Suggestion to the Doom Speedrunning community

[Dokta Whawee]

I think that it is time for a new category for the Doom Speed-Running community:

 

ZDoom Movement.

This category allows for players to use Jumping, Crouching, and Freelooking.

 

"Why?" you may ask?

 

First off, I feel that many Doom Speed-Running records are basically unbeatable. They have became so well optimized, that a lot are unbeatable. If we add this new category of Doom Speed-Running, then those old records would be kept, but there would also be new records to break, and new strategies to be discovered.

 

Second off, Having more modern Doom movement would, if you ask me, make speedruns more interesting. Also, since the new doom has these movement abilities, I feel that classic doom speedruns using such abilities wouldn't be demeaning to the source material.

 

And, finally, because of the advent of Twitch Speedruns, I think that this would be a new way to embrace the new era of speedrunning.

 

So, what do you think of this idea?

Edited July 31, 2018 by Dokta Whawee

[GoneAway]

I'm assuming this is just a shitpost, since the alternative is someone who doesn't understand anything about the community jumping in and acting like they do. But, I'll respond anyway.

 

1) Jump demos date back far into the past, and anyone can do them (and compete) if they so choose (even see obscure packs, like the heretic nm jump runs seen here: https://www.dsdarchive.com/players/andrey_budko). Also, more recently, Ancalagon did a cool run of doom 2 on zandronum.

 

2) As you can easily see on dsda, we already track anything that anyone wants to run.

 

3) The existing records aren't remotely unbeatable or optimized.

 

4) Jump demos usually make things less interesting in my experience (having watched a lot and also made some myself) - it just trivializes too much by default.

 

5) There are many reasons why demos are great, but I'm not going to write a book here.

[Memfis]

A long time ago I competed in speedrunning Doom 1 with my classmate, and we played with jumping and crouching. It was pretty exciting to see many new routes in old familiar maps. I would definitely be interested in seeing some optimized speedruns of classic wads with these settings, it's a very unexplored territory.

3 minutes ago, kraflab said:

Also, more recently, Ancalagon did a cool run of doom 2 on zandronum.

Where can I see it?

[Dokta Whawee]

2 minutes ago, kraflab said:

Someone who doesn't understand anything about the community jumping in and acting like they do.

Whoever said I didn't know anything about the community?

I know quite a bit about speedrunning, but I didn't know about that website, sorry.

Jeez, no need to act like a jerk for me making a suggestion.

[GoneAway]

6 minutes ago, Memfis said:

Where can I see it?

Hm, I'm not sure where it was posted on here, but I think @4shockblast at least has the demo saved somewhere, maybe he can reupload it.

 

@Dokta Whawee it's immediately evident from your post.

[Dokta Whawee]

1 minute ago, kraflab said:

 

@Dokta Whaweeit's immediately evident from your post.

Well, I am so very sorry that I don't know EVERYTHING about a community as vast, and as introcate as this one.

 

Perhaps I should just take my entire life to learn every last detail, hmmm?

[GoneAway]

I'm not trying to be mean, but if you walk into a community and tell them they need to embrace the modern era of speedrunning, it's going to sound a little off, especially if your post is full of misinformation :P

[Aquila Chrysaetos]

32 minutes ago, Dokta Whawee said:

ZDoom Movement.

I don't have a problem with this in itself, but a major reason we use PRBoom is for the demo compatibility.

ZDoom demos desync with every update, so if someone made a demo in 2.8.1, they couldn't watch it with 2.8.0.

Graf Zahl himself has made it known that demo compatibility is not what he's going for with GZDoom.

PRBoom does technically allow for jumping, but we leave it off because it's really just for mapping mistakes where it would be unwinnable because a step that's supposed to be 24 high is actually 32 high.

[Grain of Salt]

28 minutes ago, Dokta Whawee said:

And, finally, because of the advent of Twitch Speedruns, Demos have kind of became obscelete

 

Well, I disagree with that, and here's why.

 

1. .lmp files are convenient and verifiable in a way video could never be.

2. The doom demo scene hasn't become less active since twitch came to prominence.

[baja blast rd.]

Plenty of runs with ZDoom movement exist. Google 'jumping crouching site:http://doomedsda.us'. Record some if you want, but don't expect it to catch on. The speedrunning community is roughly a couple dozen active people who record what they want to record.  

