Post your demos!

[Grazza]

If your "normal" run involved killing all the monsters and finding all the secrets, then it belongs in the Max category. Quite a few of those currently classified as General were Max runs, IIRC.

You could also have a Misc category for stuff that really doesn't fit in anywhere. [I guess you could rename it General...]. I think there is a certain logic in adhering (at least roughly) to the compet-n categories, since these have become a kind of industry standard.

Heh, a few more posts and this will be the longest on-topic Doom-related thread in the forums. Yay!

[Opulent]

my browser can't navigate the site. :(

[Grazza]

I had to reduce my security settings a little bit (something I only do with the utmost reluctance, BTW) for the site to work.

[Nanami]

Grazza: Is getting rid of the general category that important to you? =) I'll do it if I need to, I just figured all MY demos fit there because I never do anything special. Maybe max. We're not actually competing for anything, it's just a friendly site to post demos. Maybe we should vote and see what everyone thinks the layout should be.

Opulent: It requires IE 5 and up or Netscape 6 and up.

[Grazza]

Nanami said:

Is getting rid of the general category that important to you? =)

Not at all. I just don't see the need for it.

[Nanami]

Let's vote. Everyone say what categories there should be here so I can edit it when I get home.

We obviously need speed, max, tyson, pacifist, ect. We might be able to cram things into more broad categories, or add more. Just say what needs to be and we'll work on it.

[Grazza]

The standard categories are something like this:
Nightmare
NM 100s
UV -fast 100%
UltraViolence 100%
UV Tyson
UV Respawn
UV Speed
UV Pacifist
Nomonsters

I copied this from one of Opulent's tables; Nomonsters isn't a compet-n category, but the others are.

OK, that's a lot of categories, and unless there are going to be hundreds of demos, it should probably be simplified quite a lot. You could amalgamate NM100S into NM, and indicate in the table if it is a 100% secrets run (with a letter S, maybe). Also UV -fast 100% and UV Tyson could be included in UV 100% (i.e. Max), again with the special category indicated (e.g. with an F or a T). Respawn, Pacifist and Nomonsters could likewise be incorporated into Speed. [For example, my skill 3 fast pacifist run on Grind2 would go in the Speed part of the table as 2:09 FP (skill 3).] That gives us:

NM - Max - Speed

What else? As you say, some people prefer to record a demo of "Just me playing", possibly with the odd wisecrack popping up on-screen. You could call this "Style" and have it as a separate category - but I'd suggest that unless the player specifies it is a "Style" demo, it makes sense to put it in one of the standard categories. A "Misc" category makes sense too, so there is a home for other/weird demos (e.g. movie runs, Lemmings {minimum kills}, demos where something totally bizarre happened, etc.).

So my suggestion is:
NM - Max - Speed - Style - Misc

[Nanami]

That sounds good, but I disagree with a Nightmare section.

Although most people play on UV, and it'd be okay to put NM demos in a NM section, there are some that play on skill 1 (speed, pacifist), and those are marked with "Skill 1" or whatever. I think Nightmare should just be marked as "Skill 5."

That would leave us with Max, Speed, Style, Misc.

[Grazza]

OK, fair enough, and that does follow the logic of keeping things simple. Still, I suspect there will be far more skill 4 and skill 5 demos than anything else, and the Speed sections might start to look quite cluttered.

True, there were a number of skill 1 pacifist demos on map02, but I think that's quite exceptional, and was just because that particular map is sheer hell for pacifist at any higher setting. (I'd tried skill 2 and just got ripped to shreds.)

[KennyJC]

arent there any coop demos around? like 100% done quick in coop mode?

[Nanami]

I'll soon be uploading a few coop demos. Plutonia MAP32, E4M6, and something else I think...

[Grazza]

KennyJC said:

arent there any coop demos around? like 100% done quick in coop mode?

You can find hundreds of coop demos at compet-n. The demos themselves can be downloaded from ftp://competn.doom2.net:8002/pub/compet-n/doom/coop/ and ftp://competn.doom2.net:8002/pub/compet-n/doom2/coop/ etc. For "100% done quick" see the "max" subdirectories.

