Minimum recording speed

Discussion about MARP's regulation play

Moderator: BBH

Should slowdowns giving the player an advantage be allowed?

No
13
93%
Yes
1
7%
 
Total votes: 14

LN2
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Post by LN2 »

Buttermaker wrote:Just make the rule like I suggested
Why don't you formally state what rule you want made?

The rule of not allowing a player to benefit from slow-downs is way too vague. You need something more specific.

I think the 90% rule for most games does properly cover the judgement call of whether a player is benefitting or not.

If someone has a replay that is stuck at exactly 90% the entire gameplay though, I would DQ that. However, that isn't how speed behaves on games you aren't running at 100% in MAME. It would be fluctuating around some...throwing off the timing of the moves of the player for most games. That kind of slowdown is hampering the player if anything. they certainly aren't benefitting from it if their timing is thrown off from the fluctuations in speed.

If you want to get more specific perhaps recordings using a frameskip value less than 6 or 8 for a game and has speed drops below 100% during actual gameplay will be DQ'd. That makes it more defined versus something totally subjective to each confirmer. if you see a recording at 90% yet the frameskip used is 10. The player is actually still at a disadvantage versus someone playing at a lower frameskip and getting 100% speed at all times.

However, given wolfmame doesn't show you the live frameskip on playback, it seems this type of rule currently can't be enforced.
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Weehawk
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Post by Weehawk »

The 90% rule for the total recording gives us a very clear, objective standard to apply in all cases.

Perhaps it should be raised to 95%, but I feel it should remain in effect.

It is insufficient by itself, however, for reasons noted here and in other threads.

I would favor an additional prohibition, as Buttermaker has suggested, against temporary periods of slowdown which might have the result of giving the player an advantage not available on the arcade machine of the game emulated. The specific language of the rule should leave the matter subjective to allow for case-by-case judgement calls, in my opinion.

Something like:

Code: Select all

b) In addition, temporary periods of slowdown which might have the effect of offering the player an advantage not available on the arcade machine being emulated are not allowed.
Perhaps this year's Regulation Coordinator, whether Pat or someone new (if we ever have the elections that should have taken place last month) can lead the effort to get the change formalized and ratified by the membership.
John Cunningham (JTC)
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The TJT
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Post by The TJT »

The meaning of the vote is still unclear to me. There will allways be somekind of throttling I assume.

Maybe new voting for raising the 90% limit to 95% would be more correct.
I'd definitely say yes for 95% rule. Also I believe changing frameskip in the middle of the game IS currently a no-no at Marp.

Thanks,

MC TJT :P
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Chad
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Post by Chad »

besides just raising the average, we can also say no 10 seconds of record time can average below 90% instead of the whole recording. This will allow even slow games to work with fast computers and it will deter temporary slow downs. This check can be done in mame i.e. having a floating average instead of a global average. I think the global average can have a lot of loop holes but i'd still vote for a 95% average. But we must decide what to do with old recordings, grandfather them or dq them if they are old and below 95% ?
Last edited by Chad on Sat Jan 03, 2004 7:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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mahlemiut
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Post by mahlemiut »

WolfMAME only stores the initial frameskip value in the header. Not sure how to check for current frameskip, but I can look. This would be something that makes INPs incompatible with older versions though, adding an extra byte to each frame. I'll look into it later.
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