Legal tournament Joystick

Tech Talk
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I looked at Capcom’s rules in the Street Fighter 30th Anninversary tournamnets and I found no seciton regarding “legal controller equipment”.

I’d like to give some situations which may be “pushing the rules”, and whether I predict Capcom tournaments will allow it, whether I think it should be legal if I were running my own private tournament, and get you to comment whether you think that’s cheating and what you predict/know what Capcom would say. And if someone from Capcom Tournaments is reading this, 1) why no legal equipment regulations printed in your rules? and 2) maybe you can weigh in on the officlal status of these controllers.

  1. first what I predict is an obvious cheat move: Controllers with programmable macros. Like for example, storing a hard-to-execute frame perfect combo on one button, or letting tapping forward equal a dragon punch move to start. I know how to do the second with my Dreamcast Alloy stick, and a PS2 ShadowBlade. At first I used it to invert the joystick for a right handed position, wiht nothing reprogrammed except the stick directios were swapped and the punches and kicks were swapped. But then I thought, if I competed anywhere, if I won with these right handed setup, if they recognized either model as a macro model, I would have to go about proving that the macros are just a movement of buttons and not a macro. Plus it’s kind of a half-ass way to do it because the button contour is not intuitive hen you flip it.

  2. This one hits home personally: Right handed Fight sticks. There’s only one sport where everyone is right handed, and that’s Polo. I don’t know what the reason for that is . I guess it has something to do with 2 people challenging for the ball, the horses would not run into each other if everyone was right handed but as soon as you have a cross-up, the horses do unpredictable things like stop short of the goal, throw riders off, or run into each other.

In theory there could be a “all-leftie league” but considering 1/10 people are left handed, it’d have the popularity of the Negro League or the WNBA.

Long litany about race and gender and sports that can be ignored by people only interested in the main topic of legal video game equipment

Even though the Negro League was born out of ignorance, despite the fact that there was integration pre-1900. Sockalexis (sp?) an Indian (I know the word police prefer Native American, but if the Cleveland MLB team is called the Indians, why not use the term) baseball player, who was drawing racial stereotype cheers and jeers (mostly jeers unless he helped Cleveland win a game). I don’t know if there are any “non-WASPy” players before Jackie Robinson. Hispanics weren’t big pre-Robinson. But certainly no Blacks. (Were there any MLB Baseball teams in Confederate territory other than the Atlanta Braves, and wasn’t THAT move post-Robinson? If the north were truly enlightened, why did they cater to the South by segregating baseball. It’s not the Cuban Situation when playing the Blue Jays.)

The WNBA was born out of trying to sell one particular graduating class of college women players that had talks of Lisa Leslie, Rebecca Lobo, and Sheryll Swoopes (and I heard there was one other player the WNBA were trying to recruit, but she went to the rival American Basketball League) causing “gender integration”, albeit at the level of a “12 person freak sideshow” The commissioner asked whether they want to compete agianst men, maybe be good enough to be a 12th person and most likely be the odd woman out, or be stars of an all female league, with more fame (which equals endorsement deals) and more pay than NBA minimum. This despite the fact that the ABL paid better than the WNBA if you were not a WNBA league spokeswoman like the above 3.

But what about integration. Some sports the difference between women and men are closer than others. ike or example, I never see College Women’s American Football, or even High School. The women have to compete against the men, and in a league were strength and weight is valued, and past a certain age or around puberty, men grow in different and extreme ways than women that would be more beneficial in most “contact athletics”, where the more elite and concentrated the talent because the less likely there was a woman. Basktball would be a closer example of men and women being closer to equal where if you had a quota-based league (a fixed number of men and women players on the floor on each side), it would not be too absurd for a woman to make a successful move “off-gender”, especially compared to post 5th grade American Football.

And just because elite child-making aged male athletes are better in contact sports than elite child-making aged women doesn’t mean the older, younger, and more average you go women aren’t good athletes in “contact sports”. if you have a pick up game between mixed parents and kids, there a good chance one woman would be equal to or better than the best man there.

Also women are valued more for grace (beauty in motion), balance, and flexibility, hence why usually women’s Gymnastics is followed more than men’s in general, (At least in High Schools I see women’s gymnastics more often than men’s) plus the events in the men’s side have more elements of grace while simultaneously doing moderately muscular things, like the rings.

One sport that is intentionally unquota-ed unisex at the college level is Cheerleading. The few times you see men in cheerleading in high school, they are usually given the power role of tossing the women in the air, but colleges use that all the time.

