Forum posts

First time in a while writing this as a viewer only:

+Tech-wise everything seemed especially smooth this time, during parts that I watched almost none of technical troubles besides minor (audio levels and such) happened.
+For a smaller-scale event I found it better to not have constant intermissions with hosts (while I like them generally), but on the contrary, I'd like atleast some interviews occur (unless there were some and I just missed them all). But I guess viewer intermissions really did fill the gaps, and were used pretty nicely.
+ Overall everything felt nice and cozy from here, but there are still negatives I'll have to talk about in more explicit detail.

- This one is a minor nitpick, but I found it a weird decision to set up main room the same way it was set in 2018 summer. Attendee numbers were lower compared to summer18/19, as a result even during the day most of time, stream area seemed really empty, while stream 2 seemed more packed, when it had just 7-8 people in the room. Why not take same approach with room setting as in summer19?
- This one is major. Ads during runs. There's gotta be something you guys can do with twitch to NOT do that. I am really surprised that after long time running event this is something that has to be done. Hopefully your contract with twitch can be tweaked as this is definetely not okay. You might cut most important part of run, or some sort of speech like this and it seriously shouldn't happen.
- Next two ones are more local. Donating from Russia is pain. I know that it really isn't ESA's problem that our goverment went on banning multitude of IPs and ports all over internet to stop messenger (which still works). But having such an insane problem doing simple things shouldn't happen when you try to get every dollar possible for charity. Maybe something can be done with ESA website, or alternative donation page can be created, something to not make paypal hang. (ESA website isn't workin without vpn at all here)
- This one is tied to previous one. Language barrier is a thing, and while I do understand reasons on "why" restreams were cut, I am 100% certain that interest in event for russian-speaking audience went down. Many people didn't even notice or talk about an event, as nobody talked about it who has numbers. And those who watched it, only stayed for a handful of games, with quite a few who wanted to donate not being able to do so, due to how not obvious it is to donate from here. I really want ESA to grow and I'm happy that this winter almost doubled previous one, but there's gotta be some way to help audience reach you. Maybe some sort of agreement with twitch, maybe some sort of your specific resream channels, that generate revenue for you, if "not being able to show ads to those on restreams" is the issue. And people here in Russia generally do love ESAs more than GDQs due to game variation. Anyway I'm already ranting here, but it comes from love to event.

All and all, event was fun to watch, despite my post seeming more negative than positive. Can't wait for summer!

Eventually I will add them, for now it isn't top priority, since it is far from most popular categories (current priority is nomo, then doom2 uvspeed/uvmax/nomo, then plutonia/tnt).
If you want to submit your runs - do it on doomworld, for dsda.

I was stating in some thread, that while adding LBs I want them to be initially filled with proper WRs and that takes time.

I will setup category and rules tomorrow.

Those are video only categories

Hi.
To answer your question - you only HAVE to submit demos if you happen to get 1st place / tie 1st place, in other cases it is RECOMMENDED, but not mandatory. At least to speedruncom leaderboards that is.

You might also want to join discord, it has #help channel, which also has a page about prboom, which has info about demo recording, in crispy that will be pretty much the same thing, except for different exe file. (in case you have troubles joining discord - https:/​/​dsdarchive.​com/​guides/​prboom_plus)

thing is - we had similar discussion regarding that kind of category in gta2 and it has borderline stupid ruleset in the end. In gta1 it might be slightly more reasonable, but if in odd chance you get few cars chained in explosion, you get combo, then as a result you can complete area faster. Did you do it accidentaly? Mostlikely. Will it affect your runs? Most certainly.

Glitchless is definetely out of discussion, but no major glitches is a thing that can be discussed. I'd like to have what other people have to say.
Regarding Tequila Slammer - I'd consider it a glitch, an error made during development and as a result it breaks intended way of playing. Mandarin Mayhem thing is definetely a glitch, but comboing is an intended part of gameplay and is a reason why defining ruleset will be a problem.

If we call it NMG - then why we ban combos? If we call it comboless - then what do we do if you accidentaly chain 2-3 cars in explosion?

