lol noob get your facts right and go eat ya fuckin' clam chowder

sigh....wrong

it's no wonder you guys are so, uh, 'good' at in the groove. just throw on autoplay while your at it

Posted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 11:25 pm    Post subject:     

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Okay, everyone please listen up. I've got a lot of spare time and this needs to be settled. Link this to anyone who asks about timing windows, and tell them to come to me if they have any concerns of questions. I've had this figured out for a while (with no lack of drama), but people are still missing it.

The beginning

Up until Revision 16, RoXoR's official metrics included the line "JudgeWindowAdd=0.0015" under [Preferences-cabinet].

What this means: For all dedicated cabinets (machines with /itgdata/C in place), the timing windows are enlarged by 0.0015 seconds.

Why it was done: The PIUIO is considerably slower than the ITGIO, and without the kernel hack, it runs at 60-70 Hz. Adding 1.5 ms to the timing windows boosted the number of input polls in the Fantastic window from slightly under 3 cycles up to 3.2 cycles. This might not sound like much, but a single missed cycle means 13 ms not counted toward the window, so having another reliable cycle helped considerably.

Technical stuff: More disussion (including actual numbers) can be found in this topic.

Revision 16 and the kernel hack

Revision 16 introduced a kernel hack to increase PIUIO input speed. The metrics from Revision 16 forward commented out JudgeWindowAdd=0.0015 in [Preferences-cabinet], and simply removed the JudgeWindowAdd=0 under [Preferences].

What this means: PIUIO input speed jumped from 60-70 Hz to a fairly consistent 100 Hz, dramatically increasing input accuracy. ITGIO didn't see any benefit, but it already maintains 160 Hz input speed, so no big deal there. JudgeWindowAdd is no longer set to any value by the metrics, so it falls back on StepMania.ini.

What is set, then? If you recall, Revision 16 and earlier sets JudgeWindowAdd=0.0015. When the game saves preferences, this is saved to /stats/StepMania.ini, which is not reset between patches. This means that any machine will maintain its JudgeWindowAdd setting between patches, i.e. all dedicated cabinets will still have 0.0015 while all upgrade cabinets will still have 0.

Why it was done: This is the last great puzzle that we haven't solved. I can't tell you why it was done, but the result is that all legitimate (unhacked) dedicated cabinets still have widened timing windows. We're not sure if it's even intentional, but it's telling that JudgeWindowAdd=0 was removed from the patch metrics. If that were still there, it would reset all windows to 0. Since it isn't, StepMania.ini has the authority to set it.

Technical stuff: Hoo boy. I'll dig up some posts later that delve deeper into this.

Hackery

Since the beginning of time, crappy recolors have been copying the Revision 2 metrics and using that as a base, instead of realising that the StepMania engine supports fallbacks and overriding of metrics and there is no need to copy the whole damn thing, ESPECIALLY if you're just changing the tint of some graphics.

(Why yes I am bitter about this why do you ask)

The Revision 2 metrics still include the [Preferences-cabinet] setting JudgeWindowAdd=0.0015. Since they do not fall back on and, in fact, completely override the default metrics, the patch.zip cannot affect them.

What this means: A lot of furor over exactly the wrong thing. There are a lot of problems caused by just copying the metrics - for one, us oITG guys can't stick new features in the patch.zip and get them to work with your crappy recolor - but JudgeWindowAdd isn't one of them.

Why isn't this a problem?: See the above section. Even if the JudgeWindowAdd=0.0015 setting is in place, the StepMania.ini already had it because of patches from Revision 14 or earlier. In short, it's re-applying the same setting it had already applied.

Technical stuff: Oh, man. There have been so many arguments about this that I don't even know where to begin. If you're wondering about something, ask me and I'll explain it here.

Conclusion

Regardless of intent, all unmodified dedicated cabinets have JudgeWindowAdd=0.0015 set. If you read this post (seen above, re-linked, you can see that the kernel hack boosted PIUIO input significantly. Even so, ITGIO input is still superior technically. (The best DDR cabinet can't even touch the best Andamiro cabinet for good pads, so this evens out.)

I don't have any good answers for why JudgeWindowAdd was changed, but its complete removal from the metrics suggests it was intentional; if they meant to force it to 0, they would not have removed "JudgeWindowAdd=0" from [Preferences], which sets defaults for all ITG arcade units. If it was an oversight, they missed it for over half a year between Revision 16 and Revision 23.

We can just force it to 0, right? Yes, but then you're putting yourself and your cabinet at a disadvantage against legitimate dedicated cabinets, so I wouldn't recommend it. I don't say this lightly, since I added JudgeWindowAdd=0 into the patch metrics for OpenITG (gonna force it back to 0.0015 for dedicabs in beta 3) and I imagine people are gonna freak out about that. It's probably where the complaints about 'inaccurate input' are coming from. Regardless, it has to be said, so I've said it.

If you've got any further comments or questions, please let me know. I'm really hoping to end this thing once and for all.

You are aware that that's standard on ALL normal ITG machines, right? Only OpenITG has it set to .0000.

TGA? Doesn't that stand for Totally Gone Arcade? ohhhhh

Oooo, I would be careful with the IIDX statement.  We had a machine there for a long time with Tokyo Game Action, and I know a bunch of people over there who can destroy at IIDX. 

Yeah, that's so true. My dedicab is totally fake. I built it and bought the game from a guy in a back alley. He said it'll let me "beast"...whatever that means. I just use it to play Carmeldansen all day long.

That's definitely some shit talking going on there.

I love how some of these guys consider AAA's like they're some kind of a joke score. Why don't they have respect for players who can consistently AAA shit? Just 'cause it's not a 12 doesn't mean it's an easy thing to do.

Play some Kick the Can    noob  , I one time got 23 greats on it and 1 miss.  Next time I'll try to not miss any 

"HA. Ethan's talking smack now? He can have fun AAA'ing 7's on X while the rest of us work on real songs."

Oh my god hahahahahahaha.
How long has Nate been playing again? And how much tourney experience does he have exactly?