I guess the question is pretty straightforward... I don't know if I'm being a paranoid, sore loser, or if I've been missing out on some trick... Basically, I keep getting excruciatingly stupid, spread out garbage early on, and the other guy gets 4+ wells... I'll play this guy for 10 games and the same scenario repeats over and over and over again! HOW!?
if you rotate clockwise, you get bad garbage. if you rotate counter clockwise, you get good garbage. simple. not!
you're right that often the garbage is bad early--for both players. what's probably happening is the other guy is countering your first garbage strike with a tetris or t-spin so that your garbage never shows up on his playing field. then later on in the game, as the garbage gets easier for both players, he stops countering and allows your garbage to come to his side. then he tetrises until you are very dead and frustrated. maybe this is the trick you were looking for next time you'll scrub the floor with him.
Hmm, did your opponent stop to clear garbage? When I play multiplayer, I have the habit of clearing doubles and triples to get down to the bottom of my garbage right away, especially when I'm midfield. There might be an illusion that your opponent is only getting aligned garbage when in fact, he is actually playing safely.
Perhaps my memory is wrong, but isn't garbage grey so you can tell what is garbage and what is stacked?
The whole field turns gray after you top out or after all other players have topped out. Perhaps the other player is getting garbage, but he's T-spinning it away.
I've been trying to find a pattern... Something like caffeine said -- I know it sounds funny, but what if! Like maybe it counts the number of key presses and makes an invisible pointer scroll... Or it counts the number of pieces you dropped and if it's a prime number, it completely murders the opponent! I played this guy who was extremely fast, but he would always make his first tetris slow.. and then I would get completely scattered garbage... Is he counting the number of times his pieces are scrolling, or the number of times he's spinning his stuff? Maybe he's a robot. --- This is not a conspiracy theory, it's real, I tells ya! ---
The best explanation I've heard for garbage is the following. The game remembers where the gap was in the last line of garbage you got. When you get another line, there's a fixed probability that it'll have the gap in the same place; otherwise, the gap will be placed randomly. This makes the gaps random, but "streaky". I remember that a few people on this board tested this theory experimentally in vs. CPU mode, and the numbers seemed to fit. (As a disclaimer, we didn't apply statistics or anything...we just kind of eyeballed it.) One thing that your opponent might have been doing is aligning his own gap with the garbage. What I mean by that is that when you're playing alone, you'll typically leave a gap on the far right (or sometimes the far left). However, if you're playing a multiplayer game, and you have a couple of lines of garbage, you have a couple of choices...you could either clear the garbage, and go back to leaving a gap on the right, or you could start stacking your pieces so that you build on the existing gap. If garbage does in fact work like I noted above, there's a good chance that the next few lines of garbage will line up with your gap, whereas they probably wouldn't if you just went back to keeping your gap on the right. This kind of makes it seem like you're really lucky, and your garbage just magically lines up.
Yeah, wasn't it worked out that it was roughly 20% chance that the hole changed? On level 5 handicap, it changes every single line, except for presumably when it happens to pick the same column again, meaning you get, on average, a double hole every ten lines or so.
Something like that. Though if it's 20% same, 80% random, then that works out to 20% + 1/10*80% = 28% same and 72% other. Anyways, search old forum posts and you'll surely find whatever stats we gathered. As I recall it was from real online play and not VS CPU. Billman's early posts is probably the easiest way of finding it.
It can't be that hard to play a load of games against the CPU and record what the garbage randomising is like.
Yes it is. Apart from single-game systems such as Game & Watch, Nintendo has produced only three video game platforms that are not compatible with video cassette recorders. These are Virtual Boy, Pokmon Mini, and Nintendo DS. All other systems are video game consoles with a composite video output (NES, Super NES, Nintendo 64, Nintendo GameCube, Wii) or handheld game systems whose software is compatible with the Game Boy Player accessory (Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance). A camcorder is more expensive than even a homebrew-enabled DS.
Have someone watch you and write it down on a piece of paper or something. You don't need some hi-tech jizazz.
Well, that's pretty interesting... If I understand correctly, a CPU with more skill sends out garbage that is more scrambled? Is that hardcoded, or does the CPU know how to exploit "the trick," whatever it is? Could the same "handicap" be hardcoded into wifi games depending on the players' ratings?
No, he meant the handicap chosen in a WiFi local/friend game. By default, against the CPU and in Worldwide mode, the garbage is closest to the '3' handicap.
I'd be 20% random, so 1/5 x 9/10 = 9/50 = 18% chance the hole changes in each line. I have no idea what you guys say about bad garbage at the start. I tend to find it all lines up and then slowly becomes more random, if it doesn't stay the same.
