[quick start] How to change starting player angle?

[Coincident]

I've seen some demos where the player performs a trick that I have no explanation / information about, even after searching these forums.

The trick is: the level starts with a custom player angle. It seems that a rotation is applied to the player even before the first tick (you can see it during the "screen melt" effect on map start).
This is visible, for example, on Vincent Catalaa's record of E1M4, NM100S: https://dsdarchive.com/wads/doom/leaderboard?category=NM+100S&level=E1M4
 

With this trick, a player can start the level at the perfect angle to immediately start SR50 in the right direction on the very first tick.

This can save a few frames, and be an advantage in some cases. I'm surprised I don't see this trick being used more often...

 

So... 2 question about this trick:

1 - Is it allowed? (as in, for DSDA / Compet-N submissions)
2 - If so; how can I replicate it? Does it work with PrBoom or do I need some other source port?

Edited February 14, 2020 by Coincident

[baja blast rd.]

1. Yes.

2. Move mouse before map loads. Yes. 

[Dimon12321]

The first tic can be read if you were entering input at a specific moment before the map starts loading. But how to do that so precisely is beyond my knowledge. I would believe if it was like W + D or W + A, but he also turns left at 32 in-game degrees (32 * 1.4 = 44.8 angle - I don't know how this measure is called).

The second tic is read right after the screen melting effect is over. Here you have enough time to press movement keys and turn the character with your mouse, and when the melting is over - you will instantly turn at an angle.

Edited February 13, 2020 by Dimon12321

[Scorpius]

I use this all the time. As soon as I click my demo recording bat file, I shift my mouse either left or right a certain amount. This results in an altered starting angle upon loading the map, which is really helpful for getting off immediately. For example, MM2 MAP12, you start on a narrow bridge looking away from a door. Instead of turning around and then running across the bridge after the map loads, I move the mouse to face the door (at an angle to strafe run, of course) before the map loads. Therefore, I can immediately run across the bridge without any required turning. It essentially allows you to proceed with your speedrun quicker.

[depr4vity]

i use this all the time, prboom doesnt show a different angle during the melt, but crispy does

[Looper]

The trick is called "quick start". It accounts for the first 1-7 frames of the demo or so. It is slighly dependant on your computer and heavily dependant on the source port. Each source port has a different kind of quick start. The best quick start at the moment is in Crispy Doom with the in-game restart button. You can get it angled with an insane S50 start. I think an in-game restart button would make it even better for prboom+, too.

 

16 hours ago, depr4vity said:

i use this all the time, prboom doesnt show a different angle during the melt, but crispy does

It will, if you turn on the very first frame, though :-)

 

Under Prboom+, the quick start looks SOMETHING like this:

Frame 1: MF50 SL40 (MF50 = W/forward. SL40 = A/strafe left)

Frame 2: MF50 SL40 TR38 (TR38 = turn 38 'tics' to the right)

Frame 3: MF50 SL40

Frame 4: MF50 SL40

Frame 5: MF50 SL40

Frame 6: MF50 SL40

Frame 7: MF50 SL40

Frame 8: MF50 SL50 (the first frame where the game feels like it is not stuck in the melting screen anymore, but player can turn with the mouse, for example)

 

In CrispyDoom it is something like this:

Frame 1: MF50 TR31

Frame 2: MF50 TR7

Frame 3: MF50 SL40

Frame 4: MF50 SL40

Frame 5: MF50 SL40

Frame 6: MF50 SL40

Frame 7: MF50 SL40

Frame 8: MF50 SL50 (again the first frame where player gets the normal control back, similar to prboom+)

 

And with in-game restart button in CrispyDoom it looks like this:

Frame 1: MF50 SL40 TR38

Frame 2: MF50 SL50

Frame 3: MF50 SL40

Frame 4: MF50 SL40

Frame 5: MF50 SL40

Frame 6: MF50 SL50

Frame 7: MF50 SL50

Frame 8: MF50 SL50 (full control gained around here)

 

And in DOSbox + original exe it looks something like this:

Frame 1: MF50 TR31

Frame 2: MF50

Frame 3: MF50

Frame 4: MF50

Frame 5: MF50

Frame 6: MF50

Frame 7: MF50 SL40 TR7

Frame 8: MF50 SL50 (full control gained around here)

 

And in original exe under DOS environment it looks something like this:

Frame 1: MF50 SL40 TR38

Frame 2: MF50 SL40

Frame 3: MF50 SL40

Frame 4: MF50 SL40

Frame 5: MF50 SL40

Frame 6: MF50 SL40

Frame 7: MF50 SL40

Frame 8: MF50 SL50 (full control gained around here)

[Coincident]

Thanks Looper! That's exactly the information I was looking for.

I have to get Crispy Doom and practice that "quick start" while recording some demos to see what happens.

By the way, how can I open a demo file to see the frame-by-frame information inside?
Can I use kraflab's demo analysis tool, or do you recommend something else?

[Looper]

6 minutes ago, Coincident said:

By the way, how can I open a demo file to see the frame-by-frame information inside?

 

I'm using XDRE v2.06 or 2.09

[GoneAway]

Not to open a big can of worms, but is fixing this something we should pursue? By fixing I mean making it equivalent across the major ports (and probably aligned with vanilla). Probably for most players the differences aren't important but for the people pushing stuff like no01 it's pretty vital 😄

 

I think it's "ok" right now to say "if you're pushing the absolute human limit then you'll need crispy for the quick start" but it's not exactly ideal.

[Poncho1]

Funnily enough, in my first few demos, my run would automatically have me face towards the right. Dunno what all that was about. 

[alps]

On 2/14/2020 at 4:14 PM, Looper said:

 

I'm using XDRE v2.06 or 2.09

as soon as i enter 10-15 tics in 2.09, it crashes, no idea why, im using win7 (dont wanna go w10 and have my ram usage high)

[RoadrunnerKZSK]

Hi, so I've been trying to figure out this quick start strat and whatever I've tried I couldn't overcome these problems:

 

1) My demo always starts with a WT frame:


while every other demo I've downloaded already starts with MF50 SR40 for example... Why is that? I'm already holding the inputs when in screen wipe effect..

 

The only time I've managed to get actual input instead of WT on the first frame is using a workaround where I hold that input in previous demo and only then I press restart demo. In that case the new demo will have the first frame with input of last frame of the previous demo:

This behavior seems very weird, is this how you're supposed to do it?

 

2) Second issue I have is how do you actually SR50 in the quick start time window? Strafing with mouse doesn't seem to work at all so I had to use 4 buttons for SR50 to work from frame 1 onwards but now I'm unable to punch in any turn input in between:

Best I could do was SR50 from previous demo, upon entering wipe effect Move mouse and hold SR40 for few frames and only after the game activates after about 5 frames I could start SR50, resulting in something like this:

which is close enough but not ideal, not to mention the execution is very clunky.

 

I tried everything in parallel on CrispyDoom and PrBoom+ 2.6. It worked the same way on both.

 

 

Could anyone clarify how this works please?

[blob1024]

On 2/13/2020 at 8:52 PM, Scorpius said:

I use this all the time. As soon as I click my demo recording bat file, I shift my mouse either left or right a certain amount. This results in an altered starting angle upon loading the map, which is really helpful for getting off immediately. For example, MM2 MAP12, you start on a narrow bridge looking away from a door. Instead of turning around and then running across the bridge after the map loads, I move the mouse to face the door (at an angle to strafe run, of course) before the map loads. Therefore, I can immediately run across the bridge without any required turning. It essentially allows you to proceed with your speedrun quicker.

I knew of this but could hardly regularly replicate the angle wished in demos. it's all about personal sensibility to move in order to get right position?

thats why I rarely actually use it, its more the times I fuck it and run into a wall than starting with good angle eheh

[GoneAway]

3 hours ago, RoadrunnerKZSK said:

Hi, so I've been trying to figure out this quick start strat and whatever I've tried I couldn't overcome these problems:

 

1) "Why is that? I'm already holding the inputs when in screen wipe effect.."

The wipe is on the second frame, so you are actually already "too late" to quickstart at that point.

 

Quick start is about entering commands "before" the game starts so they are read at the start of the first tic. So you aren't getting the input at the end of the previous demo copied over somehow, you are just entering this command when the new demo "begins", which coincides with when the restart key is pressed (which again, is before the wipe and not during).

 

2) sr50

This issue where you are "locked" into sr40 for a few frames is caused by a bug in the wipe screen code. That bug is fixed in dsda-doom.

Mouse sr50 shouldn't be a problem, but you have to time it. An easier strategy is to restart twice. The first time you restart creates the wipe - during the wipe you input your action you want to quickstart with and restart again - all of that is buffered into the start of the following demo. This is what depravity uses.

[RoadrunnerKZSK]

18 minutes ago, kraflab said:

 

1) "Why is that? I'm already holding the inputs when in screen wipe effect.."

The wipe is on the second frame, so you are actually already "too late" to quickstart at that point.

 

Quick start is about entering commands "before" the game starts so they are read at the start of the first tic. So you aren't getting the input at the end of the previous demo copied over somehow, you are just entering this command when the new demo "begins", which coincides with when the restart key is pressed (which again, is before the wipe and not during).

 

2) sr50

This issue where you are "locked" into sr40 for a few frames is caused by a bug in the wipe screen code. That bug is fixed in dsda-doom.

Mouse sr50 shouldn't be a problem, but you have to time it. An easier strategy is to restart twice. The first time you restart creates the wipe - during the wipe you input your action you want to quickstart with and restart again - all of that is buffered into the start of the following demo. This is what depravity uses.

Thanks for reply.

 

1) Makes sense.

 

2) Sadly no matter what I try using any form of mouse movement combined together with SR50 in the wipe window it has no effect at all. Yes I noticed depravity's demos, for example here is doom II map 1:

 

As you said he's indeed unable to do SR50 on all of the starting frames.

 

That's why I'm intrigued about this particular demo here(not his):

There's a perfect turn value on frame 1 (which is required otherwise SR50 is useless on start of that map) and then SR50 right after.  Is this legit?

[GoneAway]

Looks completely legit - you don't need to be moving in order to activate quickstart, so just a turn is fine. Then you can sr50 during the wipe effect and it will come out just fine.

[RoadrunnerKZSK]

2 hours ago, kraflab said:

Looks completely legit - you don't need to be moving in order to activate quickstart, so just a turn is fine. Then you can sr50 during the wipe effect and it will come out just fine.

 

Would make sense if only the SR50 worked :D As soon as I press SR50 during wipe effect it always neglects any previous mouse movements so I don't get the turn input for my new demo :/

[GoneAway]

12 minutes ago, RoadrunnerKZSK said:

 

Would make sense if only the SR50 worked :D As soon as I press SR50 during wipe effect it always neglects any previous mouse movements so I don't get the turn input for my new demo :/

You cannot turn & sr50 on one frame. You can only input one frame during the wipe, so it can either be turn (+ sr40) or sr50.

[RoadrunnerKZSK]

16 minutes ago, kraflab said:

You cannot turn & sr50 on one frame. You can only input one frame during the wipe, so it can either be turn (+ sr40) or sr50.

 

Yeah but when I do turning in  first wipe and then sr50 in second wipe I always get 6 frames of WT:

 

I didn't really get how can the double restart make me go TR first frame and SR50 second frame when I can't setup both at once and if I try to setup turn and SR50 later there are the Waits. I'm probably just dumb.

[GoneAway]

That looks like the wipe bug I mentioned earlier - basically it eats input for a bunch of frames. If you get that in both crispy and pr+, then your only option is to switch to dsda-doom - or ask to get this addressed in one of those ports.

[RoadrunnerKZSK]

10 hours ago, kraflab said:

That looks like the wipe bug I mentioned earlier - basically it eats input for a bunch of frames. If you get that in both crispy and pr+, then your only option is to switch to dsda-doom - or ask to get this addressed in one of those ports.

 

Yeah it was happening in both ports for me but the perfect start demo I showed yesterday was CrispyDoom as well so that's why I was confused.

 

Anyway yesterday I was excited when I found out about the new prboom+ 2.6 version but now that I've tried your dsda-doom it's even better :D I was able to perform the ideal quickstart right away:

 

Also a lot of great features you have there so thank you for suggesting it! Definitely gonna be my go to port now.

 

One thing I'm still a bit confused about though is this Quickstart window option. What does it do?

I figured it'd be the amount of time it reads your input for after restarting a level to then copy that input to next restart. But setting it to either 0 or 1000 doesn't do anything from what I've noticed.

Also this option here seems to be doing nothing:

 

Is there a way I can speed up the wipe screen effect? I'd like something like 300-500ms instead of ~2 seconds. Would save a lot of time when spamming thousands of runs.

 

[GoneAway]

The quickstart window just affects the initial quickstart when you launch the game. Basically it simulates a longer startup time. There's no way to speed up the wipe effect currently (and there won't be, as speeding up any part of the game is against the rules for speedrunning).

[RoadrunnerKZSK]

6 minutes ago, kraflab said:

The quickstart window just affects the initial quickstart when you launch the game. Basically it simulates a longer startup time. There's no way to speed up the wipe effect currently (and there won't be, as speeding up any part of the game is against the rules for speedrunning).

I see. Thanks again for clarifying everything :) You basically saved 0.2sec from all my speedruns from now on which is a huge deal for me.