Jolt Country

ICJ posted something on Caltrops about a web-based version of Tetris which he said was pretty good. I hadn't played Tetris in at least 20 years, and even at that point didn't play much. I never had the NES version that everyone else did. I guess I would have rather been blasting asteroids than rotating blocks. Anyway, I checked it out (https://tetr.io) and it was, in fact, very good. For kicks I tried the multiplayer mode where you go up against 100+ other players simultaneously, and their success leads to "attacks" on your board, adding rows of garbage blocks and making your game more difficult. I was knocked out within 20 seconds.

After you lose, you have the opportunity to watch the other players, particularly the ones that survive to the end. I commented on the IRC that it looked like these people were actually bots. They were playing so fast that I could not remotely begin to follow what was happening. Flack mentioned there was a documentary about high-level Tetris players called "Ecstasy of Order", a terrible name if there ever was one. Okay, now I was curious, and I was at a strange place with my job where I wasn't technically on vacation so I felt I needed to sit at my desk, but there wasn't much to do, so it was a good time to watch a documentary about Tetris.

The movie opens with shots of the world's first Tetris championship in 1990, won by a mysterious, dorky kid by the name of Thor Aackerlund, who won it easily, got a few moments of fame, and then was never heard from again. The rest of the movie, in betwixt describing the game, the theory and history of the game, and other interesting background, follows the efforts of a guy in 2010 trying to bring back the championship and get a bunch of top players together to battle it out to see who's the best. It also follows the attempt to find and convince a reluctant, somewhat recalcitrant Thor to rejoin the ranks and make his first appearance and such an event in over 20 years.

I've seen some other retro videogame-type documentaries, and this one matches up well. The people involved, unlike King of Kong, are generally likeable, and relatively normal for what you'd think when you think "person who willingly admits they haven't played any games other than Tetris since they were nine." The narrator does not have a great voice for narration, so if there was one major criticism, that would be it, but it doesn't detract much from the movie, which is otherwise very well done.

At the end, the tournament is finally put together, Thor arrives, many of these Tetris masters meet each other for the first time, and everyone seems to have fun.

The movie's immediate effect was to reinvigorate -- or rather, invigorate, since I was never much of a fan to begin with -- my interest in the game. I have played more Tetris (both on tetr.io and after purchasing Tetris Effect on Steam) in the past four days than I probably had in the previous 50 years combined. I am much better at the game than I was four days ago, which according to my tetr.io multiplayer record, makes me the worst player on the site. Oh well, I have a lot of missed practice to catch up on.

The three interesting things I learned after watching the movie were:

1. The tournament is still being held, and now because of Youtube and Twitch exposure, is more popular than ever.
2. The "unachievable achievement" (getting to level 30) touted as the Holy Grail of Tetris in the movie is now regularly accomplished and surpassed by every top player in the competition. People got better since the movie.
3. The guy who ultimately wins the tournament in the movie died in January 2021 at 39. Bummer.

I give the movie three and a half tetraminoes out of four.

What's this "t-spin" people keep talking about?

A "T-Spin" is when you are able to take the T-shaped piece and rotate it at the end to fit into a tight spot. Modern versions (and maybe the old ones?) give you extra points for doing this.

Two things I never knew before watching the movie were "t-spins", and the fact that you can rotate the pieces both directions.

One theme throughout the movie is that since there weren't competitions or anything for a long time, there were all these players who had gotten very good on their own time without knowing anyone else was doing it. One of the players, a blonde lesbian, makes the final 8 at the competition, and earlier in the movie as she's demonstrating the game for the filmmakers, she admits that until she had talked to them, she never knew about 1. t-spins, and 2. that you could rotate the pieces both ways.

So apparently those aren't the most important things in the game. I had all the info I needed to be a top-tier player.

It's one of the few games that doesn't whip me into a frenzy when people say it's the best game ever made.

I accept Tetris, Robotron, Pac-Man, Zork, Super Mario Bros., Doom, Asteroids, Rocket League, X-COM. If somebody names one of them they are trying not to be an a-hole. Other answers, someone is selling something.

