Updated tetrisfriends.com

[caffeine]

I don't have time to explore it just yet. I see a "Tetris Battle 2P," but I'm sure that's just the asynchronous thingmajig.

[Blink]

I don't have time to explore it just yet. I see a "Tetris Battle 2P," but I'm sure that's just the asynchronous thingmajig.

ok so i signed up and checked it out, from what i can tell:

you earn tokens by playing games or doing an achievement, which can be used to unlock stuff.

only singleplayer is available right now, you get marathon mode and sprint mode for signing up , along with 500 tokens to unlock either different art for your pieces or another game mode.

the singleplayer modes are identical to the ones on Facebook, DAS is not customizable and line clear delay feels the same as facebook.

the site looks well made, the leaderboard is much better looking than facebooks.

facebook scores were not transferred over

game is in flash

[Rosti LFC]

TC_ prefix to all our usernames people?

So far seems to still be a case of mutton dressed as lamb. Shiny site, but crappy gameplay and the DAS is still slow as fuck.

[DIGITAL]

TC_ prefix to all our usernames people?

YES, YES, YES. Just placing an emphasis on this so people won't pass over it. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif

We need to advertise wherever possible!

[Meroigo]

Hello internet! I signed up with the nickname TC_Meroigo. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

[Reveillark]

oh, sweet. but somehow i feel too young to fly under the TC banner http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_sad.gif

[Rosti LFC]

oh, sweet. but somehow i feel too young to fly under the TC banner http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_sad.gif
Young as in time spent here, or young as in age?

Not that it matters. I wouldn't say either were good enough reasons to not have the TC banner.

[Corrosive]

TC_Corrosive

the avatars are so pimp.

[TWF]

TC_TWF.

I can't decide what avatar to take aiuieucgdghdiud

[Burbruee]

TC_Burbruee here, just signed up.

Can you change the keyboard controls? Or do I have to use a stick and xpadder/joy2key for that?

[Meroigo]

Can you change the keyboard controls? Or do I have to use a stick and xpadder/joy2key for that?
Press Esc or P during a game and click somewhere there to change the controls.

[iphys]

I signed up and played a game, but every couple minutes my piece would freeze for a few seconds and then suddenly there were a few pieces that had all locked down on me. Is it Internet lag or something wrong with my computer? Also, is there really no way to rotate counterclockwise?

[Burbruee]

I signed up and played a game, but every couple minutes my piece would freeze for a few seconds and then suddenly there were a few pieces that had all locked down on me. Is it Internet lag or something wrong with my computer? Also, is there really no way to rotate counterclockwise?
Try Z or X instead of up, I thought the same at first.

[m:)]

you can change the controls and rotate both ways.. checkout wiiji to use your wiimote to play, it will do keystrokes.
on my mac it crashes safari after every other game. I haven't tried it with firefox yet.

being the non conformist I am I used tc_m. it's bad bad to be playing tetris at the office tho.. i prolly shouldn't get in the habit of doing that. good thing using the keyboard for tetris tweaks out my shoulder.

[PetitPrince]

TC_PetitPrince, of course

I signed up and played a game, but every couple minutes my piece would freeze for a few seconds and then suddenly there were a few pieces that had all locked down on me. Is it Internet lag or something wrong with my computer?

Happens now and then. *Very* annoying.

[Ai]

TC_Ai will be created in a few moments!

I honestly didn't play the Facebook version all that much. I never really got used to the slow DAS. Hopefully I'll be more active here. ^^

[jujube]

being the non conformist I am I used tc_m.
some Japanese Tetris DS players go by the prefix TCM- (tetris chicken master) in response to all of the TGM- and TC- players.

edit: i signed up as TC_jujube.

[an ass]

They don't like my name http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_sad.gif

edit: regged as TC_AA733

[Burbruee]

I think I just saw TC_PetitPrince online in two VS 5 games. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

[rednefed]

I played a few. TC_rednefed. Slow DAS makes me unhappy when the gravity gets past 1G.
I like how one of the unlockable textures has an ARS-like block surface, but playing that will likely screw me up when I do some ACE-ARS2'ing in Heboris.

[milkolate]

TC_milkolate

=)

[EnFuego]

Now I can check facebook and play facebook tetris at the same time!

TC_EnFuego

[Zircean]

TC_Zircean.

Oh yes, we are all so badass.

[jujube]

there's something a little weird about the leaderboard rankings in battle 2p mode. it seems like it goes first by rank (or level) and then by winning percentage. the number of stars you have doesn't seem to matter. the problem is that if you keep playing and can't reach the next level (you need to reach 5 stars at your current level to advance) then you're only hurting your leaderboard rank because your winning percentage is approaching 50%. as far as i can tell, the optimal strategy is to reach a level you don't think you can surpass and then...stop playing? boo http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_sad.gif

not that i'm going to stop playing http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif

edit: well now i'm confused because Shawn is ahead of rapsnoj despite having a lower winning percentage. but if you go to someone's profile and then view details for battle 2p it says that the "most skilled" category is "based on rank and 1st place ratio". maybe the most recent players to reach a rank are higher on the leaderboard? that would be better than placing them based on win %, but however it works people might be tempted to create new accounts every so often to get back near the top.

[iphys]

I tried opening up a fresh browser, and all the sudden I stopped getting so much lag and shaved around 20 seconds off my sprint time, so I think maybe my browser was just bogged down from being up for too long. Anyway, that might be a good thing to try if you're getting lots of pauses.

[iphys]

Man, there's some punks cheating on sprint. How could someone do 40 lines in 34 seconds while wasting a few seconds to do 2 soft drops, and the person in 2nd place is from the same state, so they're probably buddies using the same cheat. It doesn't even make sense if you look at how slow they are on average in the sprint 5P. Oh, and 1137 is just so llet -- I can tell the kid has real skills with the keyboard.

