Doom 2 in under 10 minutes [TAS]

[almostmatt1]

After hundreds of hours of work over roughly 14 months, I could not be more happy to have this finally done! This is the first completed UV-Speed TAS demo of Doom 2 in 16 years, the last one being the 14:02 demo by RamboBones from 2006. Zero-Masters 12:44 Nightmare D2All from 2018 of course does exist and showcases many of the new tricks found since then, but this demo includes even a few not included in ZM's TAS. Considering to the magnitude of the improvement over the previous TASes, the amount of time since the last completed UV-Speed TAS, the fact that it's sub-10, and frankly the sheer amount of time and effort this took, I hope no-one minds me making a thread for this. :-)

 

This is a fully built Tool-Assisted demo, all inputs for each frame was entered manually in XDRE. This is faster than:
- The previous UV-Speed TAS by 4:20
- The fastest NM-Speed TAS by 3:02
- The human UV-Speed record by 7:46 (I must emphasise TAS and non-TAS are very different runs, just a fun comparison!)
- Even the UV-Speed turbo demo by 0:22 :)

 

Huge thanks to @ZeroMaster010 for brute forcing the map 08 void glide for me, and for helping with all kinds of other stuff -  I'd have been even more lost at a lot of points without your insight! Thanks also to @vita, @Looper & @xepop, whose various unfinished tas runs were a great resource to study and helped a LOT with building the first 1/2 to 2/3 of the demo. Many other people helped me with various questions over time on Discord, so very big thanks to all that did!

 

30uvx942.zip

 

Edit: I should mention that it was 4:30 in the morning after 19 hours straight of working on this when I worked on most of the text file, sorry in advance if there's a bunch of typos and general illiteracy :)

 

Edit 2: I've written a large tasvideos.org submission that covers a lot of technical stuff. The map-by-map comments try to emphasise the tricks themselves, instead of very repetitively explaining "here's a wallrun, and here is also a wallrun, and here is also a wallrun, and here is a wallrun, and..." a couple of hundred times. Honestly it's hard to know how much detail to have gone into, in order to give it enough detail without being excessive (might have failed at that second bit...). Several parts were also written specifically for an audience not as savvy with Doom, so I cover quite basic things like wallrunning and diagonal running. If you feel I haven't done a good enough job at explaining some of this stuff, please let me know, I am happy to answer any question at all and go into more detail about anything at all. Write-up found here: https://tasvideos.org/7458S

Edited April 25, 2022 by almostmatt1

[RockyGaming4725]

Greatest demo of 2022, calling it now :)

 

Superb work, honestly this is just insane. Not only is it sub 10, but it’s sub 10 by nearly 20 seconds! This will certainly go into the history books.

Huge congrats!

[Ks4]

This is Beautiful

[4shockblast]

Absolutely insane run.

[SleepyVelvet]

All the rocket-boosting that's woven into this is kinda hot.

[HeadshotTAS]

Looks like I picked a really good time to get back into Doom TASing. I'm definitely going to study this intensely in order to help improve my own runs. What an amazing TAS! I can only imagine how much effort went into this, huge congratulations on actually finishing it. MAP29 was truly insane!

[Nine Inch Heels]

If someone were to ask me what my pick for demo of the year was, I'd tell them that it's too early to tell... But this right here is a very strong contender...

Edited April 17, 2022 by Nine Inch Heels

[thiccyosh]

Words cannot describe how stunned I am while watching this masterpiece.

[Fredrik]

Hoped to see a new D2ALL TAS for years, and when it's finally here it's beyond all expectations. Congratulations!

[Dreemurr Deceevurr]

Holy shit!

[El Juancho]

Good job dude! This was really fun to watch :D

 

This is without a doubt the best TAS demo ever made :)

Edited April 17, 2022 by El juancho

[maxmanium]

That's nuts .wad. Impressive stuff.

[Hitboi]

I didn't expect this to happen at all! Amazing demo.

[ImproversGaming]

Apologies @almostmatt1 but I am not very familiar with the TAS process and guess that this covers a range of possibilities. This is really interesting and I am very naïve so forgive my questions. Is it largely about using XDRE to manually edit and change the inputs of recorded demos to retrospectively to improve the time for the maps? Or using automated methods like "Brute Forcing"? Or something else? Did you have to play a lot of Doom and record demos or was a lot of this optimisation achieved in XDRE using stock demos (like from the DSDA website) as a starting point?

