this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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Valve has moved quickly to outlaw automated keyboard features.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

A comment I see nobody making is that this will negatively effect disabled gamers and prevent the use of accessibility tools.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This is 100% justified.

These types of features have been regulated in fighting games for a long time. The ideal situation here would be for Razer to open source their firmware and establish a community-driven approved firmware design and let valve greenlight a specific configuration which can be parsed by the game's executable (or, for tournaments, can be flashed for valid gameplay).

That's my 2 cents at least.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Are you going to ban mice that are too light? How about super low latency peripherals? Are monitors next? Is there a limit for the specs on those?

I really can't see how this makes sense for you.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The problem is that these create input events on behalf of the user. forexample: When pressing A while still having D pressed, the keyboard sends a KEY_UP=D event even as the user is still pressing D.

As for your comparisom, lowering latency is something different, if anything it's attempting to make the users actions registered more accurately.

Do note that without this kind of processing, the games already knows that D is still pressed while A is presses, and they decide how to act on it. Games handle this differently, a common one being both keys as "stand still".

So we're:

  1. creating new input eventson behalf of the user
  2. tricking the game to to avoid a state the devs have intended
  3. resulting in a huge advantage for the player.

In my opinion this should be implemeted on a OS level for all to use, but I don't struggle one bit to see how this is disruptive and a no-go in competitive games.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

You're confusing changing the priority of the inputs with creating them. Not the same thing.

In my opinion this should be implemeted on a OS level for all to use

Tons of keyboard/mice features are applied per device. If you want to do this on yours, it's free. Look it up.

There's no barrier for entry and it makes the gameplay quicker. There are no downsides here, this feels like plain gatekeeping.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's scripting to change your character movement. The super light mouse doesn't move itself. How is that even comparable in your mind?

Imagine if you had a mouse that stopped moving when your crosshair passed over an enemy. Is that acceptable?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The super light mouse doesn’t move itself.

These keyboards also don't move your character on their own. They simply allow you to react faster by not requiring you to fully depress the key before the other input is accepted. This is simillar to banning n-key rollover if something like 4-key rollover was the norm. It's an improvement on movement and raises the skill ceiling.

To top it all off, this feature is not hardware restricted. Unlike wooting's other things like setting the key depress distance, which you can do because they have optical switches.

Imagine if you had a mouse that stopped moving when your crosshair passed over an enemy. Is that acceptable?

No. But that example is also nothing like the feature being discussed here. Are you sure you understand what this does?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

they do in a way move the character on their own though, through emulating extra input events on behalf of the user.

without, these inputs are sent, one per human action: KEYDOWN=A, KEYDOWN=D with the same two keypresses: KEYDOWN=A, KEYDOWN=D+KEYUP=A

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The game is coded to not allow you to strafe while pressing both side buttons. This software sidesteps that by changing how the keyboard functions with simultaneous key presses.

This is simillar to banning n-key rollover if something like 4-key rollover was the norm.

Rollover has nothing to do with how the game is coded to handle certain inputs.

It's an improvement on movement and raises the skill ceiling.

Strafing is a difficult skill. Allowing hardware to change how a character behaves lowers the skill ceiling.

that example is also nothing like the feature being discussed here.

Still a closer analogy than "are they gonna ban low latency peripherals." Genuinely baffling how you came to that conclusion.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The game is coded to not allow you to strafe while pressing both side buttons

The way this feature works has nothing to do with how the game is coded and no, cs does not explicitly try to prevent you from doing this. If it does, please show me your source.

If they actually wanted to do that, they could also add a minimum delay between the inputs and not ban anyone.

Allowing hardware to change how a character behaves lowers the skill ceiling.

Lowers the skill ceiling to strafe but strafing isn't something that everyone does. Considering that it makes you harder to hit, and shooting IS something everyone does, it means that everyone has to improve their tracking skills.

Still a closer analogy than "are they gonna ban low latency peripherals." Genuinely baffling how you came to that conclusion.

If that baffles you, it means you didn't give it much thought. Lower latency benefits people with better reflexes. If you have a mouse that has a high latency and I a keyboard that has very low latency, that means I can avoid more of your shots.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

Games are defined by the limitation imposed by them.

You might arguably do all that if you are competing at extremely high skill levels tbh.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I give it less than a week before someone has code for this exact feature in QMK. It won't be as detectable as looking for "Is using Razer Keyboard".

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

i’d imagine it’s pretty detectable anyway… if the point is pushing a or d without any break between them, that’s real easy to time in software: no human is going to be perfect every time

sure, then comes the arms race of circumventing by adding some delay, and some variance in the delay time, but no large hardware manufacturer will just include it at that point and it’ll be obvious it’s a hack rather than an acceptable feature

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

I disagree on this change but I can see why it was made. Having keyboards with processors is a slippery slope.

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