[jujube]

it wouldn't be hard to track their actual playing time with it being a web based game. they would just need to get rid of the pause feature in short modes like sprint, sprint 5p, battle 2p, and ultra, where the games last no more than 2-3 minutes. if you don't have 3 minutes to play then why are you playing? you can just restart the game if you get a phone call. it's not like you can pick up where you left off without losing time anyway. if the actual playing time and the time reported from the player's computer were off by more than a couple seconds you'd know the game was slowed down. i'm sure the developers have thought of this but they still give players the option to pause the game.

cheating wouldn't do any good in marathon or survival. your time doesn't matter, and slowing the game down won't help you improve your score much if you don't know how to T-spin or at least tetris consistently with back-to-back. if the devs left the pause feature in those modes and ignored actual play time it wouldn't really matter. of course if someone reports a false score it's easy to tell by checking the replay.

[Kitaru]

From what I understand, it already records data that can be used to identify cheated games. However, the removal process is either not automated or only run periodically.

[iphys]

Well, let's hope they catch and remove those people's times eventually then. I agree pausing is pretty dumb for sprint, although there are some people that could take ages to clear 40 lines if they're new to Tetris.

[m:)]

is it pausing that does it?

http://vlixter.com/2008/03/28/tutorial- ... ok-tetris/ (http://vlixter.com/2008/03/28/tutorial-how-to-cheat-in-facebook-tetris/default.htm)

doesn't look like fun to me :/

[muf]

being the non conformist I am I used tc_m.
some Japanese Tetris DS players go by the prefix TCM- (tetris chicken master) in response to all of the TGM- and TC- players.
Turner Classic Movies! The channel I love to zap past and never actually watch cause the movies are shit.

[jujube]

Well, let's hope they catch and remove those people's times eventually then. I agree pausing is pretty dumb for sprint, although there are some people that could take ages to clear 40 lines if they're new to Tetris.
yeah i guess some people take 10 minutes or more. but like Kitaru said there's apparently a system in place to stop cheaters, so maybe it doesn't matter if people can pause and take a break.

is it pausing that does it?

http://vlixter.com/2008/03/28/tutorial- ... ok-tetris/ (http://vlixter.com/2008/03/28/tutorial-how-to-cheat-in-facebook-tetris/default.htm)

doesn't look like fun to me :/
there's no way to cheat with pausing at tetrisfriends because the pause screen hides the playing field. the issue is that pausing extends the playing time from start to finish making it harder to match the game clock with real time. it's therefore harder to distinguish between people who pause and people who intentionally slow the game down (like the awesome person in your link), but maybe the game tracks the duration of a pause accurately (in a way that doesn't rely on the system clock on the player's pc).

[iphys]

Well, both times have disappeared now, so the cheaters don't last long on the leaderboard at least. Yay!

[tepples]

like Kitaru said there's apparently a system in place to stop cheaters, so maybe it doesn't matter if people can pause and take a break.
My 32" Vizio monitor has a freeze button. If I press freeze just before I pause the game, the picture remains on screen, and I can plan my next several moves.

[muf]

My 32" Vizio monitor has a freeze button. If I press freeze just before I pause the game, the picture remains on screen, and I can plan my next several moves.
Or you could just make a screenshot. Personally, I think NDS_TGM handled pausing most elegantly: if you pause, your high score doesn't get saved. So you can practice, but don't expect to set any new records. I plan to replicate this behaviour in GMO.

[mat]

like Kitaru said there's apparently a system in place to stop cheaters, so maybe it doesn't matter if people can pause and take a break.
My 32" Vizio monitor has a freeze button. If I press freeze just before I pause the game, the picture remains on screen, and I can plan my next several moves.
well the ideal scenario for something like this wold really be a program that records the field throughout the game and waits for the key you have set to lock a piece, then pauses the game and displays the last image of the field over the field, unpausing on the next input.
you could take that a step further, and have it not unpause on input, but instead stay paused and record the inputs up until the next piece drop, at which point it unpauses, plays out the recorded sequence and then pauses again. you could do this blind, which would occasionally lead to mistakes, or you could incorporate another clone that tracks the piece sequence and gives you a correct visual the whole way through. meh.

[Udy]

TC_Udy http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

[clincher]

I see a of you in the leaderboard http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_surprised.gif

[Udy]

So terrible to play, aaargh!

[iphys]

Why? It seems pretty decent to me, especially considering it's free.

[jujube]

i really like survival mode. the only thing that gets me is the slow DAS and line clear delay in timed modes.

[iphys]

Yeah, survival is worth playing just for the invisible bonus stage. The game doesn't feel sluggish to me except when my browser freezes up, but I'm not a speed demon, so I wouldn't really notice.

[Meshens]

Signed up as TC_Tim.

Also hi, I'm Tim.

[Kasumi]

Welcome Tim.

I signed up as TC_Kasumi.

I lose my connection sometimes when I'm not plugged into my router which is inconvenient. Just so it's known.

[EnFuego]

They need to implement a built in keymapping. The website says it is still in beta, does anyone think any cool features will be added soon? It would be cool if some people for the tetris company were active on the site.

[Kasumi]

There is Built in keymapping. Click game options and click the controls -custom button. Then click the thing you want to change and press the key you want.

Also, man I am too used to getting owned on TOJ. I'm undefeated right now in this game. Though I realize I'm not promoted enough to get matched up against the really good other TC members, I still totally feel above average in Tetris again.

Also this game's garbage system is WEIRD.

Edit: Okay after like 13 matches I finally got KO'd. But I still won the match. My confidence is going to be crushed very soon when I get promoted some more, though. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_sad.gif

[EnFuego]

Oh wow I missed that. The garbage system gives too much for combos imo

[m:)]

the whole thing is kind of odd, it's more like a race against someone else's game.

[Quad]

I'm a bit disappointed by the online Tetris games I see where you need to earn points or even pay to unlock game modes and stuff. I think it ruins the competitiveness of the game. This game looks alright but I'm not going to try it just because I don't want to waste time trying to get unlocks and stuff.

