Hextris

http://hextris.github.io/hextris/

by kome • 12 years ago

589 92 12 years ago

hextris.github.io

kazinator• 12 years ago

"I wrote Hextris way back in 1990." -- David Markley

http://www.hextris.com/

Kind of misleading to use the name "Hextris" for what looks like a very different game. The original Hextris is 2D falling blocks exactly like Tetris, except that the world consists of hexagons, and so the pieces have six rotations. I played this like crazy for a brief time in the mid 1990's.

prawn• 12 years ago

Same. I used to procrastinate and play Hextris for so long I'd enter a trance and zone out.

Remembered it recently and based my own game on hexagons!

minimaxir• 12 years ago

This is more Hex Puyo Puyo than Hex Tetris.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puyo_Puyo_(series)#Gameplay

bluedino• 12 years ago

HexKlax

bitwize• 12 years ago

It is the 2010s and there's always time for it!

diminish• 12 years ago

Every time I get a glimpse of other people's phones I endeed up seeing crush candy saga and then 2048. let's see if hextris re-loaded will get a dent.

snarfy2• 12 years ago

It needs a 'drop brick' button.

loganengstrom7• 12 years ago

We thought about adding that, but we weren't sure where we'd put it - any ideas?

Gracana• 12 years ago

Spacebar or tap the center?

sergiotapia• 12 years ago

Now build it using Swift|Elexir|Haskell. :P

abritishguy3• 12 years ago

It gets too fast - if it had a limit to how fast it got then it could go on forever but with it as it currently is there are limits to how high your score can get before it is too fast for you to be able to react and once you reach that score you aren't very motivated to keep playing.

I'm struggling to beat 5863

mnx• 12 years ago

I got 6700 on my third try, and I'm not great at such games. I think there's a lot of randomness to how far you'll get.

stinos• 12 years ago

this. After a while it goes so fast I have no clue what I'm doing anymore and it's not that much fun anymore :P Maybe make the overal acceleration a bit slower?

Btw the speed seems to depend on the machine you play it on. On my wife's close to 10 year old laptop it's way slower than on mine. But the rotation is still fast enough, so scores are higher. She's at 20000 now and the speed is roughly similar to what I get at 1000 points. Old hardware FTW.

ams6110• 12 years ago

Yeah I tried it on my PowerBook G4 and it was like molasses

ryandrake• 12 years ago

Maybe depends on the hardware. On a new-ish MacBook pro, it gets too fast to play after 2 minutes or so. A game programming best practice is to hang your game logic and drawing off a timer that runs the same speed regardless of hardware, so it's not too fast on new computers and too slow on old ones.

GeneralMayhem• 12 years ago

Chrome on a brand-new MBP here, I got 5233 but by the last 30 seconds or so I was barely reacting, just getting lucky with where they fell. It was about four drops per second at that point, just a steady stream.

trappedfly• 12 years ago

Friend of one of the developers here. My record is 66k: https://github.com/Hextris/hextris/commit/ccff79029999a19f5d...

abritishguy3• 12 years ago

The speed is very very different depending on the computer/browser which kind of ruins it.

zwegner2• 12 years ago

Weird. I got to 80k in Firefox, and stopped because it was pretty slow and not getting faster--not really challenging at all.

I tried again in Chrome and its a lot faster, and does get faster throughout the game as well. More fun and challenging, but yeah--it does get too fast too quickly.

michaelmior• 12 years ago

My first try was 39556. I actually thought it was too slow to get started, but then it picked up quite a bit near the end.

abritishguy3• 12 years ago

Timing seems to be very different on different computers/browsers which is just stupid.

