another new arika video (tgm3)

[caffeine]

guess arika knows how fast these vids get around on the net. they've plugged their new xbox360 release of tgm ace in the two last videos. this is a very fast game. i clocked the last level to be around 165ppm. that's around 2.75 pieces per second.


for non japanese speaking viewers, or just people who can't navigate:

http://www.arika.co.jp/ click the left column entry under "bbs." scroll down until you see the videos entitled "TGM."

TGM is fantastic. Why do you waste your time with garbage like Elements and Worlds? I'm honestly surprised to find someone take those games seriously.

[caffeine]

played worlds because it was on xbox live. online multiplayer is appealing in itself, and it's something rare upon authentic tetris games. currently playing elements because it's fast. it's actually faster than tgm3 in that-- once tweaked-- there are no frame animation restrictions; although, i haven't pushed it to its limits yet. right now my record on 40-line is 44 seconds. that's about 135 pieces per minute. could go a lot faster, though. once i'm able to get a record i'm satisfied with, i'll post a video to show you what i mean.

Elements is shameful though... All highscores save to the same list, no matter what mode you play.


Contrary to popular belief, the videos on Arika's site are not world records. The TGM2 videos especially aren't even close. Were you to see a record play in motion, I doubt you'd complain that the series is too slow. (Though I'll admit that the original TGM is a little slow once you're good with instant gravity.)


There's actually a lot of subtle enhancements in the TGM series that have strangely been absent from other Tetris games. I summarized some here (http://www.arcade-history.com/history_database.php?page=detail&id=2875), but that's rather dry and only covers the original game. Consider this: It is possible to play TGM entirely blindfolded if you've got the skill.


Your claim about the multiplayer is totally warranted, however. But! If you were unaware, TGM:ACE is actually focusing on it. Sadly, when we asked Mihara (http://mihara.sub.jp/top/blog/sb200r/log/eid59.html) (the father of TGM) about the possibility of a worldwide release, he said something to the effect of "I'd love to but it's hard enough for me to get a license for Japan." So barring some sort of miracle, we're not going to see a worldwide release.


So yeah... How much TGM have you actually played? I get the impression you've only look at the videos for the pretty fast moving pictures. It's goes much much deeper than raw speed. Are you open minded enough to give the game a real shot?

haven't played too much tgm. i don't think i ever completed the game, but you're right about the videos not being world records. i was able to locate these sites:

http://www13.plala.or.jp/TETRiS_TGM/index.html

http://www.din.or.jp/~koryan/tetris/index_cj.htm

they both give a great deal of information on the series, which is interesting. by the way, thanks for the additional information. very interesting, but it's really too bad about the licensing difficulties.

[AlphaMei]

Nice find!! http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_cry.gif TGM is to good!

I hear those words "Frame animation restrictions" from time to time in discussions about Tetris in English; What does it mean? Maybe that the frame rate is locked to go no higher than 60 fps?

[caffeine]

it means that the game puts little animations in where the tetrominoes drop or where the lines clear. the animations take a number of frames away from actual input frames (frames where the player can input commands), and that slows down gameplay. in short, a player has to wait for the animation to finish before he can continue playing.


edit:


but you mean about the wiki entry, i see. um, for that example, i meant to say that the tetrominoes couldn't drop any faster because then they'd have to drop more than once per 1 frame (yes, at 60fps), which interestingly happens in later games, but not in nes or gameboy versions.


as for the z, s, and t triples-- very, very interesting. i played tetris worlds online for a long time, and i never came about such a situation. i plan to check it out whenever i get a chance.

[Needle]

I see what you mean. Yeah, the TGM series does have small pockets of non-controllable time while:

1)Completed lines are clearing, and

2)After a piece has locked down but before the next piece shows up.


The developers of TGM have tuned the game though so that both of them keeps getting shorter after the game reaches 20G (Infinite fall speed). In later levels, line-clearing animations will just disappear. In addition to that, the following also shortens after 20G:


3)The controllable time from landing to lockdown

4)The time required to hold the joystick sidewards before the active piece zips in that direction at a speed of 1 grid square per frame


So all aspects of play keeps getting faster in TGM.


