New Tetris game announced:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr8fVT_Ds4Q

The thing I'm excited to test is the dizzy factor of VR mode as compared to First-Person Tetris.

[!--ImageUrlBegin--][a href=\\\"https://i.imgur.com/Jrhf5jk.jpg\\\" target=\\\"_new\\\"][!--ImageUrlEBegin--][img width=\\\"500\\\" class=\\\"attach\\\" src=\\\"https://i.imgur.com/Jrhf5jk.jpg\\\" border=\\\'0\\\' alt=\\\"IPB Image\\\" /][!--ImageUrlEnd--][/a][!--ImageUrlEEnd--]


Not in a million years. Wtf were they thinking. Idiots.

Interview and gameplay: http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2018/06/e3_...st_versions_yet

Henk Rogers wanted this. Yay. They have multiple definitions of what Tetris effect means and they are all wrong.

Why does the tetris effect really happen? Because you HAVEN'T played it ENOUGH. Your brain tries to find solutions and then it goes away completely.

• Single preview: is this for just the first level, an option, etc. or is it a conscious game design choice? If it's single preview all the way through, props to the game designers.
• Audio/visual: neat.
• Responsiveness: pieces appear to come out as soon as you hard drop, with exception to line clear. Anybody got a read on autorepeat/DAS?
• Zone mode: need more info.
• Multiplayer: ??

The E3 interview and footage showed some more gameplay than the trailer (which btw has over one million views). It'll be the best looking (and sounding) Tetris game but I think it will also be rather casual. Multiplayer wasn't mentioned once and I doubt Tetris Effect will have it, although multiplayer is the thing which works best in the Tetris guideline ruleset. Looks like Tetris Effect will be centered around a Marathon-like mode, although Marathon is the most broken thing in the guideline.

Personally, I don't like the 1 preview choice; in my opinion 2 or 3 previews are always better in singleplayer (I like 1 preview in multiplayer though because it can help to reduce the skill gap which is over-present in guideline versus). 1 preview doesn't change the fact that this game still behaves like guideline: Bag randomizer and Hold feature makes stacking Tetrises (with the well on the wall) ridiculously easy. So you must either give a bonus to center-well Tetrises (games never do that) or introduce T-Spins. However, T-Spins are problematic in Marathon mode. Spinning the T piece into its final position takes some time, so you can't make the gravity challenging and have T-Spins at the same time. Plus, it's frustrating when you create a T-Spot but can't reach it afterwards - you will never have that problem with Tetrises. There's no proof for Super Rotation System (SRS) and move-reset lock delay yet but I am 99% sure the game will have that. Move reset lock delay means that the game only becomes difficult, if pieces immediately touch the ground (after spawning), and if additionally the lock delay is reduced below the 0.5 seconds mark (see levels 25 to 30 in endless marathon). And this is the wrong kind of difficult in my opinion: The game becomes frustrating because the piece often locks before you can even move or rotate it and it's about abusing/spamming the rotation button to prevent the piece from locking. And SRS means strange upward kicks when the pieces touch the ground - all upward kicks will also kick the piece to the side (in case of S and Z pieces, you have to press rotate right when you would usually use rotate left)

So I don't like the direction where the game is probably heading. The gameplay footage tries to hide that fact: The player has always self-made garbage, makes bad hold choices and the low gravity doesn't show the quirks of the Super Rotation System. Some suggestions for the unlikely case a Tetris Effect developer is reading this:

