Secret Gamer Girl / SecretGamerGrrl / Googleshng / "Violet Hargrave" / Jacob Lawrence (Jake) Alley / Violet Cassandra Ocean - Delusional Zoe Quinn Stalker, Libelous Tweeter, Thirsty Gnome, Faux-Tranny Neckbeard Incel, Micropenis, "Known Troubled Person", Creator of "Massive vs the Masses", Self-Described "Noise Making Thing"; Lives in Niantic, CT

[TurboNAS]

It’s a pretty amazing project. Here’s what Jake is up against.

The original Nintendo used a proprietary controller with a serial interface to the machine. This is analog technology and adding something new would require updating the electronics and chips inside the Nintendo so it handles the new signals.

Maybe Jake is shooting for a USB-based controller that talks to a modern computer. That’s much more sensible since he can update an emulator and add in his new controller inputs.

None of this is easy but it’s certainly possible, especially since there are programs already existing to map controllers for use in different game systems.

At best Jake’s scroll controller will send an Up or Down arrow signal to the game. I suppose he could map it to A or B but its utility seems very limited.

Here’s some info on an original NES controller to show what these things look like under the hood https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/Controller_port_pinout

I wonder if Jake knows about circuit simulators so he can build this out and test it before trying to order a real world part.

 

[Kosher Dill]

The original Nintendo used a proprietary controller with a serial interface to the machine. This is analog technology and adding something new would require updating the electronics and chips inside the Nintendo so it handles the new signals.

You can actually send as much extra input onto the serial line as you want, as long as your software is set up to read it. For example the SNES mouse sends 32 bits as opposed to the standard 16. And even on NES there were things like this which doubled the usual data:

https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/Famicom_Network_Controller

There's nothing impossible about what Jake's trying to do, it would absolutely work to make custom controller hardware with new inputs, and corresponding software, and have it all work on a factory-standard SNES. It's just that nobody wants this or asked for it.

 

[TurboNAS]

There's nothing impossible about what Jake's trying to do, it would absolutely work to make custom controller hardware with new inputs, and corresponding software, and have it all work on a factory-standard SNES

I don’t think it’s impossible but the level of difficulty is way beyond anything Jake has demonstrated before.

It’s certainly funny to watch.

 

[Kosher Dill]

I checked out the Jakestream for Monday 12/2/2024.

He was up WAY too early that morning (at 9 AM) because of (something garbled - he really does mumblescramble things regularly now), and being depressed. And he had to be up at 6 AM the following day (Tuesday 12/3) for an appointment! Times are rough.

Nothing much notable in the interstitials, but we did get one Alt-Tabbie.



Jake still frequents Talking-Time Discord, and still plays infinite amounts of that stupid Final Fantasy 5 randomizer.

 

[Norvic 2 The Ressurection]

You can actually send as much extra input onto the serial line as you want, as long as your software is set up to read it. For example the SNES mouse sends 32 bits as opposed to the standard 16. And even on NES there were things like this which doubled the usual data:

https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/Famicom_Network_Controller

There's nothing impossible about what Jake's trying to do, it would absolutely work to make custom controller hardware with new inputs, and corresponding software, and have it all work on a factory-standard SNES. It's just that nobody wants this or asked for it.

There is however some mismatch between the way the NES/SNES does things and the way Jake wants his controller to work.
The SNES controller essentially captures a snapshot of the button states, typically once per frame and then clocks it out over a typical two wire serial bus. Jake is hooking up a rotary encoder to that. With a rotary encoder, you need to capture rising and falling edges to tell which direction the wheel is being turned in, a detail very easy to miss when you're not explicitly monitoring for edge transitions, just snapshoting the state every few milliseconds. A good analogy is digital music. Make the sample rate too low and you start losing the details.

I think that if Jake ever does build his controller he may find that if you spin the wheel too fast or too slow then you'll get confused data on console. Of course he could just build a prototype on breadboard before commiting to getting PCBs manufactured to test this out, but Jake is Jake. I don't understand where he gets his conviction that what he's doing is correct, considering he barely understands what he's doing....

 

[Tragi-Chan]

I don't understand where he gets his conviction that what he's doing is correct, considering he barely understands what he's doing....

His entire life tbh.

 

[Kosher Dill]

The SNES controller essentially captures a snapshot of the button states, typically once per frame and then clocks it out over a typical two wire serial bus. Jake is hooking up a rotary encoder to that. With a rotary encoder, you need to capture rising and falling edges to tell which direction the wheel is being turned in, a detail very easy to miss when you're not explicitly monitoring for edge transitions, just snapshoting the state every few milliseconds.

From one of his earlier Jakedev streams, it sounds like he's planning to use an encoder that outputs Gray code, so the input the SNES would see is just a handful of bits indicating whether we're in position 0, 1.... 31 or whatever. I presume if you have that and remember the last frame's position you could guess the wheel's direction and speed well enough, assuming it's not moving more than half its range in a single frame.

Not being an electronics guy, I couldn't say whether this is fanciful nonsense or what. He didn't say exactly what encoder he's using, and complained about not being able to find any specs or schematics, so it's anyone's guess.

 

[Spunt]

This is almost a little sad. It's like watching a small child build a Duplo aeroplane and prepare to throw it out of a window in the genuine belief that it will fly. Do you intervene and save the child the heartbreak of failure and losing its much-loved toy? Or do you watch and hope that its disappointment will form a valuable learning experience to help it discern fantasy from reality? Except in this case the child is 40 years old.

