Puyo Puyo

Puyo Puyo Beans






Puyo Puyo Structures

Classic Double

clasic paul

Shifting Pattern

Make the Trigger Block the Trigger

Sandwich Beans

Inverted Trigger

Overview of structure strengths

Pro:

Classic double Classic Paul Shifting Pattern Make the Trigger Block the Trigger Sandwich Beans Inverted Trigger

Con:

Classic Double Classic Paul Shifting Pattern Make the Trigger Block the Trigger Sandwich Beans Inverted Trigger

Gratuitously large structures

The double bye

This is the start of the structure and then you need to do Make the Trigger Block the Trigger. The idea of this structure is to build something extremely long. The structure has a five chain explosion in two columns, but is difficult to build without short curcuiting. Since the last throw sound for the the frist player in Kirby's Avalanche is "Bye", this stucture is a good attempt to get two "Bye" sounds to go off consistently (a chain of eight explosions.) Sandwich beans can be theoretically be built larger in two columns - a chain of seven is possible in two columns (this has NEVER been accomplished in practice, plus the trigger of the sandwich beans would be seven high and thus almost impossible to set off.) !WARNING! Building this will get you killed against anyone but the very inept.

Supper sandwich -- a fifteen long structure (set it off with blue)
An example of a nineteen long structure, created by Paul Schlegel with some help from Jason Hoerner. Note that ninteen is the longest possible structure.

Throw sounds

These are the sounds made as each consecutive explosion in a chain reaction is set off. Note that no sound is made for the first explosion. The last sound in each list is repeated for additional explosions.

Puyo Puyo (Super Famicom) note that these are Japanese and cannot really be spelled. These are four throw sounds.

Kirby's Avalanche (SNES) There are six throw sounds.

Terms

death beand - An amount of white beans that will result in the inevitable death of th eplayer. The standard well is 6x12. In theory, to insure death, one must send two orange beans plus two rows. In practive, two orange beans (10 rows) is considered death beans, because normally, the well is not completely empty and the player cannot expect to get enough matching colors at the top. When playing on skill levels 4 or 5, where the player starts with 3 or 5 rows of white beans, the amount of white beans for death is correspondingly reduced.

Single, double, triple, quad - Terms which specify the length of a throw in terms of hte number of consecutive explosions in a chain reaction.

Big single - A single which contains an extradordinarily large number of beans, all the same color. Not that if the single consists of beans of multiple colors, it will not be as large. The biggest possible single is 14 colored beans, which will send around 20 white beans at the opponet (over 3 rows).

Big double - A double which contains an extraordinarily large number of beans in the second explosion. These are especially dangerous because the opponent does not have any time to react (as soon as they hear the sound, it is too late.)

Bunghole - A set of colored beans in a structure that is still accessible to be exploded after the opponent has thrown. The term comes from Beavis, as Cornholio: "Would you like to SEE my bunghole?". Correct usage: "Wow, you sent a bunch of white beans, but I can still see my bunghole!" or "I thought I was dead, but I had a really nice bunghole." Incorrect usage: "You plugged up my bunghole." The creation of bungholes is critical to survival, because they allow white beans to be exploded much more efficiently after the opponent has thrown.

Bean AI - Term coined by Jason Hoerner describing the inevitable tendency of single white beans to fall in the worst possible column. The most common manifestation of the "Bean AI" occurs whenever a single bean falls in the third column form the left, filling you up and causing instant death. Sometimes, the Bean AI is even more insidious, and will drop two white beans in a row on the third column to cause death. Another Bean AI effect is to block the trigger of a structure. A statistical analysis of single bean fall distrbutions reveals that prability and Murphy's Law alone does not account for this effect. However, attempts to isolate the section of code which implements the Bean AI have failed so far. One strategy when the opponent is near death is to make a quick single in order to send "AI beans" to finish them off.

Throwing - Setting off your first chain reaction structure in a game, starting the battle.

Dribble bean - A white bean that doesn't drop immediately because the column it attempted to drop in was full. Since dribble beans don't fall in a single drop, they can cause death because each time a pair of colored beans is placed more dribble beans fall covering up the beans that were just placed. Thus it is very dangerous to fill up complete columns in a structure. You will be "dribbled to death".

Spinning war - A condition that occurs when both players have sent death beans. In order to win, it is neccessary to delay the drop of white beans as long as possible so the other player dies first. This can be done by spinning the bean rapidly on a flat surface so that it takes longer to rest on the surface. Additional spinning war tactics are setting off an explosion, timing the placement of beans so that there is more fall time of the bean before it reaches the surface, and playing shorter (playing short means your chain reaction finished first, allowing you to get fall time while waiting for the enemy structure to finish.)

