Icarus Demos [-complevel 2]

[Kristian Ronge]

Hello all,

Three new runs, though two of them were recorded a while ago:
Map 12 UV speed/pacifist in 0:20.
Map 26 UV speed in 0:26. (so-so)
Map 26 UV max in 2:46. (slow)

Enjoy!

[Grazza]

Good stuff.

BTW, I had trouble downloading those using the links provided, but got them easily enough by looking in www.student.nada.kth.se/~d99-kro/demos.

[Kristian Ronge]

Yeah, there seemed to be something wrong with the proxy server. It should be working again now. Thanks for the kind words! :-)

[myk]

Kristian Ronge said:
Map 12 UV speed/pacifist in 0:20.

Yeah, hydroponics... they (whoever they are) apparently use it to grow pumpkins!

That Revenant in the failed demo turned around, shook its ass at you mockingly, and said "ha, look how I ruin your run!" And he did.

[Kristian Ronge]

Indeed. It's a pity, I rather liked that run better (slightly faster, looks a bit smoother, and also has nice reality-style running with extremely low health throughout most of it).

Any suggestions on what to try next?

[Grazza]

Map17 maybe? Andy Olivera's Max on this map involved a lot of berserk, so it might be quite fun for someone who likes punching. And a Speed might be good to watch (maybe tough though; and the slow start might prove annoying). IIRC I think there is a grab of the red key that might save a tiny bit of time. I wouldn't recommend trying Nightmare - my estimate is that it would be one of the toughest of the remaining undone ones.

Also map29 has been a bit neglected from a demo viewpoint. Though those double crusher/door things you have to wait for would be a bit irritating. And I don't recall how guaranteeable the cyber telefrag is - if it isn't, then a Max might be a bit frustrating.

Regarding "Hydroponics", I suppose you'll now see why the map features fruit and vegetable areas that light up when you activate them, rather than it just being some random fluff.

Oh yeah, and map07 Max should be pushed somewhere below the TAS time using the suicide exit trick (some years back I did a fairly casual one that was within a few seconds of it).

Map20 is one of my absolute favourite maps, but again possibly not an easy one for recording.

[Kristian Ronge]

Grazza said:
Map17 maybe? Andy Olivera's Max on this map involved a lot of berserk, so it might be quite fun for someone who likes punching. And a Speed might be good to watch (maybe tough though; and the slow start might prove annoying).

Did a casual max that was well below 10 minutes, but the gameplay isn't very enjoyable, and I'll probably not try it again. Had a couple of attempts at a speedrun, which turned out to be very difficult. Getting to the yellow key quickly is slightly problematic, but the real problem is getting back after having grabbed the red key (all the monsters are down there waiting for you). If you can get through that, the end should be easy, though. I'll see what I can come up with.

EDIT: I did a pretty ugly 4:57 maxrun of map 17 just now. I'm going out of town in a few days, and if I haven't gotten around to improving that run by then, I'll post it.

[Kristian Ronge]

Here's map 17 UV max in 4:36. I'd expect a time below 4:00 to be possible, but it's an okay run IMHO, in spite of some mistakes.

UV speed would unfortunately be extremely boring and max-styled, and in spite of my best efforts I haven't gotten to the end in any sort of satisfactory time, so I'm giving up on it (at least for now).

[Anima Zero]

Kristian Ronge said:

Here's map 17 UV max in 4:36. I'd expect a time below 4:00 to be possible, but it's an okay run IMHO, in spite of some mistakes.

UV speed would unfortunately be extremely boring and max-styled, and in spite of my best efforts I haven't gotten to the end in any sort of satisfactory time, so I'm giving up on it (at least for now).

Map 17 UV-Speed extremely boring and max-styled? Not for me at least :P.

I was dinking around after a session of Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst and, after watching your maxrun for map 17, I gave UV-Speed a whirl for said level.

After 30 minutes or so worth of attempts, I got a time of 1:40. Time sounds pretty nice given the challenge of running this level quickly, but it's quite improvable. Perhaps 5+ seconds or so?

Hopefully this inspires you or anyone else to try and improve the time.

Will be attaching it now.

ic17-140.zip

[Kristian Ronge]

Anima Zero said:
Map 17 UV-Speed extremely boring and max-styled? Not for me at least :P.

Uh, well, things like killing all the monsters in the start, stopping to kill a Hell Knight, or hanging around the exit area shooting Revenants is "max style", in my book, but opinions may differ. ;-)

Nice run, though. :-) Did you try a red key grab? (I believe Grazza hinted at that previously) It's definitely possible from the blood room, just as you've grabbed the rocket launcher, which could save a second or two since you wouldn't have to maneuver around the HKs/Baron as much to get to it. Don't know if it's possible without triggering the sector it's in to lower, though.

EDIT: Spelling

[Anima Zero]

Kristian Ronge said:

Uh, well, things like killing all the monsters in the start, stopping to kill a Hell Knight, or hanging around the exit area shooting Revenants is "max style", in my book, but opinions may differ. ;-)

Nice run, though. :-) Did you try a red key grab? (I believe Grazza hinted at that previously) It's definitely possible from the blood room, just as you've grabbed the rocket launcher, which could save a second or two since you wouldn't have to maneuver around the HKs/Baron as much to get to it. Don't know if it's possible without triggering the sector it's in to lower, though.

EDIT: Spelling

Yeah, essentially having to kill all the enemies at the start is max-style. I must have been exhausted when writing that post up :P.

As for the RK grab, that's certainly a possibility, but if you get hung up by a caco in the process of getting out of there after snagging the key up, you may lose the time saved just slipping past the baron and HK to get the key that way. Then again, you aren't exactly SOL if you get hung up by a caco. Trapped by a baron and a HK? SOL'd unless you get really lucky :P.

Now then, I didn't read your post before doing this improvement to map17 UV-Speed a couple days ago. Visually, it's on the ugly side with getting hung up on several things, RK room being the worst offender here.

Yet I somehow managed to get a nice improvement to the time. Cut off 10 seconds to make the new time 1:30. In all honesty, given the hang ups I had during the attempt, my response to the time: "...Did I really get 1:30? No, no...that could not have just happened :D!". Honest truth there.

Still could be improved no doubt, but this map is painful for a quick UV-Speed with all that has to go right and the fact I'm a little more than agitated with attempts at it now :P.

Will be attaching demo now.

ic17-130.zip

[Kristian Ronge]

Two old runs I didn't get around to post:
Map 27 UV speed/pacifist in 0:13
Map 31 UV speed/pacifist in 0:19 (0:18 shouldn't be overwhelmingly difficult)

[abyrvalg]

Just ran my first non-TAS demo woohoo :)
Map 12 UV speed/pacifist in 0:19

ic12-019.zip

[abyrvalg]

Map 31 in 0:18 speed/pacifist
Map 21 in 0:14 speed.


p.s.: By some weird accidence the txt-file for the previous demo claimed it tool-assisted. Though it wasnt. Fixed the description now and included the file in the archive too, so the previous post can be deleted.

ic122131-anp.zip

[Grazza]

jongo said:

so the previous post can be deleted.

Rather than do that, I have replaced the attachment with the amended version.

[Alvis]

Probably not the most exciting thing, as it doesn't add anything to the table, but I've gotten map01 UVmax down to sub-3, in spite of some really ugly mistakes. I mean, really, when's the last time it took you four tries to hit a switch? :P Also, my apologies if there's already a better time and I didn't see it due to carelessness/'noob'ishness.

http://www.relentlessbeating.com/alvis/demos/ic01-259.zip

Edit by Grazza, as that link is down:
also here: http://www.doomworld.com/sda/dwdemo/ic01-259.zip

[abyrvalg]

Last week i had lots of spare time and nothing to do because of little health problems. And i started running Icarus for fun. Well, soon it turned into this half-serious TAS movie :) It wasnt meant to be extremely optimized or insanely action-packed. Some maps are surely far from ideal, somewhere you'll see glitches and bumps (maps 3,7,14,19 come to my mind now), but in others i tried hard and hope someone likes it anyway.

Map Time

level 1: Shuttlecraft 1:06
level 2: Shuttlebay 0:14
level 3: Quarry 0:22
level 4: Engineering 0:10
level 5: Flipside 0:21
level 6: P.E.T. Rescue 0:31
level 7: Sickbay 0:47
level 8: Donnybrook 1:02
level 9: The Moat 0:52
level 10: Bridge 0:03
level 11: Feeding Frenzy 1:25
level 12: Hydroponics 0:17
level 13: Asylum 0:27
level 14: Fortress of Evil 1:59 <-worst one
level 15: Waste disposal 0:10
level 31: Great Balls of Fire 0:16
level 16: Bootcamp 1:22
level 17: Bloodbath 0:59
level 18: Cargo Bay 0:31
level 19: Blessed are the Quick 0:28
level 20: WarTemple 1:28
level 21: Engine Core 0:07
level 22: Nightfall 0:18
level 23: Painful Discharge 0:58
level 24: Haunted 0:10
level 25: Another Fine Mess 0:21
level 26: Weapons Bay 0:23
level 27: Starhenge 0:12
level 28: Excavations 0:25
level 29: Brutality 3:29
level 30: Nucleus 0:23

Here's download link:
http://webdrive.reborn.ru/jongo/Icarus/30ic2136.zip

Also here:
http://www.doomworld.com/sda/dwdemo/30ic2136.zip

[Kristian Ronge]

Two TAS movies in two days! Sweet.

Very fun to watch, even though (as you yourself point out) some parts and maps aren't optimized. Is this a new record for number of suicide exits in one demo? ;-)

[xit-vono]

Very nice. This is quality!

[entryway]

fun!

Kristian Ronge said:

Two TAS movies in two days! Sweet.

In this case I suggest to declare the fourth days off of September as official TAS holiday :)

Kristian Ronge said:

Is this a new record for number of suicide exits in one demo? ;-)

We already have Tyson style. Now we need Cobain style. With this style you should finish a level as fast as possible and make suicide at the end.

[Grazza]

This is certainly something I have wanted to see for a long time! And a very appropriate one to record when you have health problems. :)

But it's a shame you missed my map14 demo earlier in this thread - the trick there saves about a minute. And I think my map23 demo might have misled you into pressing a switch that isn't needed (coords -900,512) - if so, sorry (that doesn't lose much time though).

[The Green Herring]

Heh, nice to see my projectile barrel trick on MAP11 find use in a demo with monsters. ;) Cool stuff!

Another possible improvement, which I mentioned earlier: It's possible to trigger both of the "hidden" switches in the pitch-dark room in MAP09 through the barriers blocking them, but you have to be at a super-steep angle to do it. Doing this with the northern switch allows you to access the "lower red key pillar" switch immediately, but you have to be quick to grab the red key as it lowers, or else it'll sink into the floor and render access to it impossible (unless you go and flip the rest of the switches the normal way.) I've been meaning to record a demo with this, but I haven't found the time to do it, what with working on Community Chest 3 and all. I wonder if anyone can break the UV speed record with this? :)

[abyrvalg]

Huge thanks for a feedback!
Btw i checked my latest downloads and now i see that ic14p113 was downloaded corruptly. Funny how it turned out that i've missed a route on this particular map where i could save so much :P
And i noticed this map23 button later after all the work was finished, but just didnt feel like improving. I could also avoid taking RL there, but the time is still OK.
And one more mistake which i'm sure was noticed - the total time isnt 21:16 as i said earlier. It is 21:36. I checked it three times before uploading the file. But as all the other mathematicians, i'm rather inattentive to numbers =)

[Grazza]

I believe there is a quite a high proportion of mathematicians in the demos community, so the error had a good chance of going undetected, for that same reason. :) BTW, prboom-plus will give you a pretty reliable total time at the end of a movie run - while I still wouldn't stake my life on it, Andrey has fixed some old prboom bugs in this.

