Description: 13 seconds faster than my previous 21m14s record set on 2018-03-15.
Last time I did doom2 nightmare I wrote that I might do this again in 5 years, 4.75 years is close enough.
I'll be lowering this record further this year.
Map comments: Map 02: new glide setup makes this map a lot easier and faster. Map 03: got blocked too much by the spectres Map 08: uv difficulty muscle memory kicking in, didn't fire to wake up the barons earlier so I lost a lot of time to getting blocked there. Map 10: fence clip now used Map 12: took too much damage so I had to slow down a bit in the cacodemon room Map 17: I had different settings than when I practice so I was very lucky to open up the yellow key bars as my visual que was gone. Map 22: failed the jump at the end there, happens every time though. Map 25: a bit low of cells Map 27: missed the second BFG which was supposed to hit the hell knight, so I didn't want to let the hell knight have the last hit on the arch-vile as the vile would take too long to kill the hell knight. So I went to check if he was infighting and I got lucky as he had to have been hit by a lost soul after I left. Unfortunately I then got quite unlucky afterwards by having the vile bump the door twice without opening it. The vile then bounced off of the alive hell knight to open it eventually. I just ignored the lost soul here as I didn't want to fire so I could hear the door open. Map 28: really made a mess out of that switch. Map 30: everything was line up perfectly here, unfortunately I was too focused on hitting the first rocket timing that I kind of forgot about the 3rd rocket and went a couple of frames too early. Should have just gone with the old setup which is to lower the lift and then fire the rocket, but that can also fail if I take a projectile at the wrong moment.
Not too bothered by missing the last rocket and not getting under 21 minutes, lost too much time on map 27 so it wasn't good enough anyways.
Description: 13 seconds faster than my previous 21m14s record set on 2018-03-15.
Last time I did doom2 nightmare I wrote that I might do this again in 5 years, 4.75 years is close enough.
I'll be lowering this record further this year.
Map comments: Map 02: new glide setup makes this map a lot easier and faster. Map 03: got blocked too much by the spectres Map 08: uv difficulty muscle memory kicking in, didn't fire to wake up the barons earlier so I lost a lot of time to getting blocked there. Map 10: fence clip now used Map 12: took too much damage so I had to slow down a bit in the cacodemon room Map 17: I had different settings than when I practice so I was very lucky to open up the yellow key bars as my visual que was gone. Map 22: failed the jump at the end there, happens every time though. Map 25: a bit low of cells Map 27: missed the second BFG which was supposed to hit the hell knight, so I didn't want to let the hell knight have the last hit on the arch-vile as the vile would take too long to kill the hell knight. So I went to check if he was infighting and I got lucky as he had to have been hit by a lost soul after I left. Unfortunately I then got quite unlucky afterwards by having the vile bump the door twice without opening it. The vile then bounced off of the alive hell knight to open it eventually. I just ignored the lost soul here as I didn't want to fire so I could hear the door open. Map 28: really made a mess out of that switch. Map 30: everything was line up perfectly here, unfortunately I was too focused on hitting the first rocket timing that I kind of forgot about the 3rd rocket and went a couple of frames too early. Should have just gone with the old setup which is to lower the lift and then fire the rocket, but that can also fail if I take a projectile at the wrong moment.
Not too bothered by missing the last rocket and not getting under 21 minutes, lost too much time on map 27 so it wasn't good enough anyways.Final Doom: TNT Evilution - Nightmare! 100% Secrets Speedrun in 1:50:40Zero Master2023-04-18 | Runner: Zero-Master Date: 2023-04-17 IWAD: TNT.wad PWAD: TNT31.wad Category: Nightmare! 100% Secrets Map: 1-30 Source Port: DSDA-Doom v0.25.6 Time: 1:50:40
This is the first single-segment run of Final Doom: TNT Evilution on Nightmare! difficulty with obtaining 100% secrets on every level. This was the last undone nightmare all secrets category for the IWADs (doom, doom2, plutonia, tnt), were plutonia was done about 2 years ago. Primary reason why this hasn't been done before now is because of map 02 and map 09 which are very difficult on nightmare. However I have come up with some new strategies that have made it a lot more manageable, details on that and comments about the run can be found by reading the included txt file with the demo found here: doomworld.com/forum/topic/135135-final-doom-tnt-evilution-nm100s-in-15040
This is also the longest nightmare record ever made! Now I am only missing plutonia myself to have completed all iwads for this category, so I will hopefully get that done at some point too.
I've switched to the correct aspect ratio for the hud, I primarily went with the stretched hud previously because I absolutely hated the ugly brick textures that prboom had, but it's been a while since that could be corrected with the widescreen assets, just never bothered to switch until now.
Some comments about the run: Map 02: I realized I had enough armor that I could grab it on the way to the exit, but I usually don't do that since I'll take extra damage, so not a great idea, but it worked out here. Map 04: Good enough starting health that it shouldn't be a problem. Unfortunate with the revenant going down the elevator, as I didn't wake up the monsters by the exit because of it, but I survived the end so it's fine. Map 09: Got really close at the blue key berserk secret, went quite ok otherwise. Map 31: Lol, if I had died at the start here... what a mess, forgot where the health was too. Otherwise just taking it very safe and slow. Those revenant rockets make me nervous though, especially when I go for the soulsphere, felt like I'd have a really dumb death here at some point, but that never happened. Map 32: Unbeliveable bad luck with that last secret by the revenant closet, took lots of damage and then I 100% should have died at the mancubi. The plan is to just activate the switch and go back immediately, but I guess I paniced because of the bad health and tried to dodge by going further past it which I think might have made things worse, I don't know. Pure luck that I didn't die. Map 18: Why... there's something about the yellow key and the keys on map 26 too that just make them so.. forgettable. Map 25: Messed up the ending really badly there, might have gotten killed if I got too close to those barrels perhaps.
Description: 1 minute and 53 seconds faster than the previous record by Vincent Catalaa which was set 21 years ago.
E4M3 and E4M7 have secrets that are either impossible or nearly impossible to get, so only 90% for E4M3 and 50% for E4M7 are required.
While the other episodes have had somewhat recent records, episode 4 has been ignored for over 2 decades. Episode 4 is surprisingly not crazy difficult for nightmare all secrets, but that only means the route could take more risk and be faster somewhere.
Recently I've been routing/practicing for another run that's going to be significantly more challenging, I'm not sure when I'll be able to complete it though, but eventually it will happen. I've been working on some other runs at the same time so maybe I'll do ep2 and ep3 uv-speed again for example meanwhile.
Map comments: E4M1: I wasn't close enough to the fence for a while there so the key grab was a bit slow, otherwise it went ok.
E4M2: Could probably do the start a bit faster if I have enough health, but there's a few shotgunners coming up and you just never know what damage you'll take.
E4M9: Decent chance I die on this level, didn't look into going directly to the yellow key which would be faster.
E4M3: Getting all secrets here is much easier since you grab a mega armor, backpack and a soulsphere. Could potentially run directly over to the exit area after the last teleporter, but with all the random monsters around it would be very risky, not to mention missing out on cells.
E4M4: Just hope I don't get blocked going for the invulnerability, easy level.
E4M5: Need to conserve as much armor as possible for the next level so I take it a bit easy here and don't rush the start.
E4M6: Perhaps the hardest ultimate doom level, but with enough cells and health/armor from the previous levels it was no problem here. Could of course go for the much faster route which is to hope the cyberdemon infights, but I'll save that for some other time. Would be faster to skip getting the soulsphere after triggering the secret too. Here though I drop down and BFG the cyberdemon from below, it will usually push him back so I need to move out of his line of sight so he'll come forward before I can hit him again.
E4M7: As long as I have some health left over from the previous level than this one is really easy. Biggest problem would be missing the exit jump which is a bit precise.
E4M8: Since you have so much health and armor from the previous level and get double soulsphere + mega armor this is also very easy. Probably possible to take some more risk here and get away with it, but for now this will do.Ultimate Doom - Episode 3 - Nightmare! 100% Secrets Speedrun in 7:51Zero Master2023-01-23 | Runner: Zero-Master Date: 2023-01-22 IWAD: Doom.wad Category: Nightmare! 100% Secrets Map: Episode 3 (E3M1-E3M8) Source Port: DSDA-Doom v0.25.4 Time: 7:51
Description: 23 seconds faster than the previous published record by KingInferno93, though he had an unpublished record 21 seconds faster. So this is only a 2 second improvement, time comparison above is against his old run.
This episode has some really annoying sections, especially the entire second level. I had a couple of runs that would have been a bit faster, but failed at some point, so maybe I'll try again later.
Episode 4 is up next, for those who have played it you probably know how difficult it is, so it might take a while before I do it.. just kidding of course, I also did that one yesterday, but I'll upload it in 2 days from now.
Map comments: E3M1: 38 seconds is ok here, I've gotten 35 seconds before but it's so luck based that I'm happy with anything that has good health and doesn't make any big mistake.
E3M2: Easily the most frustrating level in any of these episode runs because getting a good time is impossible. Most likely I'll take a lot of damage going for the chaingun as the rockets don't connect well, then there's the 2 lost souls by the plasma secret which can deal more damage or block you. For the soulsphere secret I want to avoid using too much plasma which means I'm guranteed to take a few hits going through there. Then most likely I'll get blocked by more pinkies on the way back from blue key like I did here and of course there's more lost souls at the exit.
E3M3: Immediately followed up with another awful section at the start here, need to get past 5 pinkies and 1 spectre + lost souls. Once you get to the 40 plasma ammo though it gets a lot easier from there.
E3M4: Biggest problem is getting blocked after the blue key, you do have the invulnerability with a rocket launcher so it shouldn't be a problem, but it's hard to get through smoothly.
E3M5: This level is quite nice though, mostly straightforward things here.
E3M6: Oh boy do I hate this one, had a run that was 4 seconds slower than this one, but I lost 11 seconds when I failed the jump to the secret exit after getting blocked by a lost soul. Then I had another run where I didn't get the jump to the chainsaw because I got hit by 2 max damage roll cacodemon fireballs.
E3M9: I usually get either 54 or 55 seconds here, so this level is simple.
E3M7: Got blocked really badly at one point here, usually doesn't happen so I wasn't prepared with the plasma rifle and had to wait for the BFG to connect. When I went through the tunnels something happened that I have never experienced before, I was holding move forward + strafe left but I kept getting bounced backwards off the wall to my right. It happened a total of 8 times which is ridiculous, only cost me a second, but I've never seen anything like it in all my hours of playing this game.
E3M8: From 3000 health to 47 health after 2 BFGs on the mastermind, awful, anything other than 8 seconds is very unfortunate.Ultimate Doom - Episode 2 - Nightmare! 100% Secrets Speedrun in 11:46Zero Master2023-01-21 | Runner: Zero-Master Date: 2023-01-19 IWAD: Doom.wad Category: Nightmare! 100% Secrets Map: Episode 2 (E2M1-E2M8) Source Port: DSDA-Doom v0.25.4 Time: 11:46
Description: 12 seconds faster than the previous record by JCD.
Overall easier than episode 1.
E2M1: I knew when I did the linedef skip on the teleporter that this was going to be the run, easily avoidable so it shouldn't happen. Time here is terrible, but it's the hardest level so I just want to survive. Just a very annoying level on nightmare 100% with lots of hitscanners, pinkies that block you and cacodemons that are impossible to dodge.
E2M2: Feels strange how long this level is when it's so short for uv/nm-speed.
E2M3: Mega armor + soulsphere secret helps a lot.
E2M4: Messed up a linedef skip here which cost me a few seconds. Need to be careful to not go to the exit door ledge too soon as it becomes impossible to tag the soulsphere secret sector.
E2M5: The secret exit here is very annoying, if you don't good health there's a big chance you just die depending on damage rolls from the lost souls.
E2M9: It's possible to bump the key here and open up the exit faster, I go grab the plasma rifle while also waiting for the cacodemons to move out of the way so I don't die immediately. Though a faster route should skip that.
E2M6: Yes, there is even a 3rd void glide on this level which is useful for nightmare all secrets. Works a bit different than the others, just need to SR40 into the corner and there's a good chance it'll work, but it failed the first time here. It's a bit weird as I kind of have to wait a bit for it to work sometimes. Could have also just gone for it without actually killing anything, but it's a bit of a risk. Also a bit slow on the exit switch.
E2M7: JCD grabs the invulnerability entering the room, but it does basically nothing so I grab it afterwards to make the level much easier. But then if he doesn't need it afterwards either it would be faster to just skip it completely if you want to risk it, but the level is a bit dangerous otherwise.
E2M8: It's possible to get blocked by lost souls so it's probably a good idea to just keep a big distance to the cyberdemon as he doesn't really move around that much on nightmare so it's hard to miss with plasma.Ultimate Doom - Episode 1 - Nightmare! 100% Secrets Speedrun in 10:14Zero Master2023-01-19 | Runner: Zero-Master Date: 2023-01-18 IWAD: Doom.wad Category: Nightmare! 100% Secrets Map: Episode 1 (E1M1-E1M8) Source Port: DSDA-Doom v0.25.4 Time: 10:14
Description: A very average run, 29 seconds faster than the previous record by Vile, most of that time saved from the intercept overflow.
I'll most likely do the other episodes soon for this category, and maybe something more interesting afterwards.
E1M1: Bad start, missed opening the wall and the exit which cost me at least a second. The 3rd secret is a bit random as it relies on a shotgunner crossing a linedef, average time which cost me the most time here. I don't really care about how much health I exit with as I probably won't be needing it for E1M2.
E1M2: Missed the switch by the imp, so overall the run felt really bad combined with the E1M1 mistakes so I can play a bit more aggresive to try and make up for it which is nice.
E1M3: By far the most difficult level in this run. Most annoying thing is to get blocked on the way back from the soulsphere.
E1M9: This level can also be difficult depending on what kind of health I have from E1M3. Really bad time, probably my worst.
E1M4: Yellow key door was a disaster, a lift was active which prevents me from opening the door.
E1M5: Need to be careful not to rocket myself. Had a lot of health after the soulsphere secret, figured it would be impossible to throw it all away, but I almost managed it.
E1M6: Came up with a really nice setup for the door block here. Just clear out the hitscanners so that the spectre can't be distracted and SR50 through the door and the spectre will very likely block it. Quite fortunate in the exit room as well, I expect to take a rocket to the face with the spectres rushing out too quickly, but that didn't happen here.
E1M7: I had a previous run that I completed with 75% here, the secret by the rad suit is 32 units, but if I move over 16 units per tic then there's a chance I'll go too far that I get lifted up to the next step without touching the ground while inside the secret sector. Then of course I run over it on the way back too.
E1M8: Never seen a pinky die that fast on nightmare. Usually nightmare is quite a bit slower than UV difficulty because they move around so quickly that I end up damaging different pinkies instead of the same one. Took a bit of time before the intercept overflow triggered even though the corpse seemed to be in the right position. Really slow with the 3rd movement input though, need to be careful not to tap the input twice as it's impossible to recover from that.