• either scramble/stir up the playfield or add garbage lines from time to time in Marathon: you have to disturb the player somehow to make the game challenging in a good way. as said before, stacking for Tetrises with the well on the wall is just too easy otherwise; even with 1 preview I can still clear > 80% of the lines with T-Spin Triples until gravity becomes too high.
• either extend the lock delay when the piece spawns or add some spawn delay: in level 25 or so, lock delay is decreased to 0.3 seconds in which case the piece often locks before you can move or rotate it. my suggestion means additional time for the player to prepare for the piece, but no additional time once the first input is made. A spawn delay should be around 4 frames long (66 ms between locking of a piece and spawning of the next piece). An extended lock delay should be around 50 % longer than the usual lock delay but never longer than 0.5 seconds.
• make an option where you can change the randomizer: Bag randomizer isn't random enough. There are patterns where you can stack infinitely or where you can make lots of T-Spin Doubles or T-Spin Triples. I also think bag randomizer undermines 1 preview. I think the best way to implement a good really random randomizer is with the help of weights. For examples, see the functions nextolaf() and nextrecursive() in the following pastebin (Java code).
• make a mode for pros with this SRS-like rotation system and without move reset lock delay: SRS behaves awfully under high gravity. This rotation system deactivates the upward kicks (those will kick the pieces to unfamiliar columns and they can be abused to climb over a hill) and introduces a rotation which will still work when the piece touches the gound in spawning orientation. All the downward kicks which people know from multiplayer will still work. Instead of move reset, use step reset (lock delay is only reset when piece falls down a row) or entry reset (lock delay is only reset when piece spawns; in this case disabling the upwards kicks is sufficient).
• make a mode which is about downstacking/clearing garbage: Such a mode is as good as never present in official games although versus players like to play it a lot. Examples would be: 40 line Cheese, Dig Challenge, Survivor, Grande Finale, driller mode
• use Initial Hold and Rotation System (IRS, IHS): Usually, official games ignore all inputs during ine clear delay or spawn delay. It is frustrating when there's a 1-second-long line clear delay and you press the rotation or hold button just a frame too early. IRS and IHS means here, that if you press down rotation/hold button during the delay and it is still pressed when the delay ends, then the piece will still be rotated/held. Also let the player charge the sideway movement a little in this case: if left/right button is pressed down during the delay and still pressed when the delay ends, then reduce the sideway autorepeat delay a little, e.g. by up to 3 frames (this means the piece will move a step left/right immediately when it spawns and the autoshift delay is reduced by up to 3 frames depending on how early left/right was pressed down during the line clear or spawn delay)
• make sure that softdrop speed is fast enough in Ultra: it's frustrating when you have to use height reduction methods in Ultra
• customizable controls: The default setup for consoles / handhelds is that you move and harddop with D-pad / arrow keys. However on PC, harddrop and sidewards movement are on different hands (harddrop = Space, sidewards movement = arrow keys). It's very hard to switch platforms without customizable controls.

Regarding the Zone mechanic: I think it's a nice feature. It will bring a little more strategy in the game: Usually players just stay at the bottom, repeating their techniques. The feature will force you to upstack from time to time to optimize scores. Once you trigger the mechanic, all lines you clear will stay in the playfield but will be moved to the bottom (Tetris Monster also did this). When the zone interval ends, the game counts how many lines you 've cleared in total, and rewards points accordingly (and removes the lines). Not sure how T-Spins are handled int his case. I hope they are not completely worthless during this interval.

Some things I noticed in the videos regarding Scoring:

• 1 combos don't reward extra points. In other Tetris versions they scored points worth a half Single. Maybe, The Tetris Company made that change so 1 combos can't be abused in goal marathon (1 combo scoring like 1.5 lines but just substracting 1 line from the goal)
• The game uses a drop points multiplier. Usually, games don't use such a multiplier, so points from softdrop and harddrop become irrelevevant in Marathon. The drop points multiplier seems to be independent from the line clear points multiplier. When the zone interval is activated, drop points are doubled, and later even tripled (makes sense because the height is reduced the more lines you've cleared). Both multipliers can change during a level. A level usually lasts 24 or 30 lines. Once a level is finished, the score is reset to 0.

Some citations worth noting from the Tetris Effect website:

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]GET IN THE ZONE
Includes the all-new "Zone" mechanic, where players can stop time (and Tetriminos falling) by entering "the Zone" and either get out of a sticky situation that could otherwise lead to "Game Over," or rack up extra line clears for bonus rewards.[/quote]
[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]LEVEL UP
Over 30 different stages, each with its own music, sound effects, graphical style and background that all evolve and change as you play through them.[/quote]
30 is a number we know from Endless Marathon (30 stages/levels whereas each stage takes longer than 10 lines here).

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]PS4 OR PS4 PRO (& OPTIONAL PS VR!)
Fully playable on either a standard display (up to 4K and 60fps on a PS4™Pro), or optionally in mind-blowing 3D on PS VR. [/quote]
[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]PLAY YOUR WAY
Fan-favorite modes like Marathon, Sprint, and Ultra, with more all-new modes and other features to be revealed before launch.[/quote]
Fan-favorite is a little overstatement. Those modes must be present in any official game.

