MouseClick vs ButtonMashing

[CranberryClock]

So while going through school I had to write a whitepaper poc pov about a gaming theory and advance it to teaching why one argument is not the same as the other. Basically my topic was Click Casters or Button Mashers. My paper was actually read outloud with slides, how ever I am not going to include the slides. I will however post my Transcript/notes which I used as a refrence point etc. NOTE the grammar in the paper being shown is note style, sometimes theres errors in words, spacing, formatting. It was simply there for me to look at when I was doing my slides for the class Game Theory Simulation and Programming.

You might have seen this article posted by DexBeta at WoWIncGamers or reposted a few times around the web from the original article I wrote up while trying to start a website called Pwnography.
************

This paper is going to be a thesis where the average Myth about video games, as well as
strategies are dissected, torn apart and hammered to stop the spread of stupid nonsense. Imagine if you
will a Mythbusters(tm) of video games and hardcore gamers alike. I will be putting together a series of
tests and show my documentation to bust the myths about hardcore gamers and why they do the things
they do. Enough babble already letââ,¬â,,¢s look at this articles topic.

Button Mashing vs. Mouse Clicking

Every place you turn there are 'Elitist' jerks, or 'pros' that state that Button Mashing is far more accurate and faster than Mouse Clicking, or Click Casting as itââ,¬â,,¢s called in MMORPG's. They both have their advantages, and well like everything its dependent on the play style of the gamer really. I have seen button mashers frantically smash buttons to dust and still get beaten by the most advanced hand eye coordinated quake twitching click casters. I have also seen the beastly of mouse clickers get destroyed by hot keying frantic. Needless to say, I am going to leave it to science.

So which is faster Button Mashing or Mouse Clicking?

The Facts:
*Note: These tests were both concluded on 2 sets of keyboards and mice. The first set was the average
mouse by Microsoft/HP that is shipped with a default setup. Same goes for the keyboard.*

Mouse clicks are simple. However it runs a little different than a keyboard. Since the mouse is drawn on an API GUI layer on your computer, itââ,¬â,,¢s a visual representation. Imagine if you will a virtual keyboard button that floating around on your screen. Wherever you click, you in sense of keeping it simple, push a button on that virtual keyboard, and it sends the mouse coordinates back to the API layer which does a math equation of whether or not there is something to be pushed at those coordinates on your screen.

Mice clicks are sent to the computer via Hz , or Hertz . These Hz use whatââ,¬â,,¢s known as polling.
The polling rate (or report rate) determines how often the mouse sends information to your computer.
Measured in Hz , this setting equates to lag time (in ms).

By default, the USB polling rate is set at 125hz .

In our first test, were using the default for a mouse. A time table will be used, as 125hz averages 9.8ms or 10ms time between when you click and when your computer receives the "I clicked" message. Keystrokes are even easier to understand, but can get a bit tricky. Keyboards are considered a direct input interface. When you hit "X" key on your screen, it fires off an I/O command. I stands for Input, your keystroke, and O stands for Output, your output from the input command. Simple right? 1 will create a 1 on the screen and so on therefore. Well just like a mouse, you have an API layer. The API layer here is your default I/O command. However, this is where Keystrokes become a little tricky. Each program that is created imports the default I/O API table, making 1 = 1, and Shift + g = G. Now that you have that,
there is also additional API layers added onto it. If for example you are playing World of Warcraft, and you hit 1, but have chat closed, it will automatically (default settings) override the bottom layer API and use the Games API for keystrokes, therefore it will push the button for your Hotkey. Now here comes the juicy part. The default poll rate for almost ALL keyboards not tuned in the kernel or using any advanced key stroke programs, or polling mods etc. We are talking about going out to Walmart and buying a 7$ USB keyboard. The default rate is usually 210hz averages. However the time in
ms that its reported is 11.1ms.

Why is that?

