I am more than happy to take over the role or coordinate with others that would like to help organize. I had seen the doc, but I guess I never checked out that tinychat before. That's actually pretty interesting. Did everyone have/need a camera, or could people just access some text chat? If using cameras, were those directed towards the TV? Seems like that's an interesting solution to player vs. player in NES, if that's the case. We more or less used some of these rules for our Saturday night comepetion at Geek.Kon. Works out well...at least it did for Josh. Dig that sort of stuff. Lots of variations that could be tried, if people were down. There is actually a potential SNES solution for vs. competitions. I was just reading a few weeks ago about some dudes that are taking SNESes online with some magic...but I am no techy and wouldn't be able to test this out alone. Off of the top of my head, I'd assume latency could be an issue, though without giving this a shot, I don't really know. I'll be soliciting some help on this soon. Otherwise, I'll give ya'll some time to recover from the bloodbath that will be PRGE and then I'll get the ball rolling.
I saw a picture of the device, but haven't done much research into how it works. It appears to plug into both controller ports on the SNES (you plug your controller into the box), and then there's an ethernet port on the back. Beyond that, I don't know how it works. ie: if it streams video over ethernet and receives input back (2 people playing on the same console, just over the internet), or if it functions more as a mere input repeater (which could cause really bad sync issues between players/games/randomizers). My guess is the latter. Either way, latency is definitely going to be a problem. Even if your ping times are ~30ms, that's about two frames of lag, plus overhead on both sides... I could see real world input lag being much higher. EDIT: I read through the source code (LINK). It appears to be an input repeater. That's definitely going to cause issues on Tetris & Dr. Mario, as the randomizers are going to be seeded with different values when you start a game (ie: both players will be receiving different pieces, which will cause the second players game to be foobar on both sides). I also noticed something peculiar about the timings for sending and receiving input over the SNES interface. It's calling _delay_us(12) and _delay_us(6) in multiple places. Those timings are definitely overkill. They only need to be about 0.1us. When I was working on my NES/SNES to USB adapter, I just set the clock to a hard 16Mhz, and called NOP twice, which gives you about 0.125us.
Glad I didn't have to go far for help. Thanks! So...even worse than I feared? Fabulous (and not suprising)! Well, we'll probably have to stick to NES, unless we get some marathon SNES high score sessions going on.
Chad, when do you get in, how long do you stay? I was planning on going today (Friday) but I needed to spend the day recovering some sleep. I am still going to go before I leave town though. It is about an hour and a half drive I believe.
No problem, I needed to rest a bit as well. I'm here through Tues (flight out Wed). Wanted to see a little of Portland, so took a few extra days.
Hey ...this is David Danny and Jake...if anyone is near the convention center or the red lion hotel we are playing some tetris Tryin to get ready for tomorrow...we need a couple more players...text 5592691045 also thinking able having a getting some food in a little bit
i had such an awesome time this weekend and wanted to thank all of you for being such gracious hosts, awesome opponents, and supportive tetrisers. i can't wait until next year...
Hey all, This is my first post on the forum. My wife and I had a blast at the tournament this year and will certainly be coming back next year for more punishment. It was great to meet many of you and start to learn how to improve our gameplay. I'm determined to shatter my personal best in the coming weeks; the awesome burning on display during the finals has given me so many new possibilities to consider.
Huge props to the tournament organizers too. They were super friendly, very professional and the event went off without a hitch as far as we were concerned.
Everyone made my first CTWC experience an absolute pleasure - I will really be looking forward to next year, which is already shaping up to be very exciting. Super thanks to Terry and Robin for the hospitality, all who ran the tournament.
Welcome Mark - it was nice meeting you guys and looking forward to seeing you both in the qualifying bracket next year!
@mark- it was a pleasure to meet you guys. i met three players from the seattle area and was wondering if we can't get together in the next few months to play some. my GFs sisters lives in fall city and good friends live in ballard so i go up to visit periodically. lets get some pdx v seattle stuff going! @chad- you are my new favorite player. i sincerely hope you continue to entertain the idea of moving to portland. i would love to have another pal in town to play with and i know robin and i are sick of beating up on each other so it'd be nice to have you school us.
@ Terry - Thank you sir, and I am very much sold on the city. The only question is can I find a company and job that suit me. I'm going to keep looking at Rentrak and I will definitely be looking for other possibilities in the coming months. @ Ben C - you were definitely missed! With you and Frank in next year, and Mark and Jen, and who knows what other surprise new challengers or returning veterans, the qualifying bracket should look very impressive. Did you hear we had a guy from Finland (Jani) come to play? He was amazingly entertaining to watch play. He was a one button rotater, a right side builder, a tapper, wore a mitten (yes, a mitten!) on the left hand, and had never even played the NTCS version, and he finished in the top 10! You also missed Josh T swimming in the Pacific Ocean. Luckily I caught some of it on video. We're all going to do it next year so be sure to pack some swimming trunks.
That. Is. Madness. LOL! Tell me he was swimming in his Line Piece costume. I'll be sure to be ready for a cold dip in the ocean, for sure!
