Demos you're most proud of

From my experience, an entertaining / hard-worked / lucky demo often gets less attention than an average one. This pushed me to start this thread: popularize the best demos, according to their authors.

If there are more than 40 of your demos at DSDA, you are welcome to contribute to this thread. List demo(s) you think are your best. Explain why. Try not to exceed 10 examples. We may rediscover some gems this way.

Hopefully there are some boastful players here that will push the modest ones (the majority?) to speak :)

I have 52 demos right now so I think I can speak! :)

It's not too much compared to other players but I guess it's enough to judge what's good and what's so-so.

1 - Doom II MAP27 UV Max in 3:40
Reason: 31 seconds faster than Compet-N record, amazingly lucky Arch-Vile telefrag. I think this might be my hardest demo to beat.

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/attachment.php?postid=1001896


2 - New Gothic Movement MAP11 UV-Fast in 17:49
Reason: Faster than current Max record, Cyber 2-shotting with fast parameter, 3,341 monsters down (aside from Lost Souls). I think this is a very good looking and entertaining demo. This level with fast parameter is an insane but lovely challenge.

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/attachment.php?postid=1011018


3 - Chillax MAP34 UV Max in 23:56
Reason: Absolutely the most unforgiving level I've ever recorded on. Blue key needs a lot of luck not to get stuck, red key needs luck not to fall on lava and also you gotta kill four Cybies with Plasma in some VERY narrow areas. This is very beatable timewise but an amazingly hard level to complete.

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/attachment.php?postid=996743


4 - New Gothic Movement MAP13 UV Max in 11:06
Reason: 4,283 monsters down. This is very good for entertainment value in my humble opinion. Very good Cyber handling. Time is beatable but you need mad luck with stragglers, as I had.

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/attachment.php?postid=950170


5 - Hell Revealed 2 MAP26 UV Max in 7:10
Reason: Hard worked demo. This is a demo which will be hard to beat. Very good looking and lucky monster handling.

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/attachment.php?postid=1006981

I have a few other good demos but those are easily the best to me.

Skipped through my stuff and I don't really think I have anything hardworked nor worth being that proud of. Yeah, I'm not very boastful.
The longest I spent on a single map was roughly a week, and the only ones I recall trying that long were su15-1556, h225-547 and dv022-453

"Tight optimization efforts":

Alien Vendetta MAP01 UV-Max in 1:05
Hard worked demo, beats Johnsen's amazing record by 2 seconds.

Icarus: Alien Vanguard MAP06 UV-Max in 1:11
Very nice. I like the part where I kill an imp and destroy the barrel behind him in one SG shot.

Scythe X MAP01 UV-Max in 0:43
Hard worked and also very lucky (the imp near the exit killed two zombiemans).

Vanguard MAP01 UV-Max in 1:00
Risky strategy! Lots of punching. Caco encounter is the best part.

Green Goddess E1M1 UV-Max in 1:05
Took many, many hours. Addictive map.


Very lucky:

2002: A Doom Odyssey E1M8 UV-Max in 1:21
Great monster behavior, "perfect" health at the exit.

Requiem MAP31 (Secret Exit) UV-Speed in 0:36
How the hell did I survive in the last room? :) This demo was recorded on my birthday btw.

Plutonia MAP16 Stroller in 1:03
This is just incredible. :)

Misc:

Kama Sutra MAP27 UV-Max attempt (one missed monster) in 9:47
Not a great demo, but that was great challenge for me, as I rarely record on long "hardcore" maps.

Whisper in Time Stroller in 2:49
Zombie-stroller! Bizarre.


And where is vdgg's list? :)

Currently I have 98 demo uploads (including two entries for Chris Lutz's INFERNO.WAD which didn't go to DSDA because I replaced them with faster ones). I can't exactly determine my "top" demos at the moment, but I can write a short list of some runs which I find interesting (in chronological, "progressive" order). All of them can be downloaded on my DSDA page (the link is in my signature).

1. Memento Mori MAP21 Nightmare Speed in 2:57 (entry #6, done February 14, 2007):

IMO my first decent demo. It initiated my habit of going below regular UV Speed records (in this case, 3:26) while playing on NM. Even today I find this demo reasonably fast/smooth, and I like its crazy ending.

2. Hell Revealed MAP13 Nightmare Speed in 2:23 (entry #10, done September 16, 2007):

It's the first really hard level in my favorite megawad, and at first it was impossible for me even on skill 4, but some years later I managed it on skill 5, playing far more aggressively than Peo in his TAS (5:55). It felt quite a victory for that time (though if I would do it in 2010 or 2011, my time would me under 2 minutes at least).