Quite a few things that could be done faster, I just wanted the record so I didn't look into some more crazy strategies. Might not be that bad to skip the E1M3 soulsphere for example as it's not a secret, then there were other secrets which I didn't really need to spend time on once they were triggered. Maybe I'll do a sub 10 one day, or maybe someone else will do it :)Doom II: Hell on Earth - Nightmare! Speedrun in 20:46Zero Master2023-01-08 | Runner: Zero-Master Date: 2023-01-07 IWAD: Doom2.wad Category: NM-Speed Map: 1-30 Source Port: DSDA-Doom v0.25.2 Time: 20:46
Description: 15 seconds faster than my previous run and the first run below 21 minutes.
Yet again I failed map 30, I'll blame the revenant this time as it's one of the worst spawns you can get. But it's ok, I feel like I've hardly even started, so I'll be attempting this more later. I took it safe during the last levels as I wanted to get sub 21 out of the way.
Obviously below 20 minutes would be a massive milestone, but the entire run needs to be incredibly clean for that to happen, which is extremely difficult to pull off on nightmare. As I mentioned in the last one I intend to improve this further this year, so we'll see how close I can get at least. I've got a few other runs to do meanwhile though.
Map comments: Map 02: Made a slight change to the route here, after the first blue key door I kill the zombieguy furthest to the right before I open up the door and kill one of the shotgunners on the inside, then I'll fire at the zombieguy and shotgunners behind him while I go for the switch. It should save about 2 seconds to what I did earlier, most likely I'll take some more damage, but it's map 02 so it's no big deal. Map 07: Messed up my initial inputs going for the rocket jump, thankfully I didn't fire a rocket and damage myself like I usually do when that happens. Map 13: Another small change here, I use the BFG to clear out some of the imps after the first teleporter. Not sure why I haven't done this earlier, I have yet to fail the jump down to the door with this strategy. Probably because it wastes 40 cells which I can't really afford, but I've switched to rockets for the revenants by the blue key door afterwards so it's fine. Map 17: Unlike last time I didn't have too much trouble with my visual que for the yellow key switch press, but I wasn't used to having the berserk red screen active so it wasn't ideal either.. I guess I should practice with it or avoid picking it up for next time. Map 22: Finally a good catacombs, basically never happens. Map 24: Grabbed some extra cells and a rad suit as I knew I was on good time, won't be doing that again now that I have sub 21. Map 26: Grabbed green armor even though it wasn't needed. Map 27: Hey it worked! a bit slow, could get 26-27 seconds here if all goes well. Map 28: Again grabbed invulnerability just to be safe. Map 29: Had an attempt yesterday where I failed the first rocket jump somehow.. it's actually the easiest rocket jump in the game, at least this run was better though. Map 30: Still not the time I'm looking for even if I did get the 1 cycle so it's ok. I fired a bit too early, just didn't have much time to prepare because of the revenant. Decided to take the slower method for the 3rd rocket as it's quicker at activating the elevator and I need to hit 1 more.Ultimate Doom: Knee-Deep in the Dead (Episode 1) - Ultra-Violence Speedrun in 5:13Zero Master2023-01-07 | Runner: Zero-Master Date: 2023-01-04 IWAD: Doom.wad Category: UV-Speed Map: Episode 1 Sourceport: DSDA-Doom v0.25.2 Time: 5:13
Description: Since ExM1-ExM7 legacy timing is more or less abandoned I'll probably get around to doing some ultimate doom speedruns again.
5 seconds faster than the previous record by Vile, uses the intercept overflow on E1M8.
Sub 5 minutes would be a nice goal here, this run was overall worse than vile's, but obviously saved lots of time from the intercept overflow and not having to pick up rockets on e1m6 (roughly 14 seconds total).
Map comments: E1M1: I'll take 12 seconds here for now, not too difficult to get 11 but it's a bit annoying to reset for it. Of course skipping mega armor would be ideal to save about 2 seconds, but then you lose many more runs on e1m3. E1M2: 24 seconds is ok here, though 22 is easy if you get the zombieguy to open up the door on the way back from red key and if there are no issues in the exit room. E1M3: Seemed like it went ok at the start, but 43 seconds is not good, got blocked too much in the end. Unlucky to have the last barrel hit me like that. E1M4: Always get either 15 or 16 seconds here, bumped the wall and lost out on 15 here. E1M5: Another level that went ok, nothing amazing and nothing terrible, lots of smaller mistakes though with opening the doors, heh. E1M6: No idea how I got stuck that long on the lightpost, it was like it grabbed me. E1M7: Not a bad time, but could have been a couple of seconds faster. E1M8: A new setup for the intercept overflow that's easier for an episode run, 22-23 seconds is about average what I get in practice here, so the time wasn't awful, but it's possible to get 17 seconds or so. Unfortuantely getting a good time is completely luck based, but getting the trick itself requires no luck.
Overall a very average run and easily improveable. Under 5 minutes will happen one day.
I've got a few more iwad runs that are easily improved with some route changes, hopefully I'll get more of them done in the coming weeks.Prodeus - 100% Ultra Hard Speedrun in 2:11:35Zero Master2022-12-08 | 100% = All kills, all secrets and no deaths. I've also included all the ores even though they don't count towards 100%. 2:11:35 was timed with a load remover, real time is about 2:15:03.
Description: I expected a decent route to put the time under 2 hours 30 minutes, so I was surprised by how fast this went. This is far from perfect, both the route and the execution can still be improved quite a bit.
Lots of route improvements all over the place, not having to restart a couple of levels obviously saves a lot of time compared to my previous run. There are a ton of things to remember so there are many places where I just use the wrong weapon or waste a few seconds not knowing where to go. Feels like I lost about a minute on the automap checking if I had killed everything and another minute one a couple of missing enemies. No doubt that under 2 hours is possible with further improvment and less mistakes.
I probably wouldn't have done this if Maynarde didn't give me some competition with his run in 2h36m27s, if you want commentary with your run then I definitely suggest that instead, his run can be found here: speedrun.com/prodeus/run/zg2349jy
Misc tricks: Shotgun animation can be skipped by changing weapon back and forth, also used for a few other weapons.
Keybinds: Movement: WASD Dash: Shift Jump: Space Use: E Reload: R
Pistol: Mouse Wheel Up Shotgun: Mouse Wheel Down Shredders: 1 Mammoth: 2 Quad Shotgun: 3 Plasma Rifle: 4 Auto Shotgun: 5 Chaos Rifle: F Grenade Launcher: C Minigun: X Rocket Launcher: Q Swarmer: CTRLDoom Eternal - All Master Levels Ultra-Nightmare [No HUD]Zero Master2022-11-18 | All official master levels done without deaths in a single segment. I do them in order of easiest first to hardest last.
Restrictions: No HUD/Crosshair, no Chaingun Shield, no BFG, no Crucible/Hammer and no Saving Throw.
I use one console command which is hud_globalalpha = 0 to remove the hit indicator and meat hook crosshair.
All video settings set to Ultra-Nightmare with ray tracing enabled.
Runes used: Air Control, Equipment Fiend and Savagery. Weapon binds can be found here: pastebin.com/mwgJEfEX
ARC Complex @ 00:00 Cultist Base @ 10:21 Super Gore Nest @ 30:50 Mars Core @ 57:00 Taras Nabad @ 1:32:11 The World Spear @ 2:11:17
Misc info: - I don't expect any more master levels at this point, so I figured I'd go through them in one sitting, just a fun challenge I've had in mind for quite some time now. - No effort put into going fast here. Another restriction I had was to avoid skipping too many fights, but there were a few things I missed or intentionally skipped. - ARC Complex and Cultist Base don't have ultra-nightmare so they are done on nightmare without deaths. - Skipped the last part of ARC Complex because it's a bit janky with the elevators and mostly uninteresting. - I'll often switch between grenades to figure out which one I currently have equipped in case anyone is wondering about the 2 sound effects that plays between and during fights are. - This was my 3rd attempt at it, first attempt soft locked at cultist base while the second attempt died at Super Gore Next exit run through to the marauder pinning me against the wall, which is why I now kill the tyrant first.
Comments about this playthrough: - Most of this is very slow, I spend several minutes just trying to max out armor and ammo before and during some sections where I have a decent chance of dying. - Had to reset the cultist base pit fight because it soft locked, motivation to do 3 hour doom eternal videos in one segment is really low at the moment, so there was no way I was starting over and since I finally decided to give this a go I wanted to see it through this time. - I didn't know for sure what the chaingun shield looked like so I used it for a second at the start of world spear so that I wouldn't end up using it by mistake later :) - Nearly accidentally used the BFG on taras nabad, I should have moved my BFG/crucible/hammer keybind beforehand. - Should have died about 4 times or so at world spear, at least everything up until that point was quite simple, even taras nabad. The possessed pinky section is especially rough to do without chaingun shield, so that close call wasn't unexpected. Really overestimated my health with the possessed cyber mancubus early on though, fortunate to not take some random projectile afterwards. - Very happy that I didn't soft lock on world spear, I've seen the dog idle by the purple goo fountain and unlike Cultist Base I can't just load checkpoint since it's ultra-nightmare.
Enjoy!Misc Doom SpeedrunsZero Master2022-11-06 | A compilation of a few individual level runs I've done somewhat recently, most of them yesterday, only the last 2 of them for E1M1 aren't records:
Doom 2 - Map 02 Nightmare in 34.69 (lv02n) @ 0:00 Doom 2 - Map 02 Nightmare All secrets in 43.54 (lv02s) @ 0:35 Doom 2 - Map 12 Pacifist in 40.83 (lv12p) @ 1:19 Doom 2 - Map 18 Ultra-Violence in 9.97 (lv18) @ 2:00 TNT Evilution - Map 08 Nightmare All secrets in 1:56.66 (ev08s) @ 2:11 TNT Evilution - Map 25 Pacifist in 9.97 (ev25p) @ 4:08 The Plutonia Experiment - Map 13 No Monsters in 21.37 (pl13o) @ 4:19 The Plutonia Experiment - Map 19 Pacifist in 17.86 (pl19p) @ 4:41 The Plutonia Experiment - Map 19 Ultra-Violence in 16.66 (pl19) @ 4:59 The Plutonia Experiment - Map 30 Ultra-Violence in 19.23 (pl30) @ 5:17 Doom - E1M8 Nightmare All secrets in 19.86 (e1m8s) @ 5:37 Doom - E2M7 Pacifist in 13.60 (e2m7p) @ 5:58 Doom - E1M1 No Monsters in 8.71 (e1m1o) @ 6:12 Doom - E1M1 Pacifist in 8.94 (e1m1p) @ 6:20
e2m7p, lv12p and ev25p are also ultra-violence speed records, e1m8s and ev08s are also nightmare speed records.
Comments: lv02n: Just a new setup for the glide which makes it a lot more consistent on nightmare difficulty.
lv02s: A low effort demo using the glide to beat the previous record by a second.
lv12p: Very easy, just need luck with the yellow key grab, the first elevator and not getting blocked in the second elevator. I knew I was a bit slow on the 4th switch so I really had to be quick on the 5th one.
lv18: So happy I skipped 10 seconds, though not very surprising because this "setup" is pretty quick. I mostly just wanted to investigate if there is any consistent method for it.
I guess you've gotta be crazy enough to try the zombieguy if you want 8 seconds.
ev08s: This level uses a very interesting trick! "Ah, you mean the standard void glide?" No.. but yes, it's not a standard e2m6 void glide because this is the west direction.. but that isn't the only interesting trick here, I use a wallrun in the void to go 2 seconds faster than JCD's NM-Speed demo while also getting all secrets. "Well of course, there's a wall there so you can run along it" Yes.. but no, the direction is going west, longer wallruns are done going north or east, not west. However, if you have a fence, or in this case something that behaves exactly like a fence which is the backside of a wall, then you can maintain over 16 units per tic momentum going north while the rest of your momentum is to the west. So the north momentum which takes you nowhere will double your speed going west. Of course because of the bad angle reducing west momentum you don't cut the time in half, but it's 13 seconds saved which is pretty good.
ev25p: Pretty good setup for the void glide.
pl13o: How did I miss this obvious setup for the south glide.
pl19p: I always wanted to try the south direction here.
Strategy here is to skip using vertical mouse movement and hope that you just go through once at the center, happens surprisingly often so it's not too bad. Got it at least 3 times in however many attempts got to that point.
pl19: "Ok, let me try it UV-Speed then" and this was first attempt after I stopped pacifist attempts, I'll take it.
pl30: I knew this one was going to be fast, but I'm almost annoyed that 18 seconds doesn't seem to be that difficult now. Would have to be a really clean run though.
e1m8s: Took way longer than I expected, 1000+ attempts but most of those were instant resets. I think I had about 150 attempts that did the correct inputs and I only got the intercept overflow twice, the first time being way too slow. A lot easier on UV difficulty.
e2m7p: You need a minimum speed of 160/7 units per tic to get the jump, this seems to be impossible to do without running against a monster. The more speed you have the further away from going over the edge you can be, but usually you just barely go over with about 0.4 units per tic, so you need to be almost completely over the edge for it to work.
e1m1o: E1M1 uses a new strategy that I came up with for the start which saves 3-4 tics. From the start I can easily do some specific inputs which gives me a really good wallrun for a few tics and that doubles my speed. This means I activate the first door at 1.80 or 1.83 very often compared to 1.89-1.91 without it. 1.80 with wallrun is much easier than 1.89 without wallrun, and it's possible to even get 1.77, but that seems to be very difficult.
Current record is 8.69 by aconfusedhuman.
e1m1p: Also no damage taken. Current record is 8.80, also by aconfusedhuman. Current record has a 1.94 first door, so potentially the time could go down to 8.69 with this new setup. I am definitely not up for that kind of grind,Ultrakill - Early Access (Prelude, Act1, Act2) PlaythroughZero Master2022-10-25 | Previously I did a playthrough of Prodeus and I said it was one of the best new old-school type fps games.. but it's not the best, because that of course is ultrakill. I've been playing this on and off for a while now, I've got just over 30 hours in the game, still a lot to get better at not to mention there's several things I haven't even figured out yet. For example only yesterday I figured out you could insta kill mindflayer with the shotgun explosion or malicious face with piercer and parry. I also struggle a bit with timing the dash, slide movement boosts consistently still, while core detonation is something I barely use because I haven't tried it enough etc.
I've gotten all secrets that are tracked here and just included as many challenges as I could be bothered with. Skipped the secret levels as well with exception of 0-S. Most of this gameplay is awful compared to what it could be, some of it is less shit than other parts, but I'm happy I managed to get through it in about 90 minutes without routing this much at all. The worst parts were dying once to each V2 boss, but at least I got gabriel (though missed out on p-rank on the last one).
I'd like to do a 100% speedrun one day, but it requires quite a bit of effort so I'm not sure if that will happen. I've completed the game with all P-ranks and challenges, but the problem is mainly going fast instead of slow :) I've got lots to improve on, maybe I'll give it a try at some point, perhaps when the game is finished, no idea.
Anyways in case you haven't played this game then unless you hate fps games there's no reason why you would ever not play this. If you played this game and hate it because of 4-S then that's ok.
Thanks for watching.
Level time stamps and comments: Prelude: Intro @ 0:00 0-1: Into the Fire @ 01:12 0-2: The Meatgrinder @ 03:23 0-S: Something Wicked @ 06:10 0-3: Double Down @ 06:46 0-4: A One-Machine Army @ 09:08 0-5: Cerberus @ 11:01
Act I: Infinite Hyperdeath Layer 1: Limbo 1-1: Heart of the Sunrise @ 12:13 1-2: The Burning World @ 14:40 1-3: Halls of Sacred Remains @ 17:48 1-4: Clair de Lune @ 23:13
Layer 2: Lust 2-1: Bridgeburner @ 24:44 2-2: Death at 20,000 Volts @ 27:58 2-3: Sheer Heart Attack @ 31:08 2-4: Court of the Corpse King @ 34:30
Layer 3: Glutony 3-1: Belly of the Beast @ 36:39 3-2: In the Flesh @ 41:06
Act II: Imperfect Hatred Layer 4: Greed 4-1: Slaves to Power @ 43:25 4-2: God Damn the Sun @ 47:55 4-3: A Shot in the Dark @ 54:11 4-4: Clair de Soleil @ 59:16
Layer 5: Wrath 5-1: In the Wake of Poseidon @ 1:01:44 5-2: Waves of the Starless Sea @ 1:07:34 5-3: Ship of Fools @ 1:12:20 5-4: Leviathan @ 1:18:47
Layer 6: Heresy 6-1: Cry for the Weeper @ 1:20:21 6-2: Aesthetics of Hate @ 1:26:44
Some comments: 0-2: Actually the hardest boss in the game for me currently. 0-5: Messed up and wasn't even close to getting the challenge. 1-4: Failed to time the dash so I took 50 damage followed up with a bit unfortunate damage from V2. 2-1: Extra careful to make sure I get all the enemies. 2-3: Was supposed to clear the water control by the exit first, so I ended up forgetting about the enemies at the start. 4-1: Forgot about the last secret, got the challenge though because of it. 4-2: Also forgot a secret, no idea why I bothered getting the secret exit afterwards too. I know I could of done the red and blue skull with dual wield and still got the boss, but I've never tried it so I just wanted to make sure I got the challenge. 4-3: This was a disaster, not sure if you can get to the dual wield once you've activated all 4 pillars, so had to reset and then I missed activating one pillar so I was confused for a bit. I'll be happy with surviving the final fight. Skipped the optional boss as I only tried it once so that would be even worse. 4-4: If only I knew how to aim this wouldn't have been a problem. 5-1: Forgot the first secret. 5-3: Happy I didn't miss any enemies. 5-4: Apparently the timing of my first attack wasn't very good. 6-2: Took too much damage for P-rank, also didn't get the challenge which is pretty easy. Should have used the blue railgun and parried his attack in the second phase instead. Also forgot you can't skip the dialouge the first time you get there.Prodeus - 100% Ultra Hard Speedrun in 3:10:50Zero Master2022-09-27 | 100% = All kills, all secrets and no deaths. I've also included all the ores even though they don't count towards 100%.
Ultra casual speedrun and a very bad time, route is awful, not to mention having to redo a level because of bad memory. Spent about 18 minutes having to redo Progenitor because I had no idea where the ore was, I just completely forgot about it. Main reason I forgot was because it's completely in the open and so I didn't have to specifically remember this one. Unfortunately I overlooked it, twice, and only after finding the automap by accident did I figure out which one it was. In the early access you could also return to the upper parts after the level was done, maybe there still is, but if I knew that I'd probably have taken greater care to keep count. So ignore absolutely everything between 2h04m and 2h21m. Shame it didn't go below 3 hours, it would have gone from an awful time to a time that's still awful, so it's not that big of a deal.
Had to redo genesis part 2 as well because of some glitch. Not the only time this level has glitched out, after you get 63 kills and enter the fight where the lava goes down you sometimes end up with 64 kills for reasons unknown to me. If that doesn't happen you end up with 102/103 at the end. Also had to restart Hexarchy as I remember I forgot the ore at the start.
I am however happy that I didn't die, so as long as that didn't happened I figured I'd just continue and anyone that's struggling to find the secrets can use this as a reference, as I don't know how long it would take to get a decent time. Part of the problem is 1 missing monster sometimes, on Frost I was missing one kill yesterday and on the automap I couldn't see anything left alive. I checked the profile afterwards and it said 100% and I unlocked all the store options so I know I got everything here.
I'd expect it to be doable in under 2h30m with a proper route, who knows. No idea if I'll go for a better time later.
Misc tricks: Shotgun animation can be skipped by changing weapon back and forth, probably applies to other weapons as well.
Keybinds: Movement: WASD Dash: shift Jump: Space Use: E Reload: R
Pistol: mouse wheel up Shotgun: mouse wheel down Shredders: 1 Mammoth: 2 Quad Shotgun: 3 Plasma Rifle: 4 Auto Shotgun: 5 Chaos Rifle: F Grenade Launcher: C Minigun: X Rocket Launcher: Q Swarmer: CTRLProdeus - Full Playthrough on Ultra HardZero Master2022-09-24 | Prodeus full release was yesterday, here's a playthrough of the game.
Lots of changse from the early access to the levels I've already played which all seemed pretty good to me. Died a few times in this playthrough on some of the later levels, but overall not very difficult. Missed several secrets as I didn't want to spend too much time looking around. Maybe I'll do a 100% playthrough later, not sure yet.Doom Eternal - More Custom Levels [Nightmare][No HUD]Zero Master2022-09-17 | Every few months I feel like playing some doom eternal again, so here's 3 hours of modded master levels. There aren't many new mods these days as far as I'm aware, but there's quite a few I haven't played yet. I was also planning on doing all the official master levels in one go with the same restrictions as below, but I've just never got to it because the length makes it hard to find motivation for it, so maybe some day I'll do that. I think this if the first time I've recorded anything with ray tracing, and it looks amazing in certain levels/areas.
This video is made of 6 segments, one for each of the following custom levels (found on nexus): UAC Atlantica Master Level-635-1-5-1-1661652383 ReclaimDen-1099-1-1-1652999106 LeakyNekravol_by_Zandy-721-3-1631316740 marsdencore-996-1-0-0-1644955323 Exuden by night-611-1-0-1b-1661381518 Corrosion Slaughter Map-693-1-5-1661649802
Restrictions and settings: No chaingun shield, no BFG, no crucible/hammer, no HUD including no crosshair of any kind and no deaths. All video settings on max with ray tracing enabled, fov = 115. Keybinds can be found here: pastebin.com/mwgJEfEX ----------------------------------------------------------------------- UAC Atlantica Master Level by Konvaz @ 0:00: "Custom-made Master Level for UAC Atlantica Facility. Incorporates TAG2 Demons and Meathook Nodes."
Definitely one level that looks a lot better with ray tracing, also a fun level. ------------- ReclaimDen by Payoyo @ 35:04: "ReclaimDen is a toxic version of Reclaimed Earth with dark Doom 2016-like visuals and challenging encounters."
This was my first playthrough of this mod and it was probably my favourite out of the ones I played here.
The fight below the gore nest was visually incredible, seeing the second baron approach me right as I was finishing the glory kill on the first baron by the reflection is something I've never experienced before. ------------- Leaky Nekravol by Zandy @ 1:07:34: "A wet and wild Nekravol pt 2 master level with lots of demons!"
Very cool visual change to the level. Felt like I was constantly trying to max out my ammo and health in the final fight, usually playing without the hud isn't a problem, but here I just didn't have any idea were I was health wise for the most of it. Overall nicely balanced difficulty wise, nothing that got too crazy at any point, but still interesting fights throughout it. ------------- Mars Den Core by Leix and Payoyo @ 1:27:48: "A challenging master level with visual twists! This level is balanced to be played without the hammer and includes some DLC demons. Difficulty increases and peaks in the last arena and the slayer gate. The main goal was to make interesting and challenging arenas revolving around heavy/super heavy demons. I had some fun modifying some cutscenes as well so I wouldn't recommend to skip them."
Yeah I skipped the cutscenes. Starts off easy and then gets a bit crazy towards the end. I played really slow at the final fight, this was the last part I did so I just wanted to survive. ------------- Exuden by Leix and SeaBazT @ 2:09:56: "Exuden is the Exultia master level made by The Den, the French community Doom Eternal Discord server. This mod is a complete transformation of Exultia, it is recommended to play it on a completed save. The slayer gate is already open and some plateforming sections simplified so you can focus on the arenas!"
No idea what was up with those final marauders, none of them wanted to attack. Felt like I played pretty badly here, but the level was ok. ------------- Corrosion Slaughter Map by Konvaz @ 2:46:47: "Slaughter Map for the BATTLEMODE arena, Corrosion."
Quite simple, first video segment here that I made and first playthrough so it was more of a warmup. I didn't want to bother with the infinite arena at the end.Final Doom: The Plutonia Experiment - Map 22 (Impossible Mission) UV-Speed in 0:23.20Zero Master2022-09-09 | Runner: Zero-Master Date: 2022-09-09 IWAD: Plutonia.wad Category: UV-Speed Map: 22 (Impossible Mission) Source Port: DSDA-Doom v0.24.3 Time: 0:23.20
Description: It's been 4 and a half year since I found this trick, but I thought it required coop to work.
Sometimes you can go back in bounds if you have a wall on the opposite side that you can rocket boost off of, but there's no such thing here. Then instead you would need another player so that you can build up momentum towards the wall without going past it so a single player demo would be impossible. But in this case the wall you're going through is at a slight angle which makes it possible to get stuck at the very edge without going past it. From there it's possible to build just enough momentum to get through.
The void glide by the pinky is more annoying than usual because of a perfectly placed blockmap line preventing half of my pistol shots from hitting. Too my surprise though it wasn't difficult to find a useful setup for getting back in bounds. Unfortunately the pinky is unlikely to coorperate most of the time so I don't expect to see this in a full run considering how late into the run it is. It is kind of interesting that plutonia could now perhaps be shorter than doom2 because of this and the new pl11 trick.
My goal here was to just get under 30 seconds, so I'm really happy with 23 seconds as the setup for getting back in bounds went quickly and the first time I got it quick enough I also didn't get blocked by the revenants.Final Doom: The Plutonia Experiment - Map 32 (Go 2 It) UV-Speed in 25.43 [TAS]Zero Master2022-09-01 | This is a Tool-Assisted Speedrun!
Description: It gets increasingly more difficult to find new tricks for the IWADs as fewer of them exist. I don't know if there's much left now, but who knows.
A void glide usually works by reaching the speed limit of 30 units per tic and then just barely getting over 2 units increase in speed so that the 32x32 unit doomguy will no longer overlap with the wall, assuming the wall is aligned with an axis.
In this case the wall is not even close to being aligned, it's actually at a 30 degree angle making the wall extend 16 units further away from the corner vertex in the y-direction. So the wall I want to go through requires a speed of over 48 units moved in a single tic! This void glide can also not be done without the assistance of not just one, but two monsters to block movement positions.
Once that is done the idea is to get back in bounds at the exit area, to do this one has to run around the keyed exit doors which extend about 2000 units into the void. One major problem remains, which is the angle of the walls inside the exit room which are at 135 degrees. In order to get back in bounds the angle is usually required to be smaller, preferably just over 90 degrees, but anything between 90 and 135 degrees would do. When the angle is exactly 135 degrees it becomes impossible, with exception of one specific direction which is to go through an x-axis aligned wall by going south to north and east to west. Like the void glide however this also requires something to block your movement, so we would need a monster to somehow get into the void with us and travel to that location.
So the 2nd trick here is to kill a pain elemental close to the wall, this will cause the lost soul to be spawned outside of the wall and from there one just need to guide it to the correct spot which makes it possible to go back in bounds. Another trick used here is to clip plasma projectiles into the wall overlapping with the pain elemental, but the pain elemental could be killed from the in bounds instead.
Finally then once the lost soul is positioned correctly it's more brute force to get the required momentum and positioning to go back in bounds and exit.
Could have grabbed the BFG at the start and used it to kill the pain elemental quicker, a time under 20 seconds is probably possible with some more effort. Previous TAS record is 43 seconds though so a 18 second improvement nearly cut it in half.Prodeus - Early Access 100% Ultra HardZero Master2022-08-05 | Been playing through a lot of new old-school type fps games lately, and Prodeus was one of the best ones.
100% is all kills, secrets and no deaths on all the levels. I've only managed to get 96% in my campaign file, so I assume since there's also 4 trials I guess you're supposed to get it under the time that's mentioned. However, it's glitched and doesn't register if that's the case, so I didn't put in any effort into getting the time under the goal.
I might do a 100% playthrough of the full game whenever it's released which is probably soon, depends on how long it will be.
Some comments about this playthrough: Every single time I finish a level I'm afraid I'll get 99% on the intermission screen. This was my first attempt at a full playthrough and I managed to get everything thankfully. As far as I know there's no kills or secrets counter, so I also spend quite a bit of time checking around corners to see if I missed something. Died once at the start of the grenade trial, forgot how the weapon worked, no other deaths than that. Gets a bit slow towards the end, really wanted to avoid any deaths. The last 2 levels don't have much armor, so that's also why I have to take it slow.Doom E1M8 in 17 seconds and Plutonia Map11 in 9 seconds with a rare glitch!Zero Master2022-06-04 | A few days ago I met with one of the people that inspired me to pick up doom speedrunning 8 years ago, which is Henning who did doom 2 nightmare in 29m39s back in 2009. He had a message from John Romero to me, you can see it here: vimeo.com/715249616/fe36cd0966
Unfortunately there's no doubt that the limit for E1M1 has been reached, so I won't be able to perform any magic there. However, there seems to be no end for things to be discovered in doom, so I have something else to offer which is a new trick for the only level in Knee-Deep in the Dead that John didn't design: E1M8: Phobos Anomaly, as well as a level in Final Doom.
Sometimes when you play doom there's a extremely rare occurence where you and the monsters can walk through walls, this is known as the all-ghosts effect.
Whenever someone encounter this glitch and wondered what happened, they always got the same answer: "An intercept overflow happened if you fired a hitscan weapon over 128 linedefs/things." And that's true, except never once when this occured for me were there even close to that many linedefs/things for 1 tracer, so it didnt't really give you the full explanation.
