Ramping Q's

[fullofpaint]

So I'm writing a persuasive paper agaisnt ramping and i need to give some history. Anyone know when ramping first got it's start? I know there was the turbo mode for the old shocker and the like but when did it first become widely used and accepted?

[Cold Steel]

So I'm writing a persuasive paper for a class on ramping and i need to give some history. Anyone know when ramping first got it's start? I know there was the turbo mode for the old shocker and the like but when did it first become widely used and accepted?

In my area, it started as a designer cheat, packaged as an aftermarket chip known as the XSF (sold online by Xtreme Sports Fulfillment) chip. These chips were touted to make any electronic gun stupid fast, and they did. As far as I know, these early chips were produced by Tadao Technologies for XSF. These chips were already being used by many of the top pro teams, within about a year many of the top pro teams were marketing their own aftermarket chips. Within that time period, there were a slew of other companies that entered the aftermarket chip market. Companies like Virtue, TAG, WAS, & Noxx were releasing their own products that were heavily demanded in the tournament scene. Many tournament producers found themselves painted into a corner when it came to dealing with ramping guns. Not everyone had them. Those that did would scream bloody murder if allegations were brought against them. There was no usable means of policing ramping guns. The NXL was among the first of the leagues to adopt ramping. They brought in radar guns, PACT timers, and developed a parabolic microphone to monitor the rate of fire of their players. Following their example, other leagues adopted similar policies. Ramping wasn't really embraced so much as it was tolerated on account of not being able to police all players and their equipment. By allowing ramping and capping the rate of fire, event producers and leagues could level the playing field for all players. The rate of fire cap also created an effective means of placing enforceable limits on the balls per second players could shoot on the field. The capped rate of fire, the penalties for exceeding that cap, and the technology that is used to enforce the cap, all contribute to the speedball game that we know today.

CS

[LegumeOfTerror]

all i know is it used to be cheating. i still think it is, and dont use anything but semi.

[punkncat]

The first actual "ramping" chip I ever laid eyes on was an Anderson board. It was made by freeflow IIRC. One of the guys at the field, a fellow who would eventually be on the same CFOA team as myself earned his nickname using it. "Cheater"

You have to understand. At the time trigger bounce filters were unheard of. Unlimited ROF boards were the common thing before ramping became prevelent. Around that time most boards were capped at 10, 13(many ESP boards), 15...Centerflag and a few others came out with 20 BPS boards. I am unsure of who came out with the first types of uncapped boards, but w/o trigger filters it was brutal. Lucky for us that the egg was the fastest common loader. When the Halo came out, it was awful. Getting smoked with 20+ BPS.
Not long after the evolution of these boards, the tourney scene had a lot of players complaining about this. Not only from the aspect of being on the recieving end, but also as a leveling (competative) factor. So, eventually the 15 BPS cap was decided on as the most popular. There is another and IMO more reasonable cap known as Millenium which is 10BPS.
In my mind, even though I consider ramping a cheat, it was a good thing. It actually put a control on the chaotic state of "cheater" chips that were commonplace not only at tourneys, but to what was filtering down to every field that hosted ball.

This is as I remember it, the way it happened "round here" and would not consider any of it cold hard fact. I cannot be relied on as a credible footnote.

[fullofpaint]

Thanks guys! I knew some of this stuff, but not all.

[warbeak2099]

The first actual "ramping" chip I ever laid eyes on was an Anderson board. It was made by freeflow IIRC.

No it was distributed by Pro Paintball / Freeflow. Ethan and Mitch just sold and installed them, they didn't make them.

[SN toter]

The old Shocker turbos...I mean its not that fast but its kinda like the precursur to ramping...gave you more shots pre trigger pull.

[wolf13]

the original shocker turbo's were actually an accident of sloppy design that read more pulses then the actual pull. from what i understand, most software would have these ghost signals edited out, but SP cut corners on the design. SP did what the do best, and turned sloppyness into a marketing gold mine. It was hard to control, and I witnessed a couple of occasions where people pulled their finger off the trigger and gun continued to fire. Bill mills of warpig did a pretty biased review of it that I think did a lot of damage to his at the time good reputation. It should still be on his site. it was quickly banned as a cheater mode, but SP still marketed it to players outside the NPPL (at the time the only major national professional league). an industry agreement was supposed to cap rof, but as I recall, virtually noone in the industry kept to it. SP never really went along with it and was more then happy to go back to openly selling cheat modes. Real ramping though came around a little after that but by then I had stopped paying attention

[billmi]

the original shocker turbo's were actually an accident of sloppy design that read more pulses then the actual pull. from what i understand, most software would have these ghost signals edited out, but SP cut corners on the design.

