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deadwolves

Youtube Nightmare player: is he cheating?

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Speaking of maps that are not completed "the way they were designed to"...what about TNT MAP31: Pharao? *ducks*

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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.


I think he cheated by using a mouse

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j4rio said:

I think he cheated by using a mouse


And NOVERT.EXE -now that's cheatin'. That's NOT how Doom was meant to be played!

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Maes said:

Speaking of maps that are not completed "the way they were designed to"...what about TNT MAP31: Pharao? *ducks*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFHtkPNn5JI


That map was also designed without a yellow key in SP, so apparently doing anything but running around confused, unable to finish the level is "not playing it the way it was designed." Shame on all of us who have used the yellow key patch. Then again, perhaps it was designed to be beaten with that speedrunning trick, given that is the only way to complete it under normal circumstances. [/facetiousness]

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Well, that's not entirely unplausible. What kind of an ancient Egyptian mystery would it be, if it was so straightforward?

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Felt like I should throw my two cents into the cheating vs. exploiting argument.

They are certainly different things, but even within the 'exploiting' category we can break it down even further. There are two ways I can think of to exploit a level:
-exploiting something in the level design, and
-exploiting something in the game's code.

A good example is E4M2, Perfect Hatred. At a certain part, you can jump past the blue door, bypassing most of the level. I personally wouldn't have a problem with this, as it's still within the game's normal physics.

However, at the same part, you can grab the BFG through the wall, which is exploiting something in the game's code, which is NOT within the game's 'normal' physics.

Given how John Romero himself designed this level, it might be interesting to go straight to the source to see which of these things he would approve of, if any.

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vadrig4r said:

Lurk more post less.


While he may have been uniformed on this, it led to a topic that for me was an interesting read. I'd like to see more posts in general quite frankly, why not.

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PsychoGoatee said:

While he may have been uniformed on this, it led to a topic that for me was an interesting read. I'd like to see more posts in general quite frankly, why not.

There is a way to initiate discussion, and blindly accusing people of things from a position of ignorance is seldom a good one. At least something good came out of it.

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BaronOfStuff said:

The BFG grab is exploiting something in the level design too though, if you want to get really pedantic...

Perhaps, but it still exploits something in the code as well.

As for the nature of the thread, I think it's a good one, and some good info has been shared here. There will always be a few people telling others (like certain people in this thread) what to do as if they know everything, but the reality is that they were NOT involved in the programming of the game, and as such do not know what was intended by the likes of Romero, et al., when the game was made.

For the know-it-alls who want to be forum bullies (but real life losers - no surprise there), the only way to find out for sure is to go straight to the source.

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RobinSena said:

They are certainly different things, but even within the 'exploiting' category we can break it down even further.

We can, but do we have to? As far as mapper intent goes, there's no difference between exploiting a trick unknown to them or a mapping mistake they made accidentally. Is there a reason beyond categorization for the sake of categorization?

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vadrig4r said:

There is a way to initiate discussion, and blindly accusing people of things from a position of ignorance is seldom a good one. At least something good came out of it.


Accusing would be to say "this guy is cheating". OP said (paraphrased) "I have a suspicion that this guy is cheating". Not the same.

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RobinSena said:

the reality is that they were NOT involved in the programming of the game, and as such do not know what was intended by the likes of Romero, et al., when the game was made.


Considering that Doom has been hailed as the "greatest hack of all time", it's unlikely that Romero, et al. lost any sleep (let alone, crunch coding time) considering the implications of tiny oversights or particular coding/implementation choices for generations to come. They were too busy coding the next killer app, with a projected market lifespan of 2-some years, and that they did. And probably they barely managed to deliver something with the level of polish of Doom v1.1 on time, to begin with.

E.g. sure, they needed to have wall clipping code that worked, and that it did, in 99.999% of cases. The remainder was those tiny little tricks which would require years worth of obsessive, competitive speedrunning to discover. Do you think id had such a team of highly trained COMPET-N monkeys in their dungeons or something? :-)

But as a purely Gedanken experiment, if they did, then maybe they would have fixed them (to the degree that performance wouldn't suffer, e.g. from running more exhaustive checks. Maybe they'd change the design of some maps and that's it).

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RobinSena said:

As for the nature of the thread, I think it's a good one, and some good info has been shared here. There will always be a few people telling others (like certain people in this thread) what to do as if they know everything, but the reality is that they were NOT involved in the programming of the game, and as such do not know what was intended by the likes of Romero, et al., when the game was made.


But the fact of the matter is that this is a LONG established community of speedrunners who ultimately, over the last twenty-three years or so, have decided what is approved in a Doom speedrun. The exploits that may or may not be John Romero sanctioned are community sanctioned. Breaking the engine and finding unbelievable tricks and exploits are all part of what makes speedruns awesome. It wouldn't be any fun if people were only allowed to play by the level's "rules", so to speak.

