Don't also forget that the main reason is that the floorkick resets lock delay, same for movements and rotations that don't floorkick.
Infinite spin is not a glitch. It is intended behavior of SRS. Rotation and movement reset lock delay. You can wiggle a square back and forth to effectively pause the game while you think of where to put the next piece. Some variations place limits on the number of times you may reset lock delay by rotating or moving. (there is never a limit on step lock reset) TI had very strict limits on the number of resets, while ACE allowed so many as to be practically infinite. In Tetris DX, wall climbing WAS a glitch, and there is a variation of infinite spin that IS a glitch. But in The Next Tetris, Tetris DS, and Tetris Worlds, infinite spin is intentional. It has been intentional ever since SRS was standardized. I have nothing against infinite spin being allowed for time based modes, where it will only hinder you. But in traditional survival based play, infinite spin has no place. 100% step lock reset, allow kicks to raise the piece, but only have this action reset lock delay once until the center of rotation drops below the last line it was at when the kick based reset was triggered. This is how it should be. This will fix SRS for survival play without destroying the intent of the rotation system. While we all here think ARS is the One True Rotation System, Mr. Rogers has a different vision, and while the wallkicks of SRS are strange, they are quite useful for getting the piece across the screen quickly over jagged garbage, which seems to be the intent. Recovery is easier under SRS, and with the strange groups that 7 piece bag can spit out sometimes, perhaps helping the player recover from them isn't such a bad thing? Now perhaps an "Easy" mode can be kept that allows infinite spin, for those that are learning the game, but the advanced survival based modes should have infinity turned off.
So basically, in a nutshell, you just said that for Marathon in should use ARS lock delay and floor kick rules, and SRS wall kicks?
That basically is my view of it. SRS works better for speed, because infinite spin doesn't matter, and also because the rotation allows for faster play. ARS works better for survival, because it's a more difficult rotation system, and because it uses step-reset lock delay. If ARS (with or without floorkicks) can't become the standard rotation system for Tetris then SRS with step-reset lock delay is better. I dislike infinite spin, and to a large extent move-reset lock delay (even if there's a limit on the number of moves before the timer stops resetting), which is why I play almost exclusively play Ti-ARS on Heboris. Occasionally I'll swap to ACE-ARS or Ti-World, but it's reasonably rare. I just don't see the point in having a survival mode on a Tetris game if surviving to completion isn't extremely difficult. Tetris DS marathon can be completed by your average player after a few hours or days of practice. TGM requires around a year, or even more, before your average player can complete it and then a bit longer for them to fully complete it with Gm rank. That is why it is so much better.
I'm sayi got keep the orientations and wallkicks of SRS, and a slightly more relaxed floorkick rule then ARS. Where ARS normally only allows one floorkick during the entire peice drop, my suggestion will allow more, but only if it drops below where the first one was made first. In an ideal world, the next official tetris game would have three classical tetris modes. 1) Beginner. This is Tetris as they have it today, with SRS and Infinity in fully. But it would only go up to around level 10 or so, and then end, telling you to try normal. 2) Normal. This would be the system I described above. All your manipulations from easy will work, but no Infinity. You won't be able to use Infinity to stop and think. SUrvival is harder, but your practice on beginner will help you. 3) Master. This would use ARS, except with rotate left and rotate right still matching what the previous two used. "For experts only! Many of the tricks you learned will not work here!" Personally, i think their position that soft drop is non locking and hard drop IS locking should be switched, but I'm not holding my breath.
You say ARS should match SRS rotation directions, but for me it is SRS that is backwards. With ARS the left rotate button rotates anti-clockwise, which moves the top of the piece to the left. For me that makes far more logical sense than SRS does. SRS was mostly used on the Nintendo consoles anyway, where the A button is on the right of the B button, not the left. It's like when they moved it to the arcade as Ti-World, they didn't realise the buttons were the other way around.
bottom line is the two rotation systems should not have their buttons swapped with respect to each other. I'm not sure which one's supposed to be on what side, but they should be consistent. I believe ARS requires that the leftmost button be rotate left, and SRS requires the rightmost button be rotate right. Because of the 3 button setup, they had to swap the buttons to make the game compliant when using SRS. with two buttons only, the two rotation sytems are identical with which rotate does what, i think.
rosti, i'm confused. the left button always rotates ccw and the right button always rotates cw in every srs game i know of, except for tgm3.
