Develop Tetris Game in C programming Without Graphics Library and Full Source Code

Tetrix game is created in C programming without using graphic library. We draw shapes only using # character and game is played on command window. User can play game using up, left, right, and down arrow key. The up key rotate Tetrimino (Shapes) in clockwise direction, left key move Tetrimino (Shapes) in left direction toward negative x-axis, right key move Tetrimino (Shapes) in right direction toward positive x-axis, and down key rotate Tetrimino (Shapes) in anticlockwise direction. By default, Tetrimino (Shapes) will move 1 unit downward toward negative y-axis in each frame of the game.  The score is calculated based on the number of rows filled with boxes. 

The main objective of this project is to provide knowledge and technique about creating Tetris game in C programming, provide basic knowledge of linear algebra to rotate and translate shapes. User can use any graphics library to draw window, and shapes to make it similar to commercial games. However, the algorithm of the game is same in all Tetris game available in market.  

In this article, I will explain the following items:

• Coordinate system of the game
• Usage of linear algebra to rotate and translate shapes.
• Data Structure used in the game
• Collision detection and score checking Techniques

Also, Download the final version of the game Download Project from GitHub.

I have explained the game in following two articles:

Part 1: Tetriminos (Shapes), Coordinate System, Rotation and Translate

Part 2: Data Structure, Collision detection and Score checking Techniques

Part 2: Tetris Game in C programming | Data Structure, Collision detection and Score checking Techniques

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Data Structure

This is a 2D game where the primary object is a box. A combination of 4 boxes forms a Tetrimino (shape). Boxes are arranged on the Tetris board from the bottom upward.

Board Specifications

• The Tetris board has a size of 11 columns (x-axis) by 21 rows (y-axis).
• Tetriminos are arranged on the board such that if an entire row is filled with boxes, the player earns points.

Box Representation

• Each box is defined by 2D (x, y) coordinates, which determine where it is drawn.
• To represent boxes and Tetriminos (shapes), the game uses three structure variables:
• Point2D
• Tetriminos
• TetrisBox

Part 1: Tetris Game in C programming | Tetriminos (Shapes), Coordinate System, Rotation and Translation of Tetriminos (Shapes)

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Tetriminos (Shapes)

In this Tetris game, I use 7 shapes. While some versions only include 5 shapes, I’ve added two extra ones: the J and S shapes, which are mirror opposites of the L and Z shapes, respectively.

Each shape consists of 4 blocks, and each block is called a Mino (short for monomino). A group of 4 Minos forms a Tetrimino (also known as Tetromino or Tetramino). For consistency, I’ll use the term Tetrimino throughout this article.

Coordinate System

To simplify game development, I’ve designed a gotoxy(x, y) function that relocates the coordinate system’s origin (0, 0) from the default top-left corner of the command window to a more convenient central position at (36, 12).

How It Works:

1. Coordinate Transformation:

• The function offsets input coordinates:
• x becomes x + 36
• y becomes y - 12
• This allows negative coordinates (e.g., (-36, 12) maps to the original (0, 0)).

1. Purpose:
• Centering (0, 0) simplifies calculations for symmetric gameplay elements (e.g., rotating Tetriminos around the origin).
• Negative coordinates enable intuitive positioning relative to the new origin.

Part 2: Tic Tac Toe game in C programing | Source Code explanation

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Watch this tutorial in YouTube.

In this article, we will discuss the following main topics. I encourage you to watch YouTube video to understand the source code in detail.

• Technique to switch players.
• Logic to check winner player.
• Calculate computer player best move.

Technique to switch players

I have assigned the value 0 to the first player and the value 1 to the second player, regardless of who plays first. If the human chooses to play first, the value 0 is assigned to the human variable, and the value 1 is assigned to the computer variable, and vice versa. Throughout the project, the system checks the current player against the human or computer variable to determine the player type. The first player always uses "X," while the second player uses "O." However, the value assigned to a box depends on the player type: the value of a box chosen by the human is 3, and the value of a box chosen by the computer is 5.

Part 1: Tic Tac Toe game in C programing | Flowchart, Algorithm of Computer Player, and Data Structure

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Watch this tutorial in YouTube.

Flowchart

Explanation of Flowchart:

Start: The game process begins here.

Display Game Menu: The user can choose to play first or second.

Initialize Game: Initialize the human or computer as the first or second player. Set up the Tic-Tac-Toe board and assign initial values to the players.

Part 2: Snake Game in C | Snake Collision Detection, Calculate next position and Changing direction

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In this section, we will discuss the following items.

• Techniques to change direction of the snake based on user input.
• Techniques to calculate the snake's next position.
• Techniques to check for snake collision with window and its body.

