I would guess that the current setup is less than a third the latency that you will see with the physical interface..l maybe even off by a factor of 5 or more.

Yep, it's reliably getting to level 29 in the software, and I've seen it get to level 30. We'll see how it goes once we start integrating all the hardware, but I hope to ultimately get it reliably reaching level 30

I guess the only time your program would have to read the block on the screen though would be the first one, then you just pre-calculate the position of the next one, so even though you can't read the NES's RAM, you can still go as fast as you could reading the RAM with good programming. Can't wait to see this get more to it, really cool.

Finally had a chance to watch the video... The actuators are fast as hell... This thing can hyper tap with no problem!


3gen, presumably even with good programming they want to strobe the play field once per piece to make sure the piece went where they expected.

Can we see some 19+ speed please

I'll see if I can grab some later level footage...

Here's some gameplay footage of the AI. We've still got a few ideas up our sleeves for improving it, so hopefully we can get the final system working 100% past 300 lines

Very impressive, us Australians are so clever If only you could make more of these, i would definitely buy 1 just to mind fuck everyone.

I like how it missed 1 piece it all went to hell, so you aren't processing the playfield every frame, but who cares? I was impressed. Was that on a TV? I think the speed of the physical devices on it are the only things that are making it fail, that looked pretty tight.

Wow, that is a helluva demonstration.

I al going to be really interested to read more about the decision making algorithm whenever you release details.
Is this part of a project for a technical conference or grad school, or just for fun?

this is awesome!!!!

Too cool!

Pretty much fits into the fun category there

In college one project was to make hardware that played Dr Mario. A computer would tell the FPGA board what the next part was and the hardware had to respond with the movement/rotation within a certain time. Most people could get something that wouldn't lose, but winning was much harder. You lost a point for each piece you dropped so my first version would lose as fast as possible to get the least negative score

Would be awesome (and much harder) if you could set up a webcam to play, so it would work on any real system instead of using an emulator.

wow. it's totally seeing the next piece isnt it?

Heh, you probably ranked pretty highly then

We are definitely planning on using a camera, and only using a NES controller hooked up to a real NES

Yep, and taking the current and next piece into account when it plays the current piece.

yeah I can tell. It plays like Ben Mullen (lines WR holder)

Excellent

Our focus is on lines at the moment, we may build a strategy for points in the future.

Its pretty amazing. Im a little worried if this video gets out it might take away from one of our climactic scenes. can i just buy it from you?

It might need to star in the sequel?

Wow. That is nuts man. Good job.

Wow James, just WOW!

Crazy Awsome.

Better be careful if it gets too smart/good. It might send a Rob back in time to 1990 to destroy Thor and Robin so they don't make it to the Championships....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore)