Teaming up - Inferno by Chris Lutz [done!!!]

[tatsurd-cacocaco]

My general comments, here

This is the first demopack project for me, excluding personal one (Doomcity). 
When I played this wad from E3M1 to E3M8 for the first times, I felt that these 
maps were a little boring. This is because there were many situations that I 
fought against tough monsters (like a baron) with weaker weapons (like SG or CG). 
Of course, it's the first try, so I didn't at all know layouts, positions of 
enemies, and secrets, and I used an orthodox method. I hadn't played a wad for 
Ultimate doom for a long time, so playing a map without SSG didn't agree with 
me well. However, every max demo has some ideas to play them comfortably. I just 
tried E3M9 and found several new ways to get more faster records. As a result, 
I enjoyed recording demos enough and this wad can really be playable comfortably. 
The ten cybers in E3M8 is tremendously awful, but Looper (aka Paska) killed 
them and finished this map with a valid max. It was undoubtedly a great achievement. 
Also, I was glad that everyone tried not only UV categories but also NM categories. 
For this, the project was more interesting. Vdgg, thank you for making a good opportunity.

[SAV88]

My wall of text:

This grand, atmospheric episode is a nice gift for fans of the
original Inferno and Thy Flesh Consumed. It consists of large levels 
which are just about as beautiful and varied as an UDoom mapset done 
in 1998 can get. If you like Paul Corfiatis' mapping, you'll like 
Christopher Lutz's work.

It got a great attention from ten modern Doom recorders: the HR2 
speed freak (Xepop), the Alien Vendetta conqueror (Tatsurd-cacocaco), 
the Ultimate Doom wad specialist (The Green Herring), the famous 
Czech sprinter and trickaholic (Dew), the Russian Doom scientist 
(Never_Again), the new doomer from France (DidierTranber), the Baltic 
player who showed his Nightmare skill in E3M7 (Donce), the first ever 
human who survived PA17 (Paska aka Looper), and two keyboarders (VDGG 
and me). The UDoom'ish gameplay of "Inferno" didn't perfectly please 
them all, but the wad still has a lot of opportunities to have great 
fun in various speed demo categories, as you can see from the number 
of demos. And I really enjoyed working on my own seven records. 
Every level is done not only in Max and Speed modes, but also 
in Nightmare and Pacifist genres (not counting E3M1, which is more an 
intro than a serious level). From the undone tasks, some of the 
interesting future challenges for hardcore players would be E3M5
Nightmare with 100% secrets or a full NM Speed/NM100S movie :-)

Demos in the set are rather different in style, speed, smoothness,
etc, but every player made a worthy contribution to the pack, and the
overall level of demo quality/optimizedness turned out higher than in
most demopacks. Enjoy the Inferno!

[Looper]

You can remove my comment about the e3m5 from general pack comments...

E3M5 Pacifist
Time: 7:07

I guess no one really tried this? :)

i3p5-707.zip

[dew]

Paska said:

I guess no one really tried this? :)

yep, i tried like 3 times and every time the three imps slaughtered all the pigs who couldn't quite reach them. i just don't have the patience for this, p207 pacifist attempts being the exception. :)

[Looper]

Whoops, almost forgot this demo. I tried to improve the time, but those barons always blocked me so I quit and forgot the whole thing. Now deadline(s) pressing (at school), so I don't have time to improve.

E3M5
UV Speed
Time: 1:39

Silly run :/

i3n5-139.zip

[Donce]

Here are, finally, my comments. Good work, everyone.

General

When I saw the wad name (Inf-lutz), I immediately knew that I had played it long ago, because I remembered the name, and the wad was in a folder where I put them after playing. It was really surprising, after replaying several maps, to see that I don't remember a thing from them visually. That's odd, because this mapset is not the one that can be easily forgot! I'd say it's great, large levels with impressive architecture, and often you need some time until you know a map and don't get lost in it.

