I’m just going to say this to save myself the effort:
Fair: using XOR-type logic gates (IE, Button A OR button B, NOT(Button A AND Button B)) to prevent SOCD. Any time you press two confilcting directions, you are set to neutral. Same as if you were moving a stick from left to right, while in the deadzone, you’re at neutral for a while. So, run finger from left> Left+right > Right, just like a stick. I think if tournament organizers were to test all fight boards for this type of effect, and ban any fight boards that didn’t have this, it would be completely fair advantages to play on buttons. I think if someone made a “Hit Box helper” PCB that has this logic implemented, everyone could shut up about whether it’s advantageous in an unfair sense or not.
Unfair: Being able to hold both directions at once to be able to throw a sonic boom forward, be able to block in both directions, and all the other crazy madness that this is causing.
I don’t even care about the argument anymore. This is my compromise.
It’s simplier, actually: they didn’t anticipate SOCD controllers, they simply coded the game also for PC, so they checked that the use of a keyboard didn’t disrupt the game.
I’m not too familiar with electronics, but I think something like this should do it.
Also, I tested mine in MVC3. Not sure if it was my PCB (cthulu) or the game, but I was always moving a single direction (I think right), blocking attacks from the left and getting hit by attacks from the right.
Also, it seems just crushing to say “Yeah, you spent $200 in materials and put a ton of work into that, but there’s absolutely nothing you can do to make it tournament legal, even if you fix the left-right issue”.
I think a key part of recommendations for what is and isn’t tournament legal is enforcable. I don’t think that the logic gate is enforcable. Anyone who knows what they’re doing could turn such a gate off after the judges table.
For that matter, I don’t think devoting an entire stage of the tournament (and a lot of setups and judge’s time) to checking controllers in training mode is feasible at most tournaments.
You’d need to check every stick in the tournament, as any custom with a ps360, or a madcatz te could be easily modded to have the far right two buttons give directional inputs to output socd. (you could have a hidden switch the toggles this feature, or you open up your stick and change the wiring discreetly after judge’s table)
While I might not think that Socd’s are a good thing(and I play on a fight board), at this point, unless either a. they don’t work on ps3s, or b. a patch comes out, I just don’t see a ruling against them as enforcable.
We really need to test ps3 Marvel as soon as possible.
And, in the interest of fairness we should probably make a socd input on madcatz te tutorial, so the playing field is level.
Amp good work but i am sorry where this thread has gone.
Charge characters were never ever supposed to be able to walk forward and spam their movies. That is why they are charge characters. They were never supposed to be able to continuosly hold charge and spam a move, once executed they are supposed to have to charge again.
Never are you supposed to be able to block both ways at the same time, crossups are a part of the game and were never supposed to be made brainless to deal with.
If you really think that changing buttons and joysticks to more quality ones are the same as this then i do not know what to tell you. You change buttons from some crap factory ones to ensure that the direction or button you press is actually engaged when you press it not to make what is supposed to be impossible in games possible.
No guile was never supposed to be able to walk forward spam sonic boom his design was supposed to make him release a direction and then go back to charging.
You dont change from a stock joystick to a jlf so you can somehow press both left and right at the same time.
He understands that you have to go by some real standard that includes warranted (yes, you should very much ban anything that lets you walk-forward and charge sonic boom), discrete (yes, it’s SOCD’s + bad code that allows this, so you can ban SOCD’s), but then you run into a problem with enforceable. There are three options:
Ban Fight boards altogether.
I don’t want this, since in both the games I’m primarily interested in playing (BlazBlue and Super SF4), banning SOCD capable controllers no longer falls under the definition of “warranted”, IMO.
Establishing XOR behavior as “good”, and ban all SOCD-capable controllers that don’t exhibit XOR behavior.
This one is fucking stupid, there’s no way on earth to efficiently implement this. If you check during the button check phase of a game for XOR behavior, and it turns out it DOESN’T have XOR? Now you’ve just held up the tournament another 5 minutes because someone needs a replacement stick, and since he uses board, which is going to be that much rarer…etc.etc.etc. I shouldn’t even have to say how bad it’d be to do all these checks during tournament check-in.
Case-by-case basis banning of SOCD controllers
There are games that give SOCD controllers advantages, and games that don’t. Ban SOCD controllers from tournaments that do give unfair advantage, and don’t ban from the games that are fine.
Only 1 and 3 are the ones that are actually reasonably implementable, and there are plenty of fight board users (including myself) that don’t want 1 to happen.
And yes, we need to test SOCD behavior in PS3 Marvel 3 and Super SF4 (and hell, why not BlazBlue?) asap.
