Not only did he invent ZaR-Roper, he also improved Warmer. Kradie is a legend.

Watch til the end to truly realize how insignificant anything, even the greatest technology/social advancement, is going to be. Real eye opening time-lapse. Death/Space is the only thing that will survive the universe, so cherish the day you die.

My last contribution to W:A.

Since I don't plan to finish this any time soon I am gonna release an unfinished version of it. Maybe someone will still find this interesting/useful.

P.S.: Thank you MI for the opportunity.

Currently working on
Not yet started
Done
Kinda Done, missing replay/pictures etc.

1. Introduction, why the f@#! am I even doing this.

1a. My History 2000-2004, it's all bout dem taps. Twitching, FR, 2 Handed, modding thx to Wargod.

1b. My History 2005, the dark ages, the era of testing cheats, and what I have noticed. XSpeed, Joypads etc.

1c. My History 2006-2008, Maturing in roping, a slow process, and one mysterious kb, that one "aha" moment.

1d. My History 2009-2011, RIP kb, motivation gone to shit. Playing offline to keep skill.

1e. My History 2012-current, The comeback, and the shame of my own roping, there is still hope

2. Taps

2a. Twitching, let's talk about twitching, benefits, disadvantages,

2b. Fingerroll, let's talk about FR, benefits, disadvantages

2c. 2 Handed taps, let's talk about 2 handed taps benefits, disadvantages

2d. Timing, speed, control of the taps

3. Mods

3a. The famous Paperball, why it's so effective and why it was my favourite mod for a long time

3b. Tapping on the rubberdome, why it is better compared to paperball, and why it opend up a new way of tapping

3c. Taps directly on the contact, no delay, maximum control, but what about speed?

4. Keyboards

4a. General talk, PS/2 > USB, older kbs wreck newer ones, Brands to look out for, differentiation of tapping kbs and arrow kbs

4b. The tappy kbs, IBM Rapid Access, Dell Quietkey, Most Logitech

4c. The arrow kbs, IBM Model M and it's variations, Lexmark chips, Chicony

4d. Newer kbs, why they are generally worse, replays to compare them.

5. Cheats

5a. xSpeed, the ultimate evil, but you can use it to get better

5b. Artificial taps from Joypads, macros etc. What they can teach you, ultimatively you are better with your own

6. The one Keyboard, Explaination of the mysterious behavior, ppl that also have similiar kbs to my knowledge (list of ppl)

1. Introduction, why the f@#! am I even doing this.

1a. My History 2000-2004, it's all bout dem taps. Twitching, FR, 2 Handed, modding thx to Wargod.

Work in Progress:

1. Introduction

I have always enjoyed writing about roping and theory-craft all it's aspect, some may remember that I used to have my own little forum back in the days, it was supposed to be a new league but it never lift off, since I was heavily involved in the creation of the league, I took over the forum and used it to host DarkOne's TTRR challenges and published tutorials for roping related stuff and more. But there is one aspect to roping that keeps defying my logic, even today. It's the behavior of the arrow keys on specific keyboards, almost all have a slightly different characteristic that I plan to show off as good as I can. Most people don't know this, but during my prime (as DeathInFire) the MAIN reason I became so good was simply a keyboard, it is this keyboard (insert image of my keyboard here), a vintage IBM keyboard, originally created in 1993, it uses a Lexmark chip from 1984, it's amazing it still works, well, kind of. It used to be a mechanical keyboard, similar to Model M (picture of Model M here), but when I tried to clean it and have a look at it's inner layers, I broke it. At that point it was not a problem to me as I had already mastered the art of tapping on contacts directly, mechanical keyboards like this one don't have a membrane rubberdome layer on top of the contacts. So you have to be creative and glue things on it, and of course, get used to it. This keyboard is in very bad shape, as you can see on the picture above, only the marked area in green is still functioning, everything that is marked red is malfunctioning or not responding at all. I realized if I ever want to show this phenomenon of what I have discovered, this keyboard is key to it. Plugging it in, and seeing it not being as good as it used to be (link to X-Style worm contest final round) vs today (link to "Still got it replay") is alarming to me that I need to do this, sooner rather than later. So let's begin by presenting my history, how everything, in retrospect made sense to me. Grab your favorite drink/food and enjoy this personal story before we go to the technical side of it. This is full disclosure.