But thankfully a year ago decino decided to do an analysis on this glitch and gave the proper explanation for why this just happens randomly sometimes, which can found here: youtube.com/watch?v=-IYfwCWZeD0&t=410s (E1M8 footage is staged according to his comments in the video, so getting that to work normally is more complicated)
So with this knowledge in hand I figured one could almost do this just about anywhere really, this then leaves two candidates for this glitch to save time, which is Doom E1M8 and Plutonia Map 11.
For plutonia map11 there are 2 "exits", one of them is a normal exit that takes you to map 12 immediately, while the other teleports you to a room with 4 arch-viles and an E1M8 (sector 11) type exit floor. If you do manage to get an intercept overflow you cannot use the normal linedef exit or exit switches, but you can use the exit floor and it takes very little time to reach it from the start! We are also very fortunate to have 5 packs of shotgun shells stacked on top of each other on a table right at the very start which can be used to trigger this glitch reliably.
E1M8 only has one exit which everyone knows about: you kill the barons, go up the stairs and teleport into a room and die. However this level has 2 different tricks from before that allows you to get out of bounds. Since the exit sector extends beyond its boundary on the outside of the level you can exit without having to enter the room from the outside. But, if we could very quickly trigger the all-ghost effect then we could be even faster! We are not as lucky here though as with plutonia, but there are a lot of demons and barrels in the first room which we should be able to use somehow to still trigger it.
There are a few problems with this. First of all you'd need to find some spot where it actually works. Then once you've done that you need to get to this specific coordinate without spending too much time, or else you'd just be slower than the record. If you try to get it by random chance it would take an eternity, so that's not very effective.
So after several hours of brute force (having doomguy run around in the room shooting everywhere for many years in-game time) I managed to find some area where I'm able to get the intercept overflow. Afterwards I restrict myself to use various movement inputs that I'm able to easily do without TAS and then mostly brute force different angles that hopefully would lead me to a sequence of inputs that can perform this trick non-TAS.
And after many more hours I managed to find them, then it's all a matter of getting it correct in a demo, the results are what you see here. This improves the record for E1M8 by 2 seconds and Plutonia map11 by 39 seconds! Both of these demos play back in dosbox using doom.wad or plutonia.wad, so it's not a source port specific thing and the levels weren't edited to achieve this, though some source ports have a fix for this glitch preventing it from happening.
Thanks again to John Romero for the video message and decino for the analysis video he did a year ago on this trick.
Enjoy!Doom II: Sunder - Map 18 (The Singing Void) UV-Max in 21:13 [TAS]Zero Master2022-05-31 | This is a Tool-Assisted Speedrun!
Description: It's definitely possible to do this in under 20 minutes, but it takes too much effort to get the infighting right. Very happy about the time though considering how complicated this one is.
In this level I can choose 3 different paths to go in any order, for the blue key fight I can return through the original path while the red key one gets blocked off before the last fight. The yellow key also closes off after the first fight, but it's possible to do a linedef skip to prevent that. It is also possible to return to the final fight for each path and this is done a few times to try and optimize infighting to save time.
The overal strategy: Start by going to red key first as the first 2 fights are very straightforward. I just need to start the final fight and not really do anything while infighting does most of the work there. If I have really bad infighting in either the blue or yellow key fight then I also don't have to redo the red key part.
Second I go for yellow key, because I expect infighting in the final fight to last a while and so I can't do it last. There are 2x3 cyberdemon boxes that you can open in these 2 areas for the last fight. I need to avoid having cyberdemons get surrounded unless they are very likely to win the fight by a large margin, as they can quickly go from full health to dead without doing any damage. So I let them out at certain times like after revenants and hell knights/barons have been infighting or when they've all moved to one side of the room.
Third is then the blue key, I figured I'd rush through and leave monsters infighting in fight 2 because it's a very slow fight, while I leave the final fight once I think the cyberdemons might survive.
Meanwhile I try to get more infighting going at yellow key by releasing more cyberdemons or clear some monsters I left behind before I go and clear out remaining monsters.
Ideally the cyberdemons are all very low health by the time everything else is dead, this is especially annoying to achieve in those cases where it's best to leave the fight and just hope that you get lucky.
Comments about the TAS: -The start is simple enough, I save a few seconds by having the cyberdemon kill the hell knight up top. At the bottom I figured I'd leave the cyberdemon pair for later while I have the arch-vile infight one of them, but it barely does any damage. -Made a mistake at about 24 seconds in, could have just acitvated the switch and jumped down instead of waiting for the elevator to teleport. -Should also have used some plasma on the cyberdemons at about 45 seconds. -Would have been faster to use plasma rifle instead of SSG against the hive mothers and try to get pain states so that they'll fire 3 rocket volleys, but it would be annoying to do. -Infighting in the first yellow key fight could have been better, especially getting the cyberdemons further into the hell knights/barons would have been good. -Killing the arch-viles in the yellow key room was slow. -First blue key fight was ok, it's difficult to get the all the cyberdemons low health or dead by the time everything else is dead here, but I do lose several seconds here. -Second blue key fight was also ok, I managed to get to the switch by the arch-viles somewhat quickly, lost a few seconds trying to get to the last switch though which is much easier, didn't feel like doing it over again. I have no idea what happens in this room after I leave, just hope to get lucky. I think when I got back here the second time the overall luck seemed decent, but I also think it could have been a lot better. -Final blue key fight seemed good, maybe I could have left earlier, not sure. Most monsters and cyberdemons were really low health when I got back, though it would have been better if they continued infighting.But it is nice to have the cyberdemons alive so you have better control over having the cyberdemons die at the same time as everything else. -Next run throughs of yellow key fight seemed ok, the cyberdemons were either dead or low health by the end so that was perfect. It's a complete mess of a fight so getting better results here might be difficult. -Red key area was really good, I probably could have been faster killing monsters, but those fights are so short that there isn't that much to gain here. The infighting in the last red key fight was excellent, when I came back here at the end there was hardly anything left and the hive mothers were mostly low on health.
Highlight of the TAS: the imp that was resurrected at 1:58, who then fires a projectile which kills a revenant behind me and then dies to rocket splash damage.Doom II: Sunder - Map 06 (Grinder) UV-Max in 5:59 [TAS]Zero Master2022-05-24 | This is a Tool-Assisted Speedrun!
Description: Another tool-assisted sunder max, this is probably the most interesting one to TAS for sunder imo as it's less than half the non-TAS record. Map 08 and 13 could also be twice as fast as the non-TAS time perhaps, but those times are bad.
Tools used: segmenting, slow-motion and IDDT IDDT cheat. Reality = No damage taken, if I get hit I simply go back and try again until I don't get hit.
Lots of smaller things that could have been done better. Several times I tried to improve things and found myself 10 seconds slower, so a lot of it is just hoping for good infighting elsewhere on the map and trying again if it's not good enough.
I was thinking I'd do the arch-vile jump again, but I'm not sure if it saves much time here as I want infighting in the starting area quickly. You want infighting between the first cyberdemon and the top right area, the second cyberdemon with the revenants and the barons in the middle and also at least one of the cyberdemons infighting the hell knights before the last area.
I went and grabbed the invulnerability by doing a linedef skip and an arch-vile jump to leave, not sure if it was a good idea though. The invulnerability obviously doesn't do that much when you can just redo anything, but you might get a bit of extra splash damage when you get surrounded. I would have liked the arch-vile to have been infighting the cyberdemon for about 3 minutes, but I guess he died and I didn't want to try again. Would also have been good to just use the cyberdemon to take care of the cacodemons in the area.
The final fight was painful, I got a 6:24 exit at first, but I was thinking under 6 minutes was possible if only I cleaned up a couple of things before the fight and just tried to optimize it. Took a while to get it under the 6 minute mark because of how difficult that part was.
You'd think that you just need to hold fire here and plasma down the cyberdemon at the end of it, but to get a good time you want those cyberdemons to teleport in quickly and to be firing as many rockets as possible. Then you want both of them to survive till the end, but you also don't want them to have a lot of health left. Then of course there's the monster teleporters where you can't have monsters stand on top of the teleport for too long as they can waste like 10 seconds if the last monsters have to go up and down the monster box.Hexen - Fighter (Berserker) Speedrun in 6:46Zero Master2022-05-03 | Runner: Zero-Master Date: 2022-05-03 IWAD: Hexen.wad Category: Fighter Skill 4 Speed Map: HxAll Source Port: DSDA-Doom v0.24.3 Time: 6:46
Description: I've done Hexen before nearly 6 years ago with a real-time run using crispy-hexen, but I've never recorded a demo for it. A lot has changed since then as there's been a lot more out of bounds tricks discovered after I used the first one on Necroplois, one of the last levels.
It took a lot longer than I expected to get this run, mostly because I got extremely unlucky during my attempts. Fortunately in all that pain and misery of losing attempts to complete nonsense I came up with some really nice route improvements along the way that has made the whole thing quite easy to do in the end. There's a trick that's quite difficult to pull off on Hypostyle that would save a lot of time and combined with the rest this record could be greatly improved without too much effort.
The route itself, ignoring improvements to the consitency of the tricks, is mostly the same as the previous RTA skill 3 record by o_circles in 7m14s, which is a very impressive time considering how much more difficult it was. Credits to JCD and Ch0wW for coming up with the most important skips with their 8m27s coop run as well as cyanveo for his 9m57 single player run.
This is done on berserker difficulty (skill 4) which is hexens equivalent of ultra-violence and also single segment. Recording and playing demos for hexen is now very simple thanks to kraflabs work on the DSDA-Doom source port.
Comments about the run: Really good mostly, I just wanted 6m59s, so 13 seconds faster is nice.
Winnowing Hall: I think 8.49 was my best time, lost a second because I had to punch twice to kill the ettin.
Seven Portals: Got the out of bounds stuff quickly so time is good. It's possible to go straight through without having to do the second jump. It's also possible to clip out at the start and enter by jumping on an ettin, but that saves little time and might be a bit difficult so it's probably TAS only.
Shadow Wood: Got the jumps on here somewhat quickly, only got blocked after getting the hammer. A few blocks going for the caves, but nothing terrible.
Caves of circe: Went well, getting blocked a few times is to be expected.
Shadow Wood part2: Incredible time here, both going out of bounds and back in went really quick. Getting back in bounds quickly happens quite often though, but it can also take 10 seconds.
Hypostyle: Really good time here, I've been losing a lot of runs to the pigs not putting me back into the wall properly, so I aim a bit more to the right and it seems to have worked out.
Heresiarch's Seminary: Decent start, it's possible to get all the monsters with the flechettes, but that's not very common. 32 seconds is about what I'd expect if everything goes ok.
Castle of Grief: Also went ok, nothing went really bad, but movement could have been cleaner, maybe by as much as 10 seconds.
Gibbet: Start was good, got blocked a bit going for the upper area. Managed to get out of bounds quickly, and back in bounds relatively quick. About 5 seconds lost overall.
Necropolis: I should have used a disk of repulsion when going for the portal.
Vivarium: Didn't get blocked too badly and didn't have the wall lower which would be a disaster for this level.
Necropolis part2: Out of bounds trick was ok, a bit slow on the repositioning for going back in bounds, but it worked out well. Could of course gone with the fast way and just wake up the monster and hope to get through first try, but I went with the consistent setup since my time was good.
Dark Crucible: Went well, no major issue like failing to place the maulotaur or not getting stuck in the wall quickly enough.
Overall a solid run, but easily improveable with a new discovery I made for hypostyle which would skip having to pick up the porkalator in caves of circe.
Description of the route itself can be found in the txt file included with the demo found on doomworld/dsdarchive.
Enjoy.Doom II: Sunder - Map 02 (The Burrows) UV-Max in 3:07 [TAS]Zero Master2022-05-01 | This is a Tool-Assisted Speedrun!
Description: Just wanted to try and do a UV-Max TAS, I didn't spend much time on it, but at least I got some practice at it and I might as well upload it.
Under 3 minutes is possible, but I'd have to go far back and try again and get good cyberdemon RNG like here, though I'm sure that could have been ever better too. Had a few pinkies running around in the back around 2:30, this happens really often, but it's possible to have that place empty. A few revenants wandering down the stairs that I need to kill at 0:58 are also annoying, should have just attempted it again until they are not there so that I can take the shorter path to the hell knights.
Quite some time could be saved on the hell knight section, but I'd go insane trying to optimize that. And of course there could always be a faster strategy, but I think you need those revenants from the exit area to by the cyberdemon as getting infighting with the switch cyberdemon seems necessary and there's nothing else.
Demo syncs with both old and new sunder, so video is made with new sunder as pwad.Ultimate Doom: Thy Flesh Consumed (Episode 4) - Ultra-Violence Speedrun in 2:53 (3:31)Zero Master2022-04-19 | Runner: Zero-Master IWAD: Doom.WAD Category: UV-Speed Map: Episode 4 (E4M1-E4M8) Source Port: Crispy Doom v5.8.0 Time Without M8: 2:53 Time With M8: 3:31 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Level Map Time ep4-342 Hell Beneath E4M1 - 0:25.89 :( -0m01s Perfect Hatred E4M2 - 0:21.60 :( +0m01s Sever The Wicked E4M3 - 0:09.06 :) 0m00s Unruly Evil E4M4 - 0:37.86 :| 0m00s They Will Repent E4M5 - 0:28.37 :)) -0m04s Against Thee Wickedly E4M6 - 0:39.66 :( -0m02s And Hell Followed E4M7 - 0:14.11 :( +0m01s Unto The Cruel E4M8 - 0:38.57 :) -0m06s ---------------------------------------------------------------- TOTAL - 3:31 -0m11s E4M8 comparison is not relevant. E4M1-E4M7 time is improved by 5 seconds. The reason E4M8 is not included is because dos version does not display the time for the final map. Even though that is no longer relevant as sourceports can determine the time, the convention is still kept.
Description: This was recorded some time ago, I just never uploaded it until now. No plans of doing this one again any time soon.
I was planning to do this about 10 seconds faster, but I just never got around to it. I've been hoarding this for far too long already. I only care about E4M1-E4M7 time, but the route with E4M8 time in mind is identical unlike other episode runs.
E4M1: Bad time, should reset on 25 and above.
E4M2: Also a bad time, I usually don't get above 21 seconds anymore.
E4M3: Always get 9 seconds here, 8 seconds is easy if you rocket jump on the right side of the lost soul, but I'm happy if I just get the rocket jump at all.
E4M4: I should do better here, but 37 is decent.
E4M5: My average time on this level has gotten a lot better ever since I skipped the plasma rifle. 28 is quite common, but something can go wrong and I can lose a lot of time, so I'm very happy with 28.
E4M6: And I used to be very happy with 40 seconds here, now 39 seconds is not even decent.
E4M7: Should always get 13 seconds here, 12 isn't too bad if you just risk it.
E4M8: Decent time, could still be better.Doom Eternal: Battlemode Slaughter Tour by Zandy [Nightmare][No HUD]Zero Master2022-03-30 | Time to play some doom eternal mods. I tried one mod before this one and it was terrible, it made me question if I had completely lost interest in this game. Fortunately this however was excellent and I really enjoyed it. Haven't played since horde mode was released, but I seem to do ok at least.
