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A man accused of cheating at video games may lose his Guinness World Record

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Re: A man accused of cheating at video games may lose his Guinness World Record

#21

Post by jerf »

bbarn wrote: post #18

So, is the opinion that he just fabricated the photo, or that he had a knack for figuring these glitches out? Because as far as I know, glitching things is considered all well and good with speed runners, and lots of his other high scores imply some kind of glitching or another.

Glitching is not universally considered "well and good" by speedrunners. There are multiple categories. Claiming you have a glitchless run that uses glitches is cheating. You may also run in a category that permits certain glitches, in the no-holds-barred category that must be run on real hardware, or the tool-assisted category, or any other game-specific category. Same deal.

This is the current state of the world. 10 years or so ago and before, there was a much stronger presumption of glitchlessness. Though you'd still encounter the problem that rigorously defining "glitch" can be quite challenging.

Re: A man accused of cheating at video games may lose his Guinness World Record

#22

Post by fortythirteen »

"It's unethical!" cried the group so obsessed with protecting those in their inner circle that they regularly find loopholes to keep from recognizing legit records.

There are some good mods at TG, but I find that many, if not most of them, treat it like an elite social club instead of the supposed impartial record authority that they promote themselves as.

Re: A man accused of cheating at video games may lose his Guinness World Record

#23

Post by jerf »

ranger207 wrote: post #8
woliveirajr wrote: post #5

> Beyond the software analysis evidence, which speaks directly to Todd Rogers’s Dragster 5.51 score time I didn't understand this sentence: it means that, looking at the code and calculating all possibilities of gear changing moments, it would be impossible to achieve 5.51 ? If so, why would any other evidence be necessary ? Or, if it wasn't such analysis (and I think that this one would be definitive), why wasn't th…

Yes, the analysis proves 5.51 is impossible, and it's been confirmed that 5.57 is the best possible time through the use of an emulator with preprogrammed inputs, meaning that it plays the game perfectly. Todd Roger's response is that the analysis failed to consider the "human element" and how the console would respond to that.

Ah, yes, the "human element", the same thing that leads people to believe they can beat a chess AI by "confusing it" by moving randomly. Still a surprisingly popular belief despite how easy it is to test the theory.

Re: A man accused of cheating at video games may lose his Guinness World Record

#24

Post by xutopia »

whiskyant wrote: post #17

Here's a good video summary about Todd Rogers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e-H4sEHB54

For those who can't watch. Some games were scored in increments of 5 and he somehow got a score finishing with an 8. Many scores were ridiculous like 650000 for a game that goes in increments of 100 and the second highest video verified score was in the 90k range. Then the fact that all his records were referee verified instead of video verified. The referee is serving a sentence for child rape. Then there is the lie about the videos being taken by the police department and never returned which was proven false by a call to the police department. Then the fact that the record holder had direct access to the Twin Galaxies database and ent3ered his own records though he says he only did it once.

Re: A man accused of cheating at video games may lose his Guinness World Record

#25

Post by Jeema101 »

One thing that has maybe not been considered is that the Atari 2600 is susceptible to what's known in the online Atari community as 'frying', whereby cycling the power off and then back on very quickly while the console is running can lead to weird changes in the program state.

Not saying this is what occurred, but it could be a possibility, depending on the code...

Re: A man accused of cheating at video games may lose his Guinness World Record

#27

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

xutopia wrote: post #24
whiskyant wrote: post #17

Here's a good video summary about Todd Rogers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e-H4sEHB54

For those who can't watch. Some games were scored in increments of 5 and he somehow got a score finishing with an 8. Many scores were ridiculous like 650000 for a game that goes in increments of 100 and the second highest video verified score was in the 90k range. Then the fact that all his records were referee verified instead of video verified. The referee is serving a sentence for child rape. Then there is the lie…

> Then the fact that all his records were referee verified instead of video verified. The referee is serving a sentence for child rape.

While that's deplorable, it does not logically follow that a child molester is necessarily an unreliable referee.

Re: A man accused of cheating at video games may lose his Guinness World Record

#28

Post by FroshKiller »

EtDybNuvCu wrote: post #19
awesomepantsm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With only 5.1 seconds of input, you could brute force it if you really wanted.

Could you? The game runs at NTSC rates, which we'll round up to 60Hz. We'll also say that 6s of inputs need to be considered, and scores which are above 6s will be discarded. We'll finally say that the possible input states consist of the joystick in either left ("shifting") or neutral ("popping") position, and the gas button either up or down. This generates four possible input states. The number of possible input s…

I think the maximum polling frequency on the 2600's joystick ports is only 30 Hz.

Re: A man accused of cheating at video games may lose his Guinness World Record

#29

Post by UsernameProxy »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #27
xutopia wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who can't watch. Some games were scored in increments of 5 and he somehow got a score finishing with an 8. Many scores were ridiculous like 650000 for a game that goes in increments of 100 and the second highest video verified score was in the 90k range. Then the fact that all his records were referee verified instead of video verified. The referee is serving a sentence for child rape. Then there is the lie…

> Then the fact that all his records were referee verified instead of video verified. The referee is serving a sentence for child rape. While that's deplorable, it does not logically follow that a child molester is necessarily an unreliable referee.

It's a pretty safe bet, though.

Re: A man accused of cheating at video games may lose his Guinness World Record

#30

Post by taneq »

EtDybNuvCu wrote: post #19
awesomepantsm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With only 5.1 seconds of input, you could brute force it if you really wanted.

Could you? The game runs at NTSC rates, which we'll round up to 60Hz. We'll also say that 6s of inputs need to be considered, and scores which are above 6s will be discarded. We'll finally say that the possible input states consist of the joystick in either left ("shifting") or neutral ("popping") position, and the gas button either up or down. This generates four possible input states. The number of possible input s…

There's brute force and then there's brute force. You know that the joystick inputs have to be applied in a certain order, and you basically want the throttle on unless you're above a certain RPM, so the search space is more like 60^4 with a couple of parameters, which is plenty tractable.
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