Prove Yourself (or tell stories)

[TimeOfDeath]

DOOM is serious business for some people. With all the competition and honor that go into recording demos, maybe we could help each other feel safer by trying to prove ourselves. Recently, someone deleted all of their youtube videos and left after curiosity arose about whether he used TAS. This has affected me because I competed with him on hr2 map32 and now I don't know what to think.

Maybe we could all post our Doom history?
- when you started playing Doom, recording demos, what maps you record on, etc.

If you have a webcam or a digital camera that can make videos, maybe you could show your Doom computer, key config, show you playing live, etc?

I'd enjoy reading and watching these kind of things anyway, regardless of trying to prove yourself.


Here's an example video I made for Super Mario Kart that shows me playing live with my hands: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lfVbrHBRDA

Here's a Doom commentary video where I do a -nomonsters walkthrough of loink.wad that shows a few rocket jumps: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-speed-demos/48535-loink-video-walkthrough-with-commentary/

[vdgg]

Uh-oh. You seem to have drastically changed your attitude since this topic.

I feel relatively safe :) I'm 100% sure these top class players do NOT cheat: TimeOfDeath, xit vono, tatsurd-cacocaco, gggmork, dew. I follow their demos, commentary, non-demo related behaviour for a long time.

I had absolutely no idea how to cheat until the -recordfromto discovery. I use this option in practicing longer runs and for my own stupid TAS Tyson collection which I don't wanna share with anyone. Even if I had a camera, this would not prove anything. One can make 99 legit runs and cheat on just one by using a single savegame. So I simply trust everyone here and hope most of you trust me (even though I haven't recorded anything amazing...)

[TimeOfDeath]

I don't have internet at my place, so I can't properly respond right now. But, it was Okuplok's deleting of videos and leaving that made me suspicious. At the time we competed, I just stabbed my monitor with a screw driver and admitted defeat :)

Just to be clear, I do trust everyone here. I just thought it could be cool/helpful to learn more about all players.

[dew]

i played doom throughout the 90's with my friend, we had a permanent ethernet network and our daily bread was doom and gta1. we spent lots of time playing doom2 map01 dm and map15/16 coop. interestingly, we were totally oblivious about the online scene even with internet access, we didn't know you could load up pwads(!!) and for some reason i played on mouse only, +forward on mouse2, tapping keys only for strafe and use, not using +back. hehhh...

years later, being an oldschool gamer raving how modern games suck, i got introduced to zdaemon. it was late 2005 or early 2006, not sure. i spent some time playing ffa, mostly greenwar, then i got lured to ctf and duels, too. the important moment was my study stay with erasmus programme in denmark. i lived in the DTU campus in copenhagen and those bastards were blocking all the ports used by online gaming. i started playing all the singleplayer pwads i've been ignoring all these years, starting with alien vendetta (heh). av map16 played in the laser lab where i worked on my project. the laser is turned on for effect. :) in this period i killed a lot of time learning how to rocketjump in zdaemon, mostly by studying timeofdeath's demos. that was the start of my own demoing carreer, so he is the reason i'm here now. :)

skip to the present: i'm fairly established as a uv-speed/pacifist specialist. i'm too airheaded to plan a proper maxroute exceeding... 2 minutes. on the other hand, i can grind an insanely hard trick for hours to get 1sec improvement in a speedrun. i'm quite erratic and miss plain shots often, which is ironic, because i'm quite good at ctf and 1on1. i like hard tricks, because they give me an edge, but my biggest strenght is probably very clean sr50 running. i record on prboom+ and i find it impossible to go back to vanilla under dosbox, because the mouse feels weird and the constant record restarting is painful. so i mostly stay away from the classic c-n wads and record on new stuff. i know how to use -recordfromto and i did some TAS runs with it, but the runs are so preposterously hard it's pretty obvious even without my saying so. :)

misc info: i play on laptop (old crap hp nx7400) and i use logitech g5 mouse. i thought i'm using high sensitivity, but watching tod or chewy proved me wrong. :) my best and most difficult accomplishments are my rjspace9f rocket jumping demos for zdaemon that took almost two years of training and grinding. the rj directly to bfg in my uv-speed is my personal 'doom2map07 pacifist rj'. i consider vile the best demo recorder ever, because it's so sweet for watching, although my biggest influences would be sedlo for speedrunning, chewy for duelling and of course my personal hero tod. :) i don't have a webcamera, sorry. i'm currently co-managing zdaemon's 1on1 european tourneys.

[Creaphis]

My runs are legit because if they weren't they'd be better.

[skogsto09]

I'm more of the opinion that its better to have a few solid hardworked
achivements to look back on, rather than having done half a million half-decent runs here and there. I get the most respect from a player if he proves himself thru one great achivement rather than not really
having put himself to the test ever.

