Community Chest Series Demos [-complevel 9]

[Grazza]

Regarding 180-degree turns, this is something that can be done in Doom2.exe using what has been called a mouse-spinner utility, and has been around since the early days. The compet-n rules specifically allow this.

So I don't see any strong objection to its use in Doom2.exe-compat demos. Though personally I find it a little ugly (in the same way that any ultra-sharp turns are), and wouldn't use it myself. (Well, unless a truly awesome trick required it. Truth is beauty, after all.)

[gggmork]

@justanotherfool: nice max optimization ideas, you win :)

@gusta: I made and successfully played a dummy test demo with complevel 2 using 180 degree turns, so it seems to work (I did my above demos with complevel 9- not sure if boom was the right choice here, but the sky texture looks better on 2..). I don't use a mouse, so that alone is a huge asymmetry against me that I sorta make up for with 180 degree turns (even with 'run' keyboard turning is slow- before I used that key, my best bet for speed was to simply run backwards without turning, heh heh. For example, after flipping a switch you tend to need to go the opposite direction, now I just immediately face that way which is nice), plus I use one 'strafe on' key rather than 2 keys for left right. My whole setup is unconventional really; most use middle finger for forwards and backwards, while I use middle for forwards only and thumb for backwards only (numpad: 4,8,6,2 = pointer,middle,ring,thumb + 0 = 180 degree turn). I wish they'd implement 180 degree turns in zdoom (maybe that mouse spinner utility grazza mentioned would work), as I habitually use it to no avail when playing zdoom. Not sure how useful that key would be to a mouser since they can already turn quite fast. It may be ugly, but playing doom 'digitally' with the keyboard and that flip key is fun imo.

@joshy: yeah, not shooting to leave enemies (especially outer warpers) dormant is maybe the most common major exploit I've noticed, even in maps from experienced mappers (ex. scythe2 map 27 (edit, its map 27, not 28) you can dodge a huge army)- I guess because, when testing, its counterintuitive to not shoot in a, erm, first person 'shooter' (another common exploit is repeatedly opening/closing a door a crack while firing under it, using it like a shield- especially if monsters can't open it which seems to be the case with most key doors. That's why I tend to only use 'open, stay open' for doors). IMO, the engine should maybe make non deaf enemies start active.

[justanotherfool]

I think you overestimate the amount of door cheating that goes on, gggmork. I doubt it even occurs to most players that it's a viable strategy, and even if it did, it's a pretty dull way to do things.

From a speedrunning perspective it's normally slower than just killing everything ordinarily. About the only categories you'd expect to see it in with any regularity would be fast and nightmare, where you need all the cover you can get. I don't recall seeing it in that many demos.

Anyway, I should thank you for your part in the optimisation, since your own demo prompted me to make a few small adjustments which undoubtedly contributed to the better time.

[Andy Olivera]

gggmork said:

@joshy: (another common exploit is repeatedly opening/closing a door a crack while firing under it, using it like a shield- especially if monsters can't open it which seems to be the case with most key doors. That's why I tend to only use 'open, stay open' for doors). IMO, the engine should maybe make non deaf enemies start active.

If you want to disable the "door trick", yet still want the door to close, use one of the SR line types(monsters can't open these, however). As for avoiding sleeping monsters, the surest way to disable that trick is to use a shootable switch. Slightly less reliable is placing monsters in such a way that the player has no choice but to fire on them.

[gggmork]

Yeah, in my 1024 map I edited a switch to be shootable for just that reason. But yeah I guess door cheats are more useful in casual play as opposed to speed. Its great to cause infighting if you have a whole room full of easily infightable monsters, especially hitscanners, on the opposite side (everyone aims at you and thus eachother but you're safe)- happens a lot in obhack generated maps. I 'door cheated' twice in my c3 27 demo on the previous page I think.

[Dr. Zin]

Holy shit!?

People actually recorded on CC3M20? Every review I saw panned that map hard.

[justanotherfool]

@Dr Zin:
It's quite a polarising map, I think. Some people didn't like it because of the size of it and the large monster count, especially given the absence of the BFG. I didn't really have any problems with the gameplay and thought that the map was rather imaginative. It seemed quite different to anything I'd played before, which is usually a good thing.

In particular I was impressed by your talent for creating wide open areas that aren't underdetailed and ill-shaped. There was the massive cavern housing the yellow key and of course the whole outdoors section at the end of the level, for example. This is also very evident in "Hybrid Envy", which I hope also to record demos for at some point.