(Quick note: Back then, I didn't have unlimited Internet, I could only play from 6pm to 6am for free, and if I dialed in too early it would lock me out and we had to call the ISP so they would fix it, they often even gave us 5 Euro to compensate, haha. So I would come home from school, play W:A offline, and on 6pm I'd go online.)

1a. My History 2000-2004

No money but still shopping.

I started W:A offline, I found the CD from my brother and thought I try that out, as a young teenager I didn't have a lot of money so a "free" game was pretty valuable to me, Internet was shit, Dial-Up Modem 56k didn't allow for me to download games, not that I even knew where to find them, I was a total newb. I only played offline, so roping was not even remotely possible to grasp. Only months later when I managed to update my W:A to the current version I was curious enough to go online. My first nickname was Hoodlum and I was overwhelmed of the idea that all these players in#AG, #RH etc. were real players to play with, not just Bots from offline. I joined my first game, it was a shopper and the host asked me if I knew the game. I played a lot offline, of course I said "Yes", well it turned out that I didn't know shit. I barely was able to grab a cr8 by walking, and a weird telephone in the corner would show up, it confused me, I picked up the weapon but my turn was over. The host turn started and, wtf is he doing? He uses the rope like I have never imagined. Doing powerful swings, even some quick double tap that made him fall down but change direction of the next rope shot. Later on I found out that it was called a "Shadow". Of course I was amazed but when I tried doing that on my turn I failed horribly, the host left the game after I, obviously, didn't know the rules and shot him without collecting any cr8 and killing one of his worms that way. But I didn't care, I was in for a new world of Worms!

Amazed by Amazed.

So, this shopper has convinced me that W:A is way better than I imagined, it was a fun little game I would play in-between other activities. And this rapid tap movement was still sticking in my head, how did he do that so fast. I quickly researched all that mattered and started hosting my own shoppers, knowing the rules and how to chat (telephone indicating chat messages) made W:A the most amazing game, after about a week I was able to get some good shadows, I was very proud. I met a lot of people, mostly from GT and BkM, other german players. One of them, Chrischi was really nice to me and explained a lot of things to me, making my desire to join them a distant goal when I would become good enough. He also introduced me to other more rope savvy people, He felt that I loved the roping aspect the most in shopper so he told me about those guys that would hang out in #RH, they play propers and warmers, I should try that. I encountered many people there, they were mostly Americans and my English was still pretty bad at that point, but I wanted to see them, I would beg and one guy, Amazed, would play with me. At that time I was probably playing for 2-3 months, my roping was based around shopper, so compared to him I was roping so bad. He was doing kicks, pumps, and his taps, damn he had taps, he would tap near the ceiling and shoot bursts of taps that would blow my mind. I need to learn to do that! I asked him how he does that, and he was telling me, you need a good keyboard and quick fingers, it's not that hard, many of the good warmers are crazy good with taps. So after that game I would go offline and warm, hours on hours, and press space like mad. But it never was close to his, I was not giving up though. He said a good keyboard, maybe my keyboard is shit. I asked my dad if he could buy me a new keyboard because my old one was broken, (it wasn't, but he wouldn't notice anyway) and I would want a quality one. So I looked around and Cherry seemed to have good keyboards. I ordered this keyboard (picture of old malfunctioning Cherry kb) the same day I met Amazed.

Muscle cramps for taps.

The next days were pretty hyped up for me, to me, the keyboard would make me tap as fast as him, and the expectations were through the roof. When it finally arrived, I quickly plugged it in and it was a lot better than my previous no-name piece of crap I used to have. It wasn't as fast as Amazed, but it was noticeably faster and more responsive. I made a couple of friends in #RH, one of them, a German called Makaveli (later changed his name to SupremE) was really good at Warmer, and he was kind of my first "elite" warmer friend at that point, he was the only German that would get into the higher quality warmers regularly with the elite of #RH. His taps weren't as fast as other good warmer players, but he had very good control and insane good kicks, and of course, his taps were still faster than mine. So I asked him, what does he do, he explained to me that he is tensing up his muscle that would make it "twitch", resulting in a quicker tapping than with just moving the finger up and down. When I tried it, it actually kind of worked from the get-go, it was uncontrolled and after a little while it would hurt my arm a lot. I would continue doing it regardless and the next day I had a sore muscle in that arm. He told me that it's normal and that I will get used to it quickly. He was right, after about a week the muscle soreness went away and I was happily improving this technique. I was closing in on Amazed, I will get your taps, I will even surpass them!

