Heretic demos (non-demopack and NM)

23 hours ago, PVS said:

What do you mean guys under 'save/load' for demorecording

I mean load a savegame file (.hsg).

You use savegames for recording video runs? After edit final video in video editor and as result have something like video TAS?

I made an opportunity before for normal demo recording from savegame in vanilla format, but this is not for speedruns. I'm use this method for recording demos for large pwad maps, for pwads not good optimized for wand-start, etc. If need, possible find Chocolate Heretic 2.3.0(se), only win32, on the 6th page of this topic. But for playback such demos need savegame files itself and this port version, of course.

1 hour ago, PVS said:

You use savegames for recording video runs? After edit final video in video editor and as result have something like video TAS?

What??!!, I do not lol.

I mean load and save game during demo recording.

1 hour ago, PVS said:

I made an opportunity before for normal demo recording from savegame in vanilla format, but this is not for speedruns. I'm use this method for recording demos for large pwad maps, for pwads not good optimized for wand-start, etc. If need, possible find Chocolate Heretic 2.3.0(se), only win32, on the 6th page of this topic. But for playback such demos need savegame files itself and this port version, of course.

Oh really?, nice.

That's a big step to get the save/load work on demo recording/playback.

Heretic episode 4 in 7:55

heretice4-755.zip

(not video added)

I think it's a beautiful run.

I must recognize the work by @Thom Wye for simplify the route and make it less cumbersome and deadly.

Also I think that episode 5 need a improvement on its route.

And could happen the same thing of doom, m1-m7 time can be improved using items that works for get a better m8 time, m1-m7 route vs total time route.

9 minutes ago, kokrean said:

Heretic episode 4 in 7:55

heretice4-755.zip

(not video added)

I think it's a beautiful run.

 

I must recognize the work by @Thom Wye for simplify the route and make it less cumbersome and deadly.

 

Also I think that episode 5 need a improvement on its route.

 

And could happen the same thing of doom, m1-m7 time can be improved using items that works for get a better m8 time, m1-m7 route vs total time route.

well the key grab at grand stair is my only contribution to the community that afaik is my original )

ep5 is gonna get a big improvement once someone makes use of the m3 squeeze. I kinda wanted it to be me, but I want to save episode and longer speedruns for the streaming channel I plan to launch, so it is up for grabs

I like your uses of the morph ovum and your route through M7.

I have some further thoughts on how E4 could be improved.

• JCD has a truly marvelous strat for M2, but does it have a consistent enough setup? I wasn't able to pull it off even in practice.
• And I think M4 could have wing usage optimization. the current route uses only about 15 seconds of wing time, could at least one of the level's "wings" be improved with flying without excessively risking losing the wings?

2 hours ago, Thom Wye said:

I like your uses of the morph ovum and your route through M7.

Thanks.

2 hours ago, Thom Wye said:

And I think M4 could have wing usage optimization. the current route uses only about 15 seconds of wing time

Oh!... yes!... How I did not thought about that?.

2 hours ago, Thom Wye said:

JCD has a truly marvelous strat for M2, but does it have a consistent enough setup? I wasn't able to pull it off even in practice.

I Don't think there is a better strategy for e4m2 on episode runs, the wings path must be followed for the wing glitch, could be another way to get those but this actually could be the fastest.

19 hours ago, kokrean said:

I Don't think there is a better strategy for e4m2 on episode runs, the wings path must be followed for the wing glitch, could be another way to get those but this actually could be the fastest.

have you watched JCD's SM-speed of E4M2?

@Thom Wye Yes, but wings must be grabbed for get faster e4m3 and follow the wing glitch line. Don't matter if get 1 and don't use it, wings always are deleted from the inventory for the next levels.

@kokrean but you can open the outer ring of the map where the wings are without setting foot in the central yellow key pit

24 minutes ago, Thom Wye said:

but you can open the outer ring of the map where the wings are without setting foot in the central yellow key pit

Don't know if I'm wrong, but as I can see the doors for fall and get the wings are closed all the entire jcd's demos, don't know if another entrance to get wings.

@kokrean the route would be timebomb-jumping onto the inner ring, opening the gates to the outer ring, grabbing the wings, grabbing the green key, grabbing the second wings and then finishing the level normally

the key part is the timebomb jump onto the walkway, the linedef opening the doors to the outer ring does not need you to go through the yellow door

25 minutes ago, Thom Wye said:

the route would be timebomb-jumping onto the inner ring, opening the gates to the outer ring, grabbing the wings, grabbing the green key, grabbing the second wings and then finishing the level normally

the key part is the timebomb jump onto the walkway, the linedef opening the doors to the outer ring does not need you to go through the yellow door

Interesting. 

