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GUEST SPEAKER: You ready?

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The project that I chose to
work on is a 2D puzzle game,

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and it's based on a
puzzle version of Tetris

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that I've created
over many years.

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I programmed in
different formats.

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But I haven't figured out
a good way to deploy it,

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so I thought maybe Unity would
be a good option because it

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claims to be cross platform.

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So, anyway, so I'm a one-person
project, and that's OK.

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It was a fascinating
learning experience,

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and I made decent progress.

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The game that you're
going to see is not very--

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oh, something's wrong with it.

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The Canvas needs to get
away from the playing board.

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Is there a way?

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Anyway, so the game is
very low-end graphics.

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It's very bare bones,
but conceptually, it's

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an implementation of Tetris,
with the variation that only

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certain pieces are used.

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And it has a puzzle objective,
so you could actually

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win the game or solve it.

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The objective is-- the simple
objective is a wipeout--

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where you want to clear
the board exactly,

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so that the last piece
clears all the row.

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Is everyone familiar with Tetris
and the row-clearing mechanism

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[INAUDIBLE], I hope?

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So you'll see it and figure
it out if you're not.

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If I can--

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I knew I wanted to do a
2D game, grid-type puzzle

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because that's what I've
been working on a lot

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is developing various
ideas for logic puzzles

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that use 2D grids.

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And I thought Tetris
might be too ambitious,

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so I was looking
at the tutorials I

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found on Unity sites.

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There were some-- there
was one for Minesweeper,

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so I was originally
going to do that.

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But then when I found
the Tetris tutorial,

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I said, oh, maybe
I can go with this.

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My first step was to implement
the Tetris tutorial--

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implement the code from
the Tetris tutorial,

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which that code was
for a full Tetris

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game with a 10-wide board
and all the pieces that

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are standard Tetris.

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But what I wanted
is just a couple

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of pieces that work
well for the wipe

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out games that I
do-- the puzzles.

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So I just needed a
T-piece and an L-piece,

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so that's all I implemented.

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So I adapted the
Tetris code a lot.

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So let me just jump a bit
and show you a quick demo

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if I could move my mouse.

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Oh, it's two screens.

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So before-- oh, yeah, the
game is already going.

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So you can select
which width you want.

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The board can be--

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I'll show you how that moves--

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the board can be
seven-wide, or we'll

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start with five-wide
because that's easier

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to finish the wipeout.

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10-wide is really slow.

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It's possible to play this
wipeout game with wider boards,

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but it just takes so much
longer, and it's tedious.

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So I find that five, six,
and seven are the most

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fun and challenging
levels, and the game

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can be very challenging.

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You need to learn
patterns, as you'll see.

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So then you have the choice
of three piece options,

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as either a T-piece,
which I'll start with,

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or you can do an L-piece, or
the T and L together, which

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under the current limitation,
they're randomly chosen,

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which makes the
game extremely hard

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because it's much
easier to solve

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if you can plan ahead a little.

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Because you get to
the point where--

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well, I'm jumping ahead.

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So let's do the T-piece and
show the game in action.

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So this is what it looks like.

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We start with a piece
down at the bottom.

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It manually drops-- are my
cursor keys going to work here?

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Yeah, so there's
basically four--

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the four arrow keys are
used to control this.

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The pieces fall like in
Tetris, so you can rotate.

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There is only one
rotate, so right up arrow

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is rotate clockwise.

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And you could drop a piece,
and then the rows clear.

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That's the Tetris mechanism.

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So now this takes a little
longer to do a wipeout,

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but I'll show you
the basic idea.

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The trick is that
you learn patterns,

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so you'll start to
see a pattern here.

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So I can clear
that, and now I can

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clear a row by putting this.

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It takes four pieces
to clear a row.

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So eight more pieces
and I'll be down--

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all but the white dots.

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So let's just plow through that,
so you can see what happens.

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[LAUGHTER]

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One more.

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So it's-- you see the pattern,
so part of what I think is fun

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about this game is
learning these patterns.

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It's challenging to figure
out how to learn pattern.

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There sort of like macros.

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Oh.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Look at that.

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Thank you.

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So let's just try one--

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I don't know how much time I
have, so I'll just do one more,

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so we can discuss
what went into it.

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There were a number of steps
forward in the learning

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experience.

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First, was implementing
the Tetris game, modified

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to use only the two pieces,
so I started with just the two

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pieces.

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And then, the next
step, I wanted to set up

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controls to let me select.

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So the first thing I did
was the width buttons--

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to modify the width.

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There's just one
thing that's control,

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which is the right border,
as you saw it moves around.

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So learning to move that was
my first learning experience.

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I was happy when I
got that to work.

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And I had to figure
out along the way

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how to make buttons work--
how to connect to them

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and run the scripts for
buttons and things like that.

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It was very challenging, and
I had never programmed in C#

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before, so that was a
challenge in itself.

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But I made progress with that.

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Once I figured out buttons, I
said, I'm running with buttons.

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I'm going to use buttons
for all they're worth.

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So I try to do the Piece
Selection buttons and then

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the Start buttons.

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And the Stop button
doesn't quite work.

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It sort of works, but it
seems to create something

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wrong in the data structure, so
that when I run the next game,

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it crashes.

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So that's not good, so I
avoid the Stop button now.

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So let me show you the six-wide
board with the T-piece also.

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Maybe I should do
the L-piece just

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to show you a different
piece because I may not

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be able to get beyond this.

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So how do I want to do this?

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So, yeah, this will work.

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So one of the
patterns you learn is

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that with two L-pieces
together, you can

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make a two-by-four rectangle.