White boy - A colored bean that is placed inefficiently or wasted because the player is concentrating on building a specific structure. This can occur either form simple oversight or strict adherence. The term comes from the movie Better Off Dead: "It's a shame when folks be throing away a perfectly good white boy". Common usage: "You just threw away another white boy!" or Construction beans - Clear beans which simplify the building of a structure. These occur whenever an (often inexperienced) player sends a single clear bean or a single row of clear beans over early in the game. These beans are easy to integrate into many types of structures and almost always fail to cause any damage.

Slay - Playing on the same skill level against a player with such a lower ability that they have no change of winning. True beginners can be slayed even when the expert is playing on a much higher skill level.

Torture - Playing against an inexperienced player and trying to keep them alive as long as possible, only to kill them in the end. The weaker player is trying hard to win, but is unable to do any real damage to the expert. Tourture can be co9nsidered a type of treaty play, because the weaker player can win if the expert becomes greedy, and the weaker play is given a fair chance of building structures.

Treaty - An agreement whereby the stronger player attempts to handicap themselvs to play against a weaker player on the same skill level. Some treaties are honor based (the weaker player wins a "moral" victory when the stronger player breaks the treaty.)

    Examples of treaties
  1. Tourture
  2. Sending only singles
  3. Sending only doubles
  4. Only throwing after the weaker player has thrown first
  5. Filling the first 2 or 3 columns on tbe left randomly before starting to build a structure
  6. Pulling the first three to five beans straight down, spiking one's self
  7. Covering up the next bean ((usually with a couple of layers of post-it notes.) This is by far the most challenging handicap because it directly destroys the thought process of the expert player. A common tactic when playing with this handicap is to look at the OTHER players next bean and try to keep pace with them.

One,( two, three, four) row - each row is 6 clear beans (the width of hte well.) The word row always refers to rows of clear beans.

Orange bean - An orange bean represents 5 rows of clear beans or 30 total clear beans.

Eight orange off the top - A throw which consists of so many orange beans that you can not see how many there are, even after the first two have fallen on the enemy and killed him. Since only six orange beans whow up at the top, a throw bigger than eight orange beans has an unknown size.

The well - A single player's playing field where the beans fall. The standard well is 6x12 beans. On consoles, the sprite size for tbeans is 16 pixels, snd thus the well is 96x192 pixels. Qwirks, the lame PC version of Puyo Puyo uses 32x32 pixel bean sprites for tha 192x384 pixel well.

Strict adherence - Building a single type of structure with no flexibility, even if the beans would be better suited for a different kind of structure. Strict adherence often occurs with beginners who build Classic Paul or Classic Doubles. The common symptoms of strict adherence are throwing away white boys. The expert knows that it is vital to throw whenever the opponet throws. The expert knows how to use construction beans and repair broken structures. The expert knows what kind of stuctures to build and adapts his play to the kinds of structures the opponent builds ofer a series of games. Against a beginner (first time puyo puyo player) the expert will win more than 99% of games.

Mind control rays - A term invented to explain the loss of cognitive Pluyo thought processes when playing against a lower skilled player, allowing them to win despite their lack of skill. This term was coined to explain the sequence of bizarre losses when playing against Kyle Brink. At a certain point midway through a game, the ability to figure out where to place beans becomes scrambled. Great mental focus is required to escape the power of these rays.

Alternating beans - A bug/feature in the random number generator of Puyo Puyo and Kirby's Avalanche results in the occasional generation of an alternating psequence of two identical bean pairs at the beginning of a game. If a player recorgnizes that there are alternating beans, they can easily build a quick Classic Paul by organizing the beans into columns.

Nigh death - A term describing an amount of white beans which have a good chance of killing the other player. These are clear beans that are almost big enough to be death beans (typically 8 to 10 rows, or slightly less than 2 orange beans.) These beans will kill the other player if the do not throw (their will is already full of colored beans.) However, if the other player throws death beans, the player that only manages to throw nigh death beans will lose.

Spike (spiked) - A spike is a set of beans piled up on the third column from the left (sometimes called the "spike zone".) Filling the third column results in death, som any extra height on this column should be avoided. A classic example of being spiked is having two beans in the spike column when a spinning war occurs. The second orange bean that falls results in instant death (10 rows plus 2 on the spike zone.) Much more dramatic spikes are know to happen, and experienced players will panic and frantically attempt to destroy them.

Poision beans - A pair of colored beans which exactly fits into a structure to allow the structure to go off longer or larger than would normally occur by setting off the trigger alone. A perfect bean may also refert to a bean is the only specific bean which allows a structure to be triggered.