So I'm understanding that in Tetris Worlds, while #3 is long (and resets easily), there is no #2. Is this correct?


edit: I'd also like to note that during #2, the player needs to wait for the next piece to show up but it IS possible for the player during that time to hold down the rotation/hold buttons to invoke initial rotation/hold, and to 'begin charging' the fast horizontal movement (#4) before the piece shows up. (Speaking of which, how does sideways movement work in Worlds?)

good questions. i would've thought you'd know (finding those triple quirks), but i can't really test worlds since i got rid of my xbox. i might find the cd rom around here somewhere. from memory anyway: 1 for sure, and maybe a couple of frames for 2. 3 nearly always infinite, but there exists situations where a lockdown must occur. horizontal movement works as one would expect.

[Needle]

Well the thing is that I'm familiar only with the rotation/compensation rules of the Worlds rules (also known as the Tetris Company's 2002 Tetris Guidelines), as a Worlds mode exists in TGM3. But I haven't played the Tetris Worlds game itself, so I'm not familiar with the finer details of that particular implementation.


And as for horizontal movement, I asked "how it works" since TGM's horizontal movement works in a certain way:


If you move the stick sideways, the piece will move in that direction by 1 grid square, in the immediate moment the horizontal input was recognized. So far so good.

But in TGM, if you keep the stick held even after that initial 1-grid move, the piece will start moving quickly and continuously in that direction at a speed of 1 grid square per frame, until it hits the wall or the terrain. It's kind of like how a key repeat occurs on a computer keyboard: you push a key down first to produce the character once, then following a short delay, the character starts repeating quickly and continuously.


So for finer controls, you move the stick in and out enough times to reach the destination. But when you just want to quickly slam it to the edge, you hold the stick and the game will move it for you, near-instantaneously. (This becomes vital when playing in instant gravity)


The input repeating does not occur in the original Game Boy Tetris, where keeping the d-pad held will not do anything beyond the initial 1-grid move, and the player has to quickly release and push the d-pad repeatedly in order to move the piece to the edge.


Still some other implementations do not have the 'charging' aspect and will start repeating the horizontal input immediately, but at a slower pace.


This level of detail (how key-repeating is handled) was what I was interested in the last post. Sorry for the lack of elaboration.

[caffeine]

familiar with the repeat/delay function, yes. i've played pc clones that use this type of setting (top players usually set a small "hold down key" delay and then far left or right in 1 frame. for worlds, i cannot tell you the frame measure, but i do know it doesn't go 1 per frame. it delays maybe a split second after holding and then it moves quickly to the side. not sure how quickly, though.


i've read about tetris co.'s document "what is tetris," which outline mechanisms, tetromino fall speeds, etc. you have a copy of the 2002 guidelines?

[Needle]

The Tetris Guidelines are documents presumed to be developed by Henk Rogers and the Tetris Company, made in order to standardize Tetris on a single set of implementation rules. It has its existence only spoken of by several developers, and is probably locked away deep in the bowels of the Tetris Company to be accessible only to licensee companies who paid whatever amounts of money to make and sell a Tetris game. Apart from analyzing what the licensee developers said, We can only examine and deduce the guidelines from the implementations of the compliant games. From TGM series creator Ichiro Mihara's statements, we know that there exists a 2002 version and a 2005 version to the guidelines, the former of which Tetris Worlds and TGM3 are compliant with, and the latter which TGM ACE is "almost" (Mihara's words) compliant with. The 2005 version seems to be stricter and in more detail.


What is almost certainly governed by both guidelines:

- Block rotation/compensation rules

- Piece colors (The I piece is cyan while the T piece is purple, as opposed to I red and T cyan)

- Initial stance of pieces (L/J/T enter play with their flat sides facing down, not up)

- Lockdown behavior (Rotating a piece will reset its internal lockdown countdown)

- Behavior of the up button (The piece both immediately drops to the bottom and locks down, as opposed to just dropping and not locking down)

- Behavior of the down button (The piece falls quickly and will not lock down, as opposed to falling quickly and then locking down)

- Existence of the hold function

- Number of piece previews (This seems to be a variable between 3 and 5, as the number fluctuates a bit even in compliant games)

- Default button layout (left button rotates clockwise, right button rotates counterclockwise)

- Use of Roger Dean's Tetris logo


What was possibly either changed or newly defined in the 2005 guidelines:

- Use of Russian classical music (The developer of TGM ACE stated that their usage was mandatory)

- The initial piece height (Pieces must start falling from an location higher than the top of the well, instead of the top of the well)

- Sound effects playing upon rotation, horizontal movement, lockdown and line clearing

- Counting of levels using lines cleared (and not by pieces dropped + lines cleared)


The key repeat/delay behavior is something uncertain among this, as both TGM3 and TGM ACE behaves in the way I described and apparently not as it does in Tetris Worlds. Either the key repeat behavior is not defined in the guidelines, or it could be possible that it's defined but Mihara argued his way to break the guidelines in TGMA (hence making TGMA "almost" compliant.)

then how could you know, if you've never played tetris worlds nor do you have a copy of the rotation compensation rules, that t, z, and s can clear triples?

