Grazza

Look it up in a dictionary. You'll probably get a surprise.

The text-file states that it is "somewhere in the Arctic Circle" and "in a fjord in northern Norway". That description was the basis for the way I worded my post. Unlikely to be summer, but perhaps not winter (and clearly not mid-winter).

Prboom-plus, pretty much exclusively. For its compatibility with many types of maps, features for watching and recording demos, and the fact that it is very stable, and that bugs and feature requests are generally dealt with quickly and without breaking anything.

That reminds me of the screen at the start of Eternal map05.

Freakin' Noob, before you start asking for help on your new mega-cool-and-whatnot project, make sure you have something to show first (screenshots, map downloads, etc). Keep in mind we've already seen thousands of upcoming projects that actually never got done.

I run over the linedef that opens up the exit area at the start. I reckoned it was a toss-up timewise between doing it then or later, so I chose the method that involved running the whole time over one that including some waiting around (better aesthetically). I now realize I missed a shortcut, but don't have time to try it again right now.

Sometimes you really do need road signs though. <img src=http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/2525/hpim23367wr.th.jpg>

It might be an honest mistake. There are plenty of people who are so accustomed to using ports that they have forgotten what is a port feature and what isn't.

A few others spring to mind: Rebirth map31 Fort5 (most of its maps) Operation: Arctic Wolf (though strictly speaking it might not actually be set in winter) Various "Xmas" wads, including massmas Plenty of Hexen pwads naturally use ice features

Map12 UV Pacifist/Speed in 0:29. Nothing special, and no tricks, but it took me quite a while to get it below 0:30. BTW, Boom 2.02 (and Prboom 2.02) crashes if you try to watch this demo with it. I think the following (from prboom-plus's stdout.txt) is probably the reason:P_LoadLineDefs: linedef 524 has two-sided flag set, but no second sidedefLinedef 515 has the same problem. None of the other maps have problems of this type (according to prboom-plus's console output, at any rate).

An idea advertised in previous posts: Map07 UV Pacifist/Speed in 0:15. Anyone want to try the two-glide route? The zip also includes a silly demo on map15. Shame this idea is of no use. BTW, I notice that Pacifist Max is very feasible on a few of the maps, thanks to the fact that the rocket-launching arachnotron can kill itself with its own splash damage.

You would only need to put the deh on the command line if you were using Boom 2.02 or Prboom 2.02 ("WinBoom"). The dehacked patch is inside the wad and so is used automatically by newer engines that support this feature.

Apparently it was used to make Ars Electronica, so it looks like it must work reasonably well. I see that it is still mentioned on Reini Urban's projects page, though some of the links are broken. Still, it might be a useful source of further information.

I just find it annoying to have off-centre weapons in Doom. Regardless of any arguments on the grounds of realism (I guess there are some both ways, depending on specifics), it is simply unhelpful from an aiming viewpoint. Doom's weapons target anything that is directly in front of you, whether higher or lower, on an imaginary line down the middle of the screen. An angled, off-centre weapon can only aim at a single point of this line. Thus, while a centred weapon will always appear to be pointing towards its target in some sense, an off-centre one will very often not be, and will also appear to be pointing towards things that it can't hit. Even a cross-hair won't help much with this, as it is just a point rather than a line down the middle of the screen.

Interesting. I cut out a further 32 pause tics (leaving just the PS and the PE and a single WT in between), and the demo still played back OK. The code snippet I quoted was from the saving code (from prboom-plus, though it was marked as by Killough). Whether it was being overly cautious in being modulo 256 rather than modulo 4, or if there is some other reason (to do with archies, or else a formal requirement unrelated to demo sync issues), I don't know. Edit: I think that's for "demo insurance" in MBF demos. So for MBF demos, maybe you can only safely lop them out in multiples of 256; for vanilla demos, I don't see a reason why multiples of 4 shouldn't be safe. To remove a chunk of tics, I just converted the demo to text with LMPC, and deleted them using Notepad. The tic numbers make this quite easy. (The tic numbers are just comments, so it doesn't matter that they are out of sequence.) A pause takes the form of a PS tic, followed by a bunch of WTs and then a PE. I presume the "in general this is impossible" comment refers to the fact that it is impossible in general to remove all traces of a pause.

