Tetris Scoring

I made some quick progress on tetris today. There is now an element of scoring! And you can pass levels, although now that I think about it, the way I've implemented the levels is rather silly. You simply pass a level each time you break a multiple of 1,000 points. Dumb, dumb. But I don't think I'm changing it now.

Enjoy!

Bitten by the Summer Book Bug

I apologize to my dear faithful readers for the 3-week delay between posts. I have been caught up reading two very gripping books: "The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova, and "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by, of course, J. K. Rowling.

I have heard of several people who have read "Harry Potter" in two days or less. I am not one of those people. I just don't read that fast; nor do I have all the time in the world. I read each as quickly as I was able and enjoyed each immensely.

I do love to read, nearly as much as I love programming. I will, of course, try to continue to program some more of my own stuff this summer, but there may be some books that continue to distract me here and there. If any of you can recommend some good ones, I'm all ears. A couple I have on my list already are: "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana" by Umberto Eco, and "The World Is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman. "The World Is Flat" is on the recommendation of a friend, while "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana" is one I stumbled upon today. I think it looks interesting.

Again, I'm interested in your suggestions! Oh, and there's more tetris to come. This is a programming blog, after all...

Cursed Microsoft Java

Today I discovered a problem with my Tetris game: it doesn't work for 90% of you! In spite of all my efforts to make it compatible with the lowest common denominator (Internet Explorer, Microsoft's JVM), I had never actually tested it on a machine without Sun's JVM installed until today.

It appears as though when I compile my java classes, I need to add a compiler option telling it to target Java 1.1 (my SDK is 1.4). I will try to do this either tomorrow or later this weekend.

Thanks for your patience. While you're waiting, why don't you install true (Sun's) Java?

Nearing the Finish Line on Tetris

I realized yesterday it has been far too long since I updated you all on Tetris. Progress has been going well, albeit slowly. This week's additions include:

• Completed lines vanish!
• There is now a panel indicating what the next falling piece will be!

Please try it out and let me know what you think. The next component I'll be completing (it's already in the works) is a score. Stay tuned.