Doom II World Record: 34 minutes, 13 seconds

It's named "30nm3413.lmp", recorded by Henning Skogsto, and downloaded from the COMPET-N database here.

For some reason, the demo always hangs up on Level 9: The Pit. After getting the yellow key, the player jumps into the pit surrounded by many Imps and suddenly stops moving. The blazing fire coming from the Imps kills him instantly, and he restarts at the beginning, moving in illogical directions.

I'm using version 1.9 and have tested it in both DOS and Windows.

For those of you who have watched the demo, have you ever been able to get it to run in its entirety? Could this be a hoax? In other words, could Skogsto really have died in Level 9 and submitted it as a full entry anyway?

It's not a hoax. If you're absolutely sure that you're using (the one and only true) doom2.exe version 1.9 and it really doesn't work, then there can be no explanation other than that your doom2.wad file is corrupt.

I'm quite sure it is not corrupt, as I've just reinstalled it using a legitimate CD-ROM from id Software, and have been able to play through each level personally without any problems. In fact, I have tried the exact same demo on a friend's computer and the same problem occurred in the same level as well.

Can you please post your WAD file info? Mine:

Version: 1.9 Windows/DOS
Size: 13.9 MB (14,604,584 bytes)
Modified: Wednesday, May 29, 1996, 1:04:46 AM

Thanks in advance.

Hm, nope. I'm watching it in PrBoom and he's just finishing up Downtown so it seems to work fine.

EDIT: He just beat Icon of Sin so...

Works here, my doom2.wad is 14604584 bytes and my doom2.exe is 709905 bytes. They have the md5 sums of 25e1459ca71d321525f84628f45ca8cd and e2382b7dc47ae2433d26b6e6bc312999
respectively.

You should be able to play the demo back with Prboom2.2.x.
There are several cases where more recent chipsets give different ms-dos results.

Thanks. I just ran it on PRBoom 2.2.3 and it stuck on Level 24: The Chasm. There was a sound like that of a Pause, and after that the music continued running while nothing moved on screen. Then I just pressed a button and the application quit in error.

It's really frustrating when things like this happen because to test it again, I must start over from the beginning and watch huge sections of it over again. I've probably already watched Levels 1-9 five times already.

I don't know whether it's a memory issue (I have 256 MB so it shouldn't be a problem) but I always test everything at least twice to make sure that it's not just a problem with my computer.

However, all of your help is greatly appreciated.

Personally, I find GLBoom far less liable to crash than PrBoom (in fact, I don't recall GLBoom ever crashing). It's the OpenGL version of the same program, and should be in the same zip.

If you want to watch a demo speeded up (e.g. just to test if it plays back OK), you can replace -playdemo with -timedemo or -fastdemo. I just watched 30nm3413 with -fastdemo in GLBoom 2.2.3 - it took about 3 minutes.

You can also increase/decrease the game speed in prboom/glboom.

Note: -timedemo works with the original exes and most ports, but -fastdemo is less standard.

I just ran the demo again through PRBoom using the -fastdemo parameter and the whole demo worked! So I assume the previous Level 24 crash must have been a problem with my computer.

Thanks to all of you for your wonderful help!