[Needle]

I got the rotation compensation rules from here:


http://www.din.or.jp/~koryan/ (http://www.din.or.jp/~koryan/default.htm)


Koryan, one of the top TGM players in Japan, figured out the compensation implementation of the World rules through repeated experimentation. He did it using Tetris Advance for the GBA, which also uses the World rules.


http://www.din.or.jp/~koryan/tmp/w_t-spin_j.gif

http://www.din.or.jp/~koryan/tmp/w_t-spin_z.gif

http://www.din.or.jp/~koryan/tmp/w_t-spin_t.gif


Going from left to right, the game checks the rotated shape against the terrain. If the rotated shape collides with the terrain, the game chooses the next candidate and checks again. If it goes through all candidates and there still was a collision, the piece would refuse to rotate.


The example given in the Wikipedia notes uses the fifth compensation candidate from L0 to L1 of the Z piece.


http://www.din.or.jp/~koryan/tmp/gba-tw_spins-i.gif


He stopped halfway through analyzing the rotation of the I piece, as there was an inconsistency in the compensation behavior between different rotation directions. In all other pieces, rotating pieces in the other direction yielded symmetrical compensation results. But the I in Tetris Advance did not. He considers this a bug in Tetris Advance, and states (albeit from his memory) that the compensation in TGM3 acted in a symmetrical manner.

[Needle]

Also, I do have a Worlds-compliant implementation running on my cell phone; In my experiments at least the Z and T did snap in. In fact the game's scoring chart had a special score listed for "T-spin triples", which got me interested in this whole weirdo triple thing in the first place.

[colour_thief]

The input repeating does not occur in the original Game Boy Tetris, where keeping the d-pad held will not do anything beyond the initial 1-grid move, and the player has to quickly release and push the d-pad repeatedly in order to move the piece to the edge.

Incorrect, the delay is so long that most people will repeatedly press the d-pad. But there is still an auto-move.


Needle, do you play TGM? Or read Japanese? It seems you too follow Mihara's blog. I might have some people you'll want to meet....

[Needle]

Oh. Missed that one. Guess I was too impatient to notice...


I play TGM and read Mihara's blog, in fact I'm Japanese and live in Japan http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif

[colour_thief]

Wow. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif

How good are you? I can get GM in about 11 minutes in the original TGM. I haven't passed the lvl 500 barrier in TGM2 deathmode yet, and I can get to the master mode invisible challenge with S9 but I fail miserably. I've only owned TGM2 for a month though, so give me time. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif I don't have the opportunity to play these in the arcades like you do, so I have to catch up.


I'm part of a small community of GM class players outside Japan. We've been struggling by, using machine translation to read Japanese websites (Mihara's blog, 2ch, etc). Maybe you remember a while back when Mihara said he was asked by a guy from France about an international TGMA release. That was us. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

If you don't mind, I have a few questions:


1. What is the full story of GTET? How did it influence TGM2? And could you share the latest version if you have it?


2. Why was the delay between TGM2 and TGM3 so long?


3. Why was neither TGM nor TGM2 ported to a game console?


Sorry I have so many questions. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_redface.gif These have all been addressed before in various places, but machine translation has not given comprehensible answers. If you know any answers us western TGM players would be very grateful to hear them.

[colour_thief]

Double post, but I thought I'd answer some of Needle's questions to be fair. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

Yeah, the TGM series does have small pockets of non-controllable time while:
1)Completed lines are clearing, and
2)After a piece has locked down but before the next piece shows up.

In addition to that, the following also shortens after 20G:
3)The controllable time from landing to lockdown
4)The time required to hold the joystick sidewards before the active piece zips in that direction at a speed of 1 grid square per frame

So I'm understanding that in Tetris Worlds, while #3 is long (and resets easily), there is no #2. Is this correct?

Yes, this is accurrate.
As a bonus, here is another correction:

In later levels, line-clearing animations will just disappear.

I know this is false for the original TGM (obviously). In TGM2's death mode, this time is 0 only lvl 200-300 (if I remember correctly). After this it increases (but other timers decrease to keep the game moving faster). I believe Heboris drops it to 0 permanently, though I'd have to double check that.


