Billy Mitchell's Direct Feed Recordings are MAME Generated

[CaptainJivePants]

Well written.  I trust your judgement and I will support your decision.  Thanks for your continued service to our community.

[QAOP Spaceman]

Before the inevitable backlash begins from those who won't accept the very clear evidence you have presented, let me add my hats off to xelnia and sock master for having the guts to publish and be damned.

[Adam_Mon]

  "Them Hollywood Hucksters"

Well written Jry.
gg sock also.

[andrewg]

Something occurred to me that hasn't before regarding emulation in general. It is standard, the frames will always look the same, whereas in any other recording format, you will always be recording frames (in between) console/system actual framerate. That's to say that simply looking at the beginning of a performance frame by frame may be enough to determine emulation. At least this would be possible if a person simply submitted an inp file as proof, but may not be detectable if other alterations were made.

[QAOP Spaceman]

oops



artist unknown

[sevenup1203]

Great job with the investigating, crazy that this stuff still happens.

[ZedIsDead]

I'm no expert, obviously, but that does look pretty damning. I'd say you made the right decision. Hopefully TG will see reason as well, but judging from the Dragster response, the Billy Mitchell dispute will stay there for months until public outcry from outside forces their hand. Good job putting this together, Jry.

[michaelsroka]

oops



artist unknown

This is amazing.  Both the pictures and the findings.

[craighiphopfish]

Im thinking it’s time to change my profile picture.

[YesAffinity]

Great work, guys!  I'm glad my setup provided useful evidence in this matter.  I wholeheartedly support the resulting decisions.

[TheSunshineFund]

Great work, guys!  I'm glad my setup provided useful evidence in this matter.  I wholeheartedly support the resulting decisions.

Yer good stuff mate!  Definitely added much to the evidence package.

[Ohrami]

I always thought his gameplay looked abnormally swaggy. Good work exposing him. The movie is sort of ruined for me now though.

[ripper]

Some crazy, crazy stuff going on anymore.   

[colecomeister]

Why leave the 933,900? Even if legit, the presence of illegitimate scores would disqualify him from being on any HSL, right?

All legit scores should be included. Remember, whether a player falsified a future score does not mean that we just remove all their scores that are legit. We want the list to be relevant as well as accurate.

Way to go Jeremy!

I'm very much a curious visitor here, so I don't wish to come across as trolling DKF members. Is the tracking undertaking by DKF purely a statistical enterprise? That is, no one can truly be "disqualified" from being tracked by DKF if a player at any time puts up a true score, even if the same player has on other occasions falsified or misrepresented their score? I think this question of whether Mitchell should be stripped of any recognition (as outlandish as that sounds) may come up at TG.

I have to admit that, on the one hand, yes, we have a player who has publicly put up big scores, that is undeniable, and yes, we can't ever "forget" that he actually did that, and so why shouldn't those legitimate scores be tracked out of a devotion to historical comprehensiveness? However, on the other hand, the charges leveled here - that Mitchell with deliberate forethought falsified and misrepresented the circumstances of his game play, passing off a MAME submission as an arcade submission on three separate occasions, going so far as to create a "live venue" narrative with staged filming in one instance - should only face the punishment of having his score adjusted? That said, I understand that in the case where a scoreboard does not view inclusion or recognition of scores as a "privilege" for the player and is simply tracking legit scores, then yes there really isn't a "punishment" except to scrub scores that aren't.

[krehztim]

As someone who just started in this whole community about 3 years ago and knows very little about the technical aspects of the hardware and of the MAME programming, but who spends hours a day tearing down MAME submissions at RU, this is an astounding analysis, and Jry did an amazing job of explaining and showing the discrepancies.  Unreal job. 

While I mostly agree with leaving his legitimate score on the scoreboard, it does seem almost sad that if Todd were to actually put up a 5.57, for example, his score is verboten.  Billy getting better treatment because of his standing in the community, and for his actual achievements?  Also doesn't help that Todd was such a stonewaller for so many years and refused to compete.  Billy's got to be approaching 60, there's no way he's hitting 1.2 million anymore.  I can't imagine the uproar if TG would remove all of Mitchell's scores. 

Well done, everyone who put this together.