Advanced Macro Editing

Liason

New Member
Curious...who is the best macro editor on the site or who has the most knowledge about the editor?

I'm working on a macro atm...a bit stumped as it must be perfect...I would consider this an advanced user question.

The macro is for a Tiger Woods game. I would need to upload the macro because it would help the person helping me to see what I'm talking about.

If anyone is interested in helping me tackle this issue I would be greatly appreciative. Thanks for your time.
 

odingalt

Well-Known Member
Staff member
That's a complicated game I remember trying to make macros for this game way back at the beginning when I created the macro controller. In fact I used Tiger Woods golf and Project Gotham Racing as the first two titles when I was writing the firmware for the macro controller. I gave up on tiger Woods (I was trying to make the perfect swing).

My advice to you is to increase the timeline multiplier to 10.0x. It's hard to explain but this essentially increases the "Resolution" of your macro. By running it at 10.0x, the macro will run faster, meaning it will use more data points per every second. For a game like Tiger Woods where it's heavily reliant on the analog sticks and accuracy you want the highest resolution/most data points per second possible.

To look at it another way, when you are set to 1.0x speed, it will play 100 data points per second. When you set to 10.0x speed, it will playback 1,000 data points per second. [FYI when you record a macro it records at 1.0x speed. Meaning it records 100 data points per second. ] One thing that is a big mystery to me is that I actually have no idea how fast the Microsoft controller actually reads data from the joysticks and triggers. On PS3 we know that they poll at a very slow rate, something like 100 times per second. On the Matrix2 controller there is evidence to suggest that hardware is reading the buttons several hundred thousands times per second (essentially it's reading the buttons when nothing else is going on). However the next question would be, how much data does the XBOX360 controller actually send to the console. And the next question then is for each and every different game title available on XBOX360, how much of that data does the game actually consider.

Sorry for going off on a tangent, trying to help explain how this stuff works and hoping that will somehoe help shed light on whatever it is you are trying to accomplish.
 

odingalt

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Another thing I should bring up that is commonly overlooked on the macro controller timeline editor. If you draw a line with a starting data point and and ending data point on the analog joystick track, the macro controller itself will "Tween" between the two data points. Example:

At 0.0 you create a data point that pushes the left joystick UP. You drag the line out to 1.0 seconds and create a data point that pushes the left joystick DOWN. When the macro plays back, it will slowly change from pushing up, to pushing down, over 1.0 seconds. The controller takes the difference between the two data points and slowly "tweens" between the two values.
 

Liason

New Member
OK, expanding the resolution of the editor might actually be the fix I'm looking for...

I'm familiar with timeline editors as I'm decently versed in proaudio applications like Logic, Cubase, etc. Spent many hours manually editing note events.

The problems I was having was:

Data points, in this case up/down on left toggle...in this game in particular the data points weren't exact. E.G., a straight down or straight up in the editor wasn't straight up/down in the game. Both would break left. This I can overcome as I edited each data point slightly to the right so instead of a straight line in the editor it was a smidge to the right. This makes a perfectly straight swing...so straight the upswing wouldn't even register in the game.

I wasn't sure if this was a problem with the editor itself or the game. Either way, the workaround works.

My main problem is the downswing. The swing meter in the game is made up of over-swing and fast-swing. Over-swing is on the bottom of the meter and fast-swing is the top of the meter. The fast-swing I can manage a full red to the top...the over-swing I can't get full red...its about 90%, but I must have it 100%.

I tried adding more data points on the pull down but saw no effect. I have the data event as far as it will go to the right on the editor before it bottoms out and nulls the swing. I've spent several hours going from point to point on the editor and found the threshold exactly before it bottoms out. Maybe now that I can expand the resolution I can find that sweet spot.

When I recorded my swing live I noticed a bunch of data points in the beginning of the pull-down of the left toggle. The 1st few points would have a natural progression to the pull, meaning...a little away from center, then a little higher, a little higher, then fully at top...some events would go beyond the top into the black which I was unable to reproduce manually in the editor, definitely curious about how that works and if there was a way to reproduce that phenomenon. Should I stick to the progression or go straight to the top?

I think I might have a few more questions but I have to get back in the editor to give you a clear question.

I think one of which is: should I focus on the time distance of the pull or how many data points that are within the pull time?

Also, what happens exactly when two events are merged? I accidentally merged the beginning up the upswing with the end of the pull-down and both events became one. Can't remember the exact result.

Still digesting your post, but its definitely helped and looking forward to getting back into the editor. Thanks a lot man, very helpful.
 
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odingalt

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Eh, your post reminds me of more info on the hardware. So, all Microsoft analog joysticks are just potentiometers, and cheap ones at that. If you take 10 microsoft controllers and measure each potentiometer as you move it through the range of motion you'll get 10 different answers. We had to take an average and make an assumption about a few things about the joysticks:

"Dead band" - this is the area where the stick is in center but the game isn't registering any movement. There is a tiny deadband in each direction where it doesn't register movement.
"Full value" - this is the value when the stick is pushed all the way in one direction. Sadly this value can be different from one controller to another.

When you record a macro I think you are getting more of a raw reading of the stick, whereas when you draw it, it goes through some translation before it's put into a macro. We probably set a "full value" limit that is less than what your particular controller is capable of doing.

Way back when I built this thing I considered requiring a calibration routine to be run on every single controller, but I didn't think the average 12 year old could figure out how to do it. What is really needed here is some sort of calibration program built into your macro to store values like, where's your deadband and full value for your particular controller.

This might possibly explain why the arrows were drifting slightly left in your example. You could play back the same macro on another controller and that one might drift slightly right. "over compensating" or compensating by pushing the arrow slightly the other direction when creating the macro was probably the best way you can fix that, but then the macro will only work on your particular controller.

As far as not being able to push the thing past deadband, I think we would have to do some sort of software update to our macro software where, somewhere buried in the settings menu, we would allow the customer to define a different full value or do some sort of calibration or something. I can tell you the bad news is that I have no software developer at the company now, the original contractor who wrote the software had all of his employees quit over a year ago, and I had to lay off my software engineer due to the terribly low sales we are experiencing due to everybody waiting for XBOX720 and PS4 announcement. It may be awhile to never to get a software update out to help with this :-x
 

odingalt

Well-Known Member
Staff member
I am tapped out this weekend (I spent Friday night, Saturday and part of this morning working on PS3 Ragnarok updates), next weekend I can see if there is a way to easily rebuild the windows software with a field somewhere to define a different full value so at least you can draw a macro with the strength all the way to one direction.
 
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