I just wanted to check as I have no familiarity with TAS and the runs look incredible. I read your post that explains the background of XDRE, which is brilliant, and just wanted to know more about this specific recording. I recommend your other post to others that may want more details about XDRE:

 

This is an amazing recording and I love the use of TAS methods to really push to show the boundaries of what is achievable. I was absolutely glued to the video and love seeing the strategies that have evolved over the years to shave off more and more time from these runs - sub 10 minutes seems crazy to me. Great work and so fascinating to see - thanks for sharing! 

[Roebloz]

Holy Shit

[spineapple tea]

I'm surprised by just how comprehensible that was to watch, but what happened on map 18? Was that a glide with a zombieman?

[RockyGaming4725]

1 minute ago, Spineapple tea said:

I'm surprised by just how comprehensible that was to watch, but what happened on map 18? Was that a glide with a zombieman?

Yeah he clipped through a door using a zombieman. It was found by Zero Master, and has been done by him and myself in RTA runs.

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

Awesome!

[Plats]

Beyond insanity. Congratulations!

[knifeworld]

That caco rocket boost and the icon kill were insane, and all those void glides too.. I can't choose a favourite trick! Congrats!

[ReaperAA]

I am calling it. This is the Demo Of The Year (DOTY)

[Looper]

Congratulations! Very high quality TAS of Doom2 after all the years of wating. Happy you didn't stop in Map29, I'm sure that map was annoying to deal with.

 

There were couple tricks, but not many, that were missing, but it's next to impossible to make a full run with no mistakes. Also, building TAS this high quality takes a lot of time, which means that new tricks and strats (even after all these years) pop-up. This could mean changing a thing or two half-way the run, which is a huge pain.

 

Again, congrats!

Edited April 18, 2022 by Looper

[almostmatt1]

Thank you so much for the kind words, everyone! I'm glad that it appears to be enjoyable :)

 

22 hours ago, ImproversGaming said:

Apologies @almostmatt1 but I am not very familiar with the TAS process and guess that this covers a range of possibilities. This is really interesting and I am very naïve so forgive my questions. Is it largely about using XDRE to manually edit and change the inputs of recorded demos to retrospectively to improve the time for the maps? Or using automated methods like "Brute Forcing"? Or something else? Did you have to play a lot of Doom and record demos or was a lot of this optimisation achieved in XDRE using stock demos (like from the DSDA website) as a starting point?

I just wanted to check as I have no familiarity with TAS and the runs look incredible.

 

I love having the opportunity to share some stuff about Doom TASing, so absolutely nothing to be sorry for. :) 100% of this demo was built from scratch using XDRE, so for each of the 22641 frames making up the demo, every single input needed to be manually entered. No part of the demo involved taking or recording a demo by regularly playing and then editing that, everything was completely built starting from nothing, input-by-input, frame-by-frame. I could (and did) view other demos for ideas for what to generally do, but that was it - just looking at them for general ideas, not editing them or copying frames from them.

Brute forcing is only used to determine inputs for about 1-3 frames at a time for the purposes of instant glides, .000000 tricks, optimising diagonal wallruns at times, etc (basically just really precise stuff, if you don't know what those things mean). It unfortunately can't be used to automatically create a section of demo of any significant length, it is just used for things that are virtually instant. 
TASing CAN be done by simply playing with slow motion and rewinding/re-recording segments and there are some players that get great results this way, but that's not what this demo does.

[ImproversGaming]

Brilliant, so interesting. Thanks for taking the time to respond, this was exactly what I was looking for. Still cannot get over watching the demo. Amazing.

[Red Recluse]

God demo made by master.Irresistable art.

[Keykhosrau]

Oh man this is some great stuff. Me and my fam are gonna have a great time watching this over dinner.

[CrazyDoomguy]

Nice trick kill icon of sin with lost soul 

[Dimon12321]

Will we see the first time in the history when Cacowards mentions a TAS demo? As far as I remember, even Zero-Master's Nightmare run wasn't mentioned there

Edited April 19, 2022 by Dimon12321

[HitelbeVettBor]

That's some serious dedication. :)

[Kyka]

You remember how we used to call really fast cars "supercars?" But then the term "supercar" no longer cut it, because cars had got so much better and faster? So we started calling them 'hypercars.' In the same way, the term 'speedrunning' almost doesn't work here. This is more of a 'hyperrun.' (Not my finest word creation, but the point is there.)

 

I couldn't believe the title. A sub 10 run? Even on TAS, that seemed a bit far fetched.

 

Apparently not. Brilliantly done.