Make a Tetris-style Puzzler in Unity

An overview of our project structure. Download the TetrisCloneStart.zip file if you want a project with the folders already created!

This slide shows our sample project organization structure.

Download the TetrisCloneStart.zip file if you want a project with the folders already created!

Here we will introduce the core classes of our game:

• Board
• Shape
• Spawner
• GameController

Here we set up our Board class, which will draw an empty grid and store our shapes... eventually.

Create an empty grid square in Photoshop or use the one from the Downloadable Resources tab.

We will need to setup some camera settings to see our game board.

We create a prefab from our empty square sprite, so it can be replicated to form a grid.

Let's create a method to draw the empty grid.

Here we cover a few ground rules for how our methods and variables are named for this project.

Finally we get our empty grid drawn on screen!

Let's create a two-dimensional array to store our landed Shapes.

Our game board and Board class is complete.

Let's start exploring Unity's User Interface system. If you already have experience with the UI system and don't want to go through the section, skip to Save Point III and resume the course in the next section.

Exploring our first Canvas object in Render Mode: Overlay.

Here we will start layout out our user interface.

We use Layout Groups to space the icons in our lower panels automatically!

We add a border to our game board using a nine-slice sprite.

We add a Canvas in Render Mode: World space to add a background.

This Save Point includes our roughed out but non-functional interface along with our rudimentary Board class.

Make sure you are in Pivot mode when setting up the Shape Prefabs in the next lecture.

We lay out our seven Shape prefabs that will be our main game pieces.

This Save Point has our Board, Shape, GameController and Spawner classes created, but has no game mechanics implemented yet.

Move and Rotate our Shape

Here we being to explore Unity's Time class, which will help us create events that happen at an interval.

We add some methods to the Board class to check for boundaries.

Here we store any Shapes that land in our Board's grid array.

Here we will explore the Input class and the Input Manager, where we will setup our "virtual axes" for MoveRight, MoveLeft, MoveDown and Rotate.

We'll briefly examine the Input.GetKey and Input.GetKeyDown methods and refactor our code to use a PlayerInput method in our GameController class

Here we finish setting up all four inputs:  MoveRight, MoveLeft, MoveDown and Rotate.  We should be able to manipulate our active shape once we are finished!

We add the ability to clear rows when they are complete!

Let's check for our Game Over condition!

Our first iteration of the game is complete!

We setup our SoundManager class, which will help us playback sound effects and music.

We setup an AudioSource for our BackgroundMusic audio and configure the SoundManager to control music playback.

Let's add some sound effects.

We add some sounds when we move our Shapes.

Let's add some sounds when we clear a row.

We add some vocal effects for different events in our game.

We've added some basic background music and sound effects to our game!

We create a class that lets us toggle between two alternate icons.

We add the toggle that allows us to switch our default rotation direction.

We create a Pause button to pause to the game.

We create a Screen Fader to help transition our game to its starting and end states.

Here we finish our Screen Fader and learn how Coroutines work.

We have added some UI enhancements to our project!

The ScoreManager class will help the game keep score of player progress.

Let's add some UI to show off our score!

We finish the Lines and Level indicator in the lower left of the user interface!

Our game can now keep score!

We add a helper "ghost" to preview where our Shape will land.  Definitely a great gameplay feature!

We modify the Spawner class to give us a three-Shape preview of things to come.

We finish the Shape queue!

We add a small button to hold a Shape for layaway!

We finish the Hold button.

We have finished our Ghost, Shape Queue and Hold button features!