A "spin" is the use of rotation to place a tetromino somewhere it could not be placed by normal movement. Above are various examples of placements we can only make via spin. While it is necessary to master T-spins in particular, for the epically high damage they do when clearing lines, the other spins help a lot in ordinary stacking, and some come up especially often in all-clears and Long Combos. Let's look piece by piece.
1. S and Z-spins.
We see above the standard rotations of S and Z. I've used A for clockwise-rotate and B for counterclockwise-rotate, as is the standard default for Puyo Puyo Tetris. We notice that even though this piece can only either be upright or flat, the rotation pattern has 4 beats. This is important--many spins can only be accomplished on a specific "beat" in a specific direction.
We also note that the S and Z rotation patterns are mirror images of each other, with B swapping for A. Thus, any spin that can be accomplished by hitting A a certain number of times in a certain position with Z, can be accomplished by hitting B a certain number of times in a certain position with S.
The general rule with spins is that the piece is placed in the nearest placeable location to a free placement, if placed at all. Rather than understand the detailed programmatic rules, though, what is more useful is to memorize specific placements.
Above we see what I call the hinge spin, performed with the S and Z. This allows us to slide into an S-shaped hole from above. I call it the hinge spin because we rotate around the square at the top of the S-hole, like a hinge.
Note that it only works on the second rotation beat, i.e. for S we hit A (clockwise rotate) exactly once, position the S, and then hit A again. For Z we hit B. If that rhyme helps you remember, great. Personally I look at the top of the S piece, see the squares curving around to the right, and go "yeah, I need to turn it to the right!"
If you want to understand WHY it works, look at the rotation diagram. The placement from this rotation is very close to transition from second to third beat.
A similar job accomplished a completely different way, the hole spin:
Here we can't hinge off the top, because there is an extra square. But we can go into the hole and spin in from the right. Given the different relative motion, it's not surprising we do something completely different here: for S we hit B, transitioning from the fourth beat to the third beat, and for Z we hit A. Personally I just remember that it's the opposite of the hinge spin.
Finally, here's a much more rarely used spin, the dive-bomb:
Note that it isn't useful for all-clears, because we need the little square at the top to make it work. Otherwise, we just move to the side. Also note that there's no setup rotation needed here: we go from the start state directly into the hole.
2. L-and J spins.
Again the rotations are precise mirror images of each other. Any sequence done with L using "A" can be done with J using "B"
The most useful, seen in all-clears, Long Combos, and elsewhere... the hinge spin:
Pretty easy, once you know you can do it. But boy does it make things easier.
The second most useful, occasionally seen when clearing up garbage, e.g. if you got a garbage hole in a bad spot under the pan... the bellyflop:
The most useless, pretty much only seen in Big Bang mode, the hook spin:
Yeah, this is the same as the spin used for a T-spin triple, but with L and J, seen far, far less.
3. I-spins.
Notice that here again, the rotation pattern has four beats: one with the horizontal I higher, one with the horizontal I lower, one with the vertical I on the right, one with the vertical I on the left. If we're just hard-dropping, we can use A or B depending upon whether we wish to put the piece on the right or left, and save a lateral movement. When doing a spin, however, the beat matters.
There are two I-spins we care about. Sometimes we're trying to bellyflop into a horizontal line:
Here we use the downward stroke, i.e. moving from the second beat to the third with A, or the fourth beat to the third with B. On the left, we use A, on the right, we use B. This fits with our expectation of turning a rod clockwise versus counter-clockwise, holding it at the bottom.
Warning! The I bellyflop is NOT mirror-symmetric. It breaks the rules! Here's an example near and dear to my heart, which comes up in all-clears:
We want to place the I horizontally so we can follow up with the L (on the left) or J (on the right) for the all-clear. On the face of it, there's two ways of doing this. One is to use the natural rotation from the inside, rotating to the third beat. I suggest you practice always doing it this way:
The other obvious way is to come in from the side and do a bellyflop. In one case, it works. In the other, it doesn't:
So we see that the clockwise I-bellyflop requires pieces to be in the way at row three, or it pops out. The counter-clockwise does not. WEIRD!
Sometimes, we need to get into a vertical hole at the side. This is often a life-or-death situation, and it's better to have a plan here than to hold right and mash wildly, hoping it ends up on the right side instead of the wrong.
I admit, I've done the hold-right-and-mash approach many a time. It's not pretty. On the left, with a height 19 wall, is a pretty simple sequence:
Unfortunately, this doesn't work on the right:
It does, however, if we build up a bit underneath:
Note the little notch at the side. It turns out, an even left-side depth of 2 doesn't work:
But if we're a little wider, we can pop it up then B-spin in... even for a height-20 wall:
It turns out the rule here is that if we can get above the wall in the third rotation state and hit B to get to the second, we successfully get to the right side of the wall. We get to such state by hitting A twice due to the dearth of satisfactory clockwise-spin placements.
The pop-it-up method can also be used to get over a left-side height 20 wall. This time with a huge lateral movement:
Here, I switched to state 2 and back to move from height 20 to 22 (!), then did my usual B-spin from the first state to get over a left-side wall.
With only a 3-wide depth-2 platform, we need to drop down to height 19 to get into contact with the platform, then use it to pop us up back to height 21. The trick here is that once we're down a row, we're effectively 5 wide (we only need 4 wide) because the depth 3 stuff then counts too:
Of course, the I piece can SPAWN at height 21, avoiding the need to do a crazy pop-up altogether. Sometimes this just happens when we swap it in. I don't fully understand the rule for this.
The other way is to have stuff in the way at height 20 in row 4, 5, 6, or 7 (don't do this except for column 7 unless the I piece is next):
Starting at height 21, we get over a height 20 left wall by holding left and hitting B once, and a height 19 right wall by holding right and hitting B three times (the first two to get to the third rotation state while dropping down one line, still being above the wall. The third to do the usual rotation from the third state to the right of the wall.) Of course, we could also hold right, hit A twice, then hit B, to stay in the habit of doing the most broadly applicable thing.
You'll probably be pretty stressed when you need to do these (one line from the top) so it's a good idea to practice the major cases down to muscle memory.
4. T-spins.
Without being constrained, the T just rotates in place. But this still allows it to get into places it otherwise could not. For brevity, I'll skip the initial rotation in these diagrams, since it's pretty easy to tell with the T.
A couple T-spins which count as mini in Puyo Puyo Tetris, the pan spin and the flat spin:
In Tetris DS, I would do these for two or three damage. In Puyo Puyo Tetris, you only get the back-to-back bonus from these, so they're not so useful by themselves.
The basic rotation:
This does not count as mini, and is used very frequently for midgame T-spins.
The bellyflop:
This often can be used in place of a basic rotation, and is sometimes very slightly faster to execute. Note the square to the left of the T preventing a basic rotation when we hit A.
The hook spin:
This one is important as it's pretty much the only way to get a T-spin triple. We hook off the hook-shaped square at the top.
Finally, here's the staircase spin. You may get into this when cleaning up an awkward board:
Because the top is blocked, the T goes directly into the staircase hole for a non-mini T-spin double. Not bad, though the remaining board is not the greatest.
Conclusion:
Knowledge of the various spins and practice implementing them is useful in a wide variety of endeavors, from executing Long Combos and Aces, to cleaning up garbage, to plain old stacking pieces. Of course, their most devastating application is in landing T-spins. In our next post, we'll look in more detail at more complex T-spin setups.
thanks for the write up
ReplyDelete