Z-Type: How Fast Can You Type?

[notsonerd]

Z-Type

What is Z-Type?

Z-Type is a pretty straightforward typing game. You type each word as fast as you can as they rain down from the top of the screen. The words, however, fly towards you as space ships. As you type, your space ship will shoot a laser for each correct letter you type. Once you complete a word, the enemy ship will blow up. The ships will spawn quickly, but you have plenty of time to type each word before they reach your ship. Once an enemy ship collides with your ship, you lose.

How to Play

The ability to type is the only skill required to play. Your score is determined by your typing speed and accuracy.

Z-Type is played in waves. The spawn varies between short three to four-letter words to ten-letter words and more. You'll find larger enemy ships have longer words. Larger ships also have a chance of spawning smaller ships. You don't have to destroy every ship so long as your ship survives the wave. When you destroy a ship, there is no need to press the spacebar or enter keys to move on to the next ship--the game does this for you. You cannot change enemy ships until you have destroyed it. Once you complete a wave, there will be a short pause before the next wave begins. The game becomes slightly more difficult with each wave.

It can also be played in two modes: normal and expert. Normal mode is aimed at beginning to moderate-level typists; it starts slow and gradually builds in difficulty. Expert mode throws you right into the fray within five waves.You can pause the game at any time by hitting the ESC key.

So how fast can you type?

[ksm123]

I do not like this kind of games.

They start with very slow typing, go to comfortable speed, then there can be a level of not so comfortable speed, and then it quickly become impossible.

I think it would be more beneficial to equip game with the following "leveling" logic:
- find user's "comfortable" speed (i.e. max speed where accuracy does not drop rapidly)
- find user's "non-comfortable" speed (i.e. the speed that would be attainable if user's accuracy was 100%)
Start at user comfortable speed, and SLOWLY crank requirements to non comfortable speed, if it is attained, crank it up a little more, but do it even SLOWER.

This should keep user on his/her toes, reaching for higher and higher speed. Speed determination mechanism should be self correcting, adapting exercise speed to user (rolling) average speed. Of course outliers should be removed from consideration.

[demik]

linkbane?

[notsonerd]

I do not like this kind of games.

They start with very slow typing, go to comfortable speed, then there can be a level of not so comfortable speed, and then it quickly become impossible.

I think it would be more beneficial to equip game with the following "leveling" logic:
- find user's "comfortable" speed (i.e. max speed where accuracy does not drop rapidly)
- find user's "non-comfortable" speed (i.e. the speed that would be attainable if user's accuracy was 100%)
Start at user comfortable speed, and SLOWLY crank requirements to non comfortable speed, if it is attained, crank it up a little more, but do it even SLOWER.

This should keep user on his/her toes, reaching for higher and higher speed. Speed determination mechanism should be self correcting, adapting exercise speed to user (rolling) average speed. Of course outliers should be removed from consideration.

Unfortunately, the game adapted a universal method of difficulty-increase where the game becomes progressively more difficult after each "level" or wave. I personally find the method sound in that it's made very simple, though I've yet to see an algorithm similar to what you described implemented in a competitive typing game, like Typing of the Dead. However, I do not believe this game uses any sort of speed determination; it's a simple concept with only one objective: get as far as you can.

May I ask what your average typing speed is?

If you want the game to progress or crank up at a slow pace, that's what normal mode is for. Cranking up the speed according to the user's personal typing speed would render the scoring system unusable since everyone's scores would be calculated differently. It removes the concept of competition making it a completely different game altogether. Other than recording your overall WPM and accuracy, whether you lose on wave 12 or wave 22 is the only other way it's designed to show that your typing may be improving.

[ksm123]

May I ask what your average typing speed is?

If you want the game to progress or crank up at a slow pace, that's what normal mode is for. Cranking up the speed according to the user's personal typing speed would render the scoring system unusable since everyone's scores would be calculated differently. It removes the concept of competition making it a completely different game altogether. Other than recording your overall WPM and accuracy, whether you lose on wave 12 or wave 22 is the only other way it's designed to show that your typing may be improving.

My average typing speed varies between high 50's on a bad day, to high 60's on a good day, with "achievements" of ~75WPM.

