So, @Nyeogmi and I have been tinkering with @Vanessa's PicoTetris. I've been giving it more and more mechanics inspired by Tetris: The Grand Master, and Nyeogmi has been finding ways to keep the game running at 60FPS despite the stuff I've done to it. So, together, we present: Extreme Tetrom! Immensely more TGM-like and 100% less trademark-infringing.

Updated 2023-9-12 - Ver. 7.5 - Save-Compatible to 7.0 or later

extreme_tetrom

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extreme_tetrom

by Kistaro

Cart #extreme_tetrom-15 | 2023-09-13 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA

35

Extreme Tetrom is a homage to Tetris: The Grand Master, Arika's series of Tetris games designed to become very difficult, providing new challenges to experienced players. It isn't a clone of any TGM game - it has its own difficulty curves, grading system, and surprises - but it should feel familiar to TGM players. Using a variation of Super Rotation System - the "normal" Tetris rotation system in modern games - it should feel familiar to Tetris players who have never played a TGM game, too!

If you're used to other versions of Tetris, watch out for the special rules around "floor kicks" (pieces getting popped up so they can rotate when they're on the ground) and lockdown. Floor kicks can't pop a piece back up into the air anymore, and the only way to reset the timeout before a piece locks down is to move it to a lower row than it's been in before - moving, rotating, or "climbing" the piece upwards won't help. Think fast!

Think very fast indeed - once gravity is instantly spawning pieces on the floor of the well, the game still finds ways to get faster and faster, reducing the delay between piece spawns and giving you less time to maneuver on the ground.

This is Extreme Tetrom. Can you master it?

Controls

L/R: Shift piece to the side
D: Soft drop
U: Hard drop
X,Z: Rotate
X+Z together: Hold piece

Modes

• Marathon: A classic mode for players who want a traditional Tetris experience. How quickly can you clear 150 lines? Game speed follows a curve similar to "standard" Tetris games.
• Sprint: Marathon, but for only 40 lines.
• Infinite: Played for a high score, this mode also uses a standard Tetris speed curve - although it starts doing some very TGM-like things to try to force the game to end once you've been playing for a very long time...
• Grandmaster: Inspired by Arika's TGM series, this mode's speed fluctuates throughout play (until it reaches 20G, at which point it only gets harder). You're playing for a grade rather than a score; combos, clearing more lines at once, playing quickly, and making it further into the game will all help your grade. Can you survive to Level 1024? Can you achieve the grade of Grandmaster? There may be some surprises along the way...
• Intermediate: For players who are not ready for Grandmaster mode yet, but want to get there. Designed as a training mode, ramping up the speed more slowly.
• 20G Trainer: For players who are ready for the first half of Grandmaster, but aren't ready for 20G speeds! It starts out at 20G with very forgiving lockdown time. It gets less forgiving, and ends where Grandmaster starts its own 20G play.
• Intense: Inspired by TGM2+'s "T.A. DEATH" mode, and TGM3's "Shirase" mode, this mode starts at 20G and gets harder. The only thing you need to do is survive. How far can you make it? There is a last level. Can you get there?
• Grandmaster+: A more challenging variation of Grandmaster mode for people who want their game spiced up! Garbage rows will appear with increasing frequency throughout the game.
• Intense+: Similarly, this adds garbage rows to Intense.
• Extreme: For people who thought Intense+ was too easy. There is a last level, but I do not believe it is within human capability to get there. Prove me wrong.
• Lightning: A race to 40 lines - in the dark. You'll get a brief glimpse of your well every time you drop a piece. For a while, at least - then you'll have to clear a line to get that flash of light again...
• Invisible: And if you prefer your darkness to be absolute, here you go! The ghost piece is useful for tracing out the shape of the top of your well - right until the ghost piece itself disappears.
• Blitz: How high a score can you get with only 128 tetroms? Watch out -- this game gets very fast, very quickly!
• Impossible: "'Impossible' doesn't mean 'very difficult'. 'Very difficult' is winning the Nobel Prize; 'impossible' is eating the Sun." --Lou Reed, in Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors

Notes

I hope folks have fun with this game! I have always been fascinated by the TGM series and have wanted a home release of the games in the USA; no luck yet, despite hints by Arika last November. I was impressed by Vanessa's "Pico Tetris 1.1" game, and saw its existing references to TGM - "secret grade" mode and unique piece entry sound effects per shape - but I wanted to go much further, and make it into a true homage to TGM inside Pico-8. There are a few rough edges here and there, but I consider myself to have succeeded.

