grav Posted June 6, 2018 (edited) So a week ago I finally managed to complete a proper Watch Me Die! difficulty single segment run (the equivalent of UV-Speed full game runs). The time I achieved is 32:32 IGT or 36:58 real time. Obviously with this not being a PC doom game, I am unable to record demos... but if anyone would be interested in my raw video file, I uploaded it to google drive for anyone to download. You have my permission to host it in any capacity you choose if you want as well. Video file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1r1wYS6h8tGD3CXb2nUZnGMIQVNBMYHAG Youtube upload: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnBDZXf7hn8 Twitch VOD with chat/reaction: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/267448690 The context of this run is almost as interesting as the run itself. So when I first picked up this game in 2014, the WR for the WMD full game run was 1 hour 8 minutes (real time) by peaches. He had routed just about every map from scratch but obviously being the only player to play a game seriously you end up missing quite a bit of stuff. As I improved I inevitably challenged the WMD record and was able to claim the WR at 1 hour 2 minutes beating peaches' improved WR time of 1 hour 3 minutes. After this, I went back to the drawing board and basically rerouted the game from scratch, finding much faster ways to do many maps without sacrificing too much survivability. Obviously in any Doom game, you know how much time can be saved in UV/NM by just risking it more than usual. Doom 64 specifically had a surprising number of opportunities where going faster is actually safer... IF you don't mess up your execution. Spending less time in a dangerous room reduces the total time you spend with a chance to get royally screwed over... but of course this often takes more skill to execute consistently. Going through a room super fast may leave you unscathed every time you execute it well, but if you get stuck on a wall for a tenth of a second it could mean instant death. I started to realize that the time save potential for situations like these were too much to pass up basically. As a result I ended up making the run insanely hard to complete. After over 2000 runs, I achieved my 53:47 as sort of the culmination of the strategies at the time. I made a couple large mistakes but the run was fairly good for the time. Some time passed and I joined the-elite trying to get some of them to get interested in Doom 64. One of the runners in that community started messing around in the game and he ended up finding a way to clip through fences. This basically skipped the entirety of Final Outpost and portions of Altar of Pain and No Escape. The new life this brought to the game got me to come back to the game and try to get one last god run to end all god runs. I rerouted the whole game from scratch AGAIN, this time implementing basically every risky strategy I could reasonably get away with so that I can be certain the time I get will last. My goal time had dropped all the way to 44 minutes. No one map was all that terrible to complete without dying, but when you stack up 20 maps in a row where you can die 20% of the time, you soon realize how hopeless it becomes to not die one time in that span. I wasn't deterred, so I grinded for months and months, racking up a total of 16000 attempts. I never got my run. I got all the way to final map or two a couple times and I died every time, naturally. ZELLLOOO, a newer runner who joined around this time, started playing Watch Me Die and he was getting good enough that he could beat my 53:47 soon. To ensure I didn't lose the WR, I banged out a single run with marathon style strats to get a low 48 minute run. ZELLLOOO ended up with a 48:44 and he moved on after achieving that. He knew I would just beat him instantly if he did get the WR so that may have deterred him from continuing. I kept grinding a bit more for my god time but eventually I started getting challengers in some of the other games I ran at the time such as Blast Corps, and I was also interested more in Goldeneye runs. I decided to take a break to play those games more and come back to Doom 64 with a fresh start later. Fast forward to 2017, I was ready to come back. I was going to start with Be Gentle! (easiest difficulty) runs to ease back into the game. We run easy mode alongside WMD in this game because the difference between the two is much more pronounced in Doom 64 than in PC Doom. Doom 64 has a billion kill triggers and maps with tight corridors, both of which become drastically less of a big deal on Be Gentle!. We also have no option to run NoMo either of course. Anyway, we obviously don't take it as seriously as WMD but it's still a legitimate run that we try to optimize. During my grind for a good Be Gentle single segment run, I made a breakthrough by finding an advanced version of the fence clip mentioned earlier. This clip (or glide as you guys would call it) allowed us to teleport through 16 unit bars using the lag generated from the super shotgun. The gap between the bars was not relevant as Doomguy is literally going from one side of the bars to the other instantly. This broke the hell out of several maps. Then I made another breakthrough that allowed you to clip through 32 unit bars. This broke 3 more maps to pieces. As if that wasn't enough, I found yet another huge glitch by discovering the blockmap out of bounds memory manipulation that allowed you to essentially delete any linedef you want by navigating to a precise location in the void. Two more maps have now been broken. I achieved a good enough Be Gentle! run with all of this new tech (26 minutes RTA), so now my eyes were set on Watch Me Die for another crack at the run of the ages. The time I was aiming for had dropped from 53 to 44 to now 36 minutes. I was expecting an even more heroic grind since on top of all of the hardships of this run already, now you had a dozen really difficult glitches that all easily could kill you or cause significant time loss if not done perfectly. Despite the prospect of this taking an eternity to do, I went back to the grind. 