Miracle bean - A bean which comes in at the moment when a player is about to lose which allows the player to survive a little longer. Often times miracle beans are also perfect beans. This mainly applies to beans which come in when the player is at the very top of the well and only has space to place one or two beans before death would occur.

Digging - The act of cleaning up clear beans that the opponent has thrown. Clear beans are blown up by exploding colored beans next to them, so the experienced player will organize explosions to maximize the number of clear beans that are destroyed. Another important digging tactic is the creation and utilization of bungholes (colored beans that are visible or barely buried by the clear beans.) Cleaning up clear beans gives the player more space to attempt to create another structure to throw.

Digging war - A game where both players throw an amount of beans smaller than death beans. The digging skills of the two players are pitted against one another.

Long - A term describing the construction of the structure which goes off as a very long chain reaction or is especially large. Thus it takes a long time to build. Common usage is building long or playing long. Normally when a player builds long, the end result is death beans. If both player play long, a common result is a spinning war.

Short - A term describing the construction of a structure which consists of few explosions or is relatively small. Thus it takes a short time to build. Common usage is building short or playing short. When a player builds short, death beans almost never occure, and thus the player must send additional throws in order to finish off the opponent. Playing short is a strategy to counteract a player that is playing very long. The quick explosion buries the opponent's structure before they can finish it. It is important when playing short to not build a long chain reaction (the long chain reaction takes a lot of time to finish exploding, giving the other player more time and early warning to complete his structre.) A quick, three row double si a good short. If a short player sends something too small or takes too long to send another throw, the opponent often can "get back to his structure" and set if off with devastating results. If both players play short, a common result is a digging war.

Flounder - A state of play during a game of Puyo where a player fails to actively create a structure. The brain of the player has mostly shut down and only understands the creation of singles. The player is just staying alive. It is possible to flounder when digging, where a player is not digging effectively (not creating explosions which efficiently get rid of clear beans.)

Greed - The creation of dangerous unnecessarily larger or longer structures, often where the attempt to create hte structure may result in death because of lack of space. Greed is most commonly used to describe behavior in a digging war, where a player takes chances near the top to create a slight larger structure in limited space whic can result in instant victory if it is successfully exploded. The less aggressive player, setting off mere singles is gloriously squashed!

Short circuit - A misplaced color bean in a structure which causes a structure to go off in a shorter chain reaction. Normally this results when beans are set on top of a stucture carelessly. These beans fall and cause later parts of the structre to explode prematurely.

Bet - Choosing a specific color of a bean when extreamely close to death and placing several of them together, betting on the hope that more beans of that color will come before death occures. Betting is a a neccessity because the player can only see the current bean and the very next bean, thus a choice must be made.

Checker board - A diagram best illustrates this one:

The above structure is a classic checkerboard, but the term applies to abroader class of structures where beans of many different colors are piled on top of one another and none of them are connected to neighbors of the same color, such as the following:

Efficiency - The amount of beans which explode in a structure as a ratio to the number of beans that are placed. Efficiency can be determined by looking at the number of colored beans that are left in a structure after it has exploded. The fewer remaining colored beands, the higher the efficiency.

Perfect efficiency - A state of efficiency where ALL the colored beans in the well explode as part of a structure.

Bean resources - Each player gets the same set of beans. Ideal sturcture construction involves use of all the colored beans you are given. Colored beans are referred to as bean resources. This term is most commonly used in the expression "throwing away bean resources". A common waste of bean resources is blowing up singles early in the game before throwing. These singles do not accomplish anything and also cost time.

Pull - To pull down a bunch of beans as fast as pssible while waiting for the trigger bean for a structure. Common usage: "Your sturcture is ready! Come on, pull!"

Throw size

The following pseudo code defines the calculation of clear beans. Note: this is WRONG!
Inputs chain = number of current consecutive explosions (>= 1)
numsets = number of disconnected explosion sets (>=1)
setsize[numsets] = size of each disconnected explosion set (>=4)

Functions
CHAINBONUS(n) ((n==1) ? 0 : 2*(1<<n))
NUMSETSBONUS(n) ((n==1) ? 0 : 3*(1<<(n-2)))
SETSIZEBONUS(n) ((n=4) ? 0 : n-3)

Pseudo code
base = 0
bonus = CHAINBONUS(chain) + NUMBERSETSBONUS(numsets)
for ( s=0; s<numsets; s++ )
base += setsize[s]
bonus += SETSIZEBONUS(setsize[s])
if bonus == 0 then bonus = 1
score = base * bonus
clear_beans = score / 70

Fractional clear beans are searately maintained (score%70)