If you'd like to add your own modes to the game, check out tab 5. Speed rules are pretty much spreadsheets. Note that the engine interpolates linearly between gravity speeds (but not between ARE/DAS/lockdown speeds - those are stepwise, and only at section breaks), so you'll need to add an explicit "endpoint" at the same speed if you want the game to hold a speed for a while. Gravity is measured in frames per line, so 0.05 is 20G mode. In the actual speed curves, I'm using 0.005 instead - 200G - because rounding errors made 20G not quite behave like 20G, but way-more-than-20G works just fine.

I'd love to see folks' highest grades in the GM modes and furthest sections in Intense and Extreme! If there are bugs I haven't caught, they might be in the late parts of Intense or anywhere past level 2 of Extreme - they seemed okay when I tested them with the difficulty turned way down, but I have not been able to genuinely test the higher levels of these modes with their real difficulty curves enabled. I'm no grandmaster.

Are you?

added 2022-8-21:

Extreme Tetrom is not a "clone" of TGM -- it's not intended to be. It's my reimagining of what a "modern" TGM game could be, using modern piece movement and scoring, but not easing back on the difficulty in the slightest. TGM3 and the Xbox version have "move reset" on their SRS modes, which dramatically pulls back on the extreme difficulty that TGM is supposed to achieve. I've reinstated it -- lockdown timers only reset when a piece moves down to a lower row than it has ever occupied before. Floor kicks are legal, but they can no longer pop you back up into the air.

Extreme Tetrom is intended to stand up to very serious play. In my shower fantasies, a bored TGM player takes the game seriously and it develops a genuine, competitive following. That's very unlikely, of course, but a dubiously-human lizard monster can dream, can't I?

Changelog

This is seriously incredible. i'm so stoked to see a good copy of tgm thats not nullpomino grade master.
My current best grade is S4.

Hey @sidrocka, I'm glad to hear you like it so much! I was hoping that someone other than just me would find it a worthy demake of TGM.

I've just updated the cartridge: pieces now move immediately when they can if they were blocked in a sideways move and you're still holding the button (rather than waiting through the DAS delay; the DAS delay is still enforced for additional steps of that move, but it makes the first one as soon as possible now). More visibly, piece spawn is now at the correct time (end of ARE rather than before it); that fixes timing for the piece entry sound and "next" piece advancement, and Initial Hold / Initial Rotation now work the same as in TGM. (Kind of. You can't use both at the same time because Pico-8 doesn't have enough buttons...) So if you want an even better TGM experience, you might want to grab the update!

Because this update doesn't make the game more difficult or change scoring, it does not clear your high scores.

New update: piece entry jingles can now behave like TGM and play a tune for the new next piece rather than the one that is currently entering. Players who already have a save file will need to go into Options to enable this; new players get it automatically. It can be freely changed.

Also, I am deeply amused to discover that if I search for "Extreme Tetrom" on Google, it's been re-hosted on a few other sites, surrounded by ads, with incomplete control instructions and a description written by one of these sites and then it, too, was copied by the others.

This has some bugfixes for the options menu - I'd swapped some things during save/load.

Big update! Piece lockdown is now animated: the outline of blocks in the well fades to black as the lockdown timer runs out - as long as the lights are on. You'll lose this indicator when the well is dark.

This changes save file IDs so:

• your high scores will be wiped
• your settings will be reset to defaults

This version removes some of the options previously available, to give me some tokens (and performance) back.

