Jetris CE

2016-08-20, post № 138

curses, games, programming, Python, #bag, #bag method, #Tetris

Jetris Console Edition is my second Tetris clone (see Jetris for the first one). It is programmed in Python and uses the curses module to display all its graphics on the shell.
Despite it running purely on the shell, I managed to eliminate any noticeable graphics update bugs. Furthermore the code to clear lines differs immensely from Jetris and actually works properly.
To enhance gameplay I implemented the so-called bag method. Instead of choosing pieces at random, a bag gets filled with all seven possible pieces. Each time you get a new piece, that piece gets randomly chosen out of the bag. If the bag is empty, it gets refilled. That way it is ensured that there will be no more than twelve pieces between two identical pieces (worst-case scenario). Also there will no more than four ‘S’ or ‘Z’ pieces in a row which makes the game fairer.
The pieces initially fall at one pps (pixel per second) and the game runs at twelve tps (ticks per seconds). Every ten cleared lines the speed increases by one tick or one twelfth of a second until it stays at the minimum speed, one twelfth of a second.^[1]
The game’s clock is handled by a thread and graphics updates are made when they are needed (there are no fps).
To achieve the pieces blocky look I used two spaces and a color pair whose background color is the piece’s color. On the shell two fully filled characters look like a square.
You also have the option to change your key bindings — which get saved on disk —, pause the game and there is a high score list — which also gets saved on disk. The files are located where the Python code file resides.