What is your luckiest demo and what are the luckiest demos of all time?

[Kinetic]

This thread refers to demos that successfully exited and are on DSDA, not rare occurrences such as those found in the Rare Kills thread.

 

I don't really know my luckiest demo, lv02 might be a good candidate for just how many different ways a run can fail if you are going for optimal times. A demo that I think was pretty lucky that I did recently was Scythe Map21 Max, where I killed 3 pinkies each with 1 fist -> 3 imps each with 1 fist -> specter with 1 fist -> chaingunner with 1 fist -> 2 rocket caco -> 3 imps each with 1 fist -> 2 rocket PE -> run-saving stun on vile at exit with SSG. Basically every optimal outcome happened for me in this run (besides an HK dying in 3 hits, it took 5 punches sadly).

 

What are the luckiest runs on DSDA we know of? I would expect something like E2M8 max or some meme-run where it's just grinding out an extreme rng occurrence and there is nothing else to do in the map. But I am more interested in any "normal" runs where an absurd lucky string of events take place, or maybe just a super rare occurrence that the player can't believe they got in a successful attempt that saved a lot of time. Txt files always mention how great an infight was (or how awful) that carried their run, or theoretical times if "all the stars were to align" so to speak...what demos have had all the stars align?

 

But both meme runs and non-meme run answers are acceptable. Discuss! (dead forum)

 

[Phoenyx]

Not sure about the luckiest demos of all time but in terms of my own demos, it's a toss-up between Speed of Doom Map 14 pacifist and NoYe Map 18 max. I think it might actually be the former since I still have no idea how I managed to struggle my way through all those revs and get the sub-1 lol. 

[vdgg]

My stuff, I think Icarus MAP23 UV Fast, the last 25 seconds, 

 

From other players

 E4M1 Tyson in 50:56 by Xit Vono. 49 minutes in, one last baron, 7% health and some green armor. Hit by the baron fireball, survived.

[Billa]

Right it's my time to shine, I know a few meme runs with absurd luck requirements.

 

You're right about E2M8 max, there is a decent amount of skill involved in hitting every rocket & doing the start quickly but in the end your final time comes down to rocket damage RNG. There is an excellent TAS by Vita that gets a perfect 25-rocket kill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_FOsYS8vdY

Chance of that would be around 1/83,600,000,000,000,000,000,000. Meowgi's 29.54 UV-Max is a 36 rocket kill which is 1/428. Gosu_Noob's 29.71 UV-Fast also takes 36. And finally Gosu's 28.66 NM-Speed run takes 34 rockets, at 1/6771 odds!! Full table here, note Lost Soul damage is not taken into account.

 

Now for the real meme runs. D5DA2 Map 02 is a demo I fondly remember because there were a handful of us streaming it at the same time in Discord grinding away at the run - the map is just a corridor with a Cyberdemon and a Romero head you punch out, for those who don't know. We were in there for hours getting 23, then 22, then 21, then Gosu managed to bag a 20 with a 30 punch kill, at 1/72 odds for the Cyber plus a 36% chance for the Romero head to die in 2 punches. IIRC a few of us had 30- and 29-punch demos that were never submitted. Along comes mhrz, who grinds it for 5 minutes and gets a 19.77 run with 27 punches... 1/3976. Or 1/11,044 if you account for the 2-punch Romero head. Table of odds up to 60 punches

 

Obligatory tnt3 map 08 UV-Max mention (3 mancs and 3 arachnotrons self-annihilate offscreen)

 

D5DA4b Map 54 UV-Max has a mandatory 1/3176 RNG check. You fire 2+3+4 rockets and kill a HK+Vile+Baron. lol

[kuckkuck]

From the E1 max grind, definitely E1M1 and it's not even close. There is like 6 different points, each of them costs 1 second, if the RNG there isn't in your favor (notably the start, double kills in the slime room, imp opening door...), and they were pulled off successfully in the 24s run, besides one point - the secret tunnel with 2 shotgunners. However not only you need to rely on everything going right, you also have to rely that nothing goes wrong - some imp standing directly on blockmap and surviving a shot, surviving the run in itself, lift not coming down, wrong movement etc. All of this inflated the attempt numbers to almost 70k (though in fairness this number is inflated, because it's probably not a good idea to run this as your first speedrun. I bet other people speedrunning for long time could've achieved this in at least half the number of my attempts). I got reminded, how this level sucks, when I did the E1 max.

 

Another one is E1M8, which I absolutely hated, because I had no idea, how to play it. I played the exactly the same every time, yet sometimes I ended up with 2:25, sometimes 2:15, and when I got the record of 2:03, I jumped directly from my previous PB of 2:09 by 6 seconds. Maybe if you watch the demo, it might seem it's fine, but it felt, like I had absolutely no control over what's happening. The problem is (probably) using shotgun on pinkies, since they take 2 or 3 shots to go down, and with doom's buggy hitscan detection and for some reason they tend to down mostly in 3 shots in this level.

