[HN Gopher] Teens are rewriting what is possible in the world of...
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Teens are rewriting what is possible in the world of competitive
Tetris
Author : danso
Score : 312 points
Date : 2022-07-22 19:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.polygon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.polygon.com)
| ilitirit wrote:
| Not sure if it's mentioned in the article, but this documentary
| is worth watching if you haven't seen it. It pre-dates some of
| the newer techniques people are using.
|
| http://watch.ecstasyoforder.com/
| spike021 wrote:
| Anyone have a preferred method of playing Tetris?
|
| These days I just load up the official site's web version [0] but
| lately they've crammed more and more ads onto the page and Ublock
| Origin can't keep up. Sometimes the tab totally freezes. Makes it
| difficult to enjoy.
|
| [0] https://tetris.com/play-tetris
| [deleted]
| Siilwyn wrote:
| I like to play on Flatris: https://flatris.space/
| userbinator wrote:
| You could play a version that you wrote yourself...
|
| It's actually not that difficult --- it's probably one of the
| most cloned/ported puzzle games, but almost always called
| something other than Tetris because their lawyers really don't
| want you using that name. "Russia Block" is/was a relatively
| common synonym.
| chongli wrote:
| It's easy if you just want to get the basic game up and
| running. If you want an authentic experience, however, then
| you need to put in more work to replicate the quirks of the
| NES original (the version used for CTWC). There's everything
| from the NES's 60.0988 frames per second to the Nintendo
| rotation system, delayed auto shift, soft drop speed, to the
| random piece generator (which is biased against line pieces).
| There's also the scoring rules, gravity level progression,
| and more.
|
| The game mechanics are actually quite complex when you
| include all of the details. Sure, you might say those details
| are superfluous, but there's a reason many people prefer
| classic Tetris over more recent versions. Nintendo's original
| mechanics are much more challenging but also very satisfying
| to play with.
| jgtrosh wrote:
| Either Nintendo Tetris on NES if I'm at home or Tetris Effect
| Connected's Classic mode. Here's a good enough online emulator:
| https://arcadespot.com/game/classic-tetris/
|
| For modern Tetris, Tetr.io or jstris.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| My favorite is a variation called first-person tetris:
|
| https://www.firstpersontetris.com/
|
| It's fun to give someone without telling them the whole view
| rotates whenever you rotate the piece because it's extremely
| disorienting if you're not used to it, but after a bit of
| practice it becomes easy
| moozilla wrote:
| https://tetr.io/ is probably the best unofficial game,
| especially if you're into multiplayer variants.
|
| For single player https://jstris.jezevec10.com/ or
| https://simon.lc/tetr.js/ are the best.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I found this version bit fun. Goal and more tactic driven. Also
| short games don't tire out too much. https://tetris.com/play-
| tetrisgems
| goosedragons wrote:
| My favorite version is Puyo Puyo Tetris. It's on Steam, Switch,
| PS4, Xbox. Also a Puyo Puyo game but you can easily just play
| Tetris if you want. It's fun, it's colorful. Also has
| multiplayer, online and split screen. No ads but you do have to
| buy it for $20.
|
| After that it's probably classic Game Boy Tetris.
| EddySchauHai wrote:
| Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 is also out! I believe it has more players
| online.
| Comkid wrote:
| My favourite is tetr.js which is open source and has seen
| multiple forks over the years.
|
| The latest I'm aware of is [0].
|
| [0] https://doktorocelot.com/tetr.js/
| Shared404 wrote:
| Gameboy/NES emulator is probably a reasonable option.
|
| I have a keychain toy I got as a child that has a cheap LCD
| recreation.
|
| <strike>clearly the best option is bastet on linux</strike>
| redhal wrote:
| Nice to see some Tetris news here! I've been a little obsessed
| lately with Tetr.io. For those who don't know it, it's a version
| of tetris where you can play against other players and send them
| pieces when, for example, you do a tetris or a combo. It's pretty
| impressive to watch the competitions :
| https://youtu.be/A4SFWfXZsks
| herman_toothrot wrote:
| Pretty cool. Anyone remember TetriNET from the 90s? Similar
| concept, except there were special pieces mixed in that you
| could use on opponents or yourself (add line, clear line,
| quake, etc.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TetriNET
| cjbprime wrote:
| Yup! I remember the Debian developers would often play it
| together, I suppose because it was one of a small number of
| exciting open source multiplayer games which worked on Linux.