[Kasumi]

I don't know what to think about this game's mechanics. On the one hand, It's really easy to get two KOs right in the a row if the person doesn't have anything to counter it in the hold piece box. Since part of their playing field stays after a KO, it just gets pushed right back up on the attacking player's next move. On the other hand, it's kind of neat the way it allows the defending player to take advantage of the person-who-just-ko'd-them's-high-stack with whatever they had prepared.

Hmm... I dunno. In any case, I'm finally getting destroyed now that I'm a champion. I went undefeated until I became a champion. The skill gap between the Rank 15's and the Rank 14's is absolutely incredible.

[m:)]

Kasumi, you realize you are not playing someone in real time correct?

it's like your playing ultra against someone's past game but with garbage. they never even know they have been KO'd

but yeah, you KO someone only to have them send b2b tetrises at you.

[jujube]

I'm a bit disappointed by the online Tetris games I see where you need to earn points or even pay to unlock game modes and stuff. I think it ruins the competitiveness of the game. This game looks alright but I'm not going to try it just because I don't want to waste time trying to get unlocks and stuff.
if i remember correctly, you'll have enough tokens after signing up to unlock one of the two locked modes. after playing a few games you'll be able to unlock the other one.

[iphys]

Yeah, it was trivial to unlock both games with the points they give you just for signing up and for playing. They don't even have the option to pay money to buy points, so I'm not too sure why they're giving away all this Tetris goodness for free when it's probably cutting into their Tetris Zone profits, but they are.

The other unlockables aren't really necessary because there's nothing wrong with the default pieces they give you. It was pretty cool to unlock the retro Gameboy style minos and play a game with them, but I doubt anyone would really prefer to play in monochrome no matter how powerful the nostalgia.

[tepples]

I'm not too sure why they're giving away all this Tetris goodness for free when it's probably cutting into their Tetris Zone profits
Tetris seems to abandon products after two years, and I think Tetris Zone has hit the two-year mark. As far as I can tell, Tetris's new business model looks like this: give away the game on desktop PCs and laptop PCs at Wi-Fi hotspots, get people hooked on The Real Thing, and then charge them for play on laptops away from hotspots, on handhelds (e.g. iPhone and Radica's surprisingly good color screen Tetris (http://www.amazon.com/Radica-M1292-Color-Screen-Tetris/dp/B0010TADQ6)), and on devices connected to SDTVs (e.g. Wii, X?O).

[m:)]

(e.g. iPhone


i am by no means trying to contradict your statement tepples, but wow iphone tetris is really really bad. awful indeed. that said i'm sure it's on lots of 'em.

when they dropped the price to $5 i grabbed it.. in the end those tuff times when i'm sitting there in the waiting room..

i end up turing that tetris off.


rummer has it ea's tetris kicked a much better free version off of the app store.

[Kasumi]

Kasumi, you realize you are not playing someone in real time correct?

it's like your playing ultra against someone's past game but with garbage. they never even know they have been KO'd

but yeah, you KO someone only to have them send b2b tetrises at you.

I was not aware of that, no. Huh... That's actually really interesting that they did it that way. (Not against a real time person.) Huh. Cool idea.

[Zaphod77]

Actually, it's very uncool.
Your lines have no effect on what they do.

But their garbage does have an effect on you, reducing your mobility. Your opponent is still magically able to place their pieces where they placed them before, even if the same inputs wouldn't cause the same result because there isn't clearance anymore.

Once i figured out what was going on, I realised how much bs the mode actually is. It would be kinda fun if it were realtime versus opponents, who would have to react to your garbage, instead of you being the only one reacting to theirs.

[Kasumi]

I meant more of it being a cool idea, in that it works at all. It's a way to get lagfree multiplayer anyway. It always did kind of puzzle me how some people played so well when their garbage was so high. Now I just feel completely silly. It's not even live. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_rolleyes.gif

[jujube]

I'm a bit disappointed by the online Tetris games I see where you need to earn points or even pay to unlock game modes and stuff. I think it ruins the competitiveness of the game. This game looks alright but I'm not going to try it just because I don't want to waste time trying to get unlocks and stuff.
i earned 30 tokens for logging in today!

[iphys]

That's strange. I notice it now shows tokens and lifetime tokens in the profiles, but they're the exact same number. Probably everyone here has already unlocked everything, so I guess we just keep accumulating these tokens to flaunt them like rich people who have so much money they don't know how to spend it, heh heh.

[m:)]

i actually have been greedily hanging on to my tokens
not so many yet tho, I've been playing other tetris.

[jujube]

yeah i've been hoarding them too. we should donate some to Quad's "i don't feel like earning stupid tokens" fund http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif

[iphys]

They seem to have changed the music on Survival mode. What was it before?

[jujube]

i noticed that it changed too. if i remember correctly it was a version of Korobeiniki before.

and i earned 30 tokens for logging in today!

[m:)]

i earned 30 tokens for logging in today!


i only earned 25 http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_mad.gif

[iphys]

I see they now count up your lines in the bonus round instead of counting them down by 4 over and over, which seems much more logical. Is it just me, or does the line clear delay seem even longer than it used to be? After they've tweaked things I'm now having problems with my T's sometimes locking down on me when I go to spin them, and it's not like my browser is freezing for a second -- it just seems like time suddenly advances by a second or something. I tried restarting my browser, but it was no help.

[Kitaru]

I see they now count up your lines in the bonus round instead of counting them down by 4 over and over, which seems much more logical.
Wasn't this always the case? I thought it only did the counting down from 4 on replays.

Is it just me, or does the line clear delay seem even longer than it used to be? After they've tweaked things I'm now having problems with my T's sometimes locking down on me when I go to spin them, and it's not like my browser is freezing for a second -- it just seems like time suddenly advances by a second or something. I tried restarting my browser, but it was no help.
I'll check on the line clears in a second. I also noticed that things were randomly locking now, though. I had a theory that perhaps they had added something stupid like the ability to lock by pressing down again once it was in contact with the stack, but this does not appear to be so after a quick test. In any case, it honestly made me care significantly less about playing there. I only go there for Survival in the first place. :s

EDIT: Maybe I'm wrong about that soft dropping having nothing to do with the random locking. Try double tapping down at later levels.
EDIT2: No, that's what it is, certainly. Around halfway through the game, it seems soft drop essentially becomes locking.

