Cheaters caught red handed

[Eurisko]

Karl Jobst posted a new vid talking about cheaters in the DOOM speed running community.

Good stuff , enjoy.

 

 

[Grazza]

I'm relieved he didn't give many details of the detection methods, as this would have been useful for potential cheaters.

[Magicana]

I find cheating for speedruns and competitions (They are very informal, but that's what I'd call the ironman runs) very strange.

 

Apart from that one $100 prize, there is no money attached. It's all about personal achievement at this stage. And what's the achievement if you have to cheat?

[TheNoob_Gamer]

24 minutes ago, Magicana said:

I find cheating for speedruns and competitions (They are very informal, but that's what I'd call the ironman runs) very strange.

 

Apart from that one $100 prize, there is no money attached. It's all about personal achievement at this stage. And what's the achievement if you have to cheat?

Maybe it's fun for them.

 

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

Also, for those who are lazy, the cheaters that are called out by the author of the vid are Memfis and Bloodite Krypto, respectively.

They are both gone from Doomworld now, AFAIK + you will immediately recognize the names if you have been on this site for long enough.

 

 

 

Edited November 26, 2019 by TheNoob_Gamer

[RonnieJamesDiner]

Can't believe he didn't mention the worst culprit of all. Looking at YOU ZeroMaster. 20 minutes to do an Underhalls pacifist run... talk about slow motion.

 

Spoiler

I'm joking please don't hurt me.

 

[Kyka]

While I was watching this video, on a whim, I set the YT playback speed to 0.5, and while watching at this slow speed, I realised that the editing and scripting in this video is too perfect. The only way that Karl Jobst can make such quality vids is by recording and editing them at half speed, and then speeding them up and uploading them to YT at normal speed.

 

Disgraceful. Karl Jobst is a cheater.

 

You heard it here first folks. o_0

Edited November 26, 2019 by bLOCKbOYgAMES

[Doomkid]

Me remembering Mem’s cheating escapade: Ahh poor Memfy, I hope he’s doing alright now, he clearly wasn’t in a very good place at that time..

 

Me learning about BK’s cheating and soliloquising: lol what a douchey way to go out, bye

[Magicana]

1 minute ago, Doomkid said:

Me remembering Mem’s cheating escapade: Ahh poor Memfy, I hope he’s doing alright now, he clearly wasn’t in a very good place at that time..

 

Me learning about BK’s cheating and soliloquising: lol what a douchey way to go out, bye

 

 

This was Memfis? If he was that hard up for cash, I wonder how much people would have given if he'd just asked...

[Grazza]

I think he was also trying to make some twisted point about cheating being impossible to detect, but ended up proving the polar opposite.

[GarrettChan]

5 hours ago, Grazza said:

I think he was also trying to make some twisted point about cheating being impossible to detect, but ended up proving the polar opposite.

IIRC, it's the debate that he said using ZDoom is harder (or maybe impossible) to cheat since PrBoom+ is very easy to cheat (according to what he said), but obviously... ZDoom doesn't act like original. Therefore, I guess this is the reason why Memfis made a demo trying to say cheating is hard to detect or something. He might not be malicious at this point, but you know, once money is involved in something, things will be difficult. Right now, no one knows the actual reason behind this anymore.

 

The funny thing is that... this competition is originated from a particular somebody putting up crappy maps and having a prize to finish his/her maps.

[[McD] James]

Karl Jobst is one of my favorite Youtubers, and I'm usually ambivalent towards speedrunning. Every video he puts out is just pure quality. 

[RonnieJamesDiner]

Could someone explain to a total muggle just what the hell SR40 and SR50 are? I tried reading up on the wiki page, but when I read things like "SR50 (to the right) may be activated using Run, Forward, Strafe Right, Strafe On, and Turn Right (shift, up arrow, period, alt, and right arrow in the default keyboard arrangement). It results in a speed of √(50² + 50²) = 70.7 (141% of normal run-forward speed) at an angle of arctan(50/50) = 45 degrees", well... my brain just sort of doesn't know what to do with that information. 

[Magicana]

2 minutes ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

Could someone explain to a total muggle just what the hell SR40 and SR50 are? I tried reading up on the wiki page, but when I read things like "SR50 (to the right) may be activated using Run, Forward, Strafe Right, Strafe On, and Turn Right (shift, up arrow, period, alt, and right arrow in the default keyboard arrangement). It results in a speed of √(50² + 50²) = 70.7 (141% of normal run-forward speed) at an angle of arctan(50/50) = 45 degrees", well... my brain just sort of doesn't know what to do with that information. 

 

It's strafe running. You move faster than just moving straight forward when straferunning (SR40) and then you move even faster again when you press the keys above. Someone can give a better engine explanation than that, but that's the low down. Most people will naturally do SR40, SR50 requires a lot of key inputs and "Locks" the player into a direction. I've never been able to work out how to do SR50 properly (Full disclosure - I've got it automated on Zdoom, but it's entirely for personal use, no competitions).

[RonnieJamesDiner]

Yeah, I don't think I've ever even tried SR50, I honestly didn't know (or couldn't remember) that the "period" and "alt" buttons actually did something on the default keyboard layout. Yikes. Thanks for the bit of explanation though. So, this can only be done to the right?

[Magicana]

8 minutes ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

Yeah, I don't think I've ever even tried SR50, I honestly didn't know (or couldn't remember) that the "period" and "alt" buttons actually did something on the default keyboard layout. Yikes. Thanks for the bit of explanation though. So, this can only be done to the right?

 

It can be done in either direction.

 

 

Here is a really shitty video showing how it works in practice (And when I say really shitty, I mean really shitty). It allows you to make jumps that you can't normally make, and the movement is slightly faster, but for practical purposes it's not really that necessary. 

[RonnieJamesDiner]

@Magicana OHHHH fuck... alright, I have done this (I'm terrible at it), but I've tried it. Had no idea that's what SR50 referred to. OOF. I'm actually having 'nam flashbacks to MAP11 of Monti's Mass Extinction, I'm fairly certain this is needed in the large platforming room but I just couldn't do it, haha.

 

I had no idea that the classic keyboard layout actually had a dedicated strafe button... I feel so stupid (hey, I've got something for the "Things you just learned about Doom" thread). Wow, would that have made life easier back in the day. This was part of the reason why, when I migrated to GZDoom, I was instantly hooked. Suddenly I could bind the keys the way I wanted and strafe all day -- something I thought wasn't possible in vanilla. Oh my... don't look at my shame :(

[3saster]

I love how much respect Karl Jobst has for Doom. Despite being a Goldeneye runner, and a general speedrunning channel, a third of his videos are on Doom (and one on Quake). It's interesting too, cause I consider Doom to be the "Wolfenstein 3D" of speedrunning, and Quake the "Doom"; Doom was the first notable speedrunning community, but Quake was the one that really brought it into the mainstream.

[The_SloVinator]

This is why I don't speedrun nor compete. While it is great to call out cheaters, at the same time the insecurity amongst the community grows & anything can be suspicious, even the legit runs. Someone can even accuse you out of jealousy & let gullible people jump into the bandwagon.

[Andromeda]

25 minutes ago, The_SloVinator said:

This is why I don't speedrun nor compete. While it is great to call out cheaters, at the same time the insecurity amongst the community grows & anything can be suspicious, even the legit runs. Someone can even accuse you out of jealousy & let gullible people jump into the bandwagon.

Doom's speedrunning community is pretty laidback, when there's an accusation of cheating it's usually (if not always) well grounded. Don't let yourself be fooled by the astonishing thesaurus of Mr. K as accusing anyone just out of spite is going to backfire.

[GarrettChan]

1 hour ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

Yeah, I don't think I've ever even tried SR50, I honestly didn't know (or couldn't remember) that the "period" and "alt" buttons actually did something on the default keyboard layout. Yikes. Thanks for the bit of explanation though. So, this can only be done to the right?

Default layout doesn't work I think because it's too hard to press... My personal setup is A + W + Shift (strafe on) + Space (turn left), but it takes up my keyboard already, so I can only do one side SR50, which is funny.

 

12 minutes ago, Andromeda said:

Doom's speedrunning community is pretty laidback, when there's an accusation of cheating it's usually (if not always) well grounded. Don't let yourself be fooled by the astonishing thesaurus of Mr. K as accusing anyone just out of spite is going to backfire.

TBH, it's not easy get to the level that somebody would suspect your things... 

[Pegleg]

10 hours ago, Grazza said:

I think he was also trying to make some twisted point about cheating being impossible to detect, but ended up proving the polar opposite.

