It's "random" insofar as it can be for a CPU which by design can't be truly random. It's not random insofar as it's not "my bitch". Progress slowed due to unexpected MAME savestate behaviour. I'm trying again now. Ready. Go.
A TAS is certainly not cheating. It is something really different from normal playing, and cannot be compared. No one is pretending a TAS is something that it's not. Using techniques that aren't possible in real time, like luck manipulation, only mean the game is more suitable for TASing, as the differences between regular playing and the TAS are bigger.
The application works just fine. The level counter goes from 20->21 with the clock reading 7:60 and I'm reasonably happy with my stack layout. Unfortunately looking into the future, I've had only 3 I pieces in about 30 levels with no line clears yet. I should be okay though. Naturally I'll be aiming for all tetrises except in 100-299 when I can do whatever I want, and might earn myself a gold CO and bronze or even silver AC medals. Muahahaha.
Unless you don't get an I piece between levels x95 and x99, in which case you're better off clearing a triple so as to not lose time at the section boundaries.
I think you mean rewinding and witholding a previous tetris so the you get 4 more pieces to play (which, naturally, contain an I) in the section.
Piece sequence is deterministic. Unless I want to massively rewind (which, honestly, I don't) and then restack so that a possible I piece comes along which I can use in the right window. Even then there's no guarantee it'll work out in the end. Besides, if you actually check, if you cross the 099->100 level step, you'll find it's the line clear delay of section 100-199 that is in effect, so who cares? No line clear delay. Then I don't have to worry until level 299. There's currently a continuously updating image at http://dehacked.2y.net/screen/ displaying my playing progress. I'll disable auto-updates if I stop playing. Right now i just scored a tetris going level 64->68 with the clock reading about 00:20.65 An AVI will be made available at a later time. Right now I'm enjoying myself too much.
Perhaps you can come to #arika on quakenet as that's where the mass amount of TGM players here reside.
The most important thing though, would be passing each section with the screen as empty as possible, until 500. Because ARE is so chunky early on, playing fewer pieces at that speed gives you a tiny boost... quite a few seconds worth, cummulatively.
i made a tool-assisted TAP-clone all-tetrises run that happens to be kinda fast. Kitorisu The Definitive The MegaGrand Master 14 PLUS PLUS Horror-Instinct Tool-Assisted Super All-Tetrises Speedrun With Extra Goodness
Haha, sub-3 minute like you had been hoping. Congratulations! (I'll fix the credit roll behavior right now. It isn't supposed to clear and pause like that for Death!)
thanks Kitaru. and if you'll notice, after the credit roll there was a demotion in grade if you get the credit roll fixed i can pick up where i left off at 999, or maybe backup just a tad and change the last section. once i saw the screen would clear after 999 i didn't hesitate to make holes above the 4th row when i neared the end.
The credit roll is fixed, I'll get working on the demotion right now. EDIT: As far as I know, all is well now. TAS away!
TAP Death has been desyncing on me lately at or around level 345. But just to give you an idea of the speed, the clock reads 1:21.06 while I'm locking down my piece at level 349. I'll try to fix the desyncs later. Having it happen twice in a row in the same spot has kinda killed my mood right now.
Just a friendly reminder: Have you figured out a good wording for this yet? Did you manage to get past the desync?
colour_thief and I have tried it out a bit, and examining what kinds of input TAP will accept. I have a pretty good feel for what I'm doing and how to charge DAS using two pieces so as to allow me to never be in a situation where I need DAS and it's not charged. As for the desync, I fixed one and promptly (like less than 10 levels later) ran into another. Combined with work, minor illness and a pet project, I have been neglecting this a bit.
I do want to put a Japanese text warning of this being a TAS on the video, or at least the description. If someone can just hammer out a suitable warning in japanese (in whatever locale/encoding will work on youtube) I can do it.
