Icarus Demos [-complevel 2]

DSDA page

This is the thread to post your demos on the classic megawad Icarus by Team TNT.

This is a vanilla Doom2.exe-compatible wad, so it makes sense to record demos in that format. Feel free to use Doom2.exe, Chocolate-Doom or of course Prboom+ with -complevel 2.

For a table of existing demos on Icarus, look here. [removed old DSDA link - Maribo]

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(There follows the original thread-opener:)

This demo is just to demonstrate that a standard exit trick can be used in many maps in Icarus. From the text-file:

Quote

Odd - as far as I can tell no one has noticed that this type of exit trick is relevant to Icarus. Many of the maps end with this type of area, so the trick has widespread relevance to this megawad. I just chose map24 for this demo because I remembered you got the RL right at the start, and the exit area was directly accessible.

Icarus map24 NM Pacifist in 0:18.

Another NM on Icarus, this time map04. I've been trying to identify maps where the exit trick is feasible. There's no RL here, so I had to do it without the trick.
Icarus Map04 NM in 0:41.

Here's map12, UV Speed. (Yeah UV, not NM, I suck.) Barrel dodging and the standard exit trick.
Icarus Map12 UV Speed in 0:32.

I've been wondering about map05 too. No RL there, but it might be possible to use your momentum and the boost from the imp's fireball to do the job. Don't know if it's feasible; it would need good timing.

I do not have Icarus ATM. What is the trick?

It uses a trick that originated in plutonia map17 speedruns. If the exit is guarded by a bar that comes down from the ceiling, but leaves some room underneath, one can use a rocket to kill himself and slide underneath the bar and over the exit line, ending the level.

Sorry, I should have explained that. :)

I kind of assumed everyone knew about this trick and was familiar with Icarus and its style of exits. Icarus is definitely worth downloading - it's under 3 megs and a pretty good megawad.

I should mention that these tricks don't work in all ports; it's a Doom2.exe thing that they don't all emulate.

Anyway, here's another one:

Icarus map 15 UV Speed (normal exit) in 1:03 (originally 1:17, but improved in the course of testing Schepe's hacked Eternity.exe).

It needed doing...
Icarus map 15 NM (normal exit) in 1:16

And one more. Maybe the last of the easy ones.
Icarus map 27 NM Pacifist in 0:16

This one certainly wasn't easy. Same type of trick, but no RL, so good monster cooperation was needed. Quite a funny demo.
Icarus map05 (Flipside) NM in 0:24

And another. It's similar to the map05 demo in that there is no RL and therefore monster cooperation is needed, but it seemed a lot easier. Eternity's walkcam is recommended to see what was going on.
Icarus map10 (Bridge) NM Pacifist in 0:05

This one was tougher, and features more "real" Dooming. Again no RL, and this time imp help needed to be arranged.
Icarus map02 (Shuttle Bay) NM in 0:50

Here's a speedrun on map07. Messy due to the number of monsters in the way. I couldn't face the idea of playing this on Nightmare, but good luck to anyone who tries. This route should at least make it easier, since you skip the arachnotron room. There's no way around the mancs though. The trick is also useful for Max, since getting the red key takes a little time, even once you've killed all the trons.
Icarus map07 (Sickbay) UV Speed in 1:39

And here's a Max on map07, using the exit trick - just 7 seconds slower than the TAS time (which didn't use the trick). Third exit; there are some obvious errors and time-losses.
Icarus map07 (Sickbay) UV Max in 2:51

I've also compressed this thread a bit, in case anyone is wondering what happened to the posts. All the demos and comments are still here.

This is kind of embarrassing. On map22 I spent ages and ages and ages trying to find a way to implement a suicide exit with gross and unrealistic monster cooperation. Then I noticed what would probably have occurred to me immediately if I hadn't been trying to be too clever: a simple and standard trick makes it pretty trivial. And nothing has to die - no monsters and not even the player. :p
Icarus Map22 (Nightfall) UV Speed/Pacifist (and Lemmings) in 0:30

NM is not too difficult with this route either.
Icarus Map22 (Nightfall) NM in 0:36

Three more, involving map 15 and/or map31.