OK, I decided to stop being lazy and try to check this properly. A relevant(?) snippet from the source code:(gametic-basetic) & 255;Based on that, it's modulo 256 - so if you randomly hack pause tics out, there may be no better than a 1 in 256 chance of not affecting the tracer states of any revenant fireballs. However, it means you can safely hack them out in blocks of 256 tics, leaving a pause of at most 255 tics (7.29 seconds). I tested this with ks286354.lmp, hacking out 7168 tics (tic #43123-50290), leaving a pause of just under a second. The demo duly plays back fine. So there we are. You can pause for as long as you like, safe in the knowledge that you can later hack out all but a few seconds of it, even in a demo with heavy revenant activity. Assuming, of course, that I haven't missed anything fundamental, which is very possible.

I use pause frequently while watching more or less any interesting demo. It means you take a look at the automap or go walkabout with the walkcam to see what's happening elsewhere (e.g. interesting infights, surprising monster movements) without having to miss any action while 'relocating'. Pausing was also a way to avoid the six-tic jump when changing the gamespeed (especially relevant if watching with slow motion).

lol, earlier discussion of methods to pause (or should that be "paws"?). The black cat has since got quieter, but the white one is liable to jump up onto the keyboard without warning. If it is just a case of odd/even tic number, then it should be possible to remove all but one of the pause tics without causing a desync. BTW, I think this is related to the issue of desynchs in internal demos - doom(2).exe didn't keep track of the tic numbers too well. I don't know if Andrey could make it possible to reduce the gamespeed to 0% - that would provide a way to "pause" (set step to 100 to go directly between normal speed and paused) without adding pause tics or risking accidental foul-ups by activating the program again when you don't mean to. That reminds me of the txt for 30nm4000, where Anders J. gave a running commentary, including what Henning was eating between levels, etc. Before I understood how it was being done, I was wondering where all the pauses were, or that he must be a very fast eater. :)

Were you editing the wad in Doombuilder and XWE at the same time? IIRC that can cause big problems.

I'm not 100% sure, but I thought there were some possible desync issues if you remove a pause, due to the fact that the gametic number is what determines whether a revenant's missile is homing or non-homing (Donce mentioned this some years back). If it is just a case of odd/even (that's my recollection, albeit hazy), then there is a 50% chance of it being safe to do so.

Confirmed: OK. To download, copy/paste the URL. In case anyone has problems, I have put a copy here too.

Yes, TVR is a fruitful place to find 32-unit gaps; the ones you mention have been done. Cack_handed, for instance, did map13 in 8 seconds using two glides (the one into the exit itself being a hard one). You'll find many of them (and others) in this thread, and a few of mine (26, 31 and 29) earlier in the current thread (starting here). The map03 trick has been done in coop by Method and Gusta, but was reckoned to need more than simple strafe50. If you have recorded this one, it would be very interesting to see it. Other maps where there are known 32-unit-glide shortcuts: map03 (but obsoleted by the jump), map04 (several, but not clearly useful), 14 ("hard" glide, not done yet AFAIK), 22 ("hard" glide, not done yet AFAIK), 25 (multiple glide), 26, 29 (two glides, but just one used so far in demos), 31. That's from memory; I have no doubt missed a few, and some where a glide is possible but the benefit is marginal.

I'd played around with that idea, but thought it would need too much luck, if indeed it is possible. Actually, I thought the best chance was with a stream of arachnotron plasma, as the height from an archie blast would be as much a hindrance as anything else. I'm probably wrong about that though, since I didn't get any slides that ended anywhere near the exit. I'm not sure about the mechanics of a corpse passing through monsters. I suspect it happens more easily on Boom (I've used this in some demos) than on vanilla (perhaps it doesn't happen at all in vanilla?), but haven't tested this systematically. I think the comp setting that is causing the problem for you is comp_zombie ("zombie players can exit levels" - a misnomer since it affects corpses, and not just zombies). Set that to 1 or "yes" if playing with anything above complevel 9. With Boom compat (-complevel 9) you should be OK (it was an MBF option, not present in Boom), and also be able to slide through the cyberdemon. OTOH, it feels a bit "naughty" to me to pick compat settings just to get a trick to work when they aren't the ones required by the map, but it would be an interesting demo to see in any case. BTW, in case anyone didn't read the changelog for test version 2.4.7.1 of prboom-plus (which fixes the Boom bug that was affecting map06 demos), the demos recorded so far can be played back using... -force_truncated_sector_specials ...in the command line. This retains the buggy behaviour.

Yes, I've wasted plenty of time trying to glide through <32 unit gaps, before I learnt always the check the exact width. BTW, there are some 32-unit glides possible in av24 (the "easy" kind), but whether they would lead to a faster time, I'm not at all sure. They are around coords (432,552) and (272,392) - the former needs to be done twice and would be the basis for the new route (skipping the yellow key), and the latter is optional.

As shown by those exploding whale stories.