Uploaded July 2020 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

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This is a tool-assisted speedrun that beats Map 31 of Antaresian Reliquary!

- Map 31: The Eclipse of Betelgeuse

------ General comments ------

antares031's speedrun of this map caught my attention. I found a lot of mistakes in his run and the overall strategy was clear, which made me beat this map.

I never had a good opinion of Slaughter-like TASes because of their terrible quality, but then I tried it myself and became convienced. No, it's definitely not my thing. Not only is it a poor usage of TAS tools, but also is a big time wastement. The software barely handles such heavy maps with thousands of monsters.

XDRE lags at the very beginning of the map, so I made just a small piece of input in it. The rest of input was made in PrBoom+. This TAS was made using slow motion in 61 segments (replay appends). Every time I needed to fix an error, I had to wait for a long time for demo to load because the map is filled with ~43k of monsters. Try to play it back using -skipsec 1200, for example! You will have to wait for several minutes before the footage finally shows up.

--- Route comments ---

The route itself isn't difficult. Just a sequence of switches, some of which open a specific gate of a conveyor, imitating a time period you need to survive until a door or a closet opens.
It was pretty clear that everything is pointing towards grabbing the BFG near the exit tower. That's the only way to deal with 43k of monsters.

First 6 minutes were basically a UV-Speed route with some pointless shootouts which wouldn't save time afterwards. I even managed to perform an Arch-Vile jump with much effort because your jump depends on the angle of the arch-vile with respect to you. Basically, you jump in the opposite direction from him (like he is shooting you), not where you were running at the moment of strike. So it was very difficult to perform, and my jump wasn't enough high to reach the platform near the yellow key. So I had to activate the lift as well.

There are a lot of spawn points for monsters around the map, and they keep spawning until they all gone.

--- Possible improvements ---

I wasn't concentrating on a specific section. My objective was to constantly blast the BFG and prevent myself from running out of ammo. Unfortunately, it wasn't well done.

1. The northern section (where you start the map) wasn't fired enough due to the presence of big platforms which hampered my manoeuvres. If I keep in the same place, I get shot hardly. There were a couple of projectiles flying towards me for every second, so I had to leave the northern section for last.

2. I killed lonely Cyberdemons quickly. They could kill more monsters for me. Untouched Cybers died of infighting, so I hadn't completely f***ed up with that.

3. There were about 20 spoiled BFG shots which could do the thing faster.

At least, I managed to catch the lift to the exit at time =)


I think, about 2 minutes could be saved, but such long demo loadings didn't let me do that.
This is my first and last Slaughter-like UV-Max TAS, at least, for the next couple of years. I need a stronger version of PrBoom+ which would lift such Boom maps or, otherwise, there's zero point for me in making such TASes.

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IWAD: Doom 2
WAD: Antaresian Reliquary
WAD filename: ANTA_REQ.wad
Category: UV-Max, TAS
Walkthrough: Map 31
Source port: PrBoom+ 2.5.1.4cl9

Time: 21:28.83 (1288.83)

Author: Dmitry "Dimon12321" Moskovchenko
Email: d.moskovchenko@gmail.com
YouTube channel: youtube.com/user/Dimon12321/videos