This one involves a suicide exit, which saves a tiny bit of time and makes NM easier:
Icarus Map15 (Waste Disposal) NM (Secret Exit) in 0:16

No RL on map31, so this one features the standard way to exit:
Icarus Map31 (Great Balls of Fire) NM (+Pacifist) in 0:20

A misc demo: map15+map31 to get the RL for a suicide exit on map31, but it doesn't save much time:
Icarus Map15 and Map31 UV Speed in 0:36 (total)

Edit: And just for the hell of it (no suicide exit - just a standard demo):
Icarus Map31 (Great Balls of Fire) NM 100% Secrets (Secret Exit) in 0:57

I hesitate to upload such an ugly demo, but it does contain quite a nice trick - a long SR50 jump with a very tricky landing.

Icarus Map25 UV Speed jump shortcut

7th time lucky. Ahem. The time is 1:59. It's only the sixth time in total that I made the jump without falling off the landing area, but the success rate should improve with practice.

So does Icarus earn the title of the trickiest megawad? :)

I doubt it. Plutonia allows plenty of suicide exits too, and lots of archie jumps, rocket jumps/assists, etc. Icarus just hasn't been scrutinized for speedrunning tricks very much in the past. For such a well-known megawad it has a surprisingly empty demo table outside the Max categories.

BTW, I think quite a lot of the maps (even those without shortcut tricks) would be interesting on NM. :)

Heh, when I noticed that you'd posted in this thread, I immediately assumed you'd done something like a 0:45 NM on map25 at your first attempt. :p

Hehe, now I'll just have to at least try some NM in Icarus.

EDIT: Ok, so I got involved, here is the zip containing three NM demos:

MAP03 0:57
MAP06 2:21
MAP07 3:08

Hopefully there will be more...

Vile said:

It uses a trick that originated in plutonia map17 speedruns. If the exit is guarded by a bar that comes down from the ceiling, but leaves some room underneath, one can use a rocket to kill himself and slide underneath the bar and over the exit line, ending the level.

cool to see that this trick I found in plutonia 17 made a lot of lil' babies :)

just thinking about it... these exit tricks would be cool in coop...
That's rather easy to die with your partner cooperation :)

Yes, I thought at least the Plutonia map17 UV Speed coop record would have been claimed by now.

I wonder how many other wads allow these exits (besides the occasional ones in HR, Scythe and MM). You'd have thought Plutonia would have found quite a few followers.

Donce: I've copied your NM demos here. Nice work. It's funny - in map07 the jump to the yellow key and then to the box of shells shouldn't really be difficult, but I found it immensely easy to screw up.

I've already posted 3 nm lmps of Icarus in the exit tricks thread but only one of them actually used the trick, and now I recorded 3 more maps (again, only one uses the trick), so I decided to start a new thread.

On to the demos:

MAP03, MAP06 and MAP07 here or here.

MAP09, MAP12 and MAp13 here.

Sweeeet! I'm in. Grabbing them now. Thanks.

I'm a bit surprised to see map09 done - I thought that one would be sheer hell.

I've put a copy here.

We now have NMs on the following maps: 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 09, 10, 12, 13, 15(s+n), 22, 24, 27 and 31(s+n). I wonder if a full set is possible. There are still a few easy ones left, but some of them (barring any tricks) would be long runs with heavy resistance along the way (1, 11, 16 and 28 spring to mind).

Edit: I've merged the two Icarus threads into a single one, with a more all-encompassing title. I think this makes sense, not least because NM exits on some of the remaining maps will undoubtedly involve tricks (suicide exits will provide slight shortcuts on maps 08 and 18, for instance).

On second thoughts, the suicide exit idea may not be much help on map18 for NM. At least, I didn't use it here.