WilliamSt• 12 years ago

Don't focus on placing every tile perfect, just get them evenly placed across the hexagon. The game seems to slow down after a while as well. I got 17800 points after a few trials..

asronline• 12 years ago

WHY HN?! Just when I was being productive again.

emilsedgh• 12 years ago

Here we go. A new addiction. I was just free'd from 2048. Kudos. This is real fun.

moultano• 12 years ago

I'd remove the reload button. I've hit it three times by accident already.

loganengstrom7• 12 years ago

Hi, I'm one of the main developers of the game - I just made an issue for that on GitHub. I'll try to address it later this weekend - thanks!

thakobyan• 12 years ago

This is awesome. I like it.

highace• 12 years ago

Coming up next: a bot that plays this automatically.

loganengstrom7• 12 years ago

That'd be great! We were thinking of doing that for the homepage, but didn't find the time. I'd happily merge it in if someone were to make an AI for Hextris.

Pistos2• 12 years ago

FYI: Nothing is displayed if you don't accept the site's cookies.

5414h• 12 years ago

How can the iOs version weight only 4,7mb , i dont get it .

klausa• 12 years ago

Most of the app bundle on iOS are various assets (.pngs, videos, sounds, etc). This looks like it's drawing everything in code, so the app bundle is really small.

Marco's new app, Overcast also has UI drawn almost entirely with code (all icons are generated with PaintCode [1]), and his app [2] is 4.5mb.

[1] http://www.paintcodeapp.com [2]: https://itunes.apple.com/pl/app/overcast-podcast-player/id88...

morb• 12 years ago

Even that 4.5MB doesn't seem particularly small to me. Podkicker Pro, Android podcast client takes 2.15MB on my phone. App itself take 792KB, and feed metadata takes 1.38MB.

loganengstrom7• 12 years ago

The iOS version is essentially just a static website inside of a webview. Since we only use paths to render the shapes, Hextris doesn't require too much space.

saganus• 12 years ago

Why did you get downvoted for this question? I don't get it. So I upvoted just to counter.

0x0• 12 years ago

Will it blow your mind to think that Sim City for the Amiga was only one 0.8mb floppy disk?

joaorj• 12 years ago

Post your first try score! (and don't waste more time playing, if you can)

Mine: 3387

chasing• 12 years ago

Interesting idea.

One quick criticism:

I played a couple times and maxed out around 700pts. Then played a game where I didn't touch a single key -- no rotation whatsoever -- and managed to score 3292pts.

I'm not sure what this indicates, but it feels off.

loganengstrom7• 12 years ago

That's a valid criticism - I don't know how it could be fixed.

Maybe more colors could be added? Game balance has been really tricky with this game, as changes play out very differently on mobile devices and "real computers."

rodw2• 12 years ago

More colors seems like the obvious way to increase the difficulty as the user levels-up. With only four colors, random play is quite likely to get a match--the odds of a randomly selected tile matching a given tile is going to be 1 in 4.

From a cursory look (my math may be a little off) it seems like the odds of a tile matching at least one of its 4 cardinal-direction neighbors is ~57% (20 of 35 order-independent variations), and the odds of a tile matching 2 or more of its randomly selected neighbors is ~28%. In other words, with just random play you're going to get a match out of every `+` shaped collection of 5 tiles nearly 1/3rd of the time. Factoring the three-in-a row possibility the odds of a match will go up from there. (And since a match will eliminate several tiles of given color, the odds of getting a match on the "chain reaction" must also be quite high.)

RoryGlyphic• 12 years ago

EXCELLENT.

Maybe a little walk through/instructions displayed for longer. Had to start over to quickly read again (was zoning out first time)

rythie• 12 years ago

Looks a lot like rotational... https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/rotational-unique-block-puzz...

jspr• 12 years ago

Which in term looks a lot like QbQbQb http://qbqbqb.rezoner.net/

dls215• 12 years ago

Ha, my all time high was ~800,000. That is.. until someone changed the speed.

suchabag• 12 years ago

It's great. I wish there was a color blind friendly version though!

hoov• 12 years ago

This is exactly what I wanted to say. The colors chosen are very difficult for me.

jnishiyama• 12 years ago

Landscape mode would open up the screen quite a bit. Also, a high score board would be awesome.

Can't stop playing regardless.

ryangittins• 12 years ago

Hey, excellent game! I'm sure I'll waste a lot of time on this, haha.