Anyway if we go with it, I'd call it NME (No Major Exploits) and just put all listed above - purposeful carstacking, mandarin mayhem 999999, tequilla slammer exit in there. Want to hear more from @MolotokMolotok and @mikmik before this decision is made.

I know many probably won't care (and probably nobody checks this game at this time), but when you do ILs game always takes into consideration how much ammo you had, how many nukes total you have etc. It even applies bonuses that you get for collecting all nukes (double kick power for easy nukes, half damage for medium and special gun for hard).
Should we restrict ILs to savefile that has no nukes? Or should we just let anything go? None of that is relevant to fullgame, since you always play on new savefile.

20.11.
Individual levels
ILs will be coming back from tomorrow onwards as I will have time to fill them in with basic stuff.
If you really wonder why this whole shit-show happened, go listen to me talk for 1 hour here - https:/​/​www.​speedrun.​com/​doom1/​thread/​fspli/​1#kha18

Rules for ILs will now be more strict, with WR submissions (or tied WR submissions) requiring demo files to prove run's legitimacy. As for bigger categories this will also be the case (but might also be locked on time that you end up getting). It is done on a basic logic that if you happen to get run which is exceptionally good by larger community standarts you should also provide according artifact - demo file.

Non vanilla-compatible source ports will be instantly getting rejected from now on. All "might"s in rulesets are gonna be changed into "will"s.

This process will take some time and will bring ILs for Ultimate Doom, Doom II and eventually Final Doom, since the latter had the lowest popularity.

gzdoom emulates game on a completely different level, usage it for speedrunning is highly not recommended, except for wads made specificly for it. For best speedrunning experience you should try prboom/glboom or crispy doom.

My way too late response to things I've done.

tl;dr - I am regretting what I've done. I don't expect you to agree with me or understand my personal takes, while I hope you can understand this reasoning. ILs are coming back, rules are going to change in certain way.

ye, secrets aren't required, my bad

there's one thread on this already - https:/​/​www.​speedrun.​com/​doom1/​thread/​mxkas , where everything was said and extra conclusion was made by me not so long ago
No need to create extra threads, while I do appreciate your effort going extra mile creating this wall of text, this topic is way more complicated than you might be seeing it.

I agree. While it was expressed to "why" it happened, it was also overreaction on my end to getting annoyed with all talk on that topic, so when "nuking LBs" was proposed for like 3rd time - I did actually went with it, cause I got annoyed.

Truth be told - those who actually care about doom came to discord and started doing runs and became good at it to the point of high competiteveness. While srcom page definetelly died off completely.

Looking back - I should've done something different, enforce extra rules. But it was also time when I didn't have much time to do this stuff and noone else (who's eligible enough for it) wanted to do anything with this mess.

So I might think of something in upcoming time, cause I want it to be accurate, but I also want this page to be more alive. Maybe bit by bit it will come back. Maybe I'll ignore the hell out of it.

As to how you submit .lmp to srcom - upload to dropbox or some other cloud service and put a link in description.

https:/​/​www.​youtube.​com/​channel/​UCqcYluu5zm7uqBNGL8kextA You can watch this YT, if you want ILs, it has all up-to-date IWADs and more.

It is built in into livesplit

22 Sep 2019

Categories have been updated to represent newly added campaign - Bright Island.
IL table will get updated, when I get to see all level names.

I'd propose making loadless timer main timing method, since it is more consistent.
That's pretty much it :v)

Unfortunately you can't really have one without another and have that run "accepted" by general doom community. You can record demo only and then produce video out of it later, with prboom+. And demo goes as primary source of info. For visual stuff there is ofc "DSDA on YT" youtube channel, ran by Zero Master, which uploads relevant WRs from time to time. Also as story tells - most people care for WRs only, and rarely care about ILs, unless they are told "HEY THIS IS GOOD" (examples would be - shock's 8s e1m1 or Looper's Chasm, since Karl Jobst made indepth videos on those). And even less people care for WADs outside of publically known ID software releases.

