just from two days and about 10 hours with it, i can tell you it's easier when the game is moving fast. you can hit the walls much faster, and judge your landings from the wall if you need to. it makes playing at instant gravity much more fun. from a fun aspect alone it's great!
I think you're simplifying a little. Joystick is faster than keyboard for ARS because zangimoves are so natural. Keyboard is faster than joystick for SRS. Gamepad is weird (my best 40lines time is on the DS version of lockjaw).
I don't think I am. Zangi moves feel a little unnatural on a keyboard, but they're not that much slower. Certainly not enough to make a difference considering they only make up a small-ish proportion of piece placements. Double/triple-taps are by the same extent a lot faster with a keyboard. I believe that the keyboard is always faster. Some of it comes down to the individual, but I don't see how you can get the inputs in faster with a joystick than a keyboard.
that's funny, i must have only played games with a 4-way stick that don't allow diagonal movement. but i fired up some NHL 2002 and was using an HRAP2 with 4-way, and sure enough, the little hockey dude moved diagonally! it's different with different sticks though, because my X-Arcade stick couldn't register diagonals when in 4-way. it didn't have a restrictor plate, but had a tube that went around the shaft of the stick, and when you moved the stick left the tube would push against the left sensor. by default the fat part of the tube was lined up with the sensors so that it could push against two sensors at the same time. you could remove the tube and flip it so the narrower part of it would contact the sensors, and it was physically impossible for it to set off two sensors at once, so this was 4-way mode.
wow, this stick kicks ass! i'm not really getting speed out of it, but the control is amazing. i can't wait to get comfortable with the stick. it's great fun!
wow, it actually does help. after two weeks of playing with a stick the pain has subdued. and i'v been playing ALOT of tetris the whole time nice one! the stick is so fun. I'm getting faster then i was with a game pad. it sucks for tetris party tho. the buttons are in the wrong place. i just need to get more comfortable with the stick. i finally got a section time in TAP under 1:30. i don't feel like i'm going slow.. i just relax to much when i play.
mufunyo, i'v got to say thanks again for this tip. I haven't had tetris pains since i got that stick and I've been playing every day. it's been two months now i haven't played TP much but I am getting faster. I am in the 6's now I'll be happy with low sixes before I need those 5's
BTW, do you have your Wii hooked up with the regular composite cable that it comes with or a component cable? Whenever I revert to the composite cable to do video recording, I find my time goes up by a minute (and I lose more to the computer in battle too) -- hard to believe that the difference in video quality makes so much difference in my performance, but it does for some reason. Anyway, apparently the component cable is a good investment for anyone that hasn't bought one.
Do you have a flat screen TV? There's usually more processing (comb filter, denoising, deinterlacing) when using composite input than when using component, so most likely your TV is inducing input lag that's causing you to perform worse.
Yeah, I have one of those BenQ flatscreen gaming monitors. When I use the composite cable I have it hooked up to my DVD recorder and then a S-video connection to my flatscreen, so maybe there is lag from the DVD machine or from the flatscreen or both. It's weird though, because I'm not conscious of there being any lag. I also have an elgato eyetv for my MacBook, which they said you could use for playing games on your Mac, but that thing seriously has about a half second of lag and is useless for anything other than recording a second feed.
component cables running 480p on a LG LCD with "game mode" the set doesn't lag. I could probably trim my time down some more, but I rarely play TP. In Heboris or Texmaster I'm doing 0-500 in 6:15-6:30 right now.. i'm slow.
it does indeed, and I was stoked the first time i cleared it . I've got a long way to go still, but I am getting faster. I was finally able to get it under 7:00 in the end of January. Then I found Heboris which, for whatever reason, i can play faster. I don't get the shift between firm drop and lock nearly as much in heboris. I'm in absolute awe over the speed a lot of you guys can play at.
Something I noticed on Tetris Friends is when I only use 1 or 2 taps and DAS for everything else, my time is a few seconds faster. I think I am a slower tapper than most people, but my other thought is I'm not sure whether I'm tapping the rotation buttons at the same time as the D-pad unless I'm using DAS, so maybe the reason I'm faster with DAS is I'm getting my rotations in while the pieces are shifting rather than after. The fastest people on Tetris Friends are doing about 2.5 pieces per second, and I'm not even at 1.5, and I feel like I'm almost at my physical limit though. If you do learn how to play on a keyboard, are fingers a lot faster than thumbs? I noticed I had better luck navigating some of the tricky parts of the advanced stage racer courses in Tetris Party when I put my fingers on the rotation buttons so I could alternate more quickly than if I had to shift my thumb back and forth, and I imagine there is a similar benefit to having multiple fingers for left/right/drop, mainly so you can drop your pieces the instant you finish moving them.
I'm a little unclear on the problem you are having but perhaps your tapping is simply just slower than just DASing like you mentioned, thus giving you that illusion? I can sympathize though. I'm a horrible tapper as well. Blink is the strongest of tappers on here so maybe you can ask him for advice. And of course, multiple fingers are a lot faster than thumbs alone. Your method of playing stage racer sounds awfully similar to spectre's method of playing on the GB.
i've tried "clawing" the d-pad before in TDS and i haven't been able to stick with it. i know it's faster in theory but i keep reverting to using my thumb.
^they are taking about using your fingers instead of your thumbs on a DS or wiimote. that way you have a dedicated finger for each button press, minimizing the time between button presses. I'm slowly getting faster, it's really a matter of thinking less, and not miss dropping. that ghost slows me down. i need it on tetris party because you cant see the piece spawn. i hate the ghost piece.. i don't need to see the bottom of the stack as much as i need to see the preview and the piece orientation. flip/flopping ars/srs doesn't help learning how the pieces spawn. TGM is good because the preview is where the piece will spawn at. i could play that blind at the top and i play the sections with no ghost faster then 0-100 i'm pushing to get those section times under 1:00, 1:02:26 is my fastest now. hopefully i'll hit it soon. i'm using my joystick on tetris friends so i have fingers for the joystick buttons, but have to tap the stick to move. i need to get tapping faster on that stick. 40 lines at 1:27 atm right now my joystick is on a rubberized keyboard tray hanging under my desk, and I think the wobbling is slowing me down a bit. I had to play in a different room the other day to let my wife study.. it was amazing the difference being on a solid surface. ... can't win tho it was a little slick and the stick would slide around on it.. just a heads up if you need to replace the feet on your joystick soft cloth feet are not the way to go. they do work great on keeping your floor from getting scratched when you move your furniture around, sometimes you just make do with what you have. i still got that 1:02 first time i put the stick on the solid surface.. i need some new feet! **edit, yeah i kind of ramble.. i type to freaking much and it fracks up my shoulder.. hopefully the point comes across
