TT
NAME
tt - a hoopy real-time puzzle-game.
SYNOPSIS
tt
[
-s
|
-s#
] [
-b
] [
-l#
]
DESCRIPTION
The program
tt
is an implementation of the well-known game
Tetris.
Quadominoes (groups of four squares joined orthogonally together) fall
slowly down the screen, accumulating at the bottom, and when the pile
reaches to top of the screen the game is over. The pieces may be
moved to the left or right, and rotated as they fall, with the aim of
making them tessellate with the pieces already at the bottom of the
game area. The height of the stack of pieces can be reduced by
filling a complete row of 10 squares, at which point that row will
disappear, and those above will fall down into its place. It is
possible (and desirable) to destroy multiple rows at once.
The keys with which these operations can be accomplished are displayed
on the screen during play. They can be redefined if necessary, (see
the section below on the environment variable TTKEYS). The game also
recognises a suspend key and a quit key, with which the game can be
suspended or quit. Incredible, huh? I mean, who would have thought
it?
In between games, when the program is waiting for a keypress before
restarting, pressing the "n" or "q" key will end the session, and
pressing the "s" key will list the top ten entries of the high-score
table.
The high-score table stores only a single score for each user at any
game-level. Thus a user exceeding his own level-0 high-score would
have his old entry in the high-score table (if any) replaced with the
new score. However, a single user may have multiple high-score table
entries for different game-levels.
The author recommends that the optimal game-levels are 0, 10 and -6
FLAGS
- -s
-
If the
-s
flag is set, then
tt
will print the top 10 entries in the high-score table.
- -s#
-
If a number is specified, then
tt
will print that many high-score entries, up to a pre-defined maximum.
- -b
-
If the
-b
flag is set, then
tt
will rotate pieces backwards (ie. clockwise), for compatibility with
the grotty versions of Tetris available on the BBC micro and other such
machines. (The default anticlockwise rotation is compatible with the
tetris
and
mex
program mentioned below)
- -l#
-
If the
-l
flag is set, then
tt
will play on the level specified, which must be between -10 and 20.
Each level of play starts at the same speed, and increases in speed at
the same rate. They are differentiated only by the fact that non-zero
levels drop a number of pieces, equal to the absolute value of the
level, onto the screen before the game starts. Negative levels drop
pieces down the middle of the screen, positive levels place them
randomly.
ENVIRONMENT
The environment variable
TTKEYS
contains, if set, the keys which will be used respectively for the
operations move left, move right, rotate piece, drop piece, suspend
game, and quit game. The keys ^L (redraw screen) and s (print the
high-score table, when pressed between games) cannot be rebound.
The environment variable
TTNAME
contains, if set, the name which will be used in the high-score table,
if a good enough score is obtained to merit inclusion. If this
variable is not set,
tt
will use the environment variable
NAME
and if this is also not set, the user-code will be used.
FILES
/usr/local/etc/ttscores -- high-score table.
/usr/local/etc/ttlock -- lock file for high-score table.
SEE ALSO
mundi(6), tetris(6), mex(6)
AUTHOR
The program
tt
was written by Mike Taylor (mirk@uk.ac.warwick.cs), based on the
original Tetris idea, by a frustratingly anonymous "Russian
Researcher".
BUGS
None known -- Please report any bugs to the author.