[Searcher]

I have to agree with Grazza here:

Quote:
The standard categories are something like this:
Nightmare
NM 100s
UV -fast 100%
UltraViolence 100%
UV Tyson
UV Respawn
UV Speed
UV Pacifist
Nomonsters

End quote

The absolute minimum catagories are those minimums he suggested. And it would be best to use the above catagories so you can expand and not wonder where something was put.

This will keep things simple and be easy to navigate. If you want to have a site others will revisit and perhaps even donate to you have to make it simple. Take the time now and you won't be cussing and doing would'a, could'a, should'a later.

Your pwads tab should go to say an alphabetical list like a-f, g-m etc., instead of naming the wads. Very soon there won't be room for naming each pwad in the tab.

Take the little extra time now to do it right and it will pay big dividends in the future. There could be hundreds or even thousands of demos on the site in the future if you do it right first time and not put people off by making it hard to figure out. Opulent's DSDA is a great example, real easy to navigate and figure out. This keeps people coming back, and donating to the site.

Don't "cram" things into broad catagories, put them where they go.

Do it like a pro the first time around. It never will be big if you don't do it right the first time.

[Grazza]

I should just mention that the categories I quoted were from Opulent's table for Hell Revealed, for which there are 588 demos listed. For most other wads the table is rather simpler, and (I presume) in part determined by what demos have been received.

[Nanami]

The hundreds of sections for demos sounds like a good idea innitially, but I don't think we're going to need so many categories. I think a more broad set of categories is best.

Remember guys, this thread was started to show how everyone plays Doom. It's not about competition. The reason we DO have the categories is so we can at least sort them a little so it's easier to navigate. Some of you NORMALLY play for speed or in pacifist mode, although I just play and don't have any real goal set. Just for fun, I'll do a max or speed demo, but I'm not out for competition.

I don't think we need a dozen categories because we're not really a competition site. We started off with Ultimate Doom or Doom II iwads, and moved on to Final Doom and then pwads. It started off as a place you can post demos to show how you play, but it's picked up and started to be a big demo posting site for fun--which is fine of course.

Really there's only a small handful of us that even upload demos. We'll probably never have more than 20 demos for any level. There's no competition so the site draws little attention, as does this thread. Edit: From other people, I mean. Less than ten people post on this thread. End Edit If people wanted to compete for times, they'd go to Compet-N.

Recently Magikal and I were talking about reviewing wads from /newstuff and listing them under pwads so people could do their preferred run of the level. Everyone can then watch for entertainment. Say, I do it and take 20 minutes and get 100% kills, Anomaly does it and takes 10 minutes and gets 90% kills and makes funny comments along the way, and Espi does it in 2:45 exactly. Anyway, my point is it's a good idea to separate the categories, but we don't need more than about five or six. Maybe not even that many.

But honestly, that's just how I see it. I'd still appreciate input from everyone, as this site is made by and for us. If anyone wants to help work on the site or has suggestions, don't hesitate, all right? =)

[myk]

I don't see anything wrong with what was said above, about dividing it just into maxkills and speed, mostly. All the others are really subcategories of these (most of speed really.) It isn't even entirely necessary to divide the demos by category, it could be done by map and level (or author, wasn't the main idea to show playing styles?), for instance... that might make more sense if the aim is to be generic. Plus, remember, there's already the DSDA (and compet-n, and PDANG , of couse) with well-defined categories. It's probably better if the sites differentiate each other, each finding its own recording niche.

[Nanami]

Hehe, I knew this'd happen. ^_^;

Magikal's too busy to continue working on the site, but he'll continue to upload demos on occasion. So I'm the only one working on the site now. I'll be at work for most of the day today, but when I get home, someone force me to fix the site, okay? I'll try and get it up and running before Monday if possible.

[magikal]

Yup busy with work this month, but also I think it's easier if one person has a vision of what the site should be like otherwise it can get complicated and frustrating. Good luck Nanami:)

[Grazza]

Nanami said:

Really there's only a small handful of us that even upload demos. We'll probably never have more than 20 demos for any level. There's no competition so the site draws little attention, as does this thread. Edit: From other people, I mean. Less than ten people post on this thread. End Edit

It might not stay that way. After all, once the site is fully made, you'll presumably mail the news guys at a number of Doom sites, and get reciprocal links with other sites.

