Why do you Speedrun Doom?

Hello, I've been speedrunning doom for almost a year now, on and off. I mainly started after watching the Doom Gods do speedruns such as Xit Vono and stx-Vile. Speedrunning Doom is very fun, but why do you do it? Is it the competitiveness and satisfaction of beating someones score? The pure thrill of doing the run? etc.

I would really like to know why you do speedrun.

Thank You :D

I haven't done much running lately, but for me it's really just another way of playing the game. I usually play Doom cautiously, with the goal of surviving a level on my first play through. Speedrunning is interesting for me as it forces me to adopt an extremely risky style of play.

In 2000-2004 I also played Doom cautiously, developing my skill by fighting my way through progressively difficult mapsets on UV and UV-Fast -- first UDoom and Doom2, then TNT and Plutonia, then HR, AV, Scythe and HR2.

But starting from late 2004, I'm not interested in casual playing anymore, as it became extremely unchallenging for me even on ultra-hard levels. I only enjoy optimized, aggressive Doom playing. When I'm in the mood for some excruciatingly hard work, I produce some new Doom records (mostly in UV Max and Nightmare categories). And when I want to relax, I play various maps with savegames (again, aggressively and pedantically), and I really enjoy finding and testing new time-reducing tactics.

For many, many reasons, I'll choose and mention three of them which, if I were another player looking at myself, I would find the most odd :)

1. I like watching my own demos. Sometimes tracing damage given, using camera mode, finding oddities in them.

2. I like looking at my DSDA demo page profile. I also try not to record demos on WADs I find poor, unlike, for example, The Green Herring. If you stumble upon my demopage, expect demos of different quality, but at least on good maps (even if 'good' only according to my subjective choice)

3. I like 'solving' maps. One of the demos that inspired me to start posting here was Hitherto's UV Max on FDC6. The term 'solving' refers mainly to UV Max demos. I'll give you POLYGON.WAD as an example (no demos at DSDA at the moment). I'm sure that hundreds of players finished this map on skill 4. I'm sure many of them found the WAD immersive, many of them finished it with 100% kills/secrets... 'Solving' this map is to find the fastest route, taking into account distance run by the player (teleporters, backtracking), weapons found on the way (you usually can't 'max' a map quickly equipped with just a shotgun when there's RL and plasma hidden somewhere), opportunities to group monsters, predicting where the monsters would wander if you don't kill them immediately ('skip them'). I find all these aspects fascinating even if someone in the future finds a faster path or strategy ('proving me wrong'). Hope you understand what I mean.

Because it's one of the few games where I feel completely in control of every aspect of gameplay.

For the simple joy of creating something that lasts beyond the immediate experience.

I'll respond to the topic in a bit, but first, I'd like to share some background. Although I played shareware Doom a long time ago, and I had Final Doom since it was new — it was, in fact, the only commercial Doom game I had (no, really) — I came to Doom in 2007 in large part because of Doomworld and its demo community. Prior to this, I was lurking in the 3D Realms forums. In the Duke Nukem 3D forum, I posted speedruns for user-made levels (links are all dead now) that were compatible with v1.5 of Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition — only for people to shrug because they couldn't play them in eDuke32, the local equivalent of ZDoom. This ultimately forced me to start a YouTube channel just to show them to the forum-goers. After a short while, interest seemed to dry up. On top of that, with the increased focus on DukePlus, the HR Pack, and the additions to eDuke32, I began to feel the community was focusing a little too much on fancy effects and gimmicks in lieu of good level design. By that time, I had rediscovered the Final Doom disc, become interested in Doom again, and been active on the Doom Wiki.

Ultimately, Doomworld attracted me with how almost every level of source port is in widespread use — so people continue designing for the original engine and work with its limits — and how its demo community was not only thriving, but open to the use of any level of source port no matter how old. Hell, people still recorded demos under Compet-n's vanilla-specific rules despite its website having not been updated since 2005! And so, I became active here with the release of my first two demos for Icarus. (They are available on the DSDA, along with the improvements I later made.)

Today, I remain here because of its supportive community, and because I enjoy speedrunning. I do so for these reasons:

1. Figuring out the best way to finish a level under specified conditions is something I like to do. It is a useful way to exercise one's logic.
2. Doom speedrunning is surprisingly not all that complex when you come down to it — but at the same time, how to best apply those techniques provides for unique challenges on every level you play.
3. Continuing Maikl's campaign to record demos on doomworld.com/vb/doom-speed-demos/50510-the-idgames-levels-doom-exploration-demo-thread-new-castle-phobos/]every level in idgames/levels/doom/ has made me play levels that I would have otherwise not been interested in — and, in the process, uncover some lost gems. Sure, I've encountered a lot of dreck (as vdgg suggests,) but that tends to happen when you go on a mission like this. More on-topic, however, this campaign has resulted in me playing many kinds of levels, from easy strolls to difficult journeys, from thinly-veiled deathmatch levels to complex missions, from ammo warehouses to veritable deserts, from ghost towns to slaughtermaps, from mazes to open arenas, from real-life reconstructions to surreal realms, and from luck-based missions to pure tests of skill. All of these have produced unique challenges for me to take on. I'm willing to bet that at this point, I've probably had more experience on more types of levels than most other players. I could be wrong, though. But most importantly...
4. Doom is fun!