I actually thought (and still do) that your map 20 was one of the best maps in the pack, and I'm looking forward to testing your CC4 map when it is eventually finished. Just try not to forget to make sure that all the doors/switches that should require keys actually do require them... :)

[RjY]

justanotherfool said:

Just try not to forget to make sure that all the doors/switches that should require keys actually do require them... :)

I did wonder if it was deliberate - since the blue key room is noticably harder than most of the rest of the map, and as you've found, skipping it saves a lot of time.

Dr. Zin, care to make a definitive answer?

[Dr. Zin]

Yeah, that was a total mistake that slipped past both me and the beta testers. However, it is nice that it makes a speed run easier!

[justanotherfool]

I have a speedrun for CC3 Map 26, "Hybrid Envy". Comments are welcome.

The time was 4:23, by the way. There are a few timed sections which make the run take longer than the actual route would at first suggest.

EDIT: Just taken a lot at Kristian's maxdemo of this level, and evidently I didn't understand the bars in the red skull key room as well as I thought. He used a trick that lowered them straight away, which would obviously save a lot of time in a speedrun. Undecided on whether to aim for a better time or not.

c326s-423.zip

[Anima Zero]

Watching a few of the recent cc3 demos got me motivated enough to do a UV-Max for a cc3 level I've been wanting to do one for, but just haven't had the time to do lately due to being occupied by other stuff.

It's for map 14, "Mountains & Mortar". Time for it comes to 13:04. Quite easily improvable as I had a few stupid moments in the run (Go me and being confused on what weapon I want for the enemies right after the BSK door).

Attaching now.

c3141304.zip

[Gusta]

How about complete maxpack for cc3 guys (or maybe speed)? can somebody sum up which maps are undone / done? perhaps I could try to record something too.

[The Green Herring]

As far as I can tell, the following levels have not been done, in regards to UV max and speed demos:

MAP01 (speed)
MAP02 (speed)
MAP03 (speed)
MAP04 (both)
MAP05 (speed)
MAP06 (speed)
MAP07 (both speed)
MAP08 (speed)
MAP09 (both)
MAP10 (both speed)
MAP11 (both)
MAP12 (speed)
MAP13 (speed)
MAP16 (speed)
MAP17 (speed)
MAP18 (both max)
MAP19 (both)
MAP22 (speed)
MAP23 (speed)
MAP24 (both max)
MAP25 (speed)
MAP27 (speed)
MAP29 (speed)
MAP30 (both max)
MAP31 (speed)
MAP32 (speed)

If I'm wrong, correct me. The MAP32 max can be found here. The MAP28 UV speed demo can be found here.

[justanotherfool]

Actually, gggmork posted a speedrun for map 18, which you can find at the very end of the linked page. Recorded with Zdoom 2.17

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doomworld-news/41804-community-chest-3-released/5/

[The Green Herring]

justanotherfool said:

Actually, gggmork posted a speedrun for map 18, which you can find at the very end of the linked page. Recorded with Zdoom 2.17

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doomworld-news/41804-community-chest-3-released/5/

Sadly, that download link is dead. Could gggmork please repost it here, if possible?

[gggmork]

Here's the zdoom 2.1.7 map18 speed (it doesn't really appear that speedy):
http://fs02u.sendspace.com/processupload.html

I also did 3 speed and 30 speed linked on the previous page.

[The Green Herring]

gggmork said:

Here's the zdoom 2.1.7 map18 speed (it doesn't really appear that speedy):
http://fs02u.sendspace.com/processupload.html

The link said:

An error occurred while processing the uploaded file. (10000)

You also might want to put that and the MAP03 demo in .zip files with .txts. That way, you won't have people finding the demos in their hard drives 10 years later and wondering who the heck recorded them. ;)

Nevertheless, I've crossed them both out in the undone list.

[Anima Zero]

I may have overlooked it, but I don't think a maxdemo was ever done for map 12. Nor was speed obviously. It'd certainly be an accomplishment to get a UV-Max on the level as it's insanely huge.

Might take a shot at map 10 UV-Max in the next couple of days. I just don't particularly care for the difficulty of getting to the BFG secret. It seems like it's so easy to fall off the edge going towards it. Other than that, I'd think a maxrun here wouldn't be too tough to pull off.

