Book on Modern Tetris

[myndzi]

Alright, then you'll definitely be catering to a fairly small market in my opinion. Your description there probably doesn't encompass the majority of, say, Tetris Friends Arena players (those below platinum or even gold). I think that the casual Tetris players play because they like the game, not necessarily because they are driven to excel. It is an important line to draw, because you are telling me that the book is for those Tetris players who are driven to excel. Those are the ones that are hungry for knowledge, practice and play a lot, aspire to sub-30 Sprint times and the like. In that context, many of the things I suggested, while interesting, are probably not good fits for such a book. Additionally, I don't think it's likely to be a very long book, or at least shouldn't be. As a manual for how to step up your game, you won't want or need to devote 50 pages to describing any one aspect. Your primary purpose will be to convey "what's out there", why it's important, and how to get better at it. All other sections are supplemental.

If your primary focus is to be philosophy, well, it's a different kind of book altogether. Most of the content mentioned in the previous paragraph probably doesn't belong. You might get away with a one-two punch and have half "path to ownage" and half "mental endurance" or whatever, but I don't expect that both parts will appeal to everyone. You're skirting the edges of motivational/self-help books in a way with the latter bit.

Edit: on the other hand, you could compile a veritable TOME OF TETRIS, and include big chunks of everything under the sun. That would have its own merit and appeal, and if sectioned properly, each part of it might appeal to a different sort of person/player.

[DarthDuck]

You're skirting the edges of motivational/self-help books in a way with the latter bit.

Lol. Sorry to pigeon-hole your thoughtful post but when I read this I felt like someone just ran over my foot with their car. I do not want to write a self-help/motivation book. I find it to be a contemptible and sorry genre. But I am also amused when thinking it over that every philosophy book ever-written could be forced into that category if you really try.

I think this stigma came from the Chicken Soup for the -blahblah- Soul franchise, which started an entire wave of terrible books. When I say philosophizing about general skills gained from Tetris, I'm more into silly stuff like dilating time for personal gain or being able to flood yourself with massive amounts of data. But I am glad you said this because now I know what to make it clear that the book is not. I do like the tome idea though, and know that not everyone has a taste for philosophically rigorous text, so I will have to limit the heavy stuff to skimmable sections on psychology rather than permeate the book with it so that my readers don't think I'm some wannabe Jedi hippy.

Alright, then you'll definitely be catering to a fairly small market in my opinion. Your description there probably doesn't encompass the majority of, say, Tetris Friends Arena players (those below platinum or even gold). I think that the casual Tetris players play because they like the game, not necessarily because they are driven to excel. It is an important line to draw, because you are telling me that the book is for those Tetris players who are driven to excel. Those are the ones that are hungry for knowledge, practice and play a lot, aspire to sub-30 Sprint times and the like. In that context, many of the things I suggested, while interesting, are probably not good fits for such a book.

I have not made any definitive decisions on the structure or audience of the book. All I'm doing at the moment is chaotically writing down scattered notes on graph paper and in Notepad. I actually have no sense whatsoever where the bell curve really lies on TF. I am so used to occupying the lower extreme of the bell curve here on Hard Drop, that it's easy to assume I am also at the bottom of casual players. I want to clarify that this book is neither about myself or my reassurance, I only mentioned my own skillset as a template for a potential audience, but I see your point in why that was a mistake. I assume Tetris is growing on the casual level, which means that the number of ambitious noobs such as myself will also grow. But like I even said in my OP, I do have a unique enthusiasm for the theoretical aspects of the game, so it was a mistake to use myself as as the hypothetical median of casual players.

I will revise my prior statement and say that the book is aimed at the beginner intermediate (top of silver or bottom of gold). That will be like a complete book in itself. But there will also be a rather large "tome" of advanced techniques. Maybe what I should be doing is just writing two books at the same time. But if I do, I will have a thorough review of any techniques relevant to the advanced player in the first book, and won't be a greedy jerk and try and make it sound like the advanced players needs both.

tl;dr: Sorry for the long posts and /clap at anyone who's even skimming them, but should I write two books here? If I do, the beginner one will be first (and meanwhile I will be pushing myself like crazy trying to stay on the cutting edge in preparation for the sequel). We already established that the upper echelon of tetris could fit on a small raft, but if the first book prepares its readers for the second, and the first book is aimed at a huge audience, then the second could be marketable/profitable too right?