Some of the arenas have some effect on the player like losing weapons or low ammo, while most have different damaging floors or walls. Accidentally used an old version of this mod, so it's probably even better on the latest version.
I'd like to never use the chaingun shield again, to help with that I've switch to mobile turret, which of course is useless so you'll probably never see the chaingun again :) ... or maybe I'll start using it just for fun some day.
I should also get my eyes checked, because a few times I mistook a quad powerup for an eyeball turret.
Not sure if I'll upload more, but since I've never actually ran around in the battlemode levels before I figured some might find this mod interesting like I did.
Restrictions: deathless with no chaingun shield, no bfg and no crucible/hammer. No other mods active as far as I'm aware and I never use any scripts/macros.
Runes used: Savagery, Air Control and Equipment Fiend.Doom II: Sunder - Map 20 (Beneath the Waves of Styx) UV-Max in 1:01:59Zero Master2022-03-25 | Runner: Zero-Master Date: 2022-03-24 IWAD: Doom2.wad PWAD: Sunder 2407.wad Category: UV-Max Map: 20 (Beneath the Waves of Styx) Source Port: DSDA-Doom v0.24.1 Time: 1:01:59
Description: Lost motivation to finish this map so it took a few weeks. I'd say this level is similar in difficulty to map32, a slightly difficult first few minutes followed by mostly straightforward stuff until the very last fight an hour in which is like 50/50 or so chance of survival (should probably survive 2 out of 3 times if I'm playing at least decent).
Anyways that's it, a single segment UV-Max for every sunder level! It's been 6 months since I started this, I've mostly enjoy routing so it's been fun to come in and have a look at the max routes for these levels and come up with new ideas. I don't think I'm particularly happy with any of the times I got. Since there were so few existing legit runs for new sunder those ended up being more about survival where the time of all of them can be significantly improved.
Some misc info about my 22 sunder maxes: - Most attempts was by far map05 since I'd fall off 80-90% of the time at the very start (2112 out of about 6000). - Estimated total playtime of all attempts is close to 100 hours, 30% of it on new sunder (map 15 onwards) and 70% on old sunder (maps 1-14). - 175 of those 6000 or so attempts went past the 5 minute mark (21 of them being the uploaded runs). - The easiest level turned out to be map18 as it only took 1 attempt past the first 2 fights. - The biggest surprise to me was how a couple of tiny gaps managed to bring down city at the mouth of ire with ease. And I maxed 16,17,18 and 19 in 6 days, of course it took more than that if you include routing/practice. - Most frustrating and took the longest was map07, I had some pain in my left arm at the time and I was constantly getting unlucky on a very rough route. I remember a few comments saying it would be easy, which casually is probably true, but it's a bit funny how that turned out. (Map01 attempts are not included in the above numbers as they weren't stored).
Some might be wondering why I went for 100% items... it all started with map02 as the berserk was like right next to the exit.. I might as well pick it up and get 100% items! And then map03, ok sure I have to throw away a second or two to grab the berserk behind the exit, but it's not a big deal. And then all of the sudden I'm at sunder map 32 "ok let's just waste several seconds picking up vials". Anyways there are no secrets with exception of 1 in map15 so it was a nice replacement, it looks nice to have everything at 100% and I didn't really care care too much about the time. I would have regretted it badly if I had been a few frames slower on map06, but mostly it was no issue. For new sunder maps the times are very slow anyways, so a few more seconds doesn't matter.
The levels I liked the most are 05,06,08,11,18,19. I think most the levels are excellent and overall I enjoyed running all of them. I still have some route ideas that were just far too crazy to do without TAS.
Obviously a massive thanks to Insane_Gazebo for creating this masterpiece of a wad. There's still new maps to come, so it's not over yet, but for now at least all existing maps are done. Whenever new maps come out though I don't know when I'll get to them, might focus on something else like IWAD runs or even do something with doom eternal again or do nothing at all, who knows.
Some have also asked about a non-TAS run of okuplok, I don't think that's something I'll do as it's just too long for me. Finding the motivation to run sunder map16 was difficult, okuplok which is 10x as boring and twice as long might be too much. Most of the difficult fights can be cheesed though so it's not impossible or anything.
Comments about the run: I was going to go to sleep, but I figured I'd just do a quick attempt for the day and die in the first 2 minutes, so I was a bit tired here. Overall quite slow, with saves/loads I had a time of 53 minutes. Lost about 2 minutes to the BFG skip alone.
Pinky room about 8 minutes in was a disaster, didn't manage to get on top of the teleporter spot quickly enough and I missed a rocket resulting in the pinkies getting too close. Had to SSG my way out of there, still managed to keep track of when the arch-viles arrived so I managed to keep control of the fight.
BFG skip was another disaster.
Spectre room the second wave of arch-viles was horrible, I should never take more than 1 hit here if that, so I had to go for a megasphere which slows down the next fight by quite a bit.
The cyberdemons at the end were both really unlucky and lucky. Unlucky because they positioned themselves to block me so I had to take a second run through the middle and later had a complete block by one of them, and lucky because he didn't fire and kill me.
Route/Strategy: pastebin.com/GppGmKc3Doom II: Sunder - Map 19 (City at the Mouth of Ire) UV-Max in 2:05:18Zero Master2022-02-24 | Runner: Zero-Master Date: 2022-02-22 IWAD: Doom2.wad PWAD: Sunder 2407.wad Category: UV-Max Map: 19 (City at the Mouth of Ire) Source Port: DSDA-Doom v0.24.1 Time: 2:05:18.17
Description: What a map! One of the most difficult doom levels ever made assuming you don't use tricks to make it just a little bit easier.
This level was made about 2 years ago, well before I started running sunder. Previously I've done some of the levels by going straight to the end where the BFG is located. Here however, the BFG is locked behind high walls with double fences, almost like a fort designed to keep me out. Only after doing many challenging fights and going through about 80% of the level are you supposed to finally get your hands on it. So anyone that's seen this level and watched my other runs might ask, did I actually get to it early this time too? You can find the answer by watching or reading below. Anyways I use nearly every trick there is for this level.. linedef skips, zero press, rocket jumps, glides, infinite height switches and an arch-vile jump.
I really enjoyed running this, the early parts are quite fun. This was my only run to get past like 45 minutes so things really go downhill at that point. Being a bit more familiar with the route and not playing unnecessarily safe could easily bring this under 1h50m at least.
There's a couple games I'll be playing over the next week or two, so I'll get to map 20 after that. Quality wise this is the worst run I've done so far, a lot of it just looks like a casual playthrough to me, so hopefully taking a bit more time for map20 I'll also be able to record something that's at least not terrible... assuming I don't end up getting unlucky at the final fight too many times whenever I get there, in that case I'll also take whatever I get.
Comments about the run: Absolutely awful time and 25 minutes slower than my last practice time. Even a half-decent run without the early skips could beat this. 5 minutes were probably lost to horrible ammo management, 5 minutes to forgetting where to go or checking for missing monsters, 5-10 minutes to just slow and bad playing for everything after 40 minutes and another 5-10 minutes to playing the final fight too safe. A bit more practice or deep attempts would have fixed those problems quickly, but whatever gets the job done is good enough for now I suppose.
Since the map is so open I made several route changes after some attempts which made a mess out of it all too. 3 out of my last 5 attempts made it to the BFG, so the early route here is really good now. Most my attempts died at the first couple of fights early on as I figured I'd just combine attempts with practice as I don't need ammo/health from there.
Start was ok, somehow I just almost never die in the long stairs fight even though I feel like I play awful on a bad route every time so I haven't seen much reason to adjust anything. At least I had some health left this time, not that it's important.
Got the skips without trouble, only for a few attempts did I have to attempt the rocket jump a second time, so it's very consistent for me.
Rev/cyber fight went mostly as expected. The same with red key fight, but took a lot of damage and things got out of control shortly after the hive mothers teleported in, though that's normal and I still survived.
I wasn't supposed to grab the invulnerability closest to the blue door when I did. My plan was to use it for the part at 39:00. It's not too bad though since it was a recent change to the route so I had already had something decent prepared for it, just not as safe as with the invulnerability.
Actually managed to activate the cyberdemon/vile/revenants fight at 37:25 in 1 SSG shot, that was lucky.
Grabbing the megasphere at 39:30 turned out to be a bad idea, but if I survive getting back out into the main room then it's easy to dodge everything as long as I don't do anything dumb. Wasted quite a bit of time here playing it too safe.
Wasted too many cells at 55:30, just forgot what I was supposed to do here so just left click with BFG until everything is dead. Left me low on cells for the cyberdemon pair afterwards so that cost more time.
Made a real mess out of the baron elevator fight at 1:09:25. This fight was easy enough without the BFG so with it I just assumed it would never be a problem. Could have easily taken a cyberdemon rocket and died here.
Nearly died in the last fight, should have waited a bit longer for the monsters to move closer to the center. Since it nearly cost me the attempt I clearly should have put more effort into that particular part. Mostly horrible BFG use overall, just didn't want to run into 10 projectiles at the same time or get trapped somehow because I want to save a few minutes in an already slow run. A single hell knight decided to flee the battlefield apparently, coward!
Description: Did this a few days ago, just didn't want to upload immediately after map 17. I really enjoy this level, definitely one of my favorite ones. With my route here it turned out to be one of the easier levels, though I did get a bit lucky at the red key fight.
This map introduces the new monster called Hive Mother. I personally really like it and thankfully it doesn't have immunity to splash despite its size so it's not super tanky.
Next up is map 19... actually I did that one a few hours ago too, if you've played that level you might wonder how I managed to get that one done so quickly.. all I will say is I used nearly every trick in the book :) Not sure when I will upload it, friday or saturday most likely. I'll be taking a break for probably a couple of weeks before I get to map 20.
Comments about the run: Overall happy with it, my time isn't that far off from what I get in practice compared to my other new sunder runs.
Had a different plan in mind for the start, but I messed up the linedef skip. Worked out ok anyways.
First blue key fight I had some extreme luck with none of those initial revenant rockets being seeker missiles as those are quite hard to dodge at the start. I shouldn't have damaged that hell knight stuck on the stairs.. never considered it a possibility for a monster to block other monsters from getting up like that. Also shouldn't have dropped down so early, or at least used more rocket splash first.
Second fight I forgot to wake up the cyberdemons before activating the switch. Infighting wasn't optimal, but overall it seemed ok. Just needed a lot of plasma to take down the cyberdemons and some extra rockets for everything else. Also at about 17m50s in I don't think I've ever had a cyberdemon rocket that close to my face and it not hitting me.. wouldn't have been an issue if it did hit as I will pick up the megasphere in the next area anyways.
Third fight all cyberdemons teleported without me having to really go out of my way which never happened in practice, so that was nice. I don't think this fight could have gone any better.
Nearly fell off going into red key/hive area.
I didn't mean to wake up the cyberdemon in the second red key fight, but he didn't get in the way so it mostly went as I planned.
Absolutely insane third fight, dropping down from 172 172 to 1 hp is not something I think I've ever experienced in a demo attempt before. And this is after the absolute disaster with the cacodemons which I somehow survived as well. This fight is not that difficult, the cacodemon being really far above and also being behind me was unlucky while the 1 hp moment was my fault, bad movement because I was impatient.
At yellow key first fight it's quite dumb to pick up 50 health when you plan on picking up the megasphere anyways, but I don't expect to have any need for them. Usually I don't need to grab the megasphere immediately, but I was too low from red key area. Even though 100/82 is still good I was afraid of taking a cyberdemon rocket when I start the fight, which seemed to happen in practice a couple of times. If it happens then I would survive, if it doesn't happen then I will probably have no further issues anyways.
The revenant sounds had me convinced there were remaining monsters in the next area, so I had to take a couple of extra run arounds to check to be sure.
Final area was no problem, cyberdemons mostly behaved nice. I forgot how I was supposed to release the last 3 cyberdemons, so when I started the fight I didn't want to go back into the center out of fear of cyberdemon rockets. So I decided to run around, luckily that worked and I didn't get blocked too badly, but I should have practiced that more. Took some unnecessary projectiles, but there's so much health it's no problem.
Was afraid I'd run off by the exit there for a moment.
Route/Strategy: pastebin.com/CH9SZweGDoom II: Sunder - Map 17 (Archives of the Technomancer) UV-Max in 1:38:41Zero Master2022-02-19 | Runner: Zero-Master Date: 2022-02-18 IWAD: Doom2.wad PWAD: Sunder 2407.wad Category: UV-Max Map: 17 (Archives of the Technomancer) Source Port: DSDA-Doom v0.24.1 Time: 1:38:41
Description: Somehow nearly 100 minutes feels short after map 16.
When I did my last practice attempt with saves/loads and only died once to a cyberdemon pair I realized this probably wouldn't take very long to get. The route was also already done when I finished map 16.
Only a small part of the final fight here is what I'm afraid of, which is the 4th and last run to one of the teleporter rooms as I have to run by a lot of arachnotrons and there are random cyberdemons everywhere.
From my first playthrough some time ago I mostly remembered the crushers... can't imagine anyone getting to this part and enjoying it the first time. I also thought it would be incredibly annoying in a max run, but it turns out with a slow approach where you know where most of the monsters are it's not nearly as bad as I expected. Honestly I think it's perfectly fine at this point and I kind of enjoy taking risk running through the crushers, of course I'm a bit more cautious in a single segment run though.
3 more levels to go.
Comments about the run: Went mostly as expected, time is about 10 minutes slower than practice with save/load which is normal.
Didn't even see the 2nd cyberdemon by the BFG when I attempted to kill the first one. Fortunate not to take a surprise rocket there.
While I was trying to kill the 4 cyberdemons after BFG section the sound really messed with me. So the BFG use here is a complete disaster as I was basically paranoid about them being right around the corner all the time, but it's ok since there's so many cells anyways.
Cacodemon horde fight went ok, but the route could probably have been better with more rocket use. Still have to wait for the cacodemons to teleport in though so the fastest strategy would be to just leave immediately and come back later (and the last switch here can be activated through the wall after pressing only the first switch).
What didn't go as expected was falling off by the short platforming section. Another one of those moments where I just hope I die at some point so nobody has to see it. At least I didn't fall into the inescapable pit first.
The big room with the 2 large platforms went mostly ok until the last phase of it. I missed some BFGs and got hit by a couple of arch-viles and a max roll hell knight projectile and all of the sudden I was low on health.
Ammo management in the crusher section was ok, didn't have any problems with ammo. Could of course used more BFG if I wanted to be a bit faster.
Final fight went well, accidentally picked up the last megasphere, but it didn't matter at that point.
