Contest ideas for Doom speedrunning site

[sneakfast]

Hello,

I am working on a Doom speedrunning site with many guides and newbie-friendly articles about playing Doom singleplayer, and recording demos. It is meant for czech community to increase popularity of SP here.

There will be two main event types, Titles and Contests, with contests as we know them from Compet-N, and titles reminiscent of Doom Honorific Titles, Titles being meant for wider audience(three levels of difficulty), contests of mediocre to hard difficulty.

Now what is my problem: I would like to ask you for help - it isn't hard to write guides and articles about recording and playing with ports, but I need some ideas for the contests and titles, and I thought that this is the right place to ask - please share your ideas:) thanks

[Gusta]

Nice idea! But it would still be good if this site would work in English too for some foreign visitors :-) I think I will tell you some ideas on icq or better in pub after 7+ beers. :-) For start, you can look on Wildwarriors site - we got there some very nice doom tasks that could be easily used for some contest.

[Kristian Ronge]

Good luck with constructing the site!
Here are some earlier discussions on this forum about novelty categories and/or challenges in Doom speedrunning ->
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32296
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=34136
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35860
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33971
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19677

There are surely others, as well. Snoop around. :-)

[Opulent]

Good ideas.

Perhaps different 'types' of titles.
example:
DHT type titles for Iwads(random easy/medium/hard levels assigned to player)
Scythe/HellRevealed/KamaSutra DHT titles (perhaps only max/speed categories for pwads) with easy/medium/hard titles to be earned.
etc...

player might hold something like:
DOOM DHT medium Speed title
DOOM DHT easy Nightmare title
DOOM2 DHT hard Max title
DOOM2 DHT medium Speed title
Pwad DHT medium Speed title (played on pre-determined, pre-categorized pwad maps)
Pwad DHT easy max title

Players could even be tasked with recording a map that has never been done before. :)

I really really like the Pdang style setup. because you play against yourself more than other players... and it is a definable point structure.
the competition should always be friendly or you will lose good and bad players.
good luck! let us know how it progresses.

[Belial]

I really think reviving DHT and expanding upon it's structure would be a welcome addition.

[sneakfast]

Thanks a lot for your support:)

I tried to find DHT rules(i think it was in one .txt), but with no luck - it isn't on the official sites and all links are broken :/

[Grazza]

sneakfast said:

I tried to find DHT rules(i think it was in one .txt), but with no luck - it isn't on the official sites and all links are broken :/

Maybe these links will help:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~fms27/dht/dht6.html
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~fms27/dht/dht5/ (older)
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~fms27/dht/future_of_dht.html
ftp://ftp.sogang.ac.kr/.3/msdos_games/ftp.cdrom.com/id-mirror/lmps/dht-exams/ (old cdrom.com mirror that escaped the later file-pruning in the lmps section)

[VinceDSS]

making it open to foreigners would be great indeed ... I know a bunch of french people that would participate :)

[sneakfast]

That ftp server is great, I began to think that I won't find the DHT rules, ever. Thanks for the link:)

It would be great if the site could be open for everyone, but it is hard to make it multilingual, maybe because I plainly can't do real webdesign and programming in php/SQL - so far we have only some materials, and everything is done via forum, well have a look

http://dsp.czweb.org/forum/
and here
http://dsp.czweb.org/

it is just in testing phase, and we made it czech..

Do you think it would be good just to write everything bilingual? Or any other ideas? :)

edit: tituly = titles, pravidla a navody = rules and instructions(articles), sin slavy = hall of fame

[sneakfast]

I added first title, Entryway Geek:)
http://dsp.czweb.org/ftp/tituly/zadani/entrygeek.zip
here are the tricks you have to do in order to get the title- bfg.lmps to be replayed with bfg1.wad, move.lmps classical doom2.wad (two of the bfg lmps are courtesy of Sedlo:) two additional demos you have to do is map01 NM speed in 6 seconds and nomonsters run in 5 seconds.

I don't know, is it hard enough? :p

[Opulent]

not sure I understand the rules of the bfg1.wad title... I play the demo and the player just acts funny. Maybe I need a Czech->English dictionary.

Map01 in 6 seconds isn't too hard, but 5 is.
I'd prefer to see a more open contest where players of all skills can compete. A selection of maps and runs... something more like the DHT.
But maybe that's not your intent.

[Grazza]

Opulent said:

not sure I understand the rules of the bfg1.wad title... I play the demo and the player just acts funny.

You need to load the bfg1.wad too. I believe the idea is that you are meant to emulate the same trick pulled off in each demo included. The wad and 7 demos by Sedlo were originally released in a file from 2002/3 called bfgtricks.zip or bfgtricks-sedlo.zip.

[Opulent]

I did. the items at the beginning are different.
I watched a couple demos and I eluded me as to what was required.
I will re-watch later with more scrutiny and brainpower.

and as for Map01, perhaps :05 isn't so hard... I got it on my first try.
http://www.doomworld.com/sda/dwdemo/lv01n594_op.zip
I remember it as being harder...

[Grazza]

Are you seeing the player blow up barrels using traces from BFG blasts fired in other parts of the map (and thanks to good movement skills)? Those are the tricks in question.

[Kristian Ronge]

About what Opulent said (players of all skills competing) I got an idea*:

Instead of titles, how about "grades" (e.g. gold, silver, bronze requirements)? The requirements for the higest "grade" (e.g. gold) could be map 1 NM speed in 0:06 / map 1 nomo in 0:05 / do all of the bfg-demos, and the requirements for the second highest "grade" would be slightly lower, e.g. map 1 NM speed in 0:08 / map 1 nomo in 0:06 / do three of the bfg demos, and so on. For each step, the requirements would be less and less demanding, which would give players who aren't as skilled something to aim for, too -- and a chance to practice for the higher grades.

It's just a humble suggestion, so if you don't like it, that's quite okay. :-)

* = idea stolen shamelessly from the TimeSplitters series where you earn medals in challenges based on performance.

[sneakfast]

Opulent: there are two demos in the zip file named move1 and move2.lmp, these have to be replayed without bfg1.wad. Maybe that could be the problem?

Kristian: well I tried to do something similar in this title, you dont have to record all 10 demos, with 9 demos you gain title Entryway Geek Junior:) and with 8 demos Entryway Geek Newbie.

I know the difficulty differentiation could be done better, and I will try to improve it in following titles - maybe with different requirements for speed (1:30, 1:10, 0:50) or quality(kill 20, 10, 1 imp).. Any ideas are welcome:)

[Kristian Ronge]

sneakfast said:
I know the difficulty differentiation could be done better, and I will try to improve it in following titles - maybe with different requirements for speed (1:30, 1:10, 0:50) or quality(kill 20, 10, 1 imp)..

That's exactly what I was thinking. The lowest grade's requirement should be quite generous IMHO, so that everyone has a shot at it. :-)

[sneakfast]

After three weeks first contest is over:)

http://sneakfast.borec.cz/ftp/carnage.zip

I packed all the demos together, the aim was to make 120% kills at Doom2.wad map02 as fast as possible at Nightmare! difficulty, I think that some of the demos are really thrilling to watch! enjoy

[Opulent]

sounds great!
onto contest 2...