 

Quote

And, finally, because of the advent of Twitch Speedruns, Demos have kind of became obscelete

 

Wrong. Demos will always be an extremely compact and convenient way for people to download runs and then play them back with their own viewing settings. Keep in mind that with a video, you are limited to the HUD, renderer, graphics, sounds, playback settings, and so on, that the video uses -- and that is even before accounting for the logistics of video playback. Plus as Grain of Salt mentions, being able to verify runs is important as well.

[GoneAway]

Just now, Aquila Chrysaetos said:

ZDoom demos desync with every update

ZDoom itself is actually at the final version now (unless they started it up again), so at least for that purpose it's fine from now on. But, I think most people lean to gzdoom anyway.

[Dokta Whawee]

1 minute ago, Aquila Chrysaetos said:

Graf Zahl himself has made it known that demo compatibility is not what he's going for with GZDoom.

 

Oh, okay, I get it. I always wondered that.

[Dokta Whawee]

1 minute ago, rdwpa said:

Wrong. Demos will always be an extremely compact and convenient way for people to download runs and then play them back with their own viewing settings.

Alright, I will change my original post.

[Grazza]

"Silly?? SILLY!! (he pauses and thinks) Silly! I suppose it is, a bit. What have we been doing wasting our lives with all this nonsense? (hear, hear) Right, okay, forum adjourned forever."

[Grain of Salt]

Grazza please don't adjourn the forum

[Dokta Whawee]

1 minute ago, Grazza said:

"Silly?? SILLY!! (he pauses and thinks) Silly! I suppose it is, a bit. What have we been doing wasting our lives with all this nonsense? (hear, hear) Right, okay, forum adjourned forever."

What?

[Aquila Chrysaetos]

7 minutes ago, kraflab said:

ZDoom itself is actually at the final version now (unless they started it up again), so at least for that purpose it's fine from now on. But, I think most people lean to gzdoom anyway.

I know, I was referring to ZDoom and its child-ports (QZDoom, GZDoom, and Zandro), just using ZDoom as a catch-all.

I use drfrag's ZDoom32, anyway, so this would in a way still apply, though I could see a small section of ZDoom wad runs compatible with 2.8.1, since it's the latest official version of base ZDoom.

[GarrettChan]

Totally no... for the record sake, imagine an old game like Contra or something, the record is totally optimized and the record is really hard to be beaten, and somebody go there and suggest changing the rules or hacking the game in order to create new categories to speedrun. The outcome would be predictable like this.

 

To be honest, speedrunning is a strange interest all the time. It has its interesting point in it, so no need to manually add some new "interesting" for it. This is kind of similar to that I don't consider new players solely play Doom with BD/PB as Classic Doom players. If someone gets into speedrunning because of these new rules, this probably is not a very good sign.

 

For the twitch thing, *.lmp would always be the best for spread demos because of the size. Video files are big and difficult to store. You may say Twitch stores that for us, but how about one day Twitch doesn't exist anymore. Probably this sounds ridiculous, but it has a chance. I usually prefer watching a video because I can drag around it quickly, but just like rd said, you can change the HUD or something in the demo in order to fit your need. For example, if you're really looking for a secret that you can't find it, use the HUD can pinpoint where to look.

[GoneAway]

5 minutes ago, GarrettChan said:

You may say Twitch stores that for us, but how about one day Twitch doesn't exist anymore. Probably this sounds ridiculous, but it has a chance

The funny thing is twitch already took multiple actions that resulted in massive loss of videos in the past, so this isn't even a crazy idea (changes to highlight and past broadcast storage conditions, the huge event where they muted many videos, random tech issues, etc)

[Linguica]

Also many people do not have internet access that is fast enough to do video streaming or be uploading big videos all the time.

[Nine Inch Heels]

Well then:

1 hour ago, Dokta Whawee said:

First off, I feel that many Doom Speed-Running records are basically unbeatable. They have became so well optimized, that a lot are unbeatable.

Your feelings are irrelevant, and it's not unheard of that eventually something has been optimized so much that it is almost impossible to beat. This is not necessarily a problem.

1 hour ago, Dokta Whawee said:

If we add this new category of Doom Speed-Running, then those old records would be kept, but there would also be new records to break, and new strategies to be discovered.