I have the exact frame counts for all the timings. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif I also have a 100% accurate reverse engineered piece randomizer. Our small western TGM community knows every gameplay-relevent technical detail about the first 2 games, extracted directly from the program ROMs. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_cool.gif We may be small, but we're hardcore.

[Needle]

Oof, got me there again. I guess I was being overly broad. the line-clearing animations decrease, disappear and reappear depending on the level both in TAP and TGM3(Ti).


Very impressed to hear you guys actually dissected the code in the ROMs; As far as I know, most folks in Japan have only analyzed the game through what could be seen on the screen. (Few exceptions exist - one guy analyzed some of TGM and TAP's grading code, but have been quickly silenced probably by Arika or The Tetris Company (TTC).)


I read about the randomization algorithm of TGM1 on a site somewhere (the recording the past 4 pieces, retrying 4 times one), but haven't seen one for TAP; Is the algorithm the same with TGM or is it different? Personally the piece sequence "feels" different. I also remember reading somewhere that upon hearing that the World guidelines requires 3 piece previews, Mihara said something along the lines of "What? But that would mean I'd have to make the TGM algorithm....." so it's probably different in Ti as well. I haven't played enough TGMA to determine if that one feels different.


As for your questions, I don't know enough about the past as I'm a relative newcomer who started playing only about an year ago (and with Mihara's habit of posting snippets of TGM-related stuff on his blog and quickly deleting them within hours), but I'll try to answer what I know.


1) As I only started following this stuff about an year ago, I've never played GTET. I'm not sure if it was GTET he was talking about, but Mihara did say in one of his blog postings that some of the original features in GTET influenced the grading system of later TGMs. Subsequent discussions in 2ch stated that one original feature in GTET was a bar graph indicator which increased and decreased depending on the amount of empty squares which have been "trapped" by other blocks on top of them.


2) The TGM3 (Ti) currently in arcades is actually the second TGM3 there had been. Arika tried to develop a third TGM game some time after TAP, but it was cancelled for some reason (possibly related to question 3). After some more time, Arika got another try to develop the third TGM - which, this time, was successfully released as Ti. This stillborn first TGM3 looked to be somewhat similar to Ti, having both the World and Classic rules, but did not use the Type-X board which Ti uses.


3) TGM1 was to be ported to the PS1 and TAP was to be to the PS2. There seems to be a working copy of the PS2 version of TAP internally within Arika. The port of TGM1 was aborted due to TTC's decision then to only allow one Tetris game per platform (http://plusd.itmedia.co.jp/games/news/9 ... ews01.html (http://plusd.itmedia.co.jp/games/news/9905/28/news01.html)). I'm not completely clear on what killed the port of TAP, but a clone called TexMaster is suspected to be related to the situation.

According to Mihara, it seems that it is under Arika's responsibility to police Tetris clones derived from the TGM series, and Arika faces penalties from TTC if they fail to keep the situation under control. Mihara, however, did not want to make waves as much as he could regarding clones and clone authors, himself having borrowed the 20G concept from Shimizu Tetris (an old X68000 Sega Tetris clone with powerful rule tweaking options.)

TexMaster was a TAP clone which went over the edge by charging its users money and directly ripping sound effects off from TAP. Mihara tried his best to subtly express his concern over TexMaster by alluding to it without giving out names, but the author of TexMaster remained blunt, insisting that what he is doing has no problem since he has not been explicity and directly contacted by Arika. After this went on for a while, TTC came forward and penalized Arika for not killing TexMaster and its author outright. The exact content of the penalty was not stated by Mihara, but it is the general opinion in the 2ch TGM threads that they had to freeze development of the TGM series, perhaps for a certain amount of time.

As for why TGM-K for the PSP was canceled, I don't know (yet).


After making all those mistakes I do have to add an disclaimer that all this may not be completely accurate, owing to absense of past logs, screwing up of my memory/reading comprehension, Mihara's credence as a trustable person (He seems to have a bad reputation among some industry persons), what TTC (dis)allows Mihara to say, and so on.


BTW, a few months back Mihara mentioned that they "received a penalty again", when someone in Japan released a gameplay video of TAP recorded from MAME 99u4, after TAP support was removed from MAME (which probably became proof that TAP is out in the wild, and fodder for TTC to blast Arika again for failing to contain them.)


Also by the way: Have you guys already found out the Classic rule(ARS) in TGMA is a hideous frankenstein patchwork of the Classic and World Rules? The only thing they could retain was the rotation rules - behaviors of up/down, block colors, and lockdown behavior have all been changed to that of the World rules. Part of the reason I haven't gotten a 360 yet is due to this.