Route/Strategy: pastebin.com/v4VMjesmDoom II: Sunder - Map 16 (Whispers of the Gnarled King) UV-Max in 2:11:24Zero Master2022-02-16 | Runner: Zero-Master Date: 2022-02-16 IWAD: Doom2.wad PWAD: Sunder 2407.wad Category: UV-Max Map: 16 (Whispers of the Gnarled King) Source Port: DSDA-Doom v0.24.1 Time: 2:11:24
Description: By far the longest level I've done so far. Finding the motivation to run this was difficult because of the length, but meanwhile I've managed to nearly finish up the routes for the remaining 4 levels. Those are within a more comfortable time range, though map19 is quite close in length, but I think that one will be more fun to max.
The most dangerous parts here are within the first half so overall it's not that hard. The 3-4 places I expect to have the highest chance of dying are all connected, starting with the cyberdemon/hell knight infighting through to the imp mountain before the large indoor section. For the remaining parts of the level I've mostly got consistent strategies for everything... or so I thought.
A TAS run could get the BFG and run quite far back with linedef skips and arch-vile jumps. One could also start the initial fights and get infighting going before doing clean up and dropping down to the caco/rev fight.
Comments about the run: Awful... The start is ok, but once I reached the imp mountain about 40-50 minutes in I just want to survive.
Had a couple of monsters fall down which cost some time. Sometimes I have to wait around and try to listen for sounds before continuing.
Took a cyberdemon rocket in the arch-vile room early on because I accidentally woke up both cyberdemons and misjudged where the opening was trying to back out.
The self rocket about 35 minutes in: "I really hope this isn't the run."
Imp mountain + previous area from 40 to 50 minutes in was terrible. Didn't even get unlucky here, I think the main problem was I didn't really have much of a strategy so I end up playing very slow. Monsters that fall off here will eventually show up at the exit area so it's not a big issue, there's probably a better place of taking care of them.
Nearly got thrown off by the arch-viles after the imp mountain, didn't care that much since the run was pretty bad at this point.
Nearly died at the BFG fight, I was quite sure this would be consistent, but I guess it's just a bit of a chaotic fight.
Cyberdemon in the 2nd pain elemental/cacodemon fight didn't infight well, so I wasn't off to a good start. Went mostly as planned otherwise though.
I should have died before the baron fight to the revenants, I played carefully by keeping too much distance to the them, but then my BFG doesn't connect well which puts me in trouble. At least I made a good choice to try and run around the revenants when they cornered me, but then I was afraid of random revenant projectiles which made it a lot closer than it needed to be.
The baron fight was quite lucky overall, took a bit of damage I didn't need to take. If I had gotten bad RNG with them just flooding out quickly I would definitely had died because I was playing awful.
The final fight itself is really easy, made a few mistakes though. First I grabbed the cells on the wrong side of the door, so I picked up cells at 560 when I was at the other side. This also pulled the mancs to the right side of the door making things worse. I realized like 30 minutes earlier that it was never going to be under 2 hours, so I slowed down even further and didn't follow my route, resorting to a lot of SSG use.
Description: The first UV-Max of this level, because the only other person to do this level ignored a cyberdemon even though they frequently fall down and are easily dealt with in such cases.
Lost two attempts at the final fight. The first one I took 6 mancubi fireballs in about 1-2 seconds trying to push through that did 336 damage before I got killed by a 7th hit. I could have taken between 48-384 damage from those 6 hits, so a bit unlucky with 336. I didn't feel bad about it, forgot to pick up some health vials anyways, not that they are necessary of course.. Then the second attempt which I did on the same day as this successful run some similar stuff happened, but I had enough health to grab the last megasphere. But max health doesn't really last long when you take a completely random cyberdemon rocket. I couldn't see the rocket past all the corpses so I didn't even notice it before it hit me. I guess after the luck I had an hour into map 15 I had to pay for it here.
Sunder map16 route is mostly done, the map is really long and a completed run should take somewhere around 2 hours, hopefully just under it. It's not looking as bad as I thought it would be, I think the last sections are easier than the final fight of map32, but on average it's more difficult and it's significantly longer. I've had ammo issues in practice so I'm afraid of running low near the end as well.
Comments about the run: Went mostly as expected with exception of the final fight.
For the final fight I took a lot of damage again trying to get through the mancubi.
Then I nearly died when I had to push through the cacodemons, didn't have much choice as my ammo was running low and I didn't want to take damage going for cells on the left side.
Nearly died at the very end to a surprise cyberdemon, somehow I just didn't see him and I had to just go for it as I was afraid I'd get hit by something else or bump into a wall if I backtracked.
Description: This level feels quite short, which is strange as it's the 4th longest sunder demo I've done so far, but a lot of it is very simple. I'm sure getting under 25 minutes is not difficult, but I'm not going to aim for a really good time for a first exit or since demo might likely desync in future versions.
Only has one fight that is kind of difficult with exception of the very start. Both of those sections went terrible. The second cyberdemon was slow and the other fight became a mess as I allowed the arch-viles to resurrect too much, not to mention ammo management wasn't that good and my route isn't that good either. Should have dealt with the pain elementals in some other way perhaps so they can't fill the room up with lost souls. I also allowed the arch-viles to resurrect a lot of monsters in the tunnels, but that's intentional as I want splash damage to deal with them, clearly improvement can be made to the route there.
Also I am embarrassed of those platforming sections, almost looks like it's the first time I'm playing the game or something. I wouldn't even call the section by the mastermind platforming as it's so easy. I had one run that was faster, but I fell off there like an idiot. In the final fight it's nearly impossible to die so that's a bit annoying, but then I did this on the next attempt past the first cyberdemon so I don't feel too bad about it. Also lost a run in the other room with the thin pillars + I didn't practice those much so that explains why it's so bad.
Now only long levels remain and I expect to take a bit of time to complete them, map32 route is starting to look good though. I'm quite sure map 16 will be the hardest out of them to max.
Route/Strategy: I run between the 2 revs to wake up the cyberdemon first while keeping the hell knights asleep as long as possible, this usually gives me enough time to bring the cyberdemon out of his room and I can run between the hell knights to safety. Hopefully everything lines up nicely for me to just run in an activate the switch and leave the room while the cyberdemon kills everything in the room by himself.
Obviously get the next cyberdemon infighting with the hell knights. I just try to pick off the ones moving to the side of the center and hopefully it doesn't get out of control where I get boxed in by hell knights not aggroed on the cyberdemon. For the revenants I just use rockets with the cyberdemon to clear them out quickly. Everything until the 4 megasphere room is straightforward. There I will grab ammo, a megasphere and sit behind one of the cyberdemon while I wait a short moment for the first switch to become available. Then I just need to get to the first room I entered and wait for the second switch. I don't really have much use for the megaspheres so I will pick another one up if I have taken any significant damage.
So then I can just leave this area and most likely the monsters will all get stuck and infight a bit. There is a chance they start moving into the starting area, if there's a lot of monsters then it's probably best to start over. Yellow key runthrough is simple, then I stock up on ammo for the next part.
The tunnels are usually no problem, need to just sit back and spam rockets and plasma all day. There's a chance I get blocked and killed by the arch-viles at the end. Once done here I will clear out the 4 megasphere room from the other path, if I'm lucky the cyberdemons are dead. Hell knights have very low chance of throwing projectiles through the gap, but revenants can so they need to be killed first.
The next room is the hardest, it's not that bad though as long as we don't get unlucky. My route here relies on getting good splash damage on the arch-viles while they resurrect stuff, which is pretty slow. I hope to get the viles out of the room they are in so that I can run in there and just use rockets to kill everything from a somewhat safe place. It would be much faster to stay in the open of course.
Arch-vile room past the chaingunners I sit on top of one of the teleport locations to block an arch-vile from immediately entering the room. Then I can just safely use plasma to kill them. Once I get back to megasphere room I just go straight for the invulnerability and clear everything with it.
Next section is easy as you can kill the mastermind with plasma without even seeing it as the hitbox is so massive.
Final area has so many megaspheres that I could probably face rocket myself 5 times and still get away with it. Just take care of the arachnotrons first, use all cells then pick up another 600 cells to clear the pain elementals. Then just a lot of rocket spam. Final arch-viles are no problem since I have so many cells and a megasphere easily available.Doom II: Sunder - Map 15 (Babylons Chimera) UV-Max in 1:27:02Zero Master2022-01-27 | Runner: Zero-Master Date: 2022-01-25 IWAD: Doom2.wad PWAD: Sunder 2407.wad Category: UV-Max Map: 15 (Babylon's Chimera) Source Port: DSDA-Doom v0.22.5 Time: 1:27:02
Description: Plutonia was just warmup for old Sunder, while old Sunder was just warmup for... more Sunder of course! Map 15 was the first new map for Sunder after Insane_Gazebo made his return after several years of absence.
There were no non-TAS demos of this level done yet, probably because this wad isn't finished so any demo might desync in the future on new versions. While this level is quite long, it is not very difficult at any point, partially because of various cheese strategies. The route I used is all about surviving, so time could go significantly lower. So don't look forward to the final fight, you'll probably be disappointed :)
I don't know if this will lead to a max of map 19 (or map 16), but I will at least do map 31 and 32. Though I did a second playthrough of map 19 over the last few days where I made a lot of progress on a route. I might do some other wads/levels in between and I have no idea when I'll finish the next levels. My previous runs were uploaded weekly for the most part, that definitely won't be continuing here.
Demo is recorded with sunder v2407 (the latest version at the time of recording).
Comments about this run: Forgot to activate a switch by revenants teleporters in the cyber/cacodemon fight before BFG. Think I nearly died at the end of this arena when I got hit by some unexpected revenant rockets, but they did some low damage rolls.
After dropping down to the arch-vile/chaingunner ambush I somehow managed to take 3 arch-vile blasts, never once did I get hit by them in practice, so a bit unfortunate here. I made sure to be careful about avoiding being thrown into the lava though, don't think there's a way up, made the next fight a bit more close than it needed to be. Used too many cells also because of it, which did put in me in trouble in the imp/rev lock in room.
Once dropping down to the next area I could have done better to avoid taking the direct cyberdemon rocket, luckily there's a soulsphere and mega armor there.
The arena past red key door was a complete disaster at the start. This is were I expected to have the highest chance of dying, but then again I never had problems with it when I practiced. The arch-viles were hard to deal with and I got double cyberdemons in the center. Took a while before I could get the opportunity to kill the last one.
The fight after red key fight I had all the cyberdemons die.. every time in practice I would have 4-5 of them alive so I was surprised by how slow the infighting was going. You really want to be careful running up the stairs because you can't see anything from all the corpses and a cyberdemon rocket could end it, but that's obviously no issue this time.
I have no idea what I did at the fight at the bottom of the stairs with the double cyberdemons... this is as easy and straightforward as it gets, just keep your distance and spam BFG as you have a ton of ammo. Somehow it was a perfect combo of nonsense at the worst possible time, I deserved to die there, but I got lucky.
I made a real mess out of the revenant/pinky fight next to the final room, had a lot of revenant projectiles on me and I wanted to get rid of them so I don't go from nearly full health to dead in an instant. But when trying to get rid of them it got out of control and I let too many revenants out and had to take it slow.
Somehow I had lots of cells left over after the final area, I was always very low in practice, must have been good infighting.
Skipped the exit linedef at the end and cost me a second :)
Description: 10 minutes and 8 seconds faster than the previous record and also 56 seconds faster than the TAS record!
I was initially thinking I didn't have to worry about the 10 minute barrier here, but I was wrong :) Run around for 3 minutes before starting to kill anything at all and somehow cut the 19:59 record in half. My early routing was looking at around 13 minutes or so, but then I started getting close to azu's tas time and I knew I had to go for it, and then eventually sub 10 was within reach. Final level of old sunder and my last maxes being a bit too low effort also motivated me to do better.
Usually doesn't take too long to get the arch-vile jump, 10-15 attempts or so. Quite rare to get 2 arch-viles to show up, even more messed up that neither of them attacked me for so long. Lost about 15 seconds to a bad start. Some close calls with cyberdemon rockets here.
And that's it for old sunder, a total time saved of 1 hour 11 minutes and 46 seconds over the old records.
Route/Strategy: Exact same as map13: don't shoot, get to the BFG, get to the final fight and then the max attempt begins.
First off is getting the vile jump, most likely the vile will run down the cave instead of following you, so it takes a few attempts. Getting the jump once he does attack isn't too bad, but sometimes he'll infight or position himself behind a pillar.
Next up is running through the level to grab bfg and go to the central room which involves a couple of glides. Once there it's possible to press one of the switches through the wall, I managed to find a nice setup for it so that it's quick and consistent. This will lower the bar that blocks the switch which enables you to leave the room. It would be much faster to skip the linedef that locks you in, but because of the direction, distance and wall geometry it looks too difficult to do.
Now you can go anywhere so it's not too obvious to know what the fastest route is. The next thing I do is to grab the central invulnerability first because it's difficult to pick up and then wake everything up. I go outside the fence and wait for the revs/viles to move inwards for about 9-10 seconds, then I take down the cyberdemon and clear out the megasphere room. Now on the way back I will run around back the central room to drag imps away from the entrance in the fence. This makes it much easier to get through, but still the most dangerous part of this route. I had a faster route which did this a bit different, but I had to run through the entrance in the fence twice which ended too many attempts. I didn't have much use for the first invulnerability here, so it could be picked up later and save even more time, but it still wasn't as good as the other route.
Then I make a run for the invulnerability on the outside and try to get as much damage done as possible, you don't want too many cyberdemons alive so they are easy to clear out later, but of course you don't want any arch-viles alive either. Once enough monsters are dead I go to BFG room and clear it, then I'll be left with some more cells which are used in the central room. Then get the last invulnerability + 600 cells and go back to the start and kill the 6 arch-viles there. I don't have a rocket launcher so I do a second run through of it later.
Grab rocket launcher and hope to get around the cyberdemons. Get through as quickly as possible while killing as much as possible with the BFG along the way. Grab 600 cells in the central room again and clean up anything left in that area. Another 600 cells for the revenant room, then 600 cells run through of the starting area again before finally another 600 cells through the rev room and out to the double cyberdemons before clearing out the rev room with remaining cells + rockets.
Uses the E1M8 type exit, which is fixed in new sunder. A neat trick is that you can stand in the corner of it when fighting the revenants/cyberdemons and you'll be invulnerable, but you'll have very little health left.Doom II: Sunder - Map 13 (Obsidian Nightmare) UV-Max in 26:07Zero Master2022-01-15 | Runner: Zero-Master Date: 2022-01-11 IWAD: Doom2.wad PWAD: Sunder.wad Category: UV-Max Map: 13 (Obsidian Nightmare) Source Port: DSDA-Doom v0.22.5 Time: 26:07.71
Description: 6 minutes and 58 seconds faster than the previous record. Uses map05 midi instead of the bladerunner ending title as it got copyrighted and forces ads in the middle of the video.
This run is very slow and that's ignoring all the parts where you have to wait around. The start is basically UV-Speed and then turn around at the exit. There are lots of different tricks and even more that are possible. My best practice attempts were close to under 20 minutes, but with a more aggressive route in the "final" fight you could save a lot more time. I have no interest in trying to get a good time here, partially because the route needs some improvements still and there's just many different things I'd rather do then try to rush so many cyberdemons and arch-viles.
With my route this level isn't much of a problem once you get the first arch-vile jump. There's a decent chance you'll get blocked off by a couple of hell knights or cacodemons when you try to leave the upcoming lock in room, but once you're past that it's mostly about not messing up the cyber/vile/caco fight and not getting unlucky when you exit the 5x2 pain elemental room... which was very close here. Of course the other cyberdemons can be annoying as well.. yellow key cyber, 2x tunnel cybers unless you want to fight them on the damage floor and maybe even the cyber at the start are all annoying.
Ammo management was pretty poor here as well. Another route possibility would be to do a north glide to get to the BFG quicker, one could maybe find a setup that would make it possible to get it quickly so you don't have to fight the imps.
There's a chance for each pain elemental pair to get stuck where they will move along each other forever. There's only one thing you can do to prevent this, which would be to activate the switch that opens up their teleporters and fire for the first time once they are able to move through. This is obviously completely useless in a max, so the next best thing is to just minimize the time between when you fire for the first time and when you get to that point. Most my practice attempts (60-70%) have them telelport, so it's not too bad.
Route/Strategy: Obviously the plan here was always going to be to get the BFG as quickly as possible and then get out.
The easiest way out of the starting area is to arch-vile jump. Then you can easily grab the rocket launcher and get the other cyberdemon in the room to start infighting. Now run around the other way to the other arch-vile, ideally you want him to infight, but having him attack while he can't see you by the switch is good enough. The pillar can be opened simply by pressing the switch from the side and once in the next room nothing will teleport since I haven't fired yet.
Half the time there will be hellknights and/or cacodemons on the way up the stairs and they'll probably kill you. But, once you get past you should be good until you reach the next area. It's pretty easy to open up the bars to the final area since nothing will teleport in on the left side, you can wait out the two lowering pillars or just press the one switch through the second pillar.
For the other side you teleport into a separate section so you can fire here without waking anything up, with a few rockets it's pretty easy to get through.
For the final room you get locked in if you cross the linedef near the edge, but it doesn't extend all the way into the wall. Since it is exactly 32 units from the wall it's possible to run around it, but requires you to get perfectly close to the wall. A couple of cyberdemons and arch-viles are already awake and will teleport in once you enter the room even if you haven't fired. Those are the viles that are in the bottom right where at least 1 of them need to run into a section where it is hard to get out so I don't end up killing them all. I'll sit up by the first switch and just let infighting do some work, would of course be much faster to not do that. Once the room is clear I use the remaining vile to jump out by again getting perfectly close to the wall, so when I get hit it will give me some momentum towards the wall making it easy to not go too far and activating the linedef that closes the room.
The rest is just clean up :)Doom II: Sunder - Map 12 (The Zealous Machine) UV-Max in 19:50Zero Master2022-01-08 | Runner: Zero-Master Date: 2022-01-07 IWAD: Doom2.wad PWAD: Sunder.wad Category: UV-Max Map: 12 (The Zealous Machine) Source Port: DSDA-Doom v0.22.5 Time: 19:50.09
Description: 9 minutes and 50 seconds faster than the previous record.
Overall this run went ok, nice level to run. Most the time loss comes from bad BFG use, gambling on the imps being dead would also save quite a few seconds, but wouldn't have worked here. Also both unlucky and lucky with the final monster that had falled down in a pit, usually that doesn't happen, but I found him quickly.
Should have died in the final fight, was quite unlucky with the incoming revenant projectiles, took my time to dodge them which allowed the hell knights to close the gap to the wall. Very fortunate to actually survive once it had gone that bad, especially the cacodemon fireball afterwards dealing only 10 damage... I was 100% sure I was dead when I was in the middle of that with no way through. Messed up my route though costing lots of time since it should be easy to land good BFGs otherwise.
New sunder version has some additional cyberdemons in the last fight making it a lot faster and better.
Route/Strategy: Once you use drop down to the 4 cyberdemons locked in the center there's no way back, so we can't leave the start until everything is clear. We start off with a straightforward arch-vile jump where you can jam yourself in the corner to maintain some momentum to easily manage it. Next I want to kill those 2 arch-viles so they don't become unpredictable later as well as the pain elementals. I have a few options of where to go now, I go with entering the bridge/3 cyberdemon area from the other side of the intended way first. Just get everything released and infighting, but also activate a linedef that will close an already closed door. The lindef can only be activated once so when I cross it coming the other way after opening the door it won't close behind me.
Then I want to get to the other side of the door as quickly as possible to activate the imp teleporters in the soulsphere room. It takes a lot of time to clear them out and they'll clog up near the entrance and block the teleporter so you constantly have to go back there. Get infighting of course with the hell knights/cacos/cyberdemons in megasphere/armor room first, can't really get past them straight away so I go back and use rockets on imps meanwhile. I will also probably run out of cells by the end so I have to use some rockets anyways and this is a good point to do so.
After a while I should be able to get past the cacodemons and open up the imp/soulsphere room. After killing the vile up top I do a setup to skip a linedef. There's 2 linedefs, 1 that closes the door behind you and 1 that activates the revenants, and you need to be careful here not to skip the lindef for the door or you'll get locked in if you don't cross it before activating the next switch. The cyberdemon here is probably the most dangerous part of this run as it's a small space and a difficult entrance. The rest is just cleanup and hope nothing fell down into some pit or is hiding somewhere which happens like half the time.
Now past yellow key bars for the 4 cyberdemons in the center, ideally you'd want to get them infighting, but you have to wait for the switches and you don't need to save ammo. Of course getting more than 1 cyber to infight seemed impossible so I just went with killing them straight away since it's a lot safer and it costs little time.
Another linedef skip to prevent the revenants from showing up in the following room, I can then run around and easily hit the switch to open up the door to the final area. Getting past the door is usually very dangerous, if it looks like I will get blocked I can run around the revenants on the right side instead.
2 more linedef skips to keep the door to the previous room open so the monsters from there will move in. Now this fight will always end up with a ton of hell knights left over, so it's best to just ignore all revenants as they will infight and die. Instead I try to get a bit of damage in on the hell knights with rockets, but mostly I just want to run around so that as much stuff can see me and try to attack to get infighting going. Once the invulnerability wears off you just gotta circle the area until you nearly run out of cells. This is when I start going for the 600 cells located in each of the rooms, it's a pretty good timing since just about everything has teleported in by that point and the rooms aren't filled with monsters.
Then I want to just circle the room keeping myself between the hell knights and the cells and grab any soulspheres along the way. I leave 600 cells by the final switch for the 4 last arch-viles and any left over monsters. Once I'm left with those cells and another 600 cells is when I leave the room and go back up top to grab the mega armor and additional cells. Getting all the cells in the previous room saves a ton of time.Doom II: Sunder - Map 11 (The Furnace) UV-Max in 31:22Zero Master2021-12-19 | Runner: Zero-Master IWAD: Doom2.wad PWAD: Sunder.wad Category: UV-Max Map: 11 (The Furnace) Source Port: DSDA-Doom v0.22.2 Time: 31:22.37
Description: 4 minutes and 33 seconds faster than the previous record. Pretty much everything here could have gone better, but nothing was particularly awful. Sub 30 minutes is not difficult and I'll probably do that some day if nobody else does it. I would have done it now, but I wanted to upload one more sunder max before I leave on vacation and continue in January. It's not the only level I want to improve, maybe when I've gotten through the rest of sunder I'll return and make cleaner runs for a few of them.
I really do like this level, perhaps my favorite in old sunder, but for some reason I had trouble finding the motivation to run it. Probably because of the mostly straightforward combat at the start didn't interest me much. It's fun to see how much damage you can get done with 4 invulnerabilties when playing casually, but doing it several times gets boring pretty quick.
This level is also far easier than what I would have expected. The platforming section is easily the most dangerous part and it's not even that bad, for everything else there is a low chance of dying. Main issue is by far clean up and not missing any monsters in the starting area before leaving.
The final fight was pretty bad, I had far too few cyberdemons by the entrance (north area) and I knew it wasn't going to be close when I saw all the hell knights alive, so I slowed it down and took it safe, 30 minutes or 32 minutes makes no difference, neither are good enough so I'll just take the exit for now and try again later.
Video uses IDDTx2 near the end to show monster movement while I do absolutely nothing, obviously not used when recording the demo itself.
Route/Strategy: Start by grabbing the hell knight invulnerability first and use all our initial cells. For the next 3 invulnerabilities I use rockets, the last 2 to clear out a lot of the revenants and jump down to the stairs to activate the imp teleports. Now I want to get to the next 2 areas as quickly as possible so that I can get everything infighting.
I'll leave the megasphere and 600 cells in the next room until everything in this starting area is dead. Next it's back to the hell knights up top so I can grab the last invulnerability, with that I try to jump down to the revenants (often fails) and clear most of the remaining ones out before taking on the arachnotrons. Once at the double cyberdemons I just leave after getting some infighting going, you could get some crazy luck here by having the cybers kill everything and then leave the room, but that's unlikely.
Now it's all a matter of cleaning up, I start by getting the first imp section cleared and getting the soulsphere, then get rid of some imps on the other section. Back to the double cybers which are done infighting and then clear out the remaining imps and everything on the ground. Some revenants are always alive up top unfortunately and they can be annoying to deal with.
The next area can be annoying as the cacodemons will hide between the fences. Mostly use rockets when they are easy to use and BFG otherwise, leave with 100 cells. Pain elementals is simple enough as long as you have some health, I use 3 + 4 BFGs on the 2 rooms usually.
Revs + cybers are no problem, get some rockets in first while the cyberdemon infight and just don't get trapped. Then comes the platforming. I do a setup for the very start since during practice I messed up a few times there. Hardest part was always the corner coming up immediately, the 2nd and 3rd sections aren't difficult.
Hell knights are easy enough, just use all the cells here. A couple of cyberdemons + revs and imps is very simple with all the health and ammo around.
For the final area I have a different strategy, like map10 you want everything to teleport in as quickly as possible, and the best way to do that is to go back outside and just wait. A few times I'll move to the other side of where I am standing to have monsters move around in the monster box so they'll be more likely to teleport near the end.
Of course the next part is obvious, just go around the arena in a U shape, but you don't want to spend too much time on the opposite side of the entrance to avoid dragging monsters into the central room. Ideally the arch-viles will have nothing to resurrect.Doom II: Sunder - Map 10 (The Hags Finger) UV-Max in 28:46Zero Master2021-12-11 | Runner: Zero-Master IWAD: Doom2.wad PWAD: Sunder.wad Category: UV-Max Map: 10 (The Hags Finger) Source Port: DSDA-Doom v0.22.2 Time: 28:46.49
Description: 1 minute and 28 seconds faster than the previous record.
Surprsingly this might be the one of easiest levels in all of sunder, I don't think there's a single fight here that is anywhere close to being dangerous. I'd say the highest chance of dying would be the part right after the pain elementals, which is the fight with the arch-viles + revenants. It's not bad since you get 600 cells + megasphere though. Of course the final fight isn't easy if you do it the normal way :)
Anyways, I hope to get map11 (the furnace) done before I take a break and then continue in January.
Route/Strategy: New strategy for the start makes the initial fight trivial. Rush through to get to the next 2 rooms as quickly as possible, only try to kill the first 2 viles after going past the dead mancs since they'll usually be there. In the 3rd room I do a glide so that I can run through the next door immediately, this opens up the door to the 2nd room which was closed behind you. From there I just rocket the revenants in the 3rd room while I 3-4 times run to look at the cyberdemons stuck in the doorway and laugh at them... and also get the monsters to start infighting. Once I've used all my rockets I'll go grab the invulnerability and max out on cells and just head back to the main area and kill as much as possible. I'll then stand down by the gap on the inside so that any cyberdemon on the other side will start infighting while I use rockets on the hell knights.
The 4th area containing the imps and pain elementals is annoying, but you have 400 cells and a mega health in this room so it's not really difficult. The problem is the 1 imp that refuses to wake up and other random imps that hide in some corner and can be hard to spot. If you play this map casually you're very likely to miss 2 imps, both of them in the first imp area. One of them is easily woken up by simply standing in the corner by the 2nd imp area and using the chaingun. The second one I stand next to beam in the 3rd area and SR50 at a certain angle that has a decent chance of waking up the other imp.
If I have enough health for the next area I'll skip the mega health. Sitting at the back and firing rockets will take care of quite a few viles, then just BFG the rest and hope you don't take too much random damage. Baron teleports next is pretty simple, you'll get 400 cells in the area after that so it's best to use BFG to take care of the 3x3 viles as quickly as possible before they can res too much.
Next section just run past the cyberdemon and let him infight a bit before killing him with the BFG. New strategy for the next section is to instead of activating both switches + running out you just activate the one through the bars first and sit back and take care of the revenants. This is so that the teleporting monsters up the stairs will mostly go down and not go into the next room like the previous route. Once the revenants are dead I activate the first switch and run out and sit back with the rocket launcher until the path is clear enough. Usually takes time for everything to teleport so you want to leave stuff alive and just come back later and clear it all out. Next area: BFG + rocket spam until it is done.
I'm not as crazy as Killer5 who rushes the cyberdemon after the narrow ledge, instead like the previous record I just hit him with the BFG balls. Arachs/mastermind is simple, then there's some platforming, found a simple setup that always works on the first section, even if you fall down there you can teleport back up. Can't fall down by the last platforming part though. There's enough cells that you can safely sit back and fire 4-5 BFGs to take care of the next cyberdemons.
Now for the big timesave in this run, 2 linedef skips to keep the entrance door open so that I can safely wait by the invulnerability that I left behind. There's only 1 teleport destination and to be as fast as possible you want that space to not be occupied. If you are fighting in this room you're much more likely to drag monsters over the teleporter or have a monster busy fighting on top of it. Since I'm on the other side they'll move away from the spot immediately and you get everything teleporting in really quick. Using the rockets here isn't intended purely as a safe strategy, I just have to wait here no matter what so using the rockets is just a bonus.
Once my rockets have run out it is also a good timing for grabbing the invulnerability as enough monsters have teleported. Invulnerability + BFG + infighting will take care of so much stuff that that the remaining monsters pose no threat once it runs out. Ideally you'd want to hit the switch inside the center room about 30 seconds before you clear the last monster, just need to be careful no monster is trapped on the other side of the raising wall.Doom II: Sunder - Map 09 (The Cage) UV-Max in 19:52Zero Master2021-12-04 | Runner: Zero-Master IWAD: Doom2.wad PWAD: Sunder.wad Category: UV-Max Map: 09 (The Cage) Source Port (Demo): Woof v7.0.0 Source Port (Video): DSDA-Doom v0.22.2 Time: 19:52.06
Description: Improves the previous record by 13 minutes and 4 seconds.