| contingencies wrote:
| IMHO when people discuss networked Tetris, it's now the
| reference implementation.
| bcherny wrote:
| Ah, sounds similar to PuzzleFighter, an older Japanese game.
| EddySchauHai wrote:
| There's a battle royale version of Tetris on the switch that
| sounds very similar - you can alter your settings of who you
| attack too, targeting those who attacked you, those in the
| lead, etc... I never won but got top 3 a couple times :)
| nope96 wrote:
| Found out about Tetr.io from this HN thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29728892
|
| Instantly got addicted, and I was amazed to see how good
| everyone is. 14 year old me with my gameboy would have been
| stunned at how fast and crazy modern Tetris is. And multi-
| national! Love it, but had to give it up after a few months
| because it seemed like it would/or was causing my longstanding
| RSI to come back.
| DoubleFree wrote:
| Years ago I stumbled onto competitive Tetris because the YouTube
| algorithm pushed the Jonas vs Joseph match on me. I didn't expect
| it to be exciting, but it was actually captivating and I've
| followed CTWC (very) passively ever since. The excitement from
| the commentators is also very infectious.
| Victerius wrote:
| TIL There are Tetris competitions.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Name an activity and there's a competition for it.
| 2c2c2c wrote:
| different flavors too.
|
| nullpomino 40line clears look insane:
|
| https://youtu.be/_k5tP1v0w-k
| [deleted]
| bubblesorting wrote:
| The blitz (maximize score in a set time) all-clear runs are
| pretty impressive, too.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWETj11LmMw&t=7s
| formvoltron wrote:
| OK when I was in high school.. and we are talking 1991 here,
| there was a programmer in a class I was taking who wrote a head
| to head tetris game as his project for the class.
|
| 31 years later the world figures out that head to head tetris is
| pretty cool.
| silpheed5 wrote:
| Or he had a gameboy from 1989 with a link cable and had already
| played head to head tetris there?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Is the method more taxing on the controller? How do such NES
| events handle controllers? Are modern remakes allowed, do they
| disassemble and fix them, or is there a fear that eventually all
| NES controllers will be broken forcing change?
| tedunangst wrote:
| The G forces are pretty minimal. Also, replica controllers are
| permitted. You can play with a lefty controller that swaps AB
| and D-pad for instance.
| a_t48 wrote:
| You will eventually wear out the pads. Happens with SNES
| controllers after heavy kaizo play. :)
| Xcelerate wrote:
| I used to be obsessed with Tetris (both on the console and the 40
| line clear version on the computer) and ended up programming a
| version of it that maps one key on the keyboard to one
| "slot/rotation" combination for each piece. Amazingly, there are
| enough keys to cover all of the combinations, so each drop is
| just one key press. Ended up getting some pretty good 40 line
| clear times for this weird version of Tetris; it felt like I was
| typing to play the game. I don't know if anyone has done
| something like that since then--that was probably a decade ago.
| barbs wrote:
| Awesome! That sounds like something worth sharing, if you were
| willing?
| emiliobumachar wrote:
| Interesting, but there's one thing I didn't get. Why does each
| piece need different keys?
| function_seven wrote:
| I don't think it's a separate key for each piece. It's a
| separate key for each column and rotation.
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| 10 columns, 4 orientations - matches keyboard real nice and
| kentucky.
| moozilla wrote:
| There's a variant of this idea called "KeyTris" or "Finesse",
| here's one implementation: https://github.com/alex-ong/Finesse
|
| Example of someone getting sub 20 seconds with this method:
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TGW4j7LRBJk
| thot_experiment wrote:
| That's super cool, what sort of times were you able to achieve?
| I think it's "cheating" to even use the 180 degree flip button
| (but obv everyone is free to define their own rules for a game
| where you're essentially playing against yourself). I can play
| with zero finesse OR I can sub 50 seconds, but I definitely
| can't do both at the same time.
| bergenty wrote:
| This is great. I randomly stumbled on this scene about 6 years
| ago and it's great to see this on the front page.
| synergy20 wrote:
| My son was obsessed with this for a while and is probably ranked
| top 20 globally, what's the excitement of this game is beyond me.
| That ended up hurting his college application quite a bit, and he
| showed no regret and is still in love with it.
|
| The only thing positive I see is that they actually have a closed
| circle from different nations, so he made some "online friends"
| there.