[myndzi]

Like I suggested before, I think that a book with a good chunk about the history, evolution, and key players of Tetris would have a broad casual appeal. There are interesting things that have happened, interesting stories to tell, interesting people, interesting accomplishments, and none of those require a great deal of technical knowledge to relate. Along the way, however, you can gradually introduce concepts too - such as DAS, lock delay, and so forth - naturally, since they are innovations that happened in the game itself over time.

With the groundwork of knowledge about the basic components of modern Tetris games, you have then made the more technical components accessible, and someone who may not even like playing Tetris can still read on out of curiosity - or put it down, having gotten what they want from it. Players who want to learn how to get better needn't read the first part, but it will probably be of interest to many of them anyway.

In this way, you can have a book that has broad appeal AND specific applications. You might compare the first part to a documentary in some ways - Ecstasy of Order did a nice job of introducing people to Tetris and talking about one specific subculture of the game, and the people involved, and it was a 90 minute documentary that was quite interesting. With an approach like that, if you hope to tackle all major aspects of the game, you surely have lots of writing ahead of you.

If you want a section about philosophy, sure, why not? Anyone can skip a chunk of book if they want to. The only difference between two/multiple books and one big book is really a marketing thing. It'll probably be harder to sell a publisher on something so esoteric the larger and more involved it is (more money it will cost to produce and whatever). But I don't know if you have any plans to even attempt to find a publisher, and if you do you should seek advice from writers, not from Tetris players, on what publishers want and how to write a book you can sell.

There's still self-publishing via modern eBook platforms as a possibility, and in that case it's pretty much whatever you want as far as I know.

I guess what I'm getting at is, depending on the scope of what you want to write about, it may be a good approach to section off individual chunks of the book according to what kind of an audience will be interested in it. In that way, you don't wind up ruining the interesting documentary parts with loaded technical jargon, or fluffing up what could be a "lean and mean" how-to-get-better section with a bunch of other stuff you are interested in writing about. Good separation can make it both a history, a technical reference, a philosophical musing, and whatever else you want. Or you can write separate books for each. Up to you really.

[ohitsstef]

what is the purpose of your book?

because from your first initial post i thought you were writing a guide for novices....

and now it seems to be going all over the place

i'm not trying to run over your foot or anything but you should have a set purpose for this book and kinda stick with it.

[DarthDuck]

what is the purpose of your book?

because from your first initial post i thought you were writing a guide for novices....

and now it seems to be going all over the place

i'm not trying to run over your foot or anything but you should have a set purpose for this book and kinda stick with it.

I didn't set a purpose because I wanted to see what people wanted to read about first. I have a much better idea now thanks to the feedback, so here is a tentative purpose:

Why a novice should take up tetris and how to get to a decent level of competitive play.

First two thirds of the book: will be aimed at the beginner (less ambitious for me as you pointed out). While aimed at the beginner, each section will still have little optional fun-facts in boxes here and there as teasers to more advanced play. This part will also have recourse to time-stamped tetris dreams and where in my progress I had them. I say I/me/my because no one has posted anything in the tetris dream thread yet  

Last third of the book: will be sort of an epilogue for the beginner. I will provide a glossary so I won't have to hold back on terminology, and I will do my best to go off the deep-end without any thought of saving something for a sequel. This will contain psychology, philosophy, and advanced tactics. It will also, deep breath, have a TGM section and guide for underrated single player modes. The introduction will make it clear that, for the beginner, the last part is skippable or should be saved for later.

This part will also have shoutouts to all of our top/active players and their signature styles. I will try not to leave anyone out who's active in the community, so poke me if you are concerned about being left out and would like to make sure you are included and in what way. As a whole, you define the cutting edge, and if I do my best to absorb everything in the forums and listen to everyone with an open mind, I think I can write a short and sweet section highlighting everyone's best ideas. Almost all feedback and ideas from Hard Drop will go in this last third. I think a novice would have fun skimming through this section to get a feel for just how deep the game can be and to have something to look forward too.

tl;dr: I will only be writing one book.

