Cheating at Tetris(chalkdustmagazine.com)
chalkdustmagazine.com
Cheating at Tetris
https://chalkdustmagazine.com/features/cheating-at-tetris/
22 comments
Picking 100,000 blocks for this challenge shows how little the author knows about tetris. A "kill screen" in the traditional tetris averages around 2000-4000 blocks (rough estimate). And that's already pretty hard to reach.
Someone good at tetris would never take such a challenge because they know how much that is. While a mathematician who just want to make a catchy post seemingly would.
I believe that even if you sent the "worst" configuration of blocks, a really good player would be able to stick around for 500-1000 blocks every time (unless glaring mistakes), especially if they expect an attacker choosing the blocks. If the attacker chooses random, that would actually be an advantage since the real game chooses pieces almost at random (AFAIK it's not pure random).
So, this post is like challenging someone who's good at tennis at making 100,000 of shots every single time: it's just orders of magnitude so off, that the player would know you're a total noob simply for asking.
Someone good at tetris would never take such a challenge because they know how much that is. While a mathematician who just want to make a catchy post seemingly would.
I believe that even if you sent the "worst" configuration of blocks, a really good player would be able to stick around for 500-1000 blocks every time (unless glaring mistakes), especially if they expect an attacker choosing the blocks. If the attacker chooses random, that would actually be an advantage since the real game chooses pieces almost at random (AFAIK it's not pure random).
So, this post is like challenging someone who's good at tennis at making 100,000 of shots every single time: it's just orders of magnitude so off, that the player would know you're a total noob simply for asking.
Indeed, at 3 pieces per second (I don't have a good sense of how fast good tetris players play, but I've seen some videos and it looks like they can average more than one a second), it's 10 hours of constant play.
Playing at such a speed for 10 hours is kind of insane. Playing it without error is not human.
Playing at such a speed for 10 hours is kind of insane. Playing it without error is not human.
More human than human, that is our motto
Yes, the article says this at the end:
> In regular Tetris games, the speed at which the blocks fall steadily increases. This causes players to make more and more mistakes and, just like the holes in the S and Z columns, these mistakes will stack up until game over is inevitable. Ultimately, small mistakes due to the time constraints will likely be what causes your friend to lose the challenge, so you probably won’t have to wait 69,600 blocks to beat your friend.
> In regular Tetris games, the speed at which the blocks fall steadily increases. This causes players to make more and more mistakes and, just like the holes in the S and Z columns, these mistakes will stack up until game over is inevitable. Ultimately, small mistakes due to the time constraints will likely be what causes your friend to lose the challenge, so you probably won’t have to wait 69,600 blocks to beat your friend.
Also
> Despite her keen interest in the maths behind the game, she has yet to actually play through a level of Tetris!
> Despite her keen interest in the maths behind the game, she has yet to actually play through a level of Tetris!
Typically it's not pure random, instead they randomize the ordering of the 7 pieces, otherwise called the 7-bag system. Some games use different bag size, e.g. 35-bag system used in TGM3. AFAIK with 7-bag, a good Tetris player can play pretty much indefinitely, assuming that the speed of the falling pieces never increase, and that they can pause the game to take rests.
I used to play Nullpomino (an open source tetris game) for hours. It has a mode called marathon, where the goal is to play as long as possible. It's normal to see good players surviving for hours, even with increasing level. Here's an example of someone playing for 1h, 90% at level 20 (at level 20, pieces appear immediately at the bottom): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHXxKywAQME
I used to play Nullpomino (an open source tetris game) for hours. It has a mode called marathon, where the goal is to play as long as possible. It's normal to see good players surviving for hours, even with increasing level. Here's an example of someone playing for 1h, 90% at level 20 (at level 20, pieces appear immediately at the bottom): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHXxKywAQME
Any Tetris game where the term "Kill Screen" applies doesn't use the 7-piece bag randomizer.
TGM, the first one, is my one time sink, I started to play first on Mame until I got an original Capcom ZN2 PCB.
