Learning to speedrun

I suck at speedrunning. :P

I have been trying to get a bit more into being a demo-runner, and all I am good at are maxdemos it seems. I can't speedrun at all. So, I want to know, any tips for it? Any good advice? Any good existing demos I could maybe learn from? I would like to give doing speedrun demos a shot. Thanks in advance.

Obviously, knowing the layout of the map is vital. Don't want to get lost now do ya ^_^?

Plan out a route that is the quickest (that is, one that's usually the most risky in most cases).

Can't really think of much more than that. Perhaps someone else more experienced in speedrunning could add to the above.

As for speed demos, check out mine on Hell Revealed 2 or Loh2 for examples (and in some cases, what not to do with a rocket launcher ^_^). They should be on Doom SDA or, if you want, you can search through the older threads as they are there as well.

Good luck!

a great resource for this is the older Compet-N demos and the Pdang demos.
You can compare and practice against the best players... and players who aren't quite the best.
It would be a good meter to show where you are at and what you are doing wrong.(if anything)
I'd be willing to bet you can beat a lot of the DOOM(2) initial-record speedruns.

something I think new players don't realize is that most of the best players play a particular run many (sometimes very many) times.... and you only get to see the best one. (although, for several players, their worst would be my best... but let's not go there. :) )

Well, there are basic skills, and map-specific work.


Basic Skills
Running. You need to practice running smoothly and accurately, and avoid things that lose speed, such as bumping into walls. Strafe-run whenever possible (i.e. if at any point you're not straferunning, there should be a specific reason), and use wall-running to your advantage.
Monsters. In a speedrun, monsters are just obstacles, and you need to minimize the amount of your time that they waste. Learn how they operate, and get to know how to run past them, and use quirks in their attacks (e.g. if you run fairly close to a revenant it will walk towards you rather than firing a missile) and their pain chance (e.g. an SSG blast will normally shut a cyber up long enough for you to slip past it) to your advantage. Fight them only if you need to. Sometimes by varying your route very slightly, you can open a clear path for yourself without losing any time.
Weapons. Learn which weapons clear a path most quickly. The SSG is great in most situations, while the BFG's traces can clear a room of small enemies (remember the fireball can only harm one monster). Berserk is sometimes the fastest way to get rid of a monster. Chaingun and plasma gun are good in situations where you might take heavy damage if you used a less rapidfire weapon.
Tricks. Get to know how the quirks of the Doom engine can be used to your advantage, so you can quickly recognize shortcut possibilities. These include switch tricks (from below; before it has risen; through a wall), archie jumps, rocket jumps, strafe-40/50 jumps, suicide exits (e.g. to get under bars), and others.
Learn from others. Watch lots of compet-n and DSDA demos.
Practice and self-criticism. Record yourself playing and watch and rewatch these demos. Look carefully at what is costing you time.
Practice some more. Practice, practice, practice.


Map-Specific Work
Learn the map and plan a route. Otherwise you can spend a lot of time recording a demo only to realize that your route was utter crap. Look at the map in an editor (if it's a complex map), and run through it with nomonsters or in godmode. Decide what you need to do, where you need to go and what you need to pick up. Determine what the best possible time might be, and assess how close to it you might realistically get with monsters present, and taking damage.
Learn what triggers what. See if there are ways to avoid releasing or awakening monsters. Sometimes staying pacifist for a while will save you a lot of bother. Likewise, get to know which lines/features monsters can't cross, and which lines block sound (and thus where you can use weapons without particular monsters hearing).
Look for shortcuts. Don't assume you have to follow the author's intended route. Many maps are non-linear, or feature errors or unintended shortcuts. Try stupid ideas - they sometimes work. Sometimes keys (or other useful items) can be grabbed by slamming into walls, and switches can be pressed in a similar way. Be logical in your investigation - determine what you have to do in order to exit, and work back from that. Sometimes you find most of a map can actually be skipped.
Check for previous demos. See if anyone else has recorded any demos on the map you're looking at. No point in reinventing the wheel. Even if the demos are in a different category, you may well find some useful ideas in them.

Good maps to practice? Dunno, probably best just to choose maps you like, and perhaps ones that aren't too large (or small), and aren't insanely difficult. Perhaps it's also best to choose maps that allow pretty free movement - not too cramped, and without too much fiddly architecture that tends to "snag" the player. Or maybe start with an idea that appeals to you, and look for (or try to remember) a map where you can apply it. One of my first speedruns was on a map called Rigel1, an old favourite of mine. I started by planning out a route (on a print-out of the map), and was very surprised how much I was able to bring the time down. Oddly enough, the eventual route was very similar to the one I had planned out on paper to start with - and initially abandoned as too difficult. Sometimes the "reckless" route is the right one, and as you get to know the map better, you see ways to make the route work. You kind of develop an intuition the more you run through a map.

Here, tell me what you think. I did a e1m1 run. I beat it in 12 seconds, at one point(wasn't recording), I beat it in 11. Recorded with doom.exe, so its a vanilla demo.

freewebs.com/masterofdeath27/mode1m1s.lmp

Ill check out some of the Compet-N stuff later when I have a bit more time.

Well for a player who is interested in speedrunning but not at the same level as c-n players publicdang is a good place to go. I also had a mirra site which was taken over from Dashiva that is also a good place to practice, but it's only for ultimate doom. This one however is more to my style because it takes single gametics into account. If there is interest I may start it back up again, so let me know.

for a run like that one, I recommend repeatedly trying it without monsters. then just try to duplicate that performance with monsters.
You should be able to do :11 regularly, :10 isn't too easy... and :09 is very hard.

