Youtube Nightmare player: is he cheating?

[deadwolves]

I really like watching doom vids as they help with figuring out how to route out a map, especially helpful when you are playing Nightmare. But there's one guy out there who seems to have it all figured out and I'm not sure if he's playing legit.

Take this one for example: E1M5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlPe7H5N7NY at around 0:35 he rushes past a pack of demons like they were nothing. I have gone into that lynchpin at least 100 times on Nightmare and can never do that. That's one of the most difficult part on Episode 1 when you are playing Nightmare.

On E1M8 you can clearly see the spectres at 1:10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzBw5xS__Xg This isn't fair in itself, because the spectres are tough to deal with on this map, but at 2:00 he appears to slip through them.

On his E4M1 vid, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej9f227sm3Y he manages to lower the lift at 0:15 somehow. And gets the red key through the bars. I've tried that many times but cannot do that. Then there's some fancy footwork when he runs for the exit after the NIN secret. He pulls this again somehow on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjMCBzajDRE 2:25, somehow he manages to get a key through a wall, almost entirely negating a battle with a baron.

I only play Nightmare vanilla. So maybe that's the problem. But I doubt his videos are the same- played each map enough times to know that. Nightmare is no joke, you cannot elbow past demons or grab keys through walls. So what is the deal. If he's playing a beefed up thing of Doom where you have advantages then that's not real Nightmare, that's just bullshit. Somebody fill me in.

[Blastfrog]

He's moving by the monsters normally, not sure how you're seeing him go "through" them.

As for grabbing stuff through walls, that's a known bug he's exploiting.

[Deleted_Account]

Should we report him?

[Blastfrog]

Piper Maru said:

Should we report him?

No, because there are no rules against cheating at games on YouTube, and he isn't cheating in the first place.

[deadwolves]

Sodaholic said:

He's moving by the monsters normally, not sure how you're seeing him go "through" them.

The lynchpin at E1M5 is one of the hardest things I've had to deal with. If you run towards the door in front of the enemies without shooting, like he does, you are always swiftly annihilated. Try it. I play it constantly. You cannot win by doing this. You will never do what this guy does.

My strategy has had to be change to kill everything on the ground before picking up the key because the spectres make it so difficult. You have to kill everything, then grab the key, run to the rocket launcher secret, and then kill the respawned. You are disadvantaged by allowing some of them to live. Eventually you resort to the rocket launcher just to get rid of them and get through the first keyed door.

Sodaholic said:

As for grabbing stuff through walls, that's a known bug he's exploiting.

So he's literally cheating? So he's not actually completing the map as it was designed to be played. The access to the BFG on E4M6 is a huge advantage for instance.

Look at the same map: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjMCBzajDRE At 3:47 he runs up and grabs a secret. But the pillars should not have been lowered at that point, he never interacted with anything.

[The Civ]

deadwolves said:

So he's literally cheating? So he's not actually completing the map as it was designed to be played. The access to the BFG on E4M6 is a huge advantage for instance.

These are techniques that have been used in speedrunning for a long long time now.
Cheating and exploiting are two vastly different things.
Cheating will get you kicked out of competitions and speedrun events.
Exploiting will get you in first place.
Calm yourself.

[Doomkid]

Once you know how, the enemy AI and imperfect collision detection can be abused to hell and back.

[kuchitsu]

Fun thread. :)

deadwolves said:

On his E4M1 vid, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej9f227sm3Y he manages to lower the lift at 0:15 somehow.

Easy trick. You can activate that lift while standing on its very edge. Remember that you can press switches that are located way higher or lower than you: this is essentially the same thing. Your vertical position doesn't matter as long as you "press" on the line itself.

deadwolves said:

And gets the red key through the bars. I've tried that many times but cannot do that.

Try harder! This is a famous trick that many people have done. It really really helps to get through this level on Nightmare, so I strongly recommend learning it.

He pulls this again somehow on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjMCBzajDRE 2:25, somehow he manages to get a key through a wall, almost entirely negating a battle with a baron.

Again, a famous trick. The key is located very closely to the wall so you can grab it by running towards it at a high speed. I've done it myself and so can you with some practice.

deadwolves said:

Look at the same map: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjMCBzajDRE At 3:47 he runs up and grabs a secret. But the pillars should not have been lowered at that point, he never interacted with anything.

Of course he did. At 2:48 you can clearly see him press the switch that lowers these pillars.

Most important: remember that every single of these demos is a product of many hours of work. Of course Chris can't do all that stuff on the first try. But by trying again and again eventually he gets just lucky enough to survive. That's pretty much what Doom speedrunning is about.

[eLim]

deadwolves said:

Youtube Nightmare player: is he cheating?

In one word: No.

