Bejeweled Blitz (Windows)

Bejeweled Blitz
Developer: PopCap Games Publisher: PopCap Games Platform: Windows Released in US: May 5, 2010 This game has unused code. This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused music. This game has unused sounds. This game has unused text. This game has debugging material. This game has revisional differences.

This game/console's online features are no longer supported. While this game/console's online features were once accessible, they are (as of September 7, 2011) no longer officially supported and online-exclusive features may be documented as now-unseen content.

To do: Is debug.rpl unused? How to enable the write for Blitz_DebugView.log?

The PC version of Bejeweled Blitz is the fourth game of the popular match-3 puzzle series. The sequel was built directly upon this game. It has only one game mode: Blitz. The players are given only 60 seconds to score as many points as possible. The players can collect coins to buy various powerups to help increase their score. It has better graphics than its Facebook Flash game counterpart, but lacks some features such as Rare Gems or Daily Spins. Those features were promised to be added sometime in 2011, However, PopCap decided to focus on the Flash and iOS counterparts over the Windows counterpart, meaning that the servers for the Windows version got discontinued, with the game downloads being pulled from the site as well.

As with most games made by PopCap, this game packs most of the resources to a single file named "main.pak". You can extract the resources by using QuickBMS with this plugin.

This game has 3 known versions: 1.0.6.4034 (Initial release), 1.0.6.7260 (Most popular), and 1.0.9.7400 (Final version with new powerup selector), but as far as what's known among hackers, all unused materials are identical between versions.

Leftover Symbol File

BejBlitz.pdb is present in the root of installation directories of the two newer versions of the game. It contains the majority of the symbols for the game, newer proprietary version of the commonly used framework and E-Commerce library. The file were most likely built on the exact same date as the wrapper executable.

Version	Debug file build date
1.0.6.7260	April 4th, 2010
1.0.9.7400	March 15th, 2011

Unused Graphics

Doom Gem

A graphic of the Doom Gem from Bejeweled Twist. Interestingly, the same unused graphic is found in Bejeweled 3.

x9 Multiplier

Bejeweled Blitz at some point had the x9 multiplier gem planned? Either way, being scrapped out from the final game and its updates, the graphical data remains.

Dragon Stone

In a Discord message from Jason, the Dragon Stone was originally going to act like Skull Gems from Bejeweled Twist and ate gems until it reached the bottom of the board.

Mouse

An image of a mouse.

Snackers

Snackers is the cat of PopCap co-founder and Bejeweled creator Jason Kapalka. In the Flash version of the game, she shows up when "Cat's Eye" Rare Gem is used. None of the other Rare Gems graphics exist in the game, so this graphic was possibly intended for a plain cameo appearance, like in Bejeweled Twist.

Unused Music Sequences

Being released before Bejeweled 3, the music tracker file of the game contains a handful of sequences that are either modified or left out in the final .IT file.

Bejeweled3Blitz'sSequence2.ogg

Offset 2, with tempo 112.

Bejeweled3Blitz'sSequence51.ogg

Offset 51, with tempo 120.

Bejeweled3Blitz'sSequence32.ogg

Offset 32, with tempo 112. Unlisted from the IT sequence.

Bejeweled3Blitz'sSequence39.ogg

Offset 39, with tempo 112. Also unlisted.

Bejeweled3Blitz'sSequence14.ogg

Offset 14, with tempo 112. This early Butterfly track fragment with different instruments are revealed to initially be part of Zen mode's music, as per from the additional comment: zen (use "cue02" accompaniment)

Bejeweled3Blitz'sSequence43.ogg

Offset 43, with tempo 112. Classic mode track segment but with a higher pitch.

BejeweledBlitz'sPattern33.ogg

Offset 33, with tempo 112. Classic Part 4 track segment but with a lower pitch.

Unused Sounds

These sound effects were later used in the sequel, but the format was converted to wav.

replay_popup.ogg

In Bejeweled Twist and Bejeweled 3's Classic modes, this sound will be played when the "Instant Replay" button appear. There's no Instant Replay button in this game.

voice_gameover.ogg

"Game Over" voice. There's only a "Time Up" voice at the end of the game.

voice_levelcomplete.ogg

"Level Complete" voice. This game has no level-based modes.

