TetrisParty T1 Round 2 Field Climber Tips and Tricks

Thread in 'Strategy' started by jjdb210, 15 Dec 2008.

  1. jjdb210

    jjdb210 Unregistered

    So, getting a head start on Tuesday's round 2, I've begun practicing this round.. Anyone got any advice for building the steps faster other than just massively quick movements? I don't think we have anything on the wiki about building steps do we?

    It also got me thinking, there are a lot of people out there that have wiimote->computer bluetooth profiles (so that you can use your wiimote on your PC)... But is there anyone out there that has a computer to wii profile (so you can use your PC as a wiimote?) I wonder if we could perhaps get some faster gameplay for some people if we could "rig" a new wiimote for the PC... just an Idea, but that kind of defeats the fairness of it all I suppose. Just looking for some early suggestions while I try to get a head start on this round as opposed to continuing to push myself further into the top 10.
     
  2. LANAsiDOOG

    LANAsiDOOG Unregistered

    i've used my classic controller for the wii on the pc via bluetooth and a program called glovepie

    so yes its possible to play with controllers... you just need a program that tells the control to map it to keyboard buttons
     
  3. Doesn't seem to me like using the PC instead of the Wiimote would get you much faster. Tetris Party is a really slow game, and I'm sure most people's speed are limited by the delays in the game, not by their fingers.

    Field climber is weird... I haven't done a whole lot with it yet, but there are a few things that I picked up. Probably the most important one is that if one block falls on top of the field climber, whether by a tetromino or by a row clear, he won't be crushed, but will instead be moved to the top of that row. This helps a lot when you have to dig him out, as I've noticed that quite a few times I've had a starting position that had the climber in a well where it's easy to stack to get a triple, but needs another I-block to get a tetris. That means that if you have the climber at the bottom of a well, and an I-block down that would result in a triple, the single block leftover from the I-block won't crush the climber. The other way to use this that's common sense is to place a block on top of the climber, instead of in front of him. This can save you some room laterally before you have to head the other way (turning takes time too I find), and also saves time in that the climber is one level higher without waiting for him to actually climb.

    Second thing is that you can push the climber around with the falling tetromino to a certain degree. I haven't figured out a lot with this one, like when you can do it, when you shouldn't do it, or what you can even do with it, but I'm sure it'll be helpful.

    Lastly, I think the climber can anticipate where the next block is going, and by anticipate, I mean the ghost piece placement >_> I'm sure you've already run into times where the climber just stops, even when there's a stretch in front of him that he can go across. It definitely feels like where the tetromino is falling is what's affecting it, but I'm not sure, and if it is, I'm not exactly sure how it works. Maybe someone else knows.

    So what're everyone's times like atm? I'm at 12 minutes I think with one of my first attempts.... haven't really finished the 10 levels in a while. Just wondering where I'm at =x
     
  4. I'm really not a fan of this mode. It seems like the opposite of puzzle mode in Tetris Plus in that instead of clearing lines to get your guy to the bottom you build an ugly mess to get your guy to the top -- I never liked playing those Tetris Plus puzzles, and it's like they copied that idea and somehow made it even less like Tetris. Mainly it just annoys me because it's so easy to accidentally kill your guy, box him in, or knock him off your tower, and meanwhile he's squeaking away at you or wandering in the opposite direction you want him to go -- I really lose my patience on the last levels (sometimes I just get pissed off and squish him on purpose for the satisfaction).

    You have to be careful when you're piling blocks on your climber to climb through, because sometimes they just squish him into a hole and box him into it. He doesn't seem to like to climb through a horizontal I, because I find that often just squeezes him out the side and drops him off your tower. One time when I had a wide enough base to not knock him off and dropped a horizontal I onto him, it actually squished my climber to death, so I don't know if he wasn't finished climbing through the last piece when I dropped the I on him or if it's because of the width of the piece that he doesn't like to climb through it. I usually try to place the I as a stair off to the side because I've had so many problems trying to get the climber to climb through it.

    I've had the patience to complete about 5 full games, and my best time was under 8 minutes, but I think the best times are under 4 minutes. I'm probably just going to try to get a good enough time in this round to help make the top 500, because this isn't a mode I like to play over and over again.
     
  5. Yeah there are a lot of aspects to it that seem rather random at the moment. I've gotten pretty frustrated too, but all in all I think I like the mode. Just ran through it, and I got a time just over 8. I don't understand how it's possible to get sub-4 over 10 levels...
     
  6. If there are people who can complete 150 full lines in 4 and a half minutes or so for Marathon, I think it's conceivable that people can do 200 incomplete lines in under 4 minutes to complete Field Climber (not that I can see myself doing it). On the higher levels there seems to be a lot of luck involved in whether you get a good start that you can quickly get your climber to climb from, or whether you have to clear a lot of lines first.
     
  7. BTW, in case you aren't aware, you can check your time against what other people have done so far before the tournament if you go to the local play records in the records section.
     
  8. durga2112

    durga2112 Unregistered

    Hmm, I just completed the Field Climber round, but there is nowhere for me to update my ranking for round 2. Just a caution to those who may not enjoy this game mode and don't want to do it too many times - wait until you can actually see the rankings for round 2 before attempting it. [​IMG]
     
  9. Yeah, the same thing happened to me. I'd better not have to suffer through this again. As long as my time (14 minutes) keeps me in the top 300 or so I'll be content. At this point I really loathe field climber guy and was tempted on several occasions to squish him with an I block.
     
  10. jujube

    jujube Unregistered

    i bet you wouldn't squish girl-traveler Viki. she's so sweet and innocent, just enjoying her travels.
     
  11. che_lives

    che_lives Unregistered

    how many times do you have to save this guy? i keep killing him in lv4..
     
