Obscurity regarding binding keys

[Looper]

Short introduction: back when I did the 17:55 Doom 2 full run, I used keyboard+mouse for the tricks. Let's use WSAD keys in the example, because writing 'up arrow' is a lot longer than just typing 'W'.

 

For example, in Doom 2 Map07 rocket jump, This means I move into a precise position with precise angle, and then I just SR50 to the left and shoot a well-timed rocket. The crucial part is to press many keys down the same frame. So the keys required are W+A pressed AND move mouse to the left a bit, all in the same frame to get instant MF50 SL50 start. Obviously, this is not the easiest way to do the trick. Much easier way to do it is to press W+A+E down the same frame. W for forward, A for strafe left and E for turn left (as holding the 'strafe on' key is not required to be pressed down the same frame). This way you don't have to coordinate two hands and hope that the mouse movement is fast enough to produce at least SL10 to get the full strafe left command of 40+10 = 50.

 

Now as Zero-Master beat my time with his time of 17:54, to me it was quite clear that I have to remap my keys to make the tricks more consistent. It made me thinking that I really have to optimize my keybinding, so that I can perform the tricks as consistent as possible, but here the problems begin:

 

How are you allowed to bind the keys?

1. Are you allowed to use same commands in multiple different keys? For example, you normally play with WSAD+mouse, but just for tricks you could use FGH + mouse, because it is much easier to press FGH down the same frame than what it is to press WAE down (as FGH are all on the same row). Notice that fire button, use button and the general movements are usually normally found in multiple keys by default in a source port.

2. Are you allowed to use more than two devices for movement? Meaning keyboard+mouse is obviously allowed, but are you allowed to use keyboard+mouse and 2nd keyboard? Or maybe 2nd mouse? Or maybe a joystick? Pedals? A steering wheel? I can imagine many things how to use such devices to make some tricks easier. Requiring all of those devices just to speedrun sounds silly though. A help is a help when it comes to consistency.

3. Is there any standard for a keyboard/mouse? Are you allowed to use a stepless mouse wheel (instead of the mouse wheel moving in steps, it would spin freely).

4. Are you allowed to glue keys together to help you with pressing 3 keys down the same frame? Where is the line how much you can make this step easier?

 

This 4th point is really problematic to me as you could glue 3 keys together, making it macro-like to perform some of the tricks. You could use a toothpick on top of those anyways. Are you allowed to 3D-print custom keys? Are you allowed to shrink the keys, so that your finger is so big that it is almost impossible to _not_ press all the 3 keys down the same frame. Are you allowed to use 2nd keyboard and just kick the keyboard quite hard against floor/table to make all the 3 keys down the same frame really consistently. There are many ways to press 3 keys down a lot more easier than it traditionally is, but where is the line? Obviously gluing 3 keys together is absurdly unfair. Kicking the keyboard may sound fun, but I think it is quite unfair. I am not sure about 3D-printing custom keys, but I am sure where's a way to make a mesh-like structure so that you can press 3 keys down the same frame with ease. There are differences between "brown/green/red" etc switches anyways for speedrunning, so where is the line? What if there's a company specifically targeting speedrunners with their new keyboard? "Check this out, follow speedrunners! A brand new keyboard JUST FOR YOU! This let's you press 3 keys down really easy!".

 

I do not know where the line for "it is okay" and "it is not okay" is. There has to be some definite rules.

Edited January 3, 2021 by Looper

[GoneAway]

This kind of reminds me of another game where someone used a spoon on their controller to mash more buttons faster to skip text. I'd say the rule should really be "you can't do anything that gives you an advantage over using a standard keyboard & mouse with only your fingers". Then "standard" needs to be defined exactly but I think we know what that is more or less. That would exclude kicking the keyboard, creating small keys, using a toothpick, etc. Nothing where one key's actuation depends on another key's actuation. If that was agreed upon, it would come down to the questions "how many keys can be set to the same input?" and "how many inputs can be set to the same key?".

[Looper]

36 minutes ago, kraflab said:

If that was agreed upon, it would come down to the questions "how many keys can be set to the same input?"

*stares at numpad keys and the regular numbers which were present in the original Doom*

[Coincident]

I've mentioned my opinion about this in the discord, but I can repeat it here: I believe that using a fork / gluing keys together / 3D-printing-keys that let you press multiple inputs artificially should be considered TAS, because it is a physical tool that gives you an artificial advantage over everyone else.

Fabricating a series of inputs using physical objects, hardware macros, software macros, or XDRE is all the same thing to me.

 

If you want to "kick the keyboard against the wall", or use your entire forearm to press a bunch a keys at once go ahead, and good luck; because there's **no way in hell** that those techniques will give you a better millisecond-precision than what your fingers can give you, with enough practice. Personally I would use my time to practice my fingers more, play some piano or whatever, rather than trying to find corner cases around the problem. 
 