[caffeine]

won't buy tgma partly because of this? don't act so picky. the better player adapts. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif

[colour_thief]

You can say that, but TGM has never received a home port. The event was anticipated by many, and when it turns out to be a TGM+Worlds frankengame it's a little disapointing. People can already play Worlds at home.


Sorry for the delay Needle, I've been too busy with school to reply with a worthy follow-up to your post. Thank you for your informative reply.


I read about the randomization algorithm of TGM1 on a site somewhere (the recording the past 4 pieces, retrying 4 times one), but haven't seen one for TAP; Is the algorithm the same with TGM or is it different? Personally the piece sequence "feels" different. I also remember reading somewhere that upon hearing that the World guidelines requires 3 piece previews, Mihara said something along the lines of "What? But that would mean I'd have to make the TGM algorithm....." so it's probably different in Ti as well. I haven't played enough TGMA to determine if that one feels different.


Yes, you are correct about the TGM1 randomizer. In fact, if you read that information in English it was probably written by me. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif TAP uses a different algorithm, but it is still very similar: it has a history of 4 pieces and will retry 5 times. When I say I know these algorithms, I mean more than those "logical rules"... I know the hashing function, and can generate _exact_ piece sequences from these games. If you give me the first few pieces of a game, I could tell you what the rest would be. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif It's cool, because you could easily play the same sequences as one of the Arika videos. I'm not sure what Mihara would have to change with 3 piece previews... maybe lowering the number of retries to compensate? I'm sure you'll agree that TGM has introduced many highly original concepts, so who knows, maybe he changed it to something entirely new?


I think the first TGM3 was going to be on NAOMI hardware, but I could be wrong. And I have never heard of TexMaster; very interesting. There is one thing I would like more information on if possible:


borrowed the 20G concept from Shimizu Tetris (an old X68000 Sega Tetris clone with powerful rule tweaking options.)


I remember the exact blog entry where he described this.

http://mihara.sub.jp/top/blog/sb200r/log/eid147.html

With machine translation, it sounds like he is calling the game "tetris of blue water" or something. I have never heard of this game, and I know of literally 100+ Tetris versions (including Japanese exclusive ones). There is only one version of Tetris on x68000 that I know of and it is made by BPS. As far as I can tell it is mostly standard:


http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/4267/esouthwindimg450x6001061112314.jpg
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/892/esouthwindimg600x4501061112324.jpg
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/2616/blue0ny.png

It's a little strange... The pieces spawn in random orientations. Also, the rotations are not the same as Sega Tetris games. And I can't see any "blue water", though there's lots of blue sky. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif Is this Shimizu Tetris? It doesn't really fit the description, both yours and Mihara's. The only thing is: There's a hard drop button (you Japanese call it a "sonic drop" I think), but it glues the pieces instantly instead of like pressing Up in TAP. Maybe this is what Mihara meant by 20G? Certainly, if he says he borrowed 20G from this game he's not giving himself enough credit.


Do you use IRC? I could introduce you to my TGM group. There is much I would like to say privately.

[Needle]

Wow. I, for one, welcome my new machine-language-slicing l33th4x0r overlords.


I will write what I know about Shimizu Tetris, although it is not much.


The "Tetris of blue water" in Mihara's blog is Shimizu Tetris, and it is most probably not the BPS version you showed. Shimizu is a common Japanese surname. The machine translator you used probably didn't understand that, and coughed up the literal translation of the kanji characters used in the name Shimizu (shi = clear/pure, mizu = water). The actual meanings of the individual kanji letters doesn't mean much when used in this context. At least, not much more than how often common biblically derived names (like John) in the western world conjure up images of angels and saints and fire and brimstones in people's heads (Which, I mean to be, hardly ever.)


Shimizu Tetris is a nickname of this particular unlicensed clone, and not the actual name. Shimizu is probably the name of the author. I could not find a source where the actual name of the program is mentioned. They all refer to it as "That Tetris clone for the X68000 (aka Shimizu Tetris)." Maybe the author just named it plain old "Tetris".

From what I could find, Shimizu Tetris seemed to be an unofficial clone of the arcade Sega Tetris, mimicing its implementation behavior. However, apparently Shimizu Tetris was very flexibile in its tweakability: The fall speed, lockdown time, and even the width of the well could be changed. You could crank up the fall speed all the way up to 20 grid squares per frame, which was of course the birth of 20G.


