TkTris
An Introduction
TkTris (pronounced TIK-tris) is a clone of the most popular computer game in the world, Tetris. If you haven't heard of Tetris, you really ought to get out more. I started this project in a fit of boredom one dull August evening in 2002, hell-bent on avoiding anything resembling productivity. There are at least two other clones of Tetris written in Tcl/Tk (and a few more in Perl/Tk), but both of them use Tk's canvas widget to draw the playing field. TkTris takes a simpler approach: the playing field is comprised of a grid of blank, inactive buttons. This method lent itself rather well to the block-style nature of the tetris pieces and playing field (otherwise known as the "well").
I did not know until just before release of TkTris 1.0 that Jeffrey Hobbs had his own version of Tetris written in Tcl/Tk, called TkTetris. The similarity in the two names is accidental... but I guess that's what I get for being uncreative.
Details on how to play TkTris and the scoring system are included in the game's (admittedly small) online help.
Download
- tktris.tcl The platform-independent script. You'll need a Tcl interpreter with the Tk extension installed on your system in order to run this. If running a Unix system, there is probably already one installed. If you're on Windows or Mac, probably not.
- tktris.zip The Win32 binary. You can run TkTris on Windows using just this binary, without having to install Tcl/Tk. Unfortunately, it is much bigger.
To run TkTris in Unix, cd to the directory were you saved it and type: "wish tktris.tcl". To run the script or the binary version under Windows, just double-click on whichever you downloaded and the game should run. If you're looking for a full-fledged Tcl/Tk setup, I highly recommend the ActiveState ActiveTcl distribution, which can be found by following the ActiveTcl link below.
Additional Links
Layout, content © 2003 Charles Ulrich