But at the end of the day, even if you put the world's best piano player in front of your keyboard, they will not be able to pull-off a simultaneous 4-key press with millisecond-precision 100% of the time; sometimes they will still fail. Frustrating as it may be, "Finger-RNG" is part of doom speedrunning and there's always a small chance to ruin a perfect SR50-input-start for everyone. If someone uses whatever tool to get rid of "Finger-RNG", it would be unfair for everyone else.

Spoiler

I wanted to quote here; who invented the "Finger-RNG" term? It's brilliant!
Edit: Apparently it was Vile in the discord server.

But binding keys 1-to-1 feels fine to me. Even if you end up with multiple keys bound to the same thing; that doesn't "shock" me much.

</IMO>

Edited January 4, 2021 by Coincident

[Looper]

58 minutes ago, Coincident said:

because there's **no way in hell** that those techniques will give you a better millisecond-precision than what your fingers can give you

You are actually incorrect as a kick will generate much faster moving object (a leg with huge speed and mass compared to fingers), making it easier to hit 3 keys at once. Yes I know, it sounds stupid but it is correct. If you try to move your fingers very slow when you do the 3-key press setup, it is not so consistent. If you do it with a lot of force, it is a lot easier. Now if you kick it, it is even easier. Speed is important there, but you can just punch the keyboard too. The kicking was just the extreme case of 'human speeding up a part of his body'.

 

58 minutes ago, Coincident said:

But at the end of the day, even if you put the world's best piano player in front of your keyboard, they will not be able to pull-off a simultaneous 4-key press with millisecond-precision 100% of the time

That's the thing, that's why you have to optimize the keys because.... let's say the best ever 3-key presser has 99.9% accuracy, the rest comes from 'RNG' that cannot be manipulated any further. Now imagine with better remapped keys etc you get it from 99.9% to 99.98%, 5 times less inaccuracies. Pressing 3-keys at once does not require any "wow amazing skills, he would be a good pianist, he can press 3 keys down at once!". The skill cap is reached extremely quick and rest comes from the 'RNG' that can be reduced a lot with different setups. That's where it all comes down to. How good are you allowed to be with pressing 3 keys at once without it considered unfair?

 

The accuracy of the player/pianist becomes less important the closer you are to the 'optimal playing'.

Edited January 3, 2021 by Looper

[MxCraven]

11 minutes ago, Looper said:

You are actually incorrect as a kick will generate much faster moving object (a leg with huge speed and mass compared to fingers), making it easier to hit 3 keys at once. Yes I know, it sounds stupid but it is correct. If you try to move your fingers very slow when you do the 3-key press setup, it is not so consistent. If you do it with a lot of force, it is a lot easier. Now if you kick it, it is even easier. Speed is important there, but you can just punch the keyboard too. The kicking was just the extreme case of 'human speeding up a part of his body'.

 

But the kick will have a slower reation time than fingers. The speed of the kick doesn't matter in this, since we're not sending things a distance we're actuating a switch and your fingers have much better twitch muscles than your legs.

Sure you can kick a football further than you can flick a pingpong ball, but you'd have better reaction times flicking than kicking.

I do think it's an interesting question, since you've only got so many fingers you can press buttons with so having pedals at your feet to press more buttons would be interesting. I know a few GW2 and WoW players that used racing sim pedals so they could move forwards and backwards with their feet meaning more fingers to press binds, and a few friends who have pedals under their desks have a setup to bind them to W to have a stretch while playing Minecraft and climbing a ladder or just walking back down a long mineshaft. Admittedly the second use is less important in Doom since very few levels are that long and you can take a break in between levels for episode/D2All runs.

[GoneAway]

Something to also consider is the question of what skills are important to us when evaluating runs. If looper binds sr50 to one key, and now he never fails a certain setup, how much does that "take away" from a 30uv run? I think this is a more important question than "what is tas" because we already use all kinds of tas tools. For example, advanced hud is undeniably a tool that assists us and is giving information that's impossible to obtain naturally. "Reduced mouse strafe speed" is also a tool that removes skill from the run (you get extra precision for what is a super important element of gliding fast). Toggling vertmouse is also a tool that removes skill from the run.

 

Reacting to messing up an sr50 setup, either by using a different strategy or by resetting your position, is a skill for sure - that's an element where some players can balance bad "finger rng" better than other players. That would be something lost if you could bind everything to one key - how important that is to each person is different.

Edited January 3, 2021 by kraflab

[Roebloz]

I don't really participate in Doom speedrunning (The closest was me trying to get 6 seconds on Entryway in Doom 2 GBA...For some reason.) but in my opinion I don't really mind things to aid players to press multiple keys at once, as long as it's possible without binds and with minimal delay.