An article I found (http://www.nsknet.or.jp/~otayan/lockon/tetris.html) states that a favorite setting among the author's peers was to set the fall speed to 20G and the well width to 4 squares. It would result in block maneuvers regularly considered crazy being good moves, and possibilities of completely clearing the well right after the game started if the opening moves were two consecutive I/L/J/Os. (The inspiration of Big mode, perhaps.)


And regarding TexMaster: my memory seems to have been wrong. (I knew it!)

According to #110 of http://snapshot.publog.net/html/net/200 ... 03937.html (http://snapshot.publog.net/html/net/2004/04/13/003937.html) the situation rather went like this:


- Triosoft, the developer, creates and distributes TexMaster

(- Triosoft is ripping sounds effects off of TAP somewhere around here)

- Triosoft writes that it is pondering of charging its users in its blog

- Concerned with this, Arika contacts TTC to ask them to handle the situation

- TTC tells Arika it's their responsibility to handle it, and warns them of the penalties

- Arika considers lawsuits, but ends up with Mihara only alluding to it on his blog

- Seeing Mihara's blog, Triosoft tweaks the 'for-pay' statement on their blog, and starts displaying the IP addresses of users who download TexMaster, but does not stop distribution


This is as far as it was stated in the 2ch post. The penalty probably came after this. What Triosoft did after this is not clear, but my guess is that they probably went underground to continue developing and distributing TexMaster only to people it knows.


http://triosoft.hp.infoseek.co.jp/cgi-b ... /index.cgi (http://triosoft.hp.infoseek.co.jp/cgi-bin/Texmaster/index.cgi)


Some screenshots of TexMaster can be seen here. The download links are all dead, and search attempts on the WayBack Machine was foiled by a robots.txt. I made my guess that they've gone underground based on the fact that they seem to be developing for the PSP, which is recent hardware. Definitely much more recent than what was available when TAP was released.


All in all, in Japan, the mere mention of clones are frowned upon by Tetris player communities. Information about these clones in the past are very scarce. It's essentially an unspoken police state in where what we say and do are regulated by TTC having TGM as their hostage.


BTW, new videos are up in the Arika website. One long video showing both World rules/Master mode/MasterM and World rules/Shirase/S13. Interesting stuff, since there were not many super-gameplay videos in the world rules.

[Needle]

Double post, but is this old stuff to people here? I just discovered it:


http://www.fatbabies.com/phpbb/viewtopi ... dd041e7441 (http://www.fatbabies.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=3649&sid=b4366956596eb9b7dcedbadd041e7441)


Musings by a former Blue Planet Software employee on the development of Tetris Worlds. I found it pretty interesting.


Oh and colourthief, I do use IRC. Maybe you can private-message me if secrecy is of importance.

[caffeine]

wow, very nice find. i didn't know about that.


btw, i think you may underrate worlds' rotation system. from the videos of tgm, tap, and i think tgm3 i've seen-- worlds does, in fact, have a more symmetrical rotation system. tgm has a right side bias (especially for i, but also for z and s), which explains why a player must always drop tetrises on the right. worlds' used right and left orientations for each clockwise and anticlockwise configurations. tgm only has right side orientations. also, tgm uses downside t, l, and j spawns. even though players overcome this, upside spawns seem very much more appropriate for 20g (sliding over hooks and such).

[Needle]

Well, as far as symmetry is concerned I think it's a matter of personal taste. I personally dislike the fact that it is virtually impossible to discern the current rotational position of I/Z/S blocks from its visible shape. There are four internal rotational stances in the World rules for these pieces, with different compensation for every one of them, but there are only two stances which can be discerned from the outside. There are two sets of two positions each that look the same from the outside but have different compensation upon rotation.

I can always trust that certain spinmoves using I/Z/S will succeed when using the two-position TGM rules. But in the World rules, I have to remember and make sure how many times in which direction I hit the rotate button, or else the block won't budge.


I do agree about the initial stance of the blocks though.


Speaking of initial stances, how come the initial stances of blocks are different in that Tetris Elements video? I saw that the game was released in 2004 (obviously after the guidelines emerged), but found screenshots with both world compliant and vertical initial stances. What gives?

