cack_handed

It seems premature to talk of banning void glides. Wait until it starts obviously ruining the game before considering it. But as has been mentioned, speedrunning is pretty well "ruined" already with all the unrewarding barely-doable tricks. It's the purists who ought to start a new category - "UV speed, 100% secrets, 100% keys" for instance. As for the rarity of these things, looking through the original wads (only the maps that looked exitable) I found void glides on E1M3, E1M6, E2M1, MAP30 and MAP31, but with none of these was I even able to reach the exit let alone press the switch. But it's possible that in a particular megawad the right geometry might occur very often. Meanwhile, here's a second void exit demo. Probably useless, but it should please the trickaholic crowd. E2M5 normal exit nomonsters (TAS) - E2M5x036: e2m5x036.zip

Ha! What an utterly cool trick. Following your example I was able to do it with a handful of tries, and sometimes even by accident before I was ready. Much easier than the D2 Map22 glide for instance. I ended up using a slightly different method, sr50-ing along the east wall rather than stepping backwards. Trying to find other examples was discouraging though - zero so far. But maybe this one isn't so useless after all... e2m6-057.zip

Thanks for this detailed explanation. Does this mean the trick could ever work by sliding along a Thing or vertical/horizontal wall (ie. wallrunning) or does there always have to be some sort of slope involved? Nice one! Is there an easy way of getting it to work (other than trying for hours)? I was going to moan that I'd never been able to do this trick but I managed it once just now, by accident when moving along the east wall to get into position. I suppose it's potentially doable in any corner where you can get up a "wobble". That just leaves the second glide back in so you can exit. I've been trying to engineer some geometry where you can noclip out then glide back in, but no luck yet.

Excellent analysis, all correct as far as my experience goes, apart from one refinement. Trying to summarise, glide type #1 ,a "squeeze", is the common 32 unit one. Then glide type #2, a "skip", has several forms of the same basic trick. The bar type with a 24x24 gap such as D2 Map21 can be done with ordinary strafe running. When the gap is smaller (24x16 I think on D2 Map19) "thing wobble" boost is needed. But I think the irregular gap and "fence" style (eg. D2 Map10) through an impassable linedef are based on the same form of "skipping", but are a little different. My theory is that the speed boost (or perhaps a geometrical inaccuracy with little to do with speed) comes from the same source as wallrunning. Reasons: firstly the speed boost is massive - running is not even needed, just walking will do though it's harder. Secondly, I've never seen this done when the player is not sliding along a wall that is not right-angled. I've tried rocket-jumping etc. through impassable linedefs but never succeeded, though I wouldn't be surprised if it was possible. To clarify about the "fence" glide, vertexes are not involved. You just have to be sliding along a wall and jam up against the fence. The wall doesn't have to be touching the fence at all (it could be a column say), and you can glide straight through the middle of the impassable fence linedef. I've never seen this mentioned before - I've known about it for a while (nearly four years evidently!) but never found a map where it was useful. I had to modify a map myself to demonstrate it - see attachment (it's for Doom 1 which I forgot to mention in the text). hangar13.zip

Map15 UV Max in 7:47 (dd15-747) A relatively bland and easy techbase map. It could have done with a few more tries to get the time down further, but playing the start was so tiresome I couldn't be bothered with it any longer. dd15-747.zip

Map14 UV Max in 4:29 (dd14-429) I made a point of not watching Tatsurd's max for this first because I thought it would be an interesting experiment to compare the difference in strategies afterwards. Though this did condemn me to slogging away with far too many tries before beating his time. I've got to admit Tatsurd's tactics seem more rational than mine with more effective choice of weapons, but then again you only get to see your own frustrating failed attempts. dd14-429.zip

A couple of UV-Maxes for Doom 2 Reloaded: Map11 (dd11-523) - an enjoyable map and not too hard. Lots of room for improvement by the more daring (or reckless and lucky) player. Map13 (dd13-520) - another good map but much more of a strain to play fast. I was worried this was too pedestrian an effort, and experienced a moment of dread when I saw vdgg had already recorded a max on it. All that time I spent seemed wasted, but to my relief this turned out to be a minute faster. dd11-523-dd13-520.zip