Demos that were produced for this episode are great, as well. My hat off to those who had the patience to do the maxdemos, if I did one, it almost certainly would have been boring :P Speedruns are also well polished, quite a few featuring glides, which I just can't do reliably. Here I only submit one little NM run, hoping that it's not that bad :)

E3M7 NM

This map is not very hard on Nightmare, but it's another story if you want to achieve a better time. Most of the runs end up right at the first two barons, who just won't let you through. Here I didn't even get hurt by them, which happens very rarely. After that, there's hoping that the two spectres and the demon will run towards me and will not run away, because then they will not get fighting with other monsters and will follow me, where I deal with the other batch of spectres and a demon with a shotgun. If all goes well, there is the next big obstacle - the baron guarding the switch, which must be pressed blindly. To have a better time, I can't wait for the baron to go out, I must go and try to press the switch immediately, and needless to say, most often the baron gets me. If I notice that I'm still alive, I run to the blue key (sometimes getting stuck completely on the stairway down, where cacos incinerate me!), and this is where I could blame the wad author a bit, because even if I evade the projectiles of the baron and cacos, after taking the key it is quite common to get a visplane overflow error (I don't record with PrBoom+, only use it to watch demos). Actually, at first this error was almost quaranteed until I worked out how I should move to minimize the chances of this showstopper to occur. That's why after taking the key, I do not turn around completely, but rather strafe sideways than move forward. The downside is, that there was a high risk of falling down into -20% lava. Now, if I survive up to this point and if the baron who guarded the switch doesn't take revenge by blocking my path, the rest of the map is a piece of cake, I just had to be careful not to screw up with missing shots or by getting stuck on a corner. While it is possible to glide through the bars near the exit (see the speedrun of this map), and this would save at least 10 seconds if done successfully, I could never perform the glide quickly enough, and keeping in mind all the obstacles previously in the map, I didn't even attempt this in an actual run.

Is that too long? :)

(I did not use the code tag because it did not wrap the lines)

[vdgg]

@Donce: wow, this is long but well worth-reading. I wouldn't let 10 such comments if you had recorded more demos, though :)

@SAV88: after reading your e3m7 comments I thought you could like Caverns of Darkness (cc-cod) MAP07 and MAP08, at least visually (or you know them already?)

@Paska & dew: good job with the pacifist, and I must admit that while I didn't provoke imp <-> demons infight on purpose on this map, it sometimes just happened. I recall dead pig bodies lying on the ground, but I don't remember a dead imp ever.

I guess I'll be sending PMs to two players which didn't made general comment stuff. Our work should be ready within two days regardless of their reaction.

[xepop]

Very shortly:

I liked the light usage in this wad. Well, I pretty much liked all the visuals especially in vanilla resolution. My first impressions of this wad weren't quite positive though; visplane errors (full of them), monsters blocking buttons (first thing a pacifist notices) and inescapable pits aren't really fun. But if you are playing with limit removing port and don't consider yourself much of a pacifist, you don't have much to worry about.

I liked the idea of teaming up and decided to join just for couple pacifists. Good that all got done after all since I didn't have time to spare for all of them. I'll probably go hibernating now since I got a year worth of studies to catch up. I'll be following demos though.

Also, I'd like to add that in i3p9 why I first went in wrong direction (right instead of left) near end was because I got confused by the telefrag. Now, it doesn't explain anything at all rather than arouse questions! Any psychologists here? I knew perfectly well that I have to go left but instead I was thinking about the caco and went right. Human mind is such a silly thing. Well, I stop meandering here as there are much more weird stuff going on and it's quite a bit offtopic.

[SAV88]

vdgg said:

@SAV88: after reading your e3m7 comments I thought you could like Caverns of Darkness (cc-cod) MAP07 and MAP08, at least visually (or you know them already?)

I haven't downloaded this partial conversion wad until your suggestion. But you are right, the design of these two more modern E3M7 "sequels" really appealed to me. They are filled with neat high-tech touches, such as the rocket in MAP08. And their dark, powerful, varied visuals are also reminiscent of some of my favorite Requiem levels -- "The Canyon" and "Downer" (though I haven't yet looked if Chris Lutz's CoD levels are as exciting for UV-Max playing as RQ05, or not).

[vdgg]

Ready! Error free, hopefully.

As the attachment size is slightly too big,
-> http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?rqbe2ezbncc5zqz

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?btafl7zo35rp55l

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?3ssj11bfr76o7x3

[Looper]

Nice! *waiting for next 'teaming up'*

[Donce]

vdgg said:

Ready! Error free, hopefully.

From the txt:

levels : E1M1-E1M9

It's actually the 3rd episode, but that's no biggie :)

I must confess that I haven't yet watched demos from E3M3-4, 6, 8-9. Now I'll have to replay these maps and watch the remaining stuff :P

[vdgg]

Good catch, thanks Donce. Corrected, there's new link which I repeat here: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?btafl7zo35rp55l http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?3ssj11bfr76o7x3

Edit: yet another link edit

[Hitherto]

>> Paska: I hate those VIS plane overflows.

