Hi there. I'm quite new to this game (you might've seen me lurking around in Nullpo's netplay, or in random platinum games on TF, watching how pros play).
I've been planning to post this topic for awhile but never got to it...anyway...
I'm just some random tetris noob, and here in this topic, I will tell my story on how I got into this game and how I am improving, which will hopefully be of some help to some other newbie soul out there.
QUOTE
tl;dr; warning, wall-of-text coming up Summary: I suck, I'm a noob, and it's probably not worth reading unless you're bored.
Part 1.My induction to tetris
Some backstory... You see, I semi-regularly read the webcomic xkcd, and one day, I saw this comic: xkcd: Heaven
As per my usual habit, I went to the xkcd forums to read about the current comic. And I read that it had a counter-part comic, "Hell".
Sadly (or not), the poster did NOT link the comic. If he had, it would've ended there. So I went to google and searched for it.
And lo and behold, I was greeted with the video: "TGM HOLiC aka Jin8 playing TGM3" (Invisible tetris).
I was dumbfounded. I immediately did a google search for "TGM HOLiC" (or something similar, I can't recall ). And then... I found harddrop.com as the first search result.
I went to the homepage, which had the top news as LapSiLap's new WR. I watched the video, and I was again dumbfounded.
And excited and exhilarated. Something ticked in my mind... it was saying: "this is a learnable skill!!".
Let me explain... I'm a skill-monger. I collect seemingly "superhuman" skills. I am a (sorry if some of these don't make sense): - sub-20 speed cuber (i.e. I can solve a rubik's cube in less than 20 secs) - I can lightdash on Tekken (i.e. I can do 4-5 crouch dashes per second, and I can regularly perform crazy stunts in TTT like EWGF_ws+2, TGF) - I can perfect any official DDR song (from 1st mix to supernova only, not yet at the 100% marvelous level though, but quite close... when I quit ) - I play MSP or combofiend on MvC2 (and love stuff like Mag's ROM combo or slide infinite) - I also play O2JAM. Never made it to uber-pro levels though (like CH.Free's perfect Earthquake run) since they cancelled O2JAM in our country quite a bit after I started playing, but I made it to a level where I can consistently perfect V3 hard ... - etc. etc.
So seeing a site full of "superhuman" tetris players, I could not resist the desire of being among the ranks of such people. I immediately jump into the fray.
(Summary, if you want to get the gist of it, just read only the bolded text).
Part 2.Start of my journey
Truth be told, I was hoping of some outlined guides and pre-defined techniques that will guide a beginner completely from noobishness to pro-ness.
I guess I was spoiled by speedsolving forum's massive compendium of guides on CFOP/Fridrich technique to solving the rubik's cube... it's so spoonfed that quite many people can get sub-20 in just 2 months (former WR holder Yu Nakajima is an example).
So I was massively disappointed by the lack of guides for ABSOLUTE beginners on the site.
First things first, was to find a game to play. I immediately saw that there were divisions to the preferences. A lot of people recommended Nullpomino and Blockbox, and also Tetris Japan, with the occassional Lockjaw, and also, a lot of discussion about Tetris friends.
I was utterly confused... (I was still not aware of the current state of things, like LJ being obsoleted, or BB being desolated, or ToJ being non-single-player, or all the complaints about TF) so I wanted to try each one...
I first downloaded Nullpomino, and upon running it, I saw the UI was similar to LapSiLap's... and I decided that this alone should be good enough, if the WR was set on it .
Now, being trained in many skills, I already knew how to train myself relatively quickly. I knew that to be good, I had to pickup skills and good practices, and be wary of practicing any bad habits. I immediately scoured the forums for such.
What caught my attention the most was Xael mentioning LITERALLY EVERYWHERE to learn finesse. I had no idea what this was, but this seemed to be the most solid advice I could find.
(I also noticed that Xael is tactless and picks a lot of fights but coming from many forums full of skilled people, I know a lot of people who are like that, and they're all very pro, and are actually pretty cool if you can ignore all the insults which are usually not misplaced, and contain substance if you would take the insult as advice).
I also learned that there seem to be two major rotation systems, SRS and ARS. I got the impression that ARS was the more "pro" rotation system, and the harder one (and also found some posts/info saying that SRS has bull**** nonsense spins, and infinite spin nonsense) so I thought learning ARS was the way to go.
PRONOOBTIP: If you're a newbie reading this, and just want to play multiplayer/the mainstream games, learn SRS. I still didn't know back then that ARS is mainly(or exclusively) for the TGM games, which is single-player.
I wanted to setup my Nullpomino to ARS. But I didn't know how. I found something that says it the rule sets, but that utterly confused me as well. Anyway, I read many posts that recommended Standard-Plus (something about being made by Blink, who I still didn't know ), so I tried that, and forgot all about the rotation systems.
Except I wasn't satisfied (I thought ARS was better than SRS due to sonic drop... because I was a noob who thought always sliding pieces under randomly placed Z or S pieces was the norm). So I tried some other modes... and settled with Standard-Zero just for the 20G soft drop.
