Yeah, so scootside has kind of taken over the leaderboard at this point. I don't know if it's time for a new game or what?

Thought required on this one. (:

Heh, so I guess I did quit there for a little while. There are reasons. None of them matter. What matters is, I’m back. The Simple Blocks game is updated. We have combos. We have better scoring. We have less bugs. We have proven that we can do it. We don’t know what ‘it’ is.

I’m starting to think about the prizes aspect of this, but it seems kind of pointless as long as I’m on the top of the high score board. So, someone dethrone me. I assure you that insane scores are possible with the new combo system.

Good times, and oh yeah, tell your friends.

Just getting this down with a timestamp on it. If this were any other pet project I'd be quitting right now. However, this is the one year project, and by my measurements this is only the 3rd week. (4th?) In any event, this beast is far from over. So look out.

Thank you. Goodnight.

That’s right kids. A game. A momentous occasion. I hope someone’s writing all this down. Oh, wait. So, the game uses the Anark Client ActiveX Control. (WTF?) The game is aptly titled Simple Blocks. The object is to line colors up, like in kindergarten. Four blocks of the same color that touch go away, also like in kindergarten when the bigger kid wanted those blocks. When blocks go away (in the game), the ones above them fall, no thanks to Newton. Right now the scoring is pretty simple, you get one point for each block that goes away. Play testers peaked scores over 100, though that was before there was a high score board, so, you have to kind of take their word for it, but if asked, I would vouch for them. There are bugs, lots of them. For serious; It’s like Joe’s Apartment in here. At this point I’m super interested to hear what you think and about any defects that you find. Ask and ye shall receive and things of that nature. The game itself does have a high score board, so start competing! Heh.

On a second note, this whole site is about as secure of the border of Kansas, but like Kansas it’s landlocked in a sense. I think what I’m trying to say is it might be more fun to try and inject high scores than play the silly Simple Blocks game. It all depends on the "color of your hat" if you will.

So, what are you waiting for? Go! Play!

And, oh yeah, tell your friends.

All right. I think we're setup here. Lets run through what we've got so far.

• You can create an account.
  • Your account has a login/password combo which uniquely identifies you on the site.
  • Your account has a score, this is an indication of how much of a badass you are, higher score = more 'sweet' prizes.
  • Your account has a nickname so you can have a different name on the high score board if you get sick of your login.
  • Secret web voodoo magic keeps you logged in (hopefully) because logging in to a site all the time is boring.
• Your can view that account and change your nickname.
• You can view a list of all the accounts. (this is doubling as the high score board right now.)
• Your can view this blog, which you've apparently divined how to do.
• Your can leave feedback about this site, either while looking at the feedback, or clicking the link at the bottom of any blog post.
• Your can also check out the Linky Thing but that has nothing to do with DanceLiquid Games.

Sweet! That's sounding pretty good. What's missing? Oh yeah, there are no games to play. (crickets chirping...) I'm working on that right now. The first game is in development. It's a block stacking game. Right now the plan is to do a lot of block stacking games, but 52 weeks is a long time. We can definitely do different types of games when we get bored. Having never seriously tried to implement a block stacking game before I'm naturally learning a lot. First I tried consulting the all mighty Google, may the well of his (her?) knowledge never run dry. I did not find what I was looking for. I was basically looking for some kind of tome of the ages originally written in the blood sweat and tears of Alexey Pajitnov passed down from one generation of block stacking game architect to the next discussing all the things I'm figuring out the hard way right now. Nope, not to be found. Note: if you're privy to this secret tome I'd love to see it. Maybe this website will someday become that tome. *daydream*

Okay, down to business.

A purely object oriented design would be good right? I mean, a simple system like this begs to be represented as objects. A single 1x1 square unit, we'll call that a block. A collection of such units with which the player interacts as a whole, we'll call that a piece. The walls and other (static?) parts of the game we can call the board. A piece is made up of blocks, and the board has several pieces on it. Ok. Another concept is the Active Piece. The Active Piece is the piece that the player is in direct control of. To begin with she can move it left or right (providing there is no wall or other piece in the way) and she can spin it. Oh yeah, the Active Piece is also falling. (slowly hopefully, I don't even know how to play this damn game!)

Wow, that sounds pretty fun.

"Who's responsibility is it to make the Active Piece fall?"
.."Move yourself you lazy bastard."
"Fine then, who's responsibility is it to figure out if I can't fall, you know, in an unlikely event where there are some blocks stacked up below me"
.."Do that too, what do I look like? Your Mother? don't answer that."
"Dude, I don't know, I'm feeling overworked :("

Under this fascist regime the Active Piece all of a sudden has to know something about the whole board, or at least how to ask the board about it's state, and to know how to manage things accordingly. Now, I'm an object oriented design neophyte but this just sounds like a bad idea. Thus sadly ended the first day of coding the game.

Day two; Sun rises, birds chirp, another chance to achieve our goals. For a brief second the spirit of Alexey is channeled, or at least it seems that way as you well know these sorts of things are fuzzy. The board makes the Active Piece fall. Refactoring the whole of the game logic (a whopping 200 lines of code at this point) in terms of the board pulling the Active Piece down cleans things up. Like when a baby is first born, it is not so clean, and then a little later when they have wiped the, um, whatever the brand new born baby is covered in, off, is cleaned up. Bad sentence, you get the point. Taking this epiphany (the first of many, I hope) in to account makes the game work... more... than it did before. Which it goes without saying was not a lot or well.

Yeah, now that's progress, and oh yeah, tell your friends.

Welcome to the DanceLiquid.com Games blog. This is the home of a project that I started on the date you see associated with this post. This is the result of some advice I received recently. A guy I trust a fair amount was moving away. I asked him, “Have you got any advice for me?” His response was something on the order of this: “Just work on something for a full year, it’s bound to turn out good.” This advice was and is sage like. I’m always starting all kinds of projects; from different music ideas, to silly useless programs, to websites and beyond. When I thought about it, this advice might just be the key. The stuff I start working seems like it might turn out well, but I have no follow through on my personal projects. All right, I’ll work on something for a year. What’ll it be? Well, it’ll be what you’re looking at right now. 52 short (long?) weeks of web game design. I have a few ideas, definitely not 52 weeks worth, but something about travel and long roads and beginning with the first step, etc.

Oh yeah, tell your friends.