Tetris Effect is a mesmerizing, hypnotic presentation of the game that, at every point, when you do the best you could possibly ever do at it, it will give you a "C". I choose to believe it's short for "completed perfectly".

I put it on my Wishlist. I either need to get to know the creator or wait exactly one year.

It's tough to comprehend how anyone who grew up playing Tetris didn't know the blocks rotate both ways. The NES gamepad has two buttons. Who didn't try both buttons to see what they did? The arcade version also has two buttons, one for rotating the pieces in each direction. I get how someone who only played it via an emulator or on a PC might not know that, but that girl with the NES controller... baffling.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Sat Jan 01, 2022 7:47 pm I put it on my Wishlist. I either need to get to know the creator or wait exactly one year.

There is... a third way.

Flack wrote: Sat Jan 01, 2022 8:45 pm It's tough to comprehend how anyone who grew up playing Tetris didn't know the blocks rotate both ways. The NES gamepad has two buttons. Who didn't try both buttons to see what they did? The arcade version also has two buttons, one for rotating the pieces in each direction. I get how someone who only played it via an emulator or on a PC might not know that, but that girl with the NES controller... baffling.

I think I've only played it on PC on the keyboard, and the default controls are left/right arrows to move, and then up-arrow rotates, so I only thought you could rotate it that way.

But the Z and X keys! Z and X! BOFE WAYS!

It's not racist to point out that the movie now seems quaint because everyone involved is a white dude/chick, and now there is nobody remotely close to high-level, championship play that isn't Asian.

It's not racist if it's true.

I joined tetr.io three weeks ago. A week prior to that, I hadn't played any game of Tetris in about twenty years, and even then not much.

tetr.io gives you a "C" rating when you start. I thought, eh, C, not bad for an old man. After one rated match, I got knocked down to C-. After one more, I got knocked down to D+. After the third, the site gave up on me and put me at "D", which in these hypersensitive times, is the lowest grade the site will give you. Watching actual "C" players, I realized what a joke that first rating was. The best players on the site all look like bots, but the C players looked to me just like regular players that I was about twenty years of practice away from being able to hang with.

Well, as much as I give anything my all, I gave it my all, and spent most of my free time (and a shameful amount of my not-free-time) the last three weeks practicing and grinding. I was excited to get back to D+. Not the worst on the site! Getting to C- was very exciting, but there's a long grind ahead of you at C-.

Tonight?

Well, I might get knocked back down to C- on my next game tomorrow, but for tonight, I just couldn't be prouder. Three weeks and 193 games later...



I can officially hang with the losers.

193 games of Tetris?

My head would explode after just twelve

AArdvark wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 3:52 am 193 games of Tetris?

My head would explode after just twelve

That's just 193 heads up 1v1 matches on tetr.io (more like 200 now). Not counting many many hours of solo practice on tetr.io, Tetris Effect, and even (see other thread) classic NES Tetris.

It's interesting to note that the classic game that is the subject of the movie mentioned in this thread, and the game played at the "Classic World Tetris Competitions" is essentially a completely different game from the modern varieties like tetr.io and Tetris Effect.

In classic Tetris, there's basically one way to achieve your goals, and to get higher scores than the people you're trying to beat (which is the only way you can compete on the classic version), and that is to BOOM, TETRIS. Getting tetrises is basically the whole point of everything you're doing. The more of them you get, the higher your score, and the more you'll win. If you have to waste "long bar" (straight) pieces on anything other than tetrises, you're going to fall behind other players who managed to use them to make the screen blink instead.