Shadymilkman and the famous Fingerroll.

Around mid 2001 I was decent at roping, my control was still terrible, falling often and uselessly tapping around, but to me it didn't matter, my ultimate goal was getting faster taps than Amazed. One day, SupremE would introduce me to someone called shadymilkman, he told me beforehand, you will see one of the fastest tappers on WN, be prepared to be astonished. He was right, his taps were out of my league, in fact even Amazed taps looked slow compared to his. I was in shock and my world changed completely, However, shady was super friendly, I asked him, how he would do this. He said it's called Fingerroll. It requires rigorous training and discipline to get good at. He explained it simply that it's kind of like playing Piano on the spacebar so I could understand it better. shady was the most amazing guy I met at that point, quickly being my idol for years, when he left Worms for good I missed him a lot. He would always play with me, at night right before I had to go to school. He would always support me, and even motivated me to never give up, that he knows I could become just as good as him. I am sure if you could see my later roping you would feel proud. He also said, that there is oijogja, even slightly faster than him. I didn't believe it but I wrote down the name and when I saw DWI-oijogja I would instantly jump on him and make him play with me, telling him "shady said you were the fastest tapper on WN". shady was right they were indeed faster, I was impressed, I need to do that, f@#! twitching, it's useless if you can't reach that kind of speed! So I started practicing Fingerroll, but I sucked at it, it was like learning a new music instrument, I couldn't even separate 2 individual fingers correctly when tapping, the middle finger would follow the pointer finger, it pissed me off and I often raged quit, just to come back a couple minutes later. I would even practice this method in school, I would just tap and tap and tap. And even then, it didn't even get me faster than my twitching. I was pretty sad at that point. One of my thoughts why I couldn't get it going was simply that the space bar wouldn't support Fingerroll good enough, it was kind of springing back slowly. While twitching you keep a certain amount of pressure on the key, making it pointless if the key springs back fast or not, it's in "mid-air" all the time. So it was time for a new KB. This time I would go for a IBM, the amazing IBM Rapid Access 2, black edition. (Picture of IBM Rapid Access 2 black)

A new way to tap!

When I got my very first IBM Rapid Access 2 keyboard, I would be impressed how good it looked, it had fancy Media keys, too, quite useful as I was listening Music all the time when roping. But the best part, was how quick and responsive Space was, it was totally different to the Cherry, it had this nice bouncy feel to it which made FR a lot easier. So while I played offline and eventually online too, I got a lot faster with my taps, even my control would get better, I kind of abandoned twitching at that moment. People started to acknowledge me as a fast tapper, not the same level as shady or oijogja. But still I was considered a "tapper",  which was nice. My first goal was kind of reached. Getting to Amazed level was done. But, naturally, I saw that you can become faster, there's no way I'd stop. I would FR all day, getting more consistent, faster. At the beginning of 2002, I met Komodo, always heard rumors that he could tap with 2 hands, which fascinated me, so when I finally got the chance to play with him I would pay close attention. He would do a kick, and then burst out a series of taps, faster than anything I have seen. It slowed him down, often, but it looked amazing. I had to learn that! As a child, me and my brothers always played these Wrestling games, when you grappled someone you would need to tap real fast to get the upper-hand. I was really good at it, and always beat my brothers at it. I would switch from digital cross to the buttons swiftly while my brothers only used 1 hand to tap, fools! 2 handed taps were pretty easy for me to pick up, I would use them less often, but still a good way to show off and impress other people with since I just enjoyed tapping so much. Start of turn would be: Jump, switch arrow hand to space and tap wildly to get as many taps out as possible. Komodo was a key part for my tap addiction, he added an extra layer to my skill set that is unique nowadays and even back then there were very few people that could do it, let alone get any use out of it. The only downside, obviously, was that you can't use the arrows while performing that. So my next mission was clear, I want 2 handed taps speed, but with 1 hand. I must find a way...

The dawn of modding.

