Ramping

[Duncster]

Well, if the lever could be attached to an analogue potentiometer, or whatever the modern equivalent would be, then there wouldn't be a switch point which could be bounced. I'd imagine you'd have a threshold zone of some description which the travel of the trigger pull would need to enter and then exit before the next trigger pull could be measured. This should also catch bouncing triggers, I suppose... two birds with one stone!

As for external noise being a factor, I think even with another marker close by, the noise produced from the marker the device is sitting on would be considerably louder. Maybe some kind of modified feedneck (obviously you'd need a different feedneck for different marker models), with the mic sitting in the feedneck wall? This would sort the outside noise issue... but I don't reckon it'd be necessary, as you'd calibrate the device to the marker it's attached to before each game anyway, so it should only recognise the "host" markers sound signature.

To prevent players from tampering with the device, you could make it so it's only resettable by the judge via a "key". Alternatively, you could stick a little radio transmitter in there and transmit realtime feeds to a laptop in the tower where realtime stats on all markers could be monitored and acted upon accordingly.

It's just ideas, and I'm certainly no electronics guru, but I reckon we need technology to monitor technology nowadays.

Dunc.

 

[DarrenS]

obviously a cost involved here for the tournament organiser but what about a controlled hopper that can only feed @ 15bps and markers using an intellifeed?

scratch that, i just thought it still wont fix ramping.

 

[Chicago]

Originally posted by Sherman
Results wise I don't think ramping has caused any major changes.

See, people say this, but I'm not sure it's true. The top teams have had ramping ofr a while, so canging the rule to ALLOW them to have ramping obviously isn't going to make a difference - they already had it.

A better question is, would some of these top teams STILL be top teams without ramping?

I also think that in the ower divisions, it definitely makes a difference, and in X-Ball, it definitely makes a difference. There are a lot of really young NXL players that I just don't think would be there without full auto. WouldUltimatebe able to compete at all if the whole league was semi-only?

Regardless, it's all speculation. You can't prove that it hasn't affected anything and I can't prove that it has because we've got no controlled environment wehre we can compare ramp to no ramp.

 

[Chicago]

Originally posted by Nick Brockdorff
Ah... but the very most important part of semi-automatic transmissions, is at the start of the race, where missing a shift by even a couple of 100th of a second, will cost the driver a position.... just as ramping is really only very important in the breakout phase of a game..... I think the analogy holds water

Robbo:

I'm most curious about this solution... please call

Ever watched a front guy shoot 15 bps lying down out the side of a snake? Ramping has an effect for the entire game.

As for solution, we already know the solution. It's just getting people to use it.

 

[Chicago]

Why go through all the effort of installing some wacked out trigger monitoring device, which is going to be beatable and not completely accurate, when you coud just put in certified boards?

 

[Baca Loco]

Originally posted by Chicago
Ever watched a front guy shoot 15 bps lying down out the side of a snake? Ramping has an effect for the entire game.

What is it you're implying here, Chi-town?

 

[z00l]

paintballers being the techno nerds most are I doubt you would easilly convince the majority of ballers to switch to some 'generic' board that the league decides to sell them...
most want the 'best' board out there, with the most amount of configurationability to tread the line of a legal trigger setup.
And the fastest eye logic available.

Plus you'd pretty much screw over tadao, advantage and any other board/chip creator out there.

A simple monitor device that reads trigger switch and solenoid signal would be cheaper to develop, works with every board type with only a slight adjustment in how you attach it...

place it inside the grip with a reset button on it and noone can tamper with it on field.
Issue a complete allen set to each head ref and they can check anyone they like after each game. anyone found using a ramping board or not having attached the controller correctly would be deamed cheating and the correct punishment issued.

It wouldn't remove the need to check for trigger bounce since that would show up as real pulls as far as the device is concerned, but you could easilly make it so it checks both for ramping and monitors a bps cap if such would still be in place.

Had I spent more time in class than in the cafeteria I could perhaps have made an attempt to make such an device, but since my school years
did more for my ulcer than my diploma I better leave this one to the trained professionals

 

[EyeFellOva]

Originally posted by Chicago
Why go through all the effort of installing some wacked out trigger monitoring device, which is going to be beatable and not completely accurate, when you coud just put in certified boards?

Agreed, but wont that have a higher cost? Also, for stock boards that have been upgraded, will you make sure they have the correct version without any cheating ability?