3. Memento Mori MAP21 UV Max in 9:28 (entry #25, done January 31, 2010).

The previous record holder, Ryback, said: "I think 10:00 is out of reach, the level is just too big". But I reached 9:40 extremely easily, and felt it's too cheap. With some much harder work I pushed the time down to 9:28, and I think it's the best of my UV Maxes done in the first half of 2010. But a proper time for my today's skills would be sub-9.

4. Requiem MAP16 UV Max in 5:52 (entry #42, done September 9, 2010).

Not the best of my maxes, but it realizes an insane idea of pushing the UV Max record below the UV Speed time (6:03 by Xit Vono). BTW, I can suggest another fitting map for breaking the Speed record with a Max: Kama Sutra MAP24.

5. Requiem MAP24 UV Max in 4:16 (entry #43, done September 11, 2010).

My favorite map in Requiem. I played it with a much higher level of aggression than the previous record holders, and improved my result several times (in different years). When getting 4:16 I felt that I had outdone myself: demo is a big improvement over my slightly older record (4:38), and has an unnaturally little amount of screwups and monster cooperation setbacks. Still, with my current skills I could push it down further (under 4:00), with some more aggressive/calculated movement.

6. Gravity UV Max in 5:57 (entry #63, done October 29, 2010).

The level is one of my all-time favorites, and the previous record (6:22 by Kimo Xvirus) was quite a strong demo. Beating it was far harder than even beating stx-Vile's max records, but still easy compared to pushing it under 6 minutes. Overall, the toughest minute-barrier I broke in 2010 (though today I don't find it that exceptionally hard).

7. Memento Mori MAP28 UV-FAST in 13:39 (entry #67, done November 12, 2010).

Even today I'm still proud of this demo. I wanted to push it far under Vile's regular UV time (17:42), and the final result turned out even faster than I wanted.

8. Inferno.wad (by Chris Lutz) E3M8 Nightmare Speed (also NM100S) in 2:17 (entry #79, done January 15, 2011).

One of the few demos which I'm *fully* satisfied with (even though there might be faster routes). I did some desperate time-hunt, got a lot of results near the 2:20 mark, and when I finally broke it, I got quite a fast and entertaining run filled with progressively dramatic low-health situations.

9. Scythe MAP28 Nightmare Speed in 0:27 (entry #89, done January 28, 2011).

It pushed my keyboarding movement to a new level. Not so long ago even 0:28 (which is Adam's UV time and Kimo's NM record) seemed out of reach for me.

10. 2002 A Doom Odyssey E3M7 UV Max in 6:59 (entry #98, done August 29, 2011).

My last demo to date. It's a bit rushed (I could get 6:50 or something when working on it for more than just 2 days), and has some natural flaws, but overall I'm satisfied with its speed and looks, and it's a nice improvement over one of my favorites from stx-Vile (7:50).



...But I continue progressing, and I tuned myself for a more calculated and more creative work over "my" maps. So my future demos (starting from #99 which I hope to finish soon) will be superior to my past ones.

1ntru, j4rio: thanks for starting this! I don't know all of them, so there is something to watch! In my enormous collection of >350 demos I may have nothing compared to Doom2 MAP27 Max, but there are, of course, demos I am more proud of than the others.

1. Icarus MAP25 UV Max. This was the first time I got a faster time than TAS. Even though it was an "ancient" TAS, full of strange strategic decisions and imperfections, I felt I achieved something, as the map is not easy - AV jumps, easy-to-miss monsters. (DSDA link)

2. MM2 MAP32 Tyson - my fourth attempt. Initially I was going to break the 10 minute barrier. Then I got something like 9:58, so I thought it was not too good improvement to post after 10:29. 7:25 is a time I wouldn't dream of, ever. I am sure I would not be able to beat it if I spent 500 hours on it. Aggresive, extremely lucky, there is a bit of confusion in the last seconds, but it doesn't really count (link)

3. Obituary MAP01 UV Max - I like it as it is more smooth than pretty much everything else I recorded. (link)

4. Any demo from the Cleimos II demopack. Again, a couple of old TAS times were beaten. Under influence of SAV88 I started putting some more effort into these demos, giving up much later than I used to. I think I found a perfect balance in this demopack, there is not a single weak demo in it and I had lots of fun when recording. After that I "grinded" even more in TNT MAP17 Max, but as I could see, this was too much effort for me and I don't particularly recommend that one. (link for cleim20 demos)

I got 333 demos now at the time I post this reply.

