DK Jr. springboard discussion

[gstrain]

It still surprises me that people can press a button quickly enough for it to matter in this case, although I have seen plenty of evidence that Track and Field players can manage to get a button press to register incredibly quickly -- without doing that, it would surprise me if just pressing the button twice is really effective. 

Just for fun, I encourage folks to do a Yahoo search for "Online Stopwatch" and click the first link.  Select Stopwatch (not Count Down).  Now, use your mouse and "double click" on the button. . .

When I use a normal (fast) double clicking style of the mouse button, I generally get around 0.165 seconds.  That's pretty fast.  But, it's not even close to fast enough for this particular issue in DKJR.  I'd have to dig around to double check, but I think there's only 3 "good" frames for the springboard -- if there's a 4th good frame, obviously it makes things a lot easier.  But, with only 3 good frames, we're talking about frame #1, #3 and #5 and that's it.  So, if you "miss" on your first button press and land on frame #2, you need to be incredibly fast to press the button again to catch frame #5.  We're talking about pressing the button 0.05 seconds later.

Now, go back to the online stopwatch and see how long it takes you to manage a time of 0.05 seconds.  Just now, after about 15 tries, I managed exactly 0.05 on the stopwatch by using two different fingers on my other hand to press the left mouse button (most of the time my mouse just would not register the 2nd button press).  Using one finger to hit the button twice the best I could do after 7 or 8 tries was 0.067 seconds -- again, not good enough.

Dean, I don't think mouse clicks are a very good comparison.  It's faster to push a button especially if you are using multiple fingers.

A few years back I did an analysis of the 100M dash from TJT's Track 'N' Field MAME replay at MARP where he used a 6 finger technique.  During the run he had 86 separate hits of the right button and 88 of the left button, for a total of 174 distinct presses.  This was during 455 frames, which is 7.58333 seconds.  So his average speed was 22.945 presses a second, meaning he was able to do distinct button presses at a sustained rate of one every .0435 seconds for seven and a half seconds.  Also keep in mind that at this rate players need to be careful to not press TOO FAST.  Even if you are making distinct button presses if you don't have a "no press" during intermediate frames, your presses won't register as separate presses.  So the maximum you can possibly register is 30 presses a second, not 60, and these top players using 6 or 8 finger techniques need to focus on rythym to make sure there are sufficient gaps in presses and not just pressing as fast a possible.

-George
 

[up2ng]

Ok, I give up.  Clearly with a little practice we can learn to master pressing a button on a single frame with less than 1/120th of a second margin for error in each direction pretty much every time.  A child can do this after all.  It's also clearly a common skill for people to press a button twice in 1/20th of a second.  Sounds good to me.  I don't know what I was thinking.

[Graham Wolfe]

keep this in mind, everyone is subjected to this same issue so no one has an advantage over you but we deal. its just one of those things, kind of like how mario stops after a jump, something i hate from DK but i guess you guys dont mind

[marinomitch13]

Ok, I give up.  Clearly with a little practice we can learn to master pressing a button on a single frame with less than 1/120th of a second margin for error in each direction pretty much every time.  A child can do this after all.  It's also clearly a common skill for people to press a button twice in 1/20th of a second.  Sounds good to me.  I don't know what I was thinking.

Dkjr is 60fps, right? Your numbers express this fact. However, I think you're thinking about it too much as being a skill of precision, rather than just mashing increasing probabilistic luck. If there are 60 frames in 1 second, and there is a 8 frame range when the spring is fully compressed to when Jr's sprite changes and leaves the spring (see here: http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php/topic,3570.msg44273.html#msg44273), then you have a .13333 sec range in which to get as many smashes as you can. If you are able to mash at 32 mashes per second (way easier to do with a finger scratch in one go than it is to maintain while using 2 hands -like is needed for T&F), then you will be able to do 1 mash about every .03125 seconds on average. Now, this is just an average, it's not likely that you'll be able to space the mashes out consistently, but that doesn't matter a whole lot, because it's more about the probability of hitting a 'good' frame given the number of opportunities you can get in during the timeframe -and, since it is extremely unlikely that your smashes would be perfectly space enough to land on frames 2, 4, 6, 8. So, if you get in 4 smashes during the given time frame, you'd have about an (.5)^4=.0.625% chance of not hitting a 'good' frame on average. This is a 93.75% success rate. If you only do a 3 finger scratch and only get in 3 smashes, then you have a (4/8)%^3=.125% chance of not hitting a good frame on average. A 87.5% success rate. 2 smashes, similarly, yields a 75% success rate -which my be more typical for someone utilizing the 'double flap'. Given what you've stated about getting on average a .165 time on the stopwatch you should be able to probably average about 2 smashes per the .133333 seconds if you were using the double flap, as it would probably double your clicking speed. I know this because I averaged about .1 on the stopwatch with 1 finger, about .065 with double flap (again, harder without a lead-in to build momentum), and about .045 the 2 finger scratch.

