My first demo

[Viewtiful-Chris]

It's a UV-Tyson run of E3M1 (Hell Keep). Tell me what I'm doing right and wrong, both in my playing style and how to write up threads / text files for this sort of thing.

It was recorded in Chocolate Doom 1.3.0 and is therefore Vanilla.

Also, I'm curious: how can you distinguish between a Vanilla demo and a Chocolate Doom demo for COMPET-N purposes? Also also, since COMPET-N is dead, is there any "new" COMPET-N?

[Viewtiful-Chris]

WHOOPS, forgot to attach it. Here it is.

vce3m1.zip

[Grazza]

Viewtiful-Chris said:

how can you distinguish between a Vanilla demo and a Chocolate Doom demo for COMPET-N purposes?

You can't. You're relying on people to be honest.

But your demo isn't Tyson. In a Tyson demo, you need to kill all* monsters (using only weapons 1 and 2), and you've left quite a few alive.

<small>* Only exceptions are lost souls and anything spawned by a boss shooter, or any map-specific exceptions, generally for unkillable monsters.</small>

[Viewtiful-Chris]

Grazza said:

You can't. You're relying on people to be honest.

So Chocolate Doom is THAT ACCURATE? That's actually quite amazing.

Well heck, I don't see why they wouldn't allow it. DOS is dead and Chocolate Doom doesn't let you do much that DOS Doom wouldn't.

[Viewtiful-Chris]

So uh...

Did anyone actually view it?

[vdgg]

We usually post and watch demos which follow some rules. As Grazza said, under Tyson category (Tyson rules) everything must be dead. If you magage to do so, you'll see how your performance compares to the best (C-N records for Hell Keep in Doom Wiki pages).

I assume your goal was to have the fastest time possible and you could use only pistol (or fist, but you didn't use it). Fine. In such case, you lose time after opening the keep door. Then you usually may skip one demon, and some of the imps at the end. With these rules, I managed to beat this map in 1:05 on my third try. (1st try - forgot about ammo, 2nd try, two imps followed me in the long corridor and I died). This means even with these rules your demo is not quite convincing.

It is advisable to press the quit button at the intermission screen, not after loading the next map.

Apart from the Tyson mistake, your text file is just fine.

Ask yourself what you want to achieve. There are superb speedrunners and so-called max runners here. I don't belong to any of the above categories, but still record demos which a few people watch and sometimes even praise. Most of my demos are:
- UV Max demos for good maps which lack demos
- Compet-N records for MM2 (which are relatively easy to beat / there are many undone tasks, and MM2 is my favourite classic WAD).
So I found a niche for myself. Ask yourself what are your favourite maps / categories / demos. I hope you see the point and my answer helps you.

Last but not least: some people's first demos uploaded at this forum were sensational (Archy, Graim). Other people's were not (myself). We don't have the same talent. Yet before I posted anything here, I played for fun and kept my recordings for myself for over 1 year. And watched many, many demos. I won't be surprised if you surprise us all :) in a positive way in a shorter time.