The Next Iteration of DSDA

[GoneAway]

For those who aren't aware, we've been working on a replacement for DSDA off and on for the past two and a half years. The main reasons for this undertaking were:

 

1. Andy shouldn't need to shoulder the burden of maintaining the archive forever
2. The existing archive has some important omissions (notably, heretic and hexen)
3. The existing archive has limited information in some respects (e.g., time in tics)

 

The goal was to support the missing demos, create an archive that can be maintained by a team of people, and pull a ton of data from the existing demos. That is, to resolve the 3 points I just listed.

 

This undertaking is a 4 step process:

 

1. Develop the new backend / frontend
2. Import all the demos, up to a point, including extracting the new details we wanted from each of them
3. Reach a point where we are mirroring Andy's DSDA weekly, based on his updates
4. Start pushing the demos ourselves (i.e., without Andy's support)

 

I'm proud to say that we have finally completed step 3! The archive is now mirroring Andy's DSDA and considered usable for the general public.

 

You can find the archive here: https://www.dsdarchive.com/

 

Some important notes:

 

• I am not the new Andy. One of the main points of this project is to distribute the work among a team of people (this will be more fleshed out as step 4 starts moving along).
• The archive is still missing a bunch of demos. We have a list of a lot that are missing, so please hold off on reporting absences for the time being. We'll update you when we no longer know what is missing.
• There are lots of small errors. Due to the volume, the work had to be automated to a large extent via various tools and scripts, and inevitably things may be wrong. This could include run timing, dates, categories, etc. So far, we are identifying issues and fixing things in bulk, but there may be small things that we don't notice. Please, if you see an error, let us know in this thread.
• There is a lot of manual work that is going on that will fix some of the omissions. For example, lots of comments are missing. We're aware of this, so don't worry about reporting that for now.

 

What is changed?

 

• Demos are now sorted by tics (when possible). When there is a tie to the second, there is a symbol indicating who was the "first" to that time, and another for who is the fastest by tics. This is particularly useful for something like n1o1, but most of the time it's not relevant. For n1o1, Looper has the fastest time by tics, but Ocelot was the first to get an 8, so both are recognized achievements in the table.
• Some categories have cross-listing. If you look at doom e1m1 UV Speed for instance, shock's 8s pacifist run will appear in the table. This reduces confusion when it comes to the speed record on various maps.
• Runs with many entries have a "record timeline", which shows the evolution of the record over time. This plot seems to not work in some browsers, and the dates themselves are of course largely estimated, so sometimes the plot isn't particularly enlightening, but it's a work in progress. Example: https://www.dsdarchive.com/record_timeline?category=NoMo&id=doom&level=E1M1
• Stats are expanded. Since we have the dates that demos are recorded, we can do some fun plots. You can look at the demo count per year by player, wad, or across the whole archive.
• Incompatible demos are in the Other category. This only applies to specific wads, like the IWADs. What this means is a UV Speed ZDoom demo for doom will now show up under Other, with the comment "Incompatible UV Speed". This procedure will probably be extended to things with the wrong complevel, but it hasn't been taken that far yet.
• Wads now have a "Table View" that shows only the best times for each map, for a category. This is useful if you want to check, e.g., which maps still need a max. Example: https://www.dsdarchive.com/wads/doom/table_view
• Heretic, hexen, zandronum, etc are all supported
• Instead of weekly updates, there is a feed that shows the latest demos in the order of upload
• There is a search feature for players / wads
• URLs are simplified: '/wads/doom' and '/players/kraflab'
• There is an intro page with lots of details helpful for new players (more of these kinds of pages and guides are planned)
• Videos are linked to demos when possible
• Stroller and Collector are now separate categories from Pacifist and NoMo. Collector is kind of an odd choice, but there were historically a lot of demos for it, so I decided to split it off for now.
• FDAs aren't hosted.
• Probably more that I am forgetting.

 

What is planned?

 

• Leaderboard views to show a ranking for a given run separately from the main table.
• API
• Different views / styles
• Various improvements to all of the above, as many things are still in a WIP state
• A convenient way for anyone else to synchronize a local copy of the archive
• A lot of other things that are still being discussed, so I won't commit to anything ;)

 

Please, give the archive a look through and let us know if you have any issues. For now though, Andy's archive should still be considered the source of truth!

 

This could not be possible without the months of work @ZeroMaster010 put into parsing Andy's archive and extracting all the data from the demos (which included, e.g., automating playback through prboom+ in order to extract precise timing, and estimating the recording date of every demo). In addition, I'd like to thank the following people for helping in various capacities (I'm sure there are more, apologies if I missed you):

 

• @4shockblast
• @Andy Olivera
• @eLim
• @JCD
• @Keyboard_Doomer
• @Opulent
• @PVS
• @veovisRC
• @TheLoneliness
• Everyone in the discord, for various discussions

Edited July 12, 2019 by kraflab

[vdgg]

The record timelines are super cool and there's lots of fun just looking around :))

[Poncho1]

I imagine demos that AREN'T records will still be uploaded / kept, right? 