I was so unathletic in High School that I had to find some other way to be popular. One was sheer luck when there was a dance where there were like 50 women there and only one guy, me. :smiley: The other was being a local TV star doing a local mini-golf tournament. I was the only show generating competitive ratings for a hyper local channel. I know people are people, and there’s a difffence between blatant sexism, or the opposite of being so blind to difrences, and accepting certain differences between men and women, and in certain other ways men and women are exactly the same. And the differences that count, meaning baby-making, the male and the female work in tandem. I’d think a masculine women would be as ugly as woman thinks a feminine man is. But then again a lot of women liked me, despite my moobs. Men are less willing to overlook lack of outer beauty than women do, because women have more of an X-ray soul-level eyesight. I’d rather be an ugly man than an ugly woman.

Is the game of Street fighter so canonically engrained to be a left-stick game, that you remove the challenge if it were a right-stick game, and that would be called cheating? Or would left-stickers laugh at a right-sticker, and then not only you, but others beat the cocky one right handed, which I did once. I hope right sticks are legal, however if my stick is broken, how do I continue?

The Price Is Right on Hole in One provides both a leftie and a rightie putter. Lefties have to spin the wheel the same direction on Wheel of Fortune, even though it’s a little backwards.

I don’t know the intentions of the creatirs of Street fighter whether they intended it to be canonically left handed only, or just made the choice, because it has to be one way or the other on an arcade panel, and wrongly assume that everyone WANTS to play that way at home.

I understand arcade owners wanting left stick, it increases quarters by shortening game lengths in the era where most games were single-player vs cpu, other than one-on-one fighting. Then Street Fighter 1 and 2 came and made the arcade a social scene where people were lining to play a game where in 2 minutes one person will be kicked off and need another quarter. But assuming everyone wants it aat home that way is a lilte presumptive. The last mass production Ambidextrous stick for a console was the Beeshu Genesis Gizmo, and that had only 3 buttons. There was no SNES or Geneisis 6-button ambidextrous joystick. That wasn’t that long ago compared to the SF2 success at home. Plus the Mexican leftie vs rightie setups were popular enough where some people want right handed. Why couldn’t they make a home verison ambidextrous.

What about all button controllers - AKA hitboxes? I read there was an issue with SImultaneous Opposite Cardinal Directions, where some games can read left and right toghether as both pressed, same wiht up and down. I know newer fighting games add their own SOCD scrubbing code in the game, but if you’re playing Genesis/Turbo Grafx/SNES Street Fighter II, would those have to have an approved chip with SOCD scrubbing?

Finally, if the arcade cabinet had 6 buttons, are you required to only have QK, MK, HK, QP, MP, and HP, and the last 2 buttons (if any) must be inactive? If 7th and 8th buttons are legal, must they equal 3P and 3K, or can they equal other things? For the purposes of this rule, can you discriminate between a pad and a stick?

Also must only an authorized PS4 Stick be used, or can you use stick connected to a Brook Universal Fighting Board?

Can I use a PS2 controller like my right-modded Street Fighter 15 stick and plug that into a PS2->PS4 adapter?

Also what about “house sticks?” If my stick breaks, there are rules about replacement joysticks. Will there be house sticks provided , or must one provide their own. If there are house sticks, will there be any Right-Stick models I have the RIGHT to use or must I provide my own backup in order to guarantee a right-handed model be at the tournament if it breaks?

P.S. I see another post form 2010 when Street Fighter 4 was big. It’s usually considered impolite to bump for no reason.

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Rules differ slightly on a per-tournament basis, but the general gist is:

  1. Macro-enabled accessories is not allowed. The high-level definition of this rule is that you can’t have one button perform more than one input (direction and/or button input). This is a rule across (I believe) every tournament.

  2. “Right-handed” sticks are fine. You’re just changing the location of inputs. The skillset required to play the games don’t change. No one really cares WHAT your controller/stick looks like, as long as it doesn’t violate the above macro/programming rule.

  3. Anything configurable in-game (including any available shortcuts like 3P/3K, Jab+Short, Strong+Forward, Fierce+Roundhouse) are generally allowed, and you have access to all 8 main buttons. You’re not forced to use 4P/4K, or keep them inactive. You can play without using any of the 3 punches if you so choose to.