In late 2002, beginning of 2003 I was a staple in the warmer scene, one of the bigger fish in the sea, I'd warm and RR constantly with many now extinct or disappeared legends of that time. One of them, Wargod, a RR machine and warmer alike. Would often warm with me alone in off-times. We had quite lengthy discussions about taps too, I was always talking about taps, and telling him that I want to become faster probably annoyed him one day so much, he basically just said: "Man, have you tried putting a piece of paper under your space yet?". That moment, it was that moment when I realized, "holy shit, why didn't I think about that". I told him that I would try that right away and went offline. I carefully removed the key with a screwdriver. I saw this weird membrane thingy, and pressed it down with the screwdriver, it would register a tap, quite interesting. So, I did what Wargod told me and put a piece of paper under it, but it wouldn't work. It would just spam the key endlessly and never stop. So I removed the spacebar again and put less of it under it, now it worked but it wasn't really that better, I still had to press down the key. So I opened it yet again and reverted to the previous situation. It would lock up, as expected, but now instead of removing the paperball again, I would press it down heavily. It allowed the paper to deform into smaller scale and the key was finally ready to tap on. And it was amazing, the key felt responsive, my taps got faster and also shoot out more directly. A definite improvement over "Vanilla". It was that day, where I always thought about getting it more responsive to achieve faster taps. This was a milestone to my taps, the next time I played with people they didn't expect my taps to be so flashy fast and rapid. Wargod, I owe you one.

The legendary Jmoberg.

In all my time on W:A there has always been floating one name, Jmoberg.  Not for his super fast taps, but his control of the taps, especially his scrolls. So being always curious about new people and their unique style on warming I added him on AiM. The usual adress to get in contact with people. When I heard his name in my head I would imagine him like Goldberg from Wrestling (I used to be a huge Wrestling fan, Undertaker in particular) So, when we finally met I was super excited to see him. He showcased a different way on tapping, it didn't look fast but his precision was ridiculous on point, he was moving from side to side at a speed that was unmatched to me, these so called scrolls would open me up that taps are not everything, you also need control. I would start to see tapping as a tool and not just raw speed. You can do way cooler things when you time your taps correctly. And thus, I started practicing scrolls to copy Jmoberg, a style of roping I rarely seen copied.

A new worms, it sucks, so let's alias!

In 2003 spring/summer I would order WWP since many of my favorite players already played it. Since I had the reputation of a good player, I would instantly be in one of the better clans, eN (elite Ninjas). The first thing I noticed when roping on WWP was, that it had some kind of different registration of taps, W:A and WWP were 100% copies but something felt wrong (later on it was confirmed that WWP had input issue that would hinder fast taps). So my time in WWP was rather bad at first. While I did join ToP with many of the NBR crew I never felt home in WWP, I just couldn't rope like I could on W:A. After ToP was done "dominating" the league I would usually just go back to W:A and have a good time with the few people that are left there. W:A felt like it was dying at that point, activity went down because of WWP. I always loved aliasing and I figured since I can't perform as well as on W:A I might as well just go for an alias experiment. I thought the best way to disguise my roping would simply be a new KB, since they all have unique characteristics. IBM proved to be good. I ordered a cheap vintage KB, little did I know how extremely nice it would be for single taps. Later I also found out that it was a Model M KB, the famous one with buckling spring. When I got it it kind of sucked for Fingerroll, the space-bar is heavy so you need quite a bit of force. I was used to modded space at that time so naturally I was worse at it. But I wanted to alias on WWP anyway I didn't mind and used it. I quickly realized when using one finger only it would give me insane control, similar to Jmobergs scrolls, I could replicate them quite well. After a week or two offline practice I moved to WWP with it under the alias of Jmoberg. I was able to convince many people that I am the real one, just from roping alone. Jomombo, you never played WWP in person, native WWPers wouldn't grasp how good you were, so in your name I went and destroyed WWP.

https://www.tus-wa.com/leagues/game-209931/

I actually had 44 seconds in the first round opposed to 45 what we thought, so we won by 1 second and the draw was unnecessarily played out. :/
Should have checked before, sorry for the trouble.

Edit: Checked again, Broly the noob did 56, so we did indeed have 100 vs their 100. Draw stands, follow up game as well, you can close this useless complaint.

If you are curious how it sounds to tap.

http://www.twitch.tv/anubjin

Streamed for about an hour, still figuring out good sound levels and shit, was fun Husky said hello and Asbest.

Just a fun poll of what the community thinks, I personally think it will go for another 10 years, slowly dying off similar to w2, a couple of super hardcore dedicated players (PeJa comes to my mind and Komo). What are your thoughts?

My first game ever with Chelsea as my partner, I am pleased so far and the banana fails were awesome too. I guess some legendary luck can also be transformed into legendary bad luck for the opponents. :x