[jujube]

I had a theory that perhaps they had added something stupid like the ability to lock by pressing down again once it was in contact with the stack, but this does not appear to be so after a quick test.
i kind of like having the ability to do that. maybe it doesn't matter much on a keyboard, especially if you use different fingers to soft drop and hard drop, but in TDS it feels faster to me to lock with down after soft dropping.

[Kitaru]

I had a theory that perhaps they had added something stupid like the ability to lock by pressing down again once it was in contact with the stack, but this does not appear to be so after a quick test.
i kind of like having the ability to do that. maybe it doesn't matter much on a keyboard, especially if you use different fingers to soft drop and hard drop, but in TDS it feels faster to me to lock with down after soft dropping.
Yeah, I was hinting more toward "they did that and the lag is screwing everything up" or "they did that and implemented it incorrectly." Seeing as fast soft drops are now treated as locking, I'm leaning toward the latter. Really though, you can now use fast soft drops as a locking drop pretty consistently now. Try playing the game without using hard drop around halfway through the game and you'll see what I mean.

Typically your input to use soft drop to lock would only be interpreted as such if you had actually lifted your finger from the key first before depressing it again, yeah? Holding down means "I want to soft drop," not "I would really like this to lock before I can do anything with it." :s

[jujube]

oh yeah, i was confused. i didn't know you meant it was TGM-style locking soft drop. it does seem strange they would put that in a guideline game, and even stranger that it wouldn't happen until halfway through. sounds like a bug, but maybe they're doing some experimenting with TGM behaviour in this mode? after all, doesn't invisible tetris have its roots in TGM games?

(apparently "behavior" isn't a real word according to PHPBB spell check)

[Kitaru]

sounds like a bug, but maybe they're doing some experimenting with TGM behaviour in this mode? after all, doesn't invisible tetris have its roots in TGM games?
That would be an exceptionally silly way to go about doing things if that is the case. It is inconsistent, awkward, and nearly breaks t-spins and twists. Why in the world would you ever want two locking drops? I'm leaning on bug here. Maybe they were trying to implement manual locking with down and forgot to make it safe?

(apparently "behavior" isn't a real word according to PHPBB spell check)
You probably have things set to British English in your preferences. I did as well, but "English (United States)" is also an available option. Sometimes forums running on phpbb only list British English under the language dropdown, hehe. :p

[Kitaru]

RE: Soft drop locking safety bug on TetrisFriends.Com
Dear Alex,



Your report has to been forwarded to our QA team for investigation.



Thank you for being an important integral part of the Tetris community!



-Tetris Online Customer Support
Sweet. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

[Shibby]

As accustomed to tetris friends as I already am, I still have my beefs with the game mechanics. First of all, the controlls are super slow in comparison to the clones making it feel really clunky (not to mention the lag time on the clears, which hey, might be a good thing. It encourages us to get tetris's in sprint, right?) I don't ever go for a fast soft drop anyway, unless I'm t-spinning, and if i wanted to I would just hit space bar once it's on the ground anyway. I like to split the work as much as I can between my two hands.

the 2p battle mode, I feel, is complete bull. These people I am playing against are hardly real in my mind. I'll have a game where i'm playing against a level 11 or whatever and I'll get consistantly around 1 minute, but then these guys get a random time which I can GUARANTEE is between like 1:10 and 1:16 pretty much every time. no one has good or bad games? they always just play their average game? Until I can hook up with another player and play a real vs mode game, like a tetris DS matchup, I don't really think they can call this vs. It is really just a vs cpu (correct me if I'm wrong)

The tokens thing isn't too annoying, at least it encourages you to go all the way thru your games, without quitting lol.

[Kitaru]

Since this has been bumped, I figure it is worth mentioning that the locking priority bug I noticed in Survival was fixed. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

@Shibbypod: The "multiplayer" modes are played against real people, technically... It is just asynchronous. Basically, you're just playing against replays. Whenever you finish a game, it'll file it away for potential use. Depending on what level you are at the time, it'll pull replays from the pool of finishing times/lines sent in a specific range.

Anyhow, Versus doesn't really work as an asynchronous game. It just ends up feeling like Ultra with some extra bloat.

[Shibby]

hmm, that makes sence, but there aught to be a challange mode where two players (maybe even 5....) can all start playing at the same time. Maybe even have a friends list in the game or something. Idk... I feel better knowing that these fake people i mentioned are actually real, but it is still disapointing that they are only replays of those people. This particular tetris game is just best off played on your own, against nothing but your own best scores.

[iphys]

Oh, good, I can start playing again if the bug is fixed now.

The line clear delay is pretty much instantaneous in sprint, so tetrises aren't so crucial actually.

I found it odd that the first time I played sprint 5P everyone finished within a couple seconds of each other, and the second time everyone finished within about a second, so I think not only are the games pre-played, but it actually decides which games to put you against based on how well those people did in them; otherwise, there should be some randomness in how well people of a given rank do in a given game. I gave up playing the multiplayer games, because they were kind of strange.

You would think that a game called Tetris Friends would allow you to play against your friends -- maybe someday if we're lucky.

[tepples]

[quote="Shibbypod"there aught to be a challange mode where two players (maybe even 5....) can all start playing at the same time. Maybe even have a friends list in the game or something. Idk... I feel better knowing that these fake people i mentioned are actually real, but it is still disapointing that they are only replays of those people..[/quote]
In fact, that's the beef I have against even real online play on DS and Wii. Unless you have friend codes, which Nintendo never made it clear how to get except from AFK friends in your own home town who own a copy of the same game, the opponents can't be distinguished from a sufficiently advanced CPU opponent combined with a bank of a few thousand preset names. Even The New Tetris for N64 had the latter.

[m:)]

the opponents can't be distinguished from a sufficiently advanced CPU opponent combined with a bank of a few thousand preset names.


on tetris party you don't even get names. you might recognize a mii it you play a bit.

