You’ve probably played some version of Tetris, but [the Center for Creative Learning] has a different take on it. Their latest version features a cylindrical playing field. While it wouldn’t be simple to wire up all those LEDs, it is a little easier, thanks to LED strips. You can find the code for the game on GitHub.
In all, there are 5 LED strips for a display and 13 strips for the playing area, although you can adjust this as long as there are at least 10 rows. The exact number of LEDs will depend on the diameter of the PVC pipe you build it on.
Using a PS2 controller, the games allow you to play a full-cylinder or in a half-cylinder mode. We were hoping they’d have put up a video showing the gameplay, but we couldn’t find it.
We couldn’t help but think that this would make an excellent display for many purposes. You might even be able to design different games for it.
We’ve seen full-circle Tetris, but it is hardly the same idea. If you want just plain Tetris, you could break out your transistor tester.
They missed a trick that I saw back in the hacker village at 31C3.
Rather than cutting the strip into rows and laboriously soldering them back together with jumper wires, the ones I saw just wrapped the tube in a big continuous spiral. It’s a shallow enough pitch that it may as well be horizontal, but it’s a lot easier to build.
Don’t know if anyone else on here ever played Johnathan Blow’s evil masterpiece of a puzzle game *The Witness* but cylindrical tetris just gave me severe flashbacks to some of the most painful puzzles at the very end of the game…
For those that haven’t played it and like puzzle games (and don’t mind 3D) I heavily recommend it.
Add a motor to rotate the tube, and control that with the right stick.
Yeah, you’ll probably need slip rings, but it’ll make it easier to play the whole play space!