Slashdot Mirror

Isn't this just a "solved game" already?

Classic Tetris isn't solved, but modern Tetris (since 2001) is, as colour_thief and I proved back in 2007. Someone made a video of the solution.

Then you didn't plan.

Tetris games since 2001 use the "bag" randomizer, which deals out one shuffling of all 7 pieces, then another shuffling of all seven pieces, etc. Thus the maximum gap between two "I" Tetriminos is 12, if one bag begins with an I and the next bag ends with an I. In addition, Tetris games since 2001 have the "hold piece" feature, letting the player save an I and use it later.

In 2007, colour_thief and I proved that the bag randomizer and hold piece make it possible to play forever. Then in 2014, Question_Mark produced a shorter loop.

Then you didn't plan.

Tetris games since 2001 use the "bag" randomizer, which deals out one shuffling of all 7 pieces, then another shuffling of all seven pieces, etc. Thus the maximum gap between two "I" Tetriminos is 12, if one bag begins with an I and the next bag ends with an I. In addition, Tetris games since 2001 have the "hold piece" feature, letting the player save an I and use it later.

In 2007, colour_thief and I proved that the bag randomizer and hold piece make it possible to play forever. Then in 2014, Question_Mark produced a shorter loop.

Then you didn't plan.

Tetris games since 2001 use the "bag" randomizer, which deals out one shuffling of all 7 pieces, then another shuffling of all seven pieces, etc. Thus the maximum gap between two "I" Tetriminos is 12, if one bag begins with an I and the next bag ends with an I. In addition, Tetris games since 2001 have the "hold piece" feature, letting the player save an I and use it later.

In 2007, colour_thief and I proved that the bag randomizer and hold piece make it possible to play forever. Then in 2014, Question_Mark produced a shorter loop.

Then you didn't plan.

Tetris games since 2001 use the "bag" randomizer, which deals out one shuffling of all 7 pieces, then another shuffling of all seven pieces, etc. Thus the maximum gap between two "I" Tetriminos is 12, if one bag begins with an I and the next bag ends with an I. In addition, Tetris games since 2001 have the "hold piece" feature, letting the player save an I and use it later.

In 2007, colour_thief and I proved that the bag randomizer and hold piece make it possible to play forever. Then in 2014, Question_Mark produced a shorter loop.

<sarcasm>And enough with books and music and television and movies. Everyone should stay in their basement and never expose themselves to anyone else's creative works, much less celebrate them!</sarcasm>

I think 110010001000's idea is supposed to be that people are supposed to write their own "books and music and television and movies", put them under a license intended for sharing, and celebrate them instead of celebrating proprietary works. It's like e-sports: people take up a proprietary video game as a sport and then act all surprised when the game's publisher wants to tax or even shut down tournaments under its exclusive right to perform the work publicly. This realization about e-sports is why I quit the Tetris fan community in June 2012 after learning of a successful lawsuit by The Tetris Company.

Sharing stories and celebrating them is a fundamental part of human interaction.

Then do so within the boundaries of the law. Instead of misappropriating the industry's productions, make your own with proverbial blackjack and hookers.

Any argument against e-sports works equally well against shooting and archery

You can still buy new equipment for shooting or archery. You can't buy new equipment for pre-infinite-spin Tetris because Tetris Holding won't let anybody sell it.

competitive archery is one of the oldest sports, at least 2800 years old

I'm in favor of including any sport that's at least 95 years old.

Can you explain the "fundamental" changes that happen in these games?

In single-player Tetris since 2001, infinite spin and playing forever made score attack trivial, and Ryan Davis of GameSpot wrote of infinite spin that "it actually breaks Tetris". It ended up changing the most common single-player game format to time to complete 40 lines. In multiplayer, the rules on when a T-Spin sends extra garbage to the other player have fluctuated ever since the rotation rules were revised in Tetris Worlds .

Can you explain the "fundamental" changes that happen in these games?

In single-player Tetris since 2001, infinite spin and playing forever made score attack trivial, and Ryan Davis of GameSpot wrote of infinite spin that "it actually breaks Tetris". It ended up changing the most common single-player game format to time to complete 40 lines. In multiplayer, the rules on when a T-Spin sends extra garbage to the other player have fluctuated ever since the rotation rules were revised in Tetris Worlds .

Can you explain the "fundamental" changes that happen in these games?

In single-player Tetris since 2001, infinite spin and playing forever made score attack trivial, and Ryan Davis of GameSpot wrote of infinite spin that "it actually breaks Tetris". It ended up changing the most common single-player game format to time to complete 40 lines. In multiplayer, the rules on when a T-Spin sends extra garbage to the other player have fluctuated ever since the rotation rules were revised in Tetris Worlds .

Tetris Worlds has a plot: block creatures trying to escape their dying planet through portals unlocked by high scores in Tetris. Too bad The Tetris Company had to screw it up by using Tetris Worlds to launch infinite spin as a new official rule of Tetris.