For sake of simplifying everything in case you didn't follow above, here is a small diagram.
Mouse:
-You move mouse to coords 20x,20y where a button exist.
-You click your mouse button and it fires off the command you clicked the button.
-It took 10ms, for your computer to receive the "I clicked" command.
-Mouse - > API Layer - > Coord check - > Command sent

Keyboard:
-Your hotkey is set to A for the button on 20x,20y button.
-You smash your keyboard as fast as you can hitting A.
-It still took 11ms for your computer to receive the "I smashed A" command.
-Keyboard - >API Bottom - > API Top - > Function Check - > Command Sent

Ok, so you start to see the difference is 1ms. What is 1ms? Well, here is where it gets down and dirty. 1ms actually can equate to close to 1 to 3 second delays in a Stack. Since your computer is always running a series of commands and yes no switching it as to make whatââ,¬â,,¢s known as Threads. These Threads act like a giant list of chores it needs to do. Mind you though, your computer runs through these calculations 100x per Ns (Nano Second). As things get added to the list, it processes the list. Imagine this, youââ,¬â,,¢re standing outside Best Buy, just waiting for the doors to open. There are 100
copies of the newest World of Warcraft game and there are 190 people outside. If 100 people were a mouse and you were a keyboard, and you all hit ââ,¬ËœEnter Storeââ,¬â,,¢ at the same time, the single file line would land you in spot 101.
Now.. whatââ,¬â,,¢s the big deal you ask? Whereââ,¬â,,¢s the 3 seconds come from? Let us say for demonstration purposes, you are fighting a boss in a video game. Your mouse is hovered over a cooldown and your spam clicking. You hit the button and it jumps in line to process the output. Bam, it jumped in before XX stack got flooded with other commands. Let us say now your button mashing, in the same example. You hit your keystroke at the same moment that the cooldown is upââ,¬Â¦since its 1ms slower, anything that was 1ms faster at the same exact point has priority in that thread, which means, you may have just got silenced. Button Mashing? No thanks.

However.. on the opposite side, here comes downside to clicking fast. Your buttons are scattered usually which means there is travel time between where you can click. This ultimately reduces the chance of you spam clicking as fast as you can button mash buttons close to you. Or does it?

I setup a generic test with 10 people. Each person had the same objective. They had 1 minute to click the mouse as fast as possible. Mind you I programmed the test in Flash, this was to simulate that extra API layer that exist in video games. The test consisted of a single Square Icon, when pushed it activated a global cooldown in which the button could not be clicked again for [.25 second]. This was so we can simulate what you see in video games.

For the Mouse Clicks:
Subject 1: 336
Subject 2: 285
Subject 3: 312
Subject 4 : 352
Subject 5: 296
Subject 6: 311
Subject 7: 365
Subject 8: 284
Subject 9: 4 02
Subject 10: 362

From the above chart, you can see the average is about 325ish. 325 times that spell was clicked while
being valid and able to be pushed.

For the Keystrokes:
Subject 1: 290
Subject 2: 310
Subject 3: 265
Subject 4 : 238
Subject 5: 293
Subject 6: 274
Subject 7: 259
Subject 8: 296
Subject 9: 319
Subject 10: 263

As you can see, one of two things happened. Either the response time of the finger hitting the keyboard was not fast enough, or that [1ms] actually does make a difference. Now I know what your thinking, there could be some issues with test subjects, blah blah.. but I decided like I said before to turn to science.

Ok guys, its time to get down and nerdy. Thank you for taking the time to continue listening on what I have to say, and well god bless science. For ease of the mind, we are using the index finger on both examples.

As you can see there is a small distance that a mouse click has to travel. When a users finger is positioned on the clicker, the actual distance a finger must move between the up position and the click position is less than 1mm. It also takes less than 2Lbs of pressure to actuate the mouses clicker. Thus we have the formula of 1mm distance for every <2lbs pressure.

On the other hand, we have the keystroke, which has a distance 1.6mm of distance before the I/O actuation and <1.5lbs of pressure to hit. So which is more effective? There is one way to find out. Using math and science, I created a program which would simulate keystokes vs mice clicks. On average the human finger and sustain 8000lbs of pressure before the muscle inside the index finger starts to get tired. [Thank you Cha Cha for that answer].

Automatically you can assume that keystokes would be the wiser right? But who button mashes with there finger only? Most players rest there hand on the keys and have to force down the index finger there for moving the wrist. We simulated the wrist pressure by adding in gravity in the simulated task as well as the continue pressure that a finger adds after you hit the key. Since the mouse allows the user to rest the hand on the actual device only the index is used, and the tendon use is strict pressure from the index. Where as the hands vibrations up and down cause more pressure to the fingers down index on a keypad.

Using Science again, I went ahead and purchased a pressure touch pad from an old Itouch. (thank you Dilagence for allowing me to tear apart your pressure pad).

Hooking the the pressure pad up under the mouse reveals that the actual pressure pushed every click was:

Ïâ,¬A = k, 3.14xarea(10−5 bar) = 17.4psi on 1 click.

