Jumpman's facing influences barrel behavior. With a four way joystick you can't vary your facing while climbing a ladder unless you pause on the ladder. The lad

Jumpman's facing influences barrel behavior. With a four way joystick you can't vary your facing while climbing a ladder unless you pause on the ladder. The ladder climbing sprite is facing agnostic. With a four way stick a player would need to lift off up (or down) to move the stick left and right. On an eight way you can keep climbing with deflecting left and right. Visually you won't be able to detect this. There is a random component to the barrel behavior. You could potentially detect steering by looking at jumpman's ladder entry direction and examine the behavior of each barrel during his climb. This would be an absolutely miserable task though. It might be easier to detect an eight way stick by finding buffered ladder climbing: does Jumpman begin ascending a ladder on the first frame in which he can climb and does he start moving left or right on the first frame after he dismounts?