[Needle]

In fact, that's the beef I have against even real online play on DS and Wii. Unless you have friend codes, which Nintendo never made it clear how to get except from AFK friends in your own home town who own a copy of the same game, the opponents can't be distinguished from a sufficiently advanced CPU opponent combined with a bank of a few thousand preset names. Even The New Tetris for N64 had the latter.

From what I hear, that's exactly what they intend to do; In the name of protecting the most internet-illiterate of the internet-illiterates, they're perfectly happy with throwing out thousands of babies out with the bathwater if it meant it threw out online predators/stalkers as well.

[Shibby]

Lol @ online tetris predators

[iphys]

Yeah, all those perverted tetrisexuals out there.

Do kids these days even play Tetris? My nieces and nephews don't seem to have a clue what it is, and they're all into video games, so it's not like they should be so oblivious.

[Shibby]

Haha tetrisexuals. And i know very few kids who play. My brother wont play anything but COD:4

and im 22 and this is one of the few games i play anymore

[Meshens]

Yeah, all those perverted tetrisexuals out there.

Do kids these days even play Tetris? My nieces and nephews don't seem to have a clue what it is, and they're all into video games, so it's not like they should be so oblivious.

I don't know how young you're talking, but I'm 17.

[Shibby]

Thats cool. Were should really make a TDS forum tho and have everyones FCs on the front page. That would be helpful and pretty fun to kill off some time.

And as far as the tetrisexuls, yea they must be the worst thru nintendo games cause look at xbox stuff, you go and play halo and you never hear about how someone got raped the day after they played matchmaking. But in Tetris, no ones name ever pops up... Meaning? Well, all those rapers are playing nintendo so nintendo is trying to preserve it's innocence by blocking them out. I think his would be a good story for dateline NBC. But i'm not 100% sure i have all my facts straight yet.

[an ass]

Is anyone here having problems getting the game to load? I try to load up Battle 2P and I just keep getting a blank area where the game's supposed to be.

[Kitaru]

Since this has been bumped, I figure it is worth mentioning that the locking priority bug I noticed in Survival was fixed. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_smile.gifIt appears I was mistaken. :<

[thylacine]

Yes, it's still broken for me too. I thought perhaps there was something wrong with my PC when you said it had been fixed. Still hoping.

[mzhang07]

first time posting on TC.
i hope they eventually merge the tetrisfriends website with the application on facebook so the high scores can be merged.
also the replay video of my tetris sprint record is just a bunch of pieces being randomly dropped, which i hope they will fix because i never actually got a chance to watch the replay of my game.

[jujube]

hi mzhang07. it sounds like there was a desync in your replay, which will likely never be fixed. the same thing happens to other people sometimes.

[mzhang07]

thanks.
how sad, i guess i'll just have to beat the record.

[Shibby]

I had the same problem. Facebook tetris friends has not done this to me yet however, only tetrisfriends.com

[invincibler]

Hey guys. Just started my addiction of tetris. I found tetrisfriends a good place to play. However, I can't seem to beat level 10 and up, because the DAS is too slow. The piece fall before it gets to the side. I've seen you guys, or some of you, play on that website and you have lightning fast DAS. How did you do that?

[tepples]

There are utilities that you can install into some versions of Windows to inject keypresses into the focused application.[1] One Switch describes how to install JoyToKey (http://www.oneswitch.org.uk/2/I/JoyToKey/JoyToKey.htm); in one of the screenshots, I seem to see a feature called "Automatic Shooting" that may do what you want.

But you can work around slow DAS by building the center of your stack higher in a sort of pyramid structure.

[1] Under Windows, the focused application is the one whose titlebar is selected, usually the one on top.

[Edo]

I've seen you guys, or some of you, play on that website and you have lightning fast DAS. How did you do that?
Be aware that there are a large number of cheaters on that website, and not all replays can be trusted. Dishonest losers have found ways to slow the game down to a snail's pace, enabling them to get record times despite actually playing really slowly. If the game is slowed down to 10% of its original speed, repeatedly pressing left or right to move the tetrominoes, even if performed slowly, will give the illusion of ultra fast DAS when the game is played back at normal speed.

[iphys]

If you wait until the piece appears before holding left/right, you'll have more trouble getting it to the side. It sometimes helps to use the hold to swap your piece so you can start to hold in the direction you're going to want to move your held piece and then swap the pieces so the autoshift is already active.

Mainly, it helps if you know how SRS works, so you know how you can manipulate pieces once they hit the stack. Games with 20G like Tetris DS are pretty helpful for figuring that out.

I don't think the cheaters replays ever stay up for more than a day or so before they're removed, so I think most of the replays you see probably are legitimate.

[avid]

Hello, first time poster. I discovered this website a while ago whilst trying to improve my tetris game on tetris splash. Have you noticed that the Marathon leader on tetrisfriends.com softdrops and piece and then holds it and hard drops the next one to get extra points. I didn't think this was a valid strategy but it seems he gets extra points for it http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_sad.gif

[jujube]

hi avid. that does sound kind of lame, and probably not intended as a real strategy. i hope they fix it. we had a discussion about this a while ago, but i can't remember which thread it was in.

[avid]

Yeah, seems lame to me too.

[m:)]

takes him like an hour to play the game http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_lol.gif

[iphys]

The scoring in marathon is stupid enough, but that's ridiculous that they award soft drop points for pieces you never actually place.

Reminds me of the stupid soft drop scoring in Tetris DS where you can hold down in 20G while infinite spinning a piece to continuously collect soft drop points.

[invincibler]

Well, but in reality, is it possible to play like that??? I mean really??? Can you even see where to place the pieces??? I think that in sprint mode, anything below 50 seconds is bull, but am I correct?

[m:)]

I think that in sprint mode, anything below 50 seconds is bull, but am I correct?


you are incorrect. a lot of those top spots are forum members here and legit. all the people with TC in their nick come from here.

[Rosti LFC]

Well, but in reality, is it possible to play like that??? I mean really??? Can you even see where to place the pieces??? I think that in sprint mode, anything below 50 seconds is bull, but am I correct?

