Hi there ! Welcome to Tetrisconcept Gaia Online ! I'm just a regular from this site/forum*, and I don't have any particular authority/power here**. But I do think that I know how to introduce people to the world of Tetris *you may know me from that article that I can't read anymore without willing to kill myself ** actually that's false, I have limited power over the forum theme. So fear me ! I can make the forum pink with teddy bears and yellow bunnies ! So first of all, you're on Tetrisconcept, or TC for short. We mainly talk about Tetris, as you might have guessed by having a look at the logo or the site title. Standard netiquette (a.k.a. "the boring rules", "why would I bother ?", "omg internet is not democracy") still applies here. So don't be a d*ck, and everything will be alright. Also, we acknowledge the existence of emulation (heck, some (most ?) of us use emulation as their main way of playing Tetris), but we tends to avoid the subject here. Some Tetris Company folks may be reading us and may unleash a horde of puyo puyo to devour our cherished Tetraminoes. So you won't find any roms or support about emulating such or such game. For that you'll want to use that mighty link. We do talk about clones and the games that are emulated though (but not emulation itself). ---------------------------------------------------------- The F.A.Q You may think that talking about Tetris is a bit silly, especially for a game that old. This is a common misconception about modern Tetris. So here's a quick FAQ about Tetris, TC, the universe and everything. OMG I w4nt TGM r0mz naow ! Read a little bit above: you won't find that kinds of goods here. You may find them in your nearest grocery. So, what's about that "modern Tetris" thing ? Isn't Tetris the same game since 1984 ? No. Just like FPSes where Quake, Halo and Armed Assault are massively different games and are far, far away from Wolfenstein 3D*, you have different flavor of Tetris, with different rulesets and goals. Time attack, Score attack, Singleplayer, Multiplayer... those games mode requires different strategies and different skills. The most popular "mode" here in TC would be a mix between survival and time-attack with the rulset of Tetris the Grand Master. Most members also enjoy multiplayer battle, and Blockbox would be the game of choice. *I know, I know, Wolf3D isn't the first FPS ever... but you see the point The most popular "mode" here in TC is survival/time-attack with the "Tetris the Grand Master" game and is followed by multiplayer with the free online "Blockbox" game. "Tetris the Grand Master" ? So there's like a Kasparov of Tetris or something ? "Tetris the Grand Master", or TGM for short, is a series of arcade Tetris released only in Japan. It has a very strong and very deep single player component, and it takes literally years to master. You may have heard of it from the (in)famous "Tetris Japans finals" or "TGM3 Tetris Arika Invisible Tetris" videos. TC loves this serie a lot. On a sidenote, Tetris equivalent of Kasparov would be Jin8, the very same player featured in the TGM3 video. SRS ? Is this a new kind of disease ? And what about ARS and TTC ? ARS and SRS are both acronym for Arika Rotation System and Super Rotation System. Those describe the ruleset that are used in the TGM games (ARS) and many "official" games (SRS). SRS is the ruleset made by The Tetris Company (or TTC for short) and is compulsory for any game to be sold or released commercially with the name Tetris inside (the so-called "Official Tetris" game). Recent games using SRS includes Tetris DS, Facebook Tetris, Tetris Friends, Tetris Party (Wii), Tetris for iPhone... Some people dislikes SRS for various reason, the main one being that at some point of Tetris History TTC tried to meddle into TGM development and forced Arika to use SRS only while they had a perfectly good (read: "not so broken that it would affect the overall quality of the game and stains the reputation of Tetris as a game") rotation system. That may change in the future, as TGM4 show vibrant signs of ARS (with some radical change, granted, but we may never know whether this a TTC decision or an Arika one). Gameplay-wise, SRS is also quite a bit less restrictive than ARS. While SRS can be very fast (most multiplayer gamers uses SRS because of it), ARS forces the player to be fast. Some people also dislikes SRS because SRS = TTC and their legal department they tends to sends cease and desist to everyone who use the Tetris name, including mostly harmless indie developers, and players that sends video of clones of their popular game (especially Arika's TGM) into Youtube. So when I'm referring to Tetris, what I really mean is "a game whose original concept was design by Alexey Pajitnov in the '80" and not "Tetris™®©". Sounds interesting... how can I play those shiny new Tetris ? Apart from well-known commercial games (Tetris DS and so on), there are some free sponsored online games that includes Tetris Friends, Tetris Online Japan (obviously exclusively for those nihon ninja-samurai people, but knight-viking-and-celt people can still manage to play if they don't mind the language barrier) and Hangame Tetris (exclusively for tae-kwon-do people, and it is even trickier to get an account). TGM style Tetris can be played in your local arcade game center (if you're lucky enough...) or in some anime/comics/video game convention where some TC member organizes thing. But if you want TGm at home, buying the arcade system (some of our most crazy err... I meant dedicated members have already done that) would be the most legal option. There's this method that we shouldn't talk about or via (free) clones. Those clones are quite accurate in their... emulation but doesn't use any copyrighted assets. Or at least it's on the gray area, so we can speak more-or-less freely about it. Those clones includes the now defunct (not under active development) Heboris and Heboris Unofficial Expansion, his spiritual successors Nullpomino and the popular Texmaster. Some of our member coded their own Tetris, the oldest being Lockjaw. There