[Graham Wolfe]

Honestly due to lack of ability to mash buttons (keyboard) you could bind left arrow, down arrow, right arrow all to jump and roll them. For reversals in fighting game community 1/60 frame, we roll light punch, medium punch, heavy punch during specials. I'd say our success rate is like near perfect at least 19/20 using that technique though honestly I never miss using that when it matters because I hit 3 frames consecutively before or after but within the 1 frame window

[Graham Wolfe]

But I will add, the timing took me years to get down but you guys got years on the dks.
Technically it's not against the rules to multi bind just can't use auto fire which is pretty standard.
I don't really see a problem due to already having some handicap by using keyboard. Though some might argue keyboard is easier than stick. But the rate mark hits jump
is impossible to emulate on keyboard

[up2ng]

Mitch, you should reread your own link.  Notice the bold -- there are only 3 good frames within a 5 frame window.  Therefore, the timeframes we are talking about are precisely what I have just written in this thread here:

https://donkeykongforum.net/index.php?topic=374.msg8973#msg8973

I never argued that it wasn't possible using Track and Field style button mashing -- in fact, if you go back, I suggested that this might be the only possible way to guarantee that you are getting two button presses within the good frame window.  I am very suspicious that the "double flap" is not fast enough to do this, although I guess I'd have to see exactly what you're doing with your hands when you do this -- maybe the description isn't matching up with what I imagine is happening.  I would say that someone just pressing the button twice is almost certainly not consistantly fast enough to press the button twice at precisely 0.05 seconds apart from each other (faster is bad, slower is bad). 

I also agree that mapping multiple buttons in MAME "might" work, although probably not in the way Graham is thinking.  In his Street Fighter example, he believes that he is hitting 3 consecutive frames with the three buttons.  Unfortunately, this is not possible in DKJR, because the game only thinks there is one button.  Therefore, once a jump button is pressed, it will need to be UNPRESSED for an entire frame before any jump button can be pressed again (and have it actually register as a new input).  So, rolling three buttons to catch 3 frames in a row will actually yield exactly ONE input in DKJR -- but, I'm sure a player could develop a technique using two fingers and two buttons to press (AND RELEASE) them extremely quickly.

Anyways, I guess just seeing a lot of threads where people talk about how they have "mastered" the Springboard jump (this is NOT the only thread on the subject, trust me) is annoying to me.  The springboard is broken -- and a lot of these players who talk about it probably don't even know it.  It's spoken about like it's just another difficult aspect of the game's design that can be learned (like MASTERING the springs in DK, for example) -- and yet, it's not.  Unlike the springs in DK (or any other difficult but legitimate game design) the springboard actually doesn't work correctly.  If you are extraordinarily gifted at creating a button pressing rhythm at just the right speed using something like a Track and Field style technique you CAN increase your probability, but you are still leaving it somewhat up to chance and you WILL fail some nontrivial percentage of the time.  To say anything else on the subject is, quite frankly, just silliness.

[syscrusher]

With my 1-button mashing speed, I can consistently get over 80% no problem.  I don't think my mashing is particularly fast either.  I have gotten 100% and 90% on kill screen runs a few times.  Can't argue with actual results.

[Graham Wolfe]

keep in mind everyone, hitting 1 frame in 60 is doable, so a lot of you who might be mashing might just have learned the timing very well. Like i said in fighting games my brother, a very consistent person, prefers single press reversals which he lands in the 80% range on a good day. This was from years of practice he learned his timing well. Same can be for springboard. Like I said about that 7/10 wind god fist from Tekken that was something I had just picked up over the course of a few weeks but given more time I could prolly pull it off at least 8/10 times on command since it was 1 frame out of 60. I think 80% is a good percentage for someone who has mastered the timing. You can either do that or super mash like Mark which seems to be a very good alternative if one does not want to hope he is having a good day.

Dean I guess that is a problem with multi mapping as for fighting games there are 3 separate punch and each can be pressed independently.

[marinomitch13]

Mitch, you should reread your own link.  Notice the bold -- there are only 3 good frames within a 5 frame window.

I realized I had misread the post to say 4 possible frames as Dean was posting, and I was trying to edit it before Dean posted, but he beat me to it! And even with that mistake, I had made another by using 8 frames, when I should have used 7.