Icarus map18 (Cargo Bay) NM (+100S) in 2:09

It's a really shaky first exit. But it's the only exit I've got. :)

Grazza said:

On second thoughts, the suicide exit idea may not be much help on map18 for NM. At least, I didn't use it here.

Well, in MAP08 you could skip one key but it would better have been the yellow key. You have to work so much in order to pick it that I refused even to try recording in that map.

Nice demo of MAP18, I did a not-so-good NM demo of MAP14 in 5:20.

Also I spent about 4 hours trying to beat MAP16 but had to give up. I wasn't very far from the exit several times - only had to run past the central area ant take the lift to the red door. Heh, I knew from the very beginning I won't gain THAT much luck to run past archville, spiders, cacos and a zillion of shooters while having at most 60% health and no armor.

Donce said:

Well, in MAP08 you could skip one key but it would better have been the yellow key. You have to work so much in order to pick it that I refused even to try recording in that map.

Heh, I know what you mean - that is one of the more notorious "puzzles". Still, Andy Olivera made it look pretty quick and simple in his TAS demo.

Also I spent about 4 hours trying to beat MAP16 but had to give up.

Ouch. :(

I liked the map14 demo - some nice ideas. I've copied it to the normal place.

One more demo before I go to sleep - MAP21 NM in 0:26. The major part of this map can be skipped so I took this to my advantage.

Neat - no slowdown in the red-key area. I've put a copy here.

I've done the easiest Icarus NM of the lot, but it's not completely lame, since it's two seconds quicker than the previous fastest UV time on this map. Icarus map30 (Nucleus) NM in 0:29

Edit: and here's an untidy NM100S on map21 in 0:28. Just one secret (megasphere), which helps the rest of the run go a bit faster. 1% health at one point.

Geez, I'm blind or what, I didn't even know about that megasphere. I tried your route, reached 0:25. Then I decided to mix the two routes: go through the imps but not to return to the mega. A very slight chance of survival, but somehow I had over 60% of health left in this 0:21 run. Pure luck. However, in this demo I managed to completely miss the first SSG shot.

Oh, and yesterday I recorded another speedy map, MAP26 in 0:46.

EDIT: Ok, so I recorded one more (the last?): MAP28 (Excavations) in 3:20. I remembered this level quite well from the time when I first played Icarus in 1997 and didn't consider it to be beatable. I still took a look and found that it was very beatable.

Wow, "the impossible map28" done on NM. :) I remembered there were some ideas to stop the monsters teleporting in, but I imagined they would be useful for UV Speed, but not enough for NM. Well done!

I spent a while trying map26 NM but skipping health and ammo. As you can imagine, my screen was red most of the time, but I very nearly made it once - I was past the baron but he failed to get distracted by other monsters and clobbered me just an instant before I would have been safe (probably would have been just under 0:30).

It's nice to see that my tatty map21 NM100S was useful.

I've copied your demos to the usual place.

Just one more from me: a nomonsters on map19 showing a trick route. For once, the red key is the only one that isn't skipped.

Hey Grazza, you're a pretty good trick finder! This would really help in UV speed. It would help in NM too, and I thought about it for a while, it's possible make the demons not to teleport but would use quite some health and then there's the red key room to face. It's possible to beat but the archvile can teleport after you, and the starting sargeant and trooper will have respawned. I think this is enough for me to stay away, well there are mancubi, cacos and arachnotron which make the jump much harder even if you survive to that point. Shouldn't be a big problem with TAS.

I recorded most probably the last NM demo of Icarus: MAP32 (Prestidigitation) in 0:54. I tried different ways of escaping the flames of the archville (see the textfile) and finally came up with a compromise - you flame me once and then I run to the exit :)

your In32 demo is down. :(
Grazza, did you get it?

Whoops - I must have forgotten to upload that one. I've now put it here.

thanks.
/me tries to remember whether or not I have a password to ftp or not... I think not.