Revision as of 21:17, 27 December 2020

https://twitter.com/EmojiTetra/with_replies

Some analysis

• Cool graphs: http://pub.thorx.net/emojitetra/
• EmojiTetra/DeepStatistics

Some plans for future analysis

Board health

Ideas to measure board health

• simple board fill - Count of positions on the board that are used. This is extremely simple and is already in the analysis
• modified board fill - count columns that have holes in them, and use that as modifying factor to the simple board fill. The height of those columns (or of highest?) should be a factor too
  • discussion in this thread: https://twitter.com/HeptaSean/status/1063093435719213056
• board age - for each used position, track how long (age in pieces spawned) it has been on the board. Health is then the sum of ages. Lower = healthier
  • A low board will have a higher turnover of pieces and better health. A high board will have low rows that are stuck for a long time - as they age the health will decrease, indicating we are high and possibly stuck there...
  • however, it's still not an objective absolute, as two identical boards may register different health
  • discussion in this thread: https://twitter.com/Caber_nl/status/1065174652060909570
• weighted board fill - count occupied positions in columns. The unhealth of a piece is valued according to how difficult it is to get to. Basically, the more buried a piece is, the higher it scores. Buried holes need to be handled in some form (they are bad), and deep open wells need to be handled (they are good)
  • possible implementation: every occupied position is a point. Those that are on an equal row or higher than the lowest accessible open spot have no further weighting, however each occupied position below that row gets an additional +1 for each row further down. Each unoccupied position (hole!) gets an additional +1.
  • Should it handle horizontal holes (ie don't count quite as strongly because once uncovered, they'll be easier to fill and move on?)

Sociopolitical analysis

The game can be examined as a microcosm of human democratic/communication behaviour!

I wrote some notes about this at one point. There have been many tweets too.

• For instance, this thread: https://twitter.com/alexjc/status/1063861229536665601

Tactics

• Avoid center holes and center towers
• Keep the board clean

Rhyming game tips

(refer also to My Terminology below)

• "less than four? build up more"
• "make a column only if it's to the bottom"
  • on the side build a column, but only if it's to the bottom
  • note: uses non-standard use of "column". Should find a tip to call it a well
• "more than five? clear some lines to stay alive"
  • I like it, except the meter in the first and second clauses is mismatched. “If you’re stuck with more than five, clear some lines to stay alive.”
    • https://twitter.com/JoeSondow/status/1031215485596004352

• "1+1<2" - this is great for sentiment and brevity, but the only people it would be clear to are the power players who know it anyway!

Game Table

• Official gametable doco is this googledoc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/158iMSY4Qf1AvsJvpKYN9O3XTBXPYhZw-eolZVAGu7as/edit

Note: my timezone is UTC+10 and my dates reflect that. I hope to direct link to tweets sufficient that they can be used for exact time lookups if needed

• Links to every poll in every game...
• EmojiTetra/Details2018 - Games 1-15
• EmojiTetra/Details2019 - Games 16-33
• EmojiTetra/Details2020 - Games 34-

Board styles / known feature changes

1. Start of Game 1 from the 16 April 2018: score in blocks, then unicode SOON, then linedrawing to illustrate NEXT piece
2. During Game 1 on the 19 April: unicode SOON replaced with unicode F-FWD
3. During Game 5 on the 22 May: Literal "Next", then braille indicator of next piece. Then literal "Score" in and score in plain text
4. During Game 6 on 5 June: "Next" and score moved to right of board. Next illustrated with emoji same as board
5. During Game 18 on 10 Feb: "The bot will now tweet a rendition of the game grid with filled rows marked as disappearing, with the score benefit shown." - https://twitter.com/emojitetra/status/1094340439849615360

Notable events

Empty Board Bonus

All-clears are achieved on average every 6-8 weeks, but if game play and RNG pieces align, are theoretically possible every 7th piece (as occurred on the 5th of Dec with pieces: "IIIJITJ"

In Late May 2019, I (Nemo) decided to push the all-clear tactic, believing we could move from every 6-8 weeks to every 10days or so. In the following 35 days we got two only 6 days apart, but then none for 5 months!

