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The Green Herring

Community Chest Series Demos [-complevel 9]

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After seeing all these runs, I had to attempt a map 17 maxrun for myself. I managed to come up with a route that should save a lot of time, but unfortunately I was prevented from making the best of it by missing one sergeant in the yellow key area, costing me 15 or 20 seconds.

At 8:47 the time is still pretty good though.

Going to try "Subduction" next, I think, as it looks extremely interesting. Looks like it'll take a lot of effort to learn, as well.

c317-847.zip

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Very nicely done. You seem to keep getting better. I don't know how you even knew there was a shotgunguy left, maybe it made a grunt sound. And using the very last rocket on the very last hell knight, lol.

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Prboom-plus (maybe prboom as well) has counters for kills, items, and secrets if you play at full screen (though you lose the ammo readings unfortunately), so I knew there was one monster left at the end, and it seemed likely it was one of the shotgunners.

I'd been assuming everyone else knew about the feature, but apparently not. It's a good feature to have, though some may consider it cheating. I really don't appreciate having to repeat demos because I've missed a monster. Of course you still end up with a less than optimal demo if you miss a monster, but at least you can salvage something.

I didn't know I had used my last rocket, just remember seeing 25 or so rockets remaining when I went back to the start and assumed I would have a lot left over. Looks like I was more fortunate than I realised... :)

Your own demo was impressive. I could never play anywhere near as well with just a keyboard, so I'm always pretty amazed to see the likes of Ryback and yourself tackling tricky levels. Some nice timesaving ideas there as well.

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justanotherfool said:

Prboom-plus (maybe prboom as well) has counters for kills, items, and secrets

It's a Boom feature, though enhanced in a few ways in prboom and prboom-plus. A live monsters counter was, AFAIK, first implemented in Tasdoom.

justanotherfool said:

I'd been assuming everyone else knew about the feature, but apparently not. It's a good feature to have, though some may consider it cheating.

I certainly do [consider it to be a cheat], and would never use it, and would recommend its use is strictly avoided in non-TAS demos.

It obviously gives an unfair advantage over those recording without it. One of the most impressive things about some of the compet-n Maxes is that the player didn't know if everything was dead and just had to go at full speed and hope that their route and shot choice would take care of killing everything.

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Oops. Well, if it is frowned upon, I'll turn it off. I guess I had just assumed it was alright because it made life more convenient for me and I didn't have to tamper with anything in the menu to turn it on.

Unfortunate that I didn't think to ask about this before recording all these max demos, although at least it shouldn't invalidate my speedruns, I hope?

That gives me the motivation I need to redo map 17, anyway, and I guess I should thank gggmork and Grazza for showing me the error of my ways.

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Apparently, if you really want, you can verify if a run was max using walkcam too.

I knew about that larger screen hud feature, but never use it because you lose the ammo information. And it was hard for me to quickly look at with peripheral vision, especially since the character change color (if ammo was always color coded red for example, it'd be much easier to go hmm, ammo, and immediately look toward the red area).
Otherwise seeing more of the screen and the other information (time/kills/secrets/etc- maybe even a sort of slightly opaque circular 'radar' that shows dots of nearby enemies would be cool) are quite nice. Plus it eventually gets annoying seeing doomguy's shifty eyed mugshot when you play the game way too freaking much. I'd probably use all that if it didn't have the missing ammo information & confusing layout problems, even if its considered cheating, simply because it'd be more fun.

Also its kinda pedantic to say it invalidated the runs- well except for world records or something where the playing field has to be exactly even. I mean, you would have likely done it almost exactly the same way/time. Actually for 17 you probably would have been faster without it because nobody would have even known you missed an enemy, heh. I'm glad 180 degree turns aren't considered cheating, heh. I'd probably use them anyway though because its more efficient/fun.

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I don't know. Maybe invalidate is too strong, but it does cast a shadow over all my output up until this point, and I feel pretty mortified about it (mostly that I wasn't going to change it until Grazza chimed in, even though I had an inkling that it might be questionable, as you can see from a few posts ago - pretty pathetic).

Comparisons to compet-n demos are definitely void, since the source port is different, but one should be able to compare prboom demos of a given complevel, and obviously if some people use counters and some don't then the comparison isn't a fair one.

I suppose all I can do is to make sure that it's known that everything I recorded up to this point has used that feature, and ensure it isn't used in future. I'm pretty sure I'm not using anytihng else that could be considered cheating, since I don't recall changing any of prboom-plus's settings save the controls and sensitivity.

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Anyway, very good run, gggmork and justanotherfool!
I have gradually understood the more optimum strategy. Target of time should be below 8 min. It's not too difficult. However, I don't want to challenge it yet because there are many maps speed/max undone.
Everyone, let's play them! I will play max of map 7 or map 11.

