An explanation as to why keyboard diagonal inputs don’t work

[PMYA]

It seems to be being taken as a mistake or something left over from the arcade titles that wasn’t changed. There are good reasons as to why two directions can’t be held at the same time.

In the previous games, they were all played with a 4 way arcade stick and it wasn’t necessary to address the behaviour. On a keyboard, pressing multiple directions at once creates some problems vs using a stick. For example, moving a piece one column to the left and dropping in low gravity is achieved by tapping the stick left and holding down. On a keyboard with multiple directions at once enabled, you could hold down first and tap left during the drop, resulting in a faster placement.

The same is also true for other placements, such as columns 2 and 9, where dasing to the wall and tapping back would be the fastest solution. Keyboard would be able to drop before tapping. There are other more egregious examples of unintended behaviour that would arise. Consider the player holding up throughout an entire low gravity section to sonic drop every piece. Normal mode would effectively turn into a 20g start for keyboard players.

There is probably a workable solution to avoid this behaviour but it is not a simple problem and you can see why the game behaves the way it does, and considering that this is an arcade series, why keyboard was not given a large advantage over stick.

[tcassat]

The guys just need to add the rebinding and fix the apparent bug with the DAS that happens when you change direction almost instantly. The rest is a matter of keyboard users getting used to it, or going to play some game that feels more like what they expect, like all the thousands of modern Tetris available out there.

If the devs really try to implement everything what users are asking for in terms of keyboard, they'll end up creating a third gameplay rule and it won't make sense to use arcade sticks for those who want performance anymore.

[PMYA]

Originally posted by tcassat:

The guys just need to add the rebinding and fix the apparent bug with the DAS that happens when you change direction almost instantly. The rest is a matter of keyboard users getting used to it, or going to play some game that feels more like what they expect, like all the thousands of modern Tetris available out there.

If the devs really try to implement everything what users are asking for in terms of keyboard, they'll end up creating a third gameplay rule and it won't make sense to use arcade sticks for those who want performance anymore.

I do agree that keybinds should be changeable. Frankly I don’t understand why that wasn’t the case for the release. In the past when I used to play TGM on a controller, I ran into issues with TGM1 handling inputs the way it does. I used to have down mapped to a trigger and it caused all sorts of problems, so I get that it can be irritating.

But I’m of the opinion that using the lack of diagonals as a basis for a negative review for a TGM release is like buying a Gran Turismo game and complaining that the driving sucks on keyboard. Of course it does, that’s not what the game was made for.

[Arikado]

I partially blame the Tetris company. Thanks to them most of these games have been boringly homogeneous. Wanna try something new? No, you don't. Also I'd argue that these days, the culture around tetris is mostly PC focused as it's been a common noon break game to play on some website for decades now. So a Pc player without other input methods might perceive as defective what is in fact completely intact. If this game had been released on consoles instead, nobody would have even noticed. I've actually been contemplating between getting a mayflash stick or a flat box for the game, thanks to all this commotion I at least know now to get a stick with a 4 way restrictor mod.

[tcassat]

Originally posted by PMYA:

Originally posted by tcassat:

The guys just need to add the rebinding and fix the apparent bug with the DAS that happens when you change direction almost instantly. The rest is a matter of keyboard users getting used to it, or going to play some game that feels more like what they expect, like all the thousands of modern Tetris available out there.

If the devs really try to implement everything what users are asking for in terms of keyboard, they'll end up creating a third gameplay rule and it won't make sense to use arcade sticks for those who want performance anymore.

I do agree that keybinds should be changeable. Frankly I don’t understand why that wasn’t the case for the release. In the past when I used to play TGM on a controller, I ran into issues with TGM1 handling inputs the way it does. I used to have down mapped to a trigger and it caused all sorts of problems, so I get that it can be irritating.

But I’m of the opinion that using the lack of diagonals as a basis for a negative review for a TGM release is like buying a Gran Turismo game and complaining that the driving sucks on keyboard. Of course it does, that’s not what the game was made for.

I think they wanted to standardize the way the game works on the keyboard, or in other words, force players to adapt to a single possible layout. The problem is that not all keyboards are the same, some keyboards are built in such a way that it's basically impossible to play the game. So giving the option to configure the keys is mandatory.

[PMYA]

Originally posted by Arikado:

I partially blame the Tetris company. Thanks to them most of these games have been boringly homogeneous. Wanna try something new? No, you don't. Also I'd argue that these days, the culture around tetris is mostly PC focused as it's been a common noon break game to play on some website for decades now. So a Pc player without other input methods might perceive as defective what is in fact completely intact. If this game had been released on consoles instead, nobody would have even noticed. I've actually been contemplating between getting a mayflash stick or a flat box for the game, thanks to all this commotion I at least know now to get a stick with a 4 way restrictor mod.

I’ve had a Mayflash F500 Elite V1 for a long time now. It’s significantly different after years of modding but they are ok out of the box I think. Some of the models don’t use Sanwa parts and some do, and I’m not sure which these days. If you can get one with Sanwa parts you should have a good time with it.