While tetrises are still important in the modern game, the focus shifts significantly to the even more important task of "sending attacks". An attack looks like a bunch of extra lines that you pollute the other player's board with, and so your focus is, instead on just setting up tetrises, setting up attacks, which generally take the form of:

1. Combos (using sequential blocks to clear lines one after the other)
2. All Clears (finding a way to leave your playfield empty -- this sends a huge load of ten "garbage" lines to your opponent right away.
3. "T-Spins" -- arguably the main focus of the top player, setting up and then managing to clear lines by putting the T shaped piece in a place where it has to be spun in order to lock into a place it could not ordinarily get to. Clearing two lines with a T-spin (a "T-spin double") sends as large an attack as a tetris, and uses only two lines, instead of the four required for a tetris.
4. Yes, tetrises -- still important. (These are called "quads" on tetr.io, because lawyers.)
5. All of the above combined -- If you can set up a combo of a T-spin double, followed by a tetris, followed by an All Clear, you're basically going to fill up the other guy's entire board and win the game instantly.

I find it a lot more fun and dynamic, both to play and watch. And while it does give you a whole host of new things to be bad at, the first time you're successfully able to do a T-spin in 1v1 competitive play, particularly that results with a win, well, friends, that's a good time.

While I'm here, it's also worth pointing out a couple other significant differences from classic Tetris and the modern games:

1. Rotation rules. There is a lot more flexibility to how pieces can be turned. If you're curious to learn more about this, here's a very well-done, interesting video all about the topic.

2. The pieces are randomized differently. In the old game, each piece is basically chosen at random, leading to things like the dreaded "long bar drought", of which Flack recently demonstrated a horrifying example. The new games pick pieces differently, by using what's called a "7-bag randomizer". Here's how it works:

Picture a bag, and you put one of each of the seven pieces in it. The game will then pick pieces randomly out of that bag until it's empty, at which point it will fill it back up with another set of the seven pieces. This means that, for instance, your first seven pieces will ALWAYS contain one of each, and the next set of seven will ALWAYS contain one of each, etc. The longest "long bar drought" possible is thus only 13, if one bag gives it to you as the first piece, and the next bag gives it to you as the last.

One of the main ramifications of this is that, like chess, there are now standard Tetris openings that are used by top players.

If you want to realize you'll never be good at anything, load this webpage about Tetris openings, scroll down continuously until your eyes glaze over, and then just start sobbing uncontrollably.

I joined tetr.io 27 days ago, after playing about ten games of Tetris since the 1980s. The "C" players I thought were absolutely unbeatable 27 days ago, I am crushing fairly easily. I'm solidly in C+ and inching close to B- (and beating B- players on the way there), and tonight got over 4000 rating points. 25000 is the most you can have, but 27 days ago, I was getting crushed by 1500s, and even 2000 seemed absolutely unattainable.

275 games later:



Here is why I like this:

1. I don't care what game it is, tetr.io is the best possible online implementation of any game I have ever seen. The site is incredibly fast and reliable, looks and sounds great, and is almost endlessly customizable. It's amazing. There is literally no reason to play any other Tetris game, unless 1) you like blissing out to Tetris Effect's gorgeous audiovisual feast, or 2) you like old NES Tetris more than the newfangled head-to-head battles.

2. The community is generally great. I've never been on another competitive gaming site where such a high percentage of players were nice and helpful, and such a low percentage were dicks. One B- I beat earlier, when I said "gg", she said "shut up" and left. That's the "worst" BM I've experienced there, and that's a long way from slingin' n-words around.

3. I'm fifty years old, and it is gratifying to find something, particularly something requiring quick thinking and reflexes like this, that I can still get better at. I'll never be great, and the peak of the mountain for me is "not too bad". I'm a long way from getting there, but every day I can feel my game improving, little, tiny bits at a time. One day I'll make a decision in a game that's better than what I would have done the day before. It's nice. It's fun. And hey, if you lose, it only took three minutes and you can just hit the button again.

For Christmas someone got me a $50 Steam card. My Steam wallet still has $50 in it. There's nothing there that interests me anymore.

Please out the person that said shut up. Destroying their life is the good part for the rest of us.

yo what the motherfuck is up

And just to think, I started all of this by recommending a documentary.

That's gotta be worth, oh I dunno, 50 STEAM BUCKS.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Tue Jan 25, 2022 8:55 pm Please out the person that said shut up. Destroying their life is the good part for the rest of us.

I meant that we were going to destroy her life, not that you already did so?