[GoneAway]

12 minutes ago, Poncho1 said:

I imagine demos that AREN'T records will still be uploaded / kept, right? 

Of course.

[Philnemba]

This is really neat especially adding time in tics and player demo stats. 

 

Also while browsing through my players demos list I notice that my Dues Vult 2 NoMo Map 1 to 10 demo didn't get imported :(

[GoneAway]

There's a bunch of stragglers that are still being uploaded so don't worry 😀

[Dwaze]

nice work, looks really nice and love the added stats! Small error in the table view for doom 1, it shows my name on e1m4 but I believe that should be Adam Hegyi. Mine was a tie recorded later. But only under uv-speed.

Edited July 12, 2019 by Dwaze

[Havoc Crow]

The "demo count by year" on this page sure looks interesting, apparently there was a huge low in Doom speedrunning in 2004-2008 followed by a sudden revival from 2009 onwards... Or is this some kind of an artifact?

 

Also, it would be cool if we could look for wads by author name, this way e.g. I could quickly check if people played any of my wads.

[GoneAway]

Around 2009 is when the speedrunning scene outside doom started to pick up. I suspect that that explains the rise, but of course it's just conjecture.

[GoneAway]

1 hour ago, Dwaze said:

nice work, looks really nice and love the added stats! Small error in the table view for doom 1, it shows my name on e1m4 but I believe that should be Adam Hegyi. Mine was a tie recorded later. But only under uv-speed.

It isn't sorting by date in addition to tics, so I'll have to add that. Thanks for the report!

[rehelekretep]

this is incredible - well done lads

[rehelekretep]

just a quick one - i cant see how you can toggle between list and table view. you can click on the wad name but that isnt very intuitive when you consider that clicking on it before table view will download the wad...

[GoneAway]

Ya, for sure the interface needs plenty of work :^)

[Grazza]

2 hours ago, JudgeDeadd said:

apparently there was a huge low in Doom speedrunning in 2004-2008 followed by a sudden revival from 2009 onwards... Or is this some kind of an artifact?

Probably not an artefact. Compet-n (and DANG) falling into oblivion was a huge blow that took some time for the community to recover from, and led to some of the formerly more prolific recorders pretty much abandoning recording completely - it was a while before a new generation built up. It also took some time for this forum to look like a viable alternative place to post demos, as the attachment feature was broken for some years, not to mention the whole aethos being very different. Those years you mention were also a time when good ways/ports to play Doom in Windows with good compatibility were getting developed - it was rather hit-or-miss for some time (or at least perceived to be). By about 2008 we had several good and reliable options that had become well-known to Doomers.

 

Another factor might be that competitive play leads to a larger number of demos being released. If you're trying to produce a demo you're truly happy with, you'll probably work on it for a while and release one demo. If two people are fighting to produce the best time, then they'll probably both release several demos. That might also be skewing the totals.

 

But yes, there certainly were times from 2004-8 when things felt pretty quiet in the Demos community.

 

I am not convinced by the notion that 2009 onwards is part of a general increase in FPS speedrunning activity. Quake speedrunning largely seemed to die around that time (or a little earlier - in 2008) and has never really recovered.

 

Edited July 12, 2019 by Grazza

[GoneAway]

2009 onwards was a general increase in speedrunning overall, as a concept. I can't comment on fps in particular and trust your knowledge on that. But gdq for instance, the biggest speedrunning event / stream, began in 2010. This is when speedrunning as a hobby started becoming more "mainstream". I can't guess where everyone came from, but for sure I was introduced to the concept of speedrunning after watching one of the gdq events, and only after wandering for a while came to doom. I suspect the same could be said for a lot of the newer runners.

 

Btw grazza, when will you write your book on the history of doom running? 😉

Edited July 12, 2019 by kraflab

[Bauul]

Brilliant stuff guys!  I'm a very casual speed-run viewer so the linked YouTube videos are a really nice touch.  I can absolutely see myself watching a few speed-runs on my lunch break at work.

 

As an aside, and I'm pretty sure this is a nooby question with an obvious answer, but given there are versions of web-embedded versions of Doom out there, and given DSDarchive hosts all the relevant files, has anyone ever looked at the possibility of using a web-based version of Doom to play the demos natively through the website?

[xvertigox]

Man, the functionality is even better than I expected. Awesome work, everyone, this is huge.

