"First Blood" Compet-N

[Maes]

As the stated purpose of Compet-N speedruns is to give a "quantitative" comparison of the players' ability vs each other, wouldn't it have sense to have a "first blood" category as well?

The standard speedrunning categories, respectable as they may be, they will end-up being flooded by hyper-optimized speedruns, which are the result of many hours (or even years) of study, analysis, trial and error, bug exploits, or even TAS, and thus reaching standards normally unattainable during casual play.

I herery propose having a category of speedrunning reserved only to new maps (existing maps wouldn't be eligible for reasons soon to be apparent), where compet-n entry submissions would only be valid within 1-hour... 30 minutes... or even just 15 minutes after the map is released to the public.

Of course this would require an organized, quasi-real time ladder, but the idea is to compare everyone's relative progress in an unknown map which has not been studied yet, with the purpose of seeing who really is the "best" Doomer in the sense of being an all-around good player, able to adapt to unknown situations, exploiting general-validity tricks, etc. (if such a player exists, of course).

Some proposed categories:

FB-1h: First Blood 1 hour, entries (lmp) must be submitted within 1 hour of the map being released on an official server/page/link. Any number of attempts can be made within the hour, players may submit as many attempts as they want, or only their best one.

FB-30h: Same as before, but within a 30 minute limit.

FB-15h: Same as before, but within a 15 minute limit. That means one or two tries max in medium-large maps.

Fb One Shot: The hardest of all categories, exactly *one* attempt can be made at any map, regardless of time, and regardless of how "unfair" it can be. Easier to check for validity in a LAN game, unless players are instructed *not* to end the game upon death, and thus recording the required length of "dead" gametime in the demo, thus showing that this was not a second attempt.

The "winner", in each case, is the one who reaches the farther in the map (in case none actually completes it), or, in case of completion, the same criteria with other Compet-N categories can be applied. In the case the author of the map planned for a clearly linear progress or allowed for "smarter" ways of completing the map, his judgment will also count in deciding whether e.g. dying while trying to get a certain key is "better" than dying trying to clear a hard room of monsters.

[Grazza]

Maes said:

As the stated purpose of Compet-N speedruns is to give a "quantitative" comparison of the players' ability vs each other

Where is this stated? I don't believe it is truly the purpose, at least in the way it has evolved. There is a lot of sharing of ideas in a highly cooperative spirit, and I don't recall anyone claiming to be a better overall player just because they have shaved a second or two off someone else's time. Even Vile and Sedlo (who could both certainly lodge claims to being the best Doomer of all time) have repeatedly emphasized the fact that their amazing runs are the produce of a vast amount of practice.

[Maes]

I got the "quantitative" bit from the Doom wiki itself:

http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Speedrun

And yeah, I'm aware of the fact that speedruns are more of a crafted and artificious stunt than a display of "real" skills. However comparison and competition has always been present in Doom, even if once it was much simpler (e.g. to become a "DMGAK" (DooM Grand Ass Kicker" it was enough to be able to finish all standard IWAD levels on UV or something).

[dew]

well.. i seriously doubt most people will even notice the map/wad is out after 15/30/60 minutes. casual stroll demos from firstcomers would end up being 15min record.. shit, some maps would not be completed in the time limit at all! or.. someone attacks a great time within the limit, but ends up dead by an unlucky imp shot near the exit, with no time to repeat the run. so a time ~2min slower wins. fair? i don't think so.

on the other hand, there's this contest league going on...
http://contest.idoom.cz/

czech sp'ers compete (almost) weekly on a map revealed just before the contest starts... the time is hard set for sunday 20.00, regular every week... and there's two categories: 1 hour flash contest and weekly contest.

i know most of you won't understand the moonspeak of the site, but it's pretty clear that the map is named directly before the download link in every article.. the style of the run usually follows. and the times are self-explanatory. the tables on the right side show the actual contest/latest demos for it.

i would like to mention the contest #1 especially. it was dwango5 map01 all-weapons/armors run and it was done in compet-n, too. only hegyi's record time remained unbeaten and graim's winning time shows a new route that has the potential to beat even that!

[myk]

dew said:
well.. i seriously doubt most people will even notice the map/wad is out after 15/30/60 minutes.

It would have to be done on an IRC channel or something, much like speed-mapping is done. It seems this "first blood" idea is pretty much the demoing equivalent of speed-mapping, after all.

[Maes]

myk said:

It would have to be done on an IRC channel or something, much like speed-mapping is done. It seems this "first blood" idea is pretty much the demoing equivalent of speed-mapping, after all.

