Definition of a Macro : Succession of functions programmed to be carried out automatically within a program and to deal with the tiresome operations. my initial point of view : Lockjaw reply : I only criticize macro and don't clumsy mix my point of view with unfair facility for a few and official gameplay evolution for all. Macro is equal to cheating if the main program is not designed for... and i've never seen a tetris game doing such... this make me remember some VS game from my past on Street Fighter II against a Dickhead loser using a gamepad Macro enabled :
10 buttons? Let's see... a, s, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, ;. That's 10 buttons. But how am I going to rotate the piece, and what if the piece is falling so fast that if I hit 'l', an object is in the way? Or, maybe you could have buttons that move the piece a certain number of spaces relative to where it is, but now how would this layout work? By the time you've done that, good luck trying to port this game to consoles and portables. It is just totally impractical, it's like trying to play Marvel VS Capcom on an N64 controller. And just imagine how this thing would look in arcades. One long row of buttons, each one a different color to remind the player of their specific purpose. Hey, this could even rival Pop'n Music, and while we're at it, let's add cute little furry characters all over the place, and J-Pop music, maybe even a J-Pop Korobeyniki remix. Yeah, that'd RULE. The thing is it's just too many buttons. TGM is already at a bunch of buttons, with 3 for rotation and 1 for holding. This is a perfect setup. It's fully functional, without being too cluttered, and without making things too easy. Tetris DS... some people miss that extra rotation button, and some other people can't stand that slow DAS, but otherwise, it works. (Unless you have DS Lite. Fortunately, I don't) This reminds me of when someone wanted to create a music game that uses 9 buttons, and a FOOT PEDAL. Hey, let's add a foot pedal to Tetris, it would rotate the next piece before it even comes out! Wait... we need TWO foot pedals to do that!
I'm with jago here. Macros aren't the future of fighting games and they sure as hell aren't the future of Tetris. They're just too inelegant to be considered a viable option. TGM players don't need macros to play fast, why should anyone else? Learning the technique, in both TGM and fighting games, is a very natural process and is just part of the learning curve. Previews and 2 rotation buttons are a very poor example. Without those things a player is substancially handicapped. Please point out to me where players are substancially handycapped in TGM3. In TGM3 the limiting factor is the mind. Not inadequate controls. The future of Tetris lies in your mind, not some shitty macros.
DAS is a macro for pressing the move key rapidly, given that the early PC games used the operating system's keyboard DAS (Control Panel > Keyboard > Speed > Character Repeat), which most players left at the default, slow-ass speed. At first, rotate right was a macro for pressing the rotate left key three times, and soft drop was a macro for speeding up the frame counter. Fighting games also evolve. Street Fighter II had forward-down-forward-punch for a dragon punch, while Super Smash Bros. has Up+B. Smash dedicates the whole B button as a shift key for what are in effect special move macros. In PC vs. console competition, there would be limits to how many keys could be assigned. Palm, Windows Mobile, and Nintendo DS platforms all have a touch screen. But if Konami can pull off Keyboard Mania... Players of real-time sims such as Starcraft love their buttons, buttons, buttons, which is why they claim that an RTS can never be done well on a console (where Warcraft II and C&C for PS1 and Starcraft 64 for N64 don't count as "well"). Beatmania III on double without auto-bass is 10 keys, two wheels, and two foot pedals.
This is something that everyone knows about, lots of people hold 'down' to scroll down a page, so it only makes sense to inclue this feature in a game. Once again, if you can rotate a piece in one direction it only makes sense to be able to rotate it in the other direction. In fact, I'm pretty sure that when there was only one rotate button, not everyone agreed on which direction it would rotate, so it's definitely not a macro. That's not a macro. SSB and Street Fighter are two completely different games. Capcom still says that F, D, DF = Shoryuken, not Up+one button. So the PC player now has to adapt to a different set of keys. This isn't fair. PSP doesn't. That entire paragraph was sarcastic, I thought the J-Pop stuff would've given that away. Tetris isn't an RTS. Once again, the Music game stuff was sarcastic. But thanks for reminding me that.
