Calculators Are Banned
3 years ago
Indonesia

Reminder for y'all, after the vote held on the discord, and the decision by the mods, any type of calculator will be banned. The basic 4 function one, the F3+C, calculator like FastStronghold, Strongholdfinder, Throwpro, physical calculator, all of them. So you must triangulate manually with eyes. You can manually count with pen & paper too, since it's not a calculator.

(If there's something wrong with my thread, please comment so that I'll know)

benchbotch, Shmalex and 4 others like this
India

Just a question- what about streamers and their chats? Just like chat writes down coordinates, they might use a calculator to triangulate.

RowdyCat, EllaTAS, and Etherealxx like this
Indonesia

@Senatxr i'm thinking about that too, maybe i'll ask mod

EllaTAS and Senatxr like this
Indonesia

Okay, the answer is, in order to count the coordinate, you must look directly at the center of eyes when throwing it. Something that people wouldn't do when manual triangulating. So it's impossible that the chat can count the coordinate.

EllaTAS and Senatxr like this
Germany

Streamers with chat also have other advantages, idk

Bulgaria

hi any twitch teams ?

United States

I believe the choice to ban calculators in Minecraft Any% RSG speedrunning is short-sighted, and will damage the legitimacy of many existing and future speedruns submitted.

My reasoning: A calculator is an external tool, and anyone, even people across the world from the runner, could be using it, there is no way to confirm with 100% certainty that a calculator was not used in any way in a given run. A runner could easily have someone standing next to them enter the numbers into a calculator to triangulate the stronghold entrance after 2 eye throws using the coordinates and angle from the F3 screen. They could just as easily have someone in their streaming chat do the same, or a friend watching their stream, and don't even need to pause the game to do it, just run vaguely in the right direction until they get the exact coordinates relayed to them somehow. Stopping this sort of external tool use is a futile endeavor, unless an even more restrictive set of rules is established to try to prevent it.

Some possibilities for said rules would be:

  • Pausing of any sort during stronghold location is now banned. (I understand banning all pausing is unpopular, but it would have to be banned during stronghold location.) Otherwise there is no way to prove the runner did not pause the game and work out the calculations on paper off-camera. The calculation can be done with no calculator at all using either x/z-intercept math (after finding the exact x or z coordinate and using triangulation using a second throw and the angle to work out the other coordinate) or using a printed paper sine/cosine look-up table for finding the coordinates based on the x/z coordinates of the player during two eye throws and the angles from each one.
  • A camera (more specifically a hand-cam) is now required, to ensure the runner is not using a desk calculator or graphing calculator off-camera to calculate the stronghold position. (This establishes a bar that is higher than some cam-less speedrunners are able to cross, due to lack of funds and/or appropriately powerful streaming/recording hardware to merge said camera to the recording)
  • Any chat interaction, even looking at chat during the stronghold triangulation, is now banned, as someone could watch the F3 coordinates/angle during eye throws and relay the coordinates to the runner during stronghold triangulation, even if the runner explicitly tells chat not to do so. This could be done as a trolling technique by unscrupulous chat members to throw the run's legitimacy into question.
  • A greenscreen may be banned during stronghold triangulation, as someone else could be standing behind it and doing the calculation and verbally passing coordinates to the runner while the microphone is muted.
  • A full screen recording of all screens the runner can see may be required, as someone not necessarily in chat could be passing the coordinates to the streamer using private messages or another software method of conveyance, even if the computer this is conveyed to is not directly connected to the computer Minecraft is running on. Even with all of these methods in place, there is still the possibility of someone off-stream doing the calculations themselves, while the runner is not pausing (but showing f3/coordinates/angles at each throw)

A viable alternative would be banning the use of F3 during stronghold triangulation (from the moment exiting the nether with the eyes or eye ingredients or maybe first eye throw, until entering the stronghold), which would simplify things considerably and the bar wouldn't be raised as far, and this would be much simpler to enforce. (An alternative possibility is banning F3 until the exact chunk the stronghold is in is found, as F3 may be useful to avoid digging down into the center of the stronghold entrance stairwell and dying of fall damage). Problems I can see with this idea are is it means a blind nether exit could result in the player not knowing what coordinates they end up at unless they calculate it from the nether exit coordinates, and they may need their coordinates in order to figure out which stronghold ring they are standing in to figure out the nearest stronghold)

TL/DR: There is no way to enforce banning of using calculators outside of the game unless the bar for submitting Minecraft Any% RSG speedruns is raised high enough to exclude a significant portion of the community from submitting runs and not have them thrown into question later, or unless F3 is banned during stronghold triangulation.

