The DooMed Speed Demos Archive returns!

[didierbertrand]

two demo for class_ep wad desync:
cn21-052 and cs21-150

[j4rio]

killadve - map 14 tyson is in 6:55, not 4:15 (just a typo or smt probably)

[Grazza]

didierbertrand said:

two demo for class_ep wad desync:
cn21-052 and cs21-150

They play back OK for me. Have you tried both versions of the wad? Compet-n uses the older (and tougher) version of the wad. I suspect cs21-150 might not have been accepted by compet-n, BTW.

[didierbertrand]

Grazza said:

They play back OK for me. Have you tried both versions of the wad? Compet-n uses the older (and tougher) version of the wad. I suspect cs21-150 might not have been accepted by compet-n, BTW.

didn't know about the old version, thanks. Everything is OK now.

[Andy Olivera]

178 demos this week.

j4rio: Typo fixed. Thanks!

[vdgg]

OMG, you can't attach anything now here without a "danger" of it being uploaded to the archives. The inf-lutz project should be DSDA-ignored until the final "product" is made. I hope my two demos (with no text files on purpose) get replaced when some far superior ones are recorded.

[Andy Olivera]

vdgg: I was wondering about that.:-) I can delete them if you'd prefer.

[vdgg]

If it does not involve a lot of innecessary work (such as deleting inf-lutz WAD entry, than putting it up again), please do. Otherwise I can wait a few weeks.

[kmc]

edit: Oh nvm, thank you Grazza.

[Grazza]

For many years, the term "Reality" has been taken by most demos recorders to mean simply "no damage taken", with the original additional stipulation of "no plasma use" viewed as rather arbitrary and simply ignored.

So when you see "Reality", that's all it means.

[Andy Olivera]

vdgg: They're gone. I can hide the WAD until the pack is released. Just gotta remember to re-hide it after updating.:-)

NoobBait & Grazza: Thanks for bringing this up. I've modified the description of the category on the front page to reflect this.

On a related note, I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but I fixed some category descriptions a few weeks ago to bring them in line with Compet-N rules(previously, I listed both Fast and Tyson as requiring 100% Secrets). Also added the 'Notation' section, which should've been there from the start.

[Donce]

Andy Olivera said:

(previously, I listed both Fast and Tyson as requiring 100% Secrets).

But Fast does require 100% secrets, isn't that so? Just like Max, only with -fast.

[Ryback]

Grazza said:

So when you see "Reality", that's all it means.

Well, the "no plasma use" was in the very first set of Reality rules drawn up, but granted, that was forgotten about for quite a long time...

[Grazza]

I think it was deliberately ignored, rather than forgotten about.

UV -fast does indeed require 100% secrets (or at least the same stipulation with respect to secrets as Max, -respawn and NM100S).

But trying to give one-line categorizations of each category is fraught with difficulties, as most require further clarification in a number of areas if the definition is to be made watertight. Opulent was just trying to give a rough idea when he wrote these to start with. And several other aspects of that page could use an overhaul, of course.

[Creaphis]

Grazza said:

I think it was deliberately ignored, rather than forgotten about.

Indeed. The first time I ever read that original formulation of "reality" mode, I groaned. Why take a simple, concrete idea (take no damage) and then ruin it with arbitrary weapon restrictions? We already have "Tyson" for those who want to record with a limited arsenal.

[Andy Olivera]

Donce & Grazza: Oops. You're right. Fixed. I must've notice the lack of a Secrets requirement on Tyson and assumed it extended to the other categories. Now the mystery is why it wasn't required in Tyson.

I also added the 100% Secrets requirement for Respawn and the Lost Souls exception to the 100% Kills categories. Added Episode Run, to clarify when the secret levels are required. That should be everything, beyond the level-specific stuff.

[vdgg]

crusades: e4m2 3:01 Speed by Xit Vono uses secret exit.

[Grazza]

Andy Olivera said:

Now the mystery is why it wasn't required in Tyson.

I'm guessing here, but maybe it is because a lot of secrets contain weapons and/or ammo for them. In a Max run, these are likely to be relevant, and so the requirement to reach them isn't much of a distraction from the main task. In a Tyson run they can just be a pointless burden.

[Andy Olivera]

171 demos this week.

vdgg: Fixed. Thanks!

Grazza: That's as good an explanation as I could think of...

[Ryback]

Andy Olivera said:

Now the mystery is why it wasn't required in Tyson.

It actually was in the first set of rules I can find for Tyson submissions, which was in the early versions of the Doom Honorific Titles, mid-94. Every category available in DHT3 you had to get 100% kills and secrets on.

But Frank wasn't getting many Doom Master submissions, none for Grand Master at all, and only one Tyson. So in the next version, DHT4, there was a big reorganisation to make the existing categories easier. Grand Master became Incubus, and 100% kills wasn't required. And 100% secrets was no longer required in any category. This didn't have a major effect on speedrunning as Compet-n already existed with its own set of rules for speed and max. But for the next few years DHT was pretty much the only place Tyson play was showcased, and all the earliest routes were developed there.

Frank Stajano is probably the guy who's responsible for there being a fist+pistol category in the first place. It's there in the very first announcement about the DHT competition, although at that point the category was called Doom Grand Ass Kicker, and meant to be the toughest challenge of the lot. Then some people pointed out that using his rules a DGAK would actually be a lot easier than trying to levels on nightmare with 100% kills and secrets, which was an "easier" category, so the DGAK got renamed Doom Tyson.

