The DWIronman League dies to: End Game & End Point

OP and season standings spreadsheet updated. We are closing in on the Endtimes.

Demon of the Well remains the only player with a real chance of unseating the league favorite following his narrow victory in Osiris, last month, although if we're only factoring outright victories into consideration then the game is already done and dusted. Spare a thought for Veinen, in any case, who has been pipped at the post by DotW on both of the occasions he's managed to best Bloodite. Further down the ladder we have Dime and SSGmaster, who have all but surrendered their assault on the top ten with some bad luck and bad form, respectively, the sensational end to Dime's run in Unholy Realms' map17 typifying His Canadian Excellence.

Keen to see how this year plays out. One wonders if RjY would have been close to the mark with showings in January and February, or if his keen preparation will bring him all the way to the end of the season without a single death in tow.

4 hours ago, Alfonzo said:

OP and season standings spreadsheet updated.

aww, no obituary for me yet :(

Endgame - Dead on map05 (Pop up baron was unexpected)

Endpoint - Dead on Map04 (Innevitable really)

I liked both of these, a good amount of old school charm to these and the difficulty wasn't too bad (Just my awful play as usual).

endcb.zip

Scouted Endpoint for 10 minutes before recording.  Died on map 1 in my scouting attempt.  Useful intelligence involved finding the SSG and foreknowledge of the key room which i fully exploit when recording.  Endgame was completely blind and with -nomusic.

  Cheated death for quite a while on Endpoint.  Had low health scares on every map and several times I deserved to die but survived through dumb luck.  Finally comes to an end on map 5.  I reluctantly pick up a soulsphere thinking I'm going through a one-way passage.  It doesn't save me from the gangbeating which ends my run.

  Highlights of End Game include low ammo situation in the middle of map 3,taking a beating from "that" trap on map 4, and being near death for a stretch of map 5.  Got lost for a while trying to find the last key.  Took an extended break after finishing map 5.  Map 6 went well for the most part.  Got some favorable infights going without injury and I believe I kept my health above 70 until the fatal missteps.  Decided near the end to tediously pick off the cyberdemons rather than hop onto an unknown teleporter and risk it dropping me off right in front of one.  Found out the hard way that they had a line of fire into the camping spot I picked.  Survived the first hit then decided I would recover my health with the berserk i had preserved.  The berserk in the line of sight of those same cybers?  They said "you're mine, marine"  one rocket per word.

PrBoom+ 2.5.1.4  -complevel 2  The pace of both demos is glacial with a running time of over 90 minutes each.

dwiron_endings_cnr.zip

Endgame - Survived in ~1h21
Endpoint - Survived in ~1h44

I've played Endpoint once, back when it was released. It's clearly not Eternal's magnum opus, but it does have its memorable moments. Had low health right from the beginning, but thankfully the secrets weren't too hard to find and helped me regain control.
Map 03 cost me a lot of time due to a pesky ghost Baron that haunted me for quite a while, heh. :)

As for Endgame, I didn't know much about it until I watched parts of Eris' video. Pretty good wad but it would've benefitted from a map slot rearrangement I think - map 07 felt tame after 06, and after two gothic maps it didn't really fit in thematically-wise. It has nice lighting effects though.
The Cyberdemon chase in map 05 was quite thrilling, too, even though it could have been made more dangerous.

Endpoint-Ironman-Survived1h44-wh.zip

Endgame-Ironman-Survived1h21-wh.zip

Hi all! This is my first ironman submission...

Endgame: Died in map 5, 139/200 monsters dead, and about 50 minutes in.

Endpoint: Died in map 2, 108/165 monsters dead, and about 10 minutes in.

I had done practice runs of both, just so I wouldn't have to turn in embarrassingly short demos. Maybe I'll have a decent blind attempt next month.... I hope.

Endgame: Nicely designed levels, pretty easy. I only died 'cuz I'm bad at Doom. I find the techbase themes to be overused and uninspiring; but we're not here to enjoy the scenery, right?

Endpoint: Nicely designed levels, pretty hard. I actually died several times in map 1 during practice runs. I finally made it to map 2, so I decided that was enough practice. I played this on Twitch yesterday, but I somehow goofed up the demo recording, so I had to re-play. This time I mad it pretty far into map 2, so not gonna complain. These first two levels have too many hitscanners and not enough health for my lack of Doom skills. :-\

Both demos can be downloaded here.

Survived both wads in 2H38 but with one problem: I forgot to show the compatibility for End Point. I would understand if my submission of End Point is rejected because of that (even if it's too bad :( ).
 

End Point start at 1:15
So yeah, a huge amount of luck for me this month (especialy map 2 of End Point). I never played them before so this is 2H38 of pure blindness.

