Reality

Given the nature of pretty much everything in Doom, the most realistic way to play the game is not playing it at all.

Well... I hit a roadblock. It's LEVEL 30 just as I expected. The problem is not dodging all the monsters, that's easy. The problem area is when you have to bring down the elevator platform. It's downright impossible to hit the elevator and make it back to the ledge before the acid burns you. I did beat level 30 with only 1 hit, that one hit from the acid. I beat it with no hits on I'm Too Young To Die, but of course everyone can do that.

Darn... So close. Maybe I could call it a One-hit run.

PS. I don't usually put the monsters to sleep on purpose, it's just a side effect of saving so frequently. I actually made an effort not to do it too much.

There may be a way to do that. Since the entire lower platform is a trigger line for that sector, you could stand at the very edge, turn around, and use the trigger to lower the platform while you're still on it. Then, as it's lowering, hit the platform with the rockets on it, then quickly run back before the first platform rises again. When the rocket platform is down, run to it quickly. Once you get a radiation suit, that shouldn't be a problem.

Ichor said:

There may be a way to do that. Since the entire lower platform is a trigger line for that sector, you could stand at the very edge, turn around, and use the trigger to lower the platform while you're still on it. Then, as it's lowering, hit the platform with the rockets on it, then quickly run back before the first platform rises again. When the rocket platform is down, run to it quickly. Once you get a radiation suit, that shouldn't be a problem.

That's exactly what I can't do. That was actually my strategy to begin with (I got the idea from the beginning of level 9, which required a similar strategy). Problem is, it's just too far a distance from the platform to the elevator. You just can't make it back in time.

Every time I play the level I must restart, because all of my saved games seem to crash when I reload them.

CtrlAltDestroy said:

Every time I play the level I must restart, because all of my saved games seem to crash when I reload them.

what port do you use and how much disk space do you have?

I use Doom95 and I have about 1 gig left.

CtrlAltDestroy said:

I use Doom95 and I have about 1 gig left.

I suggest you use eternity, which records demos that support vanilla doom.

http://www.doomworld.com/eternity/

Doom95 records demos that are compatible with Doom (which itself can run both DOOM or DOOM II.)

CtrlAltDestroy said:

That's exactly what I can't do. That was actually my strategy to begin with (I got the idea from the beginning of level 9, which required a similar strategy). Problem is, it's just too far a distance from the platform to the elevator. You just can't make it back in time.

You need to learn a tricky jump. See here.

That'll get you onto the platform, the then after that you might want to try the map30 trick from this demo. Or maybe just a jump to the radsuit.

(both demos for standard Doom2).

BlackFish said:

I suggest you use eternity, which records demos that support vanilla doom.

No; you need schepe's modified Eternity engine to record demos that play back with Doom(2).exe. Otherwise there's prboom/glboom.

Talking of reality and plasma weapons, I am aware of two forms:
"Real Reality": no damage taken and no plasma weapons used.
Reality: no damage taken; no restriction on using plasma weapons.
The latter appears to be the more common; the former may have been the original idea, but I don't recall many recent demos of that type (apart from Pacifist Reality and Tyson Reality, where plasma obviously can't be used anyway).

myk said:

Doom95 records demos that are compatible with Doom (which itself can run both DOOM or DOOM II.)

99% of the time, but not always.

I just saw a demo (played on standard Doom 2) of someone straferunning to the elevator right after he hit the switch. I tried that trick, and it's not easy to do, and you'll need to watch out for that monster that spawns right in your way. In the demo, he delays for a short time to allow the monster to move out of the way. Also, as he was slowly rising up with the elevator, he had more time to fire the rockets at the target.

yeah it's possible to catch the elevator as it's rising and then take out the icon with three well timed shots without ever having to lower the lift again, though insanely hard to do so for mere mortals, and the last shot has to be done as you fall, so it may be tough to not fall into the slime, though I suppose you could run forward onto the revenant platform...