[deadwolves]

kuchitsu said:

Most important: remember that every single of these demos is a product of many hours of work. Of course Chris can't do all that stuff on the first try. But by trying again and again eventually he gets just lucky enough to survive. That's pretty much what Doom speedrunning is about.

At the very least, playing on whatever he is using on E1M8 is unfair because spectres are nice and visible. You don't get that on vanilla. You are confused, you can't see anything coming. You can even rely on the chainsaw just to get around.

And speedrunning pistol start on Nightmare! and actually hoping to get from entry to exit with definite success are two different things. He probably made a hundred attempts and posted the one where he got lucky. You have got to divide the whole run into sections and really break it down. Did he play like he could have done it again spontaneously? I literally doubt it.

[kuchitsu]

deadwolves said:

At the very least, playing on whatever he is using on E1M8 is unfair because spectres are nice and visible. You don't get that on vanilla. You are confused, you can't see anything coming. You can even rely on the chainsaw just to get around.

He clearly states that he recorded that demo in doom.exe. He just played it back in a different port for aesthetic purposes.

deadwolves said:

He probably made a hundred attempts and posted the one where he got lucky.

Yes, as I said. That's what Doom speedrunning is about. Most great speedruns are products of many hours of replaying. Noone can get a fantastic result on the first try.

deadwolves said:

And speedrunning pistol start on Nightmare! and actually hoping to get from entry to exit with definite success are two different things.

You're totally right. However that doesn't at all mean that your way of playing is right and that Ryback is cheating. These are just different styles of play with different objectives. I think you should treat him with more respect. He spent a lot of time on recording these entertaining and spectacular demos. No reason to hate on him just because you're interested in more reliable play.

[Pirx]

http://doomedsda.us/player34lmps.html

cheating :p

[CreamCheese]

Breaking news! Man uses exploits in SpeedRun!
http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Grab
http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Linedefs_can_be_activated_regardless_of_player%27s_Z_position

As for the "fancy footwork" and evading enemies, thats just a combination of good footwork and a bit of luck when it comes it enemy collision detection.

In fact just had a read through the linedef one and it explicitly mentions the exploit you thought was a cheat "In Doom E4M1, the elevator to get the rocket launcher can be activated by merely standing on the edge of the elevator and using it, instead of needing to stand in the slime pool to activate it."

[baja blast rd.]

deadwolves said:

At the very least, playing on whatever he is using on E1M8 is unfair because spectres are nice and visible. You don't get that on vanilla. You are confused, you can't see anything coming. You can even rely on the chainsaw just to get around.

And speedrunning pistol start on Nightmare! and actually hoping to get from entry to exit with definite success are two different things. He probably made a hundred attempts and posted the one where he got lucky. You have got to divide the whole run into sections and really break it down. Did he play like he could have done it again spontaneously? I literally doubt it.

Good speedrunners are better than you at Doom.

[ReFracture]

deadwolves said:

And speedrunning pistol start on Nightmare! and actually hoping to get from entry to exit with definite success are two different things. He probably made a hundred attempts and posted the one where he got lucky. You have got to divide the whole run into sections and really break it down. Did he play like he could have done it again spontaneously? I literally doubt it.

I'm afraid you don't understand Doom speedrunning if you judge the final product only by the consistency in which the player could create it. There are games that are purely execution dependent and have no RNG. Doom is not one of them.

There's too much randomness involved, the player's execution is only part of the run, much of it is luck. If you want to watch the tedious process of speed run creation I recommend watching some twitch streams. 4shockblast, grav, and kingdime are a few Doom runners who stream this process. You will witness countless examples of the player doing everything "right" but dying anyway due to something outside of their control.

Here's a UV-Speed I did a while ago that took me probably 100 attempts to get an exit on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm0yfQR7B5A

At the end before I run from the top of the lift towards the exit I had multiple things that consistently got me killed. The arch-viles, Revenant, and Hell Knight all posed a huge threat. I got lucky when the Revenant walked off of the lift and then proceeded to take fire from the chaingunner so he would back off. But the randomness continues, this scenario happened at least 10-15 times.. only 2 or 3 of those instances also involved having no enemy in front of the lift at the ground level.. and only in one instance did I make it to the end.

This level isn't that difficult. I could easily take my time and clear the level out. But I'm not interested in doing a 'lets play', this is a speedrun.

I'm proud of what I accomplished here, because of it somebody can now watch that level be exited in 31 seconds, and maybe it can even motivate another runner who believes they can do better to beat it.. which would be awesome to see.

And that's nothing compared to what other runners go through. It's very well known and understood around here that these speed runs are the products of a lot of time and energy. I'm watching Grav play Doom 64 right now, his splits show 8 exits out of 10177 attempts.

The odds are very low of him completing a run, not because he is incapable of playing through it without dying, but because his speedrun has high standards. He could use safer strategies and improve world record by a couple of minutes easily, but he has no desire to do that when it would still be several minutes off of his goal.