| baby wrote:
| I personally had a shaky scholarity due to playing video games
| too much. No regret either. I've ended up in a pretty good spot
| and have a lot of memories making friends and being competitive
| at something
| faeriechangling wrote:
| I respect a top 20 Tetris player more than I respect a college
| graduate since the college graduate just has to convince the
| teachers to like him and do exactly as he's told compliantly.
| The Tetris player has to be the best at something difficult and
| competitive that shows intelligence.
|
| Can hardly blame your son for not taking something seriously
| which is mostly taken seriously because everybody thinks that
| everybody else takes it seriously and you can't just opt out of
| impressing others because it will limit what you can do and
| earn in the future. College itself is just a glorified game but
| a far more boring and unfair one than Tetris.
| synergy20 wrote:
| after reading the comments I found another thing that is
| unexpected but related, he has been trying to write a program
| beating Tetris since high school, from initial python to AI.
| He was competitive on math(ranked in top 30 nationally at
| HMMT at 9th grade), so his missing out tier1 school(e.g. MIT)
| disappointed me a bit, but it's what it is. On the other hand
| I had a MIT PhD colleague who graduated 11 years ago and is a
| senior software engineer just like the rest of other
| colleges' graduates. I guess school does not define
| everything(no offense).
| aeyes wrote:
| your son is way ahead of most kids, he'll do just fine even
| if he doesn't go to MIT
| [deleted]
| DanielVZ wrote:
| Believe it or not he's learning a ton of soft skills that
| college fails to teach that are paramount for real life
| success. During college I "wasted" my time playing videogames,
| speedrunning, striving for high scores, and forming
| communities. I graduated with sub par scores but I still
| managed to be more successful than any of my college buddies
| (even those with perfect grades).
|
| Here are some ways it helped me kickstart my self taught
| software engineering carreer:
|
| - I learned how to enter the zone almost on command. I
| recognized my triggers and exploited them.
|
| - I learned how to moderate a community. Now I see the fruits
| of that because somehow in the two companies I've worked at
| I've been seen as a leader even when I was a junior developer.
|
| - I learned that learning stuff wasn't really that hard. It
| mostly requires dedication. I memorized speedrunning routes
| from google doc files for several games and it translates well
| into the experience I've had of reading documentation to learn
| a tool.
|
| - I perfected my English. As a non-native speaker, practicing
| English with natives gave me the tools to now work for
| companies abroad that are astronomically better than local ones
| in every conceivable way.
|
| I'm sure there are other benefits as well. There are also some
| risks such as social isolation, but that really depends on the
| player's surroundings more than anything.
| jgtrosh wrote:
| It's one of the most wholesome gaming communities out there,
| where achievements are celebrated and all ages get to empathize
| on this pure experience.
|
| It shouldn't replace irl friends, but there are much worse
| online friends to have than Classic Tetris players.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >what's the excitement of this game is beyond me
|
| It's the same excitement as speedrunning if that helps you get
| it. Having a community where you are all trying to get better
| at something while having fun doing so.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I guess you might have missed the "are ya winnin son?" meme
| from a few years ago. Life isn't about the college you get
| into. Being in the top 20 of tetris players is going to be very
| rewarding, and they can go to college later if they want
| bergenty wrote:
| Is is though? What's the point. You're in front of a screen
| during the best years of your life attempting to get good at
| something that is at the end of it trivial from a lot of
| perspectives. It's kind of indistinguishable from smoking pot
| and sitting in front of your TV.
|
| That being said, I've followed the scene for 6 years and
| always found it very interesting to watch.
| paulcole wrote:
| > Being in the top 20 of tetris players is going to be very
| rewarding
|
| I was a pretty high-level Scrabble player, devoting a handful
| of years of my life to it, and it's one of the biggest
| regrets I have. Total waste of time and only a attempt to
| ignore the other things I hated about my life.
| Aperocky wrote:
| > showed no regret and is still in love with it.
|
| Good for him for finding the experience that he enjoys when
| he's young.
| DavidSJ wrote:
| Why the scare quotes around online friends? Online friends are
| very real friends.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Because they're no substitute for friends you see in person.
| kerabatsos wrote:
| All my co-workers are online. I consider some to be good
| friends. It's the way of the world now.
| slothtrop wrote:
| My co-workers are online too but that has no bearing on
| whether I see friends in person, nor does it encompass my
| entire social life.