How bad can you kick ass @ doom ...its what we're really here for isn't it ? :)

[Guiddqd]

Hello dear speedrunners :)

I can see there's still a lot of activity on this site, which is great.
I followed the progress on the compet-n inc. and some other threads, and it makes me wanna record again! But I'm having trouble with my wirst I broke several years ago and it's very difficult for me to be precise enough for top-notch .lmps.
All my demos were recorded in this condition actually, and like Henning said, I wish I had achievements to look back on, but atm it's not possible for me to be on the edge of my skills :(.

If it gets better some day, I'll be back to do the runs I always wanted to do: 30nm, e4nm and maybe 30pl.

Now to answer your question, I think doom like every other 'competitive' game is serious business enough to bring cheats in the context.

As an example, I started playing Diablo2 again, and goddamn is it full of greedy bastards. To say it like it is. You couldn't imagine all the techniques they come up with to get 'rich', and rip people off.
So for me, games and cheating can't be without each other and we, legit players, have to keep playing them for the reason we started for :).

[Vile]

First demo was pl08-135 for Compet-N, back when I still played Quake 3 for the Stickmen (stx) lol. My first max run was av26 for the first av demopack. Somewhere in there were nightmare runs for doom1 like the nm100s movies, then I tried 30ns and failed (doing that one before 30nm was pretty backwards anyway). I left that one alone for a long time before I came back and finished it, but it was worth it. There was also a lot of table-filling, like undone pacifists, nightmares for Final Doom, and other stuff that I felt like people would be interested in seeing.

I like the fact that many demo recorders like to push themselves to take on new challenges and discover new ways to take on the levels. What made demo-recording the most fun was seeing what you were capable of accomplishing, both in terms of skill and problem-solving (and shit-ass luck other times, lol). In turn, it was interesting to see what happens when one player discovers a new trick and opens up the flood gates for a bunch of new ideas and shortcuts from everyone else.

As for the serious business part of it, that may have been one reason why I stopped. With any hobby, I feel that there is a scale, with fun on one side and work on the other. When the "work" tips that scale, I feel that it is time to scale it back before it becomes too dominating. Demo-recording is fun, but it can become obsessive to get those seconds down and dwell on silly mistakes that can make the run look ugly to you, but acceptable to anyone else. I bet almost any player will cringe at one part in their demos but no one else will really notice it, lol.

Guiddqd said:

As an example, I started playing Diablo2 again, and goddamn is it full of greedy bastards. To say it like it is. You couldn't imagine all the techniques they come up with to get 'rich', and rip people off.
So for me, games and cheating can't be without each other and we, legit players, have to keep playing them for the reason we started for :).

I am glad I stopped playing that game too for similar reasons... making strong characters was fun, since eventually I was able to get through Hell difficulty for the first time. It definitely did become more of a business to try and get the best equipment though. In the end, I tried my hand at the Uber bosses and got stomped, lol. I got Uber Izual down to half health but he just regenerated it all before I could finish the job. The other two battles were much worse. I felt like it would have taken too much of my time to get the best equipment in order to do the hardest parts that bots were already capable of doing on their own with some sick build.

[Khaoscythe]

The hell...DooM and D2 in one thread O.o...?

I was wondering what had happened to Okuplok's channel a while back until I stumbled upon here. Damn shame too that it would be the 'haters' to do him in like that. To hell with the opinions of those that don't know nor can comprehend any better as long as the player himself as well as those who know for a fact of that persons' skills as a speed runner are concerned.

Off topic, PvP is the only fun thing about D2...but right now that game is pure ass! This is coming from the guy that used to run the east trade channel back in late 1.12.

In the end, it all comes down to the casual vs competitive gamer basis as we all are aware of...

[Phml]

I bet almost any player will cringe at one part in their demos but no one else will really notice it, lol.

I bet almost any player will cringe at one part in my demos but I'll never bother to make "great" runs. It's all fun and no work here, quantity over quality. ;)

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to come off as holier than thou ; more power to those who stay competitive, it certainly is great to watch these awesome runs.

[Vile]

Phml said:

I bet almost any player will cringe at one part in my demos but I'll never bother to make "great" runs. It's all fun and no work here, quantity over quality. ;)

Lol that's good actually, no doubt your demos are still appreciated. This might go back to the discussion about never releasing record-breaking demos for personal reasons, which is entirely up to the recorder, but more demos means more entertainment for everyone else. :)

[skogsto09]

Depends entirely on your perspective I guess...it would be diffrent for someone that have spent some 20.000 hours playing the game compared to an average player having *just* played some now and then over a period of time. You can't say you have really played a game for 10+years without having something like a solid achivment to show for :) Noone would belive you...if you see yourself as a dedicated doomer then go for something that really shows your heart for the game. The casual max demo for some random .wad really dosn't cut it for that category but sure has it purpose...casual controlled dooming can be the best mental therapy ever...both to play and whatch

good night people :-)

[VinceDSS]

playing on LAN is probably the best way to prove yourself, you can't hide what you do behind your screen :)

Watching henning and anders playing live is quite a feat :)

[TimeOfDeath]

Yeah, a LAN would be awesome, except all the travelling/money, and I don't like to talk.

Thanks for the responses so far. Please post more about your dooming history, and make some live videos or commentary videos or any videos at all! :)