Talk:Tetris The Grand Master

levels are not normally referred to as "speed levels", tepples. mainly because the speeds usually remain the same throughout each section (that is, 100 levels). obviously that is not the case in the first 500 levels of TGM but... yeah, i dunno--sort of weird phrasing. otherwise thanks for getting this up here--Mat 16:41, 14 September 2006 (EDT)

i'd also like to mention that the whole "20g the precurser to Death mode" thing doesn't really make sense--it is true that death mode begins at 20g, and entering the cheat causes your game to begin at 20g, but seeing as instant drop is really a widespread game mechanic and not a mode, and seeng as 20g mode in TGM isn't even really a fully separate game mode, i'd consider just leaving this out. --Mat 17:04, 14 September 2006 (EDT)

Timings
Thanks for filling in the holes Edo. However with your timing data there is a small issue:

"there are also 3 frames of "lock-flash"; 3 frames of delay after ARE but before the appearance of the next tetromino (during which DAS will not charge); and 1 frame of delay before line clear animation begins"

This is useful information for cloning a game, but the convention among players is that there is only active time, and ARE/line clear time. Nothing is said about the timing of the animations; Only the flow of time. It's unclear if these animation frames above are robbing other values of their full values. --Colour Thief 12:26, 27 October 2007 (EDT)

Edo's Investigations
After a chat with colour_thief on IRC I thought it best to describe my investigations here for you all to see:

I used framestepping (together with a few watchpoints) in TGM's 20G mode to deduce the following:
 * in frame 1 (timer shows 00:00:01) the tetromino appears at the bottom of the playfield.
 * frame 31 is the last possible frame that the tetromino can be moved/rotated, i.e. if it was in position A during frame 30, it can be in position B in frame 31, but will stop there. This indicates that frame 30 is the last frame for which input is accepted, and hence lock delay should be 30 frames.
 * during frames 31, 32 and 33, the tetromino appears silver in colour (the "lock-flash"), and the tetromino cannot be moved, nor can DAS be charged for the next tetromino.
 * in frame 34 (timer shows 00:00:56) the DAS charge will increase if left/right is held (observed using a watchpoint), and will continue increasing up to frame 58, i.e. the charge is 0 in frame 33, 1 in frame 34, 24 in frame 57, 25 in frame 58, and still 25 in frame 59. So ARE should be 25 frames.
 * The next tetromino doesn't appear at the bottom of the playfield until frame 62 (timer shows 00:01:03), so there are a further 3 frames of delay (during which, among other things, the level counter increases).
 * if lines were cleared then the DAS charge will not increase until frame 75 (i.e. charge is 0 in frame 74 and 1 in frame 75), and will continue to increase for 25 frames, and then there's the same 3 frames of no DAS charging before the next tetromino appears at the bottom of the playfield at frame 103 (timer shows 00:01:71). This seems to indicate that line clear delay is 41 frames. However, seeing as how the values for Lock, ARE and DAS are in agreement with the wiki values for TAP Master (which were actually extracted from the game, instead of deduced through observation like the Death values), it seems only logical that Line clear should be in agreement too at 40 frames. The frame before the line clear animation begins is not counted.

This is why I stated the values as I did in my recent edit of the TGM page.

So in summary, when no lines are cleared:
 * 30 frames lock delay
 * 3 frames
 * 25 frames ARE
 * 3 frames
 * etc.

When lines are cleared:
 * 30 frames lock delay
 * 3 frames
 * 1 frame
 * 40 frames line clear delay
 * 25 frames ARE
 * 3 frames
 * etc.

Similarly, for the first half of TAP Master (with 20G mode enabled), when no lines are cleared:
 * 30 frames lock delay
 * 1 frame
 * 25 frames ARE
 * 2 frames
 * etc.

And for TAP Master with line clears:
 * 30 frames lock delay
 * 1 frame
 * 40 frames line clear delay
 * 25 frames ARE
 * 2 frames
 * etc.

Following my investigations, here is how I think the TAP tables should look:

TAP Master:

TAP Death:

It's interesting to note that the reason there is "no time penalty for clearing singles instead of tetrises from level 100 through 299" of Death is not because the line clear delay is 0 frames, but because the total delay is the same regardless of whether or not lines are cleared. The same is true for Master 800 - 999.

That's all folks, comments are welcome. --Edo 17:58, 27 October 2007 (EDT)