Contents  Where Did We  Leave Off?  Next Piece Please  I Can't See It!  The New Text  Wanna See This  Too?  Scoring and Levels  Until Next Time  Printable version  Source & Demo     The Series  Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4  Part 5  Part 6

Next Piece Please

Integrating a new piece into the 'pipeline' was very easy. Basically, what I wanted was a piece that would stand in line. Then, when the current piece finished dropping, the next piece in the line would become current and the new piece, that was just created, would take it's place waiting.

So, I started out by copying all the variables the current piece had. Then I just gave them new names to show they were for the next piece and not the current one. Then, I needed to alter the New_Shape() procedure. Take a look at the code I added.

Notice that the first thing I do is test to see if NextShape is currently -1. I assign NextShape this value during initialization to show that I need to create two new shapes, one for the current and one for the next. After that special very first iteration though everything runs as normal. I place the values in the next shape into the current shape's variables. Then, I create everything just as before except I store the values in my next shape instead. At the bottom I test the current shape to see if it is -1. If so, then I know I need to create another shape, so I jump back to the top and do it all over again.

The only other modification I had to make was, as I mentioned, during initialization. At that point, both the current shape and the next shape were set equal to -1 to indicate they needed to be created.

Next : I Can't See It!