Anyone out there remember Tetris payout? I made a few thousand pounds on this in the early 90s in the UK. The machines only held 60 pound coins so you had to wait for them to fill up before you could emtpy them. At my student union bar the bar staff actually filled them up every Wednesday morning! There was always a queue of the local Tetris pros at this time!!!
The game was about scoring as many points in a limited time. If you scored enough then the machine paid money.
You scored more points by clearing lines at the top of the screen. So the trick was to build a platform and then score points high up the screen. The danger was that when the game got fast you would run out of screen.
I liked the game because there was none of this "score more points for clearing 4 lines at once" crap that you get on a lot of tetris games. There's a real skill in filling over a gap, clearing the line above and clearing the previous gap.
Other interesting features:
- Preview of about 10 upcoming blocks. If you could manage it you could do some serious planning ahead.
- Both left and right rotate buttons. It was amazing how many people only used one rotate button which often led them to pressing it 3 times! There was even one guy good enough to clear the machine that played this way.
The game play got faster each time a player won. This was designed to allow the machine to make money. I guess the idea was that it got too fast for people to empty. They must have had pretty crap testers though because it had an upper limit on the speed which was quite beatable - hard but beatable none the less.
The machines didn't last long because they were so easy to empty. A couple of years after they disappeared I found one and rubbed my hands with glee. Alas it had been doctored and ran at about double speed making it completely unplayable (for me at least).
Why do "minor security issues with the HTML engine" in a Linux setting generate no hysteria but if it was "minor security issues with the HTML engine of IE" then there would be uproar?
I wonder if anyone could code a Slashdot zealot filter...
procedure Main; var
s: string;
Strings: TStringList; begin
Strings:= TStringList.Create;
Try
while not EOF do begin
Readln(s);
Strings.Add(s);
end;
Clipboard.AsText:= Strings.Text;
Finally
FreeAndNil(Strings);
End; end; (* Main *)
begin
Try
Main;
Except
on E:Exception do begin Writeln(E.Message); end;
End; end.
Yes, this is Clip command will revolutionise the world.
If the Borland C/C++ compiler for Linux is licensed the same way as Kylix (Delphi for Linux) then you will get a fully featured compiler with a GUI for free - but only for GPL development.
Borland's Windows C/C++ compiler is widely regarded as the most ANSI compliant compiler available. One would guess that the Linux C/C++ compiler would be a straight port.
Their marketing people may have no brains but Borland sure know how to write compilers.
May, just maybe there are some Iraqi people who want to play games. I believe that they are human too (aren't they?) and so they may share some of our emotions.
Slashdot Mirror
What I want to know is why use boxen rather than boxes?
slashdot has "no known practical applications" but that doesn't stop it being interesting
Why the apostrophe in "DVD's"?
Anyone out there remember Tetris payout? I made a few thousand pounds on this in the early 90s in the UK. The machines only held 60 pound coins so you had to wait for them to fill up before you could emtpy them. At my student union bar the bar staff actually filled them up every Wednesday morning! There was always a queue of the local Tetris pros at this time!!!
The game was about scoring as many points in a limited time. If you scored enough then the machine paid money.
You scored more points by clearing lines at the top of the screen. So the trick was to build a platform and then score points high up the screen. The danger was that when the game got fast you would run out of screen.
I liked the game because there was none of this "score more points for clearing 4 lines at once" crap that you get on a lot of tetris games. There's a real skill in filling over a gap, clearing the line above and clearing the previous gap.
Other interesting features:
- Preview of about 10 upcoming blocks. If you could manage it you could do some serious planning ahead.
- Both left and right rotate buttons. It was amazing how many people only used one rotate button which often led them to pressing it 3 times! There was even one guy good enough to clear the machine that played this way.
The game play got faster each time a player won. This was designed to allow the machine to make money. I guess the idea was that it got too fast for people to empty. They must have had pretty crap testers though because it had an upper limit on the speed which was quite beatable - hard but beatable none the less.
The machines didn't last long because they were so easy to empty. A couple of years after they disappeared I found one and rubbed my hands with glee. Alas it had been doctored and ran at about double speed making it completely unplayable (for me at least).
Those were the days......
third post!!!
methinks you mean Johns Hopkins....
Why do "minor security issues with the HTML engine" in a Linux setting generate no hysteria but if it was "minor security issues with the HTML engine of IE" then there would be uproar?
I wonder if anyone could code a Slashdot zealot filter...
In Windows using Delphi the program might be:
:= TStringList.Create; := Strings.Text;
program Clip;
{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}
uses
SysUtils,
Classes,
Clipbrd;
procedure Main;
var
s: string;
Strings: TStringList;
begin
Strings
Try
while not EOF do begin
Readln(s);
Strings.Add(s);
end;
Clipboard.AsText
Finally
FreeAndNil(Strings);
End;
end; (* Main *)
begin
Try
Main;
Except
on E:Exception do begin Writeln(E.Message); end;
End;
end.
Yes, this is Clip command will revolutionise the world.
It just confuses people in my view and it comes across as trying to be clever. What's wrong with boxes?
This is the sort of abuse of language that encourages the geek stereotype.
:-)
I've looked up the word 'boxen' in my English dictionary. It's not there. Please could you tell me what it means?
If the Borland C/C++ compiler for Linux is licensed the same way as Kylix (Delphi for Linux) then you will get a fully featured compiler with a GUI for free - but only for GPL development.
Borland's Windows C/C++ compiler is widely regarded as the most ANSI compliant compiler available. One would guess that the Linux C/C++ compiler would be a straight port.
Their marketing people may have no brains but Borland sure know how to write compilers.
Wine is not an emulator. Aside from creating one of those recursive Linux acronyms
The good Mr. Stallman will love that....
First their was BCPL
Then there was spelling....
May, just maybe there are some Iraqi people who want to play games. I believe that they are human too (aren't they?) and so they may share some of our emotions.