Niiiiiice. So it is in fact doable. It looked to me like the guy in Ichor's movie had Turbo Boost on. But I'll try it.

I'm nowhere near as good as that, but if I do get onto that platform without touching the acid then I will have beaten all 32 levels without damage. Yay!

If I ever get into recording demos of these flawless runs then they will be littered with saving and reloading. Meaning they probably won't be anywhere near record-breaking. But I don't care, I'm just having fun!

Kristian Ronge said:

Oh, and I'd be very interested to see both those pages. I'd be most grateful if you could make them available somehow.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Castle/7571/

Whuzzaaa!? I tried to copy and paste the Geocities address in the "Wayback machine" before but I didn't get any hits! Damn.. :-)

Hehe. Thank you, Bloodshedder! Hey, even the demos are accessible too! :-D

I just learned the hard way that you can't save while recording a demo... darn. I guess I'll have to get better at Doom II :)

I reloaded once while trying to record a flawless level 1 run, but after I saved (in the demo) my guy ran around like a madman doing completely incorrect things. It was kind of funny actually. He chainsawed the wall several times, and tried to run right through an imp

Edit: I guess I'm a moron!!

Well, you *can* save.. and re-load from saves to produce a single recording. This, however is considered cheating and demos produced this way are never compared equally to demos produced the "normal" way.

To use savegames for recordings you'll need something other than the usual binaries like doom2.exe, though. It's possible for example in the engines TASDoom and (TAS)MBF. Demos made this cheated way are called tools-assisted demos. More info can be found at ->

http://www.doomworld.com/tas/ (The original site)
and
http://www.doomworld.com/sda/tas (Opulent's TAS site on the SDA)

Hm... And about the level 1 reality run. Just speeding through without getting hit isn't that hard, even on UV. Look for example at the COMPET-N speed record in 0:05 by Thomas "Panter" Pilger. Of course, if you're talking about a max reality run, then that's a different story. I can imagine it's pretty hard considering the pistol ammo might not last and the only option then is to saw or punch your way through a couple of monsters without taking damage.... Brr! Could be interesting to try, though..

I don't want max, but I'd rather get the shotgun and the rocket launcher. They come in handy in level 2.

Okay, I took 2 minutes and made a very casual run of what we discussed. Map 1 reality, grabbing the rocket launcher and shotgun. More or less only to show it's possible (easy even). Beware! Crappy playing awaits.. I don't know who aims worse.. Me or the zombiemen. :-)

Shitty map 1 UV reality demo. Requires ZDooM 1.22.

Kristian Ronge said:

Hey, even the demos are accessible too! :-D

Really? The links don't seem to work - have you successfully downloaded any?

I did manage to do that trick once, but I couldn't stop in time (moving too fast, and I didn't really expect to make it), and ended up falling off the other side of the platform.

Grazza said:
Really? The links don't seem to work - have you successfully downloaded any?

http://www.d.kth.se/~d99-kro/demos/reality/

:-D

All of them except map 2,13,17,19, and 31 worked!

Ichor said:
I did manage to do that trick once, but I couldn't stop in time.

It's very easy to do when you're two. ;-)
One pushes the switch, one stands on the platform. If the guy who pushes the switch doesn't make it back at least his coop partner can finish the job. Here is a neat 4 player coop demo of map 30 showing this.

Kristian Ronge said:

http://www.d.kth.se/~d99-kro/demos/reality/
:-D
All of them except map 2,13,17,19, and 31 worked!

Ah, I see - you need to put things like http://web.archive.org/web/20020205040623/http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Castle/7571/26s1-203.zip into the address bar. BTW, the two movie runs are also available the same way.

Oops. Forgot about those movie runs. Sorry. :-)

Sent you the remaining demos.

Aw, Jeez... I didn't know you were talking to me. :-)

Should check my e-mail more often, heh. Put up the remaining ones. Location same as my above post. Hehe. Sorry it took so long for me to respond.

One of the files (03s4-336.zip) seems to be corrupted. Does anyone have the real file?