Awesome moves

For those times we manage to fill in overhangs, T-spins and I-spins

• • TODO

Longest activity on the same piece

In the long run, we average about 4 polls per piece (4.14). Here are the times we've taken over 4 hours for a single piece. 13+ polls...

Great Escapes

When The End Is Nigh - and then it wasn't. This is the list of times we've filled the board to 45 or more static pieces, and subsequently recovered to under 30. "Saved to" is measured as the board fill after clearing lines, to the point where two pieces in a row begin to stack again.

Last Stands

When The End Is Nigh ...for sooooo long, before we succumb. These are the great not-escapes. Where we reach gameover level board, and continue seemingly improbably extra time.

Other Greats

Magnificent moves which show how skillful the collective can be - especially when a non-obvious move is sufficiently spruiked into awareness. I call these: #AwesomePlan

• This I-spin in Game 23 to fit into a tight spot. The plan was formulated and spruiked from the previous piece, but linking here to the I https://twitter.com/EmojiTetra/status/1123573444400914434
• On 25th June (Game 25), we placed a Z such that it didn't overcover the right-edge hole, and then double-spun the following I to clear the line covering that hole! Linking here to the Z: https://twitter.com/EmojiTetra/status/1143464512156098560
• 9th July (G25), a lovely T-spin. Linking here to the reveal of the T as the "next": https://twitter.com/EmojiTetra/status/1148276395186909190 ...note also that the T took 13 polls to complete it's move, which places it in contention for the 'longest activity' as well)
• 29 July (G26), another lovely T-spin. We successfully did a mid-board "ceiling bump" (our first?). Here is the T reveal: https://twitter.com/EmojiTetra/status/1149267865788272640

Other weird

Split clears are times when a double or triple occurs on non-sequential lines. Only possible with L/J/I for split doubles, and I for split-singles.

Since the line-clear-indicator tweets began on the 10th of Feb 2019, we have only had 7 split-clears - 6 doubles and 1 triple. By comparison, in the same time we had 3 all-clears and 9 tetras.

Scoring rate

Scoring rate vs total

Real world analysis

There is reasonable correlation with better scoring rates, and better scores. Indeed, as of writing (G24 just begun), there are 11 games with a rate above 1100/day - these have a min score of 11925 (avg: 32580), whilst 12 games below that rate have a maximum at merely 13850 (avg: 6373)

Within reason, this seems logical. Smart play is required for long games, but also improves on scoring rate by seeing non-obvious combinations of the current+next piece to score doubles and triples, where more naive play (as the hive often does) will seek singles only. Conversely, simple "just get singles" non-aggressive play will often result in situations where, thanks to a run of awkward pieces, the board gets messy and the hive simply hasn't learnt and practiced the skills to navigate out.

• 1st July 2019 scoring rate chart: https://twitter.com/skrymir42/status/1145501324139782145

Hypothetical maximums

Hypothetically, the maximum scoring rate with ideal pieces is a board-emptying tetra. 2000 points every 7th piece. I believe the fastest this could be done is with 6 "O" and then one "I" bar. This would be nearly 7579 points per day - or over 6.3x our normal scoring rate of approx 1200points/day

At our normal randomised piece rate of placement, 2000/7pieces would still be approx 4x our normal scoring rate. But that is also impossible in practice, since it relies on us being able to build a 6wide 4high tower every 6 pieces, and then have an I to score the emptying tetra every 7th piece. In practice of course, we only get an I as the 7th piece 1/7th of the time. We also cannot get an empty board every 7th piece, even if we had prescient knowledge of the future. However, I think it should be possible to get approx 2x our native scoring rate from smart piece placement alone. How? By targetting the empty board bonus via full clears as the default tactic. This should be safe as it's a tactic which inherently means we keep the board low, we have a regular "seventh piece" cycle to play to, and if we build clean, then we should get plenty of doubles and triples and occasional tetras the rest of the time.