Snake direction and food

We are using the gotoxy(int x, int y) function to move the snake on the screen. The top left corner of the PC window starts at (0,0). The right side of the screen is positive x-axis, and the bottom of the screen is positive y-axis. However, we can represent the direction of snake in all four directions by positive and negative axes (-x, 0), (x, 0), (0, -y), and (0, y). For the left arrow key, set direction as negative x-axis (-x,0), for the right arrow key set direction as positive x-axis (x,0), for the up arrow key set direction as negative y-axis (-y,0), and for the down arrow key set direction as positive y-axis (y,0). When the direction is changed, the snake will move perpendicular to current position, so we don't have to use both x, and y coordinates values. The coordinates system of the PC window is shown in the image below.

Part 1: Snake Game in C | Flowchart, Data Structure and Algorithm

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Flowchart

Explanation of Flowchart:

Start: The process begins here.

Initialize game: Initialize Snake Direction, food, snake, window, variables, and others

Part 4: Library management in C| Pagination, Dynamic Memory allocation, write Comma Separated Values (CSV) file

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In this part, we will create pagination in C programming to view large set of books data. In college there might be thousands of books. We can't display all items on the screen, so we need to create techniques to display small set of data at a time and allow users to select next page or previous page to view data which is called pagination. Also, we will discuss to manage large set of books data and write books data into CSV file.

Here, we will discuss following items:

• Pagination: Users can explore large set of data by selecting next or previous page of data.
• Dynamic Memory allocation: Dynamic numbers of books are loaded into the memory, modify or delete book details from the memory using dynamic memory allocation.
• Write Comma Separated Values (CSV): Export large set of books data into CSV file.

Please follow the source code of header file userMenu.h and loadCsvData.h. 

Pagination:

We have three main functions to implement pagination features. The main technique is to load data into computer memory (RAM). The number of data which can be loaded in memory depend upon size of the memory. However, we will not get memory problem to load couple of thousands of data. In this application I haven't used large set of data however this technique can be used for any size of data.

The name of the functions are readBooks(), viewAllBooks(), and viewBooksByPage().  

Part 3: Library management in C| Read Comma Separated Values (CSV) file and Student Login System

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In this application we have two scenarios where we read CSV files. First to read Students data and second to read books data. Students need to provide student id to login application. We read the students data from csv file and compare the student id. Also, we read large set of books data from csv file.

Sample student csv data:

Sample books csv data:

The header file loadCsvData.h is written to load csv files student data and books data. There are four main functions which reads the files.

static int getStudentID(char stuId[MAX_ID], struct stuProfile *st);
static int  loadStuValues(char *line, char *sFields[STU_COL_NUM]);
int readBooks();
static int  loadBookValues(char *line, char *lFields[BK_COL_NUM]);
int getRowCount(FILE *fpl);

Part 2: Library management in C | Username/Password Login System and Manage Admin Accounts

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In this part, we will learn the techniques to implement a username and password login system and manage user accounts.

When a user runs the application for the first time in admin mode, the application requests the user to create an admin account. However, from the second run onwards, the user has to log in using their account details. After logging into admin mode, the user can add or modify multiple admin accounts. To identify the application’s first run, it will check if the admin account file exists in the system. If the file doesn’t exist, then the application calls the create account function. Otherwise, if the file exists, it will call the Admin login function.

int checkFirstLogin(){
    int flag=1;

    fa = fopen(DATA_FILE,"rb");

    if(fa!= NULL){
        flag= 0;
    }
    fclose(fa);

    return flag;

}

Part 1: Library management in C | Flowchart and Function Stack Call Diagram

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The application is represented by three mainMenu, adminMenu and studentMenu flowchart. The mainMenu flowchart represents the options provided to the user to choose application mode and user security. The adminMenu flowchart represents the all the tasks that administrator can perform, and the studentMenu flowchart represents the tasks that students can perform.

Chapter 2: Contact Management in C | File Handling

 <<Previous Chapter

If you remember we have categoried all the functions into two types user functions and operational functions. Here I will explain the operational function and its usage in user functions one by one.

First, let's define Variables and Data Structure.

// Define Constant Variables
#define ESC 27
#define MAX_NAME_SZ 15
#define MAX_NUM_SZ 25
#define READ_ARRAY_SZ 15
#define DATA_FILE "dataFile.dat"
#define TEMP_FILE "tempFile.dat"

//Define data structure

struct data{
    char fName[MAX_NAME_SZ];
    char lName[MAX_NAME_SZ];
    char mPhone[MAX_NUM_SZ];
    char wPhone[MAX_NUM_SZ];
    char hPhone[MAX_NUM_SZ];
};

We will use struct data types to store contact information. It has only five fields First Name (fName), Last Name (lName), Mobile Phone (mPhone), Work Phone (wPhone), Home Phone (hPhone), and all these variables are char types. We can't set primary key as in database but we will choose Mobile Phone i.e mPhone as a primary key and will make sure that Mobile Phone number will not be a null value or duplicate while adding data into the file.

