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After 34 years, someone beat Tetris [video]

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Re: After 34 years, someone beat Tetris [video]

#81
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you mean by "limit user IO". Standard USB keyboards have a limit on the number of keys you can hold down at once but otherwise the limits are your physical speed rather than the protocol. Similarly, these techniques for fast clicking are still under what even the NES hardware is capable of; this rolling technique allows clicking buttons much more quickly than you normally can but they're still a long…

>this rolling technique allows clicking buttons much more quickly than you normally can but they're still a long way from the 30Hz strobe the hardware itself will accept That actually kind of what I was thinking of :-) . I would have though more "modern" games , particularly multiplayer, would have software limits even as the hardware got more capable.

Nobody artificially limits input rates because that would reduce responsiveness. You can analyze a series of inputs to detect humanly-impossible changes.

Re: After 34 years, someone beat Tetris [video]

#82
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the last thing that can happen in the game, which I think is a fair definition of getting to the end, or "beating" it.

When I made a game crash through a bug before I did not consider myself beating the game, that is why I have or had difficulties understanding. I suppose the difference is making it crash through playing as many levels, for example, as possible.

Some games don't have deliberately implemented "you win" screens and gameplay can in theory go forever unless the game has a bug that prevents advancing.

In a game with no human-authored intentional "win state", one reasonable definition of "beating the game" is "reaching a state that no other player is able to surpass". If the game crashes at a certain point, then reaching that crash is a viable state that fits that definition.

Re: After 34 years, someone beat Tetris [video]

#83
post #21

I get why this is exciting and all that, but how is bad code (or insufficient resources) leading to the bug or crash equivalent to "player beating the game"?

I think of it as "the first time anyone has not lost". Until that crash run, every game had ended with a top out.

Tetris is a deathmatch, and this is the first time Tetris died first.

Re: After 34 years, someone beat Tetris [video]

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And mental, think about something like chess! In general it's just incredible how good we can become at anything. It's kind of interesting to think about in times long past where warfare was melee based and how there would have been similar outliers. Somebody who lucked into some good genetics, good diet, and good training would have been a mountain among men.

> It's kind of interesting to think about in times long past where warfare was melee based and how there would have been similar outliers. Somebody who lucked into some good genetics, good diet, and good training would have been a mountain among men. The UFC exists today. Some fighters, like Jon Jones, are incredibly gifted and have won, and held, a championship title despite doing a lot of things "wrong" outside of…

> like Jon Jones, are incredibly gifted

with lots of steroids and other PEDs

Re: After 34 years, someone beat Tetris [video]

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memory. Past a certain point, the numbers can become so high (score, level or other) that it corrupts the memory and freezes the game

The Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games can crash this way. If you cheat and enable perfect balance, then you can grind infinitely on a circular rail and eventually the score is so high it crashes the game.

That’s what I think makes the Tetris feat so incredible. There’s no cheating needed. This is being done on the base game after something like 40 years.

Re: After 34 years, someone beat Tetris [video]

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I played Minesweeper almost every day during the summer in the 90's. I got so good at it that I eventually whittled down my time to a mere 17 seconds on the largest puzzle (expert). At that point I figured I couldn't get any faster, and moved on to a new game. Years later, I was looking at the Guiness Book of World Records and noticed that the record for the expert minesweeper is something like 25 seconds. Of course,…

Funny story. When my friend started playing minesweeper, I would go to his computer and clear out all of his scores by editing in my scores as "beating" him. Being super competitive, in order not to lose to me, he became a fiend at minesweeper, being able to do solve the beginner series in under 20 seconds. As he would get better and better, I would continue to beat his high score until he had the beginner down to so…

Related: My mom really likes the old Windows version of FreeCell. For years, every time she moved computers, I've had to copy the Windows registry values where the score table is kept in order to get her to "accept" the new computer.

Re: After 34 years, someone beat Tetris [video]

#88
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you mean by "limit user IO". Standard USB keyboards have a limit on the number of keys you can hold down at once but otherwise the limits are your physical speed rather than the protocol. Similarly, these techniques for fast clicking are still under what even the NES hardware is capable of; this rolling technique allows clicking buttons much more quickly than you normally can but they're still a long…

>this rolling technique allows clicking buttons much more quickly than you normally can but they're still a long way from the 30Hz strobe the hardware itself will accept That actually kind of what I was thinking of :-) . I would have though more "modern" games , particularly multiplayer, would have software limits even as the hardware got more capable.

Online multiplayer games are more likely have proper timers for all the ability cooldowns if anything to allow game designers to finetune the balance between various abilities. Otherwise they would be very quickly exploited by autoclickers (software and hardware). Although stuff like "rapid fire"/turbo buttons for console controllers with "100% UNDETECTABLE" in the marketing materials are very much a thing, so there are probably plenty of exceptions.

As for single player games there are barely any reasons for game developers to have improved in this regard over the years. "OnKeyDown" is still a standard API in many input libraries and the simplest thing to do is to have this mistake. Unless it's an ability with multiple second cooldown where the mistake would be obvious. And that's not unique to small games made by beginners or indie devs, AAA games have the same problems. Just few years ago DOOM Eternal had an exploit where mapping jump to a scrollwheel (even better if you have freely spinning scrolwheel), in combination with a few other quirks allowed you to do game breaking jumps skipping large parts of levels by quickly doing a bunch of them in a row and accumulating speed before game noticed that you are above ground and shouldn't be able to jump again. It was somewhat hot topic between speed runners of that game.

Re: After 34 years, someone beat Tetris [video]

#89
post #58

I beat Tetris back in 2020 (although by a different means): https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/i-finally-beat-tetris/

Man I would change your font, that is super difficult to read as large blocks of text.

I guess I'm just really good at reading text. It wasn't even a challenge for me.
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