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Eternal Memories 1 by TOD, Map 01 UV Max in 2:55. Extremely fun wad, and I just wanted to push under 3 min. Infighting, infighting, infighting + luck with cacos/PEs = decent time. Time to head off to sleep. em01-255.zip

UV-Max 01-04 01: 1:58 02: 3:17 03: 2:24 04: 4:04 Just some crap that I recorded almost a year ago. Originally wanted to make improvements to every Max timetable, so I didn't want to share. However, I figured since I'm not going to be finishing the set as I haven't played Doom in over a half-year, might as well post these. Quality is average to shit, and the demos aren't optimized at all (text file will explain why). Edit: Error in the text file: there aren't any "insanely grinded out demos" in here...not even close. I had MAP05 and MAP06 recorded, but they were overwritten as I wasn't satisfied. Needless to say, I was never satisfied until I quit. sod1-4.zip

I haven't checked this thread in many months, and to my surprise, two of my biggest Doom heroes have returned, or as it seems, have temporarily stopped lurking. :) Anyways, I hope I'm not beating a dead horse here, but I tend to agree with your assessment of player skill. I think it is widely accepted that the most difficult aspect to master in Doom are the movement controls, and therefore, the players who are the most skilled in any recording category are the ones with the cleanest movements - in other words, no bumping into walls, clean and efficient turns around tight corners, etc. Thus, it is also no coincidence that even though many C-N timetables have been broken by modern players, the demos from the C-N players of the golden age (2001-2005) ALWAYS have the cleanest movements. Other aspects of demos can almost certainly be improved with sheer luck and determination -- my demos, for example, are a clear display of mediocre skills, with relatively insane amounts of repetition to achieve optimization -- but it is almost impossible to replicate clean movements without adequate amounts of practice and talent. There are no shortcuts in this endeavor (except with slo-mo, which makes Doom controls easier, but that shit is obviously TAS). Hence, it is clear to me how much many of the old Doomgods practiced. It is my opinion that not a single modern demo recorder has the level of fluid movement skill of, say, Hegyi. This is not a slight to anyone recording today, but when I watch a demo from one of my favorite modern recorders, Ancalagon, and compare his movement skills to Vile's, Ancalagon's skills are usually inferior. More bumping into walls, not using enough SR40, etc. The effort is there, the routes are more optimized, the weapon handling is more efficient, the time is decreased, and most importantly, I am just as amazed at the demo as anything I've seen from any Doomgod...but, the play is not as clean. So, don't worry. All of us (and I'm sure Artem as well) fully appreciate and respect the amount of skill that you guys have. :) P.S. Ancalagon, I hope I didn't offend you. Just merely used you as an example, as you're one of the most impressive players I've ever seen. :)

This channel is a magnificent idea. I closed down my old channel, and stopped updating months ago, as old records are constantly being broken nowadays, but mostly because I got lazy, temporarily lost interest in Doom, and forgot about it. It's good that you're going about this the right way, and asked for permission from all of the authors first. I had a brief exchange with Grazza over this, and I arrogantly proclaimed that since I was in no way profiting or gaining anything for uploading demos with clear citation of authorship, that I was free to upload anything. Of course, no one cared at all that I uploaded their stuff without asking, but now, I think it's obviously good protocol to obtain permission first. Good stuff. :)

Seeing my name being mentioned in this thread literally made me blush. I'm very honored. :) My favorite is definitely Adam Hegyi's av31-633.zip. I don't think the demo itself is particularly optimized, nor is it close to Adam's best work. Honestly, I can't name a single concrete reason, but if I were to guess, it would probably be a mixture of: - nostalgia - admiration of Adam's smooth control, especially the fluidity of his play in this particular demo - my general worship of Adam - the music of the level (which has nothing to do with the demo itself, but it gives more texture and flavor to the viewing experience).

Note by Grazza: Welcome to the first recording attempts thread. This is the thread to show how you have attempted recording on a map for the first time, possibly with fairly limited knowledge of the map. These demos can be entertaining as they show the player struggling with the map, rather than dominating it due to a lot of practice and a highly evolved route worked out in great detail. This thread can also be the home for early first exits. Highly polished recordings (even if technically first exits - e.g. "first exit after 600 attempts"!) should be placed in their appropriate threads, and recordings made without any previous knowledge of the map (FDAs) should go in the first attempt demos thread. Please do not spam this thread with random demos that you intend to improve immediately. People are less likely to watch your eventual successful demo that you are completely happy with if they have already watched a number of very similar demos. Now back to the original post: ------------------------------------------------------- Picked the same map number I maxed in pl2 for PRCP. Yes Phml, I care about what you think of me. :DDDD On a more serious note, amazing map! Edit: Including a first exit demo. Linedef at the end isn't triggered easily, so could be fixed. prcp12-345.zip

The one rare situation that this category would be helpful in, are maps that require the player to design routes that minimizes the occurrence of archies resurrecting stray monsters. MAP15 of Plutonia would be an obvious example. Otherwise, we all know that the monster counter of pr+ largely negates the other issue (namely, the player not being able to recognize which monsters were resurrected and which weren't), so really, I think the Not-Max category is more useful and salient for demos recorded with pr+/zdoom. Even then, we kill these monsters anyways, since most of the time, maps which have archies resurrecting shit all over the place usually also give the player an AOE weapon which can mop shit up easily. And, since we almost always target the archie first, his resurrecting capabilities are mostly nullified in most slaughtermaps. Off the top of my head, I can't seem to recall a Max demo, especially from Phml, where the player specifically ignores a monster because of knowledge that it was resurrected and thus can't be bothered to kill again, or a misinterpretation of UV Max rules. I'm writing this with extremely limited research, so there are probably many slaughtermap demos out there that exhibit such behavior. Edit: I suppose my main point is, that the practicality of such a category is questionable, in my opinion.