Public announcements - In November I'll pull out all the stops and go aggressive. Alfonzo, you should keep that in mind and select an impossible WAD haha

I don't have much time to play Doom anymore, but this got me intrigued. I don't understand a few things, though:

-How you make sure that a player doesn't do several runs and posts only a successful/surviving one?

-What if a player remembers a lot of details about the maps from previous playthroughs? Isn't that an unfair advantage?

-What about advanced functions like 5.1 sound and dynamic lighting in modern ports? In my experience, they help a lot to avoid some hazards. Back in my TNS days, I remember that some people even suspected I cheat, because I was able to hear and instinctively turn around to a precise angle when some threat appeared behind me (a monster closet, usually).

Unless your playing against a particular person (like suit and mutt) the only prize is your personal enjoyment

So proud of myself for making it to map 8 of Endgame. Not through map 8, of course. Meant to do this totally blind but gradually started to remember that I had played the set in the middle of a big Jan Van der Veken binge last year. Great map set. Somehow the levels have you feeling lost a lot, but at the same time you keep progressing with relatively little downtime. Sequencing is way weird, though. The progression from maps 1-6 is great. Map 07 is great on its own but feels out of place theme- and difficulty-wise. And the less said about Map08 the better.

After a decent showing on Endgame, I was stoked to dominate Endpoint. Even peeked at SSGMaster's video. Yeah.......didn't go so well. Died in a silly Map02 HK trap while panicking, despite approaching it with absurd and ultimately counterproductive caution.

ends-ironman-bigolbilly.zip

responding to caleb's questions:

1. Peer pressure, for the most part.  It's not that serious a competition so there is very little material gain for cheating.

2. Advance knowledge is a-OK.  Again, not serious enough an event to worry about unfair advantages.

3. No hardcoded cheats or features beyond what is possible in the intended port.

10 hours ago, Crusader No Regret said:

3. No hardcoded cheats or features beyond what is possible in the intended port.

I actually read the rules (compatibility settings etc.) before asking, but this looked like gray area to me. So theoretically, if someone plays in GZdoom, they should disable both dynamic lights and 5.1 sound since they're not supported in Prboom+ or even GLboom+. Sounds reasonable.

Well apparently you should be using prboom+ anyway, not gzdoom

Nothing wrong with using GZDoom itself, just set the compatibility in settings before starting a run. Dynamic lights could be an advantage in dark areas so maybe those wouldn't be allowed.

Endgame: Killed on MAP03 due to... a Macubus fireball clipping through the wall?!

https://www.mediafire.com/file/lgs9fc4i3d6udfa/DWIronman15-1_JudgeDeadd.lmp

Endpoint: Overwhelmed after getting the blue key on MAP03.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/wui9rjiw876k28b/DWIronman15-2_JudgeDeadd.lmp

1 hour ago, JudgeDeadd said:

Killed on MAP03 due to... a Macubus fireball clipping through the wall?!

Lol I was going to do a demo of endgame but I underestimated how long it would take me to do and so I had to stop short on map03 and I nearly died on that map as well because I got lazy and let a revenants rocket either blow up on the wall behind me or curve around from behind and hit me or something, anyway it took off 70% health and I only had 85 so you can imagine the backwards scrambling I was doing trying to find more health LOL

I don't remember much about the endgame run because it was early in the month when I did it but nothing special happened.

Jut finished endpoint and that was a more interesting run. After reaching map 3 (with an amazing speedrun time of ~30 minutes) with plenty of supplies I got a bugged ghost Imp. Second month in a row hit with a bug! Luckily this time was just one monster so I pushed forward. Unfortunately I'm not used at having an ethereal companion Imp trying to backstab me and I tried to go faster than I'm used to, making stupid mistakes and finally dying embarrassingly to a solo Revenant.

endgame - map4

endpoint - map3

guineu endxxx ironman october 2017.zip

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/184531259 (going in blind as always!)

Died on map 2 of End Point to a Hell Knight trap.

Died on map 1 of End Game to making bad decisions on the map. (I really should have beaten this one.... I played through this wad normally afterwards, as this was the second month in a row where an Ironman wad happened to be on my giant request list, and easily beat the first level on a regular playthrough)

This was my second worst Ironman performance to date, only Nilla Doom topping it for awfulness.

Funnily enough, an_mutt did his run earlier in the month (which he hasn't submitted to this thread yet) and only cleared 1 map himself across both mapsets, but wasn't feeling up to playing/streaming Doom at the time and said to me "you can have the point this month" in a stream earlier on this month when I asked how he'd got on. However, I obliged that I'd try to clear 2 maps to set the Britbowl score at 5-5, but then this happened.