 

4 hours ago, GarrettChan said:

IIRC, it's the debate that he said using ZDoom is harder (or maybe impossible) to cheat since PrBoom+ is very easy to cheat (according to what he said), but obviously... ZDoom doesn't act like original. Therefore, I guess this is the reason why Memfis made a demo trying to say cheating is hard to detect or something. He might not be malicious at this point, but you know, once money is involved in something, things will be difficult. Right now, no one knows the actual reason behind this anymore.

 

The funny thing is that... this competition is originated from a particular somebody putting up crappy maps and having a prize to finish his/her maps.

 

I didn't know that Memfis had posted that apologetic admission until watching the video.

 

I recall him writing a post on another speedrun challenge where he decried that PrBoom+ was allowed as an acceptable source of demos because of how easy it was to cheat with it. Then he posted a demo, recorded in PrBoom+, wherein it seemed likely that he cheated.

 

I always thought that he was being very Machiavellian in proving his point that PrBoom+ was a poor choice for contests with demos due to the possibility of cheating.

[GarrettChan]

@Pegleg

Ah, since you posted this one, now I remember this thing happened again. To be honest, this actual money price thing (first because of Pan, you know...) just made things strange. I personally don't support this kind of thing in a open forum unless you ask for permission from the admins. Also, this triggers the human nature we all know...

 

Then, about how somebody wants to prove that PrBoom+ is not a good sourceport for this type of thing, I think you can do a TAS and clearly tell everybody this is a TAS and probably you can't figure it out just by looking at it. Then you probably won't be judged too much and you can prove your point (kind of)... However, Memfis just did a demo without saying anything and later got busted that he cheated. This is another story though because you're not honest about your own stuff. Just like somebody else in the forum, he doesn't put TAS in his demo/videos until somebody told him to do.

[TimeOfDeath666]

I had no idea about Memfis but I do remember Linguica's prize thread, I must have missed all the bad stuff. I remember Memfis PMed me asking for money for his health issues because months earlier he had written a timer program for me and I had said I would pay money but he said don't worry about it, but I didn't reply to the PM.

[Boomslang]

I CONFESS!!!

 

in my playthrough of doom 2 i used the resurrect command a few times..

 

 

 

[Boomslang]

i hated the layout of some of the levels, some were kinda BS, but towards the end levels are really fucking good.

[Kyka]

12 hours ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

Can't believe he didn't mention the worst culprit of all. Looking at YOU ZeroMaster. 20 minutes to do an Underhalls pacifist run... talk about slow motion.

 

  Hide contents

I'm joking please don't hurt me.

 

 

Yeah. Ikr? I once completed a nightmare pacifist run of Underhalls in less than a minute!*

 

 

 

 

 

*I can't help but feel that my use of the "-nomonsters" command line parameter somehow lessens the impact of this achievement.

 

[Big Ol Billy]

Yeah, tbh the Memfis story seems more sad than anything else, if it's really the case that surprise medical bills pushed him into cheating for prize money. As USA Doomer, that's pretty (sadly) relatable.

[Grazza]

6 hours ago, GarrettChan said:

IIRC, it's the debate that he said using ZDoom is harder (or maybe impossible) to cheat

Sure, but this is a specious argument. A good programmer could add TAS features to Zdoom very easily. I recall Entryway estimating it would take him 20 minutes' work.

 

Cheaters will give themselves away by their actions, both in-game and out-of-game, whether subtly or blatantly, and either immediately or eventually. The temptation to cheat is obvious: that demo where you cocked up an ideal run by something unbelievably incompetent at the exit, and you actually could TAS on a final second and no one truly would ever know... But that's a slippery slope and worse things follow inevitably.

 

 

[BBQgiraffe]

14 hours ago, Magicana said:

Apart from that one $100 prize, there is no money attached. It's all about personal achievement at this stage. And what's the achievement if you have to cheat?

 

because seeing "wow you beat me" displayed on their screens is probably the only happiness they get outside of telling 6 year old kids that Santa isn't real

[BigBoy91]

Shame about Krypto. I watched his videos regularly. Should have just honed up to it instead of typing that cringe-inducing, Shakespearean essay of a reply. That made it even worse. Haha..

Edited November 27, 2019 by lazy91geek