Then why you don't use doom+?

[Donce]

Hitherto said:

Then why you don't use doom+?

I don't know how it is for other maps, but E3M7 at least crashes doom+ right at the start (at the stairway where the chainsaw is). It would be interesting to know why and whether this can be fixed.

[SAV88]

vdgg said:

Ready! Error free, hopefully.

As the attachment size is slightly too big,
-> http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?rqbe2ezbncc5zqz

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?btafl7zo35rp55l

Thank you for this project! The demoset indeed turned out really solid for 5 weeks of work.

If you want, you can follow AdamW's example and announce your release in the Doom General forum as well. This way it will be seen by a wider audience.

[Hitherto]

Donce said:
I don't know how it is for other maps, but E3M7 at least crashes doom+ right at the start (at the stairway where the chainsaw is). It would be interesting to know why and whether this can be fixed.

Sorry, I don't know any of these maps. And Paska said this about e3m8.

Upd: In the beginning of e3m7 I only caught some VPO probability (carmack's exe) from yard corners (behind red lifts). After that I picked CS and ascend the stairs successfully (both exes).

[Donce]

Did you climb up the stairs? If so, maybe it's system dependent. I'll have to post about this in PrBoomp+ thread I think.

[Looper]

Hitherto said:

>> Paska: I hate those VIS plane overflows.

Then why you don't use doom+?

For the same reason I don't use legacy :-D

[Hitherto]

Paska said:

For the same reason I don't use legacy :-D

Strange comparison. And at the same time you use prboom-plus. Where is the logic?

 inf5-sp    e3m5    UV Speed      PrBoom+ 2.5.0.8    1:39       Paska 

[dew]

SAV88 said:

If you want, you can follow AdamW's example and announce your release in the Doom General forum as well. This way it will be seen by a wider audience.

i second that, it is a good suggestion.

[vdgg]

Hitherto said:

Strange comparison. And at the same time you use prboom-plus. Where is the logic?

 inf5-sp    e3m5    UV Speed      PrBoom+ 2.5.0.8    1:39       Paska 

Ops, my second mistake. Should be Doom 1.9. I think I'll wait until you find 15 more... and Hitherto, read your PM's please (the one I sent to you is obsolete now, but still...)

[Never_Again]

I was surprised to see all the [none received]'s against my name in the TXT, but after going through my earlier posts I realized that there wasn't much to salvage comment-wise, so I'll write some new ones here.

General:

 By curious coincidence vdgg's demopak proposal came up shortly after I had 
 tried to FDA this WAD. That attempt produced no results, I remember just 
 wandering for more than ten minutes on the first level trying to find 
 something to kill and a weapon to kill it with. All I could see was a few 
 Lost Souls I didn't have enough bullets for and after fruitless seatches for 
 the exit I gave up. 
 
 Annoying as that was I found the architecture and the atmosphere quite 
 impressive and made a mental note to make a UV Max pack for it some time 
 later. Who knows how long it would have taken for me to come around to it 
 again if this project hadn't come up. I was also surprised by the level of 
 participation. With demo statistics favoring heavily DOOM2/new WADs these 
 days I didn't expect more than a couple of players answering vdgg's call. As 
 it turned out, this 12-year old WAD now has more demos than any recent high-
 profile release, all done in five weeks' time. And it's not just quantity: 
 thanks to the participation of some of the best speedrunners the overall 
 quality of the demos is quite high, some being of true Compet-N level. I 
 haven't watched them all yet but so far my favorite is Paska's E3M8 Max, for 
 accomplishing what everyone else thought was impossible.
 
 Much has been written about INF-LUTZ's perceived demo-unfriendliness. I 
 concede that while the levels are large and beautiful with great atmosphere 
 to justify high-jacking the original E3's name, the WAD was not designed with 
 speedrunning in mind. However, this project proves that with enough skill and 
 dedication a set of great demos can be produced even on a demo-unfriendly 
 WAD. If there's a will there is a way! And God may forgive anyone who says 
 that Ultimate DOOM demos are boring. ;)

E3M3 Max:

 This level is joy and pain intertwined: impeccable design and perfect 
 atmosphere coupled with often-cumbersome navigation and monster placement. 
 Speedrunners who resent having to slow down every now and then lest they miss 
 a monster or find themselves in an inescapable lava pit are sure to hate this 
 one. 
 