I do not treat this kind of games as competitive typing, I treat them as teaching and training tools.

[notsonerd]

May I ask what your average typing speed is?

If you want the game to progress or crank up at a slow pace, that's what normal mode is for. Cranking up the speed according to the user's personal typing speed would render the scoring system unusable since everyone's scores would be calculated differently. It removes the concept of competition making it a completely different game altogether. Other than recording your overall WPM and accuracy, whether you lose on wave 12 or wave 22 is the only other way it's designed to show that your typing may be improving.

My average typing speed varies between high 50's on a bad day, to high 60's on a good day, with "achievements" of ~75WPM.

I do not treat this kind of games as competitive typing, I treat them as teaching and training tools.

I see. Well I'm pretty sure the game wasn't designed to teach an individual to type better. It does, however, force the individual to type faster than they would normally to try to keep up with the game's speed. Repeatedly playing for the average typist could actually improve one's typing just by trying to beat one wave at a time, as opposed to taking a typing test that doesn't necessarily force you to type past your comfortable speed. I imagine accuracy could also improve since the game pretty much forces you to correct any error, albeit without the use of backspace.

This thread was also created to compare scores, so...

[davkol]

I played it a while ago, but it didn't work correctly in Firefox back then, and the Normal mode was ridiculously boring, while Expert mode wasn't playable either, because of hard-to-read letters in layers.

[notsonerd]

I played it a while ago, but it didn't work correctly in Firefox back then, and the Normal mode was ridiculously boring, while Expert mode wasn't playable either, because of hard-to-read letters in layers.

Do you remember how far you got when you played in Expert mode? For me, I was still able to discern words and letters from each other well into the 20's.

[davkol]

No idea. It was poorly coded, leaking like crazy in Firefox and messy looking on high-res screens, thus I didn't play it much. Besides, I always lost interest in a few minutes, because there was no "flow"/rhythm in typing random words.

Perhaps you can find the original thread about it around here. Maybe I posted my results there back then.

[tp4tissue]

I always get raped when a word i start to type is BEHIND another word, and I can't see it.. this is really tough..

Is there a reset key

[notsonerd]

No idea. It was poorly coded, leaking like crazy in Firefox and messy looking on high-res screens, thus I didn't play it much. Besides, I always lost interest in a few minutes, because there was no "flow"/rhythm in typing random words.

Perhaps you can find the original thread about it around here. Maybe I posted my results there back then.

I figured you might've been playing at a high resolution. I don't know about "flow" or "rhythm," but whenever I play the game I start typing and I pretty much don't stop until the end of the wave. Without having to press enter, spacebar, or use any grammatical tools, the game goes by very speedily.

Here's a video of someone playing similarly to the way I would. My laptop can't handle recordings, unfortunately.

t=181 <--Wave 11 on

Why don't the Youtube embed tags work...

I always get raped when a word i start to type is BEHIND another word, and I can't see it.. this is really tough..

Is there a reset key

Unfortunately, no. It helps to know the words that you're typing. People who look at the keyboard constantly will be at a huge disadvantage.

[tp4tissue]

No idea. It was poorly coded, leaking like crazy in Firefox and messy looking on high-res screens, thus I didn't play it much. Besides, I always lost interest in a few minutes, because there was no "flow"/rhythm in typing random words.

Perhaps you can find the original thread about it around here. Maybe I posted my results there back then.

I figured you might've been playing at a high resolution. I don't know about "flow" or "rhythm," but whenever I play the game I start typing and I pretty much don't stop until the end of the wave. Without having to press enter, spacebar, or use any grammatical tools, the game goes by very speedily.

Here's a video of someone playing similarly to the way I would. My laptop can't handle recordings, unfortunately.

t=181 <--Wave 11 on

Why don't the Youtube embed tags work...

I always get raped when a word i start to type is BEHIND another word, and I can't see it.. this is really tough..

Is there a reset key

Unfortunately, no. It helps to know the words that you're typing. People who look at the keyboard constantly will be at a huge disadvantage.

I don't think people looking at their keyboards all the time are playing typing games..