I see that you strafe to the right (or however you wish to say that -- you are looking left), this will make some maps easier (e3m6, for example), but others much harder (like e1m1!).

Thanks for the tips again. :)

At first I was actually taking the secret exit to the left(where I got the 11 second run actually), but I quickly got bad at it(after slowly getting good, WTF?), and it started to annoy the hell out of me.

Looking left/right... I will try again looking to the right, seeing how much better I perform. I'm used to straferunning in DM, and circle strafeing, wich is probaly where my looking left behavior came from ;).

I will try it without monsters as well.

And thanks again for all the advice! I think I will try more maps besides e1m1 later, but don't expect larger maps, I still want to get the hang of this on smaller stuff first.

[EDIT]freewebs.com/masterofdeath27/mode1m1s2.lmp

-nomonsters helped a little bit in planning my path, but with monsters I re-recorded this demo several times because they don't go the same way every time sadly...

Beat e1m1 in 11 seconds, took the normal path instead of going through the secret door. I tried changing the direction I was facing while straferunning, and it helped a little bit. I may do e1m1 a bit more, then move on to a different map. Any maps you would like to see me do, opulent? ;)

Opulent said:

for a run like that one, I recommend repeatedly trying it without monsters. then just try to duplicate that performance with monsters.
You should be able to do :11 regularly, :10 isn't too easy... and :09 is very hard.

Still, 0:09 on E1M1 isn't that hard. It's the only Compet-N UV speed record I've managed to reach myself; even 0:05 on Doom 2 MAP01 seems nearly impossible.

Grazza's essay ;-) pretty much covered it all. Print it out, read it, and then read it again. The man knows what he's talking about. I would just like to add a few minor, humble, points:

• Waking up monsters. Grazza mentions avoiding waking up monsters. Of course, sometimes the exact opposite is advantageous; by just randomly shooting or punching in the air, at the right place and time, you can wake up monsters who will then move to certain positions which will help you get a good time (they move out of the way, they block other more troublesome monsters' paths, they activate lifts for you, etc.). These kinds of behaviour is very hard to predict, so try it once in a while to see if it has any positive effect.
  
• Try different styles. There's a reason some COMPET-N players completely dominate some tables and are nowhere to be seen in others. Doing a 30-minute Tyson is vastly different from doing a 0:04 speedrun, even though many of the skills required to do one is needed to do the other. Grazza mentions these fully. It all boils down to what styles you enjoy playing.
  

fred: I find 0:05 for MAP01 easier than 0:09 for E1M1, actually. It took me a couple hours to get my 0:09 for DANG, only half an hour or so to get 0:05. For the original poster - you should get *at least* 0:10 on E1M1 before going on to anything else, it's a good way to refine your basic running speed and your 'general speedrunning kung fu' - not losing your patience, getting into a rhythm, etc. I think Grazza's post was *excellent*.

The only thing I'd want to add to it is that speedrunning is a lot about attitude. The biggest trap I've seen people fall into when trying to speedrun is playing like they're playing normally; looking around, killing unnecessary stuff, going for medkits.

My attitude to speedrunning a map is this - first learn the route, now it play it over twenty times in nomo till you have it down. (once you get good you don't need to *do* this, you can kinda do it in your head). Now start running properly, and keep this in mind; the goal is to be as similar as possible to the nomo run. *Everything* which involves not running continuously at full speed on the most direct route to the exit is bad and if you can possibly avoid doing that thing, you should. If it is at all possible to avoid running to the edge of the room to pick up the ammo box or medkit, then avoid it. Never stop to fire - keep running. Don't shoot up a room full of monsters just because - run straight through. If you get whacked too badly, pick off the hitscan enemies as you run. Don't switch weapons unnecessarily, this will bog you down. Top players spend more time than you'd think considering the strategy of whether and when to switch weapons. In regular play, if you hit a chaingunner with the shotgun and he doesn't fall over, you'd probably switch to pistol to finish him off and save ammo; never, ever do this in speedrunning, just hit him with the shotgun again. It's faster.

But yeah, basically, you need to have the right attitude. Think of the nomo time as 'optimal' and if you want to get faster consider the things you're doing that you wouldn't be doing in nomo. And crucially, if you try something fast three times and it doesn't work, _don't give up_. As someone above said, everyone but Sedlo plays runs over and over and over again. (Sedlo can play LV07 for half an hour, get 0:08, and not be happy with it - but then, Sedlo's not human). A lot of the time this is because we're doing something stupid that will only *work* one time out of ten - for an example, look at LV02-040, the way I run the red key area. Nine times out of ten, running it that fast - even flawlessly and making every shot properly - you will either die or be on such low health you die soon after. This doesn't mean it's not the right strategy, it just means you'll have to make lots of attempts. Get used to this, it's a fact of speedrunning life.

oh, and which direction you straferun in is entirely a personal preference thing, each side will have an advantage in certain levels and situations but over the whole of speedrunning it boils down to more or less 50/50. It's pretty hard to be 'ambidextrous' too, you *will* get used to whichever you do habitually. I face right and strafe left, and doing it the other way for too long literally makes me feel a little nauseous, I'm that habituated to it.