As for longer runs, there usually is a video provided anyway, since it is completely understandable, that 99.999% of people who watch speedruns, won't even check what's going on on dsda or doomworld. So you'll see big runs instantly ported to YT, and there still is nothing wrong with it. But this video comes from demo and demo is the only source of truth, so we just can't ignore this forever.

Question goes - should we "enforce" both video and demo to allow run to be hosted on speedruncom, due to how many people just click pages and watch stuff, and unless it is a video, they won't bother; or should we allow demo-only submissions. And I already said my take on that in another thread.

Okay, this seem to be a problem at the moment and I kinda have a different take here, so let me go all out.

While speedruncom doom page is merely a small fracture of doom speedruns it would nice to understand what and why is being done. Also for reason of this actually being related to doom speedrunning in general some rules have to be applied in one way or another.

As of right now demos aren't a necessity, however they help moderators to verify your runs on many levels (sourceport, actual stats, input check for weird behavior, such as auto sr50 and so on). Also by creating a demo you create an actual legit entry into actual doom leaderboards, doesn't matter if the category that you run marked as Other in dsda.

While I do understand that some of you might be unwilling to go extra step, I'd have to politely ask you - record demos for your runs AND only use listed sourceports. It is generally accepted practice. You wouldn't go to, let's say, GTA leaderboards and then submit run with framelimiter off (banned by rules, if you wonder) and then provide an excuse on why it should stay there and why it won't affect leaderboards.

Many games require you to go extra step, like downpatching or upgrading to certain version, which is especially annoying with console games. And the only reason why I can see demos - an extra step - being annoying to you - not doing that before. It has way more positives than you might even think of:
1) It doesn't require any processing power. Which allows you to do runs on shittiest PCs possible and then still get it to perfect quality with 2)
2) It can be converted into a video with prboom features. Which allows for whatever visual quality standard exists in current day and age, be that 2k,8k,256k or something else.
3) It can be studied with TAS tools, such as xdre, where you can learn what you do wrong, learn how to adjust your inputs. Greatest example I can name is current D2ALL WR-holder Looper. He does study his failed attempts during stream which is extemely important on that high-end performance.
4) And then it also does provide all the info about your run, more than you can imagine, which legitemises your run.

If you aren't getting top time, then I personally really don't care for how you record your run to these leaderboards. But if you manage to get 1st place in whatever category you run - having a demo not only would contribute greatly to everyone, but will also help to prove how exactly do you got that first place. Also if you are capable of doing actual top-tier runs - why not legitemise them by community standards? Make you stand out. Before ILs were removed, some new runners, who appeared from speedruncom leaderboards got actual WRs in categories that stood for decades!

That isn't made for leaderboards to make you feel annoyed. That is being made for leaderboards to be 100% valid. You can still record your videos and submit them to provide an easy way of "consumind media". But please, do record demos. While currently it isn't a necessity on speedruncom - it will become eventually.

Now with that out of the way, let me quickly address the m8 confusion.
I've been getting runs without m8 in a past, and even though I think it is quite clear written in a rules, that map 8 must be finished unless stated otherwise, it isn't quite clear why that is the thing to some people, even though, yet again, it is explained in a rules, that "if your run doesn't use saves/loads then final In-Game time - sum of level times (can be seen at the end of a level, certain sourceports do count sum for you aswell) except map 8 UNLESS stated otherwise by subcategory rules (Such Compete-N rules for that, we not gonna bother, even though you can time it with certain sourceports)".
This has been a historical issue, which ONLY exists in Compete-N entries. In that case it really is Ultimate Doom only. Back in a day, old sourceports were going to intermission screen after m8, as result it wasn't possible to get actual time. Even though it isn't a case anymore, Ultimate Doom is Compete-N "entry" and to avoid any confusion on what's considered WR by community and what's not, we just apply that ruleset here for consistensy. That is why m8 have to be completed even if it doesn't count to your final time. (Maybe dsdarchive will fix that issue, by splitting UD runs into CN and other entries, I have no clue).

I'm not gonna lock this thread, you can ask questions about demos or m8 related stuff here.