Bastard Tetris Hates You

Press the Buttons has a post up about a Linux version of Tetris called Bastard Tetris. The name is well founded, as the game evaluates what shape you need the least and sends that as your next piece. From the Bastet site: "Have you ever thought Tetris(R) was evil because it wouldn't send you that straight "I" brick you needed in order to clear four rows at the same time? Well Tetris(R) probably isn't evil, but Bastet certainly is. >:-) Bastet stands for "bastard tetris", and is a simple ncurses-based Tetris(R) clone for Linux. Unlike normal Tetris(R), however, Bastet does not choose your next brick at random. Instead, Bastet uses a special algorithm designed to choose the worst brick possible. As you can imagine, playing Bastet can be a very frustrating experience!" Sounds like the sailing puzzle in Puzzle Pirates.

Sounds like my marriage.

[a whoabot (706122)]

Everyday is like a new type of hell.

1D Tetris for True Geeks Only

[Shadow_139 (707786)]

Ahh 2D Tetris sucks........
Only real Geeks play 1D Tetris [tetris1d.org] ......

hmm

[nomadic (141991)]

Press the Buttons has a post up about a Linux version of Tetris called Bastard Tetris. The name is well founded, as the game evaluates what shape you need the least and sends that as your next piece.

In othe words it's just like regular tetris.

Re:hmm

[TeknoHog (164938)]

it's just like regular tetris.

The difference is that regular Tetris is evil by nature, whereas this one uses an algorithm to simulate evil.

Re:hmm

[SA Stevens (862201)]

Any game where the goal is to shuffle around parts desperately until you fail in the end, and where 'winning' is just a matter of how long you survived, has a whiff of evil about it.

It's not at all ironic that Tetris originates from someone who grew up under Soviet rule.

Re:hmm

[nunchux (869574)]

Any game where the goal is to shuffle around parts desperately until you fail in the end, and where 'winning' is just a matter of how long you survived, has a whiff of evil about it.

Aren't you describing just about every arcade and console game from 1970 to 1985?

I know it wasn't technically the first game to have an ending, but one thing that made Super Mario Brothers (and Nintendo games in general) so revolutionary was that there was an actual goal. Before that, most games just fed you the same set of

Re:hmm

[CoffeeJedi (90936)]

That's because the arcade companies wanted you to keep slugging in quarters to get that high score. Nintendo wanted you to complete the game, so you would want to run out and buy another one.

'Evil'? Surely not, how about 'fatalistic humor'?

[waterbear (190559)]

Any game where the goal is to shuffle around parts desperately until you fail in the end, and where 'winning' is just a matter of how long you survived, has a whiff of evil about it.

It's not at all ironic that Tetris originates from someone who grew up under Soviet rule.

As a game of inevitable failure, tetris struck me as inspired by a rather dark fatalistic humor -- but surely 'evil' is too strong? :) Anyway this aspect of Russian humor was seemingly around long before the Soviets (think Chekhov)!

-wb-

Me too

[interiot (50685)]

I think a lot of people have thought of this, since Tetris seems to evil. I actually started implementing this, but gave up as soon as I asked myself who was going to alpha-test it. If the author in this article actually tested this enough to work most of the bugs out, then apparently he's more of a masochist than I am...

Masochist, indeed

[TuringTest (533084)]

As you can imagine, playing Bastet can be a very frustrating experience!

Certainly, playing Bastet for the first time was one of those moments in our lives as game players [slashdot.org] that made us feel strongly about something that, in the grand scheme of things, is probably pretty trivial.

Not necessarily a good feeling, though. ;-)

Hmm.

[Pikace (878395)]

Heheh. At least it doesn't give us those weird blocks with more than 4 units like so many of the tetris remakes.

Spinning Tetris

[Washizu (220337)]

Shameless plug for my version of Tetris: Spew [bengarvey.com]. The board spins around and zooms in and out. Written in Perk/Tk, but there's a compiled version for windows.

Screenshots here [bengarvey.com]

Re:Spinning Tetris

[Solder Fumes (797270)]

There's also Tetanus on Drugs [pineight.com], for PC and Game Boy Advance, written by former classmate of mine...he was already crazy when he wrote it, but it'll send any sane person over the edge.

mroe liek wingayz

[by Anonymous Coward]

How about a Windows version so I can have TWO programs that hate me?

Pufftris

[funny-jack (741994)]

Does anyone else here remember Pufftris? It was a Tetris clone where the playing field swung back and forth. At first it was just really slight, but as time (or it may have been # of rows) went on, it swung more and more wildly, in all three dimensions. I think that was my favorite Tetris clone. The sad thing is that the only versions I can find won't run on anything other than straight old-school DOS. Nobody here happens to know of a more modern OS-updated version, per chance, do you?