  4. It is very unlikely that tournaments will have “extra” sticks to go around. Which is part of the reason many people play with the standard button layout (Vewlix/Astro) with a Sanwa JLF with a balltop and a square gate, and Sanwa OBSF/OBSN buttons: that way, if your stick breaks mid-tournament, it’s easy to borrow one from a fellow player (if you can find someone to loan you a stick). If your stick is very custom, you’re on your own (either make sure it doesn’t break, or learn to fix it on the fly).

If you’re thinking of attending a specific tournament and are concerned, you should contact that tournament’s organizer to confirm; almost all tournaments will follow what I outlined above, but it wouldn’t hurt to check, especially if you have additional questions.

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One last question that I may have accidentally obscured in my tangential rant.

All Button Controllers aka ABC’s aka (if bought from the originator) Hitboxes. there are 2 things I heard about them.

Fighting games form the 360/PS3/Wii and beyond have code which automatically deals with simultaneous left and right, or up and down. But if you’re going true old school, I mean Genesis, Super Nintendo, or Turbo Grafx, on a creal CRT TV were you don’t hae to question the ping time and can actually play a successful defensive game beyond punishing going to the well once too often and actually react to a opponent’s windup, I heard the software doesn’t know what to do when either W+E or N+S are pressed. Like I heard L+R helps you deal in quick side-to-side changes when blocking by having both directions covered in those old games.

I heard for an ABC controller to be legal in a game where there is no software based opposite cardinal scrubbers that here has to be a computer circuit at the hardware level that does it.
Is there a standard type of scrubber in terms of button logic that’s legal, and others illegal, like having down or up always have precedence when both are pressed vs having a W/E stay the same when both are pressed until you release one direction.

Finally an unintended side effect of ABC controllers. The reason why an Atari Track and Field controller is faster than wiggling a joystick is because the left button (which maps to joystick left) and the right button (maps to stick right) are independent and can have both simultaneously actuate and release. I was able to do a 1500 m race and got something like 1200 points for the decathlon.

By the way, any joystick game that doesn’t use up or down works with the Track And Field controller. If you press both buttons on Space Invaders, you basically go one step to the left and then one step to the right in the same frame cycle, basically standing still.

I bet you if you put a joystick with an Onboard Simultaneous Opposite Cardinal Direction Scrubber into the controller when playing Track N Field or the Activision Decathlon, you’d get worse performance than if they were truly independent, like if there was no scrubber or using an Atari brand Track N Field controller.

So if you’re entering a tournament where any game could be played from any era, of any genre, then being able to turn off to SOCD Scrubber would come in handy in those “running games”, but that would complicate fighting games more if scrubbers are required.

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I assume the tournament venue provides the monitors. I assume they use porofessional gaming 1 ms ping time monitors if they use something that REQUIRES HDMI, and use a CRT TV for older games.

The only thing a 1ms monitor can’t do is a old-school light gun game, and the fact that all the pixels are drawn at the same time instead of sequence makes non CRTs not work.

I would buy a 1ms ping monitor except they don’t make them in 3D TV. I was thinking you can add 3D to ANY monitor by using a Sega Master System SegaScope 3D type of device using shutter glasses. There would be 3D in a lot more houses if you can pick your favorite TV, and add 3D if you want it. and even more letting you use your existing TV and save the money on buying a new TV just to add 3D. Is that why the Playstation 3D Monitor was the number one screen to watch 3D movies on; because it was the cheapest way to watch 3D, even still now?

That benefits TV salesmen too, because it doesn’t carry a “3D Stench” that a lot of high end 3D TVs carry, you’ll sell more 3D Devices and more TVs separately than together.

It’s kind of like the way you have to add either a sound bar, surround sound system, or (what I uses for both movies and games because it’s cheaper, easier, and more accurate) virtual surround encoded headsets, or just use the TV speakers. Those who don’t care for theater sound don’t need to spend the money. Also you may like one company’s TV and another’s sound. Mix and Match to your heart’s content.

If everything was sold as a complete inseparable composite system, they’d be less likely to move.

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  1. Most tournaments will run games off of the older ASUS VH236H or more recent BenQ RL2355HM or something equivalent that’s widely accepted as “the tournament monitors”.

  2. As far as I remember, the only real game where this caused an actual issue was Vanilla Marvel vs Capcom 3. SOCD cleaners are not 100% necessary for Hitboxes/all-button-controllers nowadays as most software should already have a way to handle it, but it wouldn’t hurt nonetheless.

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