Composer note

Recycle ideas from:
- The Alchemist
- FL Studio MiscCues
- Surreal (the old tracker song)
- Theatre Noiren bondibiisi

Music types needed:
- Classic
- Zen
- Blitz
- Various puzzle tracks?

The music file (music/Bejeweled3_suite.it) contains some notes from composer Peter "Skaven" Hajba. "The Alchemist" refers to an earlier original song of his.

Developer text

This is the message for hypers, powers, etc.

Present in offline/StatsChart.swf.

Debug Commands

To do: More info on new SHIFT+F3 graphical display.

Pressing CTRL-ALT-D will play a sound to indicate debug key input is enabled, allowing options of typing unique keys for debugging displays or mechanisms, another use will disable it, a few were added and modified.

To do: More on this.

• Shift-F2 - Added, starts/stop perf timing, shows an in-game display in red saying PERF RECORD. Another use ends the perf recording session and writes a binary smstemp* file where * is a number like 8 and sends a command in this style SpikeMonkey.exe %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Temp\smstemp* -t, such a file does not exist in the game directory.
• F3 - Added a unique function, similar to Bejeweled Twist, drawing debug information of the playfield. However most other functions compared to that it are not present.

512px

• Shift F3 - Added a copy of the FPS display that includes a historic graphical display, displaying bars indicating performance status, green shows roughly stable performance, yellow shows spikes and red shows major spikes.

The value on the top left corner is the name of the PopAnim file loaded. The value on the top right corner shows the total game time in frames. A red square appears if gems are falling.

• CTRL-F3 - Added to show a window.

Overdraw
Frame overdraw %.2fx

Command-line Parameters

The game's executable mentions developer command lines for starting the game. It's not friendly with commands using spaces, so use = instead. The majority are the exact same as Bejeweled 3 but the majority don't really work, however the game has one unique.

Argument	Description	Screenshot (if necessary)
-blitz	When the game starts, it will skip the main menu and jump to the Blitz mode, please note the background is messed up this way.	N/A
-webroot	Changes the location of the server API, does not support HTTPS.	N/A

Inaccessible PIEffect Box Draw

Version	Memory Address
1.0.9.7400	0055516A

This draws a box in the center of animated images (PPF). There is no way to set it through the game and even engine, regardless of being a retail or debug build. To enable it, set the byte at the given memory address to 1.

Revisional Differences

1.0.6.7260

Going by "Update 1" in the "readme" file, this one made a slight number of internal changes.

To do: Diff with alpha layers applied. Executable code differences if possible.

The "or" texture was redone, slightly modifying the texture size 724x37->724x32 and notably centering the word "or" under the alpha layer, "y" offset was added and set to 3 in the resource list.

A tip was added to the tips file.

Click the Facebook button on the main menu to connect and compete with your friends.
You can change the size of the game window by dragging the lower right corner.

• Textures for Facebook's dialog button glow and offline dialog button were added.

1.0.9.7400

To do: PAM and PPF files were changed. Anything interesting?

• A patch notes file was added to the game, to ensure this text is displayed on the first bootup after launching the update for the first time in a box. Interestingly it mentions "Rare Gems", "Daily Spin", "New Badges" and "PC exclusive features!" "Coming soon in 2011:" which sadly didn't come as promised.

Update 2.0

Bejeweled Blitz Has Been Updated!

What's new in this version:
	º All-new Boost selection menu
	º Easy to use Boost Auto-Renew option 
	º 50 new rank names!
	º Performance enhancements and bug fixes

Coming soon in 2011:
	º Rare Gems
	º Daily Spin
	º New Badges
	º PC exclusive features!

• The Bejewelian ranks now have an "@" symbol before the level number.
• The Facebook records bar texture's want through changes.
  • The X axis was changed from 156 -> 155.
  • The texture was redone, notably to increase the glow effect.
• The tooltip texture's X and Y axis was changed from -1 -> 2.
• The tooltip arrow texture was redone to reduce the glow effect.
• The texture for the Flame Gem exploding was redone.
• The texture for the main menu exploding was redone.
• Textures for updating the game were added.

To do: Check the changes.

• The Facebook button texture was replaced with a PNG version.
• The texture for the game's background and main menu was redone.
• The textures for the help menu aside from most popups were redone.