There are still discoveries being made in recent days.

1 hour ago, Dokta Whawee said:

Second off, Having more modern Doom movement would, if you ask me, make speedruns more interesting.

Movement in classic Doom is a form of art such as it is, making it obsolete by way of adding new methods of movement doesn't make anything more or less interesting by default if you so will. Besides, it's a well known fact that classic maps can straight up "break" when people start jumping places they're not supposed to be reaching at all, or when they reach places in ways that aren't intended. Also "ZDoom-Bunny-Hop-Speedruns" don't sound particularly vexing.

1 hour ago, Dokta Whawee said:

Also, since the new doom has these movement abilities, I feel that classic doom speedruns using such abilities wouldn't be demeaning to the source material.

See above. It is demeaning to the source material and the established and refined routes and records.

1 hour ago, Dokta Whawee said:

And, finally, because of the advent of Twitch Speedruns, I think that this would be a new way to embrace the new era of speedrunning.

None of what you said earlier has anything to do with twitch speedruns, because those can be done under the already established circumstances perfectly fine, thank you.

1 hour ago, Dokta Whawee said:

So, what do you think of this idea

Honest answer: What is this nonsense and why am I even reading it?

57 minutes ago, Dokta Whawee said:

Whoever said I didn't know anything about the community?

Your posts do.

51 minutes ago, Dokta Whawee said:

Perhaps I should just take my entire life to learn every last detail, hmmm?

I love it when people play the victim card.

 

[Ancalagon]

1 hour ago, Memfis said:

Where can I see it?

I dont know what version of zandronum it uses.

30yump.zip

[dew]

Not sure about this. Most people prefer to run maps with the physics they were intended for, so they won't switch to something that is basically undefined behaviour that could lead to catastrophic breakdowns and sequence failures.

It's also worth mentioning (and it's been mentioned) that no one is stopping you or anyone interested from recording such a demo. But they're treated as oddities rather than the new norm. I very much enjoyed watching the Scythe+Demonsteele speedrun.

Change for the sake of change also isn't an argument that many will embrace. You proposed a thing, but didn't really present a strong case why we should do it your way and not the way we already know. Maybe you need to lead the way by example?

Even then though, the elephant in the room is losing stable demo support. This is a concept the Doom speedrunning community is particularly proud about - you don't have to just watch someone's stream, you can play it yourself with your own preferred settings in your own port. You can analyze the demo with tools. You can do anything at doomedsda.us.

 

Twitch isn't even the preferred platform for storing doom videos, mind you. It's youtube, and for good reasons.

Runners suddenly snapping, deleting all their runs and robbing us of the much valued archive material is still an issue there, but on twitch this same thing might happen just because someone forgot to click some option, or because twitch changed their policies again.

You know, Doom demos go back 25 years. Do you think those twitch vids will be around in another... two?

 

GZDoom has a pretty large library of dedicated maps, but how many of those maps have speedruns? Not much. One could say it's elitism, it's speedrunners' entrenchedness in the old ways, yadda yadda... but that's the point. We already could be doing what you propose on maps that require it, but not many do so. The tears in the rain concept of records being fleeting and lost to erosion is scary to many of us who like permanency.

Reading articles and watching videos on other speedrunning communities where records are not available anymore and only confirmed by some dude years ago, I don't want Doom speedrunning to become like that. Even the losses of Doom multiplayer archives were bad enough, so weakening the speedrunning standards across the board is something to avoid. Twitch streaming most certainly doesn't obsolete demos and if you wanna show us a new record, you still need to give us a demo.

All in all, while you may mean well, your idea goes against many core concepts of the community, so I'm not surprised by the pushback.

For every memfis interested in this, there will be three kraflabs who prefer our current regime, because we already have a good thing going. I lost interest in rjumping on Zdaemon during the same time the port removed demo recording. New ideas should add to the good, not force painful compromises.

[Dokta Whawee]

On 7/31/2018 at 3:22 PM, dew said:

Not sure about this. Most people prefer to run maps with the physics they were intended for, so they won't switch to something that is basically undefined behaviour that could lead to catastrophic breakdowns and sequence failures.