Speed curves have changed - Marathon and Grandmaster get faster sooner! Both modes "give this back" later on - they introduce an intermediate level where I think the step between fast speeds was too harsh, in exchange for removing something that still felt too slow to me. This is why I broke the save file - your high scores for 3.x aren't comparable to your high scores for 4.x because the game behaves differently.

I haven't spent the tokens I freed up yet, but I have Ambitious Plans for scoring and displaying popups for twists and consecutive "difficult" clears (4-line clears, twists), etc. Also trying to compose some 2-channel music for this, although I don't think I have the inspiration; will keep plugging away at that.

Massive update! This also changes save file IDs.

extreme_tetrom_11

by Kistaro

Cart #extreme_tetrom_11-3 | 2022-08-22 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA

35

Extreme Tetrom 6.0 includes:

• popups to announce quad clears, T-twists, consecutive quad or T-twist clears (a "streak"), and a sequence of clears with consecutive pieces (a combo). obviously I am avoiding some trademarked terms here.
• The line clear animation looks a lot better.
• The line clear animation speeds up as the game gets faster.
• There are several new modes!
  • Intermediate: A "bridge" between the classic modes and Grandmaster, for players who find that Grandmaster gets too fast, too soon but want to work up to it.
  • 20G Trainer, a "slow 20G" mode that starts with very long lock times and works up to the speed 20G starts at in Grandmaster. (Intense had previously had a very slow section 1 to allow it to be used for this purpose. It doesn't need that feature anymore...
  • Sprint mode is back! It's a 40-line version of Marathon.
  • Blitz mode: how high a score can you get with 128 tetroms? Watch out - the speed curve is very aggressive in this mode!

I did some aggressive changes to free up tokens and it bought me all these features, but now I'm almost out of compressed code space. I don't want to take a minifier to it - I want to let people actually read this code, and maybe trace it far enough to design their own modes.

I would like to overhaul the end-of-game screen so it points out new high scores, new 2nd or 3rd high scores, and draws a distinction between finishing a mode (that is eligible for scoring even when you don't finish) and not. I spent my tokens and code size on new modes instead, though.

I'd also like to multiply all Endless mode (and Endless-like) scoring by 0x0.0001 and do something clever to display it like it was just a normal integer, and something clever-er to keep displaying it reasonably in a 5-digit display.

But, these are dependent on squeezing code size further, or getting rid of something. There may be more dead code I haven't found...

Edit: Now up to version 6.3, courtesy of a friend finding bugs. Adds one more mode, Scoreathon, which is just Marathon mode played for score rather than time.

Hey, folks! I've updated to version 7.3, which adds an accessibility option -- if the debris when lines were cleared was too distracting, you can now reduce or remove it in the Options menu. It also improves navigating the high score gallery.

I've published Extreme Tetrom to Itch, including native binary exports, at https://kistaro.itch.io/extreme-tetrom -- share the link if you know folks who would enjoy the game, but don't use Pico-8 themselves! There is also a complete gameplay manual there.

Almost made it ;_;

I think some of the stuff is cool, but tbh it plays way slower than the original pics Tetris. Idk if u wanted it to be slower but it’s a chore to play, you can’t change you settings so I struggle with moving the pieces. The new game modes r cool but the gameplay is balls. Rip Z/S spins

Also rip you don’t get extra points for full clearing the board

Hello ToxZc,

Try Grandmaster, Intense, or Extreme difficulty. That might be more the difficulty level you're looking for. Marathon, the mode selected at startup, is the easiest.

Options about soft drop and delayed auto-shift speed were removed because the game is designed around auto-repeat happening at a specific pace, which accelerates at very high speeds.

I’m playing the game and I’m thinking yo the is faster in those other game modes, so gg on that, but another thing that has nothing to do wth game. Idk what or how ppl use the blocks with lines and stuff, the blank pieces r way easier to see imo, dark parts of pieces could be a bit brighter but that’s just a me thing.

So Tetris’s give 9 points and T-spin triples gives 13.