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]TIMELESS. ENDLESS.
A player grading and leveling system as well as variable difficulty to encourage and reward replayability.[/quote]
This one sounds interesting. When I heard player grading first, I thought it would be like in TGM3 where players have a life-time rank and the last few played games determine if your rank goes up or down. But can that even work, when there's a mode similar to Endless Marathon where each stage takes 20+ lines to clear? For a life-time rank games must be rather short. After thinking about it, I came to the conclusion it must mean a system where your score is just converted to a grade depending on which mode you play. I still hope that the game will use a life-time rank for each relevant mode. I don't like that games just acknowledge your highscores in singleplayer because you will barely ever beat your highscore after having played for some months and a highscore mustn't be representative for your average performance. I also hope there's a global leaderboard.

Random note but I adored the music in it.
I made a cover of it lol

https://youtu.be/PSk13iYldBw

But like I'm so happy a very casual one was released. So many fast paced ones and I've always wanted a happy zen tetris I can just zone out and just play without stressing out.

2 further videos

At 0:10 you can see a mode which is similar to Big Bang in Puyo Puyo Tetris



And a talk with the developers. At 19:00 they explain the Zone mechanic and at 22:22 they talk about the Tetris guideline and whether they are allowed to break it under circumstances.

Trey Harrison, the technical guy behind the Classic Tetris World Championship, has played Tetris Effect:


It's interesting to see an expert classic Tetris player but I would have liked more to see an actual expert guideline player. Anyway, watching this video made me realize how fast paced Tetris Effect is for a singleplayer game. There's no delay between the placement of a piece and the spawning of the next piece (except if line clear) and auto repetition is pretty fast. I think it's 10 frames of DAS (Delayed AutoShift) and 3 frames of ARR (AutoRepeat Rate).

edit: noticed that Mark MacDonald is also present in that video. That's the guy from the developer interviews (besides Tetsuya Mizuguchi). The line clear delay is 30 frames (0.5 seconds until ghost piece shows up, independent of how many lines were cleared), the visual effect lasts a little longer (could be distracting under high gravity). Also, the gravity counter is not reset after a line clear (probably not reset every time a new piece spawns): If let's say a piece falls down a row every 22 frames and the previous piece was hard dropped 16 frames after its last gravity step (16 frames after it fell down a row), then the next piece will make its first gravity step 6 frames after the end of line clear delay.

Interesting observation regarding the gravity counter. Do any other popular Tetris game do that? Seems like a complete oversight.

I agree with most of what you are writing, Okey_Dokey. Marathon has been a joke since Tetris Worlds, and making an entirely single player game based on all the rules guidelines have enforced over the past many years would just result in an insanely boring game.
I get that they are going for making this a complete casual game (which could work, to be honest), but I also think that if surviving isn't going to take one ounce of skill, and time isn't a factor, there's no sense in playing single player modes at all. Bag randomizer has to go, and in my opinion, so does the hold button. Get back to the classic puzzle concept.

Most of your ideas are good, and I really appreciate the compromise between guideline traditions and additions that would grease the game for single player challenges. I would love a serious alternative to TGM for modern single player Tetris.

Quote from: Sumez
Interesting observation regarding the gravity counter. Do any other popular Tetris game do that? Seems like a complete oversight.

I can't answer the question whether other games do that, too. I just made that obversation because I wanted to see, if line clear delay was really 0.5 seconds. It's an oversight but it's unimportant for later levels. Can't say the same for some bugs in Tetris Ultimate. There's a disadvantageous bug in Tetris Ultimate that makes it skip line clear delay (covered by this great video) and there's an advantageous bug where pieces stop falling midair.

I think tetris effect is extremely important for us (although we might not like it). By targeting a more casual audience Tetris Effect appeals to a lot more people. Furthermore it is not as "Asian-Themed" like PPT so it will suit the western audience better. I think this will be the gateway game for a lot of new tetris players to come and due to the aesthetic gameplay will probably be shared more on social media than current tetris games.

The only problem I have is, that I don't own a ps4

Quote from: AESthetix256The only problem I have is, that I don't own a ps4

I am very sure that Tetris Effect is just a PS4 timed exclusive. It will get a PC release eventually (maybe 6 months later), especially because of HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Not sure about XBoxOne and Nintendo Switch though.

Quote from: AESthetix256I think this will be the gateway game for a lot of new tetris players to come and due to the aesthetic gameplay will probably be shared more on social media than current tetris games.

It surely is. With the trailer and "Tetris Expert plays Tetris Effect", there are already 2 videos on Youtube that got clicked over a million times.

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A continuation to the "Tetris Expert plays Tetris Effect" video (including a short Blink shoutout):

Looks and sounds awesome!


... but the gameplay *sigh*

Wow. I really could have done with less hip hop :S

dodecatetris