I think a key part of recommendations for what is and isn’t tournament legal is enforcable. I don’t think that the logic gate is enforcable. Anyone who knows what they’re doing could turn such a gate off after the judges table.
For that matter, I don’t think devoting an entire stage of the tournament (and a lot of setups and judge’s time) to checking controllers in training mode is feasible at most tournaments.
If you’re talking about ACTUALLY CHEATING with a hidden switch or rewiring, you can cheat just as easily with a joystick. You could discreetly set your R2 and L2 to back and forward, you could have a microcontroller fixing your combo timings, whatever you want. Stickless controllers aren’t inherently more likely to have tricky owners.
As far as tournament viability, what about this: State first that simultaneous Left+Right = DQ, inform people of resources to modify problem controllers. Don’t do any tournamentwide check, but during button config, opponent of a stickless controller owner can request the check. (watches them hold left right, jumps over them, they either move in the same direction regardless of side, or are vulnerable to hits on either side if L+R = neutral). That way it would be up to the players to enforce this, incentive being the free win, you couldn’t step away and rewire, since you could be checked in any match.
This is another argument that gets brought up and I think is legitimate. Now that the SOCD’s are known (or more known than before), you could say that anyone could more discreetly make their controller SOCD-capable without going full out and playing on a fight board.
Now, it’s easier to observe in fight boards (I mean it’s kinda obvious), but calling us more likely to be “tricky owners”? I’m not sure I appreciate that label.
Your suggestion is getting closer to being able to enforce the XOR behavior. I still don’t like it because right now, there is no such thing as being able to buy a fight board from the big manufacturing companies. So many fight board players are going to modify their own, however, plenty will be having someone else perform their mod for them. These latter people might not be educated (you would hope they would be, but you can’t guarantee) on the technical information of SOCD’s and XOR behavior. So now there’s a chance that this guy who bought a fight board from a community modder goes to a tournament and gets thrown out round 1 because his stick doesn’t have XOR behavior, something he never knew about.
That’s a possibility, but make the rule is known before the tournament, and remind people who walk up to register carrying a stickless controller. It might be harsh, but if it comes down to that or outright banning them, I’d definitely prefer the former. Also, hopefully community builders will take these issues into account when building controllers (lest they some spiteful feedback).
The problem isn’t the fight boards it’s socd.
With a pair of cutters, 2 wire nuts, a dollar of wire and five minutes anyone can make any te send socd.
Yes, you can probably make sure fight board players aren’t cheating, (the only really “fair” solution being to force them playing on the p1 side, playing the match in training mode with input display on, which gives their oponnent an advantage), but there’s no logistical way to make sure every stick in the tournament doesn’t have socd. You can ban it in the same way turbo is banned, but it’s not even a little bit enforcable. There’s not the resources (you’d have to have a judge test both sticks before every match and then watch players during the match to make sure they didn’t access some hidden toggle).
I was a fencer in college, and I can explain how the arms race is probably going to go, but I’ll just put it this way, tournament organizers aren’t going to win it, and trying to keep up is going to be a huge time and money sink.
Oh, and I’ve tested ps3 blazblue and arcana heart, those games don’t accept socd. Ever.
I just tested PS3 SSFIV with buttons hooked up to a MC Cthulhu, these are my results:
P1 Side: Hold forward, press back, unmolested; Walk Backward
P1 Side: Hold back, press forward, unmolested; Walk Backward
P2 Side: Hold forward, press back, unmolested; Walk Forward
P2 Side: Hold back, press forward, unmolested; Walk Forward
P1 Side: Hold forward, press back, reaction to being attacked; Walk Backward, Attack Blocked
P1 Side: Hold back, press forward, reaction to being attacked; Walk Backward, Attack Blocked
P2 Side: Hold forward, press back, reaction to being attacked; Walk Forward, Attack Hits
P2 Side: Hold back, press forward, reaction to being attacked; Walk Backward, Attack Hits
Hold Down, Press Up; Jump
Hold Up, Press Down; Keep Jumping
Attempt to perform a charge move without “releasing” charge direction; Works on P2 side.
1P Side: Attempt to perform an X-Axis charge move while walking forward; Unable to walk forward while charging.
2P Side: Attempt to perform an X-Axis charge move while walking forward; A normal came out instead of the charge move
I’m going to test PS3 HDR later tonight, let me know if you guys want me to try anything else in Super.
The best solution about cheating is an accurate replay mechanism like SFIV type or even better ( including a parser) to check input patterns used during runtime.