As for UV-Speed here...I don't think that's very viable. I just recently did a practice run on the level and you basically end up killing most everything in your path as there's no way to get around 90% of the enemies.

[justanotherfool]

Rottking recorded a demo of cc12, but he didn't manage to get 100% kills, so that remains to be done, as Anima said.

EDIT: Frankly, I don't relish the prospect of hunting everything down on that map. Rottking also mentioned something about it not being possible to get 100% kills, so I guess you'd have to settle for killing as many monsters as are accessible, which Rottking didn't quite manage.

EDIT 2: TGH beat me to punch, it seems.

[The Green Herring]

Pure 100% kills is indeed impossible because RottKing erroneously set a few teleport lines in the monster storage sectors as one time use only, even though there is more than one monster in them. 100% Kills can be forced by killing enemies resurrected by an arch-vile, but still. I forget what the pure maximum is, I ought to check sometime.

[gggmork]

Sorry, I often accidently copy/paste the wrong sendspace link. Attached the zdoom 2.1.7 cc3 18 speed and put a txt/zip (but someone else could beat it).

cc3lvl18uvspd515zdoom217.zip

[The Green Herring]

gggmork said:

Sorry, I often accidently copy/paste the wrong sendspace link. Attached the zdoom 2.1.7 cc3 18 speed and put a txt/zip (but someone else could beat it).

Thanks! I've crossed that out in the undone list as well.

[RjY]

justanotherfool said:

EDIT: Just taken a lot at Kristian's maxdemo of this level, and evidently I didn't understand the bars in the red skull key room as well as I thought. He used a trick that lowered them straight away

The bars close when you run over linedef #1989, which is the far side of the slime river. So he runs over there immediately on entrance to the room, then spends the next 30 seconds killing the monsters already active and waiting for the door to reopen before picking up the key.

Anyway on a speedrun there's two tricks you could try in the red key area:

• firstly the slime river is exactly 192 units wide which is just enough to strafe50 over, which means you can skip raising it up
• Then you grab the key and jump in the teleporter to the room entrance. You mentioned in the text file the possibility of gliding between the bars, well, the teleporter in the slime puts you in exactly the right angle and position to attempt it. If you can edge forwards without deviating sideways at all, you should glide.

(Disclaimer: at least in theory. I can't do the jump reliably, but I'm hopeless. I never quite managed the glide either; the teleporter does put you in exactly the right position but rounding errors in the movement code seem to end up with you deviating out of line. It was quite frustrating...)

[justanotherfool]

Thanks for the tips.

Grabbing the red key right away would save an enormous amount of time, even without the glide. Looks like this is definitely worth a look. I'll see what I can do.

[Anima Zero]

Did what I said I was going to do...a UV-Max for cc3 map10, "Atlantis Rising". The time for the run is 14:12. Sub-14 should be the best time here.

Attaching now.

c3101412.zip

[justanotherfool]

Nice demo, Anima. I've been wanting to see someone try map 10 for a while, and I'd say you did a good job on what looks like a pretty frustrating map.

Speaking of frustrating maps, I improved my speedrun in C3 26 to 2:49 by taking RjY's advice and using SR-50 to circumvent a huge portion of the level. I found the jump extremely difficult to perform with any degree of reliability, so the demo took me a lot longer than I'd hoped, and also left me feeling pretty infuriated at times.

At least I finally got some experience with SR-50, which is obviously pretty important if you want to be a good speedrunner. If I want to be using it regularly I'll have to change my controls a bit, since it requires the use of a few more buttons than I would ordinarily employ.

c326s-249.zip

[Gusta]

I recorded some UV speed and nearly-pacifist on map01 in 0:51. btw. really no speed entries for this map before? that's a pity, it was quite fun to play.

c301-051.zip

[The Green Herring]

I was wondering when someone was going to find that trick. ;) Nice demo!

[Gusta]

Thanks:-) hehe that was quite obvious :-) I also found that switch that opens door to Ycard could be pressed from below. It doesn't seem to be useful though because the switch doesn't seem to work earlier then I open the blue key bars too.
Anyway map13 Speed in 1:58 but soooo lame.

[The Green Herring]

Gusta said:

I also found that switch that opens door to Ycard could be pressed from below. It doesn't seem to be useful though because the switch doesn't seem to work earlier then I open the blue key bars too.

That originally was a legitimate shortcut, but I removed it during compilation. In retrospect, I really should've kept it. :P