Well even if it was another loss for me, I had a much better time this year, due to not giving myself a wrist injury the first day.
Having two boards was a great improvement, it gave some much needed variety and chaos, while also preventing runs from getting too cooked too soon. I think I had a reputation for hating the board last time, but I think we just needed more runs, not necessarily different ones. That being said, NoMo was a huge omission, not sure why that wasn't included, but I would have argued for its inclusion had I known. I was also a bit sad initially at how few of the usual PWADs were present - no representation for Scythes, Sunlust, HR, AV, Speed of Doom, etc, but overall I think we did pretty well. Glad to see another Sepia run, I've been enjoying that wad recently, although I hate myself for not trying the run myself with that AVJ and all.
It felt like most of my time this week was spent going back and forth with my teammate from the last Bingo, Doom Master Boss @Bredd on these first three runs, each of which was on a corner of the second board, so naturally important to defend. I feel guilty about how lucky I got with MBOS and Stardate 20X7 this week, but I can tell you Going Down was fucking terrible for me. This was a bit unfortunate since there were other runs I wanted to try, such as DBP36 and maybe something out of my usual scope, similar to how I ran Resurgence MAP28 in the last Bingo. Since I don't do text file comments during Bingo, I saved all my ranting for here.
Medi's Box of Shit MAP07 Pacifist
I thought this one might be difficult to get an exit on, but I got 1:26 on my third attempt which, as it turns out, was a terrible time. I like the movement, and the AVJ has an interesting angle, but the chaingunners at the start are a meme, and the fact that the vile can walk into the final room is pretty obnoxious too. I feel like I generally got probably lucky in my runs here, as there isn't a whole lot of agency, other than trying to circle the mancs in a way that groups them together with the cyber nicely. In total, I did 242 attempts on this during the week.
Stardate 20X7 MAP08 Pacifist
Prior to this competition, I had tablefilled this route with an 0:28. Not a great time, but then again who would ever run this again? Several people as it turns out, including myself. Bredd came up with a nice adaptation of shooting a switch that crushes some mancs and also gives the cyber a chance to distract the vile. Not very pacifist, but we gotta use what's available to us.
I left this run alone for the first few days of Bingo, with no intention to run it, but eventually I started doing a few attempts here and there. For context, my initial tablefill on this map from 2022 took me 346 attempts. Within 81 attempts for Bingo I got a run that reached the end glide at 0:19 (only to fuck it up spectacularly). I then spent the next 332 attempts to finally get another press, which was my 0:22.31.
After Bredd beat that one, I left the run alone for a couple days, only to return to it on the last day of Bingo. I knew sub 20 was possible by passing the imps/cacos quicker, but I really just hoping for any improvement on the last day of Bingo. Weird how this tablefiller I didn't even want to defend, and even considered re-rolling on the first day of Bingo, ended up being my best demo of the competition. 532 attempts total for the week.
Going Down MAP20 UV-Speed
I hadn't really planned to do this one, as I'm not a fan of Going Down for speedrunning, but I didn't know what else to play, and BFGandorf's run made it look like a fun movement run (its not) and potentially with some new exploits (there sort of were, but not what I expected).
Kind of like in the Combat Shock 2 map, completely separate parts of the map are tied up within one voodoo scroller closet. Basically the voodoo doll can't cross the exit line until you've opened two doors in the closet that are tied to the switches that lower the rocket launcher and plasma gun. Additionally, there are two more lines that need to be crossed within the mouth of the beast to finally have the voodoo doll cross the exit line. The mouth constantly has imps teleporting inside, and it has a pair of lines to make it open and close when you get near, which is supposed to keep the player out until something apparently, I don't fucking know the intended progression here.
What kept me from liking this run, other than the mandatory 8 seconds of waiting at the start, is that your time ultimately depends on getting a fast ending. In order to enter the mouth, you need to kill enough imps to actually make it there, while you cross the line that opens the mouth without skipping it, and then you skip the line that closes the mouth, and hopefully you don't get blocked or skip the wrong line or fail to skip the other line. Once inside you need imps to surround you and quickly scratch you to death so that you can death slide through the crowd and cross both required lines to exit. Another annoying thing is that the second line you cross inside the mouth is only in the middle, so if your corpse goes on either side then you don't even get to exit. I also had a run where my corpse didn't miss the exit line line that, but instead skipped it.
Bredd and I traded back and forth a few times, before he came back with a new route (if I recall, he credited BFGandorf) using a line skip out of the starting elevator to prevent imps from coming out onto the stairs. Really cool and unexpected, but this made the run much worse to run for me, as I could not get the lineskip consistently.
