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Bastard Tetris Hates You
Press the Buttons has a post up about a Linux version of Tetris called Bastard Tetris. The name is well founded, as the game evaluates what shape you need the least and sends that as your next piece. From the Bastet site: "Have you ever thought Tetris(R) was evil because it wouldn't send you that straight "I" brick you needed in order to clear four rows at the same time? Well Tetris(R) probably isn't evil, but Bastet certainly is. >:-) Bastet stands for "bastard tetris", and is a simple ncurses-based Tetris(R) clone for Linux. Unlike normal Tetris(R), however, Bastet does not choose your next brick at random. Instead, Bastet uses a special algorithm designed to choose the worst brick possible. As you can imagine, playing Bastet can be a very frustrating experience!" Sounds like the sailing puzzle in Puzzle Pirates.
and tries repackaging this as something legit? What a great prank that would be!
Everyday is like a new type of hell.
Ahh 2D Tetris sucks........ ......
Only real Geeks play 1D Tetris
Press the Buttons has a post up about a Linux version of Tetris called Bastard Tetris. The name is well founded, as the game evaluates what shape you need the least and sends that as your next piece.
In othe words it's just like regular tetris.
I think a lot of people have thought of this, since Tetris seems to evil. I actually started implementing this, but gave up as soon as I asked myself who was going to alpha-test it. If the author in this article actually tested this enough to work most of the bugs out, then apparently he's more of a masochist than I am...
Heheh. At least it doesn't give us those weird blocks with more than 4 units like so many of the tetris remakes.
Click here to give me 1/250th of an Opera license!
Ltris has this feature(?) too. It's called "Expert Mode" there. I haven't compared them to see which is more evil (how's that for a fun activity?)
Shameless plug for my version of Tetris: Spew. The board spins around and zooms in and out. Written in Perk/Tk, but there's a compiled version for windows.
Screenshots here
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
How about a Windows version so I can have TWO programs that hate me?
Does anyone else here remember Pufftris? It was a Tetris clone where the playing field swung back and forth. At first it was just really slight, but as time (or it may have been # of rows) went on, it swung more and more wildly, in all three dimensions. I think that was my favorite Tetris clone. The sad thing is that the only versions I can find won't run on anything other than straight old-school DOS. Nobody here happens to know of a more modern OS-updated version, per chance, do you?
You probably shouldn't click this.
I notice it still shows the next block. But does it ever lie about what the next block will be?
And maybe I shouldn't assist in the Slashdotting, but here's the offical page.
I remember back in the early 90's there was a version of Tetris for the MAC that would basically berrate you and taunt you and drop the occasional obscenity while you were playing. I remember because of the constant struggle to get to play it in my high school computer lab without the teacher running it hearing what was going on. Just wondering if I'm crazy of if anyone else remembers that...
In bast.c, change #include to #include and compile and run.
Loads of fun! I didn't get a single line before I died!
(fixed the angle brackets)
As you can imagine, playing Bastet can be a very frustrating experience!
;-)
Certainly, playing Bastet for the first time was one of those moments in our lives as game players that made us feel strongly about something that, in the grand scheme of things, is probably pretty trivial.
Not necessarily a good feeling, though.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
In Soviet Russia, Tetris plays YOU!
I feel better now.
Nothing is inexplicable; only unexplained -Tom Baker, Doctor Who
It sure sounds evil but only in the "Kill as many babies as you can before the cops get you" kind of way. True evil is more subtle. I think the best test for evilness in tetris clones is to see how cruel the clone can be while still making the player think it is not really that bad. After all, people will quit in frustration if the game is too obvious about its malevolence. You want to string them along, slowly ramping up their frustration, giving them the hint of success every once and a while only to tear their souls slowly from their block-addled minds with a perfectly times sequence of S-bricks.
You would test true tetris evilness in an online competition between the various clones. The evilest would be the one which generated the best aggregate of low average scores and high number of games played. That would signify the tetris which was best able to trick players into thinking it wasn't evil.
Please note that I don't advocate actually undtertaking such a foul endevour. The world has enough evil in it already.
-Pinkoir
I've been playing this for a while, and I couldn't work out why I preferred netris until I read this. Gentoo's portage description for Bastet could have mentioned it was evil.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
(Actually, it looks like there was a topic at some point in time about it in 2002!) Oh, and a quick search reveals that there is no more Wesleyan Tetris, merely a virus out there.
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
Not bad but I can top that by a year.
Unfortunately I demoed the thing to a few folks at assembly 95 and it didn't take took long until one of them managed to defeat the algorithm:) He built a tall tower on one edge and a "roof" that extended to almost the other edge and then added the following pieces under it. (the "AI" simply tested each piece by "dropping" them from the top at each position)
Any game where the goal is to shuffle around parts desperately until you fail in the end, and where 'winning' is just a matter of how long you survived, has a whiff of evil about it.
:) Anyway this aspect of Russian humor was seemingly around long before the Soviets (think Chekhov)!
It's not at all ironic that Tetris originates from someone who grew up under Soviet rule.
As a game of inevitable failure, tetris struck me as inspired by a rather dark fatalistic humor -- but surely 'evil' is too strong?
-wb-
I've often suspected the AI cheats when you play against it and to have it confirmed. Vindication at last. I'm not paranoid after all.
You get progressively better ranks in the puzzle for faster completition times per board (you'd typically complete several boards over the course of a battle or a trip between two navigation points), and better ranks for your many sailors increases the speed at which the ship sails, to a predetermined maximum based on hull type (in battle, its slightly different -- I think you get four moves max regardless but if your sailors are cruddy you won't get all of them -- that could be disastrous because it allows the other ship to get somewhere it shouldn't be, like directly behind you to pound you with unanswerable cannonfire).
Puzzle Pirates, by the way, is the best free trial you'll ever play in your life. Even if you uninstall it and never get into the MMORPG part the puzzles are just breathtakingly fun to play. Its a puzzle game, except the puzzle MATTERS (imagine playing Gem Fighter to settle crew-to-crew combat and being able to brag to people that you swordfought seven guys at a time, including a Cleaver (high rank of AI), and killed them all).
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Erm... The location of the wreck is indicated in a book called "Great shipwrecks of our century" or something like that. One dive, one sunken treasure (which happen to be the front ornament of the wrecked ship hull).
:D
The library is more useful that just getting the lens in the model lighthouse.
This post is awesome.
Sounds nifty, but I run Linux. (Googles) Oh, *sweet*!. There's a Linux client!
I spent hours going through archives of Games Magazine and I love Cheapass Games (it's a company if you're not familiar with them, that sells 50 to $5 really inexpensive, well designed games, usually a bunch of printed sheets in an envelope). Good game and puzzle design is an art. I'll give this a shot... later... when my paid work is finished. :)
( BTW - Kingdom of Loathing is a quirky fun site as well)
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien