You won't believe it! This doomgod has been cheating all along!

[rodster]

That's some high quality vector graphic emote. I like it.

[TimeOfDeath666]

Just want to say that I believe Ancalagon's runs are legit. But yeah, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask someone to make a hands video. When we speedrun a game like Doom that's heavily built on trust, we should expect some skepticism, and I've seen hands videos for a few different games. But I think requiring a clean player to re-record a 4-hour demo with their hands showing is a bit extreme. Is that the only way Vorpal will believe it? What about a shorter video? Or is he just butthurt that av finally has a max movie?

[Altima]

Having watched the run myself numerous times over and looking at a few scenarios with a fine-toothed comb, I have my own suspicions about the legitimacy of the run. HOWEVER, I want to make it PERFECTLY CLEAR I am not saying Ancalagon is in any way shape or form cheating (there's a reason I never made a thread making this claim). The PRBoom+ issue that was mentioned by the original poster was one of the things I was curious about, but my suspicions come from elsewhere. I'm only posting these to put my own words out into the open and for people to digest them as they will. Furthermore, I want to emphasize that I would like to believe Ancalagon's run is legitimate and as of right now, I do. I only have questions and suspicions. I guess I'm only playing Devil's Advocate here.

Firstly is the question of how much practice has he had on Alien Vendetta? I do realize he has achieved some incredible things on significantly harder maps and mapsets. The only thing submitted by him before this was a D2EP1 run of it in 37:58. It's an impressive time but this is only 10 maps. Was there streaming practice on this wad or was it all offline practice?

Second, reiterating the mention of PRBoom+, it's very easy to connect runs. Considering that AV is a vanilla-compatible megawad (and also the fact he didn't use the AVMOVFIX.wad file which I'm assuming is because he used a source port), why not use vanilla for legitimacy's sake?

Here's probably my biggest reasons of suspicion, though. The question of some of the decision making throughout the run. AV is hard, yes, but not hard by today's standards in a world where Sunder, Sunlust, Toilet of the Gods, Swim with the Whales, etc. is considered difficult, but it is balanced in such a way where certain situations, when rushed face-first into, can equate to a 50/50 life-or-death scenario. When you've played considerable amounts of Doom UV-Max, you realize there can only be so much fortune in one long setting. At some point you're going to have to sacrifice safety for efficiency, especially the further into a run you get. Especially in some of the volatile, close calls that happen throughout the run. You can only control Doom's randomness so much before it will still do whatever it wants to do. In a typical long UV-Max, there's the occasional fuck up at least somewhere in the run, if it's taking a wrong turn or having some sort of encounter go haywire. Sometimes you have to check for leftover monsters (with PRBoom+ this is negated through the HUD), sometimes by design, and especially 3 hours in. Ancalagon's run looks just as fresh going from Map01 to Map02 as he does going from Map28 to Map29. Not even Zero Master with his AV30 UV-speed keeps up with that sort of nerves and you can see a slight decline in the quality of speed over the course of a longer run. Speaking of nerves, the only place where there even seems to be any sort of nerves showing is on Map30? That seems a little suspicious to me, personally.

Speaking of these nerves, Maps 13 and onward, particularly 32, 25, and 28, (there's more but these all have a key moment), the way they are so hyper-aggressively played, and yet not one showing of any shakiness or nervousness? No mistakes? Map32 really makes me question because the approach used would make me believe he'd be resetting around 100 minutes into the run frequently. You can only control Doom's RNG so much, as I previously mentioned. You'd be stacking an insane amount of fortune on top of high-skill play that doesn't show any signs of declining for safety-over-efficiency or forgetfulness or nervousness for an intense 3-4 hour run like this. Every map is just superb, high-risk gameplay, all strung together into a single run. Map28, who would honestly want to risk their entire 4-hour godlike run at the Cyberdemon in the small room with that sort of aggressive play?

Again, I want to emphasize I am not saying he is or isn't fabricating that 30AV-Max run, and I personally feel it is legitimate until proven without a shadow of a doubt otherwise, I'm merely pointing out my observations why I was suspicious of the run. I do want to hear other people's opinions, though. However, outright calling Ancalagon (or most speedrunners in general) a cheater is an incredibly bold thing and can put your own reputation on the line if it comes back that it is legitimate, since it only appears you are stirring the pot fishing for drama or trying to minimize someone else's hard work.

On that note, congrats Ancalagon on the run.

Edit: Yes, I am aware of some ZDaemon stuff with Anc and AV. I'm asking it regardless.

Edited August 31, 2018 by Altima

[Andrea Rovenski]

can someone give me the tl;dr on this thread it seems like a real doozy

[Altima]

1 minute ago, Cyberdemon531 said:

can someone give me the tl;dr on this thread it seems like a real doozy

 

tl;dr: Ancalagon's 30AV Max run was pointed to being suspiciously cheated and so there's discussion of it. The general consensus is that the run is legitimate.

[A_D_M_E_R_A_L]

1 minute ago, Cyberdemon531 said:

can someone give me the tl;dr on this thread it seems like a real doozy

Basically someone did a full 32 map UV-Max run of AV and a lot of people are being suspicious about certain things in that run.

[Andrea Rovenski]

Not bad.

 

OK, it's settled.

[baja blast rd.]

1 hour ago, Altima said:

Speaking of these nerves, Maps 13 and onward, particularly 32, 25, and 28, (there's more but these all have a key moment), the way they are so hyper-aggressively played, and yet not one showing of any shakiness or nervousness? No mistakes? Map32 really makes me question because the approach used would make me believe he'd be resetting around 100 minutes into the run frequently. You can only control Doom's RNG so much, as I previously mentioned. You'd be stacking an insane amount of fortune on top of high-skill play that doesn't show any signs of declining for safety-over-efficiency or forgetfulness or nervousness for an intense 3-4 hour run like this. Every map is just superb, high-risk gameplay, all strung together into a single run. Map28, who would honestly want to risk their entire 4-hour godlike run at the Cyberdemon in the small room with that sort of aggressive play?

 

I gave 32 another watch (I'll do the same for 25 and 28), and I think that's the sort of map where it's easy to overestimate how dangerous much of the stuff in this map is.

 

- Point-blanking those cybs seems believable in a D2ALL. Stationary turrets generally fire way less because of a quirk of the engine (monsters changing direction frequently resets the 'time to fire' counter more often). Plus, and a lot more importantly, you have 200/200 going in and a mega right behind you too, so you can survive two rockets even if the cyb manages to get that many off. I'd be surprised if this was 100% reliable, but it strikes me as 'believable'. 

- All the other cyb fights are pretty easy by modern standards. I'd be pretty confident doing those deep into a saveless run, especially with the buffer of a mega going in. Awkward two-shots against cybs are something you can get ample practice doing in modern challenge wads. 

 

Also I'm not seeing this non-shaky, non-nervous, hyper-aggression, not in this map at least. The play in 32 would be somewhat rough by the standards of an IL. (And not just one by Anc, either.) 

Edited August 31, 2018 by rdwpa

[Da Werecat]

15 minutes ago, A_D_M_E_R_A_L said:

Basically someone did a full 32 map UV-Max run of AV and a lot of people are being suspicious about certain things in that run.

A lot of people?

[Cacodemon345]

21 minutes ago, Cyberdemon531 said:

Not bad.

 

OK, it's settled.

Finally a proof.

[Nine Inch Heels]

10 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Finally a proof.

If you seriously consider that a proof then you're also putting milk and cookies out for Santa Clause.

[Altima]

Just now, Nine Inch Heels said:

If you seriously consider that a proof then you're also putting milk and cookies out for Santa Clause.

Don't kink shame me.

[Cacodemon345]

1 minute ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

If you seriously consider that a proof then you're also putting milk and cookies out for Santa Clause.

I seriously don't understand what do you mean. The alleged cheater has already confessed that he cheated, which works as proof.

[baja blast rd.]

Zzzzz

 

Spoiler

 

[GarrettChan]

2 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

Zzzzz

Well, I pretty much figured  this out, but still it's funny. More funny thing is that someone think this counts as a proof. Oh, well.

[Cacodemon345]

Oh well.

[Zakken]

I'd like to throw in my two cents and state that I have known Ancalagon since 2010 or so, when he went by a different alias (that I won't disclose) back in the Skulltag days, and he's been kind of THE survival god for the past 6 years or so. He is seen playing survival somewhere almost everyday. When FNF threw in a 10-lives Armageddon event, he was the only player to consistently beat all levels without getting knocked out of the game. When Jace Hall came in and organised a $10,000 Chillax challenge where you had to survive a 10k monsters map with Hard Doom, you won't believe who won!

 

With that aside, what incentive would he even have to cheat? Not many people would even take notice of PWAD speedruns in general (if we're talking sheer numbers), so what bragging rights and notoriety would one get that would "justify" making a TAS of Alien Vendetta of all things and presenting it as not? The simple facts are that there is no motive, and Anc's history and legacy fully contextualises the skills displayed in the speedrun.

 

Your accusation is childish and stupidly paranoid, and your half-assed apology coupled with played-out rationalisations such as "b-but I brought validity concerns to light (that are barely worth humouring in a community of this size, I should add), so my petty accusation wasn't a complete waste of everyone's time!" makes this even more annoying to read. You should've just admitted you fucked up big-time and left, but instead you embarrass yourself further by pretending you're some sort of speedrun surveillance martyr, like you didn't just call a well-known, respected veteran of the community a cheater on the basis of non-evidence that you were probably aware was bullcrap to begin with (otherwise you would've posted your findings in the first post instead of baiting everyone to rightfully force you into it). It is sad that Ancalagon had to bother defending against... whatever this is, in the first place. But I certainly expected someone who's been around here for almost two decades to have better self-awareness than this.

[Pirx]

As I see, some consider Anc's lack of nerves suspicious. Well, people are very different. I noticed myself that the more i cared about a game, the more likely i was to screw up for sheer shakiness.

 

Years ago, I had much more time for practice, so I was a better player in principle, got some nice series of frags (especially on our doom lans or online with Q3 and UT back then), but on the flipside, if something went wrong, then it took me a lot of time to recover, for simply being annoyed at myself,  up to quitting out of rage.

 

Today, I'm glad when I get to keep up with the DWMC's breakneck pace of 1 map a day, and I notice my lack of practice when I hop onto a quake champions server, but again,  I'm much calmer, my play doesn't look spectacular,  but it's a lot more steady, because I'm no longer so tied emotionally to it.

 

I don't know any dedicated speedrunners personally, but I guess that one has to be rather detached from a game, since getting nervous will make you screw up sooner or later. So when I watch something like zeromaster 's inhuman runs, or j4rio tysoning extremely long maps, I always imagine someone who doesn't even blink when his run fails and just starts again. Like some guy who I met on one quake Lan about 15 years ago, he was  perched in his chair with his keyboard "Russian style" in his lap, and whatever happened, he looked as if he was just clicking away on some website. And he destroyed everyone on that Lan. 

[Dragonfly]

So you say in your first sentence that it's suspicious then in the rest of the post don't back it up at all?

 

You explain how this composure and calmness is a personality trait you don't have, and then proceed to explain that this level of composure is something you've witnessed other people possessing, and state that you yourself have seen this first hand..?

 

Not sure why you're suspicious, in that case.

[Aquila Chrysaetos]

29 minutes ago, Pirx said:

As I see, some consider Anc's lack of nerves suspicious. Well, people are very different. I noticed myself that the more i cared about a game, the more likely i was to screw up for sheer shakiness.

Agreed with this statement. I could see an apparent lack of nervousness in Anc's AV D2ALL as being very realistic. Some people (like myself, as I've observed) thrive on pressure and in trying to shoot the moon, succeed.

I'm only an amateur speedrunner at best, but I can attest that doing an effective Ironman-speed would be something that would punish nerves very quickly, and so someone who could remain calm under pressure would be best to do it.

As for the "hyper-aggression," I can't speak to this, having not yet watched the demo, but I can say that sometimes being incredibly aggressive is the best/only way to go, and so that might've been part of the strategy if that was indeed what happened.

[Dragonfly]

3 minutes ago, Aquila Chrysaetos said:

doing an effective Ironman-speed would be something that would punish nerves very quickly

 

After doing it 100+ times the nerves aspect will drop off somewhat. Sure, towards the end of the run that whole "omg is this the run?!" feeling will take place but that doesn't inherently mean the runner will fail.

 

After easily doing 100+ speedruns, each with 100+ attempts (read 10k+ speedrun attempts) I'd be genuinely surprised if Anc ever got half as anxious as a common Doomer such as yourself or I would get in these circumstances.

[Pirx]

Eh, hyper aggression is easy to pull off. The challenge is to know when to jump at the monsters yelling YOLO.

 

Thx, now Vorpal made me watch about 1 h of ancalagon's run on YouTube (on that shitty phone) and I still can't see anything suspicious. Zeromaster or j4rio look more "inhuman" btw due to many very quick turns. 

 

And yes,  the more times you've been through a situation,  the easier it gets.

[Vorpal]

4 hours ago, Zakken said:

You should've just admitted you fucked up big-time and left, but instead you embarrass yourself further by pretending you're some sort of speedrun surveillance martyr,

 

Frustrated fan, is the language I'd choose. But the martyr thing isn't so bad, because I know I'm not the only person with doubts, even if all of my posts are ignored there still have been some valuable posts (which pick apart some of my points in ways that I can get on-board with, btw) that are now google-able for other people doubting this run.

 

Are my reasons baseless? Well yeah they're gut feelings and I'm not apologizing for that, and I'm not apologizing for not doing this private (unhelpful if the general public wants to investigate), I'm apologizing for drawing the conclusion. The time between my inflammatory conclusion-drawing OP, and rdwpa pointing out calmly to reason the why of it, was 40 minutes or so... it wasn't like some huge war that had to be fought to get me to back down, jesus.

[Andrea Rovenski]

I have an idea.

 

Beat their time.

[Zakken]

1 hour ago, Vorpal said:

 

Frustrated fan, is the language I'd choose.

You've done this numerous times throughout this thread, so let me break this down to you: smugly pointing out the anger in those who have called you out on your nonsense does not count as a counter-argument, so why do you keep doing it? You played a stupid game, and you won a stupid prize. Telling us "okay, but you didn't have to be this mad at me, gosh darn it!" is a thinly-veiled attempt at shifting the blame towards us when the responsibility of this debacle falls solely on you, which you desperately keep trying to tip-toe your way around with a "more calm and collected than you" demeanour and following up your non-apologies with "but at least I did this and that!!"

 

2 hours ago, Vorpal said:

even if all of my posts are ignored there still have been some valuable posts (which pick apart some of my points in ways that I can get on-board with, btw) that are now google-able for other people doubting this run. 

Yeah, the better lot of 0 people who would have questioned this run if you hadn't bothered calling this seemingly random speedrun a cheat. Thanks for making it obvious that you were looking out for nobody in particular and did something with very real chances of hurting an innocent speedrunner's reputation with reckless abandon because you're too self-important not to entertain the forums with your "gut feelings."

[GarrettChan]

2 hours ago, Cyberdemon531 said:

I have an idea.

 

Beat their time.

That's the best idea right from the start. Thumbs up many times.

[dew]

1 hour ago, Zakken said:

Yeah, the better lot of 0 people who would have questioned this run if you hadn't bothered calling this seemingly random speedrun a cheat. Thanks for making it obvious that you were looking out for nobody in particular and did something with very real chances of hurting an innocent speedrunner's reputation with reckless abandon because you're too self-important not to entertain the forums with your "gut feelings."

Well, I'm still going to ask you to calm down, because now you're beginning to shift your point towards "you never should've done any of this in the first place". We already established raising concerns is entirely valid and sometimes necessary, because providing a rational explanation to rational doubts can make the thread valuable for future doubters as well. I'm glad some people headed down that road and made good observations, even if others resorted to the equivalent of angry yelling.

[j4rio]

You know it's bad if, out of all people, it's dew to tell somebody to calm down.

[Test Tickle]

Man beats Alien Vendetta in 4 hours with this one simple trick!

Demo enthusiasts hate him!

[Fonze]

4 hours ago, Vorpal said:

that are now google-able for other people doubting this run.

 

I think this sentence (or part) alone is the worst offender to me. Congrats on attaching the title of "cheater" to not only an innocent person, (read: somebody who had nothing to gain by this run and so much more to lose; ie not worth it to them to cheat as the risk far outweighs the reward), but to one of our most skilled sp players currently. And now it's google-able for other people to doubt this run and this runners past, present, and future works.

 

This is shameful and the lack of any applicable knowledge in how easy it is to falsify videos, yet acting like they are more definitive proof than anything else, is mind blowing in a community such as this with a demo scene 20+ years old that has never relied on video evidence for any runs, even at times more topical than right now.

 

This is also why they don't let tv crews into trials for real life things, and why even video evidence isn't always considered as accurate in the real world...................... Honestly the heuristics of demos alone allows for far better means of verification than a video by itself would anyway.