| bloqs wrote:
| You aren't a developing teenager, probably. It's well
| evidenced as essential for psychosocial development
| Gene_Parmesan wrote:
| As recent decades have progressed and more of our lives
| have gone digital, self reported rates of loneliness,
| isolation and depression have been skyrocketing. It's
| sometimes called the Internet Paradox - a technology that
| is supposed to increase our connection is correlated with
| increased feelings of isolation.
|
| It's been the subject of study but it's impossible to
| truly reject the hypothesis due to the ubiquity of the
| effect - there's no control group. Obviously correlation
| is not causation, but I think the severity of the effects
| warrant further thought and investigation.
| GOATS- wrote:
| This simply isn't true. Many of my closest friendships
| started online - with people who share the same interest as
| me, which is rare to find irl. I have since met a handful
| of online friends in person and they're always as lovely as
| they were online.
|
| Online friends were very important to me growing up, and
| still are today.
| slothtrop wrote:
| That doesn't actually contradict me.
| DavidSJ wrote:
| But nor does what you said really answer my question.
| Online friends are real, and often provide things that
| local friends can't. No one here is saying they're a
| _substitute_ for local friends, but that doesn 't mean
| these relationships should be denigrated.
| slothtrop wrote:
| > But nor does what you said really answer my question.
|
| I answered, but to further clarify: online friendships
| are not sufficient. No one said they don't have their
| place, either.
| [deleted]
| parkingrift wrote:
| Everything you've said is true, but also you literally
| cannot replicate in-person interaction. Perhaps one day
| we will be able to trick our lizard brains with virtual
| interactions, but we can't do it at present. There is no
| replacement for touching, feeling, smelling, and seeing.
| You can have meaningful relationships online but you are
| absolutely missing out if you're only interactions are
| digital.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| I don't know about you, but I don't tend to touch, feel,
| or smell my IRL acquaintances all that often.
| parkingrift wrote:
| I'd love to see the contraption you wear to dull your
| sense of touch or smell. Must be impressive.
| DavidSJ wrote:
| But literally no one in this thread is saying otherwise.
| We're just saying online friends are real and shouldn't
| be demeaned with scare quotes, and also you're probably
| missing out if your only interactions are local.
| DavidSJ wrote:
| It's a big world out there. Sometimes the best connections
| aren't found locally.
| slothtrop wrote:
| There's a level of human connection and validation that
| can't be satisfied virtually. We're animals, that contact
| is important. We wouldn't settle for a virtual
| significant-other, and by the same token the experience
| of quality time with buds over extra-curriculars isn't
| going to be fully replicated in a chat-room, blog message
| or email.
| bloqs wrote:
| This may be the case as a fully formed and experienced
| adult, but it's critical at developmental stages
| DavidSJ wrote:
| When I was a teenager, I had local friends and online
| friends, and my online friends were very real and I'm
| very thankful that I had them.
|
| Neither were a replacement for the other.
| danso wrote:
| I saw this Polygon story on reddit, and deep in the reddit
| comments was a link to this fascinating 9-minute YouTube video
| that explains the latest NES Tetris competitive tech which is
| apparently "faster than hypertapping!" (I did not know even know
| what "hypertapping" was)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-BZ5-Q48lE
| tedunangst wrote:
| For me, there's an open question whether games like Tetris
| should have such hacks. (Is it a bug that should be fixed?)
| Obviously reaction time is a factor in a game that continuously
| speeds up to increase difficulty, but should inhuman button
| mashing offer an advantage over auto repeat? You can't make
| Mario run 20x faster by hyper tapping the run key.
| GoldenRacer wrote:
| I don't feel it's a hack. DAS is a mechanism of the game that
| was intended to aid players and make the game play more
| enjoyable for the typical player.
|
| If users want to forgo that mechanism why shouldn't they be
| allowed? If I'm in a typing competition and am typing a word
| with a repeated letter such as the two l's in "all", you
| would never expect me to have to press the l key and wait for
| the computer to automatically type a second l until I
| released. You'd expect me to just press the l key twice
| because it's faster and that wouldn't be considered a "hack".
| Why would you expect anything different for Tetris players?
|
| As for Mario, it's just a slightly more realistic game in
| terms of you controlling a set of pixels that represent a
| person instead of blocks. Mario doesn't move from one column
| to the next, he smoothly travels through all the pixels
| between columns because people in the real world move
| smoothly. Tetris blocks aren't real world objects though so
| they can move one column at a time. If it only takes one
| frame for a block to move one column, why shouldn't I be able
| to move the block one column every frame?
