I remember that Chad did some testing on using Alt-Tab before, but since I couldn't remember or quickly find his findings, I quickly tried something myself. I hit F10 to speed things up briefly, then, during my "game", I used Alt-Tab twice. Since MAME32 automatically pauses (EVEN win35tg3) when Alt-Tab is used, this is a way to get around the Pause key being disabled. Anyway, here are my statistics, and it's easy to see my brief speedup, as well as using Alt-Tab twice:

      1 slow frame  (average speed:    0%)
    632 good frames (average speed:  100%)
    504 fast frames (average speed:  339%)
    432 good frames (average speed:  100%)
     12 slow frames (average speed:    2%)
     12 fast frames (average speed:  112%)
    564 good frames (average speed:  100%)
     12 slow frames (average speed:    2%)
     12 fast frames (average speed:  186%)
    309 good frames (average speed:  100%)

Now how about this? This is one of the top recordings currently on Deca2001. It's LordGaz's Mr. Do! recording (made on win35tg3). I think I can interpret the numbers. The 3% indicates Alt-Tab being used. The 29% (very near the end of the recording) is most probably him hitting F12 to take a screenshot.

  59866 good frames (average speed:  100%)
     12 slow frames (average speed:    3%)
     12 fast frames (average speed:  240%)
  22008 good frames (average speed:  100%)
     12 slow frames (average speed:   29%)
     12 fast frames (average speed:  188%)
    210 good frames (average speed:  100%)

Anyone agree/disagree with my analysis?

At 60 fps, 59866 frames at an average 100% speed would take 16 minutes and 37 seconds. I have not yet looked at what exactly happens in his recording at that point. The easiest way to check it is probably to take only the first 59866 frames (32+34*59866 = 2,035,476 bytes) of his recording, copy those to a new file, and see what happens at the end. That way you don't have to use a stopwatch. Besides, I never know exactly when, after starting a game, the actual recording starts.

Anyway, more importantly, if any of us were running Deca2001, would we disqualify his recording? Who would, who wouldn't?

Cheers, Ben Jos.

-- Anonymous, February 15, 2001

Answers

Very interesting... it definitely looks like it's 12 slow frames and then 12 fast frames any time Alt-Tab is used. It certainly looks like Gary used Alt-Tab about 3/4 through the recording. Should we inform anyone in Deca 2001 of this infraction?

And yes, if I was in charge I would DQ any recording that had that telltale data in the .inp.

-Matt

-- Anonymous, February 16, 2001

I don't remember seeing a fast frame right after a slow one when i was doing the alt-tab stuff, but i certainly would not doubt that the recording used a pause mechanism of some sort. Actually, now that i think of it, i wasn't using autoframeskip when doing alt tab. So I'll bet the fast frame right after the alt tab is the autoframeskip trying to catch up. DQed at marp no doubt.

Anything below 20% speed can be interpreted as a pause. Anything above that and below 70% is usualy another program running at the same time stealing CPU cycles away from mame (slowdown).

-- Anonymous, February 18, 2001