the earlier years of Tetris

[caffeine]

I wonder if his version IDs (v0, v1, v2, v3.12)  were just randomly chosen or if you can find them somewhere (only in the machine code I assume).

Vadim said, "3.12, by the way, is a fudged number. We didn't have accurate versioning or build numbers and just picked a plausible number for the final official version."

caffeine: the dates cgwg provided are for E60 Tetris not IBM PC Tetris. I have one of the copies dated 4 April 1986.

I didn't realize that. We can add a fourth copy's date. Someone familiar with digital cyrillic date abbreviations correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that's February 3rd, 1986.
[!--ImageUrlBegin--][!--ImageUrlEBegin--][img width=\\\"500\\\" class=\\\"attach\\\" src=\\\"https://i.imgur.com/lnsYJGg.jpg\\\" border=\\\'0\\\' alt=\\\"IPB Image\\\" /][!--ImageUrlEnd--][/a][!--ImageUrlEEnd--]



[a href=\\\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0gAgQQHFcQ]From this video.

[Okey_Dokey]

Vadim said, "3.12, by the way, is a fudged number. We didn't have accurate versioning or build numbers and just picked a plausible number for the final official version."

I remember reading something like that but my English wasn't good enough to understand what it meant. So, if Gerasimov speaks about v3.12 he really means the version that is from 1988 or later. I think this fact also increases the chance that it was Gerasimov who came up with starting height and not Spectrum Holobyte.

[Arcorann]

necrosaro originally compared the 4 versions here. The post has a zip file attached with all the versions mentioned.

You need a TetrisConcept.net account to download those attachments. Can you attach it to one of your posts here? HardDrop attachments can be downloaded by everybody.

Hm, each second column is grey in his screenshots (I mean those earlier versions without the blue dots in the playfield). I wonder how you get the game running as it was supposed to (purple showed up as pink for me, and dark grey as black).

I wonder if his version IDs (v0, v1, v2, v3.12)  were just randomly chosen or if you can find them somewhere (only in the machine code I assume).

BTW if somebody wants to play the Elektronika 60 version, a download can be found under this Youtube video. Read 3.txt in the zip (basically you just have to run 1 - simh.bat, then 2 - mess.bat and then type run dl1:tetris ).

Regarding the attachment, I've mirrored it offsite.

Regarding the graphics, try running DOSBox in CGA mode (dosbox -machine cga).

Regarding version IDs, they are likely arbitrarily chosen by necrosaro. It's not immediately obvious which order the games go in, as well.

[Okey_Dokey]

Thank you very much. 54 kb is the ideal size for forum attachments though. Running Dosbox with the parameter "-machine cga" does indeed the trick. I used a Dosbox shortcut with the parameters "-c cycles=200 -machine cga" and drag & pulled the corresponding folders over the shortcut to play the Gerasimov's versions.

I didn't notice any gameplay changes in "v0", "v1" and "v2", only graphical changes. Some remarks:

Key polling:

• game only executes 1 keystroke per gravity step which makes the game look laggy at level 0
• game buffers all made keystroke (up to ~10 keystrokes), so no missed inputs, which makes level 9 well playable (with tapping, I played at 200 cycles).
• buffering works beyond pieces: for example, if you keep pressing move left for a long time, the next pieces will also move left (1 column per gravity step) and the piece doesn't react to further keystrokes until all those move left keystrokes are processed from the input list

Scoring system:

• level increase at 1 + 10*level lines, e.g. 11 lines to reach level 1, 21 lines to reach level 2 etc.
• up to 24 + 3 x level points per piece
• minus 1 point per gravity step that a piece makes (thus harddrop pieces if possible)
• 5 points less if you activate the piece preview
• piece can make 19 gravity steps at maximum, thus at least 0 + 3 x level points if playing with preview activated
• no points for line clears

Sliding:

• piece can still be slided after pressing harddrop, thus harddrop behaves more like sonic drop although with variable lock delay
• piece can be slided multiple times when touching the ground
• the locking of a piece can be delayed, if you move or rotate a piece before the next input is polled (gravity step)
• thus you can stall a piece infinitely at lower levels (e.g. move back & fourth multiple times or spam rotation button in case of O piece)

Negative points:

• as explained above you can keep a piece in play for longer than 19 frames in which case you can end up with a negative score
• alternatively you can activate & deactivate piece preview multiple times for one points which also results in negative points for that piece
• score overflows at 32,767 -> -32,768 points
• with the help of infinite stalling you can make an inverse overflow: keep a piece in play for ~33,000 input pollings (gravity steps) and you will end up with ~32,000 points by just placing 1 piece

Beeps:

• game beeps every 1,000 points (1k points, 2k points etc.)
• when having above 32,000 points, the game beeps after each piece placement
• after a score overflow, the game stops to beep for a longer period (until you reach around -10,000 points)
• when the beep comes back, it's again every 1000 points but this time offset by around ~536 points (2^32 = 65536)

Some of that stuff reminded me off certain Mirrorsoft and Spectrum Holobyte versions I've played. For example, only 1 executed input per gravity step is also present in the Spectrum ZX version of Mirrorsoft. However, it is implemented in a very bad way there: at level 0 it can miss a single keystroke (if you haven't pressed it down at the exact moment of the input polling), and it will always miss a keystroke, if you move and rotate at the same time (it won't buffer keystrokes ... on a second thought I may confuse that with the Spectrum Holobyte PC version); and at level 9 one movement keystroke will most likely move a piece multiple times (too slippy because of "1 frame DAS", i.e. key pressed down for 2 input pollings -> piece moves by 2 columns). Or delayed locking of a piece is also present in the later levels of the Spectrum Holobyte versions (e.g. see this Macintosh video).

Version 3.12 has better gameplay. Game reacts immediately to inputs and you can move and rotate in the same frame, so level 0 feels much better (but it's still problematic that a piece must fall down 1 row before you can rotate it). Also, sliding or rotating a piece while it touches the ground won't delay the locking of a piece (at level 0 you can still slide multiple times, if you are quick enough). There's also no score overflow anymore, negative points via toggling piece preview multiple times isn't fixed though. And you can move a piece during line clear delay (that one is new although not really negative).

[Kitaru]

https://shmuplations.com/tetris/

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]—When was Tetris completed?
Patijnov: I believe it was 1985. After that, BPS released a PC version in Japan and abroad, in 1989.[/quote]

Just jumping in with that since it reminded me of this thread. There are a couple of other interesting snippets in there, it's a good quick read.