|
| Also, in the official game, if you use DAS you move at 10Hz
| (moving once every 6 frames). It looks like top players can
| tap at around 20Hz. That's only 2x faster.
| dcow wrote:
| I dont think you're abstractly asking a silly question.
| People do debate whether in-game emergent behavior that
| leverages obviously unintended game mechanics is allowable
| all the time. But the analog for Tetris here would be
| something like "if you press input so fast it overflows some
| counter and gives you free rows". That's not what this is.
| There is no "hack". This is skill.
| stormbrew wrote:
| Aside from "what is too much" questions, skipping DAS in the
| nes version of Tetris by tapping is something almost anyone
| who plays the game will do if they play it long enough and
| isn't at all unintended behavior. It just makes sense for
| certain situations.
|
| And while it's not true for most 2d platformers of smb's era,
| performing repetative button actions to move faster than the
| standard acceleration curve allows became very possible in
| 16bit games and a later, and you'll see those used in
| speedruns all the time. Usually a repeated dash, but
| sometimes weird stuff like running backwards, jumping in
| certain ways (smb actually has one of these), or rhythmically
| pumping the shoulder buttons.
| aaron695 wrote:
| yayachiken wrote:
| The competitive scene is probably also influenced from the
| speedrun community. And the speedrun community has really
| worked out the kinks in their ruleset, as in most games, you
| need to find the sweet-spot of allowing hacks and innovative
| techniques to break the game, but not too much that it
| becomes uninteresting.
|
| For example, in Super Mario Brothers non-TAS runs, the rules
| are based around the controller and execution environment.
| You are not allowed to modify the controller or tilt the
| cartridge, but that's it.
|
| Having the rules only limit the tools required, just like in
| sports, is quite elegant. If somebody figured a way to play
| faster with their teeth, it would be allowed, and rolling the
| controller is just something like that.
|
| On the other hand, people found out that you can perform
| certain feats in SMB by pressing the left and right button at
| the same time. This is considered impossible with the
| standard D-Pad (without e.g. cutting it in the middle), so
| that is banned. At least until somebody figures out a way how
| to do it with the standard D-Pad.
| LocalH wrote:
| That's like asking if Guitar Hero should have tapping, where
| you bring your strumming hand up to press fret buttons. Speed
| techniques that work with unmodified hardware and game code
| should almost always be allowed.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I can see why one would take issue with hypertapping, a
| method which seemed to require some inherent body ability to
| be capable of, but rolling is merely a more efficient method
| of human tapping. It's like asking if the fosbury flop should
| be allowed.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| What??? There's no issue with hyper tapping, hyper tapping
| is literally just being able to press the button faster
| than most people can, and disallowing it would be like
| disqualifying somebody who has more fast twitch muscle
| fiber in the 100m dash.
|
| We're not created equal, welcome to literally every sport
| _EVER_.
| stormbrew wrote:
| The real issue with hypertapping isn't that "not everyone
| can do it," really. It's the question of if it crosses
| the line into being inherently injurious to the player in
| the medium or even short term, in which case the
| advantage doesn't come from either natural or learned
| skill but a willingness to ruin your hands for silly game
| points.
|
| Generally speaking regulated sports tend to draw lines
| here too, though obviously some draw them fairly far into
| the injury territory. Most of those are explicitly
| fighting sports though.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Gymnastics is also good example. Some routines are just
| banned, because there is possibility of damage or too
| high risks. And it is quite fair as long as it is clear
| upfront and everyone follows the same rules.
| otherme123 wrote:
| That regulations are more in the line "we don't want
| participants to die or get crippled on live TV". Because
| gimnastics are absolutely insane for your body, the
| number of people who end up with totally destroyed knees,
| shoulders, ankles... before their 30's is horrifying.
| otherme123 wrote:
| At least two of the best Starcraft 2 players, Maru and
| Byun, are having serious wrist issues. SC2 doesn't
| involve tricks like the ones mentioned in the article,
| and still actions per minute (APM) matter a lot and
| people get hurt. I've never heard anyone proposing
| regulations over APM.
|
| OTOH, almost every sport hurts at pro level, and I think
| it's safe to say that all pro sports are unhealthy,
| except a few of them. E.g. Federer has serious issues
| with his knees, has had more injuries than an average 60
| year old man.
| [deleted]
| stormbrew wrote:
| I don't disagree that most sports are bad for the body at
| pro levels, but even so generally speaking they usually
| have implicit or explicit rules against deliberate short
| term damage to help you win.