This is why I stopped being a PC gamer in the late '90s. All I wanted was a better Tetris. What I got was a better bouncing ball demo.

You're not gonna get a better Tetris. The Tetris Company has made infinite spin the law for over a decade now, and providers of alternatives will be prosecuted.

There are no (legal) "independent implementations of Tetris". There is a design document, called the Tetris Guideline, that The Tetris Company expects all licensees to implement.

You mean like the infinite spin that has been a standard rule in Tetris since 2001?

I thought the Dark Tetrad Troll was Alexey Pajitnov, creator of the popular video game Tetris, when he broke the game in 2001 with the "infinite spin" rule change and went on to claim publicly that free software licensing destroys the software market.

Is Tetris, where infinite spin is the rule, really a game anymore? In fact, Tetris has been solved.

Is Tetris, where infinite spin is the rule, really a game anymore? In fact, Tetris has been solved.

Tetris isn't a reflex game. Infinite spin has been the rule since about 2001.

The fellows over at harddrop.com that prefer the licensed Tetris Grand Master series and the 'ripoff' Lockjaw game would like a word with you.

Lockjaw appears to have already been taken down. Is the Tetris clone in Emacs next?

Not really. You see, Tetris is a very simple game, there's no hidden levels of depth to it. It's blocks falling and you arrange them to make lines that disappear.

The fellows over at harddrop.com that prefer the licensed Tetris Grand Master series and the 'ripoff' Lockjaw game would like a word with you.

For many extremely detailed reasons that would make your head explode, these aforementioned games are far better for very advanced play, versus the rules currently mandated by Tetris Co. that basically castrate the game if you play Tetris seriously - such as infinite floor kicks (allowing you to stall indefinitely just by constantly rotating a piece even on the ground) and the fine details of how pieces rotate being a pain for 20G play (top-speed.)

The definition of Tetris changed in 2001 with the introduction of infinite spin (explanation) and T-spin triples (explanation), among other changes that "actually break[] Tetris" according to a review by Ryan Davis of GameSpot. So have you been playing old Tetris or modern Tetris for the past decade?

The definition of Tetris changed in 2001 with the introduction of infinite spin (explanation) and T-spin triples (explanation), among other changes that "actually break[] Tetris" according to a review by Ryan Davis of GameSpot. So have you been playing old Tetris or modern Tetris for the past decade?

The definition of Tetris changed in 2001 with the introduction of infinite spin (explanation) and T-spin triples (explanation), among other changes that "actually break[] Tetris" according to a review by Ryan Davis of GameSpot. So have you been playing old Tetris or modern Tetris for the past decade?

tetris DS does get to the point where the piece lands nearly as soon as it appears

This behavior is called 20G, and it's also seen in "Death" mode of Tetris the Grand Master 2 and "Shirase" mode of Tetris the Grand Master 3.

however you can keep it from fixing to the stack by rotating it and wiggling it constantly.

This infinite spin behavior has become the standard since 2001, despite reviewers' assertions that "it actually breaks Tetris".

tetris DS does get to the point where the piece lands nearly as soon as it appears

This behavior is called 20G, and it's also seen in "Death" mode of Tetris the Grand Master 2 and "Shirase" mode of Tetris the Grand Master 3.

however you can keep it from fixing to the stack by rotating it and wiggling it constantly.

This infinite spin behavior has become the standard since 2001, despite reviewers' assertions that "it actually breaks Tetris".

I am reminded of an proof from a few years ago that Tetris is NP-hard. But this proof is for old versions of Tetris that used a pure randomizer, not the new bag style generator in games since 2001. This randomizer incidentally allows playing forever.

I am reminded of an proof from a few years ago that Tetris is NP-hard. But this proof is for old versions of Tetris that used a pure randomizer, not the new bag style generator in games since 2001. This randomizer incidentally allows playing forever.

Imagine if you actually came up with an ORIGINAL game, the Tetris Company blatantly "cloned" it, and released it in the same marketplace

In fact, Tetris is already cloning other people's games: see Feevo, which is essentially Bejeweled with Puyo Pop's line clear rules.

would that be fair?

As long as only the game rules and not the graphics were copied, yes. Do you think Atari should have owned the exclusive right to first-person shooters after having developed and published Battlezone? Or should Namco and Midway have owned the exclusive rights to scrolling platformers after having developed and published Pac-Land, to exclude Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. from the market? And should AT&T and Novell have been able to shut down Linux and FreeBSD, which are clones of UNIX?

I'm a little surprised the KDE-Edu project doesn't include remakes of Oregon Trail, Lemonade Stand and Carmen Sandiego.

Do these games have publicly available specs? You mentioned Tetris, which has copious specs on a web site called Hard Drop, and Pac-Man, whose every AI quirk is likewise documented in English.

You're thinking of "Palomino". See "Piece" on Hard Drop.