[Da Werecat]

1 hour ago, Bauul said:

As an aside, and I'm pretty sure this is a nooby question with an obvious answer, but given there are versions of web-embedded versions of Doom out there, and given DSDarchive hosts all the relevant files, has anyone ever looked at the possibility of using a web-based version of Doom to play the demos natively through the website?

 

It would have to use Freedoom though. Which is pretty depressing on its own, and then what do you do with actual IWAD speedrunning, where levels are required.

[Bauul]

3 minutes ago, Da Werecat said:

 

It would have to use Freedoom though. Which is pretty depressing on its own, and then what do you do with actual IWAD speedrunning, where levels are required.

 

I was musing about that.  Ignoring the fact that Doom is available for free on those web-embedded versions of the game (which isn't legal), would a version of Doom that references an IWAD purely to playback demos (i.e. prevents the player from downloading the files or playing the game), does that count as distributing the IWADs?

[Poncho1]

Is it possible to be able to rank all players by amount of demos, or total time, or something like that (as in, we have the players list, and next to "Demos" and "Length", we could have a button or something that lists everything by that rank)? Personally, I think it'd be interesting to compare to other players. Just a little suggestion.

 

[Edit] ranking by length or whatever could be implemented for the demos themselves (when you look up a particular WAD and you want to compare the lengths of certain maps).

 

Dunno if that'll be too time-consuming or not, though...

Edited July 13, 2019 by Poncho1

[0xf00ba12]

A leaderboard is not an archive. I never signed up to have some pretentious icon next to my handle as if I participated in some formal, level "competition," because I'd otherwise have submitted demos to speedrun.com years ago. I wanted to share runs with this subforum and DSDA because the interpretation was left to the viewers, and yet you are puting your own stamp on what's The Best Run. An example of this is Doom's E1 Max: no one can convince me that routing seven maps vs. eight is ever going to be comparable; they are two different goals entirely but you're swaying someone who might be interested in running the category into thinking one is more valid than the other. 
 

[rehelekretep]

oh my

[Andrea Rovenski]

I do agree with the m8 scenario thing and think we, as a community, should just say fuck it and never ever do 1-7 runs because that shit's fucking stuuuuuuuupid

[Da Werecat]

If some categories are indeed more recognized than others, then perhaps we should call the president.

[rehelekretep]

whats trump got to do with this?

[GoneAway]

1 hour ago, 0xf00ba12 said:

A leaderboard is not an archive. I never signed up to have some pretentious icon next to my handle as if I participated in some formal, level "competition," because I'd otherwise have submitted demos to speedrun.com years ago. I wanted to share runs with this subforum and DSDA because the interpretation was left to the viewers, and yet you are puting your own stamp on what's The Best Run. An example of this is Doom's E1 Max: no one can convince me that routing seven maps vs. eight is ever going to be comparable; they are two different goals entirely but you're swaying someone who might be interested in running the category into thinking one is more valid than the other. 
 

First of all, the project isn't done. I haven't figured out / decided how I want to display m7 and m8 timings separately, so I've left things the way they already are on dsda. On the existing site you don't see the m7 times either, so I'm not sure where you're coming from on this? ZM's e1 record is displayed "out of order" for instance. The hypothetical person investigating the category that you mention is going to automatically assume the fastest time is the relevant one. They'd only learn otherwise by communicating with the community or reading some kind of guide material, so your insinuation is moot.

 

It even says this in the intro for new players:

"Historically, ultimate doom episode runs were only timed up to map 7, although it was still required to beat the final map. This was because there was no final score screen in the original game. For this reason, you may see two different times for the same run: the time including map 8 and the time only through map 7. If your goal is to beat an episode as fast as possible, you will use a different route than if your goal is to compete directly with an existing legacy record (m7 timing). Which way you choose is ultimately up to you."

 

It seems like you've jumped to conclusions and missed some important details along the way.

 

As far as the icons, I don't know why you're conflating the fastest of something with the best of something. Those are there to help with what is likely the primary use for visitors: finding out if a run has been done, and what the fastest time is. If that isn't what someone is looking for, then the icons don't mean anything to them anyway. So once again, it seems like your point is moot.

[0xf00ba12]

No details missed, I'm merely commenting on what I see. Looks like only one of those runs is worth some token of approval, at least that's what it'd appear to me as a newcomer. This is also related to my comment re: The Best Run, but you addressed that you haven't decided what to do with legacy timings, so that's apparently TBD.