Turbo mode was in no way an accident. It was entirely on purpose, and in order for it to work, code had to be written that would buffer a single shot, so that it could count switch noise that happened while the gun was cycling, and act upon it as if it were a trigger pull once the gun was finished cycling. Without the buffering not filtering is necessary, because the switch noise is over with by the time the gun is done firing the shot inituated by the main signal pulse from the trigger pull. In order to handle the buffering, the gun needs to be controlled by a microprocessor, and that was back in the day, when some manuafacturers (BE for example with the Rainmaker) were still using TTL logic circuits, and had not yet made the jump to software controlling their marker.

it was quickly banned as a cheater mode, but SP still marketed it to players outside the NPPL (at the time the only major national professional league)

Only true if 7 months is your definition of "quick"

While the NPPL rules committee was still undecided on whether it was legal under the rules, insurance regulations (i.e. Larry Cossio) prohibited its use at the NPPL event following its public unveiling (Portland, Oregon at Dan Bonebrake's field.) The event after that (NPPL World Cup - produced by Jerry Braun) had a different insurance program, and rules or not, it was specifically allowed by the event promoter, with a lower bps cap than semi-auto. The next year, the NPPL rules were changed, and trigger and firing mode definitions were updated. Ultimate judge Bill Cookston stated that Turbo Mode was not allowed under his interpretation of the rules, and thus it was no longer allowed in the NPPL. It was never listed as a banned product though, in each case there were either rules or insurance restrictions that prohibited it not by product/brand, but by simply restricting the functions allowed in a paintgun.

I love that an article on which I worked so hard to stick to the facts and avoid statements of judgement (where bias would be an issue) continues to this day to have people like yourself speak negatively of me, because it isn't full of an opinion that matches their own, but instead is written based simply on the facts so that the reader can make up their own mind.

The real problem with that article (which is still online) is that so many readers at the time of its release were so heavily biased, that they were upset that I didn't reflect their own strong opinion. People ask me why I don't write about all the patent issues we see - and that's probably the biggest reason why. If I did it, I'd stick to the facts, and then would face a flame-fest from angry people saying I was biased because I didn't jump on the bandwagon of their opinions.

The real problem with Turbo Mode was all to do with rules lawyering. SP argued that the signal noise caused by switch bounce as the trigger was pulled counted as individual trigger pulls, and they built software that could act upon it. If the NPPL/PSP (actually PSP had not formed yet, but it was the same main individual promoters) had wanted it not to be an issue, they could have said from the get go, that the rules were not adequate to describe a trigger pull, and ammended them so that Turbo Mode could not be argued as legal, and been done with it, but they didn't - that was the real problem.

Doc Nickel summed this up well with:

"Next up; we start arguing what defines a trigger pull. Is it the single rearward-then-forward-equals-one stroke of the lever the player pulls to actuate the paintgun, or is it the movement of the actual device used to fire the gun, whether it be sear, switch or valve? "
-Barret "Doc" Nickel
Airsmith
Doc's Machine and Airsmith Services

That's what the real argument was about, and something I didn't address in the article, because it was really just about how Turbo Mode worked, not whether it should be legal under existing rules, or whether rules should be changed to allow or disallow it.

If I were to be writing from my opinions and biases about ROF issues at that point in time, you'd get a lot grumpier stuff to read - like about how at that same IAO, every major manufacturer of paintguns except Brass Eagle agreed to discontinue any paintgun capable of shooting over 13 bps, and not to make any new products capable of shooting over 13 bps. BE then agreed to 14 bps (since that was already the limit of their Rainmaker.) But it was a empty BS to placate field and store owners. None of the companies followed through on that agreement. I still believe some day that's going to come bite them in the butt, because someone will get hurt by a paintgun capable of firing over 13 bps, and some liability attorney will turn around and point to that agreement as an acknowledgement that rates of fire above 13 bps are hazardous.

Thankfully, some folks who didn't have their own axe to grind were able to look at that article for what it was - an explanation of how Turbo Mode worked...

"..when we read your review we were Flabbergasted (shocked) on the first read i personally was looking for the innacurate personal views, then after 3 reads all i found that you had formated a Factual / Comprehensive / intresting / understandable too none eggheads and in fact you even played the Devils Adovocate (think thats how its spelt?) and really looking for the so called "cheat mode". but all you did was just about teach us here at Paintball Butiken more about the firing system/microswitch/Analog/binary/ cycle rate etc etc etc. than we would have ever been able to learn Basically Bill WELL DONE!!!! you stood up and put your [explicative deleted] on the line by being the first respected Central figure in the paintball world to find the make a atempt at finfing the facts. and we hope that all the other people learn a lesson, unless you really really really know what your talking about
its best too shut up!"

-Simon Applewhaite
on behalf of Scandinavian Paintball butiken
Stockholm
Sweden

[punkncat]

Lol, wow. ^^^^^

It amazes me how even now AO pulls folks in.