One feature that might be cool to have would be to make the gray background hexagon one block larger if you get four or five blocks in a row. That way, you'll be able to keep your ahead above water a little better when things really start to speed up. It would add another level of strategy and planning to the game.

Keep up the great work!

Rampoina• 12 years ago

Cool game, I got to 11079 points.

A few comments:

I think a key to drop faster would be a nice addition. The speed progression could be tweaked a bit. It's a bit boring until it gets faster, and it takes a while.

nacs• 12 years ago

Reminds me of the game "QbQbQb": http://qbqbqb.rezoner.net/

I believe that game was made for a Ludum Dare originally.

josekpaul• 12 years ago

Cool game!

kevinmchugh• 12 years ago

It's Tempest-ified Klax. Tempest saw Space Invaders as happening on a piece of paper. Tempest took that paper and turned it into a tube. That's very similar to what's happening here vs. the Klax gameplay.

ahultgren• 12 years ago

Just one suggestion, get rid of the shaking. Completely disorienting. Imagine tetris with shake.

bdcravens• 12 years ago

Clone on App Store in 3, 2, 1 ...

Paul_S• 12 years ago

Just look at all the titles mentioned in this thread of games that came out previously with similar ideas, all borrowing from others. The last original idea was the big bang and that was over 13 billion years ago.

cbhl• 12 years ago

When you click on the tweet button after you've finished a game, it might be worthwhile for the tweet text to contain the score a player just received.

aembleton• 12 years ago

Wow, that is seriously addictive! Love it.

Cyranix• 12 years ago

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Welltris[0]. I was pretty hooked on it at one point in my childhood. Fun implementation!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welltris

kome• 12 years ago

"the Soviet challenge continues" cool game!

lotharbot• 12 years ago

My favorite variant was Frac.

3d version: http://theodor.lauppert.ws/games/frac.htm

4d version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzyws5ZkSYg

johnhenry• 12 years ago

It kind of reminds me of a simplified TetrisSphere (Note: Tetris developer, Alexey Pajitnov, worked on this as well as Welltris.)

zwegner2• 12 years ago

Cool game! A few notes:

I think your choice of license may be incompatible with the GitHub terms of service--there's an implied right to fork by using GitHub, but your license states no derivatives are allowed. IANAL, but something to look into: https://help.github.com/articles/open-source-licensing

As I mentioned in another comment, it's pretty slow under Firefox.

Lastly, the game is quite pretty, but I feel that since the gameplay involved is so precise, the imprecise visuals can be confusing. It's hard to tell exactly when a piece is going to set in place, when a group is eliminated, what would happen if you rotate and a piece is blocked by a stack already in place, etc. I went by pure geometry at first, but I definitely got bitten a few times where a piece moved after I thought it was in place, or a piece didn't get eliminated with the rest of a group since it hadn't fully landed in its column. The collision animations don't quite help there either.

a3_nm• 12 years ago

Drawing inspiration from the original tetris, maybe the legibility could be improved by having some sort of grid-like background (maybe the height of cells could not be uniform but higher for the closer ones?), and cell-by-cell transitions rather than continuous.

Mandelbug• 12 years ago

I tried in both FF and Chrome, no issues with performance noticed. Do you have a lot of plugins with FF?

I actually had an opposite problem, the game was incredibly generous with its imprecise collision. I could rotate twice and catch two rectangles falling at the same time on the same paddle and finish a group. I was overwhelmed by the number of sides I had to simultaneously defend and the number of different falling pieces. The animations, I don't think, made much difference in difficulty or ease. Mostly I wound up surprised that I had cleared a group, rather than the opposite problem you described.

Funny we both had very opposite experiences.

chippy• 12 years ago

License appears to be GPL v3 now

https://github.com/Hextris/hextris/blob/gh-pages/LICENSE.md

loganengstrom7• 12 years ago

Yup, I changed the license.

robert_tweed• 12 years ago

You raise an interesting point about licence compatibility with Github's T&Cs, although it's no longer relevant to this project because the licence has been changed to the GPL v3. To quote the relevant part:

"By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and fork your repositories."