Next block?

[General Wesc (59919)]

I notice it still shows the next block. But does it ever lie about what the next block will be?

And maybe I shouldn't assist in the Slashdotting, but here's the offical page [altervista.org].

Re:Next block?

[by Anonymous Coward]

from the README
" -the brick preview now is a "would you like it, wouldn't you?" box. It displays the "most useful" brick (according to bastet's engine). Needless to say, you will *never* get that brick! "

Hmmm....sounds evil but is it?

[Pinkoir (666130)]

It sure sounds evil but only in the "Kill as many babies as you can before the cops get you" kind of way. True evil is more subtle. I think the best test for evilness in tetris clones is to see how cruel the clone can be while still making the player think it is not really that bad. After all, people will quit in frustration if the game is too obvious about its malevolence. You want to string them along, slowly ramping up their frustration, giving them the hint of success every once and a while only to tear their souls slowly from their block-addled minds with a perfectly times sequence of S-bricks.

You would test true tetris evilness in an online competition between the various clones. The evilest would be the one which generated the best aggregate of low average scores and high number of games played. That would signify the tetris which was best able to trick players into thinking it wasn't evil.

Please note that I don't advocate actually undtertaking such a foul endevour. The world has enough evil in it already.

-Pinkoir

This should be more prominent in the manual

[bcmm (768152)]

I've been playing this for a while, and I couldn't work out why I preferred netris until I read this. Gentoo's portage description for Bastet could have mentioned it was evil.

Wesleyan Tetris

[MikeyNg (88437)]

Wow. When I read the headline, I instantly had flashbacks to Wesleyan Tetris. Did anyone else play this game back in the day on the Mac?

(Actually, it looks like there was a topic at some point in time about it in 2002 [slashdot.org]!) Oh, and a quick search reveals that there is no more Wesleyan Tetris, merely a virus out there.

Re:Ltris has this too

[cowens (30752)]

Well, I just downloaded both of them. My best game out of 6 was 8 lines in bastet. I got 35 lines in my first game of Ltris with "Expert Mode" turned on (and I made a lot of silly errors). I would say Bastet has a significantly more evil algorhythm. In particular it seemed as if Ltris wasn't choosing a hard block for the next block; it looks like it chooses a hard block for the block after the next one. So the pattern goes: random block, hard block, random block, hard block, ad infinitum. This is much easier than Bastet, but still much harder than normal tetris-style games.

Re:Ltris has this too

[gatzke (2977)]

Maybe I am retarded, but I can barely get a few lines if any with bastet. Anything resembling a traditional move on Tetris is countered by the worst possible piece every damn time.

At least I didn't get hooked on it for hours trying to get better...

Re:Easy port to OSX [fixed]

[LincolnQ (648660)]

In bast.c, change #include <termio.h> to #include <termios.h> and compile and run.

Loads of fun! I didn't get a single line before I died!

(fixed the angle brackets)

Re:Not exactly a new idea

[by Anonymous Coward]

Not bad but I can top that by a year.
Unfortunately I demoed the thing to a few folks at assembly 95 and it didn't take took long until one of them managed to defeat the algorithm:) He built a tall tower on one edge and a "roof" that extended to almost the other edge and then added the following pieces under it. (the "AI" simply tested each piece by "dropping" them from the top at each position)

Re:Sailing Puzzle?

[patio11 (857072)]

The sailing puzzle, which is not at all evil (well, OK, I used to be the resident Dr. Mario champ and they play exactly the same) is described in detail here. [puzzlepirates.com]

You get progressively better ranks in the puzzle for faster completition times per board (you'd typically complete several boards over the course of a battle or a trip between two navigation points), and better ranks for your many sailors increases the speed at which the ship sails, to a predetermined maximum based on hull type (in battle, its slightly different -- I think you get four moves max regardless but if your sailors are cruddy you won't get all of them -- that could be disastrous because it allows the other ship to get somewhere it shouldn't be, like directly behind you to pound you with unanswerable cannonfire).

Puzzle Pirates, by the way, is the best free trial you'll ever play in your life. Even if you uninstall it and never get into the MMORPG part the puzzles are just breathtakingly fun to play. Its a puzzle game, except the puzzle MATTERS (imagine playing Gem Fighter to settle crew-to-crew combat and being able to brag to people that you swordfought seven guys at a time, including a Cleaver (high rank of AI), and killed them all).