is also Eirstt, L2Stack and surely others that I have missed. Finally, you can also play TGM-styled game on Blockbox. It is a free online game. Its main developer also has direct input from both Tetris community. I'm lost with all those acronyms ! You can find a glossary in our wiki. Or you can directly ask the members in a thread, we will be pleased to answer. Why is there 3 (three !) Tetris Wiki on the intertube ? / I heard of an another cool site about Tetris, called Hardblock / Why Tetrisconcept.com says Tetrisconcept is dead ? Ah ! A sad story... To keep it short: there was Tetrisconcept.com. One day, his founder decided that it was great and all but it was time to conclude and wanted to shut down the site. Some members didn't want that, and wanted to take over instead, or at least have a copy of the database. The founder refused. Big drama. In the mean time, one of the member had an idea for a website about Tetris and decided it was a good idea to work on that. He got the founder official seal of approval. Old members still wanted an archive of the forum back (indeed, there was some hidden pearl in there), and also still wanted TC as the site's name, because TC is a cool name. The founder gets pissed, pull the plug and sends the wiki's content to Wikia* More drama, IRC chat and phone calls I believe. Meanwhile, one member had run a website spider in the beginning of the whole affair and effectively had an entire copy of TC (forum + wiki). * Wikia people proposed to have Tetriswiki hosted on their site. The community almost unanimously refused. That caused even more drama. So effectively there was a split in the community. Some went to re-create TC (neo-TC, or TC.net) while others made Harddrop. Harddrop quickly grew (too quickly ?) because its founder (not TC's founder) had some Quadra (another tetramino game) friends and a nice facebook -like site. Tetrisconcept remained the same. Some people decided to post on both, I have the clear impression that TC is TGM biased, while HD are multiplayer addicted (SRS mainly, through Tetris Friends and Blockbox's appropriate setting). I also have the impression that the average age is higher in TC than in HD. Also there is three wiki: one at wikia (sadly, it has the highest google rank, while it has the least update), one at TC and one at HD. OMG TGM is Chuck Norris hard ! I need halp ! Apart from posting a new thread about your specific problems, you can also consult both J.O.'s guide (translated from japanese) and mine's (translated by myself, with addendum by the wiki crowd). So you really hate SRS, don't you ? Let's say that we prefer playing ARS. It's harder ! ---------------------------------------------------------- So that conclude this FAQ. I ate all the cookie while writing that thing so here's some cupcakes instead:
These questions and answers confuse me, and I've been a member on TC for 2 years. I wouldn't want to know how confusing it'll be to actual new members.
(5:25:31 AM) Kitaru: okay so I glossed over the FAQ but (5:25:32 AM) Kitaru: um (5:25:33 AM) Kitaru: (5:26:20 AM) Kitaru: If it is supposed to be to help new members integrate, I don't think it accomplishes this (5:26:30 AM) Kitaru: it seems almost more off putting and overwhelming haha
I think the best thing we could do to welcome new members is to let them know that everyone here is really laid back and doesn't really care about duplicate posting, posting in the wrong section, etc, so if you want to make a post, go ahead and get involved. If you need answers, and can't find them within a minute's worth of searching, then just make a new thread. "I LOVE SRS PEOPLE! SHOW ME THE GUIDELINE!" "WHO'S YOUR MOTHERFUCKER JERRY!"
Needs moar TGM praising and SRS bashing On your point of showing we're laid back Edo, I think PPrince's post does a pretty good job of it. I think it's a really nice post.
So, how would you guys improve it ? I still think that a "welcome, here's what you need to know" thread is needed.
Pretty sure the guide should just say: What is this Tetris The Grand Master thing? It'll ruin your life. Please don't play it.
I know muf hates rules, but I also hate unwritten rules. Like, say, is posting in French forbidden? Personally I think we should keep it simple. Something like: "Keep it legal. Use protection. Have fun."
But people would line up to fellate someone posting in Japanese. And we have multiple French moderators. Is all I'm saying. Note I don't actually want there to be French posts, I simply don't want unwritten rules more.
I think it's more of a "you should know better by now" thing rather than an unwritten rule. We've asked Amnesia to post in English countless times, and he just refuses. And it's not like he gets punished for it, I just run the post through Google Translate and add a humorous note to the end courtesy of Edo. I think it's a very good solution. If new members started posting in French people would probably also line up to "fellate" (nice word for translate, btw) them. There's a difference between ignorance and stubbornness. And about tolerating Japanese posts, if, say, a German who couldn't speak a single word of English were to develop a popular Tetris clone, and post about it in German on TC, I doubt anyone would give him a hard time for it. Get my drift?
Yeah, like muf said, if someone can't actually speak English, then fair enough. That's a fairly big difference between just choosing not to speak English. And even then, not really fair enough. Fact is there are already forums in French and Japanese for people to post there if they can't speak English. If anything notable is being posted, then I'm OK with that, because that's more of a one-off, but when they're just regular everyday forum posts then they should always be in English.
Oh gosh, multilingual posting. *bad memories of O2Jam Malaysia^'s forums* ^O2Jam Malaysia was the de facto international version of the DJMAX/IIDX lookalike O2Jam. Since it was based in Malaysia, many a Westerner would come into the game or the forums and asplode from excessive Malaysian and Singaporean English.
