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Welcome to the Deblock wiki!
This wiki aims to provide a general introduction to the game, both from a technical and a player’s point of view.
Deblock is a block destruction game! The point is to destroy as many blocks in the field as you can. You destroy blocks by tapping them when they are next to other blocks of their kind. The level ends when you clear all the blocks or have blocks left that can’t be cleared (because they don’t link up with any other blocks).
Deblock is an open source game. You can find the code form the Source tab, right here in Github. Explore, learn, fork and enjoy! Remember the license: The JRL allows you to use the code, learn from it, adapt it, as much as you like — for personal use! You are not allowed to sell the code you see here, or copy paste this into any application you will distribute (even for free). You are however, encouraged to learn as much as you can from what I do here, and repeat the practices I uphold.
Let’s get aquainted with Deblock, visually!
Opening up Deblock for the first time, we’re greeted by a tiny wizard that will explain how to learn the game and get set up for online score submission.
We begin by choose our player name. This is automatically guessed (based on the name of your iPhone or iPod touch), but if you plan on competing online, this should be your unique user name.
Since you enter your player name each time you begin the game, Deblock can easily be played by multiple people from the same device. Your score and level progress are not lost when somebody else logs into your Deblock game with their own name.
Now, let’s get to it! Hit “New Game” to begin from “Level 1”. What you see is a field filled with blocks. The goal is to clear the field by tapping blocks that are linked to other blocks. Blocks are linked when they sit next to other blocks of their kind. Special blocks have a symbol on them. They do their own thing.
Everything is better explained in the in-game “Strategy Guide”. Check it out for more information.
The more blocks you destroy in one tap, the more points you’ll receive per block. So try to make as big explosions as you can. This will take some planning and insight. First you’ll have to figure out what order to best destroy your blocks in so the others land in a position where you can make new combinations. Further in the game, you’ll have a lot of special blocks which you should try to use in the most optimal manner possible.
In the lower levels, it’ll be easy to clear the whole field. As you progress, though, that may become more of a challenge. You pass a level when you can clear to eight or less unlinked blocks. A completely cleared field, however, will give you a “Flawless” bonus. Definitely worth going for, especially if you’re trying to maximize your score.
The scoreboard keeps track of the top scores of each player. If multiple people play the game on your iPhone or iPod touch, they will all get an entry here and you can compete with them for the top of the board.
Everybody who competes online, though, gets their score submitted to the online Deblock scoreboard whenever they make progress. For these players, the scoreboard will show scores of other players world-wide.
That was it! Go get the game off the App Store or download the source code from here if you’re a developer interested in how it’s all done (in which case, read The License below).
Good luck to you, and enjoy!
Deblock is free software in the sense that anyone may take the code, do with it whatever they want, build it and install it on their device and play it; all without any cost. The application is also sold on the App Store for whomever doesn’t want to bother with compiling and installing the code manually.
In good spirit, and because we can only grow forward by helping one another, the entire source code of Deblock is available under the terms of the JRL license.
That means everyone is basically granted the following permissions for the entire source code base:
- You may reproduce, modify and use freely.
- You may share this code or your modifications of this code with anyone (respecting the rules below).
- After seeing this code, you’re free to write your own code (free from the rules below) based on what you learned from this code.
Provided they abide by the following rules:
- Distribute this or your modifications of this code for research purposes only (which is to say, not in the App Store or as an end product of any kind. In other words: For your own personal use).
- All the code, imagery, videos etc. are copyrighted to me (unless specified otherwise); so if you want to use any of it yourself, contact me first.
You can browse the source code and follow its progression through github or codaset. If you’re interested, feel free to fork the code and modify it however you like!