itch.io

Hello, 

I really love what you have done with the game! I have been playing V3.2.1 for a couple of days now and I love it, it has come a long way since a couple of versions ago! It's becoming my favorite way to play Tetris, and it is something special with all the options that you have added. I can't believe that it works so well on GBA. Great work!

I do have some suggestions, based on my experience with the game and other versions of Tetris:

I think this game is missing a bit of delay when clearing a line. All the Tetris games have it and on greater speeds it gives you a couple of moments to think ahead. Tetris DX has it, Tetris DS has it (although it gives you a bit less time, but still, it's there) and the fact that Apotris doesn't have it really messes up the flow on bigger speeds.  The next piece comes way too fast after clearing a line, compared to the other Tetris versions. In some cases I still press a direction for the piece that cleared a line but the next one is already half way down and moving. I don't have this problem on any other Tetris version, so I'm sure this is happening because of the lack of a bit of delay after clearing a line.

This coupled with the fact that the piece is locking weird when still rotating it, makes it strange to play or rather unplayable past speed level 11-12. I think on a game this fast, line clear delay and locking the piece after a greater number of rotations would make the game better.

Any plans on working on those things?

Hello! So I'm curious when we can expect a new version with the lock-delay bug fixed and other stuff (diagonal disabled, etc) and whatever you have in mind next. I've been opening this every day for the last 2 months :))

That's great to hear! Can't wait for the next version!

The jitters happen randomly, that's why they are so hard to capture. I usually use VBA-m either standalone ore core, or something based off it

Thank you for the reply, and glad you are still working on it!

It seems to me that the sound problem appears mostly when using savestates. I'll try to test ot more on different devices. I get this on an Android S8+ that runs other GBA games perfectly. Is this game more demanding?

It feels like the memory keeps filling and then the sound jitter appears.

I tried it on S20 and pc too, but there I only got sone random jitters. I will be back with other test results!

Another thing: to me the lock system is really inconsistent. I think that it's cool that the piece auto locks after about 3 seconds, to prevent the game from being too easy. 

But as long as I try rotating the piece and those 3 seconds haven't passed, the piece shouldn't lock. Like it is now it's really hard to play past the 10th level, because one minute you can spin the piece 10 times in that timeframe and keep trying to find it's place, then the next piece comes, you push it somehow into a corner and it just locks after 2-3 rotations, and this really messes with your flow. That's how I always lose a game, and it's frustrating.

Even if a piece can not be move anymore, as long as I press the rotate button the next piece shouldn't drop, cause it just messes everything.

Could you ease explain a bit how the lock delay works?

Hello, things have been quiet here lately. Is this still being actively developed?

This is good, but like a lot of homebrews this could be so great with only a few more tweaks!

The number of lines recorded in the game over screen, the fixing of the music lagging, the disabling of the diagonal press and disabling of the hard drop... 

Please don't let this be just another frustrating experience of a semi-finished game, because this could be so great!

After spending some time with this game (on a phone emulator) I think it's becoming one of my top 3 Tetris games ever!

I did note some stuff that could make it better, at least in my opinion:

It would be nice to have the lines recorded in the hiscore as well (at the end), to know how many lines one has cleared.

Besides disabling diagonal presses, disabling hard drop would be really useful, at least when playing on a touch screen. If playing with a controller, I understand that this might not have much use.

Also, sometimes the music lags, no matter the song, I don't know why it happens. The game runs normally but the audio stutters

Thanks for the reply! I meant the gravity, yes.

I get what you're saying, trying to make it stand out a bit from the rest. That's cool!

Actually, there are a lot of tetris games on the Gameboy, but only 2 on the GBA (The awful Tetris Worlds and Mina no soft - japan only) so this is why it's great that you made a homebrew version that is so good! 

I don't try to take anything away, I'm just curious about what stuff it uses and what can and can't be done in it.

I'm curious what Tetris game it mimics speed-wise. I am used to the more retro games and those seem a lot slower. In this one I can barely reach level 10 and everything becomes really fast. Does it resemble Tetris DS? Or some of the newer ones? Would a speed setting be out of the question? (Slow to resemble classic tetris games, medium to resemble Tetris DS, fast for a real fast challenge, etc.)

Thank you! Yes, found something called "diagonal sensitivity" and set it to zero, but it would be nice to have it by default in the game.

I don't understand what finesse is, it seems to not do anything. I know in Jstris (I think) it calculates the eficiency somehow, but I don't see any new statistic here.

Also an idea: the next piece could be displayed bigger and maybe in a border, to be easily viewed. Like it is now things get a bit confusing. Maybe a menu to show only the next piece could be nice.

These are just ideas, maybe others would find them cool too, who knows, but this game is already really good! Kind of like a Tetris DS for the GBA 😁 I love this!

Just found out about this game and it's becoming one of my favorites! Everything is really well done, love the feel of it, the graphics and all the options! I'm gonna have to buy it, I love it that much!

I did find (kind of) a bug: when pressing up to hard drop, if I press up and also lesft or right (sondiagonally), the piece hard drops a square to the left or right, not where I would like it. I play on Android with virtual keys so it's really easy to press diagonally. Could you maybe diaable diagonal touch?