For Example:
Ego, stock board, comes with Ramping. If they made a new version of the software with semi only that's fine.

But what about Race frames? People all have the stock board, but they can write their own software/firmware to allow cheating.

It would be possible for a lot of markers, but not all, which makes me think a backup solution would help.

 

[Chicago]

Originally posted by z00l
paintballers being the techno nerds most are I doubt you would easilly convince the majority of ballers to switch to some 'generic' board that the league decides to sell them...
most want the 'best' board out there, with the most amount of configurationability to tread the line of a legal trigger setup.
And the fastest eye logic available.

Convince? Who is going to convince? Force. As for "fastest eye logic", huh? Ball there, fire. Ball not there, don't fire. Don't buy the marketing hype.

Plus you'd pretty much screw over tadao, advantage and any other board/chip creator out there.

Screw over the very manufacturers responsible for creating the cheating problem in the first place? The horror! If I had my way, we'd put them in prison too. They made a bunch of money by creating the problem, no reason fixing the problem shouldn't annihilate them.

[qoute]A simple monitor device that reads trigger switch and solenoid signal would be cheaper to develop, works with every board type with only a slight adjustment in how you attach it...

place it inside the grip with a reset button on it and noone can tamper with it on field.
Issue a complete allen set to each head ref and they can check anyone they like after each game. anyone found using a ramping board or not having attached the controller correctly would be deamed cheating and the correct punishment issued.
[/quote]

And what part of that is simple? How are you going to accomodate various voltage levelsof te signals? How are you going to accomodate switch bounce being filtered by software on the board? How are you going to make the monitoring device and the board agree on what is and isn't switch bounce? how are you gong to make sure their clocks are synced up? How are you going to make the monitoring device fit inthe grip frame, which probably doesn' thave any extra space inside?

And how are you going to make these devices less expensive than $35 boards? I can't imagine stamping monitoring device boards is any less expensive that gun boards. Or are you just going to "share' them and force everyone to open up their grip frame, install it, close the frame, play the game, then open up the frame again to take it out? Hardly simple, and if that's the case, how are yu goign to pay for the 50% attirtion rate every event of the things "walking off"?

It wouldn't remove the need to check for trigger bounce since that would show up as real pulls as far as the device is concerned, but you could easilly make it so it checks both for ramping and monitors a bps cap if such would still be in place.

Or you could just put a board in there once that guarantees everything is legal and can be checked by plugging into the gun's read/write port.

 

[Baca Loco]

Originally posted by Chicago
Convince? Who is going to convince? Force.

Since you didn't seem to like my last question maybe you will respond to this one--

Disclaimer: in theory I have no problem whatsoever with the general notion of some sort of universal board (nor, I should probably add--again--do I have any problem with actual semi-auto as the standard of play), but...

It seems to me that this universal board concept has some fundamental problems I don't recall seeing addressed.

Different markers operate on different programming solutions regardless of the mode so either this universal board will have to accomodate those differences or else the universal board's basic programming is likely to favor one marker or another in practical application.
For example, in Tampa we used non-stock boards of a different manufacture because it made our guns both faster in semi-auto mode and more efficient. In every other respect the markers were unaltered so it's clear the software was the difference.

That being the case one problem that arises is:
A) functional--the impact on some brands of markers is likely to be adverse relative to their own software, and
B) political--in that all the major series have controlling elements tied directly to the manufacture of markers so in effect it would seem all that's changed is the battlefield. More potentially disturbing would be the thought that some manufacturers could influence which universal board was the league accepted product and thereby assure its superior function in their product or perhaps its less than stellar performance in a competitor's marker.

Unrelated directly but part and parcel of this whole semi vs. ramping debate is the fact the universal board, regardless of how well it works, fails to fully address the neutrality of equipment issue which strikes me as central to any notion of fast-shooting as an important skill to preserve--which is the core argument of most of the anti-ramping peeps.
If differences in equipment provide for on field differences (Angel vs. Impy or Timmy vs. Tippmann, for example) then you cannot claim, however loudly you wish to shout about it, that a viable skill is on display. You can only do that when the equipment isn't part of the equation and nobody (except me) has addressed this element of the issue. [I will accept that in pay-to-play pball it doesn't matter all that much if the players themselves don't care but in a world of actual professional pball it does matter if this so-called fast shooting is to be a skill of any real value.]