About timebomb boost, looks like a kind of this skips, trick that takes advantage of the player's momentum preservation. 

Could be easier test it with a TAS.

kokrean
I even had to watch several times to understand - what is happening on the screen, heh. This wings-trick turns 4th episode run in flying movie, I like this. You guys even calculate - how many seconds is better to use wings, crazy run tuning! Also, I really like stealing the blue key on E4M5, I have not seen this before.

Do you think the same is possible for the 5th episode? As far as I can see, 2 wings present only on E5M9, I don't know how much difficult and quick it will be to pick up them on M9 and return on main road, further, need save wings along the rest M4-M7 maps, but the sum time may turn out faster, in theory. Maybe you already tested this and such route is possible? In any case, I don’t remember speed movies - where secret map is involved, it might turn out interesting.
 

Episode 5 is already "winged".

@PVS you should really check out the speedrun.com heretic page ) not only are these routes for episodes 4 and 5 already in place, but they were put in place maybe 2 years ago by now? (by me lol)

I was and perhaps still am guilty of kinda disregarding the heretic demos collection in the same way, many things I did not see on speedrun.com and therefore considered my own ideas were in fact already done before by the demo community. I repeat myself but I just think the two communities should be tied together way more than they are, since the goal of finishing the game the fastest is shared.

I realized that what I was asking about 5th episode is already recorded in video, good. But I don't understand - why the word "community" means so much to you? We are already here, talking about hobby that are interesting to us, do you need something more? Look around, read at least this topic, notice the dates and people and you will see what a 'Heretic demo community' is, it is interesting to literally a few people, almost without feedback, as it has always been. But for me this is not a problem at all, I do what I like, this is my feedback from this hobby.

I know speedrun.com from its beginning, but today, I just technically can't watch any videos on my old PC, don't ask why, it's not interesting, but again - for me this is not a problem. I saw your recommendations for watching 4,5 episodes before, but as you understand now - I just can't do it.

On 1/14/2021 at 6:27 PM, Thom Wye said:

I was and perhaps still am guilty of kinda disregarding the heretic demos collection in the same way, many things I did not see on speedrun.com and therefore considered my own ideas were in fact already done before by the demo community. I repeat myself but I just think the two communities should be tied together way more than they are, since the goal of finishing the game the fastest is shared.

I think it's a real shame that there are people running heretic seriously but not recording / submitting demos. I hope that you can encourage more people to participate in this age-old tradition :^)

@PVS you kinda said it yourself. the communities are tiny, both here and there, merging them together will mean more stuff happening, more people bouncing ideas, strats and routes off of each other. I think it would be better for everyone.

@kraflab I mean... the demo community in places still lists episode times for the first 7 maps separately from the total time, like we're stuck in 1995 and we don't have anything but the demos. or the topic of all-episode runs we talked about couple days ago. tradition is great, but it shouldn't be just a pair of shackles limiting your options. To a person who today decides to do runs seriously, the demo recording traditions might easily look like a relic of the past, with no justifications for anything except for historical justifications.

I could just the same way ask, why would anyone doing a speedrun today not record a video of it and make it one-click accessible to the whole world, instead of the download to unzip to commandline process (and I would answer myself: because of old low-end laptops like the one I am using right now :) )

but I think the facts that

1. we can store and replay (and re-record) the demo for a ridiculously low storage cost
2. that demo can be analyzed for cheating, and
3. the incredible job @fabian is doing on the crispy port to make demo recording as easy, as accessible to anyone and as little cumbersome as possible (and I can't emphasize this enough, one keypress reset)

are all reasons to have the demos still around.

If there was enough past interest in recording all-episode runs then we would have already set something up for that (this was implemented for doom in the past but it never caught on). As far as timing, dsda in its current iteration has always shown the full time, and it did so when I joined the community many years ago, although heretic demos were only imported a couple years ago. It's not just about analyzing the demos for cheating - demos are the only way to verify the legitimacy of a run. If you need a demo to validate something, much of the motivation to render things into a video fall to the side. Without a demo, a video has no real meaning as far as records are concerned. It may seem like shackles to you, but to us these are just standards.

well, if crispy gets multiple episode demo recording capabilities, we'll be able to observe what effect it will have. maybe the time is right for that kind of category

and @kraflabdemo file is NOT the only way of verifying a legitimacy of the run. other games exist, they don't have demo recording capabilities and yet, their communities are thriving and runs are being verified for legitimacy through whatever means they have on hand, beginning with cummulative knowledge of the community on what is reasonably possible to perform (sped-up TAS runs with slow-motion gameplay), and continuing with just an analysis of the video recording, or the fact that the run was being streamed live.

don't get me wrong, the demo format is a very powerful and convenient way of validating a speedrun, but it is not the only one, maybe in 1995, but not today with live streaming

No shit, I've been speedrunning games for 7 years, many more than doom. Most games aren't open source and so readily modifiable. You're talking about a subset of cheating that live streaming could help with, but I'm not. You simply can't validate runs that don't have demos to show the game wasn't modified. It's literally impossible. Look at dream for instance - if he was less blatant in his modifications no one would have caught it. Imagine if such games had demos - you could actually verify things without a doubt.

