From cradle to...

I made a concept thread a while back about demo-recording blunders to bring in a bit of funny commentary from the players. Here is another, since I don't contribute in actual demos anymore... if you can still remember, share with us your first ever demos, perhaps in various styles. Luckily, I made clear which ones were my first in the txt files.

First UV speed demo and first demo for Compet-N, dated 10-7-2001: pl08-135

Oddly the first speed demo for the level, which was partly the reason for selecting it. After this, I did a couple other speed demos across TNT and Plutonia before getting in deeper. Note the plug for my Quake 3 clan at the time, that seems kinda embarrassing now. :P

First movie demo, dated 12-16-2001: e1nm0659

I began running movies from the first episode and I think I moved on sequentially with the Nightmare 100% runs until I had completed all episodes for UDoom and Doom2. I wasn't good to my nerves, leaving them literally shot afterwards, but in the end it was good for me.

First max demo, dated 1-3-2002: av262627

It's packaged in the stx-vile zip, presumably the leftovers from the initial demo-pack effort. I picked one monster of a map for my first one, but I really enjoyed it, since I improved it several times during the course of the pack's life.

First pacifist demo, dated 5-1-2002: hp13-106

Hehe... it just amused me to no end that this one was possible. Pacifist is so strange... it's endlessly frustrating and relies more on monster cooperation and good fortune but can be even more addicting than any other style. Pacifist is the mode for people who are gluttons for punishment (guess that's me, bleh).

First ever -respawn, -fast demos... oops, seems I've never recorded any demos in either of these styles. Kinda strange after 5 or so years, but whatever. :P

Feel free to contribute to this discussion if you can remember where the obsession began. :)

Vile said:

Oddly the first speed demo for the level, which was partly the reason for selecting it. After this, I did a couple other speed demos across TNT and Plutonia before getting in deeper. Note the plug for my Quake 3 clan at the time, that seems kinda embarrassing now. :P

I began running movies from the first episode and I think I moved on sequentially with the Nightmare 100% runs until I had completed all episodes for UDoom and Doom2. I wasn't good to my nerves, leaving them literally shot afterwards, but in the end it was good for me.

Nothing embarrassing about Stickmen... plus you were a worthy, contributing player.
Movies are always logical progression from playing each map individually. That is why D2S players really EARNED that title.

as for me, I watched for a long time before I seriously recorded myself. My first Compet-N demo is a fluke: ns25-117... but did motivate me to record more.
I play DOOM for fun, so those "glutton for punishment" categories are for players who have 100x more will than me.... or was that 'skill'? :)

lastly, your (public) journey starts with quality, whereas some of us started long ago and less gloriously. I could name several players who started with less-than-skilled performances... who now can give anyone a run for their money. Me, I started ungloriously and am waiting to bloom any day now. :D

Some of mine. And I don't think I'll include any Pdang stuff, that would just be too embarrassing:

First pacifist demo and first demo to Compet-N, dated 17-01-1999: p3m6-312
This demo was inspired by the fact that I watched Rini's pacifist collection for Doom1 and he noted this level hadn't been done yet. The demo is not Compet-N quality, it's like a DHT Free exam or something. But since it was a first ever I thought I should make it public for historical purposes or something. Even at the time I knew it sucked so I waited a few months to upload so I had some other stuff to disguise its suckiness with.

First movie demo, dated 19-09-1999: ep4-4706
I saw a demo in incoming from a fellow Australian, who was also a keyboarder, and it was probably the first time I'd seen a C-N demo that I thought "hey, I might be able to beat that". I think I spent most of an afternoon recording since I wasn't familiar with the levels. It's a clearly relaxed, unhurried demo, and the times get worse as the levels progress. But it was fun to do and I think this is where I really started to like Episode 4.

First -fast demo, dated 12-02-2000: f3m8-044
I did this because I started playing for Dang and on one level me and Marko got into a bit of competition, bringing the f3m8 times down from about 1:10 to about 0:50 or something, at which point I saw Hegyi's demo was only five seconds faster so I decided to beat it. And when I'd finally beaten it I was so proud about having beaten one of the best speedrunners of all time that I wrote a long text saying how happy I was and detailing all the fantastic strategies I'd used and challenging Adam to take the level back.

Naturally, Adam returned a few days later with a five second improvement, ignored all of my wonderful strategies, and then wrote "I'll leave the optimization to you Chris". Which I fully deserved. Because there are records, and there are records. Some you can legitimately gloat about. Some, you just stay quiet and hope you don't get smacked down hard...

First NM demo, dated 14-03-2000: n1m5-150
I remember this demo for a couple of reasons. First was that in the previous C-N update Rovert Reevy had uploaded an n1m5 demo and Adam had announced him as the world's best keyboarder, so out of pride I wanted to beat *his* time in the next update. Second was that in the textfile I guessed that an optimum time would be about 1:30 or so, and Adam Williamson one month later recorded a 1:13. Cause he's a bastard.

This is one of the first demos I put real effort into and I think it still looks good, even though it got beaten by so much.

First UV max demo, dated 28-05-2000: u4m9-240
This one took me nearly a full day to do, for a twelve second improvement over an initial Anders maxdemo. I think the route was slightly rejiggered - pretty much all my records at this point needed some change in the route to beat the old record. You can tell watching that I've been playing this a long time.

First UV respawn demo, dated 27-07-2000: re10-358
And yes it's another new route, and that's definitely the only way I made a new record time. If I had a dollar for every shot that misses in this demo I'd be a rich man.

First UV speed demo, dated 16-10-2000: ev28-128
I only ever did UV speed demos for TNT. This was something to move onto after doing a few TNT maxes and I think it still looks okay, a bit slow but the movement looks nice.

I forgot to mention that after doing the 3 NS episodes for Doom2, I tried to record a 30ns (and my first 30nm, I guess). The farthest I got was map24 because I was too jittery to run the ledges and kept falling in, immediately ending over a half-hour of work... doing this at least 4 times. After that, I put it away for several years before coming back to it and finally beating it. I'm glad that I didn't let that one lie... grrr.

I dunno why I never uploaded those attempts as 23ns demos, though.

Interesting topic idea. I like it.

First UV-Speed and first ever demo made (Dated 10-26-2004): h223-336
Heh, who would've thought my first ever demo would be for a monster packed level of a popular megawad :P. It certainly wasn't a bad run at all and was fun to make. Of course, over time, I managed to bring the time down below 3 minutes, something I was quite impressed with.

First UV-Max (Dated 11-03-2004): eur24036
I think around this time is where I wondered if I was insane or not taking on giant maps like this for first ever demos :P. I'll admit the demo wasn't star quality, but there were no maxruns for the map yet, so why not?

First NM-Speed (Dated 11-19-2004): eq01n118az
I liked this wad and wanted to try getting a few demos for it done. This was one of those levels. For once, not a monster packed level :P. It was on NM though which likely made up for the lack of monsters. Still, this was a blast to record. I got a rush of...aggressiveness perhaps from the attempts at this level. It was that fun to record.

First UV -fast (Date 10-29-2005): h2311441
Who would have thought I'd come back to the same level I did my first ever demo on :P? Just happened to be something curious I wanted to try and it payed off. Wasn't all that hard either. Probably could improve it today if I put some time aside for it though.

First mouser demo (Dated 05-09-2006): x2m6-052
This was a great day for me. The day I became a mouser :P. I actually tried to use the mouse once before (KS map17 UV-Max I believe). It didn't go so well then. Of course, if I had set the mouse sensitivity down a notch or two, it might have been possible for me to become a mouser earlier :P. I also have a gem of a game called Hexen to thank for me becoming as good of a mouser as I am today.