Blockgame is a demonstration of using a NerdKit for simple games. It is an implementation of the classic “clear rows of three matching pieces” game.
More information, including a demo, is available at http://blog.beerriot.com/2011/02/14/nerdkit-gaming/
Play begins with a board of random tiles:
abcdefg cabfgde gbacedf
The player makes a move by choosing two adjacent tiles to swap, such that a line of three matching tiles are made. For example, swapping the ‘a’ and ‘b’ in the second row of the example above creates a line of ‘b’:
abcdefg cbafgde gbacedf
The ‘b’ tiles are then removed from the board, and new random tiles added to the right side:
acdefga cafgded gacedfb
Play continues until it is not possible to make a match with just one swap.
This version differs from other common versions, in that matches and swaps may “wrap” around any side.
At startup, the player is presented with choices of what size of playing field to use, and how many unique tile types to play with (the “variety”).
The player chooses tiles to swap by clicking left/down/up/right buttons until the cursor is over one of the pieces to be swapped. The player then presses the select button, then moves to the other tile to swap, and presses the select button again. A selected tile is noted by a capital letter (all other tiles are lower-case).
When no moves remain, a “game over” screen is shown for a few seconds. The user is then returned to the start menu to begin a new game.
The schematic for the NerdKit while running the game is:
|---|
^__|1 |_
_| |__/ o--| (select)
_| A |__/ o--| (right)
lcd14_____________| T |__/ o--| (up)
lcd13_____________| m |__/ o--| (down)
lcd12_____________| e |__/ o--| (left)
^_____________| g |_______|
| _________| a |__^ gnd
0.1uF = | ____| 1 |__|
gnd_|__| |_X__| 6 |_ (14.7Mhz xtal)
lcd11_____________| 8 |_
lcd6______________| |_
lcd4______________| |_
_| |_
lcd2-^ |---|
lcd5--------|
lcd1--------|
lcd3--vvvv--|
1k gnd
For programming, connect the yellow programmer wire to ATmega168 pin 2, and the green programmer wire to pin 3, then tie pin 14 to ground.
To compile and program the NerdKit, connect the programmer, and type ‘make’ at the commandline (the top of Makefile will give you an idea of where the NerdKit libraries should be located).
To compile without programming, use ‘make blockgame.hex’.
The game features a scoreboard stored in the EEPROM. It’s a very simple format: three bytes of initial, two bytes of score, repeat twice more, then add a byte of checksum. Sixteen bytes total. Visually:
IIISS IIISS IIISS C
The two bytes of score are the high byte, then the low byte of a 16-bit unsigned integer. The checksum is simply the bitwise XOR of the other 15 bytes.
The game will also put itself to sleep after a period of inactivity (no button presses). The idea is to save power by turning off the display and shutting down most of the MCU. It will automatically wake up and resume where it left off when a button is pressed.
The two sleep points are: a minute of sitting on the game screen, and 4 transitions back and forth between the start menu and the highscore table. (Another new feature is the “screen saver” mode of the start menu, which flips to the highscore table after several seconds.)
There are also a couple of tests, with room for more. If you run ‘make test’ or look in the test/ directory, you’ll find them.