You need to be able to hammer the left and right keys very quickly to overcome the stupidly slow DAS, which is a technique a few people here have perfected.

[Edo]

Sleepipanda, baller4lyfe and Mister_Everett are all cheaters. If you watch their replays, they are moving their pieces far faster than the DAS allows, thus indicating that they are tapping, but they're doing it a rate far beyond what is humanly possible. They also backtrack a lot, which is a dead giveaway that they're rubbish players. If you compare their replays to TC_Blink's, Blink also exceeds DAS by tapping, but his rate of tapping is actually believable. He also plays extremely efficiently and never backtracks. Basically, anyone with a Sprint time faster than Blink's is most likely a cheater.

EDIT: I see that those 3 cheaters I mentioned have now had their Sprint scores removed from the leaderboard. What a surprise...

[jujube]

[Blink] also plays extremely efficiently and never backtracks.
every one of the cheaters backtracks several times in a 40 line game, without exception.

[Blink]

lol i feel bad for the guy who played an hour marathon game..... cause his game got removed.

[m:)]

i hate to laugh, but i am
http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_lol.gif

[colour_thief]

Did they fix the glitchy scoring at least? Otherwise I've got to say I strongly disagree with removing it.

[Blink]

Did they fix the glitchy scoring at least? Otherwise I've got to say I strongly disagree with removing it.

nah its still messed up

[m:)]

Did they fix the glitchy scoring at least? Otherwise I've got to say I strongly disagree with removing it.

i wonder if the bad scores are flagged by humans or by software.

i'll agree that is messed up to remove a legit score.

[kotetsu213]

Hey our game is broken but we don't want anyone to find out, thank you.

[iphys]

That's BS to remove the guy's score when all he was doing was taking advantage of their own stupid scoring system. It might have been cheap to score points that way, but it wasn't cheating.

[muf]

It might have been cheap to score points that way, but it wasn't cheating.
I wouldn't call it cheap, it was an hour of intense work, that is now wasted. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_neutral.gif

[m:)]

It might have been cheap to score points that way, but it wasn't cheating.
I wouldn't call it cheap, it was an hour of intense work, that is now wasted. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_neutral.gif


shit, he actually beat the hour score in a 45 min run, that run put him over blink. he was off the radar until then.


point to all this... it's really one hour forty minuets of intense (all be it silly) work.
plus if he ever had runs where he died someplace on level 15, who knows could be many hours of wasted intense work.


i felt bad for getting a kick out of it, but i did. i just couldn't waste time playing in an unfun way simply to get ranked.

[tepples]

i felt bad for getting a kick out of it, but i did. i just couldn't waste time playing in an unfun way simply to get ranked.
Sometimes playing to win isn't fun.

[Zaphod77]

dear gods.

they should just rewind all soft drop points when you use hold and be done with it.

[caffeine]

Wow! They're the ones who won't fix the game, and the player is the one who gets punished for it. Unbelievable! This is another reason why you have to design the game with hardcore players in mind.

[tepples]

Mr. Pajitnov claims free software "destroys the market" (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08_2F02_2F26_2F1859249). So why does Tetris Friends run Apache on Linux (http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.tetrisfriends.com)? That crazy TetriSCO (http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1242077&cid=28057685)mpany...

[SimMarine]

An update is out.

Tetris 1989 has the look of the Gameboy Tetris, but doesn't really play like it. Don't know the details really; I'm using this game to token whore for a while http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_lol.gif Kitaru mentioned it having SRS, and I notice it has some lock delay (You can't even lock the piece yourself).

There's now a 6P Battle game. Same as 2P, except more "people" to play against. You have the option of enabling pre-defined garbage patterns to appear in your stack before you start the game. I think when you pick a board, it matches you up against people who used the same board, to avoid unfairness.

Some weird "Tetris Acorn Drop" game. It has the theme of the new Ice Age movie coming out in July (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Age_3A_Dawn_of_the_Dinosaurs). As far as gameplay goes, it seems to be the standard "clear ten lines" marathon system. I think.

[tepples]

The I/S/Z rotations are four state, but it's not SRS. I tried the twist used for T-spin triples, and it failed. I rotated an I piece to the right, moved it against the right wall, and neither rotate button worked. I think the only piece that has any sort of kicks is S/Z, and that's to make up for the four-state rotation.

Randomizer appears memoryless if it's not 63-bag.

Hard drop can't even be turned on, nor can soft drop be set to lock. Here are the options in their entirety:
http://pinocchio.jk0.org/lj/tetrisfriends89_no_hard_drop.png

The font is a generic low-res font, not the distinctive font used by early Game Boy releases (as well as BPS's version of Pipe Dream for NES). Blocks are 18 pixels by 18 pixels (not the 16x16 that a 2x upscale would produce), and clearing one of the middle blocks of an I piece adds edges to the parts that were cut off as if it were Tengen Tet?is or TDS Touch:
http://pinocchio.jk0.org/lj/tetrisfriends89_i_pieces_cut.png

The music isn't an exact copy of the Game Boy audio (should be a 50% duty square wave for one thing). The sound effects aren't entirely accurate (although rotation and line clears come close), and now it plays the shift sound while soft dropping.

[Kitaru]

I'd say SRS without wallkicks is an accurate way to describe what is used in this mode. Also, S/Z don't have wall kicks as far as I can tell. However, you will find you can pop over things if you rotate into the upper horizontal orientation.

This mode is really bad. 1/3G with lock delay? Ugh. Hello, nigh indefinitely survivable.

[Caithness]

Haha, it really is awful. What's the point of simulating a primitive version of Tetris if you're not going to do it with near-100% fidelity? The dancers and the space shuttle are pretty ugly too. Is this just to make modern guideline-conforming games look better by comparison?