 

If the runs are already sorted as they are in Andy's DSDA (fastest to slowest), I would say why have those icons at all, if not to support your Record Index stat? Again, it's an archive, not a leaderboard, and you've yet to address that. Aside from Compete-N, Competition Doom, etc., there have never been set-in-stone rules, and there are a variety of ways people record demos. Some people think advanced HUD is cheating, some people think 2-key SR50 is about as cheaty as autorun or the turn-180 key, which is to say not cheaty at all. There are runs that have used IDDT x2, and they aren't listed as Other as you so noted in your intro page. Does Pacifist really mean you can telefrag monsters? Some people think so, some don't. That's all fine though, because DSDA is not a leaderboard, and most people have historically noted such things in the text files so we can draw conclusions ourselves as to what we consider the fastest time was. It's when you start distinguishing some runs from others as seeming more important or whatever is when I lose interest entirely.

 

I've said my piece, good luck with whatever you do going forward.

[4shockblast]

The DSDA is an archive at its core, sure, but it would be incorrect to say that it isn't regularly used as a leaderboard. If it's to ever function this way properly, it would be nice if you can take a look at a page and see what is or isn't the record, but obviously you're free to disagree with that label. It's a convenience factor if anything; a new player or casual viewer won't really care about the minor details of HUD vs not or 2-key strafe50; they will just want to know what the best non-TAS time is, non-TAS defined as accepted by the archive maintainer and in line with general community standards. This is quite hard to figure out at a glance on Andy's DSDA unless you've used it regularly, so I think it's nice to see this immediately.

 

Also, whether it's an archive or not, it is intended to represent what the different rules for recording are; otherwise, all manner of TAS demos would also be represented with no label either. Anyway, for stuff like speedup, IDDT x2, etc., there's still a lot of discussion going on, and some cases that were carried over from old to new DSDA may be relabeled going forward, as it's still a work in progress.

Edited July 13, 2019 by 4shockblast

[Da Werecat]

Sometimes I wonder if there's anything you can just bring up on Doomworld without a possibility of it leading to a bitter argument about shedding bikes.

[GoneAway]

I do want to address the "rules" list because it is important, and some background is good to have.

 

I made this because there's a lot of confusion in the community about what is or is not allowed, which especially affects newer runners. That's a genuine problem in the community right now, although it may not be obvious from the perspective of people that generally stick to the forum. This has become especially apparent in recent weeks, because of the influx of doom runners, which I'm sure is visible here as well. I didn't see any obvious way to attempt to fix that besides coming up with some kind of document, which was also prompted by a discussion Dew started in the discord some weeks ago.

 

The things on that list are not my personal opinion on what "should" be the case, but rather my understanding of the status quo, and after having extensive discussions with people of all opinions in the discord. Of course, my understanding could be wrong, but what I've found when trying to write things down is that a lot of people didn't even realize some of the things that other people had been doing that had been passing as non-tas, for instance. That also means that the ideal of a hands-off, allow anything, hope for the best approach has actually been failing. Rather than creating a situation where everyone can judge the runs for themselves, the individual self-assumed rule list has caused people to not make it clear what they actually do in their demos. If you assume feature X is allowed and anyone uses it at will, then you wouldn't write it as a note in your submission. This leads to a lack of details in various contexts.

 

If there's one thing I absolutely have to make a choice on, it's what qualifies a run as TAS or not. If someone comes and says "person x has cheated, please label their runs" (as has happened in the past months), there needs to be a document saying what is or is not a TAS. I don't think there's a way around that. The alternative would be to allow everyone to label their demos TAS or not at will, but I'm not sure that's ideal. I also discussed this at length with people to come up with a set of clear lines that, once crossed, render a demo as a TAS.

 

There were a couple things that came up as being big issues with people: the use of iddt and the use of speedup to change the game clock (e.g., while waiting for a wall to lower). These things have been "legal" in the status quo in the sense that historically some people have used them and the demos are not marked. However, since we were discussing everything and writing things down anyway, and these two seemed particularly divisive, I decided it was in the best interest to sort them out. The use of both seems quite limited, to anyone's knowledge that I've spoken with, and it seemed like most people were either in favor of limiting / banning them, or didn't have a strong opinion either way. Given that, and the ease of drawing a line in the sand (i.e., "do not adjust the game clock" and "do not use cheats"), I decided to make it clear that neither is acceptable to be used under typical conditions in a non-tas run. I'm not going to try to relabel old runs though, since we don't even know what used them. In the end, the primary purpose is to tell a new runner what the expectations are.

 

Btw, if it were "up to me" then I would have voted for speedup to be legal. In my eyes it is a nice convenience in various situations and doesn't spoil the quality of a run. But, based on feedback from various people, especially looper and zeromaster, I felt like it was in our best interests to consider this a TAS feature moving forward. So I hope it's clear to people that I am not trying to set forth some kind of personal doctrine, but rather am trying to represent as well as I can what the expectations of the community itself are.

 

At any rate, it, like the rest of the project, is still a work in progress. If someone feels strongly about something in that document, feel free to bring it up here.

 

https://dsdarchive.com/intro

Edited July 13, 2019 by kraflab