Thanks for introducing me to a fun map, but you need to be a lot more aggressive in your demos. Such as with the chaingunners near the start - it's almost impossible to die there. And running around "looking for things" is right out! I've done 4:42 with a little practice - I bet someone could get it under 4 minutes. dd12-442.zip

Here's an even trickier go at it - four glides (one sideways) plus death exit: Ares (by Masayan) map10 NM Speed in 0:13 ae10n013.zip

It's a well-known quirk that you can get through any 32-unit horizontal or vertical gap. It's called a glide. You can either just run at the gap and hope for the best, or use some very gentle forward movement of the mouse to sneak through.

Well, there are quite a lot of hitscanners in it. And every door you open and shot you fire seems to bring out more. Which can be fun, but with hitscanners it tends to be a matter of luck whether you get drilled in the back before you even manage to pick up some armour. I gave up in frustration within a few minutes trying to play it properly. @dew: Glad you liked it, but I can't help thinking it could be done in half the time.

DHSpeed4: I found this too heavy going to play sensibly. But I did manage some sort of result with UV Speed (Pacifist). dhs4p024.zip

I couldn't resist a try at the impossible Map29 glide and recorded a fairly shambolic -nomonsters in 29 seconds. It's definitely feasible for UV if you're confident of surviving the rest of the run. I included my best attempt in the Zip. I get through at about the 7 second mark but shortly afterwards run out of skill. s229o029.zip

I tried that glide and found it to be not very hard, so I suppose it all depends on your setup. For me it's almost impossible to do them at all with prboom and have to revert to using Vanilla. One thing worth noting is that it's a lot easier to glide from east to west than any other direction. Trying to attach a zip of sc18o016 & the missing pn08-019 ... pn08sc18.zip

I missed this one - I've just been inspired to do 19 seconds but can't upload so will attach. Here's my method of doing the glide: 1) Use vanilla Doom (nosound is OK here), be recording, set mouse sensitivity to the lowest, don't disable vertical movement, adjust your monitor so it shows the entire picture. 2) Run towards the gap and keep on running - you will slide against the wall. Turn straight until you no longer seem to be sliding - this is easier while recording as angles are "chunkier". 3) Slowly mouse-strafe until you are almost precisely aligned with the gap. 4) Run against the wall - you will slide very slowly left. This is how you move precisely into position. You can tell the position is right immediately the first column of pixels of the front face of the left wall comes into view (this is why you need to see the whole picture - the contrast is very clear on this map but it usually isn't so!). 5) Edge directly forward with the mouse as slowly as you can - just push hard enough for your gun to start trembling. With a bit of practice it should go rather easily on this map, but on others it's a lot harder and you may have to make repeated tries for minutes at a time for it to work. That's for normal play, I don't know about building. I believe that slow forward movement is not important for getting through the gap, but rather for moving into position. Moving forwards slides you slowly to the left, so lots of GF1 ticks rather than a few GF50 ticks gives you many more chances of being in exactly the right position.

I use a simple batch file to record using the exact line:prboom -file wads\cchest3.wad -warp %1 -skill %2 -maxdemo 1024 -record c3%1-%2 -complevel 9 -%3I checked and prboom 2.2.6 always puts 'MBF' in the LMP header. The same line with prboom-plus 2.4.3.1 has 'Boom' in the header, so it seems I just need to upgrade. I'll do the demo again if no-one else beats it.

This is the first demo I've recorded in quite a while so it's a bit rough and improvable, but I've had enough of it for now:- Map09 Max in 8:16 c309-816.zip. Mostly it's a simple and fun map except for the yellow key room which seems way too hard. One thing I liked about gggmork's demo was that he made this bit look easy. Perhaps it really is easy?! I dunno...

I couldn't resist a go on this one. It's frustrating though a great way to waste time: za18-049. Messy, but my first and last exit under a minute. I'll leave the Pacifist run to you!

I just tried it and it's an "easy" one. Whenever you're moving from east to west they always are, I don't know why. Some tips for VANILLA ONLY, other ports may vary. You need to be standing on the higher step, just on the verge of falling off, flat against the wall, pointing dead straight, to be properly aligned for this one. Then run forward until a slightly darker column of pixels appears on the very left column of your monitor, representing the front face of the left-hand wall. Then edge forward as if for a normal bar glide. It should work within a few seconds.

