500 Blocks in One Chain - How?

[jello]

Playing the Steam version of Tidalis, I stumbled upon the achievements of course.

One of which is "Chains of Chains Mk III": Clear 500 Blocks in a Single Chain. How are you supposed to do that? The board can be 12 blocks wide and 12 block high, which leads to a maximum of 144 blocks present at once. I can imagine that it's possible to clear 1,000 blocks in one combo for "Combo Annihilator Mk III", but 500 blocks in one chain?!

Seeing the collectibles' (non-)purpose in Tidalis, I'm already thinking it might be similar with this... but un-achievable achievements would be just rude.

[Fiskbit]

While the thought of a 'You'll Never Achieve This!' achievement really amuses me, I assure you that this it is possible to get this. With most achievements, you see the achievement and the way you go about getting it is clear. The challenge in these comes from knocking that achievement off the list. For this one, the challenge comes mainly from figuring out how to get the achievement, and then (less-so, if you do it right) from getting the achievement. I'd like to see if people can figure out how to do it (to my knowledge, no one has done so yet) rather than the answer just being given away.

[Spikey00]

So I'm assuming you have to constantly drop blocks while ensuring you continue the chain(?[?])?

[eRe4s3r]

Mhh that wouldn't work - you still only have 144 free spaces and even if you managed to mark them all while the fell down - when something gets deleted its no longer 1 chain. Only way i could imagine for it to work is with eaters although am not even sure a marked block that gets eaten still counts

[Fiskbit]

Well, according to Steam, someone figured this one out. Congrats to that person.

[Rob]

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Lavatein/stats/Tidalis

Just "To The Moon!" to go now

[eRe4s3r]

I demand a hint! 

[Fiskbit]

You'll need to make a level in the level editor to do this. It's basically impossible in any of the levels already in the game.

[jello]

That's what I thought already. But still: You can't make the board larger than 12*12. :/ And editing the level file with a text editor doesn't work either [or I'm doing it wrong].

[Fiskbit]

No, you don't need to do any level editing outside of the game itself. That would be too cruel. It's true that you can't have a board larger than 144 blocks, but you can get around this with regard to chain size. Keep in mind that the number of blocks in a chain never goes down, and that as long as a chain still has streams on the screen, that chain continues to exist. There are a few things ('things' encompasses game mechanics, game modes, blocks, and that sort of thing) in the game that have the interesting side effect of allowing you to make chains larger than the number of blocks that can fit on the screen at once, and together with some effort and a few helpful blocks and modes, they let you have chains of arbitrary size.

[RCIX]

I'll take a shot soon; Tidalis is downloading right now

[triggerman602]

Is there any way to remove the randomness of block directions when they spawn and take out the two way blocks?

[Ixiohm]

I did it

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197995787284/stats/Tidalis?tab=achievements

It took some experimenting and I think it can be done with a few different setups. I got similar results myself with a few similar setups, in the end it took three or four attempts á 5 or 10 minutes on the winning setup before I nailed it.

Good luck all, in solving it

[Fiskbit]

triggerman: No, there's not, unfortunately. My original solution for this required changing block directions as quickly as I could.

Ixiohm: Congrats! I actually figured out a much better way of doing this tonight than my old solution, basically making the 500 block chain happen all on its own after you've started it, which is awesome. If you play a more active role with it, you can also ensure that the chain doesn't ever end and also make it go significantly more quickly (I hit 1000 blocks in well under 2 minutes). You'll find a nasty surprise when you reach 1000 blocks, though, in the current versions.

[triggerman602]

Well iv found a viable method. Its painstakingly difficult but has gotten me to 350 on one occasion. I know it will eventually work out if i keep at it.