Talk:Quadra

"inbetween line clear animations top players have been seen to process tetrominoes of upwards of 260 TPM." Er, isn't it somewhat hypocritical to write down a speed that ignores the time for line clear animations? I mean every single non-controllable frame is more time for the player to rest and think.
 * it doesn't ignore time. it just means time for like thirty something seconds. 65.6.69.235 01:26, 28 December 2006 (EST)

Why limit the scope to right before the line-clearings begin when the game goes on for longer than that? Most other measurements take the entire game from start to finish into account.
 * right, but i thought this particular measurement was significant since it's the fastest tpm i've heard of for zero delay. 65.6.69.235 14:05, 28 December 2006 (EST)
 * I'm sure there's a lot of records comparable to that one if one was allowed to add whatever clauses to the condition of measurement, which doesn't come up only because no one cares to do that. I'm sure Quadra can go mighty fast, maybe fastest, but even if the conditions are clearly stated, there doesn't seem to be much point in a fringe-case number like that other than to inflate the superficial impression of speed and undermine its credibility.
 * There are TPM records for a whole marathon. There are TPM records for the first 40 lines of a game. There are records for the first three minutes of a game. There are TPM records for a TGM series section. So why can't there be TPM records for what amounts to a TW cascade section? --Tepples 23:13, 28 December 2006 (EST)
 * All the criteria mentioned, except for TGM section times, are distinct modes themselves. And all have fixed rules and baselines that are equal for every game. That makes the conditions equal for all players attempting that mode, which is exactly what makes comparison between records possible. All of them also take into account everything that happens in-game, including x99 level stops, line clear times, ARE, DAS delay, etcetera. In addition to disregarding regularly calculated time values, "Speed until the beginning of a cascade" is way too random for a proper record, as there are no definitions of fixed baselines for neither duration, nor number of lines cleared, nor pieces dropped. It can't even be properly compared with other Quadra records!
 * They don't have to be distinct gimmicks. A game set to "Marathon" can take a snapshot of the field after 40 lines and after 180 seconds and then report those after the player tops out just as it does the marathon record. Lockjaw: The Overdose saved the TNT-score after the first 40 lines, which can be used as a measure of the strength of opening play. And if you want a specific definition, how about "TPM during the time from game start to the line clear that starts a cascade of 10 lines or higher" where 10 lines = at least 25 tetrominoes? --Tepples 01:22, 29 December 2006 (EST)
 * Does Quadra do any of that? No. Is this talking about LJ or Overdose? No. Am I requesting a new mode? No.
 * You can remove it if you like. It's not crucial to the article. I thought it was just interesting, since Quadra is known for how fast its players can go. 68.222.41.13 14:25, 29 December 2006 (EST)

Playfield dimensions
The height is far from indefinite. The dimension is 10x32 and the visible dimension is 10x20 (this can be checked with the source code, canvas.h, where it has an array of 18x36, but 4 blocks to the left, right and bottom is just there to check tetramino collision with the border.

Speed
Quadra up to version 1.1.3 counted the speed including the animation time. After that it didn't count the animation time. It's still possible to calculate the speed including the animation time if you have a copy of the quadra record file. You just go to Demo Central in quadra, and if you click a rec file, you will see the full game time, and while you replay the demo, you can see how many blocks (tetraminos) they drop in one of the stats pages. A simple calculator can then be used to find out what the "TPM" is. Btw, the current rec is over 300 TPM (or BPM as it is called in Quadra). I think its at least 314 now (for a multiplayer game in survivor mode and 15 frags, which requires at least 3 rounds to get). There are no TPM statistics for single player games, but it can be extracted from the top 100 list and the rec files with some coding.

Another rec made in Quadra, is the number of lines cleared with one tetramino and the cascading effect. 20 lines in a multiplayer game. It's still possible to get higher than that though. In single player mode it has been proven that an 18 liner can be done with the right sequence of tetraminos, and in theory a 19 liner should be possible too (but I haven't been able to find the right sequence yet with the pseudo random generator it use).

Why quadra doesn't end with -tris
Before it was called Quadra, the game was called RemTris. Quadra is actually Remtris 3, but they changed the name because tetris.com was complaining. I have lost the link for that story unfortunately, and I can't find it right now. Quadra got open source with version 1.1.4 (see the cvs for that). Before version 1.1.1 there was version 1.1.0, 1.0.1, and 1.0.0. On the page you have the release date for version 1.1.1. On freshmeat.net they have a description of version 1.0.1 with release date may 26th 1999. I don't know when 1.0.0 was released though. Before the game was called RemTris, it was called Netris (written in the remtris.txt file from "RemTris" v1.0 and "RemTris 2" v1.0).