Wow, this post was bigger than I expected it to be. ;)

Because doomguy is like any modern man, always needing to do something as quickly as possible, in this case get the the exit of a level. :P
I only really started playing doom and also quake a year ago, and speedrunning about 6 months ago. There is a joy about completing a level in a aggressive style or beating a record, something I really haven't done enough of. I really wish I could devote some more time to improving my skills.

Fun... don't really do it much nowadays, just drop in a demo once in a while. Most of my dooming time is spent playing through new wads without being obsessive about my play. That's probably what killed my interest in recording for a while. It became more work than fun when I make a demo that has a decent time but the mistakes still irk me. I just need to ignore that, I suppose. :D

Three simple reasons:

1 - Beating existing records is a thrill, especially if the records are already good. I totally clean my mind when I'm playing this game "competitively". I can't really of anything else when I'm doing a hard level and/or trying to break a good record.
2 - Doing undone levels is really fun. Especially on Nightmare!.
3 - It's the best game ever.

I wish I had started speedrunning this game before. Sad thing I wasn't an avid Doom player back then (I only started trying to speedrun it on the february of this year).

I like mixing in the occasional demo, though I usually just play Doom casually. At one point, I really started to work on demoing a lot, and realized that it took the fun out of it. So, now I usually play a wad casually, and when the desire randomly strikes, I'll make an effort to record.

It's when I revisit wads that I try to optimize my times. This is mostly because I feel it helps me improve as a casual player. There are stretches where, if I feel Doom isn't giving the old "Good times" vibe, I'll record a demo to re-spark my interest via demos. Alternating between casual and demoing allows for a more varied feel to playing Doom. This pattern is what keeps me going.

The oddest thing, though, is I only record competitively. I'm definitely more of a demo-watcher than a recorder, but if I see one that both interests me and I can improve on, that's when I go for it.

Then I get drunk sometimes. Uh... well, that's all I have to say about that.

1. Well, sometimes I would like to finish a map that was one of my favourite. However I found the map too hard for me to play at, so I just speedrun it.

2. Another case is that I was boring, so I just do a simple short speedrun.

3. Doing just maxing is boring and it can't always shows the talent of a player, so doing speedrun is required.

4. Or one extreme case is that I want to get more demos shown in DSDA or beating other player's demo numbers records.

Challenge.

Wow, so many different responses :D

Personally for me, I'm what you would call a self-sadomasochistic gamer. I adore challenge. For those that watch my YouTube, just look up "Mega Man: Mantis Style" for an idea. It's almost a form of frustration relief to me, even if I get angry or frustrated (which I realize contradicts itself, but only because it IS a form of relief unless I overexert myself). A personal goal to push my skills and knowledge to it's limits. On top of that it gives me something to feel proud of and a sense of accomplishment when I can do something amazing.

That and the fact that I absolutely love Doom.

I know my reasons are probably lame to others, but they are my driving force to speedrun.

Altima said:

I know my reasons are probably lame to others, but they are my driving force to speedrun.

I wouldn't say it's lame to try one's limits...

The Green Herring said:

... stuff about Duke Nukem 3D demos ...

Probably I did not post it here.

Few years ago I made patch for removing fucking cameras during watching. I think for Atomic Edition.

Comparing files DUKE3D.EXE and DUKE3DP.EXE
0007B932: 0F E9
0007B933: 85 61
0007B934: 60 00
0009CF88: 0F E9
0009CF89: 84 39
0009CF8A: 38 14
0009CF8B: 14 00

Now you can watch nice demos by Fernito from his eyes.

Same format as the .CRK that comprises the source of Doom II+, I assume? Either way, thank you so much for doing that! I couldn't publish one of my videos on YouTube because of those damn cameras.

Now if only there was a way to record multi-level runs, I may or may not try some Duke demos again. I have to say I didn't expect this at all!

EDIT (Oct. 10, 2011 8:10 PM PDT): The patch works like a charm. Thank you again!

I had a lot of reasons and some of them have already been mentioned ('solving' maps, push skills and knowledge to it's limits), so i want to make it short: I love DooM, I love doomworld and it's community, and mostly becouse I love to watch speed demos so much that I started to make my own.

Akse said:

I had a lot of reasons and some of them have already been mentioned ('solving' maps, push skills and knowledge to it's limits), so i want to make it short: I love DooM, I love doomworld and it's community, and mostly becouse I love to watch speed demos so much that I started to make my own.

I thought you quit speedrunning though?

SomeKindOfMonster said:

I thought you quit speedrunning though?

I'm not ;) and i started to work on some stuff recently. It should be finished in a few weeks probably (about 2 or 3), so please be patient.

Akse said:

I'm not ;) and i started to work on some stuff recently. It should be finished in a few weeks probably (about 2 or 3), so please be patient.

Let me guess, TNT? Have you got dre to work again?

kimo_xvirus said:

Let me guess, TNT? Have you got dre to work again?

It's not TNT yet , sorry (please wait till january). For now be ready for Wonderfull DooM E1 and an improvement of a very good UV TAS SMovie(wich wasn't created by me in a first place). About dre - thanks doomgod it's work fine since there is no more sp3(along with a new os as well). Oh and I really appreciate your concern about TNT, thanks. :0)