 

Some other points include E1M4 start, where monsters can wander from windows completely, otherwise the level can be executed consistently. Or E1M8, which is just waiting for good barrels at the start, then good barrels in the star arena, and then good baron alignment. Imps at E1M2 were quite obnoxious and good run requires their good cooperation. And obv E1M7, where you can get scammed by wandering monsters, though I think it isn't as RNG heavy as other levels, and it can be broken through with skill and consistent play.

[akolai]

not so sure about rng, but in terms of raw "that should not have worked under any circumstances" energy...

Spoiler

spending 20 uninterrupted seconds on 3% health while surrounded on all sides on my first run past 02, and still getting an exit despite the incredibly sketchy arena fight and multiple failed rocket jumps, has to take the cake

 

 

 

[Andromeda]

For my own demos, either Sunlust MAP18 Pacifist or Congestion 1024 MAP30 Pacifist.

[El Juancho]

My luckiest demo has to be my italo doom map01 uv-speed in 20 secs demo it01-020.zip https://youtu.be/pGDEqLCgtGk

 

 

Being alive when the archies are targeting you is hard enough, but getting two AVJ at the same and surviving after that is a miracle

[ZeroMaster010]

7 hours ago, Kinetic said:

What are the luckiest runs on DSDA we know of?

 

absolutely no contest imo: https://youtu.be/uiA5aUCLbQg?t=9910 , in all the hours of stuff I've seen on the twitch stream I don't think anything has shocked me as much as the ending of Tatsurd-cacocaco's plutonia uv-fast d2all, thought to myself that's the luckiest thing I've ever seen in doom and couldn't believe he got away with it. The start isn't that crazy, but his fight with the icon is something else :)

 

Edited March 24, 2024 by ZeroMaster010

[4shockblast]

I guess one question is whether something counts as lucky if it takes a lot of attempts to get; it might require a lot of luck to get, but if it also took a lot of attempts, that equals out to average luck. :p

 

Anyway, it's a struggle to remember across all my runs what this could be, but it's hard not to rate Plutonia map 30 Tyson and speed highly. To get that Tyson in what was essentially two attempts (first one died relatively early to the barons) is probably the most fortunate thing that has happened to me in the realm of speedruns because it's possibly the worst start of a run to have to do more than once. The UV-Speed wasn't exactly something that happened too quickly, but to get a pretty much perfect 0:14.97 time on my first exit was completely unexpected, and I don't know that I ever had any other attempts with similar speed even get close to making the trick.

 

Honorable mention to Sunlust map 26 pacifist, where Daerik mentioned the AVJ strat in my chat when I was doing a much more tedious slow PE kill strat, and the very first attempt I even got to the cyber room, I got the jump and I managed to complete the map, and neither was trivial, so that was pretty cool.

[Decay]

In terms of pure luck, probably my Bourgeois map12 stroller. This map had a flaw in that you could pass rockets through a wall to trigger the death exit either by hitting the romero head or a barrel to trigger the explosion. I speculated maybe you could get a hell knight/baron to throw snot through the wall to trigger it, but testing yielded no results, as the angle was unfavourable. However, during an attempt I was heading into that room, the platforms with the baron/knights lowered at the precise moment a snotball was being thrown at me while I came up some stairs, creating the right angle needed to hit a barrel and causing the death exit to work. I had travelled that path in a few hundred attempts prior, so it was pure luck that ended up happening and I actually thought I just died.

 

In terms of "oh shit" moments that turned out alright, there are plenty in the stroller/pacifist categories across the Eviternity and Bourgeois runs, but I'll hand the title to Micro Slaughter Map16: Beluga Sanctuary. Aside from having probably one of the worst pacifist starts in a wad EVER, where you have to wait 2-4 minutes depending on archvile rng, the map is, essentially, entirely either squeezing beside cyberdemons in tight spaces and praying they aren't aggressive, or dodging rockets flying at you. On it's face, it's not a big deal, but realistically it amount to "you can only get hit once or twice the entire map." And that sucked. The start defined it all. You either get past that first cyber or you don't, and you have to wait 2-4 minutes just to try. I only proceeded into the main map area a handful of times.

 

 

Edited March 24, 2024 by Decay

[Andromeda]

18 minutes ago, Decay said:

In terms of "oh shit" moments that turned out alright, there are plenty in the stroller/pacifist categories across the Eviternity and Bourgeois runs, but I'll hand the title to Micro Slaughter Map16: Beluga Sanctuary. Aside from having probably one of the worst pacifist starts in a wad EVER, where you have to wait 2-4 minutes depending on archvile rng, the map is, essentially, entirely either squeezing beside cyberdemons in tight spaces and praying they aren't aggressive, or dodging rockets flying at you. On it's face, it's not a big deal, but realistically it amount to "you can only get hit once or twice the entire map." And that sucked. The start defined it all. You either get past that first cyber or you don't, and you have to wait 2-4 minutes just to try. I only proceeded into the main map area a handful of times.