1. Buy game: "Tetris Worlds".
2. Put disc in GameCube.
3. Play.
4. Find that I can turn the pieces forever. (This incidentally was one of several official rule changes, but it wouldn't be fully understood until half a decade later when Tetris DS had the same rule.)
5. Thinking the game is broken, I want to fix it. But I can't because consoles don't have mods.
6. Remember that I can't write my own game for the console either because unlike PCs, consoles don't have a public development kit.
7. Go back to PC, where indie games and mods still proliferate.

Actually, the generic randomizer could do that as well, and in some cases can be abused.

Luck manipulation works in tool-assisted speedruns of Tetris for NES because the game mixes keypresses into the PRNG's entropy pool. Some other games seed the PRNG only once; the entire piece sequence is predetermined from READY GO.

It also prevents complaints about games having a rigged random number generator if the pieces aren't distributed evenly.

True, luck based cop-outs are harder on bag than on the original randomizer. But apparently, BPS chose bag over the history based randomizer used by TGM designed to choose one of the least recently used pieces. The advantage of LRU over the bag randomizer is that an LRU randomizer 1. won't generate the sort of SZSZ clumps at the "seams" between bags, and 2. doesn't have the "Playing forever" pattern. That's part of why I chose an LRU randomizer for my own Tetris clone for NES. LRU doesn't guarantee strictly even distribution, but it is still far more even than the original memoryless algorithm. I can think of a few other compromise algorithms, such as keeping a bag of 14 pieces, drawing seven out, and adding all seven pieces once seven are left in the bag.

And other people think the changes that The Tetris Company has required over the past decade have destroyed the challenge of the game.>

Tetris: The Grandmaster 3: Terror Instinct still seems difficult to me, especially with invisible blocks.

I'm talking about things like Tetris DS and Tetris Party with their infinite spin mechanic (explained on this Hard Drop Wiki page) and a bag randomizer that allows for a play pattern that can provably continue forever. TGM3 lets the player turn these off, but it's licensed only in Japan.

And other people think the changes that The Tetris Company has required over the past decade have destroyed the challenge of the game.>

Tetris: The Grandmaster 3: Terror Instinct still seems difficult to me, especially with invisible blocks.

I'm talking about things like Tetris DS and Tetris Party with their infinite spin mechanic (explained on this Hard Drop Wiki page) and a bag randomizer that allows for a play pattern that can provably continue forever. TGM3 lets the player turn these off, but it's licensed only in Japan.

And other people think the changes that The Tetris Company has required over the past decade have destroyed the challenge of the game.>

Tetris: The Grandmaster 3: Terror Instinct still seems difficult to me, especially with invisible blocks.

I'm talking about things like Tetris DS and Tetris Party with their infinite spin mechanic (explained on this Hard Drop Wiki page) and a bag randomizer that allows for a play pattern that can provably continue forever. TGM3 lets the player turn these off, but it's licensed only in Japan.

They probably tried to find an algorithm to actually *win* Tetris and failed.

In fact, all they really had to do was wait for The Tetris Company to change the rules. Modern Tetris is trivially playable forever.

They probably tried to find an algorithm to actually *win* Tetris and failed.

In fact, all they really had to do was wait for The Tetris Company to change the rules. Modern Tetris is trivially playable forever.

The game can be theoretically played forever on an imperfect generator as long as you don't hit an endless stream of Z and S blocks.

In fact, it's against the rules for the game to give you a long stream of blocks. Tetris games since 2001 dish out pieces 7 at a time, and the most snakes in a row that you'll ever get is four: xxxxxSZ|ZSxxxxx. This leads to an easily computable strategy for playing Tetris forever.

The game can be theoretically played forever on an imperfect generator as long as you don't hit an endless stream of Z and S blocks.

In fact, it's against the rules for the game to give you a long stream of blocks. Tetris games since 2001 dish out pieces 7 at a time, and the most snakes in a row that you'll ever get is four: xxxxxSZ|ZSxxxxx. This leads to an easily computable strategy for playing Tetris forever.

If you have too many G rating you will of course not be allowed on most servers.

But if an experienced player of previous games in the same genre ends up randomly matched with less skilled players due to too few games played to establish an Elo ranking, expect a significant number of spurious Gs due to the vast skill differentials. Let's say Jin8, one of the half-dozen players worldwide who have achieved the "Grand Master" grade on Tetris The Grand Master 3: Terror-Instinct, has just signed up on your puzzle game server. He could play falling block games almost with his eyes closed, as shown in the famous video starting at 5:10. Blink, one of the respected members of Hard Drop Forum, isn't quite as skilled as Jin8, but he can still clear 40 lines in a hardcore Tetris clone in under 30 seconds (compare my 60 second time and casual players' 120 second times), and even videos of him "sucking" at a casual Tetris game are probably far better than you could do. Would they be a 3 or a G?

And some servers will require that you have a certain consistency to be allowed to play.

Then how does a new player earn consistency if very few servers allow players who haven't already earned consistency to play?

100 million typical PC users just heard you say "Download Firefox by re-routing warp power through the starboard deflector array and initiating an inverse tetrion pulse".

Tetrion pulse? You mean like this?

Oh, you mean an inverse tetrion pulse.