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About multiplayer rules

There are currently five flavors of rules which determine how players influence each other in network games and tournaments. Here’s what they mean:

As usual Everybody plays on his own, but all players get the same sequence of pieces. Furthermore, all players start at the same speed level, and get the same placement of the initial “garbage” blocks, if any.
Random Rows (easy) Same as above, but when one player clears three or four rows, Quinn inserts one resp. two randomly filled rows at the bottom of the opponents’ boards, shifting everything else upwards. Each of these rows contains seven randomly placed blocks. (In network games, all opponents get the same rows.) See the image below for an example.
Random Rows (hard) Inserts one more row than the easy variant does—i.e., two rows if three have been cleared, and three rows if four have been cleared. In network games, you probably only want to use this when the number of players is small.
Erased Rows When one player clears three or four rows, those rows are sent to his opponents (without the final piece that made the rows complete), and inserted at the bottom of their boards. This is the most difficult variant; you’ll probably only want to use it with a small number of players.
Shake Up The name of this rule comes from the accompanying visual effect: In essence, Quinn inserts a number of gaps in each column of the opponents’ boards when a player clears three or four rows, shifting the blocks above the gaps upwards (possibly beyond the top of the pit). When clearing three rows, one gap is inserted per column. When clearing four rows, two gaps are inserted. The image below shows an example.

The gaps are distributed randomly in each column. For the sake of fairness, their locations are the same for all players (in network games). However, the impact of the gaps on a player’s game can differ greatly, depending on how the player’s board looked before the gaps were inserted. In particular, the position of a gap in a certain column will often be above all blocks in that column, so that the gap has no effect at all (for example, some columns in the image below contain only one or no visible gap). This means that players with an almost empty board will generally be less affected than others.

Shifting the blocks up may even create complete rows, if the player is lucky. In this rare case, the complete rows are cleared, and the player gets a score.

The images illustrate some of the multiplayer rules:

The original board. Two random rows have been inserted, shifting the other rows up. The board has been “shaken up” (two gaps per column)—red arrows indicate the new gaps.

In Quinn’s preferences, you can also choose how the winner of a network game or tournament is determined. The following rules influence when a game ends, how the winner is determined, and how the players are ranked in the network or tournament highscore lists:

Highest score ever reached The game ends when all players finished playing, and the winner is the player with the highest score. In the network or tournament highscore lists, the players are ranked by the highest score reached in any game (just like in the permanent highscore list). This was the behavior in versions before 3.1.
Highest total score (tournaments only) Same as above, but in the tournament highscore list, players are ranked by the sum of all scores.
Highest average score (network games only) Same as above, but in the server highscore list, players are ranked by the sum of all scores divided by the number of games played. (This does justice to the fact that some players may connect to a server at a time when the others already finished a number of games.)
Longest total play time (tournaments only) The game ends when one player finishes playing, with the other player being the winner.

To determine the winner over multiple games, a point system is used. The winner is assigned four points, the loser one point. If the game is aborted, both players get one point. In the tournament highscore list, players are ranked by the sum of their points.

Longest average play time (network games only) The game ends when only one player is left playing, with this player being the winner.

To determine the winner over multiple games, a point system is used, which works as follows: The first player who loses gets one point, the second player two points, and so on. The winner’s points result from the number of players times two. If the game is aborted, both players get one point. In the highscore list, players are ranked by the sum of their points divided by the number of games they played.

Note: Players who join an ongoing game at a later time have the advantage when using this rule, so you may want to change Quinn’s network settings so that these players have to wait until the game ends.

Average lines per minute The game ends when all players finished playing. After each game, Quinn calculates the “lines per minute” (lpm) for each player, which is the number of lines erased in the game divided by the play time. (The play time is the time between the start and end of the game minus the time when the game was paused or in the background.) The player with the most lines per minute is the winner.

In the highscore lists, players are ranked by the average lpm value.

See also

Changing how the winner of a network game is determined

Changing how the winner of a tournament is determined