User:Edo

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)

Being the klutz that I am, I managed to type up my notes wrong, I've now corrected 2 of the TAP Master timings. --Edo 12:17, 9 November 2007 (EST)

Summary
After further discussion with colour_thief, here's a summary of the information I've gathered.

Definitions

 * DAS: inclusive of both the shift and auto-shift frames, i.e. shift, wait,wait,wait, wait,wait,wait, auto-shift = 8 frame DAS.
 * Lock Delay: The number of frames it is possible to move a piece after it lands on the stack. Note that if the gravity and/or stack is significantly high that pieces are actually spawning on the stack, there is one extra frame of lock delay due to the peculiarities of the underlying mechanics.
 * ARE: the total number of frames between the lockdown of one piece and the spawn of the next.
 * Line Clear Delay: (ARE with line clears) - (ARE without line clears)
 * Line Clear Animation: the actual number of frames that blocks appear floating as a result of lines being cleared. Although the animation does not affect how fast the game feels, it is significant for the purposes of DAS charging, and needs to be known.

DAS Charging

 * In the original TGM, DAS cannot be charged:
 * during line clear animation
 * for the 3 frames of Lock-Flash animation (unfortunately, the flash does not exactly coincide with the point of locking)
 * the frame where the level counter increments, nor the frame where a new piece is spawned, nor the frame between these two (3 frames in total)


 * In TAP, DAS cannot be charged:
 * during line clear animation
 * the frame a piece locks
 * the frame where the level counter increments, nor the frame where a new piece is spawned, but it can charge on the frame in between

--Edo 13:17, 26 November 2007 (EST)
 * TI has not been investigated, however, I suspect that it will be similar to TAP