And for a keystroke:

Ïâ,¬A = k, 3.14xarea(17−5 bar) = 23.1psi on 1 keystroke.

All in all, 459 clicks your finger will get tired of clicking, and 346 keystrokes your finger will get tired.

In the second series of tests I decided to take it up a notch and apply it to real life gaming. Now that science has proved it takes more energy to push a button, then to click, and you can click faster than you can push a button, it was time to see response times. On the next series of test I grabbed the same 10 people and built a new application. This time,
the application had a row of cooldown buttons. There was a row of 5. The rotational setup was simple, 1, 1, 3, 4, 2, 5, 3, 5 (Repeat) for one minute. The goal was to complete the buttons and you would be awarded with 1 cycle. This would simulate a rotational cast. Mind you all the buttons were using the same [.25] second global cooldown timer, and would use a simple null system to grey out the button so test subjects were required to click in the rotational order. For the button mashing test, all the keys were linked to the buttons, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

On a one minute test here are the results:

For the Mouse Clicks:
Subject 1: 18 cycles complete
Subject 2: 13 cycles complete
Subject 3: 17 cycles complete
Subject 4 : 21 cycles complete
Subject 5: 15 cycles complete
Subject 6: 19 cycles complete
Subject 7: 24 cycles complete
Subject 8: 18 cycles complete
Subject 9: 22 cycles complete
Subject 10: 21 cycles complete

Mind you this is moving the mouse between clicks to the respected button to click.

For the Button Mashers:
Subject 1: 12 cycles complete
Subject 2: 16 cycles complete
Subject 3: 16 cycles complete
Subject 4 : 22 cycles complete
Subject 5: 15 cycles complete
Subject 6: 18 cycles complete
Subject 7: 23 cycles complete
Subject 8: 17 cycles complete
Subject 9: 20 cycles complete
Subject 10: 19 cycles complete

Once again button mashing has proven to be slower. After further review I wanted to make sure there was no errors. The next cycles were how long could you go without having to stop for a 5 second break. If you stopped for 5 seconds the test was terminated.

For the Mouse Clicks:
Subject 1: 298 cycles complete (2,384 clicks)
Subject 2: 229 cycles complete (1,832 clicks)
Subject 3: 301 cycles complete (2,4 08 clicks)
Subject 4 : 257 cycles complete (2,056 clicks)
Subject 5: 328 cycles complete (2,624 clicks)
Subject 6: 395 cycles complete (3,160 clicks)
Subject 7: 267 cycles complete (2,136 clicks)
Subject 8: 324 cycles complete (2,592 clicks)
Subject 9: 295 cycles complete (2,360 clicks)
Subject 10: 34 1 cycles complete (2,728 clicks)

and for keystrokes

For the Keystrokes:
Subject 1: 210 cycles complete (1,680 keystrokes)
Subject 2: 215 cycles complete (1,720 keystrokes)
Subject 3: 301 cycles complete (2,4 08 keystrokes)
Subject 4 : 211 cycles complete (1,688 keystrokes)
Subject 5: 209 cycles complete (1,672 keystrokes)
Subject 6: 198 cycles complete (1,584 keystrokes)
Subject 7: 238 cycles complete (1.904 keystrokes)
Subject 8: 264 cycles complete (2,112 keystrokes)
Subject 9: 231 cycles complete (1,84 8 keystrokes)
Subject 10: 206 cycles complete (1,64 8 keystrokes)

All in all, it seems that Mouse Clicks once again prevailed not only by spending less energy, but also being able to complete the cycle faster, mainly because of ââ,¬ËœMemorizationââ,¬â,,¢ of where the buttons where. Now there are certain factors of things, such as mouse scroll speed, vs gamer skill but hard numbers do not lie.

In conclusion, if your an elitist jerk that spends his entire time complaining about how people click cast, maybe you should rethink your strategy. Players who button mash are not exactly hitting or polling faster than those who spam click. Sure this is not guaranteed 100% accurate on the data, not to mention it always depends on the players play style, but Button Mashing vs Click Casting has been busted. The ruling by math, science, tests as well as hard facts shows that those Click Casters you have always made fun of, actually do more with less energy than your button mashing self. Me personally I am a button masher, I always will be. but after doing this little project, I may want to take a trip down memory lane and apologize to any click caster I ever made fun of. They just seem to do things a lot better than we do.
Click Casting/Click Spamming is more efficient than Button Mashing.