One of the examples that come to my mind is how in Team Fortress 2, as Engineer you can set up a bind that destroys your sentry gun and already places you in the building animation for a new one. This is useful as one of the guns in the game called the "Frontier Justice" allows you to gain guaranteed critical hits after your sentry gun dies. (2 crits per kills your sentry did) This essentially allows you to save yourself using the crits almost instantly if you are in a bad situation instead of having to go through the menus and all that stuff. But for a bind or keyboard tool that allows you to press multiple keys at the same time, it does give you an advantage but it's actually possible to do it with only your fingers, and as long as it doesn't give you a major (1 second+) advantage over finger players, I'd say it's fair game. Once again, I am not a Doom speedrunner, but from experiences with other games that have binds, as long as it doesn't give you a major advantage and it is possible with fingers only too, then go for it.

[GoneAway]

47 minutes ago, Roebloz said:

I don't really participate in Doom speedrunning but

Serious question, why would you comment in this thread? Your opinion is irrelevant by your own admission, and the comment itself isn't relevant to the discussion at hand.

[Looper]

1 hour ago, MxCraven said:

But the kick will have a slower reation time than fingers. The speed of the kick doesn't matter in this, since we're not sending things a distance we're actuating a switch and your fingers have much better twitch muscles than your legs.

Lolz, sorry but this argument is laughable. You do not need reaction times for tricks. You can lift your leg 5 seconds before a trick and stomp the keyboard. The more important factor is to be consistent with the trick, not shaving some 1-2 frames.

[MxCraven]

3 minutes ago, Looper said:

Lolz, sorry but this argument is laughable. You do not need reaction times for tricks. You can lift your leg 5 seconds before a trick and stomp the keyboard. The more important factor is to be consistent with the trick, not shaving some 1-2 frames.

But it doesn't matter how hard you kick the keyboard then, only that you did it at the right time. Pressing X harder doesn't make the Doomguy go faster!

[Looper]

2 minutes ago, MxCraven said:

But it doesn't matter how hard you kick the keyboard then, only that you did it at the right time.

Incorrect! It does matter how hard you kick the keyboard. Timing has nothing to do with it, except timing the 3 keys _down_ at the same time.

 

Do you even speedrun?

[dew]

Here's some historical reading: A 2010 debate about how legitimate one-key sr50 binds are in zdoom-derived MP ports, or rather in Zdaemon in particular.

 

Zdaemon eventually introduced a DMflag that can forbid usage of such binds on a "classic" server. The DM community is more or less accepting of these, because they've been around for at least 15 years now and it's not exactly pure Doom we're playing anyway, but having the option to disable it for super-serious events is good.

 

My opinions shifted slightly, I wouldn't be as dismissive about the advantages as I was back then, and speedrunning is definitely a concern in this context, particularly when we extend so much effort to have the same playing field on the... software side. Applying the same to the hardware side seems logical.

[Shepardus]

Where the line needs to be drawn is at tools that perform timing (i.e. occurring across more than a single instant) or perform logic based on input from the game, since extended far enough that's basically a full-blown TAS. Personally I'm okay with, and would like source ports to support, binding multiple buttons to the same action (FYI Crispy Doom already allows two keyboard bindings for forward/backward/strafe left/strafe right), as well as binding one button to multiple actions. The latter can be exploited for easy SR50, but to me that's not much value lost (referring back to kraflab's second post). Then again, I've never had much interest in the finer details of Doom movement and have always leaned towards the categories/wads where such things aren't the determining factor, so I'm sure others are more interested in preserving a "one action per button" rule.

 

Regarding gluing multiple keys together, at that point they're no longer multiple keys, that's a single key with crappy construction. If you're putting a toothpick on top of your keys such that they cannot be pressed down separately, then that's the same thing. On the other hand, if they still can be pressed independently, then I'd see them as multiple buttons, and wouldn't care that your way of pressing the keys is different from how someone normally types on a keyboard. And yes, that includes kicking your keyboard, though to be honest I'm skeptical that's really more effective. I see nothing wrong with using a small keyboard either, that's no more wrong than having large hands. I don't think it's a matter of "fairness" either - other people can do the same if they want, or find their own setups that work well for them. TASes are also "fair" in the sense that it's a level playing field, but obviously we're not talking about allowing TAS for non-TAS speedruns.

[Looper]

So, do you think binding multiple keys for the same command is fine? :-D

[MxCraven]

Multiple buttons to the same command should be perfectly fine, the only objections here seem to be multiple commands to 1 key (or making one key by physically gluing 3 buttons together or something). I've got ctrl and M1 bound to shoot, and I use both, so I hope that's allowed :P