Show HN: Angularis – like Tetris, but based on triangles • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Angularis – like Tetris, but based on triangles

#41

Post by unfocussed_mike » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 1:05 PM UTC

This is cute, but ultimately kind of unplayable.

The keyboard controls are non-intuitive as observed by others.

The playing "field" is plain and for me at least (possibly due to vision issues) this means I can never be confident of the position of the piece before it is very close to the surface.

And fundamentally the square base and horizontal clearing make it a question of being lucky enough to get at least one of the two door-wedge pieces at the right time; otherwise you get too many unfixable gaps.

What this means is that the initial difficulty is too maddening to make the game fun to play, and I feel you must hate me.

Make the base and row clearing a V shape and you might have a game, rather than a cognitive punishment beating!

It is much easier to play on a touch device -- great work here! -- but at the same time in Safari on a 2018 iPad Pro (no slouch) it suffers slowdowns and non-responsive moments as play continues. Which may be out of the developer's hands.

Re: Show HN: Angularis – like Tetris, but based on triangles

#42

Post by unfocussed_mike » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 1:09 PM UTC

throwamon wrote: post #15

Very cool, very hard. In fact I'm wondering if the shapes (when randomly chosen?) don't make it impossible for the player to keep the game going indefinitely (as you clearly can in Tetris). I wish I had the proof chops to examine this claim. (I only managed to clear one row.)

The worst state in Tetris is the endless stream of "zig zag" shapes, but at least with those you can alternately sacrifice and clear rows, usually.

With this, I am not convinced that the pieces are allocated in a way that remains playable. I have cleared a couple of rows (in different games!) but there just seems too much stacked against me for progress.

It could be due to my eyesight; the board area needs visual hints. It could also be due to the controls, which seem like deliberate hardship.

It is cool, but it's too difficult to be fun; there's almost no recovery possible from accidents and there are too many ways to have accidents.

Re: Show HN: Angularis – like Tetris, but based on triangles

#43

Post by airstrike » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 6:45 PM UTC

emj wrote: post #6

Feels a bit too hard, I've only managed to clear one line. Building straight lines out of triangles seems hard, there are so many overhang pieces. Not saying it needs to be easier but I might need some help to get started.

It needs a 2-piece triangle to make a lot more empty spaces viable, or even an occasional 1-piece to allow for fixing mistakes

Re: Show HN: Angularis – like Tetris, but based on triangles

#44

Post by Arcorann » Sun, Feb 06, 2022, 5:23 AM UTC

This isn't the first polyabolo version of Tetris I've seen, though I think it is the first one with diagonal movement in addition to horizontal. I find it playable enough for my liking. Comments on the game:

* Configurable controls would be nice. Most (modern serious) Tetris players would be more used to Z/X for left/right rotate and Shift or C for hold. (Don't listen to the people who want only one rotate button; two are essential nowadays.)

* Ghost piece would be nice as well (I think someone mentioned it elsewhere). Even grid lines would help.

* Pause doesn't work, at least on desktop.

* Line counter is missing.

* The title mentions a version 0.7. Is there a corresponding changelog?

Re: Show HN: Angularis – like Tetris, but based on triangles

#45

Post by emj » Sun, Feb 06, 2022, 8:47 PM UTC

rufname wrote: post #34

stormbrew wrote: post #29

There was a game very much like this on the NES called Pyramid[1], and it is notoriously difficult/painful to play, though a lot of the pain is in the repetitive score. It also had a very wide playfield though, which made clearing lines take for EVER. Playing well also involves making good use of bombs to fix mistakes, because a big problem with this as a concept vs. normal tetris is that it's possible to make unfixa…

Thanks a lot for the pointer to Pyramid. The „bomb concept“ is indeed interesting.

I like your version better with the more complex pieces, but that is what makes it harder as well.

Re: Show HN: Angularis – like Tetris, but based on triangles

#46

Post by rufname » Sun, Feb 06, 2022, 10:07 PM UTC

Thank you for your nice and constructive feedback so far. I plan to keep polishing the game and to implement some of the suggestions.

The approach for the project so far was to use only „VanillaJS“ (so no frameworks, except for CSS) and to keep it as lightweight as possible. I think I might deviate a bit from this strict approach in the future.