Yes, that would be the underlying mechanism behind it. It would be much like taking part in a real-life competition, written exam, or test.

You know the time and the place, but you don't know what you will have to face, more or less.

Again, the idea behind this is to prove who's a really "good", all around doomer. E.g. what one may perceive as an "unfair trap" or "too many monsters for the ammo given", another one may find manageable by doing action x and y...spontaneously. Anyone can perform endless tactical analysis on another one's gameplay and find ways to "correct" him...but who is really and consistently "good" in the very first, never-seen-before, virgin, unbroken, untamed etc. approach to an unknown map?

The idea is to single out the "fittest" Doomer of them all, so to speak.

After that, you can ofc give any map to lunch for the more dedicated speedrunners.

dew said:

well.. i seriously doubt most people will even notice the map/wad is out after 15/30/60 minutes. casual stroll demos from firstcomers would end up being 15min record..

As I said, this has to be done as an organized competition between motivated participants. Random newcomers don't really enter into it.

shit, some maps would not be completed in the time limit at all! or.. someone attacks a great time within the limit, but ends up dead by an unlucky imp shot near the exit, with no time to repeat the run. so a time ~2min slower wins. fair? i don't think so.

The very definition of completing a map is managing to hit the exit switch alive or the very least triggering the end-level with one of those dead-body-triggering-linedefs tricks. Even if that means doing a slower run than someone who played like God himself but unfortunately made a mistake at a certain point.

I mean, what if you're trying to beat a map in one run, you play technically better than any speedrun that ever existed up to a certain point but at the very next istant you screw up and die? Think anybody will pat you in the back for it? Will your demo ever be accepted on the grounds of a "what if..."? Now I don't think so...

[myk]

Maes said:
Again, the idea behind this is to prove who's a really "good", all around doomer. E.g. what one may perceive as an "unfair trap" or "too many monsters for the ammo given", another one may find manageable by doing action x and y...spontaneously. Anyone can perform endless tactical analysis on another one's gameplay and find ways to "correct" him...but who is really and consistently "good" in the very first, never-seen-before, virgin, unbroken, untamed etc. approach to an unknown map?

Well, more than "all around" I'd say it'd point to who's good at solving on-the-fly situations. Map-learning and longer term work on demos is also skill. It's true that you can always do better with more time, but not all players do this with equal effectiveness or potential. Some may be very good in spontaneous situations but not that good at working out a more optimized demo in the long run, or the other way around.

[Maes]

myk said:

Some may be very good in spontaneous situations but not that good at working out a more optimized demo in the long run, or the other way around.

You expressed this better than I could so far :-)

So yeah, this would be a special case of COMPET-N aimed more at the on-the-fly, real-time factor of doom gameplay, vs the meticolously planned and crafted speedruns (which I too acknowledge, take special skills to plan and perform).

The only aid I'd ever consider giving to a "first blood" competitor would be a simple top-view map of the level, and some limited time to study it (no things and no clearly marked spots though).

There are other catches of course, e.g. maps which can only be completed if you do/don't do certain things in the right/wrong time, others which can only be completed in one way, and others that rely too much on luck, so there should be, ideally, a screening process or guidelines for creating suitable maps...or else consider anything "fair game" as long as it can be demonstrated to be completable (e.g. no single rooms with 100 cyberdemons pointed at you) regardless of its quirks.

[Hitherto]

Five kopecks from Russian FDC "First-Demo Contest" (holds five times on this moment)

1. One good mapper made map specially for contest.
2. One good player becomes tester of this map.
3. Mapper and tester becomes organizers and judges.
4. Download link revealed in exact time, so all players starts demo at the same time.
5. In case if player dies while playing, he will able restart level without quiting. Number of respawns is unlimited. (Theoreticaly, player which dies few times on quick exploring may beat too wary and slow player, which died not once)
6. Completed demos submitted immediately, for purpose of natural cheating protection by time comparision.

For international competition under these rules main problem is serious time-zone differences.

-----------------------

dew said:
it was dwango5 map01 all-weapons/armors run and it was done in compet-n, too. only hegyi's record time remained unbeaten

? What relation between compet-n and dm map?

[dew]

http://195.197.184.88/~compet-n/index.cgi?action=contest

compet-n contest, scene 2 - collecting all weapons and armors in the d5m1 map on NM difficulty. hegyi and graim both reached 24.60 using different routes.

[gggmork]

obhack w/ swarms generates fun hard maps quick, and has a seed number so everyone can play the same map