speedrunning and p_random

[flubbernugget]

 

I watched this cool video on UV Max Speedruns and there seems to be a big issue with them in that there's a lot of chance involved, meaning speedrunners have to grind out a bunch of playthroughs for a good dice roll.

 

My understanding though is that when Doom's rng is implemented with p_random, which deterministically cycles through a set of values to simulate randomness. Seems fine for casual players, but it seems like speedrunners have no way to say, fire a shot to manipulate the rng so the next one does more damage? What's going on here? Are there too many p_random calls to keep track of? Even tool assisted? Is there more to the rng than just this one call?

[GarrettChan]

TAS is fine for RNG manipulation, see Doom 2 Map30 UV Pacifist.

 

For non-TAS speedruns, you just can't. The best way to experience it is to try it yourself. Probably after thousands of attempts, you can't get a same start unless the start involves very minimum inputs.