  12. lol

    10 levels, no retries.

    Those sub-5 minute times must be people retrying every level until they get the ideal starting position/blocks, then finishing it in under 30 secs. The tournament doesn't let you retry individual levels, so I'm thinking top score will be under 7 minutes or so? I can't see a sub-5 time appearing when there's no restarts.

    Anyways, I made a few attempts just now, and I gotta say, I'm starting to share in everyone's frustration with this mode. Still managed to get a decent run, finishing just over 9-minutes. It would have been sub-9 if not for a terrible I-block misdrop on level 9 that took me a good 20 seconds to fix. Good luck guys [​IMG]
     
  13. No retries? Man, that's going to be even more frustrating considering how easy it is to kill that pip-squeak. It will definitely make it harder to get a good time, because you're going to have to stack with so much caution. Usually I just stack like crazy and don't worry how many times I kill him.
     
  14. tepples

    tepples Lockjaw developer

    Ask anybody who has played Lumines vs. CPU mode. There are no continues and no quickloads; if you don't maintain an undefeated season, you have to start over from game 1.
     
  15. Took me 5 attempts to finish the game. It's only the first day, but so far, not a lot of people have completed it, so I wonder if a lot of people will. If people didn't finish in the top 500 in the Marathon, they might just get annoyed and give up on this one. I sure hope I don't have to try for a better time to make the top 500, but I guess I'll wait and see.

    I still don't entirely get how crush-vs-climb works. I tried to put a T sideways on a staircase with the 1-square-high part on top of my pip-squeak, and somehow that 1 square crushed him. It seems like it depends on what's to the sides of the pieces or something, because if the square to the right of the square that crushed him hadn't been occupied by the rising staircase, I think he probably would have just climbed through that T. There was another time that I tried to drop an L on its back, which usually he just climbs through, but the 2-square-high part was up against some blocks on the right and somehow that crushed him even though I was pretty sure he wasn't even under the 2-square high part of the L when I dropped it. I wish they would just penalize you by adding time or flags or something if you accidentally crushed the guy, because it's so annoying having to start from scratch when it's not always obvious what's going to squish him and what isn't.
     
  16. tepples

    tepples Lockjaw developer

    The rules are probably as obscure and counterintuitive as the rules for a T-spin.

    The Tetris Company and/or its licensees have lately been horrible at documenting the rules of the game. There wasn't any section on scoring in the Tetris DS manual. It took from 2001 (Tetris Worlds) to 2008 (Tetris Party) just to finally get the definition of a T-spin (3-corner no kick) into the manual. And Arika, well...
     
  17. zarvok

    zarvok Unregistered

    Are you sure about this? I don't think it can happen. It can be very hard to tell whether he is fully on the square you were dropping 1-square-high part on, though.

    Weird.

    The rules do seem a little inconsistent. One thing I noticed is that normally, if the guy is in a J-or-L-shaped hole and you drop a J or L in there, he gets crushed. This does not happen if two lines clear as a result. It does happen if only the top or bottom line of the J or L clears. But he does not get crushed if only the middle line clears - he seems to pop up into the middle and then pop up to the top.

    I think the rules here would be very hard to document. Having played it a bit, I kind of doubt they were even well thought out - they probably just programmed something and however the corner cases came out, those are the rules.
     
  18. I don't think I've seen scoring included in a manual since Gameboy Tetris, which is ridiculous when it's the goal of the Marathon. T-spins should have been explained from day 1, because I had no idea when I got Tetris Worlds and I put the game down before I ever had a chance to discover them.

    Yeah, I'm absolutely sure he was under the 1 square of the T, and I've even crushed the climber under a horizontal I once, so he can be crushed by just one square depending on the surroundings. I'm wondering if it's calculated based on both the vertical and horizontal distances between the climber and the opening going around the edges of the pieces, because it doesn't seem to just be based on the number of blocks above him.
     
  19. zarvok

    zarvok Unregistered

    So, we have an upper bound on possible time - the best rank right now is 8'27'15. It seems clear that it will be possible to shorten this by minutes. But, let's look at the other side, how about a lower theoretical bound.

    The best time I have achieved so far on round 1 is just under 15 seconds. While achieving this, about half of his upward movement is "popping" as a result of drops (fast) and about half is climbing (slow). Typically, a block goes down, he pops, then immediately starts to climb up a higher part of the block that just dropped. I don't know if there is any way to preempt this upward climbing motion, perhaps by simply dropping the next block quickly enough. There is also some luck involved - if you get three Is in a row you can pop him up three levels very quickly.

    Do we think it's possible to go much faster than 15 seconds on level 1?

    Let's work with the 15 second estimate for a minute. Levels 2-4 also seem possible to do pretty quickly. It's easy to do the first 3 levels in under a minute, and probably possible to get the first 4 down to a minute or 1:10.

    After that it gets murkier. Does anyone know if there are strict rules about the minimum depth of the starting hole at level X? Lots will depend on luck - his starting position, the starting blocks (lots of Is are helpful in the late levels) and the flag locations. It seems like with a lot of luck - many Is, a starting location he is easy to pop out of, and flags placed conveniently - these levels can be beaten pretty quickly, say under 30 seconds.

    Of course, it won't be the case that all this works out repeatedly in a single run. If you could solve each level in 15 seconds, that would be 2.5 minutes. The first 5 levels in 15 seconds and the last 5 levels in 30 seconds would be 3 minutes 45 seconds. I'd guess that's somewhere near the best time that could be achieved by an expert over many many runs looking for good luck.
     
  20. Muf

    Muf

    The TGM instruction cards are actually suprisingly verbose. They even mention a limit of 1000 accounts on Ti, after which the account that's been unused for the longest time gets deleted.
     

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