[Kitaru]

Tetris Concept members! This is your mission, should you choose to accept it:
+If you have not done so already, create an account on http://www.tetrisfriends.com (http://www.tetrisfriends.com/default.htm), preferably with the TC_ tag. (eg. TC_Kitaru, TC_Blink, etc.)
+Put a message advertising Tetris Concept in your status. (e.g. tetrisconcept.com, #tetrisconcept on QuakeNet, etc.)
+Play Tetris 1989 on Type-A and max the score counter. Start from level 9 to make things go faster in terms of scoring. If all goes well, this should take ~30 minutes to accomplish.

The score counter maxes at 999,999, and ties are bumped down. This means that if we can get 10 people to max the score counter before anyone else, we can take that whole page of the leaderboard. It is painfully clear that they don't care about Tetris, but we can take this opportunity to insert some advertising for people that do.

[jujube]

this fake multiplayer idea is getting old. seriously, has there ever been an official multiplayer tetris game for PC released anywhere other than Japan and Korea?

[Kitaru]

Update on the leaderboard thing: I was misinformed. Ties get priority, apparently. However, I think we can still grab the page pretty easily. Please continue to play if you're still interested, but there is less pressure seeing as it isn't a race against time to earn a permanent spot.

[jujube]

yeah, looks like a tie bumps the older record down. sorry Tada http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif

[Kitaru]

Haha, change your status message to something advertising TC! :p

[jujube]

status message changed.

you know, they could have made the tiebreaker something substantial, like fewer lines or shorter time. even if you kept playing after 999,999 the game could remember where your stats were when the score was maxed.

[Kitaru]

That would have taken thought and effort.

[Pineapple]

Come on, people! If I can get 5th place with 576800, then you lot are definitely all capable of going all the way...

[Kitaru]

So, we're all hopelessly lost as to how the leaderboard settles tie-breakers now. The 4th person to achieve counter stop is in 4th. We've already exhausted most of the logical causes. :s

[jujube]

i was able to max out the score again today, and i'm a little disappointed that i have the same position in the all-time leaderboard, with stats from my first maxout. i'm disappointed not just because i played better today, but because it looks like you can't bump yourself up the leaderboard if you tie your best (unless by some strange statistic my game today wasn't as good). as more people max the score we'll slip further down the ranks.

good news is a few more TC members have gotten to the top http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

[iphys]

Is the Acorn game just a 150-line marathon? I tried playing one game going for tetrises and one game doing ZT stacking, and my scores seemed like what I would get in the 150-line Marathon on T Party. Is this game basically just there as a sorry excuse of an ad for Ice Age?

[jujube]

Is the Acorn game just a 150-line marathon?
yeah, seems like it.
Is this game basically just there as a sorry excuse of an ad for Ice Age?
yeah, seems like it.

unless it's a tetrified version of the original Acorn Drop (http://sourceforge.net/projects/acorndrop/default.htm)
http://sourceforge.net/dbimage.php?id=22026

[Kitaru]

To go: 31 Total: 9
Coming soon: Acorn Sprint! http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_lol.gif

[jujube]

To go: 31 Total: 9
Coming soon: Acorn Sprint! http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_lol.gif
not looking forward to it. the acorn clear delay is gonna be slow, i know already http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_mad.gif

[jujube]

the current Tetris 1989 top 10
http://i43.tinypic.com/15psn80.png
we only need 3 more!

[clincher]

Great! Now people are gonna realize that this is the forum of the best players http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif

[Caithness]

Or most masochistic players...

[paul]

5player live.

http://twitter.com/tetrisfriends/statuses/3564364573

i signed up. but my 360 controller doesn't work in 10.6. i might try with a ps3 controller which i'll get in a week.

[Rosti LFC]

Try a keyboard (properly, as in for more than ten minutes). You'll be tons faster once you get used to it, I guarantee.

[SimMarine]

There are achievements up. So far only one it looks, by just getting 2000 lines in Marathon within a week.

[colour_thief]

http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/image.html?u=36&dateline=1246311432
What is a tetris?
A miserable little
pile of tetrominos.
But enough talk...

[Anonymous]

hey i know this probably sounds really dumb but how d'you get back the things you've put on hold!?

[Caithness]

You mean how do you take a tetromino out of the hold box after you've put it in there?

You don't. You just have to drop it somewhere.

[Rosti LFC]

Now that someone else has bumped it I feel it's less weird to announce I'm playing this again.

If you faff to get the rubies to unlock DAS and IRS etc then it's actually fairly decent, just with SRS.

[Kitaru]

You mean how do you take a tetromino out of the hold box after you've put it in there?

You don't. You just have to drop it somewhere.

To clarify, you get one Hold swap per piece. If you accidentally swap when you hadn't meant to, you can't bring it back out until you place the current piece.

[an ass]

so apparently they have live battles now and i didn't even know this till tonight

also there are some weird people in chat

[m:)]

so apparently they have live battles now and i didn't even know this till tonight

also there are some weird people in chat


lol, they released that in.. August..

yeah the chat makes me feel like an old man.

[Mariowinsall]

I love this form of tetris! It's the only way i've ever played!

my name on it is the same as this forum: mariowinsall

[Rosti LFC]

I love this form of tetris! It's the only way i've ever played!

It's funny how both of those sentences relate to each other so well :rolleyes:

[Mariowinsall]

It's funny how both of those sentences relate to each other so well :rolleyes:

Yeah...
So what are some other titles you would recommend? I like going against other people instead of playing for the high score.

[muf]

I love this form of tetris! It's the only way i've ever played!

Hi I'm Randy! I'm a bandicoot! I live in a backyard!

[Kitaru]

Yeah...
So what are some other titles you would recommend? I like going against other people instead of playing for the high score.

Nullpomino, a fan game, currently has the best set of features. It is an open-source program in active development, so it is only going to get better in time. It offers a wide variety of customization options right off the bat, without any need to earn in-game currency as in Tetris Friends and Tetris Online Japan. Versus rooms themselves are also more customizable, and feature options such as toggles for back-to-back bonus, combo bonus, rewards for t-spins or all spins, and so on. One of the detractors is that it has less of an installed player base as a niche fan game. However, there are some great opportunities to get some matches in, such as the on-going Nullpomino Weeklies tournaments being hosted every week on Saturday at 6pm Pacific.