So with this correct setup, you have 5/60 of a second, which is .08333 total seconds to get as many mashes in as you can. If you can get 3 smashes in, you have a 1- (2/5)^3=93.6% chance on average of making the jump. 2 smashes is 84% chance. 1 smack is obviously 60%. However, these percentages assume a sort of 'random selection type' probability and are therefore just rough estimates. The specific nature of your actual pressing rate, that is, how your 1, 2, or 3 mashes fit into the timeframe (e.g. was your rate relatively consistent? were all the smashes bunched together in only one area of the timeframe?), can affect your results in either direction.

If I had to guess, and account for all the mashing rhythms and mashing rates, I'd say most people who have already gotten the timing down and are trying to mash their best would probably tend towards getting 2 mashes in. about an 80% success rate sounds reasonable. The fact that someone like Mark has gotten a perfect run is probably just him getting lucky many times in a row during that one game.

The springboard is broken -- and a lot of these players who talk about it probably don't even know it.  It's spoken about like it's just another difficult aspect of the game's design that can be learned (like MASTERING the springs in DK, for example) -- and yet, it's not.  Unlike the springs in DK (or any other difficult but legitimate game design) the springboard actually doesn't work correctly. 

To know that the springboard is 'broken' and doesn't work 'correctly' it would seem one would have to make a judgment about the intent of the programmers. I'm sure they had people test the game out, and I'm sure most the people that tested it out weren't experts at T&F mashing, so if the programers heard any word back about how the game was maybe 'broken' or lacking with respect to the springboard, why didn't they 'fix' it? It seems more likely that the programmers would have known about it (at least after some testing) and where ultimately ok with how it has ultimately ended up.

As far as I've heard, a key component to DKjr's 'clunkiness' is that it only registers inputs on every other frame. The programmers wanted this feel -or at least for this to be a fundamental aspect of the game. However, to have this 'clunkiness' aspect but also make the springboard a timing-based element to the game, necessarily created the added fact that the spring jump would also be luck based. It seems to me the intention was likely just that: To make the springboard timing based. However, they also had to be ok with the effect that their other desire for the game had on that aspect of the game (the springboard) as well. It was probably a compromise from their point of view, but it appears they were ultimately satisfied with it. It seems too bold to call it 'broken' or in-'correct' to me.

[ChrisP]

My argument for it being deliberate, from a "level design" basis,  is that making the springboard a matter of simply pressing the button a single time would render it almost totally devoid of challenge. The "long path" must be there for a reason. Why put the long path there at all if the superjump was trivially easy to perform?

(However, the counterargument to that could be that the intended challenge there was to time the superjump such that Junior would land on the floating island, with the long path being a plan B for those who couldn't time the jump correctly.)

Then again, the randomness may have been an intentional attempt to "hide" the superjump as a sort of easter egg. Many new players would probably try pressing the jump button to see what happened while on the springboard, most likely not discover the superjump right away, and write it off until one day - surprise! - they hit the jump. Then they'd try it again the next time, it wouldn't work, and the whole thing would be confounding and mysterious.

I am partial to this theory that it may indeed have been an accidental bug, but was kept in the game anyway because they liked the effect.

Remember, many bugs were found and fixed in DK between the original Japanese version and the final TKG-4 version. The springboard is a fundamental part of the gameplay in Junior and there is no possible way that they weren't aware of the superjump issue by the time the game was brought to America, and certainly not by the time Nintendo released the Easy and Hard upgrade kits. The behavior of the springboard persists to the last upgrade. Whether it was originally a bug or part of the design, it was intentionally not fixed.

Full agreement though that it's annoying when people say they've "mastered" the springboard. That's like saying you've "mastered" rolling a six on a die.

[JCHarrist]

Then again, the randomness may have been an intentional attempt to "hide" the superjump as a sort of easter egg.

It's printed right on the instruction card.



If jump button is pressed with RIGHT TIMING.

I think it works exactly as intended.

[ChrisP]

Oh shit.

I think we have a weiner.

I guess that's what we get for never having looked at an actual Junior instruction card!

Richie was right about MAME players! 

[marky_d]

Full agreement though that it's annoying when people say they've "mastered" the springboard. That's like saying you've "mastered" rolling a six on a die.

I am in full agreement with your thoughts here, but who exactly has said they have "mastered" the springboard? I don't remember anyone saying that. Maybe I missed it somewhere?

[ChrisP]

Actually... if I remember correctly, Calvin Frampton did. 


EDIT: yes

http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php/topic,2243.120.html
Q-About how often were you able to successfully perform a "Super-Jump" off of the Springboard in your high score game?

A-Most games close to 100%.  I did not know anyone that was 100%.  I doubt it is possible to successfully perform the super jump 100% of the time in every game.  I was very good at the super jump.