Can confirm. I wasted like 70-80 hours a while ago trying to beat your run and couldn't get a single exit.

[xit-vono]

Actually this is more of a bad luck thing, but I had a run where I needed 7 berserk punches to kill a pinky.

[xit-vono]

I remember Vincent talking about his nightmare demo on e4m6. He said that that was a very lucky demo because the cyberdemon was shooting at cacos that it could not hit.

[cryoniq]

That's an interesting question actually.

As for my demos, luckiest are:

• judgment map01 max in 01:29 (no video, sorry)
• Congestion 1024 map01 max in 0:29.91
• swift death uv-max d2all.

Honorable mention - SlaughterMAX Map05 uv-max in 3:20 as the map itself is an RNG fest because of cyberdemon spawning on the arch-vile platforms.

 

As for other players, i think i can put these:

• Plutonia map01 pacifist by El Juancho in 0:06.86
• Doom II map09 pacifist by Vaclav Kunes in 01:06
• Speed of Doom map30 uv-max by tatsurd-cacocaco in 02:59.03

Honorable mention - the luckiest demo is yet to be done and we all know what is it :^)

 

[Gosu_Noob]

Well I didn't know this was a thread, so here goes the resident "luck runner".

Billa mentioned E2M8... ZM mentioned Tatsurd's ridiculous double avj save at the end of a near 3 hour run... (btw never looked that the ending of that till now. This might actually be the luckiest run of all time)


Haste 10 Pacifist has yet to be mentioned, so here it is.
So Meowgi was grinding this run and attempting to run it as UV-speed on stream by shooting the vile. Rayziik comes along and stream snipes the run and gets an exit so insane that Meowgi literally stopped streaming runs, and the famous "HE STOLE!" meme was born.
In the run, the cyber fires a rocket as Rayziik is running at perfect timing. A chaingunner starts attacking and accidentally hits the vile on the pillar, triggering his pain state. A moment later the rocket kills the chaingunner, leaving no target for the vile.... except Rayziik who has now rounded the tower and has started shooting at the vile to try to trigger a pain state. He never actually hits the vile, and gets his jump and exit, making this run pacifist to boot. Its actually nuts.
has10p0866 (2).zip

 

 

For my own runs, I was just talking to Billa about this yesterday.
Out of the countless rng based luck runs I've done, there's two that stand out to me beyond e2m8.

 

1. TNTThree map 7 UV-speed.

I always like to give a hat tip to this map for its creative and unique use of the IoS.
The icon spawns 3 monsters at a time, and the intended strategy is to kill 4 arachno's to raise the platform 4 times and then exit.
In this run, I was able to get 3 arachno's to cycle in a row leading to the fastest possible raise of 3 platforms. The very next spawn, was a vile (1.7% chance I believe, so even with 3 spawns this is roughly a 1/20 chance).
I lower the platform which has only been raised 3 times, and AVJ out of the arena to save time on the last arachno cycle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqeuetAnEMg

 

2. Frog and Toad map 3 UV-speed.

I was trying to use the same strat that lucky_edie used in his run, but to do the platforming a little faster and stand on a pillar which created a tighter angle for the ball to hit the vile. The Baron never stops moving from the time I trigger him at the start, and the very first ball he shoots before even turning the corner hits the vile. The angle is so tight on the shot from the baron, that the ball actually appears to clip through part of the wall.
From there, I have fairly poor luck in triggering a vile jump as early as possible, but the sheer luck of the baron rng makes me believe this might be my hardest "luck run" to beat. (Even with losing nearly 3 seconds to the vile target)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DySMg_C48lE

 

 

Edited April 6, 2024 by Gosu_Noob

[Kinetic]

20 hours ago, cryoniq said:

yet to be done and we all know what is it :^)

actually no i dont, what is it

[cryoniq]

4 hours ago, Kinetic said:

actually no i dont, what is it

 

Actually the answer might be "anything". Like, we already have ridiculously good demos and then someone posts even better and luckier stuff. And that's cool :^)

 

 

Spoiler

But yea, i think most of us did wait for lv01p004 that was just posted today.

Spoiler

P.S. i am also still waiting and hoping for dmn03m10XX

 

 

Edited April 6, 2024 by cryoniq

[BoxY]

In ksutra map17 max dubzzz somehow kills 8 cacodemons in a row with 2 ssg shots each, I don't know what the odds are on that but it always amazed me because my personal experience with killing cacos with ssg is insanely inconsistent.

[xit-vono]

I imagine that the lucky demo yet to be done is pa30, although I doubt we will ever see it with current methods. Maybe there's a way to make a TAS that is friendly for copying in real time.