/no opinion on turbo

[BigEvil]

This might help

http://www.warpig.com/paintball/technical/turbo/index.shtml

[Spider-TW]

It's not 'history', but it points that way...

The present features on many boards let you play all over the rules. Capped at 15 (or other) or uncapped. Debounce for trigger switch (noise) filtering. Mech debounce for recoil trigger activation filtering, and programmed ramping. With the eye mode on (Forced) they shoot as fast as ball will settle in the eyes (with a programmable delay). All the evil turbo, bounce, and ramping modes you would want, in a computer.

Since the promoters have to enforce the rules externally, you can have any mode available you want, just don't get mic'ed going over. I always thought of ramping as a rules enforcement issue, not about having the best rule. No matter how many tournament settings and jumpers you have, somebody like Bitwizard (no offense Bit) will be avialable to set your board up for you. So besides the tech aspect, you might include the safety and leveling issues of the rules in your paper, if you don't have it already.

Maybe the refs will get batting helmets with mic's and counters built into them, counting in the direction they are looking.

[warbeak2099]

Like any honest and professional thesis paper, you should also include why you may be wrong. There is in fact a school of thought that believes regulated ramping has enhanced focus on strategy, movement, and communication rather than the childish practice of who can walk the trigger fastest. There is not only one side to the story nor is the opposition side ignorant in the least bit. I for one believe that capped ramping that is regulated in tournaments is a good thing. I'd rather the focus be taken off of who can shoot the fastest and put more on who has better decision making and communication skills. I find that regulated ramping does just this. But that's just me. Some people value showing off how fast your fingers can move rather than valuing the importance of training your mind to think quicker and your body to react quicker. I value the latter.

[billmi]

I for one believe that capped ramping that is regulated in tournaments is a good thing. I'd rather the focus be taken off of who can shoot the fastest and put more on who has better decision making and communication skills. I find that regulated ramping does just this. But that's just me. Some people value showing off how fast your fingers can move rather than valuing the importance of training your mind to think quicker and your body to react quicker. I value the latter.

The more important reason ramping is allowed in PSP, NXL and millennium series tournaments is that it is not possible to enforce rules prohibiting it.

The trouble comes from boards with cheater modes. I don't think the term "cheater mode" has been correctly applied previously in this thread. Turbo Mode, various ramping, and even full auto modes are only cheating if you use them in places they are not allowed, they are allowed in some places.

On the other hand, there are boards that are designed to appear to operate in one mode, but are actually capable of operating in another mode. To these, I believe the term cheater mode is more applicable.

Here's an example of how one that I have seen (gun was actually used to win a national pro level tournament.) The marker fires as a semi-auto, and its board has no documented options for other modes. However, when you tap a secret sequence on the trigger (short pull, long pull, short pull) the gun changes into a hidden mode in which it fires more than one shot per trigger pull. If the gun sits idle for more than about 15 to 20 seconds it switches back to semi-auto mode. Because there are not de-compilers for most of the microproccessors used in paintguns, there is no way to check the software of a gun to see if it has a hidden mode like this. The only way a ref could catch a cheat like this is if someone told them the code.

In 2004 in the NXL not only had cheater ramping modes become a problem, but so had cheater dwell ramping (when the cheat kicks in, it increases dwell to ramp velocity up.) Their response was to switch to new on-field chrono guns to monitor velocity during the game, and since there is no practical way to let people use their own guns, but prevent cheater rate of fire ramping, they allowed ramping, so that the cheaters would not have an advantage over the honest players/teams.

In the NPPL, on the other hand, the rules remain semi-auto only. There is no in-game enforcement of velocity, and they use a trigger puller to test guns off-field to verify that they are shooting in true semi-automatic. They have no method in place to catch cheater modes/boards of the type that I described above. Recently, a gun designer/manufacturer told me that he's seen guns with software set up that actually recognizes the NPPL's trigger testing robot. According to this person, these guns will shoot with rate of fire ramping when used on the field, but if they detect fast trigger pulls that are constant (exact same amount of time between each pull - which the test "robot" does but a person doesn't) they revert to one shot per trigger pull.

[fullofpaint]

Thanks guys for all the information! It really helped pull some of the paper together.

Like any honest and professional thesis paper, you should also include why you may be wrong. There is in fact a school of thought that believes regulated ramping has enhanced focus on strategy, movement, and communication rather than the childish practice of who can walk the trigger fastest.

yea I already wrote that section.

Truth be told I'd probably agree with you. I don't like ramping in normal rec-play, but our field has an AXBL (local x-ball league) team that runs closed practices with PSP ramping. Anyone who wants to can play and practices with them, but everyone knows what they're getting into when they get there.