Safer AND faster scoring rate. What's not to love?

Without a way to play solo and test tactics, this is theoretical only. (A javascript implementation to allow faster one-person play would be great as a practice/education tool. Could even feed it the official game piece order for direct comparisons with the hive?)

My Terminology

(note: this is what I endeavour to use, and while I encourage others to use, it is in no way formal or endorsed. Most of it is what is commonly used already)

• board: play area (7x11 squares)
• column: a vertical sequence on the board from top to bottom (11 spots)
• line/row: a horizontal sequence on the board from left to right (7 spots)
• clear - to clear some rows (see also: full clear - to clear ALL rows)
• single/double/triple: to clear 1/2/3 line(s)
• tetra/quad/tetris: to clear 4 lines
• electorate/collective/crowd/hive: everyone who votes
• hole: an unfilled space that is surrounded on all sides and above
• overhang: an unfilled spare that is covered at top, but open to the side and can be underfilled with a side-slide
  • awkward overhang - an overhang that cannot be underfilled, so looks like an overhang, but acts as a hole.
• clean - board without holes. as in "the board is clean" and "this is a clean drop"
  • question: is a half-hole a clean board?
• dirty - opposite of clean: a board with a hole. "the board is dirty". "this is a dirty drop"
• silhouette/skyline: the shape of the top surface
• well: a deep part of the skyline requiring a J/L or I to fill.
  • May also be called a hole. Esp I-hole
• empty board: nothing on the board. (a perfectly flat skyline, as per the start of a game)
  • I prefer 'empty' to avoid possible ambiguity with clear or clean
• full clear - the move that achieves an empty board
• stale/fossilised - to refer to how long a row has remained unchanged
• momentary hole - a hole which is created with the placement of one piece, with the knowledge that it will be uncovered with the very next (already known!) piece.
• ghost hole - a hole which will only appear to exist but the placement of the piece that creates it, in fact clears a line that uncovers it. Hence it never really exists.
  • Naming discussion: https://twitter.com/JoeSondow/status/1135760387322699777

Fast?

During the 2020 coronis pandemic, a new 10minute game began. I am not currently tracking details on this, however here are start/end tweets per game of it to allow thread finding for future automation potential

• 1: over: aquatic https://twitter.com/EmojiTetraFast/status/1246411492146024448
• 2: start aquatic https://twitter.com/EmojiTetraFast/status/1246413915220660224
• 3: start books https://twitter.com/EmojiTetraFast/status/1247506112196173824
• 4. start hearts https://twitter.com/EmojiTetraFast/status/1253832799540281346
  • end 114150 https://twitter.com/EmojiTetraFast/status/1269825741660647424
• 5. start hearts https://twitter.com/EmojiTetraFast/status/1269828196876222465
  • end 21775 https://twitter.com/EmojiTetraFast/status/1272898429405011971
• 6 start fruit https://twitter.com/EmojiTetraFast/status/1272900945995857920
  • end 24750 https://twitter.com/EmojiTetraFast/status/1276653169762697218
• 7 start plants https://twitter.com/EmojiTetraFast/status/1276655688224108551
  • end 10075 https://twitter.com/EmojiTetraFast/status/1278366962532282369
• 8 start books https://twitter.com/EmojiTetraFast/status/1278369478334537728

Externals

Credits

• Game created by https://twitter.com/JoeSondow
  • Tweet with links to his other accounts too: https://twitter.com/JoeSondow/status/971561164994895872
• EmojiTetra game code on gitlab: https://gitlab.com/JoeSondow/emojitetra

Other/misc

• Animation view of game history: https://emojitetra-viewer.glitch.me
• A different set of stats/charts of game history, including poll analysis: https://emojitetra-viewer.glitch.me/stats