|
| The most obvious is really that while the case for rules
| against performance enhancing drugs is usually that they
| just give an unfair advantage, if you look at what's
| actually banned and what's not, and how natural
| advantages are treated, it seems pretty clear that _most_
| banned substances are also the most harmful, while others
| skate under regulation. Esports hasn 't even reckoned
| with this yet afaik, even at pro levels. We'll see where
| we're at in 10-20 years as it mainstreams.
|
| As you point out in the other branch, that's kind of
| motivated largely by PR concerns. People are mostly ok
| with basically anyone ruining their body slowly for a job
| (unless it's their own), but they balk at rapid injury.
| My point is really just that hypertapping potentially
| gets very close to this line, and that's a big part of
| why there was a drive to find a replacement technique or
| even ban it from competitive use.
|
| Anyways, there's a lot more research into how to do high
| APMs with a keyboard and mouse ergonomically than there
| is with an NES controller, which also has a hard and
| shallow throw compared to either of those and a very
| unergonomic shape to begin with. There's a lot of reasons
| they aren't obviously comparable to each other when
| talking about the RSIs they can cause.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Seeing why someone would take issue with something is not
| agreeing it's an issue. I understand why the Tetris
| community might have been unhappy that a strategy
| impossible for 90% (completely made up number, I have no
| idea how common the ability is) of people became the
| meta.
|
| I wouldn't have banned it, but I would understand if they
| decided to have separate categories for hypertapping and
| "regular" play. Rolling seems to have fixed the problem.
| tedunangst wrote:
| The high jump seems to be more deliberately a test of
| physical skill? Did the designers of Tetris set out to make
| a game that measures the rate at which you can push a
| button? A lot of games have no glitch speedrun categories.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| If the designers wanted the game to end at level 29 they
| could have forced the game to end there. They didn't,
| instead programming a game that allows users to get
| continue indefinitely even if the designers themselves
| were unable to pass level 29.
|
| Sure you could make a no hypertapping or rolling category
| for Tetris. Calling better techniques a glitch seems
| wrong, though speed runners often disagree on what
| exactly constitutes a "glitch" anyway.
| p1necone wrote:
| Comparing rolling to the Fosbury flop is basically a
| perfect analogy, bravo.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| You can make Mario 20x faster by tapping backwards longjump
| on stairs, though.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKf_bFNXuu8
| gaudat wrote:
| That Yayayayayayayayayayahoo! has to be one of the best
| bugs turned features in history.
| sdwr wrote:
| Yah.. yah.. yahyayayayyyyyyahoo!
| userbinator wrote:
| I'm not at all a gamer, but can type decently fast and see much
| similarity between the "rolling" technique and using all 10
| fingers on the keyboard --- e.g. 120WPM is a rate of 10 keys
| per second, which is extremely difficult to do even with a
| single finger on one key, but spreading the energy across all
| the fingers makes it much easier to achieve those speeds.
| Incidentally, the fastest typers don't use a rigid key-to-
| finger mapping for ths reason too; they tend to use the closest
| finger that's available.
| CarVac wrote:
| > Incidentally, the fastest typers don't use a rigid key-to-
| finger mapping for ths reason too; they tend to use the
| closest finger that's available.
|
| Only on QWERTY. On Dvorak there's a very rigid mapping and it
| very evenly uses all the fingers.
|
| Personally, the ability to distribute the load more is why I
| prefer the number row over a number pad when typing numbers;
| though Dvorak helps there by putting the punctuation closer
| to the number row.
|
| And on my ergonomic keyboard I have the numbers on the home
| row in the number layer, rather than in a numpad layout.
| bradwood wrote:
| > it very evenly uses all the fingers.
|
| This has to be a function of what is being typed, not the
| keyboard it's being typed on. I am assuming you mean
| _English_ evenly uses all the fingers? Something like
| Polish, or Welsh, I 'd expect to not be very "even" on a
| Dvorak keyboard.
| zvr wrote:
| ... or code in a programming language.
| Nadya wrote:
| Dvorak does not evenly use all fingers - it is especially
| more right-hand dominant and that trait was actually why I
| hated it as a left-handed dominant person. The amount of
| finger travelling the right hand has to do for Dvorak is
| insane. Almost all improvements of typing speed in Dvorak
| are attributed to the learner finally _learning how to
| type_ in the first place. The main draw to learning Dvorak
| should for the ergonomics - which are strictly inferior to
| Colemak. While Colemak is nearly as right-hand dominant it
| doesn 't require nearly as much finger travel making it
| more ergonomic for left-hand dominant people as well.
