Mission Mode in Tetris DS challenges the player to perform various tasks such as clearing a line with pieces that spawn in random orientations and can't be rotated. The Time Trial sub-mode in it has 5 levels, each with 10 missions given in a random order, with the objective being to clear all 10 missions as fast as possible.
Game objectives
Emulator used: DeSmuME 0.9.10 x64
Turn OFF "Enable Advanced Bus-Level Timing"
Turn ON "Use dynamic recompiler" with block size 100.
Aims for fastest time
Comments
Each level will always give you the same 10 missions in random order. I aimed to get the lowest time in every level in sequential order. Since I cleared many of the missions before they ever appear on-screen, below is a list of all the missions in the order they appeared in this run:
Level 1
(Limited Tetriminos) (Use only O) Clear 5 lines total!
Use a T to clear 1 line!
Clear 5 lines total!
Clear 2 lines at once!
Use a L to clear 1 line!
Use a J to clear 1 line!
(Line Target) Clear the line marked by the arrow!
Use a S to clear 1 line!
Use a I to clear 1 line!
Use a Z to clear 1 line!
Time: 10.28
Level 2
Use a O to clear 2 lines at once!
Use a J to clear 2 lines at once!
Clear 4 lines at once!
Use a L to clear 2 lines at once!
Use a O to clear 1 line!
(Limited Tetriminos) (Use only T) Clear 5 lines total! -- To save time on line clear animations, I built up 4 lines ahead of time and saved an I in the hold box for this.
(Line Target) Clear the line marked by the arrow!
Clear 2 lines at once!
(Speed Up) Clear 5 lines total!
Use a Z to clear 2 lines at once!
Time: 12.03
Level 3
(Line Hurdle) Clear 2 lines, skipping 1!
Use a S to clear 2 lines at once!
(Line Target) Clear the line marked by the arrow!
(Speed Up) Clear 5 lines total!
Clear 3 lines at once!
(I Banned) Clear 2 lines at once!
(No Rotation) Clear a line! -- Again, the hold box comes in handy here. Using your held piece makes it spawn in the default orientation.
(Limited Tetriminos) (Use only O) Clear 5 lines total!
Use a Z to clear 2 lines at once! -- Had to clear an extra line here to set up the 2-line clear with the Z. There might be room for improvement here, but I couldn't find a faster route.
Use a T to clear 2 lines at once!
Time: 12.15
Level 4
Use a L to clear 3 lines at once!
Use a J to clear 3 lines at once!
Use J Tetriminos to clear 3 lines total!
Use S Tetriminos to clear 3 lines total!
(Speed Up) Clear 5 lines total!
Use a S to clear 2 lines at once!
Clear 4 lines at once!
(Limited Tetriminos) (Use L J) Clear 5 lines total!
(Line Hurdle) Clear 3 lines, skipping 1!
(Line Target) Clear the line marked by the arrow!
Time: 13.95
Level 5
(I Banned) Clear 3 lines at once!
(Line Hurdle) Clear 2 lines, skipping 1!
(Line Hurdle) Clear 2 lines, skipping 2!
(Limited Tetriminos) (Use only I) Clear 5 lines total!
(Speed Up) Clear 5 lines total!
Use Z Tetriminos to clear 3 lines total!
Clear 4 lines twice in a row!
Use L Tetriminos to clear 3 lines total! -- Here I prepare another 4-line clear for mission 10.
(No Rotation) Clear a line!
(Limited Tetriminos) (Use S Z) Clear 5 lines total!
Time: 15.71
Other comments
Luck manipulation was pretty difficult since Tetris DS uses a bag randomizer, i.e. it deals one of each tetrimino in random order, then repeats. Additionally, the game doesn't seem to pick up entropy after startup, although the initial seed is determined by the system time. It may be possible to shave a couple more frames off the time with some seed searching, but I don't have enough real-life time to do it.
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2227
Location: Georgia, USA
That was blazingly quick. I like the choice of category. I can't really tell how optimal it looks, but it certainly looks quite good now. I think this can qualify for Moons. Nice job!
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically.
Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.)
Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html)
Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature!
Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
Hmm...I think I would have preferred watching the Marathon mode rather than the Time Trial mode, simply because the gameplay is more continuous. Any thoughts?
Hmm...I think I would have preferred watching the Marathon mode rather than the Time Trial mode, simply because the gameplay is more continuous. Any thoughts?
I hope this time this movie will actually get published. Last time, #4144: morningpee's DS Tetris DS "Push Mode Level 5" in 00:13.06 was unfairly rejected from Vault even though it qualified for it, and I didn't even get a reply from the Senior I contacted back in the day (FractalFusion) to contest the decision. (I still want to contest the decision by the way.)
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6442
Location: The land down under.
Bamahut wrote:
Happy 30th birthday to this old but still enjoyable game!
This version is 13 years old.
What a lucky number for this Tetris on the year of the 30th Anniversary for the Original Tetris.
Edit: apparently I missed a few words.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account.Something better for yourself and also others.
Happy 30th birthday to this old but still enjoyable game!
This version is 13 years old.
What a lucky number for this Tetris on the year of the 30th Anniversary.
I was talking about the whole Tetris genre, not this version being 30 (Time travel maybe). But yes 30 is a lucky number and my actual lucky number as well!
Edit: I wonder if I still got my old Gameboy Tetris cartridge in some boxes in my old family house. I should really look into those boxes. Tetris on the original monochrome Gameboy for my favorite game with Super Mario land.
Nice to see another Tetris DS submission. A long time ago, I argued for a single Tetris DS movie that completed all modes in Tetris DS. It seems like TASVideos didn't choose that road (probably for the better, since it seems that no one will make such a TAS). I did start a TAS like that, but I only completed the first mode, which so happened to be the mission mode. My completion times were a bit faster than the ones in this submission:
Level 1:
9:60 vs 10:28
Level 2:
11:10 vs 12:03
Level 3:
10:95 vs 12:15
Level 4:
13:38 vs 13:95
Level 5:
15:00 vs 15:71
Here is a link to this movie: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/117393187/Tetris_DS_Baxter.dsm
Note that I probably could have selected the mode faster by using touch. Also note that this was made on an older version of the emulator, I don't know if it syncs on the current one. It was made on desmume_0.9.2-rr.
I can't get it to sync on 0.9.10, which is a pity since I'd really like to see how you optimized it so well. In any case, I'll take your word for it since you're a judge, and cancel this submission since it's already been obsoleted.
Note that I probably could have selected the mode faster by using touch. Also note that this was made on an older version of the emulator, I don't know if it syncs on the current one. It was made on desmume_0.9.2-rr.
I tested on 0.9.2, -0.9.9, it started desyncing as of 0.9.6, but in an interesting turn of events, this was the result between .9.2/4, and .9.5:
It could entirely be possible that the emulation differences in later versions of desmume mark this run as (near) optimal, but you can't really tell based just off of these 2 comparisons.
It could entirely be possible that the emulation differences in later versions of desmume mark this run as (near) optimal, but you can't really tell based just off of these 2 comparisons.
