Since the beginning of the great MARP clean-up, a number of old issues have come floating back up to the surface. A number of players, MARP newbies and veterans alike, have been expressing their views on whether it is permissible to use autofire in a recording or not. Presented below will be four choices to vote for, based on the opinions circulating around MARP. Cast your vote well, as the result will become a binding rule at MARP.

The choices are:

1)"The games should be played as close to possible as the real thing. Nobody wants to learn from someone using Autofire, because it doesn't equire the same degree of skill." No Autofire recordings, period.

2)"MARP is a fun site, and people are taking their leaderboard points way too seriously. Besides, autofire doesn't give an advantage on every game." Allow Autofire recordings, so long as it is listed in the description.

3)"When did MAME emulate a fire button?" or "I have carpal tunnel syndrome" Allow autofire recordings, no description.

-- Q.T.Quazar (qan@home.com), January 26, 2000

Answers

Well... I believe in spirit of the game. If you use autofire, you are violating the spirit of the game. In addition, we now have a checker to check to see if autofire is being used or not. We should NOT base everything on the checker however! I.E. even if the checker says autofire is being used, you should still watch the game, and if autofire is obviously being used, THEN you should say autofire is being used.

To make a long story short(I know... too late), I say #1, no autofire recordings period.

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), January 26, 2000.

I would vote No to 1) 2) and 3)

4) Allow autofire on regular marp but Enforce autofire banning for tournament recordings or tgmame recordings. I think it would make judging a lot easier, you'd only have to scrutenize (autofire/banning techniques) to the recordings that were made with tgmame stuff. Thus implying a more competative "new" leaderboard.

-- Chad (churritz@cts.com), January 26, 2000.

Chad, very few people want to start an entirely new leaderboard right now, especially since a number of us are taking a lot of time to fix up the old one. Tournament recordings aren't even a part of this vote, the ruling there has already been decided, and TGMAME, like evry other MAME will go through a long process of being hacked/fixed/hacked/fixed/hacked. The only real remaining contentions at MARP are Autofire and sub-speed recordings.

Anyways, I vote #1, as if that were any surprise, being the purity nazi that I am.

-- Q.T.Quazar (qan@home.com), January 26, 2000.

OK I'll vote #2, which is surprising since that would sort of make my autofire detection obsolete for a lot of recordings. But i have to , since it would make sense to only scrutenized the tgmame recordings since the others can't be scrutenized completely.

ok, maybe we'll let other people vote now.

-- Chad (churritz@cts.com), January 26, 2000.

"Auto..Auto...Auto...OUT ! OUT ! OUT ! " So thats number 1 , I guess.

ALEX

-- Alex ( anti-autofire) Weir (alexweir@indigo.ie), January 26, 2000.

A short post from me for once. I vote for 1: No autofire, period.

Cheers, Ben Jos.

-- Ben Jos Walbeehm (walbeehm@walbeehm.com), January 26, 2000.

I'll vote 1.5.

Its a toss up between 1 and 2. :)

I'll put 1 officially.

PS: The vote topic at http://www.wintermute.nu/vote/results.php3?pollID=3 shows 13(one duplicate), 4, 2. 13 for a new leadearboard, 4 against, 2 not decided.

-- Dave Kaupp (info@kaupp.cx), January 26, 2000.

I vote #1: No autofire. On anything.

-BBH

-- BBH (lordbbh@aol.com), January 26, 2000.

I'de say no auto-fire. In fact, I'll talk to danmanya and see if we manage to disable the auto-fire feature of emu+ when it's recording an inp. The dude that makes the unnoficial mame32 with autofire could probably be convinced to do the same, maybe if someone from MARP was to send him an email about it? Of course, this doesn't stop someone using an AF joystick though...

-- Bubble (bubble@mail.pt), January 26, 2000.

Yes to #1.

Aqua

-- Aquatarkus (aquatarkus@digicron.com), January 26, 2000.

A definitite vote in favour of #1. No auto-fire should be permitted period!!