[j4rio]

yeah he probably cheats

[snapshot]

deadwolves said:

Take this one for example: E1M5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlPe7H5N7NY at around 0:35 he rushes past a pack of demons like they were nothing. I have gone into that lynchpin at least 100 times on Nightmare and can never do that. That's one of the most difficult part on Episode 1 when you are playing Nightmare.

He's not, possibly the pinkies were destracted killing zombies .

[dew]

deadwolves said:

So he's literally cheating? So he's not actually completing the map as it was designed to be played.

MFW

[scifista42]

No, he's not cheating, but yes, he's completing the map differently than it was designed to be played. He's using what's called "speedrunning tricks", which are exploits of the game engine's imperfect/buggy behavior and aren't considered cheating, because they are part of the game and manifest themselves even without the player wanting to exploit them deliberately for his advantage.

[Maes]

Since most of what that player is doing is deemed at least theoretically possible/legit, a better question would be if he can really pull it off in real-time with his own skills in the heat of battle (especially sliding past/through Demons as if they weren't there) or if he did everything 10x slower with a TAS tool.

Unfortunately, determining if it's the latter can be very hard. It's always been a kind of grey area whether an action that can theoretically be achieved through player input alone (assuming perfect execution/timing/knowledge of the map) is indeed possible/practical by a real player in real-time. Until there are live speedrun competitions in a controlled and refereed environment, we can just keep on seeing videos like these and wondering.

A good example of a problematic area that can be overcome only with repeated practice, intimate knowledge and split-second timing (as well as source-port behavior repeatability) is the start of MAP25 of Chillax:

That weaving through the pinkies exploits the Demons' "run away" behavior, but it's VERY hard to do consistently, and I think the source port used (GlBoom+?) played a role. On ZDaemon it's much harder to get Pinkies to move in such a convenient pattern.

[dew]

Maes said:

That weaving through the pinkies exploits the Demons' "run away" behavior, but it's VERY hard to do consistently, and I think the source port used (GlBoom+?) played a role. On ZDaemon it's much harder to get Pinkies to move in such a convenient pattern.

Care to elaborate?

[vadrig4r]

Lurk more post less.

[snapshot]

Maes said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROk38OhGF-4

Completed in Just an hour ;) .

[Maes]

dew said:

Care to elaborate?

Well...the easiest thing would be for you to download the map and just try getting through the start area. When you see it, you'll shit brix ;-)

Spoiler

Well, actually, notice how at first the player (unintuitively) runs TOWARDS the pinkies and they seem to run away from him for a brief while, rather than simply blocking his way and tearing him a new one. This seems like an exploit of the monsters fleeing behavior. This doesn't last long, but just enough to clear some maneuvering space. It may seem like simply sidestepping and then backpedaling back quickly, but without triggering the fleeing behavior in at least some of the monsters, it would not be sufficient to clear the area. BTW, simply moving BACKWARDS from the start point is just about the worst thing you can do

@DMGUYDZ64: Well yeah, that map illustrates a common and annoying pattern with Chillax: many maps have very difficult/technical starts, some of which can be quite protracted and require precision, avoidance and stealth, and need a single focused "opener" player just so the rest don't get instantly killed upon spawning.

So when trying to play them in a ZDaemon server full of noobs, about 99% of the time is spent cursing at botched map start attempts, usually some noob triggering a 1000 archvile invasion or something because he touched something or walked where he wasn't supposed to too early.

[snapshot]

Maes said:

So when trying to play them in a ZDaemon server full of noobs, about 99% of the time is spent cursing at botched map start attempts, usually some noob triggering a 1000 archvile invasion or something because he touched something or walked where he wasn't supposed to too early.

This is why i rarely join them, barely can find players who i can work with in there .

[Looper]

Maes said:

Well...the easiest thing would be for you to download the map and just try getting through the start area. When you see it, you'll shit brix ;-)

I just tested it on zdaemon server and it seems to work just fine.

[Maes]

Looper said:

I just tested it on zdaemon server and it seems to work just fine.

The WAD or loading MAP25 specifically? Sure, why wouldn't they?

[Looper]

Maes said:

The WAD or loading MAP25 specifically? Sure, why wouldn't they?

The trick?

[Maes]

Looper said:

The trick?

ur 1337, d00d.

[Zed]

CreamCheese said:

In fact just had a read through the linedef one and it explicitly mentions the exploit you thought was a cheat "In Doom E4M1, the elevator to get the rocket launcher can be activated by merely standing on the edge of the elevator and using it, instead of needing to stand in the slime pool to activate it."

When I discovered this, I never went back to the slime. But I still prefer to get the red key "legitimately" rather than doing the grab.