Announcing the Tetris Max High Score Contest, October 14

[3lectr1cPPC]

So close to beating my best just now…

 

[bigmessowires]

the slowness of piece movements

Go into the preferences and enable "accelerated left/right piece motion". It's off by default.

 

[bigmessowires]

Nice work @3lectr1cPPC. I prefer to count in rows rather than points, since the 10K point bonus affects the score so much. My best effort in recent weeks is 138 rows. Need more practice.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Well that was close. New row record though!
I’ve only managed to pull off the 10k bonus once - that’s the 25k score that has significantly less rows than the ones around it.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

2 questions - winner for the contest is points, not rows, right?
And my second one - are we allowed to use the repeat last game button during competition?

 

[Phipli]

repeat last game button

I assume that just reuses the same random seed?

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Yes, the pieces you get are the same as your previous game. I’ve used it some during practice if I mess up early one but had good luck with the pieces up to that point.

 

[bigmessowires]

Yes the contest is scored by points and not rows. And... there's a repeat last game option?!? I'll be damned, there sure is. Umm sure I guess that's fine to use. If you can memorize the sequence of hundreds of pieces and somehow use that to your advantage, then you deserve to win. I think that could be exploited for bonus farming, so no it can't be used.

There's something very interesting about your scores, @3lectr1cPPC. You said you've only gotten the 10K bonus once, and the other games points all came from normally clearing rows. Your ratio of points to rows is substantially higher than mine, around 170-190 points per row cleared. I've had quite a few games around 100 to 120 rows cleared, but the scores from those games are all in the 13000 to 16000 point range, or around 130 points per row. My best game with 138 rows was 17000-something points. I'm guessing you're intentionally delaying completing singleton rows when you could, and trying to complete them in sets of 2-4 instead for more points?

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

I'm guessing you're intentionally delaying completing singleton rows when you could, and trying to complete them in sets of 2-4 instead for more points?

I've just given away a strategy, haven't I? Nuts.

 

[LaPorta]

Go into the preferences and enable "accelerated left/right piece motion". It's off by default.

I'm a doofus. Thank you.

 

[Crutch]

”Wall slamming enabled” would be a much better name for that option though

 

[Scott Baret]

Good thing I bought that LC 575 in June and convinced myself to hold on to it.

 

[bigmessowires]

30 years ago when I first wrote the game (can't believe it's been that long), I definitely remember debating with friends about the strategy of intentionally delaying completion of singleton rows, in order to score more points by completing several rows at once. But we pretty quickly reached the conclusion that it was a poor strategy, because the benefit of extra points was outweighed by the risk of landing in a hopeless situation and losing the game sooner than normal. We abandoned that idea and focused on simply trying to survive for as many rows as possible.

But I have to rethink this now, in light of @3lectr1cPPC's games and my own tests. I've been so busy I only had a chance to try one game, and it wasn't even an especially successful game, but I averaged 167 points per row instead of my typical 135-140 points/row and previous best of 145 points/row.

I could imagine a strategy where you farm multi-row setups until level 9 or so in order to maximize points, then switch to a survival strategy. That might earn about 4000-5000 points more than otherwise.

I can tell you this definitely isn't the way Moose played the game. He would sit down and play seemingly forever, games would last half an hour or more. Nearly the whole game was spent at level 10.

Believe it or not, 30 years later I still sometimes get people emailing me to brag about their high scores. This requires some determination since my email address listed in the game's about box is long since deactivated. One person claimed a best of over 1000 rows, and all the entries on his high score list are at least 400 rows.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Many of my games don't make it to level 10 for this exact reason. If you get bad luck with pieces, you will end up dead due to not getting a 4x1 when you need one, or some other issue.

Another thing I've found is just how unforgiving Level 10 is. If you make one screw-up and get your board up above the lowest levels, you'll suddenly be making a lot more. It's not really a factor of speed really - more the speed combined with how quickly pieces are made to be "set" in place once they drop. I've done most of my prior tetris practice, where I actually got decent at the game, on Puyo Puyo Tetris for the Nintendo Switch. It's definitely easier to survive on higher levels there. It will let you sit there for several seconds with the piece already "down" so to speak, while still letting you move it left/right or switch it's direction. Kind of hard to explain, but allows you to survive on higher levels if you get your board up high.

This sort of thing is honestly my favorite part of trying out different versions of Tetris. Every programmer designed the game to play slightly differently, despite how simple the game is at its base. Each version presents a unique challenge and requires a different play-style.

Like the original Spectrum-Holobyte version that absolutely hates giving 4x1s whenever I need them!!!

 

[bigmessowires]

I get what you mean about the sliding behavior before a piece sticks in place. There is a version of tetris for classic Macs called Randall Cook's tetris that intentionally cheats like you're describing, withholding pieces that you need, lying about what piece comes next, or modifying pieces after they're already down. It's devious and funny, but not really playable. I was routinely accused of having a bad random number generator. Yesterday I got seven purple blocks in a row, so maybe there's something to that claim!

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

I've gotten many of the same block in a row as well - I had one game yesterday that while not in a row, gave out a LOT of 4x1 pieces. Like, a lot a lot of them.
I don't blame the number generator though, that's how they work. You can luck into getting a bunch of the same pieces in a row. The licensed original version does this too. I actually wouldn't be surprised if newer versions (like Puyo Puyo Tetris) actually mitigate against this in order to make it seem more random. I don't remember ever getting a whole load of the same piece in a row there.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

There is a version of tetris for classic Macs called Randall Cook's tetris that intentionally cheats like you're describing, withholding pieces that you need, lying about what piece comes next, or modifying pieces after they're already down. It's devious and funny, but not really playable.

I think it would be a really fun programming project to make something a bit like this - but specifically for one thing. It does a calculation of your current board, and decides based on that what the worst piece it could give you would be, for any given board, then always give that one.
If I get good enough at programming to make that, I'm totally going to.

 

[LaPorta]

I’ve always thought you’ve got some malicious code in there that makes the game send five purple square blocks in a row, for example.

 

[Phipli]

I’ve always thought you’ve got some malicious code in there that makes the game send five purple square blocks in a row, for example.

I hear you get better scores with a ROMinator II installed

 

[LaPorta]

I hear you get better scores with a ROMinator II installed

Kind of like paying a ransom to the developer for an unlock code!