New Drill modes at hi-games

Thread in 'Discussion' started by ryanheise, 22 Mar 2009.

  1. ryanheise

    ryanheise Unregistered

    Some new modes are available at hi-games.net which are all based around garbage drilling:

    • Drill Mode - Clear 18 lines as fast as you can (You may want to switch rotation systems for this one)
    • Drill Marathon - This is an interesting new mode designed by Lardarse using the Wizard tool. Check it out!
    • Drill Mode 20G - Clear 15 lines under 20G. Extremely difficult. (Although not officially linked from the front page yet)
    The last one can be good practice for Death. It is addictive, but almost impossible. I'd actually like to hear some feedback on garbage randomisers that I could design to make this challenge more consistent. One important factor might be to always generate the same number of holes in column 5. The fact that it's not currently a consistent challenge is the main reason why I'm not adding it to the front page, but I'm posting it here because it is nevertheless fun to play.

    Enjoy [​IMG]
     
  2. jujube

    jujube Unregistered

    thanks Ryan, and great job with the game!

    and Lardarse, drill marathon is sweet.
     
  3. Yeah, thanks for adding drill mode, Ryan. You did a really good job with it.
     
  4. There's a bug where a piece won't IRS for the very first piece if you press rotate too early during the Ready Go.

    Also I miss the third rotate button. [​IMG]
     
  5. ryanheise

    ryanheise Unregistered

    The third rotate button is called "rotate left left" in the preferences (I should probably come up with a better name [​IMG] )

    As you noticed, if ARE is shorter than the READY GO sequence, you have to wait until ARE begins before pressing keys. I will definitely change this, and have an option to either treat all of READY/GO as one big long ARE (sort of), or treat it as a bald spot (like TGM1). In the former case, I'm not sure if it should be treated exactly like an ARE (w.r.t. TGM-style games) because that would also imply bald spots at certain key frames. It is also my plan to provide an option to have a delay after READY/GO before the first piece spawns, so that Shirase timings can be accurately emulated (it has a 2 frame delay before the first piece spawns), although I don't think the nature of this delay has been investigated by anyone yet, for example, as to whether this delay may contain DAS bald spots. If this 2 frame delay in Shirase is an instance of the level increment frames, then one of those frames would be a bald spot.
     
  6. In TGM1 this only affects DAS. In no TGM game can you ever be holding a rotation button down during the spawn frame without the piece IRS'ing. It doesn't matter how long you've held rotate down either... You could be holding it down from before you even inserted a coin for all the game cares.
     
  7. ryanheise

    ryanheise Unregistered

    Actually, what I said was not quite right. IRS and IHS will always work even if you hold them down before the beginning of ARE.
    (EDIT: actually, I was testing my development version, so this could be wrong. I'll check this again tomorrow)
    (EDIT 2: yes, this was only on my development version, which I can hopefully release soon)

    The only exception is if you disable ARE by setting it to zero - this will also disable IRS and IHS. However, it has been requested that even when there is no ARE, I should still allow IRS and IHS during the READY GO sequence.
     
  8. tepples

    tepples Lockjaw developer

    And when there is no ARE, I'd recommend treating line clear delay like ARE for DAS/IRS/IHS purposes, if you don't already do that.
     
  9. ryanheise

    ryanheise Unregistered

    Thanks Tepples, that really makes a lot of sense.

    This change is now implemented and released.

    I regret that it took me several days to respond to your suggestion, although I was unfortunately in the middle of some rather substantial code changes (which I will write about soon in the Tessellate thread).
     
  10. ryanheise

    ryanheise Unregistered

    (Bump)

    Any ideas for a suitable randomiser for this mode?

    What I am aiming to achieve is a consistent challenge. For regular drill mode, I try to achieve this by using something "similar to" a 10-hole bag. (This is different from Blockbox and so the leaderboards are actually not comparable. E.g. hi-games.net intentionally prevents you from getting lucky hole-free columns and ensures a good distribution).

    For 20G drill mode, there are 15 rows and hence the possibility to get either one hole or two holes in the middle column, and this can unfortunately cause a huge difference in difficulty. One option might be to use 10 rows of garbage for this mode, so that there will always be exactly one garbage hole in the middle row. However, then it also must be considered that if this hole appears on the highest row, it could be neutralised very easily (because the pyramid structure has not formed over the top of it yet).
     
  11. jujube

    jujube Unregistered

    the 10-hole bag sounds like a good idea to me.

    for added consistency in playability, i think it would be better if there were less rows of garbage (maybe 15 like the 20G drill mode). with 18 rows, you need just the right pieces at the beginning to get off to a good start, and i usually end up restarting.

    i would say for SRS have the holes appear in all columns. for ARS, only have holes in columns 1,2,3 and 8,9,10, and leave it up to the player to avoid making their own holes in the center.
     
  12. Zaphod77

    Zaphod77 Resident Misinformer

    OKay. request. would you PLEASE add alt rotate ccw key to "C" button by default? PLEASE?!?!
     
  13. ryanheise

    ryanheise Unregistered

    Done.

    How about 17 rows? Fewer rows of garbage increases the chances of a lucky stack.

    That's not a bad idea. I'll have a go at implementing it, and I guess I'll keep the original "hard" version too, though. There's something infuriatingly addictive about trying to drill through middle holes [​IMG]
     
  14. jujube

    jujube Unregistered

    yeah that's a good point, and removing one row might make all the difference needed.
     
  15. The pieces appear over the playfield, not under. There's plenty of room even with 18 rows. I'd say at least 30% of my games are under 30 seconds, with 99% under a minute, and I very rarely top out at the beginning.
     
  16. jujube

    jujube Unregistered

    sure you can avoid topping out most of the time, but you might have to concentrate on that rather than stacking in an optimal way to uncover the first few holes. case in point: it might be optimal to place an I vertical to clear the first row, but doing this can cause problems with maneuverability at the top.
     
  17. Then it's clearly not optimal. =] What you're really asking for is a altered top out condition just for drill mode.
     
  18. jujube

    jujube Unregistered

    i'm just trying to see if there's a way to make it so you don't need to shift your focus between clearing down and avoiding topping out, until you can get a row or two of garbage cleared. what if there were 18 rows of garbage but you were playing in a 21 or 22 height well? then your approach to clearing the top line could be the same as clearing any other line, and your focus would be on how to uncover the next few garbage holes in the best way.
     
  19. ryanheise

    ryanheise Unregistered

    Good point, there are effectively 4 rows of space to move around in.

    I guess the problem is really with ARS since pieces spawn two rows down. To make things a bit more reasonable, I've added an option to allow any rotation system to spawn pieces above the well.

    With this option ARS actually seems to be quite a good option for drill mode since having the pointy bits facing down may help to fill holes.
     

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