Alien Vendetta map18 UV Max by 12:24

I remember beating though stx-vile's record has caused me a hard long time to do it. This map is extremly fun to play with since the design is beautiful, the TNT map04 music was nice and it's a great fun slaughter map. I was always pleased that I finally beat his time by 2 seconds, much better than my previous 17:14 run.

Community Chest 2 map13 UV Max by 7:37

I was happy I finally get 100% kills after a whole lot of retries. It seems that monsters do Annihilation Inventions there. I remember the date I record this map is the 92th anniversary of May Fourth Movement in China. Proud for a chinese guy like me!

Vile Flesh map11 UV max by 7:41

I like this map. The demos was great too, I was playing aggressive enough that I push the time under 8 minutes. Thanks for Qaatar of giving me courage.

Vile Flesh map14 UV Max by 7:53

Oh!!! I nearly beat Qaatar's record, just 3 freaking seconds. But I was happy I wasn't like most doomers playing on HR2 map20, who most fear of the dark!

Vile Flesh map22 UV max by 20:26

It's a lazy reused music from the same wad of map11. The design was designed beautifully, but I was happy that I can get below 21 minutes for this huge and complex map. And I know that getting below 20 minutes is certainly possible.

Doom 2 map28 UV Max by 3:54

I need to thanks Esko Koskimaa for such a great route. I was happy to finish this map easily and without stress by just BFG spamming below 4 minutes.

Plutonia Experiment map28 UV Max by 7:25

Thanks for tatsurd of his great route. I like this map since there's so much rockets spams. Why was I proud? Because it's my 1st PL demo to get a good result!

1monster map12 UV Max by 6:36

All route credit goes to justanotherfool. This is my very first demo to beat a super professional doomer. Though my record is being beat by j4rio soon.

Plutonia 2 map28 UV Max by 16:18

Although I doesn't done good at some points(e.g BFG cyberdemons in large hall), but I was happy to get a good time finally after several retries!

And there's a lot to say!!!

@Daiyu_Xiaoxiang:
It seems that you forgot about your great 9:22 Max record for 2002ADO E2M4. It's a good improvement over stx-Vile, and I find it much more impressive than all your non-record demos.

I dunno, I guess my nostril.wad max comes to mind. It would've been easier to record if I didn't have two dogs, though.

I also like doing reality/max demos for some reason, probably because of my coopbuild beginnings. Going from top to bottom of my dsda profile, I guess my favs in that style would be:
- 1337 map11 reality/max
- hr2final map32 reality/max fail
- chips19 reality/speed movie
- coopbuild map08 max/no deaths
- dib28a map27 max/no deaths
- loink map01 max/reality
- reality03 demos

Some of those aren't reality, but the playing style is similar because of lack of health.

Agreed, along with your E2M7 Max in 9:16, Krypto's run was formidable as he was good with the fist.

Anyway, there are few demos I am proud of really. Just a couple of record as I've not been around that long.
1. 2002: A Doom Odyssey E3M2 UV Max in 7:47
Someone had to do this map and pushing the time below 8 minutes was quite nice.
http://doomedsda.us/lmps/37/1/a3d2-747.zip

2. 2002: A Doom Odyssey E3M4 UV Max in 5:48
I wanted to get below 6 minutes but was quite shocked when this came out of the blue.
http://doomedsda.us/lmps/37/1/a3d4-548.zip

3. Doom 2 Map31 UV Max in 2:44
This is the quickest one player max of this map (that I know of, probably should have checked the c-n website before this) But still it took a lot of effort to optimize the rocket launcher and BFG.
http://doomedsda.us/lmps/945/1/lv31-244.zip

I've made episode 1 maxes for Ultimate doom and 2002 A Doom Odyssey but they're not that great to be honest. As I'm about to do some Ep3 vile flesh maps, made it would have been best to answer this at a later date.

pl2e1 episode uv-speed run, of course. also the one for scythex. my most hardworked demos are p204-019 and my max for rjspace9f, but i plan to improve the latter sometimes in the future, because i'm not content with it. some of my mapbreakers in scythe2 gave me a feel of accomplishment, too. :)

prcp 24 in 02:47 an 2002ado e4m1 in 0:55 (both nm100 run) are the two demo that i'm proud of

Looking through the thread, I could have predicted many of the speed runner's choices. I'm a bit surprised by some of the omissions though, for instance Daiyu's UV-Max of 2002 A Doom Odyssey e2m4 and e2m7 or Artem's Hell Revealed 2 Map 14 UV-Max and Doom 2 Pacifist 29. It would feel insultory for me to mention any of my mundane demos as though they were some hard-worked, well-optimized feat of dooming comparable to the ones mentioned in this thread. My demos are nothing to be proud of, I'll reply when and if I achieve something extraordinary.

