Q-Bix - falling-blocks puzzle game

Thread in 'Other games' started by superlubo, 5 Jun 2008.

  1. superlubo

    superlubo Unregistered

    Hello everybody!


    I want to present the game "Q-Bix" created by me and a big friend of mine. This is our first game, and we're very excited aboutit. The game itself is based on the classic Tetris, but there are some innovations in the gameplay. The game was developed in C++ and DirectX 9 library.


    Here is a link from where you cand download and play the game. It's absolutely free:


    Download Q-Bix:

    http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/mod/gds/download.asp?projectID=486049


    You can also visit the website of the game and read additional info:


    Q-Bix Web Page:

    http://www.gamedev.net/community/gds/viewentry.asp?projectid=486049



    I present two in-game screenshots:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    System Requirements:

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    > 1GHz or faster Intel / AMD processor

    > Microsoft Windows XP (service pack 1 or higher)

    > 128Mb of RAM

    > 20Mb free HDD space

    > DirectX 9.0c Compatible Video Card

    > DirectX End-User Runtime November 2007 or newer -


    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1A2393C0-1B2F-428E-BD79-02DF977D17B8&displaylang=en


    > Microsoft-compatible keyboard

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    We'll be glad to hear your openion about our game!

    Thanks in advance!
     
  2. jujube

    jujube Unregistered

  3. jujube

    jujube Unregistered

    i decided to give it a try anyway, and it worked on W2K [​IMG]

    i heard sound at the main menu, but none during this game (or maybe it was very quiet). is it supposed to be this way?


    the delay before auto-shift seemed a bit too short, making it hard to shift a piece one column at a time. it became challenging when the gravity got faster to line up a piece properly, even when i knew where i wanted to put it and got it moving as soon as it spawned.


    it was a lot of fun on my 2nd try when i had a better idea of what was going on. i played a nice long game (getting bailed out by the pink item a few times) and ended up around 84,000.
     
  4. What's the point of the game and is there a youtube demonstration?
     
  5. jujube

    jujube Unregistered

    you try to make lines or same color clumps to make them disappear. i'm not sure of the size or shape of the clump. and i'm pretty sure they're not called clumps.


    you get randomly colored, shaped, and sized -ominoes (including hinged pieces) that you control just like tetrominoes in tetris while stacking them in a very wide and tall well. you'll get everything from (monominoes?) to hexominoes, but not every type of pentomino and hexomino. in fact, i don't remember ever seeing an I shaped tetromino, or any longer I.


    oh, there are also tiny falling item blocks. one of them removes individual blocks it touches while falling or moving sideways, another removes every block in the well of a certain color depending on the color of the first block it touches, and another changes the color of the first block it touches (and all same color adjoining blocks) but i don't understand how it's decided what color the block(s) will become.


    there is a cascade effect after an item is used to remove blocks from the well, and possibly after a clump is formed and removed.
     
  6. superlubo

    superlubo Unregistered

    jujube, thanks for your interest!


    It is possible [​IMG]. Before uploading the game we tested it only on Windows XP. After that we tested on Vista, and it works fine there. I think that there will be no problem to run the game on other Windows versions.

    You can hear sound only when you load the game or explore the main menu. There's no music while playing the game. We wanted to include ingame sounds. We're not musicians and we couldn't compose melody that's good enought, so we decided not to annoy the player with bad music.

    The falling blocks are moveing fast sideways, so that it is possible to reach the corners of the playfield. If it is really hard to move just one column at a time, the it is possible that there's problem with the sensitivity of the keyboard.

    I'm very happy to hear that! My personal record is around 110000. It's really hard to play after the 80000-points barrier. Sometimes it's all about luck [​IMG].


    P.S.

    Thank you for the post explaining the game. If you want you can check the "Rules" section from the main menu of the game. There you can find additional info.
     
  7. your game does not run under windows vista. its just because a dll is missing:


    d3dx9_33.dll


    hope you can get that fixed or make a special windows vista version.

    or - why not use openGL ? that way you could port it later to linux / mac.
     
  8. cdsboy

    cdsboy Unregistered


    Its just easier to download a copy of the d3dx9_33.dll because tons of games give me an error.
     
  9. do you have a link at hand?
     
  10. superlubo

    superlubo Unregistered

    I've tested the game on Vista and it works fine. To run the game you need to install DirectX End-User Runtime November 2007 or newer as specified in the system requirements.
     

  11. please remember that your target audienceare presumabely are "casual gamers", and that you cant require them to download and install anything additional. even unzipping might be too complicated for some of them. so better use nullsofts installer:


    http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page
     
  12. superlubo

    superlubo Unregistered

    herc,

    you're absolutely right. The game installation isn't user-friendly. We decided not to include the DirectX End-User Runtime in the zip file because it will make it too large. We thought that no one will wait to download it. But on the other hand many users compained about missing dll files. Since this is our first game we've done some mistakes.

    Thank you very much for the link to the Nullsoft installer! It will be very helpful in future projects.
     
  13. Muf

    Muf

    Many installers, including InstallShield, MSI, WISE and NSIS allow downloading files to be executing. So in the install script you check if the target machine has the DX runtime, and if not, download it. Keeps your installer filesize low, keeps gamers happy.
     
  14. superlubo

    superlubo Unregistered

    I didn't know that I can solve the problem this way. It's very stylish and it seems to work perfect for small games like this one.

    Thank you very much for the great idea!
     

Share This Page