Nice demo. I'll have to check it out - I like this author's style. Btw, for Andy (no need to respond): I forgot to credit Memfis/AZ for the route I used in my text file, so I reattached the demo. Please use the new version when uploading to DSDA. TY :)

I was bored this morning, and this map seemed to be right up my alley, so I took a stab. The end was uglier and sloppier than *insert sexual metaphor here*. belg-557.zip

It's one of his old alternate accounts (search for his old posts).

Lol, you elicited quite a fast response from TOD. :)

That level is so damn linear that I don't think it's possible to improve upon Tomas' record very much. I remember spending a few hours trying to better his time when I first started using VF as a UV Max practice WAD, and the best I could do was a meager 30 second improvement, similar to yours. I'm not sure if there are any shortcuts; it would require tedious research with an editor - the kind of work that TOD did with Eternal. Edit: @Daiyu - Honestly, my time of 6:32 shouldn't be difficult to beat at all, as I think the route you used (grabbing the backpack first) is far better. You should be aiming for a 5:5x at least.

-_- @natt: Relative to a fraps .avi file, how large are the RGB or YUV formats?

Would be cool to see you guys take the Max records of this great wad to the next level. Some of the later demos are really unoptimized, and even the recent ones are rather uninspired and lackluster by today's standards. A shame TOD isn't too active anymore, as I would love to see him tackle some of the later "Eternal-esque" levels.

Holy shit...can't believe I missed this. UV Max demos from dew that are over 5 minutes in length...am I hallucinating? @#$# :D

Just got around to watching this one; great job! I love watching these tight optimization efforts. :)

Does anyone know why pr+ truncates TOD's pppp-3426 at 30:13, while his pppp-3759 plays fine? I followed the instructions that came with the text file (regarding the overflows), then tinkered around a bit, but to no avail - doesn't matter what I try, pr+ seems to read the 3426 demo as 30:13 long. Edit: demo here

Heh...one of my favorites as well.

Great demos as always. You've become quite the UV Max monster. :) Edit: What happened to your door-blazing moves on some of your demos? You could have easily attained that 30 second improvement on MAP02, for example, with your good door-blazing skills. :)

I'm not a Doomgod, so take my optimism with a grain of salt, but I think it can be done. However, I'm not sure which methods of TAS you used, as you didn't make note of anything specific in the text file, and I couldn't tell from the demo itself. Such information would probably determine exactly how difficult it is to do a regular run.

I think the amount of work a TAS Max demo of that quality entails is mind-boggling. I'm too lazy to even learn how to do segmentation on pr+, and that's pretty much the easiest TAS one can pull off outside of pressing "+" and "-" or turning on perm SR50 -- I can't even fathom what kind of effort is required to build a quality demo using a replay editor. It's why they are so rare - VERY few people have the time and energy to spend on such endeavors (monster manipulation and weapon usage optimization are by far the hardest to perfect in demo recording), especially considering the fact that TAS demos, by nature, are less prestigious than regular ones - no matter the quality. As much as we'd like to think otherwise, we record demos, at least partially or subliminally, for that very factor. Until someone can conjure up a demo recording program or editor that can eliminate the pseudo-RNG damage factor in Doom, and thus guarantees maximum damage per shot, I don't think we'll ever see many TAS Maxes. TAS Speeds are much more simple, since we don't have to control that pesky factor of damage that essentially increases the amount of tedium exponentially. As for p229...under 10 minutes is certainly possible if left in the hands of Andy or Jongo. I fully agree with SAV here.

J4's new demo for h225 reminded me of Belial's old demo for HR MAP24. I remember Belial commenting in the text file that the time could easily go below 8 minutes. I don't suppose if any of you would like to try? :)

Ironically, Daiyu issued a "challenge" to me a few days ago regarding p229, asking if I could bring the Max record down below 15 minutes. I wasn't sure if that was possible, especially considering you had already improved upon the original time by a large amount; but, once I get back to recording again, I suppose that it will be my first priority. Otherwise, before I stopped playing over a month ago, I was in the process of improving upon every single Max record for Speed of Doom. I was up to MAP06, having improved each of Tatsurd's records by specific half minute time brackets. In other words, if the current record is 2:00, I would be satisfied by doing a 1:59. If the current time is 1:59 however, I would have to record a 1:29 at least. The methodology was a way to combat my obsessive compulsion in regards to demo perfectionism, as I would set a goal in the next lower time bracket, and stop recording if I reached that goal, no matter if the time could be improved further or not.

@Phobus - Thanks for the kind words. I think what makes the map difficult to max is the high ammo to damage ratio one has to maintain throughout the run. You can see that I barely missed any shots, picked up every single piece of ammunition lying around, my BFG usage was rather decent - and I STILL only ended up with 40 cells for the last two rooms, used up all of my rockets, and had only around 30 shells to spare (counting the last shell box in the exit room) when I left the level. I think those factors, along with the awkward placements of some monsters, contribute to the difficulty of the map. Even so, you're right. There are more difficult maps out there that have solid demos; I just think that my biggest strength as a demo recorder is efficiency, and this map requires that exact certain skillset and mentality. For example, I'm a pretty terrible slaughtermap player by my own standards. @blob I can't wait to watch your improvement over Heretic's demo on MAP28. :)

Since Method's demo might be lost, and dew doesn't want to record on this map anymore, I figured I'll give it a shot to bring it under 2 minutes. Screwed up at the end, or this might have been a 1:49. Crappy movement after not playing for a while, but overall, I got pretty lucky. First exit after a few hours of work. Credit to dew and Gusta. tv29-151.zip