6 ms·

Anyone know how / why they're able to send this much data over the controller ports? That seems like a sample rate that's way into the "insane" realm, irration

by Groxx 10y ago

Anyone know how / why they're able to send this much data over the controller ports? That seems like a sample rate that's way into the "insane" realm, irrationally beyond what any human could produce.

minimaxir 10y ago
The live video includes a caveat that they "cheated" by networking directly into the console for several orders of magnitude more button inputs. (i.e more than the 8 controllers from the console) The cheat was apparently controversial for the team.
- Groxx 10y ago
  For tasbot though, I wonder what that actually means. If they soldered onto the board to bypass a chip or something I can certainly see it being controversial - they're usually very clear about "this system is unmodified, we just have a bot pressing buttons".
  - lfowles 10y ago
    It's less button presses at this point and more putting data into the memory where controller input is stored at an arbitrary rate. Talk from Defcon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZrNWiBzqUE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZrNWiBzqUE
    - Groxx 10y ago
      Aaaaaah. So that lets them update the value (up to) every time the memory is accessed - that I can definitely see running so quickly. And still "using controllers", arguably. Still. Much amaze. Wow.
      - Groxx 10y ago
        (too late to edit) hmm, no, that video talks about how they did the twitch chatroom thing. As I interpret it, they did that by tricking the snes to re-poll the buttons faster than it would normally do, and they said they could achieve every couple ms (instead of once per frame), which is wildly below what the streaming video demo needed. The video is awesome though, thanks for the link! Now ya've got me queueing up tons of defcon videos....
        lfowles 10y ago
        Hm, I might be remembering wrong or mixing it up with details from various forums, but I thought it mentioned the FPGA version capable of pushing several mb/s through the controller ports.
        Groxx 10y ago
        Yeah, they mentioned it exists (2mb/s iirc) but made no attempt to describe how it works.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    The system is unmodified. They effectively bypassed a chip inside the controller.
- mrob 10y ago
  I interpreted it as meaning they removed the parallel-to-serial shift register in the controller (or at least stopped simulating it): http://www.gamesx.com/controldata/nessnes.htm http://www.gamesx.com/controldata/nessnes.htm The SNES has hardware to generate the P/S signal once per frame, but as the SNES CPU was originally intended to be backwards compatible with the NES it still has the old NES-style bit-banging mode ("old-style joypad registers"). If you remove the shift registers and drive the data line directly you can get higher bit rate. The SNES itself stays unmodified.
ekimekim 10y ago
Relevant quote from the article: "By polling four simulated multitap inputs at 300 times per frame using a method devised by p4plus2 (Jordan Potter), the TASBot team is able to effectively send data to the SNES at 1.15 Mbps" 1.15Mbps / (300 samples per frame * 60 frames per second) = 64 bits per sample, or 16 bits per input, which seems like a likely figure.
prewett 10y ago
Out of work, high apm Korean professional StarCraft players using custom controllers built with low actuation force, short travel distance buttons. They could have had a slightly faster input rate, but they had to assign 0 to a button instead of no-button-press because the players were always instinctively pressing something. Some of the best players were worried that it would hurt their game because they had to slow down to synchronize with the slower players. [1] http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/how-fast-fast-some-pro-gamers-make-10-moves-second-8C11422946 http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/how-fast-fast-some-pro-gam... [2] https://slingshotesports.com/2016/10/28/the-demise-of-korean-starcraft-2/ https://slingshotesports.com/2016/10/28/the-demise-of-korean...
- Groxx 10y ago
  10s of events per second is a far cry from tens or hundreds of thousands per second. They're pushing 1.15Mbps (see other comments) over only 4 controllers. That's something on the order of every pro StarCraft player at once on a single machine released in 1990.
  - prewett 10y ago
    It was a joke about the speed of StarCraft players... I was hoping that the fact it was obviously impossible would have tipped people off...
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  >They could have had a slightly faster input rate, but they had to assign 0 to a button instead of no-button-press because the players were always instinctively pressing something. What? I can't parse that sentence and I can't find anything like that in the articles you linked.
  - prewett 10y ago
    I'm told that top StarCraft players keep up a steady click-stream even if there is no need to click, they just keep clicking the same place. I assume that's so that they get into a rhythm or something. So ideally having no buttons pressed is a zero, and have any combination of buttons is not zero. I think the SNES controller has six buttons, plus one of up/down/left/right, so you'd get 8 bits. But if they always have to be pressing something, then you'd have to assign one combination to 0, so only 7 bits. (Probably I did the math wrong or something there) It's a joke, anyway, so if I have to explain it, it's obviously not funny.

by Groxx 10y ago

minimaxir 10y ago

The live video includes a caveat that they "cheated" by networking directly into the console for several orders of magnitude more button inputs. (i.e more than the 8 controllers from the console) The cheat was apparently controversial for the team.

