Emanuele Feronato

italian geek and PROgrammer

Talking about Lumines game, Actionscript 2, Flash and Game development.

Now it’s time to make bricks disappear if they group in a 2×2 square.

Read part 1 and 2 if you did not already.

It’s not difficult to check if bricks form a 2×2 square… and it’s not difficult to remove them from the stage.

The tricky part is making bricks fill the empty spaces left by disappeared bricks and managing combos (fallen bricks can make another 2×2 square, generating more falling bricks, and so on).

I preferred not to have an onEnterFrame on every brick to check if it’s over an empty space and eventually move it, so I created another array called bricks_in_field saving the depth of the brick in that position, so when I remove some bricks I just have to put in the moveable_bricks the depth found in the bricks_in_field array and the “engine” does the rest.

Here it is the actionscript:

// declaring some setup variables
// number of horizontal cells
grid_width = 16;
// number of vertical cells
grid_height = 10;
// size of the cell
tile_size = 30;
// offset in pixels fron the left side of the stage
x_offset = 10;
// offset in pixels from the top side of the stage
y_offset = 10;
// number of different colors that can be displayed in a brick
different_colors = 3;
// boolean values saying if I should wait for the left (or right, up...) key to be released
// this is used to make the player move bricks tapping arrow keys instead of just pressing them
wait_left = false;
wait_right = false;
wait_up = false;
wait_down = false;
// flag indicating if blocks are falling
falling = false;
// array containing the game field data
field = new Array();
// array containing bricks position
bricks_in_field = new Array();
// array containing the bricks I can move
moveable_bricks = new Array();
// initializing and drawing the play field and the bricks position fields
for (x=0; x0) {
						moveable_bricks.push(bricks_in_field[x][start_y+1]);
						start_y--;
					}
					start_y = y-1;
					while (field[x+1][start_y]>0) {
						moveable_bricks.push(bricks_in_field[x+1][start_y+1]);
						start_y--;
					}
					falling = true;
				}
			}
		}
		// place new bricks only if no bricks are falling
		if (!falling and moveable_bricks.length == 0) {
			place_bricks();
		}
		// this is how I detect if a key was tapped:     
		// when it's pressed, I wait for it to be released (in this case: not pressed)
		// thanks to the wait_ variable
		if (Key.isDown(Key.LEFT)) {
			wait_left = true;
		} else {
			if (wait_left) {
				// if the left key has been tapped, move the four bricks on the left
				for (x=0; x<4; x++) {
					// this "if" is used to determine if the bricks are still inside the game field
					if ((_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]]._x-x_offset)/tile_size-_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]].pos%2>0) {
						_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]]._x -= tile_size;
					}
				}
				// reset variable, now I must wait again for a key to be pressed
				wait_left = false;
			}
		}
		// same routine for the right key
		if (Key.isDown(Key.RIGHT)) {
			wait_right = true;
		} else {
			if (wait_right) {
				for (x=0; x<4; x++) {
					if ((_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]]._x-x_offset)/tile_size-_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]].pos%2<14) {
						_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]]._x += tile_size;
					}
				}
				wait_right = false;
			}
		}
		// when the DOWN arrow is pressed, I must rotate the bricks clockwise
		// block 0: moves to the right and becomes block 1
		// block 1: moves down and becomes block 3
		// block 2: moves up and becomes block 0
		// block 3: moves to the left and becomes block 2
		if (Key.isDown(Key.DOWN)) {
			wait_down = true;
		} else {
			if (wait_down) {
				for (x=0; x<4; x++) {
					switch (_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]].pos) {
					case 0 :
						_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]].pos = 1;
						_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]]._x += tile_size;
						break;
					case 1 :
						_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]].pos = 3;
						_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]]._y += tile_size;
						break;
					case 2 :
						_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]].pos = 0;
						_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]]._y -= tile_size;
						break;
					case 3 :
						_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]].pos = 2;
						_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]]._x -= tile_size;
						break;
					}
				}
				wait_down = false;
			}
		}
		// when the UP arrow is pressed, I must rotate the bricks counter-clockwise
		// block 0: moves down the right and becomes block 2
		// block 1: moves to the left and becomes block 0
		// block 2: moves to the right and becomes block 3
		// block 3: moves up and becomes block 1
		if (Key.isDown(Key.UP)) {
			wait_up = true;
		} else {
			if (wait_up) {
				for (x=0; x<4; x++) {
					switch (_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]].pos) {
					case 0 :
						_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]].pos = 2;
						_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]]._y += tile_size;
						break;
					case 1 :
						_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]].pos = 0;
						_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]]._x -= tile_size;
						break;
					case 2 :
						_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]].pos = 3;
						_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]]._x += tile_size;
						break;
					case 3 :
						_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]].pos = 1;
						_root["brick_"+moveable_bricks[x]]._y -= tile_size;
						break;
					}
				}
				wait_up = false;
			}
		}
		// when SPACE key is pressed, I don't wait for its release but I detect the key at once
		if (Key.isDown(Key.SPACE)) {
			// letìs made bricks fall...
			falling = true;
		}
	} else {
		//if the blocks are falling 
		// blocks_landed variable will count the number of bricks that already touched the ground
		// or that cannot fall anymore because they are over other bricks
		blocks_landed = 0;
		for (x=0; x
		moveable_bricks[x] = brk.getDepth();
	}
}

And this is the result:

Now wait for the next step to handle timing events.

Download the source.