[Shuey]

How are you coming along with this DD?

[coolmaninsano]

I've received insider information that he's not going to start for another year and a half.

[DarthDuck]

That was a finish not a start date but realistically it should be finished in 2-3years.

I am still more interested in the last third of it which will focus on player styles. In this last part, I'm going to have mini chapters representing the views of notorious tetris players and/or anyone who would like to have their views/thoughts shared. In these sections, it would be nice to mix first and third person narratives, so let me know if you would like a mini section and we can talk about it.

[bigwig]

Having neither read a for dummies book or zen and the art of motorcylce maintenance, my ignorant self will now pronounce my enthusiasm for a Zen and the art of tetris for dummies book.

[DarthDuck]

a Zen and the art of tetris

The title is still up-for-grabs and Zen might find its way into it. Either way Zen will be a major topic pertaining to game psychology and perhaps certain players like Caffeine/Kitaru.

[Kitaru]

Welp, ok ok ok, time to stop being a dilly dally silly sally and reply to some of this.

I appreciate the kick in the pants Kitaru, I really do. But the irony is that you were the particular reason I wrote off TGM as an option.

Every time I start to think I should give it a full chapter, I think "What would Kitaru possibly benefit from any thing I have to say about TGM even if I research it for 5 years... that's right nothing. Nevermind." That is a sample of a live thinking loop.

If you research it for 5 years, it's entirely possible that you'll end up in the top bracket of the Western TGM leaderboards. (That's what happened to me, anyway.  )

Either way, I'm sure that you'd have your own unique perspective and style. Even if you only play for a year, who knows what you could show me? I've seen great things come from relatively new players, such as Shuey's pattern drawing and Big mode prowess, or Qlex's ability to use virtuosic placements demonstrated in even his first Texmaster Normal GM video -- another player lending credence to the concept of The French Touch.

As far as my paranoia about ARS undoing SRS finesse, I really don't have that much finesse to lose (yet). And you seem to do ok in SRS. Also, I could just avoid doing twists so I don't program myself to believe that certain twists don't work or they need to be executed in some ways that are anti-SRS.

I "came from an SRS background" in the sense that I had dabbled in all sorts of Tetris games for most of my life, started "playing seriously" with Tetris DS, enjoyed the multiplayer but got bored of the lack of single player challenge, and then rediscovered TGM and found other players that were passionate about it. You can learn two or more different rotation schemes fine; it's just a matter of practice, and then environmental conditioning will kick in to let you know what works with the ruleset you're currently using.

I don't even have the app, but I will figure something out and I know Blink doesn't want any PC-TGM links.

He doesn't want PC TGM links because it is clearly warez. There are perfectly serviceable fan games such as Nullpomino and Texmaster so you can still get the TGM experience without having to win the "live near an arcade machine" roulette or dabble in piracy.

I have not tackled any of the threads at TC, and would appreciate any direction/advice/links.

This is the god guide -- now with English accompanying text courtesy of Villadelfia. Even when all we had to go off of was the stilted machine translation produced by Google Translate, this was still an immensely useful guide. It won't stick all at once, but if you come back to it now and again you'll start to find new things making sense or being particularly relevant to your current challenges.

The other thing I found particularly helpful in my quest for TGM1 GM -- especially near the end -- was analyzing replays of the masters at slightly reduced speed. What placement do I think they're going to make? Oh, was I wrong -- why is that? Is this something I can adopt with my play style -- say, an elegant twist I hadn't thought of -- or is it particular to high level play -- for example, stacking all the way to the top like 777 does in TGM1 is crucial when shooting for a time attack world record, but is just asking for trouble if you're an intermediate level player.

But I have enough respect for you to let the contents of my own book to be your call.

And I have enough respect for you to let you decide what to write about. I'm here if you're ever looking for guidance or suggestions, but I'm not going to tell you, "yes, you need to write about this subject or that."

My advice is to give the series a serious chance as a player, and see where that takes you as an author.