DooM 2 map30 done quicker

shortly after map30 uv tyson appeared, an idea how to improve map30 runs in TAS came into my mind. I also executed it to 90% about 5 years ago and have not finished it till today (and I wont for sure, since I cannot find the demo). So here is the trick:

grab RL, run to swtich as usual. First monster to be spawned has to be a painelemental shooting a ghost at you. while it flies to you, looking at the ghost you have to step to the left, turn 90 degrees to the right and shoot while it flies infront of you (you are trying to shoot in it's side). if your timing is good you do not hit it but shoot the rocket with an angle which evantually hits romero from the highest platform (where the lift switch is). then as far as I remember letting a 2nd painy spawn is faster than to wait for a 2nd ghost from the first one and do the whole thing again.

this method devenetly works since I made it once. the task I could not finish was to let romero explode with just 2 rockets. if I remember right around 8 seconds can be saved this way. additionally I tested a method with X archviles shooting from the highest platfrom, but this is actually slower than the painy mathod.

an easy way I used to spawn the monster I want to is to edit chocolate doom such that it prints me out which monsters spawn and writing a script which modifies the demo file. this way one can easily do several thousands demos within an hour and keeping only those with the desired monster.

if this method is already known, I apologize. But even then since there is not such a demo I hope people who are very experienced TAS users can make this demo happen.

I can see that working and no, I'm not aware of anyone trying that strat yet. I just saw the lost soul redirect your rocket effect accidentally, heh. One for the local TAS crazies.

Hi termrork!

Awesome idea!

Maybe if you can provide a file that has the right monster spawn, some active Doom TASer can finish the run from there?

Use the BFG and do it like @ 4-player nomo built (send the corpse inside the brain) but from the lift. TAS time is 26s, maybe 25.

Looper said:

(send the corpse inside the brain)

What? Why?

Aqfaq said:

Maybe if you can provide a file that has the right monster spawn, some active Doom TASer can finish the run from there?

This is fairly easy with specs of the spawner RNG and xdre showing you where in the LUT you currently are. If I could do it with an archvile in the p230 nomo, any seasoned TASer can spawn a PE in a few minutes.

Aqfaq said:

What? Why?

So that the BFG tracers one shot Romero as you are just in front of him (though dead).

let me answer all your questions:

back then before I was going to do such a run I made a proof of principle demo wether it works to shoot romero from up there or not. this demo I sent a good friend of mine and guess what, he still has it. I attached it to this post. It is a quick and dirty (e.g. all those dump plasma shots to change the random numbers, this can be done better) demo which shows how to shoot a ghost to get a certain angle. the first shot also damages romero.

@looper: I do not get your point, sure the method you describe works, but is slower than the painel method, so why doing it?

anybody feel free to take the demo and do whatever you want with it, you do not have to credit me.

(today I do not care about credits anymore, but I have to admit back then I wanted to be the one who has every record of map30 in every category for a long time, which would have worked I think if I would have been able to do the whole thing with 2 shots, which is also the reason why I did not do a 3 shot demo. but my mentality changed and nowadays I am enjoying so much nice doom2 runs no matter who made. I will never forget how childish I was back then and have to apologize 1000000 times what I have said to looper because of his map30 uv tyson legacy run!!!)

n30e3sho.zip

I'm stupid. I misunderstood the trick but the demo cleared it all. Trying to two shot the Romero that way is.... really difficult. It would takes ages to deal the 125 damage twice. Just try to deal the 125 damage even from the raising lift, not easy! Then just think about adding that way of aiming the rocket.

Don't worry about the legacy map30 thing. I think my text-files sucked back then, and they still do. I have forgot to write trick/route credits way too many times.

Looper said:

125 damage

But the rocket flight path is quite long, so isn't there a lot of time and opportunities for manipulating the RNG? Isn't the damage determined on the moment the rocket hits the target?

Ha, that's an interesting question. From my experience, it is determined sligtly (a few tics) before hit, but I may be wrong.

Aqfaq said:

But the rocket flight path is quite long, so isn't there a lot of time and opportunities for manipulating the RNG? Isn't the damage determined on the moment the rocket hits the target?

you are right, one has to shoot both rockets and is then free to manipulate the random numbers by moving (due to different monster reaction) and shooting. the random number has to be correct at the times when the two rockets hit... I am not a very experienced TAS user (only made one demo lasting a half minute), but I wrote a small script which varied movement paths and shots, but the script did not find a correct squence. for an experienced TAS user I think it is doable. dew described a method to play with the rng more easily, maybe this helps.

Hm, I guess if you hit the roof where the Romero is, it might be a lot easier than the way I did it in TAS. Splash damage is not based on RNG. Only the distance from the center of explosion.

Looper said:

Hm, I guess if you hit the roof where the Romero is, it might be a lot easier than the way I did it in TAS. Splash damage is not based on RNG. Only the distance from the center of explosion.

hahahaha
if I was not cencerned about this back then like I was right now then it is kind of obvious why I did not manage to do this run :D.
But I highly doupt I was not concerned, since my script printed me out what the damage done of each hit was..., if you are right what I think, additional shots after the rockets wouldn't have changed anything, but sligtly different angles in horizontal and vertical axis did for sure. I guess varying vertical angles like you said to hit romero right above it might have been difficult to do.

Aqfaq said:

But the rocket flight path is quite long, so isn't there a lot of time and opportunities for manipulating the RNG? Isn't the damage determined on the moment the rocket hits the target?

The rocket doesn't actually hit Romero's head, only the radius explosion damage does hurt him. And radius explosion damage is not randomized at all, it depends solely on distance from the target. http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Blast_damage

EDIT: Sorry, I overlooked Looper's post.