Btw, my map 17 route don't miss kills easily.

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gggmork said:

Apparently, if you really want, you can verify if a run was max using walkcam too.

Perhaps you've misunderstood something here. We're talking about using the HUD counter info while recording (questionable, and an unfair advantage), not for the purpose of verifying afterwards whether there were any monsters left alive, once recording is over (clearly legitimate, and indeed necessary in many cases before claiming a demo is a valid Max).

justanotherfool said:

Comparisons to compet-n demos are definitely void, since the source port is different

I disagree. If the behaviour is replicated (i.e. demo compatibility is maintained), and nothing that provides an unfair advantage is used, then time comparisons between prb+, choc and vanilla demos seem perfectly reasonable.

gggmork said:

Actually for 17 you probably would have been faster without it because nobody would have even known you missed an enemy, heh.

Erm no, missed monsters do routinely get noticed and commented upon. Very easy to spot when watching a demo.

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Well I must say thanks to all who took the time make demo's of map 17..Loved them all..I am glad that map 17 turned out the way it did, providing a Fun map to make demo's on..Just wait till CC 4 is released. Map 17 in that project I hope will be even better for demo making!

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justanotherfool said:

Going to try "Subduction" next, I think, as it looks extremely interesting. Looks like it'll take a lot of effort to learn, as well.

You're right it was quite confusing to find the right route here, but if you use my demo as a template it should be very easy to improve. And damn, I forgot to give credits to Marco who showed the way to all secret places in his nomonsters demo, so thanks a lot, man!

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I have a very slightly improved time for c317. A much better time is possible here, of course, but that can wait, since there are a lot of other slots still to be filled.

This one was my first demo without the kills/secrets counter, and I'm finding it a little peculiar to play with a slightly reduced screen (due to the status bar), but of course full screen with no health and ammo details is even worse. Anyway, I'm sure I'll get used to it soon enough.

I did have to rewatch the demo with the kills counter to make sure I got all the monsters. I was wondering if there's any way to verify 100% kills without having to do this, some kind of utility, perhaps?

Time is 8:42, and this one is probably not worth watching if you saw the 8:47 demo.

c317-842.zip

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If you want a quicker way to verify everything's dead, play back the demo along with the -skipsec parameter(so, in this case, -skipsec 510 would let you watch just the last twelve seconds).

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@Andy Olivera: Ah, that's just what I needed. Thank you.

@Use3D: I thought it was a fairly bad demo, though that was probably just my disappointment at missing an imp on a 8:30 run. In particular I felt like my movement was all over the place. It's easy to forget that recording a demo isn't just a matter of chasing the best time possible.

EDIT: So, I played through "Subduction" to get a feel for the map, since watching the demos just made me confused. The level fits together marvellously, it must be said.

I thought I could make the jump from the outside area with the RL down to the switch in order to get at the red keycard very quickly, but I was thwarted by the bars you put down there. Let's just say that I don't see myself gliding through those anytime soon. Crafty.

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Again cool demo man. Your skills always amaze me. I loled at that stupid chaingunner that got stuck..That was a sort of a time killer..But it wasn't your fault.

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That was very good, tatsurd. From playing that level when CC3 was first released I know that it's a lot trickier than the light opposition would suggest, due to its very cramped nature.

I have a speedrun for Use3D's excellent map 19. The time is 4:44. It isn't really feasible to run past everything in this map, which is why the time is so high, although there is undoubtedly room for more risk taking. Suffice it to say, this was the first time I survived past the blue key switch area and I didn't fancy getting myself killed and having to start over... :)

c319s-444.zip

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What a great demo justanotherfool, I'm definitely impressed, I had just assumed speed-running that map would be too difficult. I'd love to see more speeds and a max run! I tried to do some recording myself the other night using Gusta's route but failed completely. Hah! I suck. But yeah, thanks for the kinds words too, I put a lot of myself into that map.

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Use3d: I have just always regreted that this map suddenly ends and doesn't have any final fight such as cyberdemon walking around the exit or something, that would be great there.

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Another cc3 UV-Max here. It's another map I've wanted to record a demo for, but just haven't gotten around to doing until now.

It's for map 29, "For We Are Many". Get some food and/or drink before sitting down to watch this one as it's a very long demo. 33:26 is the time for the run. Certainly improvable in many spots (1-2 minutes faster perhaps?), but I just took the first run that was successful. Tough map it is.

Attaching now.

c3293326.zip

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I have finished map 7 three times.
The first exit was 10:56, and the second exit was 10:36. I tried another route, and I got 10:03. I will upload a map 7 demo after getting below 10 min.

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