Of course, when you have no way to verify legitimacy, you have to make do with what you have. But when a game has a way to verify things and someone doesn't use  it? Hm...

Even with the demo confirming the engine wasn't modified we've still caught a bunch of cheaters thanks to it. The demo format existing necessitates its use because it also makes frame by frame editing more readily accessible - and ultimately discoverable.

I am arguing here mostly from the understanding I have of the subject from Karl Jobst video on cheating in doom runs, but wasn't the cheated courtyard run caught because it was poorly spliced? would it slip through if the runner checked for the tics with no input? or more broadly, is it possible to splice runs so that it doesn't show in the demo file? or to successfully present a to any degree tool-assisted run as legit gameplay run?

There will always be tell-tale signs for those who know precisely what to look for. But it is best if these aren't widely publicised, so that potential cheaters won't know how to obfuscate their ill deeds.

I would say that the ability to cheat even within the confines of the demo format is all the more reason for why we should continue to maintain it as a standard, as any evidence of such cheating is even less detectable for a video of the game. Videos also open up completely novel ways of cheating runs in more complex category, including ones that may just happen by mistake; e.g., resurrects of monsters in maxes that do not show up on the monster counter and may be completely undetectable in a video, or for pacifist, damage to monsters that would invalidate a run but may be completely invisible, for example, blast damage.

At the end of the day, equating the standards for Doom with games that don't have demo recording capabilities doesn't make a lot of sense, since those games haven't got the option to record demos, so it's not like it was ever a choice for them to do anything other than videos for verification. With Doom/Heretic/etc., that choice is there, and not making the choice for demos seems substantially worse for verification of demos to the point that it is suspicious to choose not to record demos. Indeed, there is the case of ExoSDA who was outed for cheating in a different game community, and, for Doom specifically, he chose not to release demos for his Claustrophobia 2 runs. It's hardly definitive evidence that they were cheated of course, but it's not a big stretch to hypothesize that the reason for not doing so was that they may have been cheated, and having just videos would make it extremely difficult to find any evidence of that.

I do agree with Grazza that we should refrain from publicizing methods of cheating demos anyway, of course.

well, at the end of the day, I was arguing for using demos as an anticheating measure from the start :)

Heretic episode 5 in 11:16

heretice5-1116.zip

Already in demo format, great! Interesting run, you fly well, there are funny moments where monsters don't want to give their wings, 2 minutes on M9 but full time is much faster. Speed movie with secret map, it's unusual, thanks for the demo! Wings-trick is almost over, but look - E6M1 also have 2 wings, possible short movie with 2 maps, this is according to rules. Only sadly - E6M2 will be very short, I always liked this map. No comments in txt again? I always read, and it may come in handy for history, sometimes it's interesting to read what the guys/girls wrote in the 90s/2k, heh.

At the expense of the previous conversation about demos and videos, only my opinion. I need demo not for check honesty of run, I never do this, because I don't suppose at all that in this old classic game - one people will lie to other people on purpose, what's the point of this? If people do this through video games, what are they doing in real life? As far as I know, the current Heretic table does not contain such demos, possible find a number of demos recorded on WinNT with -nosound, which is not entirely correct, because this is slightly slow-mo recording, but people had completely different reasons for that, I remember.

Most importantly, I like demo files - because this is action that is produced by a real game engine in real time on my screen, this is no way comparable to any video, this is a completely different. Today, everyone can use for playback their favorite version/port, in them their favorite settings, screen resolutions, effects, etc., using a solid vanilla demo format everyone gets their own impression. Soon, there will be a new Heretic port with support vanilla demo format, there will be more options, it's always good!

Some Episode 1 Nightmare! 100% Secrets demos :
h1x2-140.zip
h1x3-120.zip
h1x4-054.zip
h1x5-115.zip
h1x6-141.zip
h1x7-145.zip
h1x8-053.zip
h1x9-110.zip
 

Heretic should have a true Black Plague 100% category since it doesn't have respawning monsters.