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Original post by Adamb Sorry to burst your bubble, but it's been done before in a little game called Nyet 3. See here. But don't let that stop you from making it though! :)

Yeah, but that was a DOS game, with no flashy eye-candy, and there are all kinds of cool things you could do with 3D that would really make tetris insane. (or even 2.5D for that matter).

Tetris-clones are great games to learn to program, they encompass a lot of ideas, they're simple, and when done right, they're just addicting.

I'm not going to be selling this game. All I'm doing is creating this game to put it in my game design portfolio as something I created.

It seems like I can't get any help with this from anyone anyway and it's just better off that I didn't. I'm doing everything myself... design, graphics, music, programming... everything. I was going to have my friend help program it but he has four IB exams coming up and has no time to do it.

I'm studying C++ more now.

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Is the game style copyrighted or are you talking about the name? Because if it's the whole falling-blocks-and-destroy-lines that is copyrighted doesn't every side scrolling game an infringement on the Mario Bros. games?

It's the "4 blocks = the Tetrimino shape and using the shapes to clear lines" theme as far as I know. The game's name doesn't really matter unless it's got the word Tetris in it.

BTW, a side scrolling game isn't quite as specific as say, if you were to have a side scroller that featured a plumber protagonist that looked suspiciously like Mario, magic mushrooms, dragons and captive princesses. Then Nintendo might be able to do something. However, there are lots of side scrollers before that one. The first one I can think of is Pitfall for the 2600 but I'm sure they were there before that.

Actually I don't think that theme is copyrighted. I heard only the word "Tetris" and game names of this style ending with the suffix "tris" are infringing copyright.

My friend is going to program the game, so he's going to use this game as a programming portfolio project and I'm using it as overall design for my portfolio. So, it's just the two of us. It's going along pretty great, I already have some of the graphics done.

Sounds great, good luck. BTW, I'm a designer for the company responsible for Tetris, and it is basically the "theme" that is infringing... though I'll have to find out the details. Shouldn't keep you from doing what you're doing though, we typically only go after those that are trying to make a profit and/or those that make Tetris look bad (if any do... there are tons of clones out there).

A question about the game's music: is it legal to use copyrighted music in a game designed for a portfolio? It sounds like a stupid question and the answer is most likely a no but it's not going to be a commercial game so I don't see much harm in it. I'm experienced in music but my parents a long time ago sold my keyboard so it's hard for me to design MIDI files and I'm not at all good at just clicking or typing the notes.

By the way, Blueshrike, thank you for your comment. You work for the Tetris company? You should send me a free copy of Tetris Worlds for the GCN. You know you want to. Hahaha, just kidding.

Sorry Falkon, don't know much about infringements other than what I've written which is pretty general, but I'd guess that you are just fine and shouldn't worry. I don't work for the Tetris Company but they are our parent company and we are responsible for new Tetris's coming out (making sure rules comply, developing new designs and whatnot).

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My bad, I thought Mario was the first side *scrolling* game... I thought I had read it somewhere.

You're right, Pitfall didn't actually *smoothly* scroll... but panned every screen. Never really made that distinction before. Not sure what was the first smoothly side-scrolling game, but some prior smoothly horizontally scrolling games were Kung Fu Master, Defender, Super Cobra, and can't think of any more off the top of my head.