Some time ago, I searched for other maps in Icarus where you could use the multiplayer exit in singleplayer, but apart from map14, any others would require some miraculous linedef skipping (e.g. map18 and map19).

Thanks again for the demo, which amongst all the wonderfully executed tricks, also includes the first speedruns on some of my favourite maps (e.g. map20). It's one I'll watch a few more times for sure.

[Kristian Ronge]

Grazza said:
Some time ago, I searched for other maps in Icarus where you could use the multiplayer exit in singleplayer, but apart from map14, any others would require some miraculous linedef skipping (e.g. map18 and map19).

Haha, a coop speedrun on map 19 would be very quick if player 1 just didn't move and the other players ran directly to the exit teleporter (and one of them would shoot another with e.g. the shotgun for a suicide exit). :-)

[The Green Herring]

Kristian Ronge said:

Haha, a coop speedrun on map 19 would be very quick if player 1 just didn't move and the other players ran directly to the exit teleporter (and one of them would shoot another with e.g. the shotgun for a suicide exit). :-)

The Kapustins already recorded a coop demo doing exactly that. ;)

Speaking of which, what's the most commonly used name for that technique, anyway? I called my Doom Wiki article about the technique "death slide," since I saw the term used on more than one occasion, but I wonder if "suicide exit" is more common.

[Kristian Ronge]

Oops, forgot about those runs. Thanks for reminding me. Of course, it's not the *exact* setup I was thinking of (which involves -- at least -- three players and would save a second or so compared to the Amazing Kapustin Brothers (TM)).

On the other topic, "suicide exit" could be used in other contexts, too (see for instance my runs on E1M2 and E1M6 of "Door To Hell", where I run into areas tagged with "20% health damage/end map" to exit), so of those two alternatives, "death slide" is more specific and "suicide exit" more general, rendering the former to be the proper one to use in a Wiki article IMHO. Not that it would usually matter.

[Grazza]

The term "suicide exit" can't be used for "damage/end map" sectors, since you don't actually die in those*. Even if you telefrag a voodoo doll in such a sector, you exit with 1% health.

But I agree that "suicide exit" is a good general term for deliberately dying in order to exit a level. A "dead exit" would also cover cases where the player exits dead without necessarily intending to or needing to.

When a corpse slides across an exit line, I'd call this a "death slide" (edit: probably "exit slide" is more precise, as you can of course slide while dead without exiting). You could coin further terms to distinguish between cases where the slide merely provides extra distance, or for where the height reduction is vital for the method to work at all, but that's possibly unnecessary. Besides, there are some complex cases that can't readily be neatly defined (kp13-010 springs to mind), and it is simplest just to call these "suicide exits" and provide further info if appropriate.

I believe the above pretty much coincides with the way these terms have been used too.

IIRC, all the dead exits in the Icarus movie run would thus be termed "suicide exits", and more specifically "death slides".


-------------------
* Unless using a port that changes this behaviour. You can also exit as a zombie from these sectors in certain cases with voodoo dolls - though that's not really a dead exit either.

[Kristian Ronge]

Grazza said:
The term "suicide exit" can't be used for "damage/end map" sectors, since you don't actually die in those. Even if you telefrag a voodoo doll in such a sector, you exit with 1% health.

Yet again, Grazza corrects me by sharing some of his vast knowledge of this game. I think I've known about this in the past, but had long since forgotten about it. Thanks! :-)

[Opulent]

just a maxdemo by Dragonknight Zero on Map17:
http://www.doomworld.com/sda/dwdemo/ic17-540.rar