i've never played the game, but if it's on mame, wouldn't a simple evolutionary search yield good results?
With only 5.1 seconds of input, you could brute force it if you really wanted.
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
#12> 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…
No, it's exactly that and it was done years ago. He's just been untouchable until recently.
Why was he untouchable?
Re: A man accused of cheating at video games may lose his Guinness World Record
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it's exactly that and it was done years ago. He's just been untouchable until recently.
Why was he untouchable?
Here's some background from a TG insider:
"I seem to recall Walter Day had sold the rights to TG a couple years back. I used to work for TG some years ago, but hated it. My brother I and were constantly having to fight with what I call "the old guard" comprised of record holders from the early 80's. First, they resisted every one of our innovative new ideas like speed-gaming records for consoles, and then later we discovered a lot of the records from the '80s were bogus because video proof was not required back then. The worst was "Mr. Activision" (aka Todd Rogers), where I and several others were able to prepare a case and conclusively prove Todd had been completely fabricating world records for various Atari games. To name a few:
Barnstorming (2600): Todd's record, which stood for many years, was proven to be impossible once we broke down the game code and stripped the stage of any obstacles. With the stage completely blank, flying a straight line to the finish was slower than Todd's record. When we presented this evidence, we were attacked by fans and supporters of Todd, and eventually an excuse was cooked up that I lovingly refer to as "the coffee stain excuse". Yes, after being attacked and told we were clueless about how good Todd was, one of the referees covered for him and claimed the 'document' detailing his record had a coffee stain on the part where the record time was listed. Instead of throwing the record out and forcing Todd to do a legit one on video tape, they just simply adjusted the record to be MAYBE possible by adding a half-second to the time."
Source: http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=31&thread...
Re: A man accused of cheating at video games may lose his Guinness World Record
#14Alternate link for people who can't be bothered defeating WAPO paywalls: https://kotaku.com/infamous-atari-player-gets-world-record-r...
I find that if you right-click on the link, then open it in a private tab or incognito. It will allow you you to read the article.
Re: A man accused of cheating at video games may lose his Guinness World Record
#15i've never played the game, but if it's on mame, wouldn't a simple evolutionary search yield good results?
That depends if the best result is similar to a bunch of slightly less-good results, or if the best is a wild leap that doesn't look anything like other good results.
Re: A man accused of cheating at video games may lose his Guinness World Record
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why was he untouchable?
Here's some background from a TG insider: "I seem to recall Walter Day had sold the rights to TG a couple years back. I used to work for TG some years ago, but hated it. My brother I and were constantly having to fight with what I call "the old guard" comprised of record holders from the early 80's. First, they resisted every one of our innovative new ideas like speed-gaming records for consoles, and then later we di…
Having watched The King of Kong, this doesn't surprise me that much.
Re: A man accused of cheating at video games may lose his Guinness World Record
#17Here's a good video summary about Todd Rogers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e-H4sEHB54
Re: A man accused of cheating at video games may lose his Guinness World Record
#18So, 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.
Re: A man accused of cheating at video games may lose his Guinness World Record
#19i've never played the game, but if it's on mame, wouldn't a simple evolutionary search yield good results?
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 states in total will be 60 * 6 = 360, and so the total input space is 4 * * 360 = 2 * * 720, which is a little big for brute-force exploration. Many of these states suck; after all, the total number of shifts is not ~300, but ~5. So a guided search is likelier to pay off.
Edit: Thanks HN for eating asterisks and having no math mode.
Re: A man accused of cheating at video games may lose his Guinness World Record
#20Here's a good video summary about Todd Rogers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e-H4sEHB54
This video stands by itself for all you need to know about the situation. It is pretty clear cut that this Rogers guy 'scum bagged' his way to his prominence when gaming was in a quite less developed state.