Nullpomino : why it should be a tetris framework and not a game.

I've been thinking about why I don't like playing tetris on nullpomino despite the fact that it implements almost all possible tetris rulesets that have ever been created and despite the fact that I respect a lot and admire all the people involved in its development.
Long time ago I posted on harddrop about encouraging people to build some sort of tetris library, so that any Tetris game creator from the community could easily create his own game based on this framework.
I remember Wojtek answering me that Nullpomino was exactly that. At the time there was only Nullnoname maintaining the official version while others would add their own unofficial patches. Along with others I pushed towards hosting the project on googlecode so that there would be only one place where all inputs from individual programmers would be uploaded and at the time I thought it was a great step towards the "tetris framework" dream I had.
I remember Rosti telling me on IRC that he diddnt believe in an open source tetris game because when more individuals were involved the game would go in every directions without order. I didn't agree with him at the time but now I have come to the conclusion that he was right.
Furthermore, some people argue that there has to be only one game in order to have a powerful community and playerbase, and in order to content everyone, we have to implement all possible game modes into one game. i think it is the wrong approach.
In my opinion, a tetris game should be the work of one person, or if more persons are involved, separation of tasks should be clearly defined. For example, one person takes care of the graphics, one person takes care of network, etc...
I don't think there is anything wrong with having a lot of different games to choose to play on.
That way, the game only goes in one direction, which is the one intended by the auhor(s).
If a lot of different tetris games are present on the scenes, then a phenomenom of "survival of the fittest" will happen and the game(s) which are the most fun to play on are going to grow a bigger playerbase.
This is why I think Nullpomino should be a "tetris framework" that other people would freely use in order to make their own games. There is nothing wrong with a lot of different people working on a framework because the framework makes it possible to implement what every single person has in mind. The idea has to be to provide other developers a way to easily make their own games, and encourage them to do.
The more games there are, the more chance there is gonna be that one person has THE idea that will be the revolution for tetris gaming, and players are going to play his game.

 

The way I see it, Nullpo's direction is "to go in multiple directions." =)

I don't know if I can put it more simply than that, but everything you argue still applies. Nullpo is just one of various different tetris games (Texmaster, LJ, etc) that are present on the scene, and if people decide "hey, a tetris game that goes in a lot of different directions" is the most fun to play, then nullpo will grow a bigger playerbase.

(disclaimer: I'm not actually involved in nullpo's design or development)

 

Wojtek is right. Nullpo is as much a framework as a game, and if we want to make a game which utilizes the full extent of the framework, why should we be stopped? It would be silly to say that we should only have the framework and then have people make their own clones based off of it, anyway. As much as I dislike agreeing with Corrosive, he's right in that our playerbase is far too small to have much more than two active games (this is from an HD thread).

In any case, we're making a framework, and then filling it with content. I see no issues. We are working on tighter communication and so far it has resulted in all the active developers and designers go in the same direction when it is applicable.

 

so in order to emulate tetris games which have something different from others more perfectly (such as DTET A+B=180 deg. rotation; Ti world & DTET soft drop; more complicated wallkick system (like my T-ex ), etc.), the framework will have to be extended a lot more....