That, and they have a key bound to every button on the command bar. But as I see a place for bicycle races without gear shifts, I see a place for puzzle games without macros.
...Tepples, you clearly have no idea what a macro is. You're using a ridiculously broad definition. Unlike Starcraft, Tetris isn't speed limited by the interface (at least in TGM3). The limiting factor is the player's mind. I find it strange that you get all semantic about Kotetsu's Pop'N'Tetris but don't comment on this straightforward argument.
if i follow your raisonning vision pressing a button is a macro of : Code: ----- Gestionnaire du bouton A if me.mInput_Keypressed(pButton_A) then -- if not pnButton_A_HoldCount then button_Test = -1 -- #counter_Clockwise pnButton_A_HoldCount = pnButton_A_HoldCount + 1 -- lnButton[1] = 1 else pnButton_A_HoldCount = 0 end if i've never tried to play tetris with paper, pen, gum and a chrono... ahh no, without chrono cause this is a macro of number you can write... I was not talking about developer gameplay shortcut choice. I was talking about guys using facility for winning against other people that don't. Especially by using way that are not originally implemented on the game, or not easily accessible to everybody !!! i was comparing to fighting game because the gameplay abilities are quite similar... but your definitively out of topic... i'm sorry, this is certainly because i was too general about the term "Macro" at first... In the general reasoning macro are good yeah ! i use macro everyday on Excel, and i strongly use shortcut on all my dev application tools.... But we are talking about macro on Puzzle game and right now TETRIS. I am relating to Macro designed for UNFAIR ADVANTAGE and/or WINNING.
Almost. In the scripting language I'm conceiving, a player could set up her keys like this: Code: Joystick 0 button 1 presses player 1 vkey Anticlockwise Joystick 0 button 2 presses player 1 vkey Clockwise Joystick 0 button 3 presses player 1 vkey Anticlockwise Joystick 0 button 4 presses player 1 vkey Hold Joystick 0 stick 0 axis 0+ presses player 1 vkey Right Joystick 0 stick 0 axis 0- presses player 1 vkey Left Joystick 0 stick 0 axis 1+ presses player 1 vkey SoftDrop Joystick 0 stick 0 axis 1- presses player 1 vkey HardDrop vkey Anticlockwise: When held for 1 frame: Rotate -1 vkey Right: When held for 1 frame: Shift +1 When held for 10+n frames: Shift +1 vkey HardDrop: When held for 1 frame: Drop +20.00G Lock if landed // More vkeys that have been omitted Tetris? More like Tet-RICE. Players should be allowed to tune their gameplay environment to an extent, which is why PC games allow choice of gamepad or keyboard play and customization of which keys do what. But I agree that competitive play should define limits to this tuning. For instance, NASCAR allows race teams to tune their cars but specifies a limit on the engine size (no bigger than the consumer engine).
To quote strikelight, programmer of blocktrix, "ANY game that is created for use on the pc, is subject to limitations AND benefits of pc use. Macro's were originally created to faciliate the functions of multiple keys at a single key press, on a pc. Since this falls into the benefit of pc usage, any game on a pc is subject to this as well. That really isn't as debatable as some are inclined to believe, which is puzzling. [...] And if the game accepts keyboard input (by the developer's choice), then it is susceptible to keyboard functions of the platform it is run on."
I'm guessing it refers to special keyboards that can do input sequences all by themselves, such as one with a "Zangi left" button, a "Zangi right" button, or the like.
I've never heard of keyboards that have that built in... But yeah essentially the same idea. With a bit of electronics know-how, it's essentially possible to do almost everything macros can do using hardware instead of software.
i wouldn't really know the difference as far as pc goes. although, take evo2k6 for example. for consoles and other standardized gaming systems, that kind of stuff doesn't fly for me. evo2k6 doesn't allow any sort of macro joystick, but does allow any in-game macros (cvs2). it's the difference between pc and gaming consoles. although, then i guess we could also look at wcg's policy, as well as other orginized pro-gaming events. generally the players use the competition's computers, but they use their own keyboard/mouse/headphones. i was thinking in terms of online pc tetris play, though.
