Tower Power
1250
Tournament Edition

This is my 1st attempt at a Playstation yaroze game. Actually the original idea was mine for either Luckily for me two MAs on the course, Alex, and Richard liked my idea, and did the models for me. Although I modelled the tetris style blocks, coloured them in, and centred the centres!! (I'm a scientist, as far as I'm concerned that's more than enough of a contribution to the art side of things ;) )

TP1250TE is loosely based on Tetris.(Aren't all the best puzzle games?) The twists on this classic game are that it's three dimensional, and you actually try to build a tower, rather than stop one being built.

Blocks fall from the sky onto a 6 by 6 square grid. It is then up to you to build a tower ten units high before the time runs out. Obviously that could be very easy, so I had to devise a way to make it harder. Hence the weather can effect your tower building ability, and I devised a clever algorithm to work out how densly packed the tower is, so that if it's not packed enough you can't go onto the next level. Actually the algorithm is not that clever, you just have to score above a certian number of points to go onto the next level ;)

The models that my colleagues worked on were a black knight, white knight, king, queen, elf and ranger, who are the Super Puzzle Tower Builders. They used Softimage|3D.

The game is far from finished, but I've zipped up a playable demo for download .

I need to add the character models, and sort out the scrappy front end. Later I hope to add a split screen 2 player mode, and split screen vs CPU game. Anyone who feels like contributing ideas for implementing split screen and/or AI don't hesitate to e-mail me at admars32@yahoo.com.

I would also be happy to get positive or negative feedback abouth the game. I especially want to know if you think I should make the blocks rotate in all 3 axis, or just leave it as one. I'm also toying with the idea of having a shadow to make it easier to see where the block will land, or have guide lines where it will land. Anyway, as I said feedback on these or any other suggestions/complaints/bugs/whatever would be great, (especially if you let me quote you for my MSc project report :)

Actually while you here, feel free to download the OpenGL conversion which for the moment plays better than the Yaroze version. Sadly it's M$ Windoze only, (or at least '95 and NT). Again, I'd be more than happy for you to get in contact with me about it. It should run on any PC, but I have a feeling you may have to have an OpenGL hardware capable graphics card. Also you may have to have M$DEV studio installed to run it, but you shouldn't do!
Cheers.
Al


admars32@yahoo.com
Last Update: 10th May 2001