While routing, I had found that instead of hitting the RL and Plasma switches, there were extra triggers placed when exiting a secret area on the map, which you could access after shooting both eyes of the beast. I had played around with it, but it didn't seem to be much faster than the regular route, so I left it alone. However, this new lineskip route sucked for me enough that it made me go back and properly time it, and I found that I could in fact use it to improve Bredd's time, while also making the run more tolerable for me. I was pretty tired when I started this route since I had been running the other route for a while, so I just submitted the first improvement I got, which was in retrospect not a good move.
Bredd came back with a 1.6 second improvement using the same route with a few nice tweaks where he walks more slowly out of the elevator at the start, which actually puts you closer to where you need to land to grab the SSG, and he also stood a bit further back to hit the second eye, which saves a bit more time. I left the run alone for a few days, because I was afraid it would get too cooked and also due to the RNG nature it felt like a good one for me to do on the last day.
On the last day, I started playing this in the last couple hours of Bingo, and while I got many 0:29's, I was always slower by tics. I got a nearly perfect ending in one attempt, but due to a mistake earlier in the run it ended up being an 0:30. It wasn't until the last ten minutes of Bingo that I managed to snag a tie with Bredd's 29.37. Total attempts for the week: 1363
Doomed By The Hour MAP06 Pacifist
This is the first run I did for this Bingo, and I quickly realized it would come down to about six seconds worth of movement, since the exit switch is timed. It was pretty funny seeing confused and 4shock fight over tics on this one. Would have been better as a NoMo :)
My 21.54 took 85 attempts, and the next day I did 130 attempts to get 20.97. Not a terrible run for Bingo, but restart heavy movement runs are too hard on the wrist for me for me to attempt to compete on nowadays.
Rush MAP07 Pacifist
Genuinely, I don't think there were many worse maps we could have rolled for Rush for Bingo, besides like 12 for maybe being too fucked and 13 for being too trivial. This is just boring, and no one else on my team wanted to run this. Getting a good time on this map is about 90% RNG by my estimation. The running is basic, the AVJs are trivial (although I still fucked up the first one a good bit if he targeted too quickly). Is getting through the rev doors a skill? Because if so, that explains why my PB was only 18.43 after 1000 attempts, most of which was failing to get through those fucking doors. Also I never once had a vile as cooperative as 4shock had at the end of his 18.23.
Community Chest 3 MAP09 UV-Speed
This one was pretty annoying for UV-Speed. My first submission in 3:53 was an overly cautious route that I basically practiced while attempting, but at least still an improvement on the DSDA record at the time. 4shockblast was able to cut nearly 50 seconds by playing more aggressively, especially in the red key area and the exit room. Thankfully, there's virtually always time to save on a survival RNG run like this, so I just spammed some attempts and paid attention to my time when I entered the exit room to see how suicidally I had to play. Total Attempts: 110
Saturnia MAP08 UV-Speed
I ran this one throughout the week, just spamming attempts randomly throughout the day. Sunk costs really sink in when you repeatedly hit that closed door at like 8.5, or get mid 9 second runs with a door bump. I really felt like I sucked at this run, so I'm glad shock eventually proved it to me. Total attempts: 4313, with so many 9 second runs.
Combat Shock MAP02 Pacifist
I had given up looking at this one after seeing how much danne trick proofed it by tying all the major map features to one scroller closet. No double AVJ to last area teleporter for me. On the last day or so of the competition though, Kinetic demoed a new route with a window jump and fence clip that saved a decent amount of time and made the run easier. The tricks ended up having easy setups that I abused, although as shock would eventually show, getting a yolo jump is doable as well. Pretty fun route, definitely needs to be taken under two minutes.
I did 185 attempts, where I'd basically start scum until I got a decent pass through those spectres. I got a pair of 2:07's and a 2:06 before finally getting an improvement.
DBP36 Aquatic Wonder D2All UV-Speed
Other people on the team wanted to run this one, so I just let them know about the skips I knew and then left it alone. Toward the end of the week, I routed this one with a time of 7:24, but there really wasn't anything new other than playing more aggressively on a few maps. MAP03 being garbage to run in general was a bit demotivating, but I would have liked to have at least done some attempts on this run.
Austrian Avian Association MAP05 UV-Speed
Despite what 4shockblast said, I think Community Chest 3 MAP09 was more fun than this. I ran this toward the end of the week when it was already 0:59, and my PB was only 1:13 after my 110 attempts.
Bourgeois DM MAP16 NM-Speed
Along with CChest3 and AAA, this made up the holy trinity of trickless bullshit survival RNG runs that I tried. That manc trio made this run insufferable for me. The record was already 0:31 when I started attempting it, but I did 583 attempts in all, with a PB of 0:33.69
So basically in summary, the runs I put the most effort in, are the ones I didn't keep :)
Thanks @Ravendesk and @Meowgi for setting this up! GG Ancalagooners and DogeBusiness.