However, there's no further mention of the word "fork" in the T&Cs. Simply forking a repository does not imply that a derivative work has been created. A fork is simply a verbatim copy.

To create a derivative work, someone would need to both fork and then commit a change back to that fork. Of course, it's sort of implied through common (imprecise) use of the word that this is what it's intended to mean, but it's not actually what it says.

While I'm not a lawyer, I believe that a more precisely-worded licence in the repository would take precedence over the ambiguously worded T&Cs. However, Github could at any time clarify the T&Cs to more clearly state that forking does imply creation of derivatives. And as with most online services, if the terms do get changed, "Continued use of the Service after any such changes shall constitute your consent to such changes."

hayksaakian• 12 years ago

Some people fork repos to have a reliable reference to a specific git repo.

I've been bitten in the past when a user deleted their account or changed their name and my references broke.

whistlerbrk• 12 years ago

Love it! I'm terrible at it!

ff_• 12 years ago

Wow, a really awesome game!

It's the perfect mashup of Tetris and Super Hexagon.

adnam• 12 years ago

Oh God, I'd only just got over my 2048 addiction...

zem• 12 years ago

neat - this is a genuinely new twist on the colour-matching mechanic. sadly, i didn't find it as much fun as some of the others; i got no sense that i could build up a neat structure and then clear it in chunks (a la tetris), or set up and trigger cascades (a la columns). it was always just a matter of reacting to the current piece and putting it somewhere it would go away as soon as possible.

codezero• 12 years ago

This is pretty great. Playing it for 30 seconds stressed me out as much as Tetris does, so I immediately closed it. Definitely caught the heady essence of the original.

edsiper2• 12 years ago

great game!, please make it multi-user (matches!)

tatterdemalion• 12 years ago

Fun! It's similar to the navigation puzzle in the online game Puzzle Pirates.

codystebbins• 12 years ago

Fantastic idea. Beyond the feedback already given I wanted to commend you on the valid use of permissions on Android (just Wi-Fi). Very specific and reasonable for the game.

wavesum• 12 years ago

how about doing collapse check only after all of blocks that appeared at the same time have landed?

This would allow combos even if the pile heights are different.

sungeuns• 12 years ago

Great game! Thanks for sharing :D

morgante• 12 years ago

Awesome (and addicting) games.

Also particularly impressive as the creator(s) seem to be high school students.

garrettdreyfus2• 12 years ago

Hey guys, one of the developers here. We've heard many people talking about the differences in speed. Previously we had based speed on the framerate driven by request animframe. We realised this was a mistake so we've switched to time based now. It just got merged and should be updated in the apps pretty soon.

pacomerh• 12 years ago

I love this. I'm so glad there's still inspiration for simple refreshing games

stevep98• 12 years ago

We did a game very similar to this for iOS called 'Cirqulous'. Check it out! (Nobody else did!)

http://www.cirqulous.com/

mind_heist• 12 years ago

Wow ! Thats a pretty cool game. I haven't gotten a chance to actually download and play this game yet, but a quick question : How do you actually decide what tile to spawn next ? Is that a chance that you spawn tiles so randomly that the player looses the game with no theoretical way of killing a circle ? How do you algorithmically ensure you simply 'up' the difficulty and not hit the above condition.

On the side note : The background music in the trailer seems heavily inspired from the mission impossible theme :)

remon• 12 years ago

I quite like the idea but it's a little too buggy at the moment : - Wildly varying performance (and thus difficulty) depending on which system/GPU combo is being used - Key input stops responding on slow machines sometimes.

Having constant interval timing in your game engine is an absolute must have.

finalight• 12 years ago

it's time

for octagontris

ollysb• 12 years ago

Nice game! On an iphone I had my thumbs on either side of the hex, I find that I often hit the reset button with my left thumb, maybe move the controls to the top?

AustinW• 12 years ago

You might want to get some feedback on this Tetris chat site: http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/index.html

Hextris

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