2000 runs later, about 90% less than I thought it would take, I finally strike gold and get lucky for once in my life. 36:58 and no significant mistakes. I lost probably 40s across the run due to unavoidable bad luck and obviously I lost sporadic time from minor mistakes along the way too. All of that is more than acceptable for me though and now I come to you with my finished product. By no means is this run perfect and I fully expect to have to improve it at some point in the future due to either a new skip or a new player challenging me... but as of today if nothing changes this will be the last time I get. Videos for the list of significant Doom 64 exclusive glitches found that were mentioned in this timeline: Fence clip discovery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UEBKKaALA8 16 unit bar clip discovery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnM_isD0bf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7JIIVQIzNU 32 unit bar clip discovery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-13AXJb7eg Linedef deletion discovery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr0Ih-hlVYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey8cA6l9yo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpJ64kv2T8g Historical Watch Me Die! runs of note: Peaches 1:08:04 RTA - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqfR_b0OSxw Grav 1:02:30 RTA - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/48151785 Grav 53:47 RTA - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/44196162 ZELLLOOO 48:44 RTA - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViSFN38RRoY Grav 36:58 RTA - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnBDZXf7hn8 It's pretty cool seeing the progression of this game over the years. Check these all out if you are interested in that. Individual map in game time time comparison for these five runs to each other: https://i.imgur.com/qsSTdDU.png Key speedrunning differences and quirks of Doom 64 from PC doom: -Lag clips of fences and bars up to 32 units thick even if the gap is smaller than Doomguy's unit width -Half second of vulnerability after hitting exit switches/trigger before map exits (this MASSIVELY affects routing btw) -Kill triggers all over the place and almost all maps are tight corridor based with many enemies blocking them -Control stick neutral reset allows change of neutral position to achieve SR40 strafe speed -Diagonal neutral position strafing can achieve SR50 speed but is only worth using for glitches and skips since it takes a second to set up each time -Linedef skips are not directional biased so skipping them both intentionally and unintentionally is much easier -No archviles, chaingunners, revenants, or masterminds -Lost souls have half the health but twice the aggression -Pain elementals spawn two lost souls at once. If you block a pain ele, both lost souls explode with the damage of an explosive barrel each -Hell knights and barons can infight -The mother demon (basically an archvile revenant hybrid with more hp than a cyberdemon) -The unmaker weapon (now obsolete in the speedrun as you never go to the secret maps to power it up and make it worth using) -Wallrunning/thingrunning is not possible -You can clip back in bounds from the void in almost any location, assuming you are on equal elevation as where you clip to -Cyberdemon rockets track you better -Arachnotrons fire twin plasma bursts -Plasma rifle has no down period but is a bit nerfed, so chaingun is more useful relative to that than normal -Probably a few other minor things I'm forgetting So yeah, that's basically it. Hope you enjoy. This could be the last major paradigm shift in all of Doom UV-Speed runs ever unless some new crazy thing is found in either of the games. I hope it isn't though. We all know in speeedrunning that almost nothing is ever truly solved ;) Edited June 7, 2018 by grav 24 Share this post Link to post
ReFracture Posted June 7, 2018 (edited) It has been very fascinating watching your journey through this game. For a very long time you refused to complete a run that would be too slow relative to your goal even if it was significantly faster than your world record at the time.. you saw such vanity as a waste of time and that is truly a rarity among the speed running community. Congratulations on finally reaching a time you are pleased with! 0 Share this post Link to post
Deleted_Account Posted June 7, 2018 This was really fun to watch! Thanks for sharing. 0 Share this post Link to post
SaladBadger Posted June 8, 2018 I find it fairly interesting that your record is 32:32 in terms of game time, given that I believe the fastest UV Speed of all of Doom 2 is just under 20 minutes, even with all the absurd shit that's been discovered. So much different between these two games, and I'm very much enjoying the discoveries of tricks in Doom 64. 0 Share this post Link to post
ReX Posted June 9, 2018 At first, I was confused (even annoyed) at the "twitch" nature of the demo. But then I began to appreciate the strategy and skill that was employed in swiftly reaching each objective, namely, the exit switch. Kudos! 0 Share this post Link to post
