Tetrisphere
Trouble
Sphere Illusion
Creating a sphere out of square blocks is impossible. But let's assume that the Tetrisphere ball is a true sphere: Imagine a vertical Tetris piece at the center of the screen. If you were to move this piece up to the north pole of the globe then down to the left until it was on the left part of the equator then slide it to the right back to your original starting point -- it would now be a horizontal Tetris piece.

Correct Information

Thanks to Jon McBain, Animator/Modeller at H2O Entertainment.
Pictures taken using Lightwave.
  1. Make a 20 point circle in the top view, make sure the top point is at 0,0,0.
  2. Copy the circle and rotate it along the z-axis 90 degrees.
  3. Copy the second circle and rotate it along the y-axis until its end point is lined up with a side point of the first circle.
  4. Scale it so that its furthest point lines up with the a point of the first circle in the top view.
  5. Keep copying the second circle and rotating and scaling it.
  6. Kill all the polygons (you just need the points) its generated and reconnect them by hand.

Previous Guesses (Incorrect)
Try making a map of the Tetrisphere ball and carve a dividing line along the equator. When mapping the sphere you will soon find that instead of having half of the sphere, you actually have the whole thing mapped out. The surface of the sphere actually seems to double its would-be realistic surface.

It turns out the sphere is really a doughnut.

This should explain everything: The enlarged surface area, the fact that none of the lines converge, the way the game's developer mapped the entire sphere after carving a line around the center, and why the pieces do not rotate properly. The "sphere" is an illusion. It's not a rare occurence that video games "bend" reality, but the way the eye and mind gets tricked in Tetrisphere is quite impressive.

The sphere could also be a rectangle viewed through a "fisheye" lens. This is more likely as it would be easier to do.

Think of a pile of blocks X wide, Y front-to-back, and Z deep. (Make X, Y and Z whatever numbers you want -- say X=64, Y=64, Z=64.) Now render it from a top view, and use wrap-around when you scroll in X and Y (scrolling up, down, left, right on the screen). Finally increase the view angle of the virtual camera well beyond the norm -- give it a fisheye lens. The result will be a much simpler basis for the illusion of Tetrisphere. Note that this explanation also accounts for pieces dropping down to smaller "spherical" layers, and still fitting perfectly. Any curved shape fails this test.

Top
E-mail
Home

Tetrisphere™ is a trademark of H2O Entertainment and is licensed by Nintendo.

Tetrisphere Trouble is best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or above.