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Comment by Minor49er | Hacker News Reader

Speedrunner Karl Jobst made a good overview video of this last week. He is no stranger to Mitchell's shenanigans:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHK0Jg2R7SQ

Karl is wrong in his claim that the stick appears to be an 8-way stick. Directionality is determined by a restrictor plate mounted on the underside of joystick assembly. Here's an example: https://www.ultimarc.com/arcade-controls/joystick-accessorie...

It's impossible to tell which plate is installed by looking at the top of the panel.

Edit: He does get some things right. My point is that this is surprisingly technical. Even some of the best players in the world don't know how the game works.

Either way it's modified.

More to the point the footage is consistent with 8-way movement. Then there's a picture of the modified machine. And the appearance is consistent with an 8 way...

It's getting pretty sweaty

> Either way it's modified.

Yep. The oldest rules I've seen require that the machine have an original stick.

> More to the point the footage is consistent with 8-way movement

Which footage? An eight way stick let's you barrel steer while ladder climbing. I don't believe that this will be detectable from looking at footage alone.

> And the appearance is consistent with an 8 way.

This is impossible to tell from the photographs. The restrictor plate is mounted on the underside of the joystick assembly.

I haven't played the game in years (if ever?). What is barrel steering, and why can't you tell that something else is happening while the player is climbing a ladder from looking at footage?

In the game, if a barrel is above you on a platform, and it approaches the top of a ladder, if you move towards the ladder you can force it to come down the ladder. The logic is partly what makes the game so hard and frustrating, as most people obviously aren’t aware of this.

Oh, huh, I had no idea. But isn't it obvious that the barrel is coming down the ladder? Or is it also slightly random?

Here's more than you ever wanted to know on the subject:

http://donhodges.com/Controlling_the_barrels_in_Donkey_Kong....

http://www.jeffsromhack.com/products/donkeykong_tech.htm

Thanks!

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?

That explains things, thank you.

so is an 8-way stick one that also has 4 tact switches, just arranged so that two can be pressed simultaneously?

According to another comment, in this case it's just a lack of a plate on the underside with a cross-shaped cutout that physically restricts the joystick to movement in the cardinal directions.

Yes, I have a controller with an arcade joystick, the 4-way setting just physically restricts the movement of the stick so that you can't be pressing more than one direction at a time. 8-way removes that restriction and allows two directions if you do a diagonal.

He's also been sued by Mitchell - multiple times now I think?

Twice I believe, and possibly by Todd Rogers as well. Billy is/has also sued Twin Galaxies and Guinness.

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