Aesthetics of Your Demos

Is this something you care about (excluding categories like -nomo, where there is a pretty big correlation with absence of errors and the time you get on any particular run)?

I remember a post by Memfis where he'd rather watch a slightly slower but more elegant demo than one that goes as fast as it can and is, well, ugly.

Maybe I'm just being a big nitpicker, or unfairly comparing myself to people who are really good, but the slightest mistakes of awareness piss me off in my own demos, even when I manage to improvise well in other ways.

(Maybe we should have a "contest" purely for aesthetics. :D)

heh, screw aesthetics and screw Memfis too :)

I think my demos turn out particularly more jerky than what I remember the game looking like while I was recording, so I stopped caring.

Your demos are really sexy. I really like the manic turns, as long as they aren't accompanied by a lot of missed shots or something. It feels superhuman in a way when it's done well.

There was another recorder with ultra-high sensitivity who was extremely jittery, like every single second it seemed the screen was shaking, instead of just at specific moments. I don't remember exactly who, but that's a bit too much for me.

It's called earthquake style. Definitely a big turn off for some people.

rdwpa said:

There was another recorder with ultra-high sensitivity

Perhaps you mean Plut. I feel quite uncomfortable when watching his demos. j4rio is much better in comparison, and in j4rio's case it looks like he actually benefits from these extremely fast turns to me, so I'm not a hater. I'm more against shaking for no good reason, which happens especially often to novice speedrunners. As people get better, they often kind of naturally get rid of unnecessary movements (but not always of course).

Having my mouse set to 4000 DPI kinda makes any attempts at smoothness in my demos null. Regardless, I really never cared either way, and trying to be smooth in UV-Max demos is much more difficult due to monsters and how they can move differently every time.

I thought my demos were shaky, because DM players in ports use the one-key sr50 bind that makes straight line movement very solid, but then I saw stuff from some of you guys and yeah, I'm practically a keyboarder compared to jario's parkinsons.

Aesthetics are important to me, but I won't submit a worse time just because it looks better. Lots of times I keep recording a run trying to get a nicer looking exit that ties my best time at least. I have to take what I can get though, of course, and in so many runs better luck is going to trump better movement. There is probably only a handful of my demos that I'm happy with aesthetically.

I have always felt that a person's playstyle should govern the way their demos in doom/gameplay footage from any game looks.

If there is some giant mistake to make me reset a demo it isn't because it looks bad but rather because it is just such a large time loss that even if I have gotten pretty far in a 20+ min map it will cause a reset.

An aesthetic demo is pretty subjective description though. Imo fast demos cant help but be aesthetic because the player would have already put in the time and effort to either crush the encounters effortlessly or move through each map without much effort on the runner's part because of memorization.

With regards to my demos.. I am still learning the game so each one generally has a specific thing present I am focusing on more than other techniques. I think my demos are pretty much average from an aesthetics point of view because I am trying to become a better player before making a pretty demo.

idk what my style is, every time i watch a demo of mine i think "this is shit" and do it again.

i actually like the wide variances in style and a lot of my favourite speedrunners/demo makers fall all over the spectrum of mouse movement/general movement:

j4rio (shaky, crazy fast)
Ribbiks (shaky, considered, measured)
Ancalagon (medium, crazy fast)
Cyberdemon531 (medium, efficient)
SAV88 (measured, slow, efficient)
Okuplok (calm and measured)
4shock (efficient/measured)
kraflab (very efficient, lovely movements)

sorry if i missed you out, these were the first that came to mind :p

i especially like the crazy mousers because thats how i play doom so it gives me hope that there are some great demo makers whatever their 'style'!

rehelekretep said:

mouse movement/general movement:

SAV88 (measured, slow, efficient)

Sav is a keyboarder, demos done keyboard only are a pleasure to watch, their movement always looks very calm.

To me aesthetics isn't about a particular movement style, it's about the way a player demonstrating their control over the level. For some players that might mean smooth, graceful turns and seemingly casual play. On the other hand someone like j4rio, with all the jagged flicks and whip turns in his demos, they feel like the natural playing style of someone with superhuman reflexes and a maniacal focus on killing stuff. I really like his demos.

I never have the time to think about my own style when recording, and then when I watch something back it seems like I'm bumping into at least three times as many walls as I remember. Don't think I ever uploaded a slightly slower demo because it was nicer to look at... seconds are hard enough to get.

I like Xit-Vono nightmere runs, simply amazing for me