Pusher/Pointman Tutorial

[Avarice]

So hey, I'm a bit confused about the basics here. I get chaining and gravity matching or whatever you called that, but your fundamental technique confuses me a bit.

What do you mean when you say you should just push certain colors to the left, and other colors to the right? When do you push them instead of just hitting them?

I am completely new to color matching characters, I've just been playing Ninja Mono. But it would be nice to be able to compete in the global boards once in a while

It's a means of matching away 2 colors while limiting the mental processing needed to keep all incoming blocks in a matchable position.  Say you have, say, red and green coming.  If you only push red blocks to the right, then they will never be in the far left column.  Same goes for green on the right, if you're only pushing them left.  This creates walls of one color on both sides of the grid, which means any block of either color dropped in the middle will be touching its appropriate side.  Let me go get a SS to illustrate this.  Ah yes, here we are!

[kEn_sct]

yeah just as avarice says.  Dont think about just hitting blocks without a push (as this is harder to think about) and u may as well push all block even if the block didn't need pushing (ei the colour is already in left lane and your pushing that colour left)

[Mink_Car]

Hrm. I think I get it.

I'll just have to practice a lot.  Over and over. Woo!

[onetrueboo]

Wanted to thank you for these tutorials.

I've been playing mono for the past several months. I just tried to play the pusher/pointman characters, and I thought my head would explode. Much more difficult than mono, but then you get a higher score.

One thing, the pointman characters ability to pickup colors is 'stack' based, not a queue. Stack in a computer programming sense, 'first in, first out'.

Glad someone figured out some of the subtle aspects of the scoring, as it's not explained well otherwise.

I must agree with the earlier poster that some of the scoring stuff seems pretty arbitrary and could still be refined. This is one reason I like the mono - it's simple. The other characters seem a bit half-baked.   

[Lavos^]

One thing, the pointman characters ability to pickup colors is 'stack' based, not a queue. Stack in a computer programming sense, 'first in, first out'.  

That's FIFO, as opposed to LILO. Then there's FILO and LIFO too. They're all stacks, you need to know how you're stacking otherwise you're going to access violate yourself in the face.

[onetrueboo]

True.

My opinion is 'stack' is the best way to describe it, at least to another programmer 

[Lu Tze]

I think after Mono, you shouldn't immediately start with Pusher or Pointman, because that is really hard at first...

what I did is that I started with Eraser: Just collect all yellow and red blocks, try to avoid the rest, and when you make a mistake, just erase it. If things get too fast, just continously press the Erase-button and you won't collect any blocks as long as you want to. After some practice you can try to change the colors (such as blue and green in song parts where there are no reds or yellows)
Once you are good at that, you can start with Pusher/Pointman and/or try to keep the chain alive.

Even with just this simple Eraser tactic you can beat most Mono Elite-Stealth-scores.

[kEn_sct]

hmm im not sure.  i just always played pusher elite with ironmode on from when i first got the game.  Then, thanks to avarice learned about the chain and i practiced keeping that with pusher getting better and better.  Then i moved on to playing pointman and pusher, pointman was surprisingly easy to learn, and is much less stressfully than pusher

[Lu Tze]

I think this depends on the type of songs you play. I play a lot of songs with 300-400 traffic congestion, which were a challenge even for Ninja Ironmode when I started. After some tries with Eraser I also tried Pusher, but that was just too difficult for these songs at the beginning, so I kept on playing Eraser and eventually moved to Pusher and finally Pointman.
If most of the songs you play are less than 200... well then one might as well start off with Pusher or Pointman even.
Pointman took me longer to learn, but now it is almost easier than Pusher. Pointman requires more reaction and speed from the player, but Pusher requires more thinking, if you want to keep the chain alive AND get the 100% as often as possible (while also making large matches of a valuable color, and so on and so forth).

[onetrueboo]

I've been playing the pusher for about a week now, finally starting to get comfortable with it. The learning curve is much steeper than with mono. At first I just could not flow. Now I'm very much addicted. This is worst sort of video crack. I can't stop playing.

The thing that kills me, compared to mono - getting a clean finish. Getting a clean finish playing mono - yaaaaAAAaawn. Getting a clean finish playing non-mono - FUUUUUUCK (as I botch it). I've had many a smoking run destroyed when I could not clean things up at the end.

I have a question about chaining. It's still not clear to me how to get the big bonus. If I understand correctly the chain must remain unbroken throughout the entire run (?) Meaning there can be no clears until you've completed the run, from the moment you pick up the first block.

This is really how the game is meant to be played, using non-mono characters. The random slop factor adds an important element of luck, things like red paint and white block placement. I think Dylan did a good job with the AI and balancing things. Heh, seems like whenever I plug up the 'digester' with white blocks the game will start dropping them all over the place, just because it know I can't use them, for example..

[kEn_sct]

no you miss understand.  You can clear and keep chain, as long as you pick up a block (any block within 1 second of the match and keep picking up blocks until you have another flashing match).  (you dont need a match to keep chain as long as your picking up blocks.)  But rember its more important to keep chain than to get the clear bonus.  But to get a really high score you need to be clearing nearly every match and keeping chain.

[Malvos]

Yeah, this is what I noticed recently, another tip (not sure if it was mentioned or not) but avoid the white blocks if it will mess up your clear, especially if you have full chain bonus and reds/yellows, the 100% clear bonus will probably my much more than the 2000 points for the white block.

[PulseReaction]

I can't seem to overcome a big barrier in my scoring potential. I can usually get around 1.5~2 times the golden medal score, but I'm completely lost on how to get more.

Is it worth it to make small combos on the beginning, to build up the chain, and then try clearing the board? Any tips are greatly appreciated.

BTW this is on pusher.

[Razaeria]

It depends. If you're playing on a song that starts out fast with many greens/yellows/reds, it's generally better to get those blocks in before you start building your chain. However, when you see the opportunity to build up that chain (slow parts or parts with mainly blues/purples), by all means do so. Once you have your chain built up, you can start making those big matches.

Hope that helps. :)

[Lu Tze]

I sometimes use this chain building, but the difference it makes is relatively small, especially on longer songs.
But yeah: If there are a lot of violett/blue blocks in the beginning, just make 4-8 matches out of those. If it starts with something more valueable, only make 1-2 matches.
Of course, if you lose the chain at any point, you have to build it up again.