Right now you can get an official TGM and TGM2:TA port on Sony PS4 (PS5 too?) and Switch for less that 10 dollars each. For TGM3 there's no port in sight, FWIK. In my opinion TGM2:TA is a better game that TGM but before tackling it I want to become GM on the first. According to expert players the second is increasingly more difficult, for example stricter time limits and conditions to meet, faster spawning and the infamous credit roll...
Last year TGM4 was released on Steam, but I don't like at all the new ranking system, also vs play doesn't have items.
Not really relevant to the article, but I wanted to give a shout out to my all time favorite pass time... ^__^;
P.S. Some random modder a few years created a patch for the original TGM arcade ROMs to run on a Playstation. Other than the Qsound, more RAM and some CATs used for protection, the ZN2 was basically a Playstation without an optical reader.
Right now you can get an official TGM and TGM2:TA port on Sony PS4 (PS5 too?) and Switch for less that 10 dollars each. For TGM3 there's no port in sight, FWIK. In my opinion TGM2:TA is a better game that TGM but before tackling it I want to become GM on the first. According to expert players the second is increasingly more difficult, for example stricter time limits and conditions to meet, faster spawning and the infamous credit roll...
Last year TGM4 was released on Steam, but I don't like at all the new ranking system, also vs play doesn't have items.
Not really relevant to the article, but I wanted to give a shout out to my all time favorite pass time... ^__^;
P.S. Some random modder a few years created a patch for the original TGM arcade ROMs to run on a Playstation. Other than the Qsound, more RAM and some CATs used for protection, the ZN2 was basically a Playstation without an optical reader.
Jeez been playing off and on for decades and this is the first time realizing each Tetris piece can be referred to by a letter.
The official names were slightly different: https://cms.joe.co.uk/uploads/2019/02/Screen-Shot-2019-02-25...
> Despite being very unlikely to happen during your challenge, the game-ending sequence of S and Z blocks is guaranteed to occur at some point in a long enough game of Tetris.
Thos is probably right but do we know for sure tetris selects the shapes purely at random
Thos is probably right but do we know for sure tetris selects the shapes purely at random
No, that's a common myth that a random sequence will eventually see every possible subsequence.
Easy to construct a sequence of just 1 and 0 thats infinite and not repeating, without having a single 2 nor 3.
Easy to construct a sequence of just 1 and 0 thats infinite and not repeating, without having a single 2 nor 3.
But that’s not what’s happening here - the model here is that every piece has a uniform probability of being selected next, in which case every possible subsequence appears in the limit.
While a sequence where one possible subsequence never appears has probability zero in the limit, it’s still a possible random outcome. Incidentally, every concrete infinite sequence has probability zero.
Yes, but "in limit" does not mean "will happen".
E.g. it might be that there will never be "I" piece at all, even for infinite random sequence. Yes, probability of that happening is exactly zero, but that might happen.
For example, if we select at random any number between 0.0 and 1.0 -- probability of selecting it is exactly zero. But we still selected it.
E.g. it might be that there will never be "I" piece at all, even for infinite random sequence. Yes, probability of that happening is exactly zero, but that might happen.
For example, if we select at random any number between 0.0 and 1.0 -- probability of selecting it is exactly zero. But we still selected it.
It’s implementation specific. DMG-01 Tetris attempted a weighted random approach but I believe other versions changed the weights and improved the “randomness”.
and time for a quick game of https://qntm.org/files/hatetris/hatetris.html
One of my favorite online stories is about hatetris:
Getting the World Record in HATETRIS - David & Felipe
https://hallofdreams.org/posts/hatetris/
https://corecursive.com/hatetris-with-david-and-felipe/
Getting the World Record in HATETRIS - David & Felipe
https://hallofdreams.org/posts/hatetris/
https://corecursive.com/hatetris-with-david-and-felipe/
Regarding https://i0.wp.com/chalkdustmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2..., it would be interesting to have a Tetris variant where the second step actually clears the field.
In the title image, the isometric view makes the yellow (O) and green (S) tile have the same outline. My brain makes the S toggle to an O with misdrawn lines.
This does not apply to the original Tetris game on NES, which does use true-random.