I place the ball in an_mutt's court to see if he wants to compare times/progress of his attempt to mine, in determining a winner between us for the month, or whether he cba'd and just wants to give me the point anyway as he originally said in that livestream. An interesting decision lies ahead....

Oh for fuck's sake, John...

(The stream of my efforts has since been purged from Twitch, so I can no longer post them! Whee.)

46 minutes ago, Suitepee said:

Died on map 1 of End Game to making bad decisions on the map.

Which part did you die on? I'm not particularly good at doom yet so on my first try I literally died at nearly the very first part (the circle hub like part after the first lift) :/ Then on my second try I got through that part but with very little health then got killed while heading for the shotgun... THEN on my 3rd try i finally got to the shotgun and actually managed to fairly well i guess. Then I suprisingly got through map 2 pretty easily, not having to do a pistol start kind of helps i guess lol. I had to stop part of the way through map 3 because I did not have the time to continue unfortunately. I had recorded a demo of that attempt but I decided to not upload it as it would technically be cheating...

edit: lol just saw the video, you got barely farther than I did on my first try i see. And you died to your old pal nukage :D I guess that makes me feel a tiny bit better knowing I wasn't the only person who had trouble with it...

So it seems that due to an_mutt being unfortunately unable to recover his VOD's of his Ironman run, I take the point this month in the Britbowl.

This ties up the Britbowl nicely at 5-5 (now both of us have come back from deficits this year...), with only two months left to go. I'm going first next month, so I sure hope for a much better Ironman performance in November!

(good grief, this Britbowl has sure had some interesting twists and turns in it)

So you did beat me after all, John.

An hilarious circumstance. I've actually been linking to runs by Dime before his recordings vanish, despite his rarely posting the vids here. There isn't a rule saying that you must post the runs in the thread, but I reserve the right to not bother to hunt down and include the recording if you don't. In this case, I actually just forgot to put an_mutt's run in the OP.

I've been off the ball on updates, recently; Zando TDM tournament and all. The leader board will be fixed up soon.

WELL NOW! https://go.twitch.tv/videos/184605237

Died at MAP03 in End Game, MAP02 in End Point, both times to the mighty wallop of the hell knight. Didn't enjoy these ones just because I couldn't get anywhere in either set going in blind.

Only the top tier can touch me!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ox7ao9d94jsfq27/dtendgame.lmp?dl=1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/scjcvsn1bj44olu/dtendpoint.lmp?dl=1

Completely blind. Dead on MAP03 in End Game due to a fit of shitty aiming and on MAP01 in End Point, all fair and square. Feels like I'm getting worse at Doom with every month.

rth-endg.zip

rth-endp.zip

I'm closing in, baby.

Declaring a lockdown on all highlights directed at DotW, Bloodite and Veinen. Anyone who reminds them that there's an Ironman challenge they've yet to do this month will be forced to perform runs of Eternal Slumber Party for the entirety of 2018. October's mine.

Pretty late but the all time standings are back, this time in epic Google Spreadsheet form!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MD_xVaxvvARtENsjya30g-rnJDqiLL2ZpQc6YlKQV9g/edit?usp=sharing (keep in mind there are three tabs - 2016, 2017 and all-time)

After a complete reconstruction of the 2016 December Ironman Challenge (where 25 people are mistakenly on the leaderboard - actually 42 people have participated), Demon of the Well takes the first place on the all-time standings, a few points ahead of WH-Wilou84! Arguably the largest margin in the upper section is between Scotty and Ancalagon - Scotty has cca 542,000 points, about 160,000 points behind Ancalagon with 702,000. Alfonzo has moved a bit closer to Anima Zero after a couple of slip-ups from the latter - will Anima be able to defend the place for a bit more? And a lot more.

From next month the sheet will probably have real-time updates as runs are posted, but we'll see. Still the primary goal is just the all-time standings.

@NaZa Yeah like I said, answering this in the proper thread for it :).

16 minutes ago, NaZa said:

Also you better prepare for Ironman, only three days left haha.

As it happens, I have done my preparation, but I keep getting sidetracked on the final recording. Hopefully I'll be able to post results of one of these sidetracks later, once I've written it up; as you seem to be into tables and statistics, I hope you will like it.

This month has so far been oddly quiet on certain fronts. My theory is the usual suspects, whose names we're not allowed to post on pain of (time of) death, are all waiting for each other to go first. It's likely there's still pain felt from being beaten at the last minute, along with a desire to avoid a repeat occurrence. Those who read the speed demos forum may have seen a series of posts that could easily be seen as ironman preparation. But in the end, despite @Alfonzo's protests, somebody needs to break the silence, and set the pace.