steering barrels while climbing ladders - 8 way stick

[Fast Eddie]

iv been meaning to test this since i saw some posts about it a while back, was kinda off topic on the thread so ill post here...

i just tested it and you can indeed steer barrels while climbing ladders, it will accept two inputs at once, not like in mame where you just freeze, you can hold the diagonal while climbing and the barrels will steer and you will run sideways automatically at the top of the ladder...

i doubt this information is of any use, but some might be interested...

 

[ChrisP]

You don't necessarily just stop in MAME. It depends on what order you press the keys. If you're holding right and press up, you'll stop. But if you hold up and press right, you'll walk. In MAME I can climb while holding right/left. The barrels don't steer though (I used the colored barrel hack to be sure).

Are you absolutely sure you were steering them while climbing, and they weren't just going down on their own?

This is actually a pretty major deal if true. It means that the Wiebe dissection was right on that one point (though still ridiculously wrong on everything else), and that Steve had a small but definite advantage on his runs. Though nothing like Billy's advantage of being able to submit "direct feeds" with no sound, no visible cab, and no visible Billy...

[Fast Eddie]

yeah i did just notice in mame that you can climb while pressing sideways, but you will stop at the top of the ladder, im 100% sure i was moving sideways at the top without letting go of the up direction, although it doesnt work for climbing onto ladders...

its pretty dam awkward to test properly so i guess i cant say 100% sure i was steering the barrels but id say 95% for sure...

ill check again tommorow, i just put my panel back...

 

[ChrisP]

Yeah, it IS hard to test this in a way that you can be sure!

You have to get to L4 at least to know that the steering is happening, and even then barrels can drop on their own so you can get false positives. Meanwhile you have to sit there climbing ladders over and over and there's shit everywhere trying to kill you.

I have an 8-way plate actually, and I'm tempted to put it back on just to try this.

If this is actually possible to climb and steer, then it looks like the CP check at the end of the game is definitely justified (though it's worth mentioning that there was no rule about having to use a 4-way when Steve was playing in the mid 2000s, so he didn't cheat or anything).

[Fast Eddie]

ok i got some L4 on tape...

http://www.twitch.tv/fast_eddie1/c/3090250

 

i also double checked you dont freeze whichever order you hit the directions...

[qnz]

You should be able to try this in MAME, if you can rebuild it from source.  MAME restricts 4 way joysticks in software, so even if you press two keys simultaneously, only one gets through to the game.  If you change the dkong joystick definitions to 8 way, it should work like the arcade machine with an 8 way.

http://mamedev.org/source/src/mame/drivers/dkong.c.html

See lines 1007-1008 in the listing above.  Change dkong_in0_4 to dkong_in0_8, and dkong_in1_4 to dkong_in1_8, and rebuild the mame binary.  MAME will then run donkey kong with an 8 way joystick.  I've just verified that works, though didn't try the barrel steering...


Todd

[hchien]

I've been meaning to try this out myself.  Give me 1/2-1 hour to take out my restrictor plate and I'll stream some experiments.

[hchien]

Results of my experiments on an 8 way (really restrictor plate free experiments) on an original arcade (no kits):

Running left or right/climbing ladders up or down

Yes. This is possible with all diagonals.

Cornering

Entering a ladder:

No.  This is not possible going up/down left/right.

Exiting a ladder:

Yes.  This is possible going up/down left/right.

Controlling barrels while climbing/descending ladders

Yes.  This is possible.

So basically everything works the way you would think with an 8 way except you cannot enter a ladder (corner) going diagonally.

[ChrisP]

WOW!!

Huge news!

Also thank you, Todd, for the MAME explanation. I was going to be really curious about how the heck this was possible on arcade but not MAME and now I don't have to be.

My apologies to Zerst as well, who has been arguing that 8-way steering was possible, and I was skeptical.

So the 4-way rule is now, officially, very important to enforce.

However, there's a big "uh oh" here.

Now that Todd has explained how to 8-wayify MAME, this opens up a major cheating opportunity.

If you can steer while climbing (and do it with the precision that a keyboard would allow) this is a HUGE issue for MAME submissions.

I am hoping that changing the source from 4 to 8 will corrupt INP playback. It should, and let's hope it does... if it doesn't we actually have a big problem now.

[Fast Eddie]

ah thats interesting you can do it in mame...

there are certainly some advantages, but i think its still harder to get onto the ladders, maybe with a proper 8 way plate it would be better...but i think youd have to almost relearn the game to improve your arcade score...

[ChrisP]

The difficulties of an 8-way stick won't translate to MAME though, only the advantages, which is what the danger is here.

It's not always easy to hit the diagonals on demand on a stick, and very easy to hit the diagonal when you DON'T mean to, but on a keyboard, you'd be able to hit the diagonals every single time you want to, and ONLY when you want to. Super-powerful.

Switching to 8-way control *SHOULD* break the INPs though, as long as the playback machine is on 4-way.

[hchien]

It's not always easy to hit the diagonals on demand on a stick

Actually when I took out the restrictor plate, it was quite easy to hit diagonals.  I tried this in MAME before on an X-arcade and it was difficult to hit diagonals/horizontal/vertical, but on a Nintendo joystick without a restrictor plate, it was quite easy.  I think the joystick naturally falls into the diagonals because of the way the microswitches work (it felt like there was an 8 way restrictor plate in). I think it would be even easier with an 8-way restrictor plate.  In fact, I'm pretty sure with some practice I could get good at it.

[gstrain]

The difficulties of an 8-way stick won't translate to MAME though, only the advantages, which is what the danger is here.

It's not always easy to hit the diagonals on demand on a stick, and very easy to hit the diagonal when you DON'T mean to, but on a keyboard, you'd be able to hit the diagonals every single time you want to, and ONLY when you want to. Super-powerful.

Switching to 8-way control *SHOULD* break the INPs though, as long as the playback machine is on 4-way.

Even if it doesn't break the replay on an original MAME version (although I think it will), if you watch the replay with the -iv option to see the inputs as you watch the replay, it would be very obvious that two direction control was being used.  In general watching all replays with the -iv option is a good idea when verifying just to look for anything squirrelly. 

If you really want to cheat with MAME and start compiling your own versions there are other "better" ways to cheat that would be impossible to detect.

-George

[ChrisP]

Yeah, I thought of the input viewer, but the problem is that there's plausible deniability there. A person could say "oh, I just hit both there by accident," or "I always do that, it's a habit." And you don't want to get into invalidating games where a person genuinely DOES accidentally hit both inputs.

Honestly, you're not gonna use a climb-steer tactic THAT often, but it's often enough to make a difference.

And what a pain it would become to have to scrutinize the games that closely!

You're right about recompiling as a cheat method though. Anybody who knows how to do that could be cheating already.

[marinomitch13]

I confess. I cheated on my MAME KS submission!