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FWIW, Romero et al. colored themselves "surprised" even at what we consider now very basic movement skills in Doom, like SR-40/50 movement and associated jumping distances.

To make a sporting comparison, would you ask any competitive High Jump athlete to go back to the jumping techniques of yesteryears?



Once the modern backflip was pioneered, nobody went back, nor was it "banned" on the grounds that it was "not within the spirit of the sport": simply put, it upped the ante (heh, quite literally) for everyone.

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dew said:

We can, but do we have to? As far as mapper intent goes, there's no difference between exploiting a trick unknown to them or a mapping mistake they made accidentally. Is there a reason beyond categorization for the sake of categorization?

In the scheme of things, a record is a record I suppose, so long as no codes (iddqd, etc.) or other sorts of 'outside' aids were used in the making of a fast run.

But I believe that if Romero and company were making the game again, they would smooth out some of these deficiencies in the game's code, which would eliminate things like 'wall grabs', and the like.

At the very least, I would recognize two different UV Max records for a level like Perfect Hatred: one for people exploiting the BFG grab, and one for those who don't.

**EDIT** A few new posts since I was typing this. Yeah, certainly some interesting things discovered over the years. Hard to draw a line between 'intended' and not. **END EDIT**

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RobinSena said:

At the very least, I would recognize two different UV Max records for a level like Perfect Hatred: one for people exploiting the BFG grab, and one for those who don't.


What you're proposing is creating a distinct "restricted", "controlled" or "handicapped" league, as I had proposed should be done for different controller configurations, too. Too bad that in practice, including real sports, such leagues don't attract much interest, because once the most efficient technique or approach for a sport has been discovered or finetuned through years of experience, nobody would willingly train himself in a lesser form, as shown in the High Jump video I posted above. At least not when he'd also have to deal with "top league" competitions as well.

For Doom, good or bad, anything that can be accomplished through player input alone is considered legit. I'd only add the necessity to be able to perform it in real time, with one's own limbs, without TAS tools. For that, we can only rely on the honesty of those who post demos (or the wit of those that try and catch "cheaters"), at least until only real-time records accomplished in a controlled and refereed environment are accepted.

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Jon said:

Accusing would be to say "this guy is cheating". OP said (paraphrased) "I have a suspicion that this guy is cheating". Not the same.


Given the OP's later behavior in this thread, I'm not seeing much of a difference.

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vadrig4r said:

There is a way to initiate discussion, and blindly accusing people of things from a position of ignorance is seldom a good one.

I just play on my own for fun man. I've made it clear that I am not accusing anyone of anything. This whole thread has schooled me a lot though.

Here's two more annoying exploits, here where he https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzCa-qtUGuc at 2:25 raises a bridge on E2M2. And at 0:13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R2r66WLEVo I don't know how you trigger two switches at once.

Now is that the right way to play? No game is bulletproof, any game probably has their exploits and Doom has obviously very many. But seriously?

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deadwolves said:

Now is that the right way to play? No game is bulletproof, any game probably has their exploits and Doom has obviously very many. But seriously?


Whether it's the right way to play is up to your own interpretation but it's definitely the right way to speedrun.

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Well, I can certainly sympathize. When you put your heart and soul into a challenging game, spend hours training, inventing strategies and so on, and then see other people "defiling" your beloved game by completely disregarding the rules you're so used to... It can be disheartening for sure. Takes some time to process all that crazy new info and get used to it.

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ZeroMaster010 said:

I can't wait until he finds out about the E2M6 void glide.


The void glide is very difficult, but to me pushing the exit switch is even harder.

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ZeroMaster010 said:

I can't wait until he finds out about the E2M6 void glide.

Disclaimer: The speedrunner in this video doesn't cheat, only exploit the engine's behavior, fully legit!

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deadwolves said:

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.



Granted, the examples you've posted are some of the most extreme examples. I can tell you (as a PS3 Doom 3: BFG Edition player) that playing on Nightmare is literally that: a Nightmare. I hated it, every single second of it. And I tried on some levels hundreds of times, if not more (probably more, unfortunately), to try and shave a second or so off my time. I hold a good portion of the speed run records on Doom and Doom 2 for Nightmare and UV, but honestly, I don't think I'm that good.

My point being, if there's people that are better than me (which there is, *NO DOUBT* about that) they will find ways to get so-called 'ridiculous' runs where it looks like they're cheating, but in reality they are most certainly not. If I can set/break records, then anyone can.

I watched the examples you posted and although it may look suspect, I have full faith that it's legit.

End of long ass post; sorry.

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