Anyone who thinks that Jake isn't severely mentally ill needs to seriously think about this situation. A grown man, who thinks he is a woman, has spent months incorrectly copying someone else's work and genuinely has so little understanding of what he's doing that he doesn't even realise he didn't do it correctly. He's so unbothered by it that he just thinks it will magically work. He genuinely, unironically believes this. He holds similarly bizarre views on all sorts of subjects, from physics to biology to politics. He believes that things will work just because he wants them to. That's a degree of magical thinking that children usually grow out of by the time they reach double-figures. He's doing this while sitting in an attic, having contributed nothing to society in over a decade, while his mother still brings him chicken tendies from the other side of town. He's hiding there because he thinks there's a vast conspiracy to rape and/or murder him by everyone from Elon Musk to gangs of roving lesbians. And he thinks he is the most learned person in the world, such that his unreadable and incorrect ramblings about a range of topics, of which he is completely ignorant, on an obscure Tumblr blog that nobody ever replies to, is genuinely his "job".

I don't know what Jake's problem is, but I bet it's hard to pronounce.

 

[Kyuruma]

Is this larping faggot serious? No prototypes? Has he even breadboarded the design? What the fuck am I looking at. Nintendo's earliest controllers are not complicated in the slightest, how do you fuck up copying them?

Guess I have to read this thread now, what the fuck. Is this dudes schtick just being a walking example of the dunning-kruger effect? Designing a PCB (or even copying one) is not something you can just fumble into.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Has he even breadboarded the design?

No, all his breadboards are tied up in the "Make your own 8-bit computer" kit. It almost all works!

In retrospect, that should've been fair warning for how the rest of his electronics career would go. If he can't even get it right with a literal kit that comes with instructions...

Is this dudes schtick just being a walking example of the dunning-kruger effect?

Well, it's more like rotund waddling than walking, but yes. He thinks he's qualified to run an electronics repair shop because of everything he learned on the "Jaketendo" project.

 

[Spunt]

Is this dudes schtick just being a walking example of the dunning-kruger effect?

Pretty much. Jake's psychology is probably simultaneously the most interesting and the most confusing of any cow on the site. His decade+ of bizarre behaviour and utterances defies easy categorisation, or indeed description. It's almost impossible to work out what the fuck is going on in that gourd-shaped noodle of his. He's not even autistic, apparently mama Alley tried to get him diagnosed but he even failed an autism test. We know there's a long history of mental illness in his family, but he doesn't seem to show any consistent symptoms of anything except of course stupidity. I'll credit him with at least not conforming to any narrow boxes with his brain errors, at least.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

His entire life tbh.

It's a ridiculous stereotype of male bravado and over-confidence in a sit-com way. "Building a SNES-controller can't be much different from assembling a slotcar and I did that during summer break 30 years ago..."

 

[Norvic 2 The Ressurection]

From one of his earlier Jakedev streams, it sounds like he's planning to use an encoder that outputs Gray code, so the input the SNES would see is just a handful of bits indicating whether we're in position 0, 1.... 31 or whatever. I presume if you have that and remember the last frame's position you could guess the wheel's direction and speed well enough, assuming it's not moving more than half its range in a single frame.

Not being an electronics guy, I couldn't say whether this is fanciful nonsense or what. He didn't say exactly what encoder he's using, and complained about not being able to find any specs or schematics, so it's anyone's guess.

I suppose it's possible he has that and he's just very confused about how it works. What he's got on his PCB is very typical rotary encoder common ground/wiper A/wiper B connections (except that unless he's got a very special kind of rotary encoder, he's wired the wrong pin up to ground.)

However accidentally he's hit on it, I can see that the approach he's taking would kinda work if he could actually create the PCB correctly which makes it even more tragic.

 

[Kosher Dill]

(except that unless he's got a very special kind of rotary encoder, he's wired the wrong pin up to ground.)

He did actually say that he wasn't sure which pin was ground and he needed to go back and check that Guess he never did.
Looking back on one of the early streams, it's very unclear what's going on with that encoder. It sounds like he just took any old encoder component from the internet and dropped it onto his PCB diagram, and it may not even correspond to whatever he's really getting.

Found the quote, from the 7/26/2024 Jakedev stream:
(while pointing out the rotary encoder on his PCB in KiCAD)

Finding the proper schematic footprint for the scroll wheel, I couldn't do it, this is, uh, swiped from someone else, it's I think the right setup, I think it's the right ground pin, I really should double-check that.

Yes, he's been working on this PCB for over 4 months.

He did buy some samples of the encoder, and had no idea what to do with it because it didn't come with instructions.

EDIT: Found Jake's explanation of Gray code from 10/4/2024, months later. He says "this is how the scroll wheel works".

 

[bile demon]

A grown man has spent months incorrectly copying someone else's work and genuinely has so little understanding of what he's doing that he doesn't even realise he didn't do it correctly.

Jake is really missing out on a promising career in publishing scientific research papers at any Indian university with credentials like that.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Jake is really missing out on a promising career in publishing scientific research papers at any Indian university with credentials like that.

Imagine if we started getting curry cooking photos instead of his usual chili. The needful has never been further from done.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

Jake is really missing out on a promising career in publishing scientific research papers at any Indian university with credentials like that.

He could be a MSDN accredited expert at this point. He's about as useful with his advice.

 

[Norvic 2 The Ressurection]

EDIT: Found Jake's explanation of Gray code from 10/4/2024, months later. He says "this is how the scroll wheel works".

I guess Jake could actually have a 2 bit absolute encoder, I have never actually seen such a thing for sale, but I suppose it might exist. I took a look on mouser, and the simplest absolute encoder I could find was 4 bits, 2 bits seems kinda useless.

 

[kazuhiro]

Jake spent two hours today tweeting a summary of his gargantuan retelling of the plot of FFXIV.

Here's the beginning of the index page on Tumblr.

And a flavor from that page.

Spoiler: Long images

Two replies.


Other stuff.

 

[break these cuffs]

Japs are pervs, who would have ever thought?