BeeJay - who finally found that his MS Sidewinder Gamepad is useful for something: faster running in Track 'n Field pounding on the gamepad than I can get pounding on the keyboard keys. :-)

-- BeeJay (brianjohnstone@jade.co.nz), January 26, 2000.

I'm voting for #1, no autofire at all, although it should only really be enforced for those games where using autofire would be advantageous. But I tend to lean more towards #1 than #2...

-- Barry Rodewald (bsr@hn.pl.net), January 26, 2000.

#1, enough said.

Steve Krogman

-- stephen krogman (skrogman@bellsouth.net), January 27, 2000.

I'll vote #1. Like almost everyone

-- Olivier Millardet (olivier.millardet@wanadoo.fr), January 27, 2000.

I'll vote #2 ... I agree to ban autofire for games like trackfld , but not for shooting games : it's too boring knocking and knocking the keyboard and there is 0% skill in it (soon we'll have to vote if we can sit in front of the pc instead of standing up like in arcade ? )

-- phil (plamat@club-internet.fr), January 27, 2000.

#1: If you need to use autofire because you are bored or are afraid you may get Carpal Tunnel, PLAY SOMETHING ELSE!!!

-- Pat (laffaye@ibm.net), January 27, 2000.

No autofire. Hah! got this message when trying to post my "No autofire." message: We had a problem inserting your message:

There are already 1 messages in the database with the same subject line and body. Perhaps you already posted this? Here are the messages: 2000-01-26 by BBH (lordbbh@aol.com) If you are sure that you also want to post this message, then back up and change at least one character in the subject or message area, then resubmit. Please back up using your browser, correct it, and resubmit your form. Thank you.

-- Tommi (tiihoto@hotmail.com), January 27, 2000.

No need to vote then I guess, as it looks like it's already passed to be banned by majority :)

Crash.

p.s. #1 anyway, just for the hell of it.

-- Dean Ryan (crash@tcp.co.uk), January 27, 2000.

I would have to vote for #1 as well - NO AUTOFIRE! Recently my cousin started to influence me to cheat in MAME and use the easiest dip switch settings, since discovering this site I have definitely stopped doing that. Makes for a better experience overall. Now all I need is one of those Hotrod arcade-like controllers...

-- seymour (seymour@iname.com), January 27, 2000.

I know I might get shot here for this, but I would like to make my own catagory on this issue.

If the player gets an obvious advantage from autofire, then no autofire.

If there isn't an advantage from using autofire, let 'em have it. This isn't the arcade, this is the at-home practice runs before the arcade.

-- Chris Parsley (cparsley1@hotmail.com), January 27, 2000.

Scoreboard reads:

Against autofire - 16 1/2

For autofire - 2 1/2

In an attempt to be correct, I counted Chris Parsley's vote as 1/2 a piece.

No of course the vote isn't over, I just wanted to give an update :)

GB9

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), January 27, 2000.

I vote #2, If people want to cheat, they'll always find a way. On most of the games, I don't believe there's a big advantage to autofire. T&F and its clones are the exception. In Deca2000, I've read post about using cigarette lighters, pens, and a number of other things. How are you going to detect that?

John Bowman

-- John Bowman (laserman_1@pipeline.com), January 27, 2000.

What the hell? "Knocking on the keyboard" is too boring and takes 0% skill? If pushing a button repeatedly takes 0% skill, then how much skill does AUTOFIRE take? Are we into the negative region now?

-BBH

-- BBH (lordbbh@aol.com), January 27, 2000.

I bought this autofire debate up over a year ago but nothing was done then.. lets hope things change now. Defintely a vote for #1 for me.. autofire is purely a method of cheating. There's nothing like cramped stiffed fingers after a 5 hour RSI inducing game of Gyruss, right Beejay ;)

-- JSW (usagi@dingoblue.net.au), January 27, 2000.

You're right there Jimmie......... and it's even worse when you consider I also did a 6 hour recording on Galaga around the same time as well.....

In the words of Bart Simpson (or somthing along those lines):

OOS SMOOOOSE. EAT MY SHORTS.

BeeJay.