 Right from the starting walkway you have to control your urge to breeze 
 through and must watch your step carefully. Approaching the rocket launcher 
 requires slowing down in advance, otherwise you will go over the edge. The 
 four Imps on the pillars are particularly annoying as they tend to take more 
 than one shotgun blast to kill each. And then there's the winding staircase 
 from the yellow-key door, you simply cannot run down there - you must walk. 
 The presence of the berserk pack pretty early on encourages a Tyson approach. 
 Since I'm not particularly good at it the results are mixed, a bit better 
 than usual, though.
 
 I always strive to kill all Lost Souls and this demo is no exception. True, I 
 don't seem to lose any time over that as the only (slight) detour - to the 
 Lost Soul in the teleporter nook in the center of the map - happened to round 
 up a straggling Imp as well. I did have to cut some corners due to the time 
 constraints, most notably by skipping the blue armor non-secret (reached via 
 the teleporter just mentioned) by the walkway at the start and the 
 supercharge in the Imp cage on the other side of the walkway.
 
 This run took a week to polish and the credit goes to SAV88 for providing the 
 motivation and some useful insights (like using the shotgun rather than the 
 fist on the last batch of Imps at the end).

E3M8 Nightmare runs (combined):

 I must admit that the Nightmare runs were a lot more fun to record. Where the 
 E3M3 Max was mostly work, these were pure play. NM Speed and NM100S were 
 trivial enough but NM Pacifist made me sweat for a couple of days. Initially 
 I thought that there was no way around the Imp on the lift but that was not 
 the main problem. The lift with the Caco to the blue key proved to be an 
 insurmountable hurdle: I could barely survive it one time out of five when 
 playing with saves, full health and blue armor. Then on the same morning that 
 dew and I independently discovered the shortcut through the computer map 
 passage I also realized that the thinking of the Caco lift as the best way to 
 the blue key was pure delusion on my part. This realization finally broke the 
 deadlock.

E3M8 Speed:

 This was one of the last levels to remain without any demos so I thought I'd 
 jumpstart the tablefilling with this quick run. Note that it's "quick" rather 
 than "fast", SAV88's Nightmare run is a lot more fun to watch. This demo does 
 have the merit of showing the "intended" route, though.

Note that these have been pre-formatted for your Ctrl-V'ing convenience. ;)

Thanks to all the participants - AFAIK the last time a team gathered to do an Ultimate DOOM WAD demopak was more than eight years ago (the 2002ADO pack in 2002).

[vdgg]

OK, I understand you meant E3M3 runs combined, I forgive your being late, as thankfully you formatted your texts in an impeccable way. Corrected Engine info, one word in Tatsurd's text, pasted your texts.

This inflmps.txt is the final version, I'll write something in Doom General and we'll see what happens.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?3ssj11bfr76o7x3

[Never_Again]

Thank you, vdgg. It might be a good idea to add that link to the first post of this thread, too, so that casual spectators won't have to trawl through four pages.

edit: just read your post in General:

vdgg said:

I often view the folks active at the Doom Speed Demos forum (including myself) and the rest of DW as two separate worlds. Thus, you may not be interested at all in what follows... Anyway,

Simply brilliant. Reminds me of George Costanza's "Hi. My name is George, I am unemployed and I live with my parents" pickup line. ;D

[myk]

Paska said:
For the same reason I don't use legacy :-D

Hitherto refers to the reverse-engineered hacks entryway made for the Doom executable files. They just lift various limits (including VPOs) without touching anything else and while retaining full backward demo compatibility. You can get them (there's one for DOOM II and another for The Ultimate DOOM) at the PrBoom+ site. They greatly improve stability in "borderline" level sets and allow many other "limit removing only" vanilla levels to work; only Compet~n demos need to avoid them, where bare vanilla is required by the rules.

[Lutz]

[I posted this in the General forum, but wanted to re-post it here, 'cause you guys completely made my year with this demo pack.]

This is absolutely f-ing AMAZING. Seriously, folks -- I am completely blown away. I actually made my wife -- who is NOT a video gamer -- sit down with me and watch a few of these, because I think that they are that incredible. Of course, I am also pretty damn flattered that you guys devoted quite a bit of time to studying these levels inside and out in order to pull off some of the crazy tricks (the speed run of E3M6 was basically a giant middle finger to my carefully crafted level progression, but in a good way).

Anyway, guys, thanks -- and again, these demos are totally awesome.

[vdgg]

In case the team's wondering what the number of downloads is

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v345/wojtunio/infl.jpg

(the elevens don't really count, these were versions with errors in the text, but 36 looks nice still)