Jester Blocks We have released a first beta of Jester for the new year. It's currently packaged for windows and gnu/linux, and we'll be releasing an osx package shortly. Check out the list of features and screenshots on the home page, I think you guys are going to really like this game. I built it and I can only beat about 5/6ths of the challenges. The game is hard. It has high speed play, a highly tuned and custom rotation system, is extremely versatile, and has lots of fun features. I hope you guys enjoy it. This is our first public beta, so I imagine you'll find some bugs. If you do, please feel free to report them here and we'll take a look.
Wow, this game has a lot of modes. Looks like a lot of thought and effort was put into it. I'm liking it so far. I noticed a couple of things that might need fixing: The preview piece actually rotates if you IRS... now, I don't know if that was intended behaviour, but the kinda weird part is that it "unrotates" once it's about to spawn. This wasn't a big deal, but once you reach high speeds, it's pretty annoying DAS feels kinda funky, but I'm not sure if that was just me being rusty, but sometimes a piece would shoot all the way to a wall without DAS being charged. If there's a way to export replays, I could explain what I mean more concretely. All in all, pretty fun and solid. I'll keep playing it and testing. So far I've only completed Survivor and one level of the other modes.
I'm glad you like the game. Did I understand you right: you've beaten all 6 "survive" curves? Damn. I can hardly beat master. You'll enjoy the 5th challenge a lot; hope you get there. I think that's the most innovate part of my game. It is; I want Jester to help serve as a bit of a bridge for players who are interested in high-speed play, but don't have knowledge of things like ARE, IRS, Charging Shift Delay, etc., so I aimed to create visual cues for all of those things. Thanks for the bug report. I'm not able to replicate it (or perhaps I misunderstood how IRS should work) could you tell me exactly what's happening that causes it? Here's the two scenarios I tried, which both match my understanding of how IRS commonly works (but it's very possible I have it wrong; I've really only played Jester). Test 1: <block spawns> <Block lands> <block locks (still holding rotate> <I press and hold Rotate CW> <IRS piece now shows pre-rotation> <Block spawns rotated> Test 2: <block spawns> <Block lands> <block locks (still holding rotate> <I press Rotate CW> <preview piece now shows pre-rotation> <I let go of Rotate CW> <preview piece stops showing pre-rotation> <Block spawns, not rotated> Both of these are what I intended when I wrote the IRS code, which I based on the description of IRS provided here (Wiki: Rotate). Are you saying if you simply tap rotate during ARE, you would expect the block to spawn rotated? If I misunderstood how IRS is commonly done, I can easily change the behavior. Please let me know.
IRS implementation is good, but I think this scenario is what was rotating and unrotating the piece really quickly to the point where it was distracting. It was actually the next piece that was unrotating, not the actual one that was about to spawn like I stated in my original post. It happens very quickly, you can see it a few times in this vid I guess it's just a consequence of the preview piece feature.
I'll add a checkbox to the preferences screen in the next release to disable the IRS-preview, thanks for the feedback. If anything else comes up, let me know.
i think i understand. only the FIRST preview should rotate with IRS. the following ones shouldn't rotate at all.
Hopefully soon. Sorry for the delay. I finally got my hands on an osx machine today, so I should be able to get things working soon.
I like it. At first I thought it was annoying to have to unlock everything, including even a single preview, but then I realized that playing without previews could be its own kind of challenge.
Glad you like that feature. It seems to be the one that polarizes people the most. I really enjoyed it (for the same reason as you) but some people said it was really frustrating for them. I think for v1.0 I will keep it, but have things unlock a little more quickly, and have both rotations unlocked from the beginning.
Yeah I think giving some manoeuver in the beginning could help. Also, when I use IHS and IRS at the same time I think my tetramino rotates twice, not sure about what's going on here. Other than that, the crazy challenge made me smile. That small mode is just ridiculous X)
Qlex: Could you provide a little more detail on this issue? "Also, when I use IHS and IRS at the same time I think my tetramino rotates twice, not sure about what's going on here." Thanks! Josh
Yeah I figured it out! Actually, after the piece has spawn, pushing hold and rotate at the same time makes the new block rotate twice, you hear a very loud rotate noise and the new block is rotated 180° Just a piece of advice but I don't think allowing hold before the first preview is a good idea, since the solution is to use hold all the time so you can actually know what the next piece will be. Just a thought, but that made my "hold" finger (ie the thumb) kinda hurt Do you plan to have some music?
Awesome, good catch. I'll have that fixed in the 2nd beta. I'm playing with the unlocking scheme, too, so I'll see if we can have a preview unlock before hold, to avoid that weirdness. I definitely want to have some music, just haven't gotten around to finding a good electronic sounds library or writing anything yet.
