Introducing blockbattle.net

How did it all start? We were hanging out at the office after work one day, having a few beers and chatting when someone had a brilliant idea.

"Hey, remember TetriNET? That 90s multiplayer Tetris clone where you get special blocks and use them to attack other players? Let's play a game!"

We all had fond memories of playing TetriNET so we set out to play a game, but soon entered a world of pain. In order to play a simple game you had to:

• Install WINE or fire up a Windows VM, since no one has windows at work
• Download and install the client on the VM, or search for a client compatible with your OS.
• Have someone download and run the server
• Make sure the client and server use the same protocol
• Have someone tweak the server settings
• Pass around the IP address of the server

When we finally got playing, we discovered the game wasn't all that we remembered it to be. Some clients were glitchy, player positions made it hard to look up who to attack and the confusing chat/attack history section made it nearly impossible to tell who attacked who in a fast-paced game. Being full of hubris, before long we all thought the same thing:

"Damn, we could make a far better TetriNET"

Within minutes, we had the outline of what would soon become blockbattle.net. The game would be implemented entirely in JavaScript and HTML, without Flash, Java or any other runtime. On the back end, we would use one of the many new high-performance event-based servers, eventually setting on Tornado. This would allow everyone to play easily just by visiting our website, while enabling us to take the idea behind TetriNET into territories the old client/server software could have never reached. We would integrate our game with Facebook, Twitter and other social services to make sure people can easily play with their friends, bring it to smartphones and tablets so you can play from anywhere and work to revamp the UI and gameplay to make the game far easier and more enjoyable to play.

Today, after much hard work and many games played, we are proud to unveil blockbattle.net to the world. It is still a work in progress and represents only a fraction of our long-term vision for it, yet we think many people will nevertheless find it an enjoyable and entertaining experience. We hope that by releasing early, we can engage with our users and use their feedback to evolve the gameplay and eventually deliver a stellar product.

Over the coming months we will also be detailing many of the challenges we've faced and overcome in developing the game here on this blog, so stay tuned to learn more on topics like:

• Implementing Tetris mechanics
• Reworking the TetriNET UI for better usability
• Using measurements to improve the game
• Developing a robust messaging layer that works on wireless networks
• Developing for mobile devices.

We kindly invite you to play a game and let us know what you think on Twitter or Facebook.

Happy Gaming