PS: 24 hours of playing Bomb Jack is also a killer on the old fingers but it didn't stop me doing that for Telethon back in '84 and I didn't have auto-fire back then either.

-- BeeJay (brianjohnstone@jade.co.nz), January 28, 2000.

I pick #2, "Allow Autofire recordings, so long as it is listed in the description."

As some arcades in Japan installed AutoFire circuit in certain games.

Also, some games like Darius 2 or Ray Force, have AutoFire setting via the dip switch, so it is not really valid that AutoFire = Cheating.

The viewer can judge if the gamer is performing well or not from the replay. :-)

-- albertc (albertc@keromail.com), January 28, 2000.

I vote for (1). Let the mass purge of the shoot-em-up recordings begin. Sadly I'll lose a starforc 1st but I can't wait to compete for real without autofire - woohoo! I disagree that autofire and subspeed recordings are the only issues. How about the myriad of recordings done under non standard dip switch settings? Nobody has been banning those yet - I see them everyday.

-- Tim Morrow (tjmorrow@bigpond.com), January 28, 2000.

No Autofire One more for option 1

-- German Krol (gcasta@drofasa.com.ar), January 28, 2000.

Am I just being thick here but how do you set autofire anyway, I don't see an option for it in MAME32 (windows) anywhere.

I would vote for number 1 but some games would be much more playable with autofire set. Examples are games like Aero Fighters and Raiden where there is a joystick and fire buttons in the arcade but on a keyboard you have to use one hand for left/right, the other hand for up/down and another finger (usually the weak 'ring' finger) for firing. So I vote for 2.

-- LordGaz (garyjlee@hotmail.com), January 28, 2000.

Maybe now I'm an old man and I remember bad, but when I scored 2 millions on Defender, without tricks, I didn't have autofire... and I can't believe is possible joking with 15-20 baiter every wave if you use autofire: only if your finger are very, very fast YOU CAN!!! So, the possible answer is only one: number 1!

-- IUR DHURIN (iurdhu@hotmail.com), January 28, 2000.

Simply put, autofire just isn't natural. I would rather get carpal tunnel then just go on cruise control. It's not fun if you use those kinds of advantages to boost the scores, and this applies to RLH cheats too...unless these were banned already. It's one thing to use slow performance as an advantage (it can't be stopped in a few cases), but it's much different using autofire. That IS classified as cheating. BIG TIME cheating. (Compared to slow performance, which is a minor offense) So, I'm pointing my finger in the air to indicate I'm voting for "1". (To some people, you wouldn't wanna know what finger I'm pointing. =P)

-- Sports Dude (shyboy820@aol.com), January 29, 2000.

I will be closing out the vote at midnight today. For the few active players who have not responded, please take the time to do so. Thank-you to everyone who did vote, including BeeJay, who I haven't even seen in about 3 months, but came out anyways :)

-- Q.T.Quazar (qan@home.com), January 29, 2000.

no autofire,hhhhm nope

-- gamefreak (gamefreake@yahoo.com), August 26, 2000.

Eghad what a bunch of whining b!tches calling autofire cheating. I was just trying to play hellfire, one of my favorite shooter games from the past and I was thinking "god this SUCKS without autofire". Instead of focusing on the fun/SKILL part of the game I was distracted by the need to keep mashing the button quickly over and over - it really detracted from the FUN of the game. Besides, if I play with a controller that has autofire as opposed to using an autofire setting in the program, how can you detect that? If you say you can, well, then I could build a controller that autofires in a slightly irregular manner so the detection would no longer work, etc, etc, etc... So, whether autofire is cheating or not is a moot point. If someone was to bring a little device to the arcade that pressed the button for him, I wouldn't call it cheating since he's not changing the actual game, he's just playing it in a different and odd way.

I never really wanted autofire for Galaga, particularly playing in the arcade, when I had a nice regular arcade button I could press with any of my fingers. But, if you're using a gamepad at home instead of a real arcade controller it's a bit of a disadvantage, since you also have to hold the controller and it's a little more awkward to press the button repeatadly fast.

-- Critofur (critofur@critofur.com), May 23, 2004.