[caffeine]

elements totally ignores worlds' guidelines. i feel pretty confident that the programmers only put in that "annoying as hell" vertical i spawn to fit inside the preview box. under default settings, a player can't execute the some of spinmoves allowed by worlds' rules (or tap for that matter) because the engine uses strange tetromino axises. fortunately, anyone can orient the rotation configurations exactly how they like them by messing with one very useful little .cgf file. i like that very much about the game-- i can edit just about anything. i can control where i see the previews, where the tetrominoes spawn (but unfortunately not the degree they spawn), how the rotation system works, how the gui looks and where it locates buttons, the sounds, the images, the color of the blocks, etc. a player could, if he wanted, skin the entire engine to look and feel like nearly any prior tetris game (with a few exceptions of course (mainly the spawn limitation)). i could, for example, play in 20g mode in elements, but i really don't like to because of that damn verticle i.


too bad you feel that way about symmetry. i love saving that extra column every time i rotate an i, z, or s. when i played worlds live, it didn't take me too long to learn the necessary anticlockwise/clockwise rules for each spinmove.


by the way, did i mention that verticle i spawns suck?

[colour_thief]

My general disgust for the world system is similar to Needle's, I just can't stand the S/Z pieces. World rotation is really complicated, and there's no real benefit. (I... suppose you might count those strange triples.)


The symmetry argument is null: I have a GM class friend who builds his hole on the left side in TGM. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif It's the strangest thing to see.


About the initial stances: In TGM this does not matter so much because of the Initial Rotation System (IRS). You know that "animation delay" that you complain about? Well if you hold a rotation button during that time, the piece will rotate instantaneously as it becomes active. This, combined with the fact that there are 3 rotation buttons, gives you ample control. It's actually advantageous to have pieces sticking upright in death mode... Once you rotate it horizontally, it will fall a short distance and reset the glueing timer.


There's also a new thing in TGM3... the so called TI rotation rules. It's the same old thing with one addition: When you rotate an I piece from horizontal to vertical, it will ALWAYS rotate. This is really useful because it will kick the I piece up even on flat ground.

[colour_thief]

Hmm, Nick posted while I was typing. Here's some extra information on TGM's rotation system, in response to this statement:


i love saving that extra column every time i rotate an i, z, or s.


In TGM, during that "between pieces" animation time, if you hold a direction you can charge a piece so that it starts zooming instantly when it becomes active. Using this with the "wall hugging" speed techniques, you never need to move a piece more than 2 spaces to place it anywhere. Here is a page showing the technique:


http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-SanJose/4825/tet/rapid_idx.htm


It could probably be adapted to other tetris games, but it works best in TGM because of the animation delay.

i find the limitations of the tgm rotations elegant. instant drop with defined rules and obvious impossible moves is challenging and interesting. with world rotations you can pretty much get a piece anywhere you want it (over hooks, into holes) which, i believe, takes away from the purpose of 20g in the first place. very interesting tetris worlds account btw. god i hate that game...

[K]

i've found this on google video :


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 08&pl=true (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8029438710598126708&pl=true)


the more interesting is that this video was on the top 100 video (according to the google cache search)


http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

[mat]

fazed.org recently linked to that vid on google, so i'm going to attribute the popularity to that--reading peoples comments is a hoot and a half by the way.

http://www.fazed.org/view/?id=10321&last


"I still call bullshit on that. A person's comprehension isn't as fast as that. I say it's a computer program playing it and he just matched the keys with his fingers as best he could... "


lol!

[K]

interesting to see that lot of people link to the wiki tgm pages http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

[kotetsu213]

I'm glad I uploaded that video.


And DDR is NOT memorization, what the heck is wrong with that guy.

[colour_thief]

Nick seems to be asleep at the wheel so here you guys go: a new Shirase video.


http://www.arikaonline.com/download/movie/tgm3_shirase0605.mpg

[K]

The speed of this video make me feel to "Hetayo"...


a player i've watched on TGM ACE X360 Live...

but what scared me the most is that Hetayo was always able to complete the game at very high speed and often really close from the 1st Rank time record, and i don't talk about his crazy recovery capabilities...


long time i haven't watched ACE ranking... but i wonder if he's still the 1st (faster than TetrisHolic aka Jin8)


hmm i've got a friend who've got a DVI camera... recording a TGM-ACE performance and postint it would be great... but getting TGM-Player autorisation is another story ! http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_confused.gif

[tepples]

What is almost certainly governed by both guidelines:
[...]
- Default button layout (left button rotates clockwise, right button rotates counterclockwise)
That's backwards from at least Tetris DS.

What was possibly either changed or newly defined in the 2005 guidelines:
- Use of Russian classical music (The developer of TGM ACE stated that their usage was mandatory)
Yet Tetris DS uses music from the Super Mario games.