Nanami said:

If people wanted to compete for times, they'd go to Compet-N.

Don't forget that Compet-N is Doom.exe/Doom2.exe only, and only accepts demos that are better than the current records within certain categories. That's a bit restrictive. There is also a difference between trying to get a better time than anyone else in the world, and merely trying to get your personal best as good as possible.

Nanami said:

Magikal's too busy to continue working on the site

That's a shame. I couldn't do the weekly map review that was being suggested, but could provide recommendations/descriptions of maps for demo recording (it would be fairly similar to a review, but would only discuss them from the point of view of demos). This might include a nomo route demo, so people who don't want to spend an hour plotting their route from scratch can get started more quickly. I couldn't provide these on a regular weekly basis, but there would be nothing to stop them being posted one a week.

[myk]

Grazza said:

I couldn't do the weekly map review that was being suggested, but could provide recommendations/descriptions of maps for demo recording (it would be fairly similar to a review, but would only discuss them from the point of view of demos). This might include a nomo route demo, so people who don't want to spend an hour plotting their route from scratch can get started more quickly. I couldn't provide these on a regular weekly basis, but there would be nothing to stop them being posted one a week.

That seems quite fine for a demo recording site (more so than a standard review.)

[Nanami]

*Huff puff pant pant huff*

Okay, the site's updated. It's completely different than before. Anyone's browser should be able to view it now.

The PWADs and Links pages aren't done yet. And... it'd actually be really helpful if everyone went to the download folder, found their demos, and told me which ones should go in what category and what other things I should add to the display of it (pacifist, -fast, -nomonsters, skill, whatever). I put mine up but that's as far as I've gotten so far.

Everyone tell me what they think. o_o

Oh, and feel free to send me anything I don't have. And tell me if anything's wrong with the site. And stuff...

[Opulent]

looks pretty good. I like the original table layout better personally, but this "mirra" style is nice.
btw, I feel terrible you spent time to change the site to be 4.0 browser compatible. :(

now let's use it! :)

[DOOM Anomaly]

The site is Looking really Good Nanami! I really like the look of the new tables, awesome work!!!

[Grazza]

Groovy!

Well, now that the tables are there, I suppose we'd better fill them...

[magikal]

Grazza said:

Groovy!

Well, now that the tables are there, I suppose we'd better fill them...

Yay! Let's do it.:D

[Nanami]

The old style was nice, but it was just a hundred more things for me to fill out and update. Now, with this style, it's easier for me to fix things. I kind of liked the old popup window for the old site, but this flows much better and everyone should be able to view it.

By the way, if anyone (Grazza?) wants to do a review/demo/suggestions/whatever on a weekly basis, let me know. It'd be nice to have a weekly or bi-weekly review of a wad(s) from /newstuff and have everyone do some demos.

[Grazza]

Nanami said:

By the way, if anyone (Grazza?) wants to do a review/demo/suggestions/whatever on a weekly basis, let me know. It'd be nice to have a weekly or bi-weekly review of a wad(s) from /newstuff and have everyone do some demos.

Mine would be mostly from the archives (some golden oldies, some more recent), but not generally from the latest /newstuff. I'd send a batch of them every now and then, so that you had enough that you could post one a week (I feel it is important that a site is updated on a regular basis). I'll mail you some thoughts/samples if I find a bit of time over the next few days.

Anyway, that leaves open the possibility for someone else to recommend/review something from /newstuff if they wish.

[DOOM Anomaly]

magikal said:

Yay! Let's do it.:D

Rangers Power Unite!!! :D

[magikal]

DOOM Anomaly said:

Rangers Power Unite!!! :D

Which one would you like to be then?
How about some demos on this map?

[Nanami]

Page updated again. I added a review page and reviewed a wad, included a couple screenshots, and did a -nomonsters example (because I had to look in DeePsea to find a switch). This works as a quick example for anyone who wants to do reviews for the site. I put Grazza's demos on the page because he told me which ones go where.

Oh, and Grazza, I got your e-mail. That would work great for a review.

My next goal is to get the PWADs section up and running. I'll gladly take demos for PWADs and store them somewhere until I have it working right.