It is fairly easy to see a turbo pattern on a replay, it is also easy to detect kara move use, and macro use, p-linking, B-linking with a naked eye.
Some software controller hook, or the input engine can file during runtime then parse the record , ( or a MCU filter positionned on the cable), to measure timing between presses with relevant accuracy and detect if someone is using a hidden MCU to correct his timings or SOCD inputs.
Have a guy checking the replay when a complaint is filed on a match and determine if one of the players actully broke the tournament input rules is probably doable as long as he is not asked to check every single match.
That system relies on deterrance rather than on prevention. It means everybody who plans on actually breaking the tourney rules that they have read can be disqualified any time during the competition upon analysis of any of his repalys. the Game input records parsing tool seem a bit over the top, but the naked eye replay check definitely seems doable.
On SFIV, SOCD are a non issue, but turbo, auto B-link, motion/combo macros and link timing autocorrection are generally seen as unfair advantages.
manual B-linking, manual P-linking, kara cancels are more generally accepted.
In any case everything but combo macros and autolink autocorrection is quick and easy to spot on a SFIV replay for someone with a trained eye. The latter two ( link timing correct and combo macros) require a lenghtier period of observation (several rounds) or an input parsing tool.
Have you lost your mind? Video game tournaments have limited resources. We do what works the best, the easiest.
It would be nice if we could drug test players to remove the possiblity of cheating, right? But that is absurd. We are playing videogames, and nobody wants to pay for that.
I don’t think hitboxes should be banned or anything, but when we invite the Japanese over here and play them on these wierd controllers, I just feel like something is lost. I guess it is arcade nostalgia talking.
The fact of the matter is that hitboxes are better. They just are, it is pretty obvious why. Is it going to matter much? That remains to be seen. I am not talking about SOCD, either.
I think most people can agree that it’s pointless to ban stickless controllers on mvc3 or SF4 if they can’t input both directions simultaneously.
It’s interesting to consider some other games though.
Given a stickless controller where both :f: == and :d::u: == :d:, it definitely changes the speed at which you can input some commands. E.G. Soul calibur has a move with an input of :f::df::uf::d::u:. You could go :f:>:d:>:u:>release :u:&:f:>:u: faster than anybody could on a joystick. That alone probably isn’t too much of an advantage, but it’s something to think about.
So, I just discovered you can do the same thing (socd) with a 360 pad.
great job capcom, great job. (it’s one thing not to expect a pcb to register opposed directions on the dpad, another if the the dpad and stick can be used together to the same thing).
I might be able to test this on ps3 tonight.
If the same thing happens on ps3 and 360, well, I think MvC3 is going to be a fighting game without cross-ups, at least until patched.
I really appreciate the help, but you could have told me it was an MC Cthulu you were using.
Toodles has already said outright that the MC Cthulu has problems sending SOCD’s to the PS3, as apparently does the Akishop PS360. You basically weren’t testing what happens when the game receives SOCD’s, you were testing the behavior of the PCB itself.
I hate to say this but because of this I have to classify your data as invalid.
I’m hoping we can find someone with a fight board that uses either a TE PCB or an HRAP PCB for the PS3 to conduct tests. But then again it’s so easy to make a stick using the PS360 or the MC Cthulu that shit is going to be a real rarity.
EDIT: YO I’M DUMB. I FORGOT ABOUT PADS.
Can people run these tests on PS3 pads? Hold left on the dpad, right on the left-stick, etc, that way we know what’s up.
Tried this out on every game I owned before the Hit Box was ever invented. I tested to see if it
SFIV/SSFIV: Nope, cross ups get hit, can’t hold charges.
BBCT/CS: Nope, same deal.
MvC3: Just tested since you gave me the idea, sadly, yes, it does work.
JohnGrimm, can you run the full gamut of tests via pad and record results?
For whatever game you have time for, if possible.
I just want results posted. This shit is driving me up a wall.
* P1 Side: Hold forward, press back, unmolested;
* P1 Side: Hold back, press forward, unmolested
* P2 Side: Hold forward, press back, unmolested
* P2 Side: Hold back, press forward, unmolested
* P1 Side: Hold forward, press back, reaction to being attacked
* P1 Side: Hold back, press forward, reaction to being attacked
* P2 Side: Hold forward, press back, reaction to being attacked
* P2 Side: Hold back, press forward, reaction to being attacked
* Hold Down, Press Up
* Hold Up, Press Down
* Attempt to perform a charge move without "releasing" charge direction*
* 1P Side: Attempt to perform an X-Axis charge move while walking forward**
* 2P Side: Attempt to perform an X-Axis charge move while walking forward**
:f: == 