Adam Hegyi would have been happy to leave the Tyson rules as they were when introducing the category to Compet-n, as then you wouldn't have to do every level over from scratch. And the variety of having to get 100% kills but not secrets is nice, plus as Grazza says secrets often contain useless weaponry and ammo anyway.

[Andy Olivera]

109 demos this week.

[Starfire]

Just out of curiosity, are you planning to put the compet-n records of Doom and Doom 2 on the archive? I'm asking because I noticed you are uploading the plutonia records. Thanks.

[Andy Olivera]

Starfire: Well, I would like to, but given how long it takes, it could be a very long time before I get to them.

On a similar note, does anyone have a complete archive of the Compet-N FTP (including the PDANG demos)? I've decided to mirror it at the DSDA, but I'd like to include the PDANG archives, as well.

[Grazza]

Yes, I have a local copy of the PDANG archives. I imagine a few other people do too.

[Ryback]

Mine's slightly incomplete, a few files got borked when rescuing them from one PC to the next a few years ago.

Edit: Actually it seems like there's a partial DANG mirror available here: http://www.telefragged.com/directory.php?id=1590. I think Doug set it up. It looks to have all the updates to Mar 2001, which is the great majority of the site. I do not recommend trying to download a full mirror this way though...

[Grazza]

Ryback said:

I do not recommend trying to download a full mirror this way though...

Yes, you'd need Doug's 3ddownloads password to get FTP access - if that even still works following the move to atomicgamer.

Like I say, I have what I think is a complete copy, so I might as well just upload.

http://www.4shared.com/file/JflwG0nb/DANG.html
My copy of the pdang archive. AFAIK, this is complete, and all you really need. The following two files are provided as-is, just in case anything is missing:

http://www.4shared.com/file/xi4rTZC0/incoming_dang.html
What was in the pdang incoming area at competn.doom2.net when I last downloaded it.

http://www.4shared.com/file/_Y88UGNe/pdang.html
This was on the hard-disk that Opulent gave me in Prague. It may well include some duplicates and extraneous matter, but may be more complete, and have older versions of some tables, etc. I hope he doesn't mind me uploading it, but I presume his intent in giving me a vast collection of data was so it wasn't lost to the community if he ceased to be actively involved.

Anything else anyone needs? I'm assuming the full SDA archive has been transferred to the new DSDA site, together with any wads the demos require. If not, I can upload that.

[Andy Olivera]

Grazza comes through again. Thanks! I'll upload these in the next week or two. As to having everything from the original DSDA site, I should. Doug was nice enough to allow me FTP access, so I was able to download everything. There are a few orphans I haven't identified (no text files and not mentioned on the website). I'll post a link to those, too, to see if someone else recognizes them.

[Ryback]

Thanks very much Grazza, that's a big help with my collection. Taking a quick look at yours and Doug's archives, both seem to have the following demo files as either empty or corrupt:

n1o3js27.zip (is almost certainly a duplicate of n1o3j027.zip)
p3m4m115.zip
m1m3m359.zip
ma10v826.zip
ma16v502.zip
ma32v057.zip
n1m2v041.zip
n1m7v438.zip
n1m9v212.zip
t1m91042.zip
03nm-353.zip (movie recorded by Vincent in Jan99)
sp03j029.zip

They're empty in the telefragged mirror as well, so I'm thinking these demofiles have been broken ever since the archive was moved from xoom.com to doom2.net. But if anyone's got them feel free to share.

Also, would anyone have an archive of the Dang /coop folder?

[Grazza]

Andy Olivera said:

There are a few orphans I haven't identified (no text files and not mentioned on the website). I'll post a link to those, too, to see if someone else recognizes them.

Sure, give me the file-names (or the file themselves). Unless I overlooked them, I'll have tried to incorporate them into the auto-loading patterns. Any that I couldn't locate, I probably asked Opulent about. I recall there were a few that neither of us could solve.

[Opulent]

n1o3js27.zip (is almost certainly a duplicate of n1o3j027.zip)
p3m4m115.zip
m1m3m359.zip
ma10v826.zip
ma16v502.zip
ma32v057.zip
n1m2v041.zip
n1m7v438.zip
n1m9v212.zip
t1m91042.zip
03nm-353.zip (movie recorded by Vincent in Jan99)
sp03j029.zip

I'm certain most of these(but maybe not all) were lost due to Bahdko's ftp being full when people uploaded.
I don't have any of them in working order. I'm sure Vince has his....

I was hoping to send Andy everything I have.... once I had it a bit more organized. I can't believe it has been 15 years!
Thanks to a few programs(Fast Duplicate File Finder, Look-Disk, Batch Zip Toolkit, and ROMZipper), I have organized and cleaned up a lot of my demo directories. It was a messy 800Gb, but now it is 138Gb with coincidentally ~138,000 demofiles. DOOM being 7Gb with roughly 40k files.

Graham, I'd rather you didn't publicly post the rare stuff... but the general(or previously publicly posted) demos should be available to the few persons on the planet who can still enjoy them.

I don't have anywhere currently for public upload access(the html and ftp DW DSDA passwords don't work for me now)... but I can postal mail or email files to someone if interested.

Lots of great players on here these days... and I couldn't have more respect for the three of you; thanks for everything guys.

files.zip