Comment by PetitPrince
7 months ago
Related: One of the subniche in the Tetris communities is Tetris art / pattern creation, i.e. drawing predefined patterns while playing the game (almost) normally.
One of most practiced pattern is the chevron, where you draw a > shape with holes, but otherwise fill the whose board. This stemmed from the Japanese arcade version of Tetris by Sega (or Segatet for those in the known). This version was hugely popular in the arcade (it stayed for an incredibly 10 years in the top100 earner in some arcade magazine), and some player were destroying the game so much that they invented this challenge. This was recognized in Segatet successor Tetris the Grand Master (TGM3), and formally named "Secret Grade". One example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgzcAkjp0J8 , and another there with TGM3 signature speed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32wzKc0cHQU .
But in general, Shuey is the master of arbitrary making pattern. Look at him drawing a Luigi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tipJDjeKuY .
Note that since then, an algorithm for arbitrary pattern generation has been devised by Michael Birken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJkHwulsac4
(sort of related: the playing forever algorithm may be interpreted as a pattern creation https://tetris.wiki/Playing_forever )
It's so satisfying to watch...
Do these pattern drawings only work with aluck Manipulation?
Secret grade is done within the confines of the game with no luck manipulation.
Note that the piece distribution algorithm is usually not a pure random() function, but one that's optimized to remove or reduce piece repetitions. For TGM it's history based (keep in memory the 4 last pieces type, reroll in case of repetition, with a 4 or 6 reroll limit depending on the game). IIRC Shuey uses a ruleset that uses the standard 7-bag algorithm (it's a Fisher-Yates with 7 elements; put all 7 types in a collection and deplete them one by one, randomly).