- Counting of levels using lines cleared (and not by pieces dropped + lines cleared)
Does it make a difference in practice? Doesn't a piece count as 0.4 lines anyway?

I also have a 100% accurate reverse engineered piece randomizer.
Care to share?

Part of the reason I haven't gotten a 360 yet is due to this.
Other part being region coding, right?

However, apparently Shimizu Tetris was very flexibile in its tweakability
Do you think anyone else will make something so tweakable?

I can always trust that certain spinmoves using I/Z/S will succeed when using the two-position TGM rules. But in the World rules, I have to remember and make sure how many times in which direction I hit the rotate button, or else the block won't budge.
Would it have been better if the World rules displayed a little circle at the center of the rotation bounding box?

fortunately, anyone can orient the rotation configurations exactly how they like them by messing with one very useful little .cgf file.

Imagine it becoming even easier soon. You can .hack your .kick

[colour_thief]

TDS uses Nintendo and Russian music.

TGMA uses TGM and Russian music.



Levels don't continuously increase. They stop at every X99 until you clear a line. Also, there is almost always an amount of "potential" lines on the screen. Because of these factors there is no direct correspondence between level in TGM and the number of lines cleared, though you could obviously calculate a ballpark figure.

[Needle]

That's backwards from at least Tetris DS.
I noticed this after I wrote that previous post, but apparently TGM3 has a strange inconsistency in its button layout. In TGM3, the buttons act in opposite ways when switching between Classic and World; in Classic mode, the three buttons work (from left) ccw-cw-ccw, while in World mode, the buttons work cw-ccw-cw. I have no idea why there made to do this, as it is in stark inconsistency with everything else in the market, including the also arcade-based Tetris: Kiwamemichi. TGMA is sort of in-between, as the default setting of the Xbox controller has X as cw, A as ccw and B as cw. So it essentially maps the three arcade buttons of TGM3's World mode settings onto the X-A-B buttons, yet in practice one can push the buttons in the same way as in Tetris DS, using B and A. (Note that the Xbox has different button names mapped to locations in the button diamond than the DS:
Y
X B
A

where Nintendo hardware uses:
X
Y A
B


As an aside, I'm interested in which button the default rotation button wil be mapped to in Sega's upcoming Tetris collection for PS2. For New Century, I expect the buttons to be X for ccw and O for cw, but the original 1988 game only had one rotation button, ccw. One would think that then that lone button would be mapped to X - however, the X button in Japanese culture is not the intuitively "primary" button, which is usually O. What they would decide on for this is some topic of interest.

Yet Tetris DS uses music from the Super Mario games.
See ct's post; all games after the 2005 guidelines have thus far used at least one russian song. Recent cell phone versions such as Tetris Black also use russian themes as well.

Other part being region coding, right?
No, as I already live in Japan. I have since gotten a 360 and TGMA anyways.

Would it have been better if the World rules displayed a little circle at the center of the rotation bounding box?

No idea. Might be good as long as the graphics are subtle enough to be safely ignorable by beginning players. I do have more interest in 4-state rotation than I did back when I made that last post.

[tepples]

(Note that the Xbox has different button names mapped to locations in the button diamond than the DS:
It doesn't matter; they're all the X button anyway (http://www.pineight.com/donate/progress/11.html).

As an aside, I'm interested in which button the default rotation button wil be mapped to in Sega's upcoming Tetris collection for PS2.
At least in Lumines and most versions of Puyo, the user can remap the buttons, but I don't know if Henk will allow that.

Yet Tetris DS uses music from the Super Mario games.
See ct's post; all games after the 2005 guidelines have thus far used at least one russian song. Recent cell phone versions such as Tetris Black also use russian themes as well.
So in other words, "Korobeiniki (http://pinocchio.jk0.org/fuckRIAA/vg/tetris/korobushka/default.htm) is the theme song of Tetris." That's easy enough to live with, as the song is PD anyway. It seems to have been the case in at least The New Tetris, Tetris Worlds (GBA), and Tetris DS.

Would it have been better if the World rules displayed a little circle at the center of the rotation bounding box?
No idea. Might be good as long as the graphics are subtle enough to be safely ignorable by beginning players.

My concept for the little circle was like this, from my illustration in Tetriswiki:SRS (http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/../tetriswiki/SRS):

http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/../wiki/images/3/3d/SRS-pieces.png

[colour_thief]

At least for me, it isn't so much the 4 state rotation that is a problem, as it is the interaction between the 4 states and wallkicks.