But are you applying that statement to systems where the first button is to the right of the second? That's what I meant by saying it was like they didn't realise the button geometry was swapped around. I was going on Heboris SRS and TGM3, which are the only games I know which use SRS in a situation where the buttons are placed in order from left to right (except for TOJ, and I can't remember what the default settings for that were). Otherwise, there'd be no clash between the rotation directions anyway.
Which I don't use actually. I shift my fingers along one, which does make using the hold button to be a bit more awkward.
"Forward progress" is what I tried to implement in TOD M3, the first Carbon Engine game to use floor kicks. But in practice, it turned out differently. Carbon Engine used a row-by-row system with fall delay per row, like Tetris for NES and Game Boy, but with negative values representing lock delay. A piece that moved down by one row recharged this counter by the time for one row at the current level, causing gravity to be temporarily increased to 1G until the delay fully recharged. Obviously, a really quick player at an early level can use the floor kick exploit. As of right now, the policy that I have adopted for Lockjaw is reminiscent of Ti Classic: when lockdown is set to step reset, only the first floor kick resets lock delay. In <1G, having to press Up-Down after each piece is a pain in the behind. When I play ARS with my N64 controller, I often get mistaken sideways presses. In my opinion, locking hard drop is a better match for thumb controllers, and the desire to target mobile phones is probably part of why Mr. Rogers switched from Zangi in The New Tetris to no Zangi in Tetris Worlds and later. (See the interview.) As you discovered, if you use A and B in ARS and you use B and C in SRS, nothing is necessarily backwards. Let me put it another way. Here is a crude ASCII drawing of a joystick with buttons: Code: O | (A)(B)(C) (') (H) And here is a crude ASCII drawing of a generic 16-bit gamepad with buttons: Code: || ___||___ _,---' `---._ ,-' VEGA (S) `-. / ,-. ABACAB (C) \ | [ + ] (B) | | `-' (A) TR | \ ________ / \ ,' `. / `.__.' `.__,' ARS uses A as rotate left and B as rotate right. SRS uses B as rotate left and C as rotate right. Either way, there exists a pair such that the one on the left rotates left and the one on the right rotates right. The only Tetris product I know of with 2-way rotation that doesn't have such a pair is Tetris Fliptop, which couldn't be more bass-ackward if it were Yet Another Sea Bass.
oh okay, i got it. while we're talking about buttons, i should bring up a problem a friend of mine ran into (who is in fact a very strong player). i introduced him to lockjaw, and he got confused with the key configuration because hard drop is labeled "up" and soft drop is labeled "down." he wanted up on his keyboard to rotate, and with the current labeling, i can see how that would be confusing.
from the Tetris Fliptop thread: this is a direct quote from the manufacturer's website http://www.radicagames.com/fliptop-tetris.php which has remained unchanged. i can only guess that swibeling is something that no ordinary top can do.
The proper implementation is to store the row at which the floorkick happened, and when performing a second floorkick, check if the piece is below the stored row, and clear the stored row when the piece locks. Simple, and effective. Point taken. except that sub 1g play is what zangi moves were invented for. if hard drop locks, you have to soft drop down, which costs time. You are right about dpads, though. With a stick or a keyboard, sonic drop is so much better, though. There is a compromise. Have double up and double down both hard lock, and single up or single down non locking. Double taps are easier on a pad, and actually doing a zangi is reliable on a pad. This would allow both. I jsut wish we could talk to Mr. Rogers and plead our case for step lock in survival modes.
Hmm, what about just taking soft drop out altogether? It's just about worthless when you have firm drop. Instead, just assign firm drop and hard drop to up and down.
I agree with DIGITAL. Softdrop is worthless, and having 2 different types of soft drop would be doubly worthless.
That might work in standard Tetris. But in the square gluing variant seen in The New Tetris and one mode of Tetris Worlds, if you don't have soft drop, that limits you in the patterns you can use to construct squares at <1G. Tetris DS makes soft drop locking if the piece has already landed and non-locking otherwise. Lockjaw does the same for hard drop when zangi is turned on.
this is actually one thing i understand why ttc keeps in. there are a few advantageous moves with soft drop you can't do with firm drop, and it would totally blow the minds of beginners. i can settle for soft/hard drop with no firm (unless i have the option of replacing soft with firm).