It's also worth mentioning (and it's been mentioned) that no one is stopping you or anyone interested from recording such a demo. But they're treated as oddities rather than the new norm. I very much enjoyed watching the Scythe+Demonsteele speedrun.

Change for the sake of change also isn't an argument that many will embrace. You proposed a thing, but didn't really present a strong case why we should do it your way and not the way we already know. Maybe you need to lead the way by example?

Even then though, the elephant in the room is losing stable demo support. This is a concept the Doom speedrunning community is particularly proud about - you don't have to just watch someone's stream, you can play it yourself with your own preferred settings in your own port. You can analyze the demo with tools. You can do anything at doomedsda.us.

 

Twitch isn't even the preferred platform for storing doom videos, mind you. It's youtube, and for good reasons.

Runners suddenly snapping, deleting all their runs and robbing us of the much valued archive material is still an issue there, but on twitch this same thing might happen just because someone forgot to click some option, or because twitch changed their policies again.

You know, Doom demos go back 25 years. Do you think those twitch vids will be around in another... two?

 

GZDoom has a pretty large library of dedicated maps, but how many of those maps have speedruns? Not much. One could say it's elitism, it's speedrunners' entrenchedness in the old ways, yadda yadda... but that's the point. We already could be doing what you propose on maps that require it, but not many do so. The tears in the rain concept of records being fleeting and lost to erosion is scary to many of us who like permanency.

Reading articles and watching videos on other speedrunning communities where records are not available anymore and only confirmed by some dude years ago, I don't want Doom speedrunning to become like that. Even the losses of Doom multiplayer archives were bad enough, so weakening the speedrunning standards across the board is something to avoid. Twitch streaming most certainly doesn't obsolete demos and if you wanna show us a new record, you still need to give us a demo.

All in all, while you may mean well, your idea goes against many core concepts of the community, so I'm not surprised by the pushback.

For every memfis interested in this, there will be three kraflabs who prefer our current regime, because we already have a good thing going. I lost interest in rjumping on Zdaemon during the same time the port removed demo recording. New ideas should add to the good, not force painful compromises.

Alright, thank you. I was just suggesting an idea, and honestly, I was expecting it to be shot down. Thank you so much for being kind and thoughtful, and sharing actual ideas with me as for why this wasn't a good idea.

 

I think that you made enough good points to change my mind. Again, it was just a suggestion, nothing more. I would be happy to do speedrunning someday, and follow all the rules that you put down!

 

Thank you for conversing with me, and not being toxic.

[Dokta Whawee]

On 7/31/2018 at 3:20 PM, Nine Inch Heels said:

Well then:

Your feelings are irrelevant, and it's not unheard of that eventually something has been optimized so much that it is almost impossible to beat. This is not necessarily a problem.

There are still discoveries being made in recent days.

Movement in classic Doom is a form of art such as it is, making it obsolete by way of adding new methods of movement doesn't make anything more or less interesting by default if you so will. Besides, it's a well known fact that classic maps can straight up "break" when people start jumping places they're not supposed to be reaching at all, or when they reach places in ways that aren't intended. Also "ZDoom-Bunny-Hop-Speedruns" don't sound particularly vexing.

See above. It is demeaning to the source material and the established and refined routes and records.

None of what you said earlier has anything to do with twitch speedruns, because those can be done under the already established circumstances perfectly fine, thank you.

Honest answer: What is this nonsense and why am I even reading it?

Your posts do.

I love it when people play the victim card.

 

And I love it when people get so upset at me for just a simple suggestion...

 

You know, by you being toxic, you actually made me want to change my mind less. Just putting it out there. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[baja blast rd.]

You might not want to use that emote like that. 

 

 

Unless you're actually putting 'it' out there...

[Dokta Whawee]

 

21 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

You might not want to use that emote like that. 

 

 

Unless you're actually putting 'it' out there...

Heh, okay.

[GarrettChan]

1 hour ago, rdwpa said:

You might not want to use that emote like that. 

Oh god, I didn't know the latter part. Fortunately, I didn't use this thing.

[rehelekretep]

( ͡°╭͜ʖ╮͡° )

[Bob9001]

On 8/1/2018 at 5:55 AM, Dokta Whawee said:

I feel that many Doom Speed-Running records are basically unbeatable.

 

I have to disagree with this, every year someone manages to beat an old record(s).

 

Why do you think this?