DMGTRIS

DMGTRIS is a block stacking game for the original game boy written in assembly.

The game is heavily inspired by the TGM series of games and has the following features:

• TLS (ghost piece) until 1G speeds.
• IRS (initial rotation system).
• IHS (initial hold system) as well as holds.
• Faithful implementations of concepts such are lock delay, piece spawn delay and DAS.
• Several RNG options available. You can choose between pure RNG, 4 history with 4 retries, 4 history with 6 retries, 4 history with infinite retries, or a 35bag with 4 history and 6 retries with drought prevention.
• A choice between sonic drop (pressing up grounds the piece but does not lock it), hard drop (pressing up locks the piece), or neither (pressing up does nothing at all.)
• A choice between traditional ARS for rotation, or TGM3 era ARS with extra kicks.
• Scoring is a hybrid between TGM1 and TGM2.
• A speed curve reminiscent of TGM, starting slightly faster and skipping the awkward speed reset. The game continues infinitely... But so does the speed increase.
• A rock solid 60FPS with a traditional 20x10 grid.

Modes

There are eight available game modes:

• TGM1: 4 history w/ 4 rerolls, never start with O, S or Z.
• TGM2: 4 history w/ 6 rerolls, never start with O, S or Z. Sonic drop.
• TGM3: 4 history w/ 6 rerolls and drought protection, never start with O, S or Z. Sonic drop. Extra floor and wall kicks for I and T pieces.
• HELL: Pure random piece generation.
• EASY: 4 history w/ 256 rerolls, never start with O, S or Z. Sonic drop.
• TGW2: TGM2 but with hard drop.
• TGW3: TGM3 but with hard drop.
• EAWY: EASY but with hard drop.

Scoring

After each piece is dropped, a check is made:

No line clear

Combo is reset to 1 and no points are awarded.

Lines were cleared

Lines = Lines cleared. In TGM3 modes, 3 lines are worth 4, and 4 lines are worth 6.

Level = The level before the lines were cleared.

Soft = Amount of frames the down button was held during this piece + 10 if the piece was sonic or hard dropped.

Combo = Old combo + (2 x Lines) - 2

ScoreIncrement = ((Level + Lines) >> 4 + 1 + Soft) x Combo x Lines.

ScoreIncrement points are then awarded.

Playing

You can build the game yourself, or use the binary here or here.

The game should run in any accurate emulator. For Windows or Linux using Wine bgb is generally regarded as the best option. For macOS SameBoy comes recommended.

Please do not try running it on older emulators such as VBA, since this game uses the semi-randomness of the initial game boy memory as one source of RNG entropy.

Controls

Menu

• A/B/Start — Start the game
• Left/Right — Switch A/B rotation direction
• Up/Down — Select starting level
• Select — Select game mode

Gameplay

• A — Rotate 1
• B — Rotate 2
• Select — Hold
• Start — Pause
• Up — Sonic/Hard drop
• Down — Soft drop/Lock
• Left/Right — Move

Game Over

• A — Restart immediately
• B — Go back to title

Building

The game can be built using gnu make and the RGBDS toolchain.

Issues

• In very rare cases the frame time in TGM3 and TGW3 modes can be exceeded due to the way the RNG for those modes works. When this happens, the screen will appear slightly glitched for 1 frame but no frame drops will occur. This issues is fundamentally impossible to completely avoid though more optimization may cause it to occur less frequently.

Future Goals

• Improve main menu.
• Decouple rotation rules, rng rules, and speed curve from each other.
• Multiplayer with items.
• Colorization.
• ...

License

Copyright (C) 2023 - Randy Thiemann randy.thiemann@gmail.com

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.