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So if I put this one
down here, then the other

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completes the
two-by-four rectangle.

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And that rectangle, you can see,
fills in the remaining pieces,

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so that that wipes that one out.

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[APPLAUSE]

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And I won't have
time to finish it,

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but I'll just show
you what happens

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when have the end of pieces.

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Let's do it with, say,
the five-wide board.

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So you see-- so we randomly
get an L- or a T-piece now.

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And notice there's
only one kind of L,

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which is the L L,
not the reflected L.

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So how do I want to do this?

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So part of the problem here
is that this L will not

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turn around to go in
the other direction.

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Now if I'm fast, I can slip
things in before it falls.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So I implemented the
drop, so that it drops--

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let me just get my piece ready--

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I want it to go there.

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So it will drop, but
not freeze the piece.

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So the code actually waits
until there's a fall.

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You see that every
second the piece

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tries to fall another
step, and the piece

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freezes when it can't
successfully fall

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in response to a fall action.

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So this isn't great.

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PROFESSOR: Anybody
have any questions?

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GUEST SPEAKER: Yeah, you
can start asking questions

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while I muck with this.

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Nope.

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AUDIENCE: Have you
actually completed it

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with the RAM [INAUDIBLE].

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GUEST SPEAKER: Oh,
yeah, absolutely.

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It's just a little more
tedious, like I said.

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It takes-- no, it's
definitely doable.

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It just-- sometimes it takes
multiple tries because--

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here's a trick.

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Because I'm preparing for Ls.

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So I didn't get an L, but
I could put a T in here.

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If I get an L next, good,
then I could put this here.

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Now if I an L, I'll wipe
out all those three rows.

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So I want to do
things like that.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Let's see.

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There-- and this could work.

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I get another L. Nope--

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didn't.

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So how do I want to do this?

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So you don't always
get the piece

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you want, of course,
because it's random.

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Let's see how this works.

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This will get it down
to almost one row.

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[ARGH]

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Boo.

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I didn't want more
L-pieces, but I have

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to decide what to do with it.

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I guess I'll just bite
the bullet and do that.

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So now I'll try again.

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Yes, now if I--

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whichever-- I'd
prefer a T-piece now.

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So I can get it
down to one cell.

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I'm close to a wipeout,
but not what I wanted.

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If I can get a T-piece,
so this is good.

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I like getting-- making
the shape of a T-piece

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at the bottom because
there is a way

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to win if I get
the right pieces.

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So, L-- I need a T and an
L. let's hope for an L next.

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AUDIENCE: Yay.

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GUEST SPEAKER: Yay.

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00:10:06,341 --> 00:10:08,706
[APPLAUSE]

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So I think this is a fun game.

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What was this-- there
was a second thing.

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The scripting was
a big challenge,

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and learning to get the
buttons to work properly.

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Oh, the text-- that's
what I did last night.

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I figured out how
to enable text.

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Someone gave me a
hint that I wanted

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to set enable true or something.

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But it was very
hard in one script

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that detected the wipeout.

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So I wrote the code last
night to detect the wipeout

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by checking for all
the rows cleared.

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There's a grid that's hidden
behind this little matrix that

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holds blocks.

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And the script operates on
that, and so I had the script

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that checks for the wipeout.

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And if it finds
there's a wipeout,

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then it needs to
call another script.

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Well, it basically needs to
go tell the text to enable,

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so that you can see it.

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So I created the text and
disabled it at the start,

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but then I needed to be
able to programmatically,

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or in the script,
turn it off and on,

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which these things sound
simple, but they are not trivial

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when you're first
encountering them.

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So I struggled-- doing
googling-- looking for things

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like how to find an object.

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And so there's find
object by type,

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and then there is the
game object defined,

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which let's you find by
name, which was very useful.

249
00:11:35,480 --> 00:11:38,540
So once I figured that
out I could look up my--

250
00:11:38,540 --> 00:11:41,050
I think it was a text object.

251
00:11:41,050 --> 00:11:44,204
I had a text object
that I created,

252
00:11:44,204 --> 00:11:45,370
but that wasn't good enough.

253
00:11:45,370 --> 00:11:47,810
I needed to get the
text component itself.

254
00:11:47,810 --> 00:11:49,870
So I had to call get
component and figure out

255
00:11:49,870 --> 00:11:53,470
what kind of specifications
to put after that to tell it

256
00:11:53,470 --> 00:11:55,030
what kind of component to find.

257
00:11:55,030 --> 00:11:56,140
The syntax was tricky.

258
00:11:56,140 --> 00:12:00,610
One website said you needed a
dot before the angle bracket

259
00:12:00,610 --> 00:12:02,110
text and another one.

260
00:12:02,110 --> 00:12:04,180
But what worked was not
having the dot there,

261
00:12:04,180 --> 00:12:07,760
so there's misinformation out
there, or else Unity changed.

262
00:12:07,760 --> 00:12:10,090
I don't know, but,
finally, I got it.

263
00:12:10,090 --> 00:12:11,810
And I thought there
was a method called

264
00:12:11,810 --> 00:12:16,300
enable that I could say enable
or disable, but turns out,

265
00:12:16,300 --> 00:12:17,120
it's a variable.

266
00:12:17,120 --> 00:12:19,570
It's a, I guess, a
component variable,

267
00:12:19,570 --> 00:12:22,360
or something, that you
can set to true or false.

268
00:12:22,360 --> 00:12:23,860
Finally, I figured
it out, and I was

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00:12:23,860 --> 00:12:28,930
able to get the
congratulatory text to appear

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00:12:28,930 --> 00:12:30,780
[APPLAUSE]