I wasn't sure how to start playing though, so I started right away with the Playing forever method. Now, many people will NOT recommend this, since it does not teach you proper stacking, but I HIGHLY recommend this for absolute beginners.
Since I was also learning finesse and playing forever for the first time (and also playing tetris for the first time probably since I lost my Game Boy), I would usually - just sit there (not moving the piece), - first thinking where it should go (which is something I am not familiar with, since I am using "playing forever" so I do NOT make random movements to get where I want), - then next thinking what the finesse is to get there. - then that is the only point I start moving the piece.
It taught me to make absolutely ZERO wasted movements.
(my tetris stacking, which I still hadn't actually used, still sucked though )
Tetris Grand Master
Posts: 2,338
Joined: 30-June 09
can you type the alphabet under 1.5 seconds?
also interesting learning 2 step finesse before learning how to stack properly. You have to know where to put the pieces as well as being able to place them in few kpt...
If you want a very fast sprint time, i suggest playing keyblox with playing forever and deep drop.
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QUOTE(Paradox @ Dec 16 2010 @ 05:52 PM)
Like many setups here, it is useful if your opponent doesn't move and you get 4 Ts in a row.
Hi Xael. There's a section in Part 2 about you . I've played that flash game before... finger frenzy...
I think I spent a whole afternoon trying to get sub-2, can't recall if I ever did it.
EDIT: Keyblox looks interesting. And now that I think about it, I think I could consistently sub-2, and it was sub-something-else I was aiming for. Not sure, my keyboard right now sucks and I can barely sub 2.5
QUOTE
also interesting learning 2 step finesse before learning how to stack properly.
Yeah, I think it's good if you're starting absolutely from scratch. Since if you learn stacking first, you can learn bad habits along the way, like rotating only one way, or trying to find a good place just by moving semi-randomly and looking at the ghost.
If you use playing forever, since it dictates where the piece goes, you can focus on learning finesse alone. No bad habits. Also, since playing forever is a pre-planned tech (similar to tsd-tst openers), it also teaches you to look at the piece previews, another good habit.
@Xael: Yeah, I know about the profile pic, I just wanted something that went along well with my username (i.e. something noobish), and I couldn't think of anything better at the time.
@clincher: I had to start somewhere . And standard-zero uses BagNoSZORandomizer.
Moving on... (again, tl;dr; wall-of-text, read only bolded parts to get the gist).
Part 3.The need for speed
Anyway, after playing for a couple of days, I actually thought of looking at my time (which I didn't even notice before, even though the timer is right there in Nullpomino). I noticed that it was quite bad (1:45-1:55...ish). I decided that I've had it with Playing forever, and decided to try tetris stacking.
I wasn't horrible at it (thanks to hold ). And I found I could easily hit 1:30 (not bad for a few days of practicing only finesse). It was until I found a post of someone pointing out that the WR people (Lapsi, Apoc, Maserati) all don't use the hold feature for stacking (or hold only for the I-block). Needless to say, I tried not using hold, and failed horribly.
However, after playing for a bit, I seemed to have hit a wall at 1:15 Still, the methods I (still) use to practice for speed are listed below:
- my own custom ruleset (based on standard-zero), with no hold, and no ghost... along with zero gravity, in line race. This forces me to use perfect finesse, as well as remember to look at the piece preview (If I forget to look at it for even a single harddrop, I am left not knowing what the current piece floating above the ceiling is.... although I could cheat and rotate to get a peek at the mino color, I try hard not to do so).
(It's annoying though when I sometimes let go of the DAS'ed direction key a little too late, and I don't realize that the next piece DAS'ed instantly to the wall, until I hard drop Happened quite a lot when I first shifted to 6 DAS, but I got the hang of it now... good training for making my taps quicker, I think).
Oh, and I also changed the randomizer to plain old BagRandomizer, so that I can learn to play SZO starts.
- Staring directly at the piece previews, instead of the matrix, when line racing (I heard Maserati does this during his sprints). I noticed it makes me go a LOT faster, until my mind blanks out and I don't know what the matrix looks like anymore.
- Just sprint a lot.
Soon I would find the need to test my skills against other players.
Tetris Grand Master
Posts: 2,338
Joined: 30-June 09
hmm 1:15 after a few days is really good.
Try playing some music in the background. since you are at 1:15 your next viable target is about 1:10. This has a tpm of 85. Go find some music with 80-100 bpm. ALternatively you could be hardcore and just play dragonforce in the background that also works. Turning off sound and only listening to your keyboard also lets you set a good pace.
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QUOTE(Paradox @ Dec 16 2010 @ 05:52 PM)
Like many setups here, it is useful if your opponent doesn't move and you get 4 Ts in a row.
Some random tetris noob, Chronicles on my journey to (hopefully) being a pro
Jun 24 2011, 01:42 PM
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