Groxx 10y ago
For tasbot though, I wonder what that actually means. If they soldered onto the board to bypass a chip or something I can certainly see it being controversial - they're usually very clear about "this system is unmodified, we just have a bot pressing buttons".
- lfowles 10y ago
  It's less button presses at this point and more putting data into the memory where controller input is stored at an arbitrary rate. Talk from Defcon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZrNWiBzqUE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZrNWiBzqUE
  - Groxx 10y ago
    Aaaaaah. So that lets them update the value (up to) every time the memory is accessed - that I can definitely see running so quickly. And still "using controllers", arguably. Still. Much amaze. Wow.
    - Groxx 10y ago
      (too late to edit) hmm, no, that video talks about how they did the twitch chatroom thing. As I interpret it, they did that by tricking the snes to re-poll the buttons faster than it would normally do, and they said they could achieve every couple ms (instead of once per frame), which is wildly below what the streaming video demo needed. The video is awesome though, thanks for the link! Now ya've got me queueing up tons of defcon videos....
      - lfowles 10y ago
        Hm, I might be remembering wrong or mixing it up with details from various forums, but I thought it mentioned the FPGA version capable of pushing several mb/s through the controller ports.
        Groxx 10y ago
        Yeah, they mentioned it exists (2mb/s iirc) but made no attempt to describe how it works.
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  The system is unmodified. They effectively bypassed a chip inside the controller.
mrob 10y ago
I interpreted it as meaning they removed the parallel-to-serial shift register in the controller (or at least stopped simulating it): http://www.gamesx.com/controldata/nessnes.htm http://www.gamesx.com/controldata/nessnes.htm The SNES has hardware to generate the P/S signal once per frame, but as the SNES CPU was originally intended to be backwards compatible with the NES it still has the old NES-style bit-banging mode ("old-style joypad registers"). If you remove the shift registers and drive the data line directly you can get higher bit rate. The SNES itself stays unmodified.

ekimekim 10y ago

Relevant quote from the article: "By polling four simulated multitap inputs at 300 times per frame using a method devised by p4plus2 (Jordan Potter), the TASBot team is able to effectively send data to the SNES at 1.15 Mbps" 1.15Mbps / (300 samples per frame * 60 frames per second) = 64 bits per sample, or 16 bits per input, which seems like a likely figure.

prewett 10y ago

Out of work, high apm Korean professional StarCraft players using custom controllers built with low actuation force, short travel distance buttons. They could have had a slightly faster input rate, but they had to assign 0 to a button instead of no-button-press because the players were always instinctively pressing something. Some of the best players were worried that it would hurt their game because they had to slow down to synchronize with the slower players. [1] http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/how-fast-fast-some-pro-gamers-make-10-moves-second-8C11422946 http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/how-fast-fast-some-pro-gam... [2] https://slingshotesports.com/2016/10/28/the-demise-of-korean-starcraft-2/ https://slingshotesports.com/2016/10/28/the-demise-of-korean...

Groxx 10y ago
10s of events per second is a far cry from tens or hundreds of thousands per second. They're pushing 1.15Mbps (see other comments) over only 4 controllers. That's something on the order of every pro StarCraft player at once on a single machine released in 1990.
- prewett 10y ago
  It was a joke about the speed of StarCraft players... I was hoping that the fact it was obviously impossible would have tipped people off...
Dylan16807 10y ago
>They could have had a slightly faster input rate, but they had to assign 0 to a button instead of no-button-press because the players were always instinctively pressing something. What? I can't parse that sentence and I can't find anything like that in the articles you linked.
- prewett 10y ago
  I'm told that top StarCraft players keep up a steady click-stream even if there is no need to click, they just keep clicking the same place. I assume that's so that they get into a rhythm or something. So ideally having no buttons pressed is a zero, and have any combination of buttons is not zero. I think the SNES controller has six buttons, plus one of up/down/left/right, so you'd get 8 bits. But if they always have to be pressing something, then you'd have to assign one combination to 0, so only 7 bits. (Probably I did the math wrong or something there) It's a joke, anyway, so if I have to explain it, it's obviously not funny.