If a1d1-112, a1d1f113 and a2d8-045 are mundane, I also don't have any achievements :)

Also worth mentioning is 2002ADO E4M9 UV Max in 4:58, a tightly played Compet-N-quality demo with enjoyable style and solid time (for comparison, Ryback had 7:19).

NoobBait said:

Looking through the thread, I could have predicted many of the speed runner's choices. I'm a bit surprised by some of the omissions though, for instance Daiyu's UV-Max of 2002 A Doom Odyssey e2m4 and e2m7 or Artem's Hell Revealed 2 Map 14 UV-Max and Doom 2 Pacifist 29.

Thanks, but my 4-years-old PA29-214 is not that skillful or optimized. It was an interesting challenge, but nothing revolutionary, and this 7-second improvement over Vile feels cheap for me. Under 2:00 would satisfy me more. I have many more solidly played, more "perfectionistic", more "innovative" demos.

As for HR2 MAP14, in 2009 I was amazed by getting 2:47, but now I see that my old-skill demo is rather crude in terms of movement and tactics, and something around 2:30 would be better. I like my last UV Speed entry for it (1:02) much more, as it's played with greater general speed, with higher maneuvering skills.

SAV88 said:

@Daiyu_Xiaoxiang:
It seems that you forgot about your great 9:22 Max record for 2002ADO E2M4. It's a good improvement over stx-Vile, and I find it much more impressive than all your non-record demos.

Oh this demo, I have nearly forget that stx-vile also play on this map. I remember I have used a lot of time just to memorized the connecting secrets.

cannonball said:

Agreed, along with your E2M7 Max in 9:16, Krypto's run was formidable as he was good with the fist.

Krypto's talent on doom is fisting and UV-Fast. I am OK on fisting barons and HKS, but poor on cacos.

Actually I was once proud of my SOD map31 UV Max demo by 10:41(If I remember the time well), this successful demo gives me courage to do harder maps. But now I think that this map should really need to be redone, the time is too slow.

I do have couple demos from my rather short list of contribution still warming my heart and here's one:
h231-441 I did like hell revealed 2 because there were not that many speed demos back then so I had no one to copy from. This was one of the most fun to do and I congratulate myself solving the puzzle of "this is obviously a map for maxing, how do I skip everything and run straight to exit?" Of course, since none of my demos are that hardworked, this one suffers from lack of polish, too.

I'll take a stab at this sort of list.

1.) Hell Revealed Map30 UV-Max in 1:40 - The first time I did this one, getting 1:52, I spent off and on 3 months to get the one successful exit. Between deaths, missing the boss, and missing monsters for Max (because it's EASY to miss something there)... the 1:40 though, I'm proud of it because it felt like it was a display of my improvement over time. Sort of like a personal goal of sorts.

2.) Doom E1M8 NM100S in 0:50 - My first ever classic Doom demo. I don't consider myself a Doomgod of any sort. Hell, I barely even consider myself 'skilled' to some of those other names out there that have stood out for years and years. However, I guess it's a testament to either just pure dumb luck (which this demo is a lot of), or maybe I'm a better player than I give myself credit for.

3.) Plutonia Map12 Pacifist in 0:37 - Replicating Sedlo's infamous Suicide Arch-Vile Rocket Jump is not easy. It's especially not easy when you can't hurt anyone in the process... Not a lot to say, but I'm just happy that I was even able to do this. It's one of those things where it's kinda like... you watch it and you point at it and say "Yeah, I did that jump. It was badass."

4.) Memento Mori 2 Map27 UV-Speed/NM-Speed in 0:29 - Sure, it's slow compared to the records, but I felt accomplished, having discovered the switch tricks to shortcut the entire map. Considering it's my favorite map in MM2... Not to mention it's the only real trick I myself have ever really come up with...