Tetris Online Japan used to be a pretty good option as well, but it sounds like it has been going downhill as of late. Some of the gameplay features themselves are a bit more refined than those in Tetris Friends, but they recently disabled the ability for free members to earn the in-game points necessary to earn upgrades. I guess they want people to start paying for the game. :/ The horizontal movement speed upgrades also aren't as nice as those in TF, but there were also upgrades for soft drop and line clear speed.

Tetris Splash for the Xbox 360 is still one of my favorites. The movement speed settings are pretty well-tuned, and the versus gameplay is really solid. It is basically TOJ without Combo Blocking and better overall speed settings. Another thing about it that I find kind of interesting is that the speed level increases over the course of a match. When the player hits a level up, the gravity -- and in turn, the soft drop speed -- increases. What I find kind of neat about this is that early game t-spins are slightly weak due to the slow soft drop speed, but mid-/late- game t-spins become more effective.

Tetris Friends has been shaping up as of late with its now messier garbage and their attempts to limit player stalling through infinite rotation loops, but it still has a few things that I don't think they have addressed:

One thing a lot of people have problems with is that Flash is pretty heavy and leads to performance issues. You're lucky if the game is pushing a solid 30 frames per second.

In terms of gameplay, one of the most decried features is the behind-the-scenes auto-handicapping that happens in non-Expert settings rooms. In non-Expert/Expert+ rooms, garbage randomness is adjusted so that players of lesser skill still have a chance. In reality, they probably should have just tuned their rating system so that players of very disparate skill levels don't have to play each other, outside of perhaps Free rooms where rating is not taken into account.

I also don't think they've resolved one of the garbage oddities yet. Whereas TOJ and Nullpomino (and I believe Splash as well) randomize the garbage hole on each segment of garbage sent, -- say, a tetris and a t-spin are separate segment entries -- TF has exhibited behavior that indicates that it randomizes on piece placement. If you have a lot of pending garbage and place a piece, it is very likely that the overall add is going to be very straight instead of being broken up into discrete chunks.

Another complaint I hear from time to time is that some speed settings are still too slow, even in Expert+. Soft drop could probably stand to be a bit faster, for example.

Another place that some people still play is Blockbox. It seems to have stagnated a bit since active development has ceased. There are a few little bugs that cropped up that probably won't get fixed any time soon -- things like the movement filter settings displaying as random strings instead of "4-way," "8-way," and "Modded 8-way," and one or two people having to turn of graphics card acceleration to avoid graphics bugs. It also runs smoother than Tetris Friends in general, but some players still suffer from lag problems. (It is still a browser game, after all.) Overall though, Blockbox still offers a lot of great features. Rotation rule selection, movement speed configuration, Rated and Custom versus rooms, and more.

[colour_thief]

Yeah...
So what are some other titles you would recommend? I like going against other people instead of playing for the high score.

Tetris Splash is the best multiplayer tetris in my opinion. Lots of fun to be had there.

[muf]

In terms of gameplay, one of the most decried features is the behind-the-scenes auto-handicapping that happens in non-Expert settings rooms. In non-Expert/Expert+ rooms, garbage randomness is adjusted so that players of lesser skill still have a chance. In reality, they probably should have just tuned their rating system so that players of very disparate skill levels don't have to play each other, outside of perhaps Free rooms where rating is not taken into account.

Tetris DS did this and nobody complained about it, so it's probably just a bad/unbalanced implementation of garbage handicapping in Tetris Friends.

[Kitaru]

Tetris DS did this and nobody complained about it, so it's probably just a bad/unbalanced implementation of garbage handicapping in Tetris Friends.

What? I don't think so. Auto-handicapping, not manual.

[Caithness]

I think he's talking about messier garbage for people who had higher ratings. But that wasn't noticeable over the course of a single match, but rather over 1000 or 1500 rating points.

[colour_thief]

Why are people stating that as if it's fact? I don't think it was ever proven.

[Rosti LFC]

Why are people stating that as if it's fact? I don't think it was ever proven.

Why does it need to be proven (and what would 'proving' it entail anyway)? It was pretty damn obvious if you played it enough. You'd definitely get messier garbage with a 7500 rating playing against someone who was rated 6500 than someone the same rating as you, and they'd get far cleaner garbage as well

Though Tetris DS also had a matchmaking system that tended to give you players who were rated pretty closely to you, so it wasn't that much of an issue.

[Wojtek]

auto balancing on tf is based on win streak. it affects how messy garbage players get and how often they are targeted by others. i don't know about tetris ds.

[colour_thief]

Why does it need to be proven (and what would 'proving' it entail anyway)? It was pretty damn obvious if you played it enough. You'd definitely get messier garbage with a 7500 rating playing against someone who was rated 6500 than someone the same rating as you, and they'd get far cleaner garbage as well

Though Tetris DS also had a matchmaking system that tended to give you players who were rated pretty closely to you, so it wasn't that much of an issue.

It wasn't obvious to me. I'd want to see disassembly or at least some statistics. How strongly correlated do you propose rating is with frequency of changing the hole?

[Rosti LFC]

How strongly correlated do you propose rating is with frequency of changing the hole?
I don't think it's extremely strong, because I think it's only really noticeable when you've got a gap in the region of 1000+ rating points. I also think it's increased the further away from 5000 you get, but that's purely speculation because I didn't play that many games below the 7000 level.

[Zaphod77]

My experience with tetris DS is that my garbage neatness has been all OVER the place regardless of rank, as one would expect with true random chances of hole change.

[Mariowinsall]

I'm going to start playing nullpomino. I hope the people that play that aren't as good as you guys...

[Mariowinsall]

Got on nullpomino, and there was no one there to play against. I already admit it's much better than tetrisfriends. When I buy an xbox360 I will definitely check out tetris splash.

[Kitaru]

Yeah, the unfortunate truth of being a niche, unofficial game is that the player base isn't super developed. We have scheduled weekly tourneys Saturday @ 6pm Pacific where you can count on people being active, but it is hit or miss on weekdays.