Chapter 1: Contact Management in C | Flow Chart and Functions

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Application Flow Chart:

Functions: 

We will divide the above application into two kinds of functions. The first type of function is user functions which interact with the user to get input and display output, the second type of function is operational functions which do the actual tasks. 

The list of user functions is as follows:

• mainMenu(): It displays the options to the user. 
• viewItems(): It displays the list of contact information on the screen. 
• addItems(): It requests the user to input contact information added to the file.
• updateItems(): It requests the user to update the contact information in the file.
• deleteItems(): It requests the user to delete the contact information in the file.
• readData(): It requests the user to input contact information.

Quiz Game in C Part 3: Final Game Play and score

First Page

In previous articles, we created functions, multi-dimensional character array to store questions, options, and answers. Up to this point, we have everything ready to finish gameplay.
Here we will use the following techniques:

• Create for loop to display question one by one
• Create another infinite loop inside for loop to check the answer given by the user. The loop breaks only if the user-provided an answer is within options (a, b, c and d)  otherwise it will loop infinitely. 
• Calculate the score for the correct answer provided.
• Use gotoxy to manage text indentation.

Quiz game in C Part 2: Multi-dimensional C array

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In this article, we will discuss the gameplay() function but not all only the usages of one dimension, two-dimension, and third dimension character array. Choosing the correct dimension of the array is very important to store information effectively. We have to display a question, four options and store the correct answer to compare the answer provided by the user. Remember these three information are connected to each other if we mismatch the order then the game will go wrong. 
Here, we will declare three character array to store questions, four options, and answer in the same order of the array index.

Question is a string which is an array of character and we will ask 10 questions in total. We create a two-dimension character array, the first index is a total number of questions i.e 10 and the second index is the length of a string.

    char question[10][250];
    strcpy(question[0], "This is question no 1");
    strcpy(question[1], "This is question no 2");
    strcpy(question[2], "This is question no 3");
    strcpy(question[3], "This is question no 4");
    strcpy(question[4], "This is question no 5");
    strcpy(question[5], "This is question no 6");
    strcpy(question[6], "This is question no 7");
    strcpy(question[7], "This is question no 8");
    strcpy(question[8], "This is question no 9");
    strcpy(question[9], "This is question no 10");

We can't assign string using "=" to the two-dimension array and correct way to use it is strcpy() function.

Quiz Game in C part 1 - Flow Chart and Main Menu

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Application Flow Chart:

Start: Quiz program start

Main Menu: Program display menu to the user to start the game or to quit.

User Input: The application stops to get user input.

Decision Tree: If user input is S then Quiz game start else if user input is Q then the program will quit.

Quiz Game: User gets 10 questions one by one and each correct score is marked as 1.

Display Score: It display final score after ending the game and the user is directed to the main menu.

Stop: End of the game.

C project on Medical Store Management System with source

This is large and complete c project built for medical store management system. In this project you can keep details of customer , suppliers and medicine. You can view the report and billing information also. You can add,edit, delete and search the record also. This project is also console application without graphics compile in code::blocks IDE with MinGW compiler.
Whole project is completely based on file handling all the record are store in file. You learn how to store the data ,editing data, searching data and deleting data using file. You can see the following feature in this projects.
1. Supplier Info
2.Customer Info
3.Medicine
4.Report
5.Bill

Employee’s Management System Project in c++ with source

This is another Mangagement project which is suitable for school or college mini project. It is written in c++ language in code::blocks IDE with MinGW compiler. It is console application without graphics. Whole project is completely based on file handling all the employee’s record are store in file. You learn how to store the data, editing data, searching data and deleting the data using file. Following features can be found in this project which is listed below.
1. Built The Employee table
2.List the employee table
3.Insert new entry
4.Delete an entry
5.Edit an entry
6.Search a record
7.Sort the table

Project on Visual C++::Server to Exchange Data between text file and Excel

In this program we use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)  with Notepad and Excel. Using Visual C++ a DDE communication server is made to exchange date. If we change the any data in Notepad then automatically data is updated in Excel. By same way we can also use Dynamic Data Exchange with Word and Excel. When possible, it is recommended that you use Automation, not DDE, to communicate with Excel or Word. DDE is a old method or technology. Excel and Word have rich object models that provide functionality through Automation that is not available with DDE. Excel versions 5.o and later , and Word versions 7.0 and later, support Automation. But who are using old version of Excel where Automation is not supported then DDE can be a better solution. I can't explain the program and DDE better than MSDN site so I will provide the reference link where you can learn it . 

C++ Project Bus Reservation System in Code::blocks

“Bus Reservation System” project is written in c++. It is very simple project just to show the implement of class and object of C++. You can understand the code easily and learn how to create class and use object in c++ for your C++ project.The tasks that user can perform in this project are listed below:
1.Install the bus record
2.Reservation
3.Show the bus details
4.Show all buses available
This project is console application without GUI. You can add many features in this project.Here data of bus information is not store in file so every run of program previous data is lost so you can implement the file handling to store all the bus details.