Literally my 5 post here and prob my last but bruh how tf do you beat sprint mode in under 1:35, I’ve spent like 1 hour total and I can’t get below 1:35. How

[EDIT] I got 1:22

very nice job on the 1:22!

There are a bunch of different score systems in the game. The 9 and 13 points you're talking about are "level" - it's programmed as 8 and 12 points but you also get a level just for dropping a piece. Progressing through levels as quickly as you can is the goal in Intense, Intense Plus, and Extreme -- your final score is the final section you reached (higher is better) and the time it took you to get there (faster is better). Other modes use different scoring to reward different forms of play.

Grandmaster scoring deviates the most from expectations. You're given a "grade" (which goes from 9 to 1, then S1 to S9... but there are also M grades and, of course, GM); your final game score is your grade and the time at which it was awarded, even if you weren't told about it at the time (in-game grade display shuts off for dramatic effect at high ranks). Internally, you have a secret score that decays to 0 over time; every time it goes over an internal threshhold, you get a grade (9 to 1) or half a grade (S1+) and the score resets to 0. As your grade increases, the secret scoring gets less generous, especially for singles. However, later sections have high base score multipliers to compensate for the extreme difficulty. Combo scoring, "streaks", and "twists" (avoiding some trademarked terms here, heh) have a large effect in this mode; bigger line clears have a stronger bonus from combos specifically, so it's worth more to do big clears at the end of a combo than at the beginning. (It's also harder.)

All this is heavily influenced by Arika's TGM games, but it's not a TGM clone -- I've redesigned all of these systems to produce what I personally believe is a more interesting game, but that is ultimately a matter of opinion!

The various block sprites aren't all to my taste either! I changed the ones I liked least in Pico-Tetris, but they're definitely not all winners. Feel free to change sprites 1 through 15 in the Pico-8 Sprite Editor to give your own designs a try, using only colors 6 (light gray) and 7 (white).

Speaking of colors, you're also welcome to try an alternate color scheme. Sprites 16 through 22 define the pieces (when I say "define", I mean "define" -- the initialization code actually parses the sprites! so if you wanted to try a wildly different game, there's an obvious opportunity, just drwa some different shapes through their rotations; note that the special kick rules for I and O, and twist rules for T, are linked to those particular sprite locations). These sprites have flags set. The first four flags (as shown in the Sprite Editor) represent that piece's foreground color and the last four are the background color; note that the high bits are towards the right. Color #15 is used for the well outline color cycle effect and is not available for coloring anything else without some code changes.

If you want to try your hand at changing the game rules, check out tab 5, --modes, and its function init_modes(), which defines the rulesets for each mode. Yes, the game speed rules are specified as spreadsheets.

okay, after playing with it a bit, I do recommend trying color 15 for the foreground color of literally every piece. not, like, for serious play, but it's kind of a fun effect.

Update! It now starts on "Grandmaster" mode by default, saves your last played mode, and adds "Impossible" mode, which is exactly what it says on the tin.

hi! i'm more of a battle tetris player than a TGM player. i noticed one of you two's prototypes for this, pico tetris 2, doesn't have t-spin detection or score bonuses. is there a good way to graft the t-spin detection and bonus code from this cart into that one?

The "picotetris2" cart is after I made a lot of changes to TGM-ify the game already. What was your favorite mode in the picotetris2 cart? It might be easier for me to scrape up tokens in Extreme Tetrom to make room to bring it into the current version instead.

T-spin detection might be practical to backport, but the scoring system might be less amenable to change more generally.

This is really cool! I only played Marathon and Lightning so far, but I really enjoy it :) Especially Lightning is really fun, those last few lines really caught me off-guard

Out of curiosity, are you still working on this?

Oh, awesome, it's great to see you back!

I haven't been actively working on this for a while, because I ran out of space on every metric and haven't found ways to save more tokens, and uncompressed code, and compressed code. The most recently-published version here is up-to-date. I've been thinking about trying to implement music, but haven't gotten very far with my compositions.