I managed to get the Pacifist time I wanted on this one without too much difficulty: hr15p020.zip. And Nightmare turned out to be possible with a lot of persistence, though this first exit demo looks pretty awful: hn15-113.zip

This one was quite easy to get: hr15-022.zip. Something like 0:20 and Pacifist too would be nice. It doesn't seem to have been done at all on Nightmare yet.

I wouldn't know about that as I've always used just the one PC (300MHz Win ME). To check it out you could use LMPC to examine the pattern of GF mouse ticks in your demos to see if they really differed when you feel you're doing the same thing on different PCs but with different results. But isn't the ks05 glide a "noskill" one anyway - just run at the gap and you get through often enough to make it not worthwhile trying any fancy mouse/keyboard techniques?

Memento Mori 2 Map14 - seems like this is a very unpopular one for speeding. At least judging by Anthony Soto's amusing ranting in m214-504.zip it is. Interesting tricks in the route though. At the risk of making it even more unpopular, I found three glides for it. I'm not going to dedicate the rest of my life to recording a Compet-N entry, but definitely worth a NoMo:- m214m128.zip

I finally got round to writing up my comments, hope it's not too late... ------------------------- Mostly I don't enjoy pwads for Doom 1 very much as they seem to run short of ideas very quickly and you're left with repetitive lightweight non-SSG gameplay. But in Extremal it's surprising how varied the maps and gameplay are. It's good that the author had the self-discipline to keep the maps small, the architecture and atmosphere are decent if a bit drab sometimes, and there's plenty of enjoyably tough close-quarters fighting with limited ammo. The downside is that you can often empty the rooms of monsters quickly, and spend too much time just running around chasing after switches which you don't quite understand the working of, and end up quitting out of motion sickness and frustration. So I've only actually played through the whole thing once, and then returned to a few maps when watching demos captured my interest. There's just three demos from me here - I wish I could have motivated myself to do more as with these small maps it only takes a couple of hours to produce something respectable once you get into the swing of things. E1M7 Speed This seemed one of the tougher maps when I first played it, very dark and disorientating and I was glad to get it over with, so it feels good to end up "owning" it by defying all the author's intentions. The three different glide tricks here were all worked out by Grazza, who did 0:39 skipping the third one as it seemed intractable at the time. You've got to be a bit insane to try recording this sort of thing, but I was determined to get this third glide to work, and in the end it didn't seem so hard after all. The first fence glide is the real pig, needing nothing but luck and limitless persistence, but technically it's very interesting... The second is a routine bar glide, take the right-hand gap and align your pistol with the yellow spot on the wall - easy but watch that Pinky doesn't bite you! Then trust to luck as you dash past Cybie (don't worry too much, the pegleg's probably too busy walking in circles to notice you) and finally you're at glide number three. This is a straight-wall / diagonal-rock squeeze, and feels a bit odd as you tend to be pushed back as you try to edge forward, but line yourself up by pointing your shotgun at a select pixel of the floor texture, ignore the incoming flak and you've a fair chance of getting through before being toasted or running out of time. A time of under 30 seconds is possible here. E3M2 Max Just a table filler for this one. A fairly easy map, though the blue key area can be tough if you're trying to be quick. Ammo is in short supply, and the main challenge is how to use it wisely - once or twice I ended up non-beserk-punching out an imp to get at the exit switch. The spoiler is the central moving platform - it's possible to time your run to sync with this, but I couldn't be bothered trying and wasted a lot of time waiting for it at the end. E3M7 Speed I did this to try out an exit barglide that Kristian pointed out. It's a typical dark, intense and cramped Extremal map, difficult to speed as you tend to bump the walls and slide all over the steps in the floor. Having the glide right at the end is a great way of ruining a fast run, but my success rate was fairly good. I never got the hang of triggering those crushers at the end, so some room for improvement there.

I found a BIG improvement for Map02 - could save 10 seconds :-))) Nomo demo:- lv02m023.zip