FK Convey
a tile-matching game

When the nineties were over, there was no more time for Midway's Klax tile-matching game. Over the following decade, music games such as Dance Dance Revolution, Amplitude, Guitar Hero, and Rock Band became popular. Many of these have specialized controllers to simulate an instrument. But the teens are coming, and music games are getting old. Luckily, there is time for a tile-matching game that uses a guitar controller. There is time for FK Convey.

How to play

[Screenshot] Hover over a part to see its name

Catch the tiles coming down the track on your paddle, and drop them into the bin. Three like tiles in a row, column, or diagonal will disappear and give you points. Chain reactions give even more points. But miss five tiles and you're out!

The paddle can hold up to five tiles. You can rearrange tiles on the paddle by tossing them back onto the track, but don't toss too many or they will be difficult to catch.

The tiles on top of a cleared line will fall into the space, and if they make three in a row, they will clear in a chain reaction for even more points. The color-changing wild tile matches any tile, and lines may overlap: red-wild-wild-blue counts as two 3-tile lines.

Mouse controls

Move the mouse over a column to move the paddle there. Then press the left button to drop a tile or the right button to toss it back onto the track.

Keyboard, gamepad, joystick, and guitar controls

You can use a keyboard or any game controller that your operating system recognizes. For example, Windows and Linux recognize most USB game controllers, and Windows XP Service Pack 1 or later recognizes the Xbox 360 wired controller. I've used a third-party USB guitar controller for PLAYSTATION 3 on a PC running Ubuntu.

When you start FK Convey for the first time or after plugging or unplugging a controller, FK Convey will prompt you to set button mappings; otherwise, you can delete the file fk_keys.ini to force this prompt. After you set the up, down, and OK buttons for the menu system, you can set buttons to move to the left and right, drop tiles into the bin, toss tiles back onto the track, and speed up the track. The "Fret" buttons move the paddle directly to one of the five tracks. You might want to map them to the fret buttons on your guitar controller, to the number keys on the left side of a keyboard, or perhaps Fret 1 and 5 to the shoulder buttons on a gamepad.

Scoring

If you clear multiple lines in one chain, each is scored as the number of matches so far times the score for the matches in this step. Verticals aren't worth much by themselves, but they are good for increasing the number of matches to boost the score from a horizontal or diagonal clear in the chain.

* When you drop the third tile, the line will clear. A 4 vertical can happen in a chain reaction. A 5 vertical can only happen when you stack the last three tiles while another line is busy clearing.

Missions

Though the current version of FK Convey has only a "marathon" mode played for points, a planned version will provide missions with specific goals for you to complete. The following are some examples of mission goals:

In missions, a four-in-a-row line is worth two lines, and a five-in-a-row is worth three. If you complete a mission, you get points for each tile on the track or the paddle and for each empty space in the bin, and the bin is emptied for the next mission. If you fail a mission, you can start it over with a new set of lives (☮). Once you have completed a set of missions without failing, the next set of missions will become available to you.

Legal

Copyright 2009 Damian Yerrick.

Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification, are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright notice and this notice are preserved. This file is offered as-is, without any warranty.

FK Convey software is distributed under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later.

FK Convey is a trademark of Damian Yerrick. Other trademarks belong to their respective owners.