Be nice people. The new guy isn't being a jerk and doesn't deserve any attitude. In Dr. Mario, the garbage itself isn't a serious hindrance to a skilled player. Almost always, the winner is determined by a cleared screen not a dying player. What does the most damage in this game is that the garbage takes so long to fall, slowing the player down. The winning strategy is to get lots and lots of really small combos. For this reason, VS has very little depth. Understandably, shallow depth makes for a boring match. On top of this, as each player will spend a significant amount of time just sitting there waiting for garbage to fall, it's doubly boring. I won't go into it, but Columns is not without its design flaws as well and is poorly suited to serious VS. As for the video, that's an anonymous Japanese player. I'm nowhere near that skill level yet, though I'm sure having fun trying to be. If you're afraid of completely losing, we could keep the stakes low and say that if you get a single win I'll buy you a beer and/or pizza or something.
i don't really agree. i like the idea of wagering in a skill game. two people's skill can be close enough to keep things interesting. the money element adds intensity. i look at it as healthy competition, and it's not like your gambling. Since if you really do suck, you know you're going to lose money.
As much attitude as your first reply seemed to indicate, ct? Sorry if I seemed to give off a mean tone. I just got a little excited that's all.
You can think whatever you want to think. It is obvious that some Tetris games are more difficult than others.
I agree with the comments that you made about Columns and Dr. Mario. You should give Puzzle Fighter a try and tell me what you think. As for challenging you TGM, I'll play you for money when I own the game.
That's an awfully ignorant thing to say. The basic premise is the same, but the games are not. Someone should force you to play all bad Tetris implementations to stop you from blurting out stupid things like that in the future. Anyway, I don't gamble..
it''s times like these when mat pulls out his ever popular, ever eloquent, and, unfortunately, ever pertinent: stfu n00b.
That's on my list of things to work on sometime. As such I haven't really worked on it, but I've been toying with exactly what would need to be done to make it as playable and as interesting as possible. Talking about that could make an interesting thread itself... ...and to everyone on the main topic's thread: there's this entire attitude among the TGM players that Tetris is fundamentally deep while other puzzles aren't. Thing is, you're comparing a ton of different rule sets for Tetris to the naive "equivalent of early Tetris" versions of all these other games. You can't do that.
So if I took Dr. Mario (which already has ARS-ish kick) and added lock delay, fast DAS, and >1G, would that make it deep enough? Or what else would I need to add?
One of the most attractive features of the TGM series, aside from the refined mechanics, is the grading system which gives a visible indicator of continuous self-improvement over years of playing. Don't get me wrong, I've logged hundreds of hours on both Columns and DrMario over the years, but the difference is I don't expect self-improvement when playing them anymore. I understand TGM players may appear elitist at times, but that really isn't the intention. Noone has ever suggested that other puzzle games cannot be deep or skillful. TGM is just deeper than most (in part because it was designed with the very best players in mind), and certainly more so than Columns and DrMario, which was the point raised. Having said all that, I still wouldn't post on a DrMario forum saying their game is no more skilful than any other game with falling pieces.
Things to consider: How would one negotiate high speeds when viruses are scarce? Would the player be required to intentionally build up garbage when the speeds become too great to land the vitamins on them? Would a memoryless random generator be used for the vitamins? If not, what system would it use? If you were to use something like the TGM generator, you could use a small history for each side of the vitamin. Perhaps just a bag generator for the 6 combinations would do. Dr. Mario would be a strange game if given the TGM treatment, haha.
For one thing, low levels would probably be handled like garbage in The Next Tetris: with the viruses near the bottom of the bottle. The game code actually has 9 different vitamins, as the two-colors can come out in two orientations, and each orientation of the two-colors is as common as a one-color. First thing I'd need to do is extend Lockjaw Engine to handle multicolor polyominoes.
Actually, I'm thinking that, to make Dr. Mario deep in the sense of versus play, the attacks would need to be done differently. At the simplest level, they'd have to be faster and larger; perhaps setting it up such that the location and color of the combo determine the location and color of the attack on the other side could make for interesting strategy (as long as it's ok to look at the other player's screen). Something needs to be done so kills will be more common instead of always having wins from reaching the bottom of the bottle. As another thought, perhaps respawns from the bottom, where each player gains a row at the same time but it only happens when one player is low, would be an idea... As for making it "deep" in single, I'd think that something that could make the game deep could be a cellular automata-style respawn. Having a certain condition that leads to additional viruses, and perhaps having the ability to use how they spawn to your advantage for chaining and such, could be an idea.
Cellular automata for games!? ....I feel that could actually become the basis for an entirely new, deep puzzle game with completely different rules. Very interesting idea. Why didn't I ever think of that first...