5.) Doom E2M8 Tyson-Grandmaster in 7:20 - On a cold February morning, around 4 am, a group of Lost Souls banded together to aid me in taking out a -fast Cyberdemon with only a Pistol and a non-Berserk fist. This is the result. I know it's considered a misc Compet-N demo, but it's one of my most proud moments to me. It was a personal stepping stone for me, to bigger and better things.

Either stuff that was hard or not done yet, I suppose.

In the first category, the episode or complete game runs on nightmare 100% come to mind. I am not sure if anyone else has done the 30NS run since then but mine filled in the third slot at Compet-N. Actually, that one seemed like a milestone for me since I did the four ns100 movies for ultimate doom around the time that I really started recording demos, then tried the 30NS run through all of doom2 and got as far as map24. Many years later, I went back and finally finished it. That was probably the only time I ever had closure for finishing a run, which may sound silly but if I left something undone, I wanted to make sure it got done in the end. If you give up on a challenge and then return years later and finally beat it with a more honed skill set, you'll know what I mean. :)

The second category could have been finding new tricks, filling in holes in the nightmare tables for TNT or Plutonia (map12 was the last one done for plutonia with the suicide rocket/av jump that Altima mentioned) or doing some movie runs that didn't exist yet, like both of the movie runs for TNT and Plutonia. I remember doing a movie for Memento Mori and TVR, the latter of which was beaten by Gusta I believe. I like doing stuff that gets the ball rolling and draws in other players to wanna try them and make their own improvements.

Speaking of which, I was going to bring this up in a requests thread but here will do: has anyone ever tried to improve the complete movie runs of TNT or Plutonia? It's always made me wonder why no improvements to those runs have ever appeared in the years since those movies were made.

Vile said:

Either stuff that was hard or not done yet, I suppose.

I remember doing a movie for Memento Mori and TVR, the latter of which was beaten by Gusta I believe.

The TVR run was improved and polished by Method, not by me. (although I´d love to say it was me :-)

Ah okay, my apologies. You could probably do it too. :)

You don't see back and forth competition about movie records very often. I think only the 30nm ever drew that kind of attention.

I'd say my best demos are rn06, m206 (nightmare) and tn09. That's because I've been putting the most effort into nightmare runs, since those are the most interesting to attempt. m216 is a good too but the ending looks bad. I suppose there are some nice pacifists too, like rp04

Very nice idea for a thread.

Personally, I'm more interested in finding route ideas than in polishing existing routes - maybe partly because I'm not very good at the latter! So some of the ideas that I'm happiest with have a demo by someone else, such as Kristian's Icarus map28 pacifist (ic28p029).

Of my own, the following are most memorable (list off the top of the my head, and in no particular order - I am currently in the Lofoten islands, Norway). Not necessarily technically best, or hardest-worked:

Henry.wad map04 pacifist in 0:32. Not many tricks here, but just a hard pacifist.

Kama Sutra map13 pacifist in 0:10. Fairly nice route (some calculations needed!), but mainly a hard slog to get the time down to 10 seconds.

Rigel1.wad Speed in 1:26. The first demo that I planned in detail and was happy with. Rough around the edges, and recorded in Legacy, but I still like it.

TVR! map10 Pacifist in 0:37. An early use of the thing wobble to skip a linedef.

Build.wad NM Pacifist in 1:04. Totally silly map and crazy idea to exit when long dead.

Icarus map22 Pacifist in 0:21. Two tricks make for a nice route.

"megawad" e1m1 Pacifist in 1:38. Just a tough pacifist. Another illustration of the joys of pacifism was my Cchest2 map09 Pacifist in 2:55.

System Vices (aboosysv) map05 NM in 4:22. A hard nightmare, with very little health.

Two strollers spring to mind, both in the the original stroller pack: STRAIN map01 Stroller in 1:18 and Evilution (TNT.wad) map17 Stroller in 1:23.

And probably some others... Some of my demos were early demonstrations of trick ideas, and therefore of some significance, but as most of these tricks are now routine, the demos themselves look run-of-the-mill. I have a soft spot for any demos featuring zombification, killing a boss brain (Romero) by pacifist methods, glides, exiting dead, breaking through walls, or going all the way through the void. And any other rarely-used or new trick ideas.

This is the first time I did Nuts.wad without cheating (I had a flash on how to do it, after months I was trying to figure out how I could do it):
http://www.mediafire.com/?4uuudzc6yii86b0

And this is the first time I did Doom2 Map30 without the rocket luncher (took me 6 hours):
http://www.mediafire.com/?gg8l4cy7eqq3713