Quinn contains some experimental features and additional settings which cannot be accessed through the user interface. These preferences are “unofficial,” which means they may change or be removed in future versions; thay may also find their way into the UI at some later date. But since they are useful in certain cases, some of them are documented on this page.
To change a preference, you must quit Quinn first. Then go to the Terminal, enter the command, and launch Quinn again.
- Turning off the animation of the LCD-style displays
- Changing the board background
- Getting statistics about the occurrence of the individual pieces
- Turning live rotation on
- Changing the minimum score required to record a highscore
- Changing the look of shadow pieces
- Changing the animations when rows are erased
- Changing the preview animation
- Turning off sound when inactive
- Changing the speed of some animations
Obsolete settings
- Changing the behavior which moves the piece to the board’s left or right edge
- Changing how pieces disappear
- Turning off the sheet to select a player for the highscore after each game
- Changing the multiplayer rules
- Setting back the timing while playing
Turning off the animation of the LCD-style displays
Quinn 3.2 introduced a short animation whenever the LCD-style displays for score and lines change. Starting with version 3.5, this animation is also used for remote players in network games. The animation can be turned off, which may increase performance during network games with a high number of players.
In Quinn 3.2 through 3.4, use the following command:
In version 3.5, the syntax has changed to:
The animations can be turned on again by changing the 0 to a 1 in either command.
back to topChanging the board background
Starting with version 3.5, Quinn supports background images with transparency. The following setting draws a white background behind the image (as in earlier versions):
Getting statistics about the occurrence of the individual pieces
In the Terminal, type
After each game, Quinn will print a message to the Console showing the number of occurrences of each of the seven piece types in the game.
back to topTurning live rotation on
There is an experimental feature which displays an animation when a piece is rotated. I have never turned it on in the release version because it doesn’t look good with some custom piece images, and can be annoying in faster levels. To enable it, use
Changing the minimum score required to record a highscore
Starting with version 1.3, Quinn only records a highscore (and asks for the player’s name) if a minimum number of points has been reached. To change this threshold, use the command
where threshold is an integer. The defaults is 1000.
back to topChanging the look of shadow pieces
To have Quinn draw a transparent version of the current piece as the shadow piece, type this command in the Terminal:
To get back the original gray shadow, type
Changing the animations when rows are erased
In version 3.1, the animations for erasing rows slightly changed. If you like the old animations better, type the following two commands:
defaults write Quinn QuinnDropRowsAnimationStyle 1
To get back the v3.1 animation styles, use the same two commands with the parameter 2 instead of 1.
There is a slightly different animation style in Quinn 3.1 and later. To turn it on, enter the first of the two commands above with the parameter 3 (instead of 1).
Starting with version 3.2, an experimental new style exists, which might, with some modifications, become the default in the next version. To try it out, use:
defaults write Quinn QuinnDropRowsAnimationStyle 3
Changing the preview animation
With Quinn’s new look in version 3.0, a “morphing” effect was introduced for changing the piece preview. In version 3.1, the animation slightly changed again to a “zoom” effect.
Starting with version 3.2, you can get back the original “fade-over” effect (from versions prior to 3.0) by using the command:
To get back the zoom effect, use:
If you want no transition effect at all, use:
There’s currently no way to get the morphing effect.
back to topTurning off sound when inactive
The following command suppresses any sounds when Quinn is in the backgrounds:
(Quinn may play sounds during network games while in the background.)
back to topChanging the speed of some animations
Quinn 2.1 changed the speed of some animations so that they become faster with every level. If for some reason you want the original behavior back, use this command:
Changing the behavior which moves the piece to the board’s left or right edge
Quinn 2.1 introduced a new feature to quickly move the current piece to the board’s left or right edge by holding down the move/left right key for a certain delay. To change this delay, use the command
where delay is a number which determines how long the key has to be held down until the piece moves to the edge (in seconds). Reasonable values are between 0.1 and 0.4; the default is 0.2. To completely turn the behavior off, set the delay to zero. (Starting with version 3.1, you can also change the delay in the preferences window.)
back to topChanging how pieces disappear
In versions 3.2 through 3.3.5, the current piece disappears with a “poof” when rows are moved in from the bottom or the board is shaken up during network games or tournaments. There’s an alternate effect, which can be turned on with the command
To get back the poof, replace the 1 with 2.
back to topTurning off the sheet to select a player for the highscore list after each game
In versions prior to 3.4, you can suppress the sheet where you are asked to select a player name for the local highscore database. There must be exactly one player in the highscore database for this to work, otherwise the sheet will still pop up. In the terminal, type
Quinn will add all results to the one player in the highscore database, provided the score is above the required threshold for the score and is among the player’s best ten results.
back to topChanging the multiplayer rules
To get back the old multiplayer rules from version 2.0, use this command on the computer running the Quinn server:
This no longer works in Quinn 3.2 and later.
back to topSetting back the timing while playing
In version 3.0, the timing for some actions (dropping pieces, erasing rows, quickly moving the piece to the board’s edges) slightly changed. In version 3.1, there was another change, which shortened the delay after dropping the piece and erasing rows. To get back the behavior from versions before 3.0, use this command:
This only works in versions 3.1 through 3.4.5, and applies to single-player or network games (not two-player games).
back to top