Couldn't 2 players target each other and get singles until the other players top out? And when the other opponents were whittled down to a single remaining opponent... He'd have no one to target but himself? How would that work exactly?
Two players could target eachother, but only for a short while until the targets cycle again. And what do you mean with "whittled down to a single remaining opponent"? With three players, player A can target player B, player B can target player C and player C can target player A. Shuffle that around and there'll always be a target for everyone. With two players, there is only one possible target for each player, player A must target player B and vice versa. I don't see the problem. With team games, if it's two against one because a player's teammate died, that's tough luck for the remaining player then, he will get double-dicked. He can punch his teammate in the face after the match for topping out too early
In Super Smash Bros. series, "stock" battles allow a player to leave the arena up to four times before being eliminated. DTET also has stock: a player can top out several times, losing a life each time. In Super Smash Bros. series, "time" battles run for a specified amount of time. A point is taken from the player who topped out, and the last player to send garbage to that player (if any) gets a point. The winner is the player with the highest score at the buzzer, often the only player with a positive score. Players tied for the highest score enter a 1-stock sudden death match at high damage, which might correspond to a low-height tetromino game match. Do you plan on adding time or stock battles?
Concerning Garbage, I like Muf his idea. It's fair and works! I will bring out a new build this evening. Tepples That is a very nice feature! I will certainly make a "stock battle" option in the custom multiplayer settings. Thanks all for the input
In Cultris the garbage is just sent to the person has received the lowest amount of garbage. It worked surprisingly well for a game that sends a lot of garbage at once. There was a few errors in the design though that happened when two players sent garbage at nearly the same time. Sometimes, both of the players would send it to whoever received the least amount of garbage so far which usually destroyed the person instantly. The stock system sounds pretty cool. I can see some games with pretty amazing come backs with a stock system.
I was thinking you could shoose your own target with 3+ players. I think if you guys are going to be influenced by other competitive games, why not FPSs? Have timed matches where instead of competing for frags you compete for fewest losses. Instead of cycling through maps you could cycle through game rules. In fact, some game rules could include no garbage at all, so that, say, 2 people could compete in death mode by trying to die less in 10 minutes than their opponent. It would really force you to keep playing despite misdrops and focus on recovery.
I have modes like that planned for GMO, called "Race" mode. You play a single player game and the person with the highest score (least deaths, highest grade/level, fastest time) wins.
That's how it works in Meteos: each player can choose to send round-robin garbage or target one player. It's less true of Smash Bros., as each player can dodge being targeted by running to the other end of the arena. I've seen this mode. In fact, I seem to remember putting a mode like this into freepuzzlearena Tetanus (1999, for DOS). But then you'd have to use "finity" (not infinity) lockdown, which has two concurrent lock delays: one with move or step reset and a longer one with entry reset, so that a player couldn't just ride spinnaz for 10 minutes like CPU opponent Nachanca did to me in The New Tetris for N64.
Version 8.1.3-Build20081010-1557 is now installed New features - New garbage distribution system (Thanks Muf) Bug fixes - Now really all snoop/watch bugs should be fixed If no new critical bugs are found, for 1 or 2 weeks there wont be a new version. The next version of BlockBox will have TGM & TAP support.
that makes a lot of sense to me. it would be impossible to target anybody. that sounds like a bug, and one that could've been fixed pretty easily. there should be a check before garbage is sent, and if, say more than 7 lines are being sent to one player, then the garbage should be split and sent to the two players who've received the least (excluding the players who did the sending). if each garbage attack you sent went to a different player, you could target by making a skim double towards one player, and a tetris towards the player you're targeting. if several players did this, one player could be attacked very forcefully. but at least Deniax's system wouldn't allow for "sit and wait" targeting like i've seen in TDS and TOJ. the winning strategy shouldn't be to stack, wait, wait, wait, tetris. and maybe some people like targeting because it brings a little more strategy to the game, so i'm not trying to say there shouldn't be a garbage distribution setting that allows for that. but i really like the Cultris method and hope it gets added to your game Deniax.
The Cultris garbage system will be build in then Although it would only take a couple of hours to implement the feature and release a new version, I first want to finish TGM and TAP, I'm being delaying it too much. So with a bit of luck, there will be an release next week where both TGM,TAP and Cultris garbage will be built in. The only question that remains, what should be the default garbage type for a rated multiplayer game?
I suggested all players receive all garbage, but apparently you guys think the games are too short that way. The Cultris method (not including the glitch) is not totally fair. If player A sends a tetris to player B, and player B sends a double to player C, then player C will have an advantage over B. Any type of targeting system is a lazy way of solving the "games are too fast" problem. I recommend a fairer distribution system. Divide the outgoing garbage(e.g. a triple's outgoing garbage = 2) by total opponents alive, round any remainder up, and send that number of garbage to all players. Say player A makes a triple and there are four opponents left. That means 2/4=.5 rounded to 1. All opponents receive a single row of garbage. Code: Opponents One Two Three Four Attack Single 0 0 0 0 Double 1 1 1 1 Triple 2 2 1 1 Blokkendoos! 4 2 2 1 As you can see, this greatly curbs all players' total garbage expectancy in a fair manner. Yes it means occasionally a double will be worth as much as a Blokkendoos. But that only will happen at the beginning of the game. The closer you come to 1on1, the more important it becomes to make riskier line clears. In any case, it's better than getting beaten unfairly. EDIT "The only question that remains, what should be the default garbage type for a rated multiplayer game?" Definitely random. Make attacks hurt. See-saws are for kids. EDIT2 On second thought, I don't see any reason not to modify the chart in order to make larger line clears always desirable. Code: Opponents One Two Three Four Attack Single 0 0 0 0 Double 1 1 0 0 Triple 2 2 1 1 Blokkendoos! 4 3 2 2
I have to say that this game is really turning out to be something great. The other PC tetris games I've played don't seem nearly as polished as this. I'm not going to get into the garbage system because I really don't play enough multiplayer tetris for my opinion to matter at all. On that same note I'm really excited for the stand alone version of the game. I did have one little thing to mention though. I got on today to play Marathon and the J piece starts point up. In the versions of TGM that I have played it starts point down. This is really minor, but it screwed me up enough that I thought I would let you know.
Wow, I feel stupid now. I don't remember changing it, and I had no idea it changed the starting orientation. Thanks.
In the Cultris forums we have actually discussed a garbage system slightly like the one Caffeine suggested. Insane combos could only affect one person which in a room of 9 people was kind of useless because it left you open to your opponents right after you did it. I like the idea of distributing smaller garbage to other people for getting something like a Blokkendoo. I think garbage system should definitely target the person who has received the least amount of garbage. There will be instances where one guy receives a line and the next guy will get 4 lines, but that isn't as bad as a random targeting system. That sounds like there can be times when someone receives garbage from different people in a row, or someone not getting little to no garbage. A random system sounds like it adds more of a luck factor into it. I've never played a game with that type of garbage distribution, but it doesn't sound that good to me. I guess I would have to play some games with that kind of system to see how it is.
"I've never played a game with that type of garbage distribution, but it doesn't sound that good to me." In Tetris Evolution, it works very well.
I did propose something in IRC once, where you would do one line to your target for a double, 1 line to target and 1 line to all (so the target gets 2 lines) for a triple, and 2 to target + 2 to all for a tetris. I was also expanding this idea and combining it with the idea of the person who has received the least garbage, but in a much more fluid way. However, all work on that is on my laptop, which I haven't been able to turn on for 2 weeks because the charger has stopped working...
I will implement more and more garbage types as the game comes closer to a release candidate. It's not very difficult to implement them
