Hacker News Reader

Comment by TulliusCicero | Hacker News Reader

> Keen also claimed that he’d won several online gaming competitions using the CharaChorder, which he says brings up an interesting ethical dilemma. “I’m not sure if there’s any restrictions on what keyboards you’re allowed to use,” he said over a video of him playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on the Nintendo Switch, using his CharaChorder running through a XIM-style adapter.

As someone who's somewhat familiar with eSports, I'm having a hard time imagining what game would let this style of keyboard provide a substantial advantage, and I'm very skeptical of these "online gaming competitions" he supposedly won.

View on HN

There has been conversation happening regarding tournament play legality of digital input controllers for the Smash Bros games, most notably Super Smash Brothers Melee. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smash_Box_controller

Yes, but things like regular keyboards, or hitboxes already exist. How does this new thing improve on those?

Check out https://youtu.be/Lw1tcqbFwN4?t=867 which talks about some of the advantages of stickless controllers. That link points to a particular timestamp, but the video as a whole is pretty interesting IMO.

I'm aware, I just don't see how this would provide an advantage over already existing methods like hitboxes, or regular keyboards.

Your original comment read "keyboard provide a substantial advantage" without specifying an advantage over what, so I assumed you meant an advantage of the most commonly use controllers, not advantage over other stickless controllers. Even ignoring that, stickless controllers are still very much a minority, so an advantage over traditional controllers would still be a large advantage over the pool of competitors especially at lower levels.

If it provides no more advantage than an existing non-standard controller, than this news piece is a complete non-story. Or at least, that bit of the piece is a non-story.

Tetris. There's some discussion on HN a while back on different ways of tapping the controller to make quicker turns. It will be interesting to seenwhat CharaChorder can do.

All of that has to to exclusively with techniques for improving speed when playing with the traditional controller. As soon as you can use another input device there is no need for that.

That was just for on the NES version using the standard controller there IIRC.

Kings Quest I, Zork, or Adventure maybe. :)

nethack! although it would only be cheating in the "fastest death" category

Reply on news.ycombinator.com