LN

treeno, lodiloop, and Artemis like this
Indonesia

@Lord_Nightmare great opinion, maybe you can talk to the mods in the discord server

United States

i cant use a handcam tho so that would eliminate half the runners

Etherealxx likes this
New Jersey, USA

Any opinions on an f3/no f3 leaderboards split? I think that would help alleviate any calculator cheating since you wouldn't be able to see your coordinates to begin with, and it would be cool to see the time differences between f3 runs and no f3.

Indonesia

@Colin_Henry maybe you should make a separate thread for that

Colin_Henry likes this
Arizona, USA

Is F3+C still allowed for tracking your portal coords?

Canada

@Lord_Nightmare I have to heavily disagree with this response. It is very easy to know if someone is using a calculator in a run or not. It's not too hard to tell if someone is using a calculator or not, or if they are using a pen and paper. While you may be unable to 100% guarantee, a 99% chance is proper enough to conclude they are using a calculator.

To use a calculator, a pause needs to take place. For example, someone may pause the game midrun to calculate the angle. It's blatantly obvious if they are pausing randomly in the middle of the run to use a calculator. There are however certain cases in which people may actually have to do something irl, like for example, their parents ask them to do something. This makes the run SUSPICIOUS but does not confirm that the runner is actually using a calculator. To confirm it, we need to look at the rest of the triangulation. Someone who is using a calculator would NOT stay on the same line, since they need to make 2 eye throws to properly use the calculator. Based on this, we can confirm that anyone that strays off the line heavily and makes an eye throw BEFORE reaching minimum stronghold distance is suspicious. Again, we can't confirm yet. The final way to know is how they make their final triangulations. When the second throw is made, the calculation begins and a pause is 100% necessary to enter in all the coords. Someone from chat can NOT tell you the coords nor can someone irl because how are they going to message you? Discord is an option on a second monitor, but hear this, once you know the coords, how are you supposed to make it look like you found the stronghold yourself? This is where a verifier can conclude whether a calculator is used or not. You still need to make final triangulations if you want to be seriously legitimate. No runner would randomly dig down without being somewhat sure of their location. Especially when using f3, ur more than sure to dig down into the staircase with 44 and all that. With that being said, I doubt verifiers will be looking seriously for calculator usage unless a top time is achieved.

How can you differentiate between a pencil and calculator? Pretty easy tbh, just ask them to show work, if they can't provide it, they're clearly using a calculator.

As a conclusion:

  • There are many things a runner will do suspiciously when using a calculator
  • easy to differentiate between pencil and calculator
  • if you still use a calculator, live with this guilt that u cheated :)

TL:DR You absolutely can not make a run NOT look suspicious without using a calculator.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Yoopicul and RowdyCat like this
Lithuania

I also think that a lot of top level runners don't use calculators and just do it with their eyes, because it could lose time typing it in, even though they could just pause game so that it's only rta loss, but they typically don't pause it. Calculators also would likely just help newer runners with the game until they got better at triangulating. Also, you could still look suspicious and suspected of using a calculator if you had a chart on a piece of paper to the nearest half degree or degree with the trig functions for it or something like that. If you didn't do any of these things and just paused your game and did trigonometric identities for precision for a while so that you minimized your igt time to find the stronghold by only a few seconds. I personally think that fps booster mods should be removed before calculators (I still think that fps booster mods should be allowed though), because fps booster mods are changing the game and calculators are not. Of course, you could argue that seedfinding during a run without using KaptainWutax's seedcracker, /seed, or other ways and did not have it involving or modifying the game, it would still be prohibited. My rebuttal for this is that trigonometric functions are directly used to come up with an angle to be semi-predictably shared with the player when throwing an eye of ender, however seeds are not very predictable manually so it would be more unintended for them to be known; therefore they should still stay banned. Also, some people can approximate trigonometric functions at the same speed as it would look like they were using a calculator just by having a lot of experience with it. Sorry that my grammar and organization was bad during this and sorry if you can't understand it that well. READ THIS --> I know the decision has already been made, so this is not an argument trying to get them unbanned, these are just my thoughts on calculators being banned.

Virginia, USA

Why dose it matter if people use calculators if only the not top players use calculators? Also, how dose using a calculator help you with triangulation?

Singapore

@CalamityOblivion @lodiloop

There are definitely top runners who use calculators (until it was banned). lackingtoast and KiRyuKoe are good examples. Also, calculators are a lot easier to use than you think. For Cudduw’s ThrowPro, for example, you don’t need to type anything in, you just do F3+C and it helps you do the calculation instantly. Also a reminder that pausing the game doesn’t contribute to IGT.

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