Alright, this thought came to my mind yesterday. What purpose does line clear delay really serve in a high gravity game? From what I know, it just adds extra time on top of ARE. However, what does it really add to gameplay? One thing that obviously comes to my mind is that it is meant to reward better stacking. But I believe this is already incorporated in level systems of most games with double, triple, tetris getting an extra 1,2, 3 levels respectively. With this in mind, if some one makes 12 lines (=30 tetrominoes) with doubles, triples or tetrises only, his level reward will be as follows: 1-Double - 1*6=6 2-Triple - 2*4=8 3-Tetris - 3*3=9 So, maybe the line clear delay is just meant to solidify the rewards of good stacking? This is just my thought. I reckon most people here would have a better explanation.
I thought there would be a deeper explanation. OK another simple question that has perplexed me for sometime actually. Why is the drop (with down button) in TAP so slow? Wouldn't it just make sense to make it a locking instant drop. The rotational-moves used to cover spaces wouldn't be affected as long as you have a non-locking instant drop (with up). I guess it would probably be alot faster to use up+down repeatedly with a stick than a keyboard. However, I find it difficult to believe that any player wouldn't lose a significant time just doing this movement. Does the game really want to test how quickly players can do this up+down movement, or is there any other reason for a lack of a locking instant drop?
You're really good at this. Yeah, I'm sure that most TGM enthusiasts would agree that a combo of firm drop (non-locking) and hard drop (instant locking) would be optimal. Soft drop is only useful for situations where neither of the above drop types can solve. However, those situations are not only extremely rare, they are intentionally avoided because they are not optimal or even natural. That is, unless the game somehow encourages such usage of soft drop like in building "squares" I believe. I think there are also other mechanisms with the specific rotation systems designed for such gameplay that minimize this, but I'm not sure so I'll let someone else who is more familiar on the subject clarify on that. There's also another issue in the realm of guideline multiplayer games where a firm drop would increase the power of T-Spins greatly (part of the balance with T-Spins lie in the idea that you have to expend time soft dropping). Some are afraid that T-Spins would become too dominant and radically change the game even more than they are now.
I think the soft drop is there just because it has been pretty much as long as Tetris has. Some beginners prefer it over hard or sonic dropping because it gives them a little more time to confirm that their placement is where they want it to be.
it's that firm drop to soft drop for locking at slow speeds that is throwing me off right now... i'm getting a lot of swerves when i lock
Soft drop is probably the same as it was in TGM1 because there is no significant advantage of having a locking hard drop (or sonic drop). You would only gain a couple of seconds in speed between level 0 and 500 in TGM2 and even that advantage is lost when most of the time you have to be able to rotate the piece near or at the bottom of the playfield. As a side note, doing the up+down combo with a good arcade stick is very very quick and accurate when you've learned the correct technique. You press the stick upward with the crevice between your thumb and index finger while at the same time initiating a flicking motion with your fingers to bring it back down. The stick will bounce when it actuates the up-relay and fall back down mostly of its own weight. I think I can do this easily within two frames. Another good technique is to actually avoid this move by holding up when the piece spawns and then locking it immediately - this can even avoid an extra sideways move if you drop a piece and rotate it in place instead which I think is quicker.
--Thread hijack-- Wait, what? Where did you learn this? Stop doing it. I tried mimicking what you said and there is way too much unneeded hand motion and all in all it sounds like an RSI nightmare. Notice how my hand barely moves at all between the different directions, especially between up and down. You could also try watching Jin8's video to observe how a grandmaster holds the stick.
Um your gif shows pretty much exactly what I do. I should have said thumb but when I wrote that I didn't have my arcade stick near and what I said was how I imagined I did it. Whatever.
Alternative theory: line clear delay was invented so graphics designers could fit in flashy and pretty animations to give the player a reward-type feeling when he clears a line. You could add animation without any delay (kind of like how Tetris DS adds an animation when a piece hard drops, but there's no loss in frames), but nobody does that for line clears (save Cultris).
Oh yeah, ryanheise reminded us the other day that in TGM specifically, DAS cannot be charged during line clear delay. You can charge DAS during ARE meaning that if ARE were to compensate for the lack of lock delay, you would have a longer time to charge DAS. Another important thing to note is that in TAP Master, Death, Ti Master, and Shirase, ARE decreases in various frames when a line clear is made during certain sections. Their initial values don't simply add up. Check Edo's wiki user page for details.