|
| Also - as someone who has learned both - I adamantly
| believe Dvorak is inferior to Colemak in almost every
| single way. From difficulty learning the layout to the
| ergonomics once learned to having to rebind or relearn
| hotkeys - especially common ones like cut/copy/paste. I
| only wish I had discovered Colemak prior to wasting time
| learning Dvorak all those many years ago.
|
| Colemak heatmap: https://zhangshenjia.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2012/04/8.jpg
|
| Qwerty & Dvorak heatmap: https://whyfiles.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2012/02/dvorak3.jpg
|
| (And as Bradwood pointed out in the response below -
| definitely biased towards typing English and not other
| languages. So people who primarily type a language that is
| not English may have drastically different experiences.)
| opan wrote:
| I went from qwerty to dvorak after hitting a max speed of
| 160wpm in qwerty and I still found some ergonomic
| improvements in dvorak. Never hit the old speeds. You're
| right about the right hand bias, though. I traded my left
| hand pain from qwerty for worse right hand pain with
| dvorak. It lasted even after building an ergonomic
| keyboard, so I switched to the workman layout after that.
| Things are basically fine now. Workman actually does
| promise 50/50 hand usage, which is rather unique and not
| seen in other layouts, whether more or less efficient.
| This criterion made me choose it over the more extreme
| halmak layout. Also, I like the name "workman" and that
| the left side homerow spells "ash".
|
| I never liked the idea of colemak being intentionally
| similar to qwerty and changing up fewer keys than dvorak.
| I thought this idea was limiting and gave people the easy
| way out. Workman applies a similar idea, which again
| annoyed me at first, but I'm pretty used to it now. I'd
| say it makes it more confusing to type qwerty on another
| keyboard as some keys are the same and muscle memory can
| get mixed up between the two. I don't type qwerty much at
| all, so maybe this would improve over time. With dvorak I
| think only a and m were the same for the letters, so it
| felt more like hitting a distinct switch.
|
| Workman also avoids the issue in colemak that colemak
| mod-dh had to fix from what I understand. Of course these
| layouts are not all the same age, so one might learn
| their layout and become loyal to it before a better one
| is invented. Dvorak is quite old now, and colemak is at
| least older than workman.
|
| I no longer remember dvorak at all. I think I used it for
| 18-24 months or so. I'll probably remember qwerty forever
| since I grew up on it, and I use workman daily so it's
| safe for now. I have used workman for at least a year and
| a half, maybe two and a half now.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| This video has been posted here 3 times (one by me) with no
| votes/comments
| dreamoffire wrote:
| Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and sometimes it rains
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| This Polygon story explains what hypertapping is and what
| rolling is. There is no need to go deep in the Reddit comments
| to find out.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| I still recommend watching the video though. It's like the
| Polygon article but more audiovisual, and shows what
| hypertapping and rolling actually look like, and the
| development of rolling
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| Truly amazing to see this new generation of Tetris play.
|
| On a semi-related note, this article stirred some nostalgia for a
| related game, "Welltris" (sort of a 3-d version of Tetris) that
| was popular among the MS-DOS crowd in the late 80s/early 90s.
| PebblesRox wrote:
| Welltris was great and I loved the music. I think it had more
| variety than classic Tetris did.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| The pictures were awesome too!
| layer8 wrote:
| Slightly off-topic: Does anyone know what happened to Angularis
| [0] at https://angularis.mondaybits.com/, or how to contact the
| author? The page went down a couple of days ago. I hugely enjoyed
| that Tetris variant.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30213972
| Ekaros wrote:
| I'm sad they aren't using the original Electronika 60 version for
| these competitions.
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| Emacs has tetris mode including highscore list: M-x tetris.
| joos3 wrote:
| RIP Jonas. Such a legend
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Absolutely devastating, but the young people keep the game
| going. It's so bittersweet.
| beebeepka wrote:
| I loved my handheld Tetris console as a little kid. I could start
| at speed 9 (highest) and play for an hour or until I have to pee
| or something.
|
| These days I am more impressed with people hitting 60% lightning
| gun in Quake or executing crazy hard army manuevers in StarCraft.
|
| Still though, Tetris is an early love of mine
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