Goal was sub 20 so I played it a bit safe at times. Not too famailiar with the terrain and it's not always flat which means I could easily run off the ledge if I'm not careful, so my movement is slow some places. This run went ok up until the halfway point where I lost more time than what I would have liked.
A couple of monsters wandered off and it took a while to kill them, can't run to them since I'd get locked in from a linedef I skipped earlier. Then I messed up the switch press to activate the wall to the last teleporter, but it didn't cost me too much time. Forgetting to activate the final switch is a disaster and nearly cost me sub 20. I thought it was going to be too slow as the start of the final fight wasn't ideal, it's quite easy so I play really dumb here and nearly died. Sometimes I had to use lots of rockets to clear the remaining monsters, here I had 200 cells left so I have no idea, just got lucky with infighting I guess.
Route/Strategy: Quite a few tricks to start this level off, first I get on top of the raising bars to skip some monster teleports at the start. Then a rocket jump to skip past blue key door and get to the BFG immediately which is obviously going to save a lot of time. Then a north lindef skip to prevent getting locked in which leaves me with 3 invulnerabilites in that area while it is completely open. I also have access to 1 mega sphere, 3 soul spheres and a mega armor + in the next area 3 soul spheres and a mega armor... needless to say there's a lot of resources here and I can pretty much do whatever I want. However all of that stuff isn't going to mean anything when one of the cyberdemons sends you flying over the edge which happened a few times. One thing I cannot do is enter the area which will take you to the final fight as there is no way out of there and the linedef is too difficult to skip for it to be worth it.
Next step is to just get everything to teleport in, then grab an invulnerability and take care of a couple of cyberdemons so they won't be a problem later. Ideally you wouldn't want to touch the cyberdemons and have them infight, but the one on the other side is both dangerous and useless, while the other 3 don't really get much done. So I figured killing one and dealing damage to the others under the invulnerability is a lot safer without really sacrificing much time. Then just clear out as many monsters as possible before moving on towards the blue key.
There's 500 cells + several rockets before blue key so I use most of my ammo by that point. Sometimes the cacodemons that teleport in the next section are a bit slow, so I'll wait here for a little while to make sure I got them all, would be better to just keep count of them of course. Don't have to wait for the switch to be available here, just go around the wall. Once you get blue key you go straight back to the start, you get a lot of cells and rockets at this point so you can go crazy with it, no need to worry about landing good BFGs. Once I get to blue key door I use the invulnerability to kill both the next cyberdemons instead of just 1, makes it a lot safer. Need to be careful to not shoot the cyberdemon off the map though, which can easily happen if you're not careful, not to mention him sending you off.
You can also go back to the other area by simply walking around one of the torches, which is what I do once I've cleared out everything around blue key door, would be faster to skip it obviously. Clear out the next section, need to double check the area for late teleporters, usually nothing is delayed too much. More cleanup before going into the final area. In the room you get locked in you can easily activate the switch to the teleporter wall first. You could also leave an invulnerability here and use it in the final fight, but it doesn't make much difference.
The final fight is pretty easy since there are monster block lines around the central area. You want to get the viles with the first invulnerability once you notice them. With the second invulnerability you want to use your rockets on the hell knights and barons since there will be several of them alive in the end and you'll probably run out of cells.Doom II: Sunder - Map 08 (Pale Monument) UV-Max in 17:43Zero Master2021-11-27 | Runner: Zero-Master IWAD: Doom2.wad PWAD: Sunder.wad Category: UV-Max Map: 08 (Pale Monument) Source Port (Demo): Woof v7.0.0 Source Port (Video): DSDA-Doom v0.21.2 Time: 17:43.26
Description: Improves the previous record by 19 minutes and 46 seconds.
This is old sunder where 1 cyberdemon doesn't teleport (this is why I have 99% kills), new sunder fixes this issue.
50% of the time I spent on attempts for this was trying to get the BFG, the map isn't difficult so it's not that annoying of a start. I should have gotten a better time though, under 17 minutes is easily doable. Because of the glides at the start, the missing cyberdemon and the route could still use some work I figured I'd just move on and take the first exit I got. Maybe I'll return to this one at a later point.
A few things didn't even go as planned here, but at least I didn't have to spend too long looking for a missing monster. Nearly all my practice attempts had me looking for missing monsters, but it really isn't that difficult to not miss any of them as long as I don't forget to check every area as I leave. I was concerned when I saw I still had a monster left after clearing the last cacodemons, wondering what I had forgot this time, luckily I ran into the last imp right infront of the exit area.
Think I killed far too many revenants with splash damage when killing the cacodemon horde, they should be infighting with hell knights and barons instead. Felt like I wasted 2 minutes killing hell knights and barons in the exit room compared to practice runs, not sure how bad it really was. Maybe the cyberdemons should do better work here and I should probably get more infighting going before I leave to go back to the start. I somehow managed to rocket myself for no reason when leaving the starting area the second time, I think I just expected the rocket to be fired a bit earlier before I started turning towards the wall. Ended up with low health in the exit room and had to take the rest of the level more slowly than what I would have liked... also took a 10 damage rev missile at 34 health, almost a shame it didn't maxroll me and force me to start over and get a better time, oh well.
Route/Strategy: Obviously 4 guideless glide right at the start to get the BFG, it's too big of a timesave to ignore. Unfortunately it's a double east guideless glide on the way back, which are somewhat difficult... but it's right at the start so it's fine. If you didn't do the glide then the earliest you'd get the BFG would be after releasing the cacodemon horde, but you want to drag them towards the exit area instead of the start so that's why it's not an option.
Next you just want to open up the level as quickly as possible and get infighting going. There's a small skip to get past the hell knight + double cyberdemon pair at the start which isn't too difficult. The cyberdemons by the switches are useless and should just be killed immediately. Now all the way to the cacodemon horde, you can get past on the left side, I tried skipping the revenant wall + mancubus teleports, but it was a little bit slower so I run back and activate the linedef. I hide in the corner to get the revenants to move as far up as possible (should be better for infighting) before I run around to the switch that opens up the exit (which can be activated through the wall). Skip the door close linedef to the exit area by running around it, but not the liendef that starts the fight, grab some cells and just leave.
At this point I did have some other ideas, which was to ignore the double cyberdemons by the soulsphere and instead try to fight everything in the open. I think that would be better as you're more likely to get better infighting, but there are so many projectiles coming from everywhere so you're more likely to die, so I decided to go with a more safe route and clear out the soulsphere area where I'm mostly safe. Then just sit in this area and clear the cacodemon horde, sometimes I need to step out in the open to get infighting going in the exit area.
Then it's back to the start, I run around by the megasphere area so that the cacodemons in the starting area will move further away and infight with the cyberdemons a bit, just makes the next part a lot easier so you don't get overrun by cacos. Once back at the mastermind/baron area I just use all my cells and try to get some splash damage on the mancs/hell knights when fighting the cacodemons by the green armor area. The rest is then just clearing out everything and getting back to the exit room.Doom II: Sunder - Map 07 (Hollow Icon) UV-Max in 12:32Zero Master2021-11-20 | Runner: Zero-Master Date: 2021-11-20 IWAD: Doom2.wad PWAD: Sunder.wad Category: UV-Max Map: 07 (Hollow Icon) Source Port (Demo): Woof v7.0.0 Source Port (Video): DSDA-Doom v0.21.2 Time: 12:32.94
Description: 102 seconds faster than the previous record.
Would have done this sooner, but I've been experiencing some pain in my left (keyboard) arm lately that gets annoying quickly when attempting to record demos. Not to mention you need a bit of luck to get through the level with this route... oh and missing monsters, a couple of runs ruined by a single monster hiding somewhere, but that's my fault. Managed to get some work done on the routes for map08 and map09 meanwhile.
As for this run, I was really unlucky here getting blocked on my way back to the start, when I dropped down to 54/54 I was just hoping I'd get killed since there is no way I'm getting under 13 minutes when I have to take everything safe... somehow it worked out through pure luck, unfortunately it looks ugly.. then again it's nearly 30 seconds under my goal time, got saved by amazing infighting again like map05. I've had practice attempts using save/load that were 11:XX, would probably have been within reach if it wasn't for the damage I took, but it looks difficult.
Route/Strategy: Basically go UV-Speed until 0.2 second before the exit, turn around and go back to the start and clear everything out with BFG.
It's easier to clear out the initial revenants with the SSG, but it's a bit faster with RL if you manage to land nearly every rocket. If you miss a few rockets you have to switch to SSG anyways, so I prefer to use it right away. The next rooms you just want to get through them as quickly as possible, while also taking out the cacodemons before continuing. Cacodemons can open up the door into the double cyber room, so when you cross the linedef after blue key door that permanently opens the door it'll close if it was already open. You want that door to be open so it's easier to just run through here on the way back, otherwise you will get blocked.
For blue key room it's easy enough to clear out the revenants first before opening up the BFG. I fire to wake up the cyberdemons and hopefully get some of them to walk down into the corridor and get to the other side for better infighting. Then I just hope to get lucky and run around the hell knights/barons for the BFG before going to blue key. Once I've activated the switch after blue key door I tried jumping down to the left and go straight to the switch, but frequently I failed dragging the monsters away, so I decided to just go out on the other side and run around instead as it works more often and it doesn't cost much time.
I leave the megasphere behind for later and grab 600 cells in the next room. I do a linedef skip on the linedef that closes the door into the previous room, once closed it cannot be opened, so the big time save here is that I can just continue on to the end of the level instead of being forced to clear out everything up until this point. Activating the 3 switches in this room is difficult, there's a good chance I end up dead here, but it has to be done as it saves too much time.
For the final room I grab the megasphere and hope that it lasts until I can get back to the one I left behind. I wait for a while to try and get the cyberdemons and masterminds to move away from the second switch a bit, but I don't want to wait too long. I have to get to the exit quickly because once the imps up top are dead there is no way I'm getting past the revenants without clearing out the entire area. So this part is completely luck based and there's also a good chance I die here. If all goes to plan I'll reach the exit and cross the linedef that opens up the door into the previous area. Then I'll run to the other side of this area as I need to drag some monsters away from the door. I might try to kill a few pain elementals, but most of them are left alive and I just have to hope they die to infighting.
So we're about half way throuh, but the rest of the route is simple. Get back to the megasphere that was left behind and go clear the starting area. Then just clear the rest of the level :)
This route requires a lot of luck for a good time. I kind of got a bit bored looking for route improvements, so it might be possible to do better. Obviously taking even more risk during the early parts would save quite a bit of time, but the route is awful enough as it is.
Definitely not a route I'd recommend unless attempting to set a record.Doom II: Sunder - Map 06 (Grinder) UV-Max in 12:59Zero Master2021-10-30 | Runner: Zero-Master IWAD: Doom2.wad PWAD: Sunder.wad Category: UV-Max Map: 06 (Grinder) Source Port (Demo): Woof v7.0.0 Source Port (Video): DSDA-Doom v0.21.2 Time: 12:59.63
Description: 98 seconds faster than the previous record. Fortunately with some route improvements this level was easy and the time was easily improved.
I took a lot of unnecessary damage at the start and somehow still made it without too much trouble. After I killed 2 of the teleporting arch-viles in the area before the invulnerability I decided to just leave as I was too low on health to deal with the last vile.
Got some nice infighting between the first cyberdemon and the monsters that are up top to the right at the start. Also had some really good infighting with the barons and mancs by the plasma rifle, as both barons were dead. Didn't get that good infighting between cacodemons coming from the teleporters and the barons, it's my fault for dragging them too far down to the start, so I used a lot of plasma to clear them out.
The second cyberdemon in the cyberdemon pair didn't die to infighting which is a bit unfortunate, he was very low, but I wasted quite a bit of time trying to get him fighting the hell knights again. Would have been a really good time for this route if that cyberdemon died to infighting. Also lost a bit of time to the second cyberdemon pair where one of them teleported a bit late and took too much time to start infighting compared to usual.
Nearly lost out on sub 13 by going for 100% items, probably should have just grabbed it while I was firing plasma.
I'm sure another minute at least could be saved on this route, but I had some other ideas that were even faster, just a bit too crazy to do. I tried a few times to improve the time, but getting all the cyberdemons to do their job can be a bit rough as well as this not being the fastest route so I figured I'd move on to the next map instead.
Route/Strategy: Instead of doing it the normal way of clearing out everything at the start I instead do an arch-vile jump to get early access to the upper area. This gives me full armor and nearly full health which I will have no need for when I go back up here after getting blue skull key. I hope to get the first cyberdemon infighting with the upper section so he can get a lot of damage done. Once I've grabbed the armor I do a linedef skip on the double cyberdemon closet, they'll destroy everything else in there first while they are trapped. The demons don't teleport in up top either then, so I clear out the revenants here since they can be annoying later and they don't really infight well with anything. Also standing near the edge here I can get some infighting going between mancs and barons at plasma rifle which is really good as it costs a lot of rockets to deal with that otherwise.
I open up the next room and clear out as many imps as I can before doing another linedef skip (different linedef, but it does the same thing). Once the room is clear I grab the 600 cells and clear out some imps so that I can leave without getting blocked from below. Then I activate the hell knight/caco/vile teleports and try to clear out the arch-viles, if left alone they'll resurrect 100+ monsters, so it's best to clear them out now.
When the viles are dead I can leave, need to open up the cyberdemon closet before leaving so these 2 can get a lot of work done on the hell knights and barons. Next I just try to clear out as much as I can in the starting area before dealing with the teleporting monsters with the 3 arch-viles. When that is done the map is pretty much over, just clean up everything and make sure the cyberdemon pair are infighting or dead.
600 cells + invunerability makes the 2nd last fight as simple as it can get, though one can save a bit of time by trying to get the cyberdemon to take out as many cacodemons as possible. Tried a few things for the final fight, what I came up with was both fast and safe, so there wasn't too much to think about. Usually I'd be left with 300 cells at the end of the fight and never close to dying, so it should be good.
I grab the top invulnerability first and get to the 2 switches in the nearest corner, then I move towards the other invulnerability while killing as many of the 4 arch-viles as I can. Obviously grab the second invulnerability before the first one is done, head towards the next switch before going back and activating the last switch. Dump all the rockets and then just go to the outside and spam plasma until it seems clear enough to head back in for cleanup.Doom Eternal: The World Spear Master Level Ultra-Nightmare [No Hud]Zero Master2021-10-27 | The World Spear is 1 of 2 new official master levels, this is my first UNM clear.
You get the hammer from the start, sometimes I try to save it for difficult situations so it doesn't get used as often as it should. Didn't have to resort to any BFGs during this run and I try to use the chaingun shield as little as possible.
This was a long master level compared to the others, was fun though.
Enjoy!Doom Eternal: Mars Core Master Level Ultra-Nightmare [No Hud]Zero Master2021-10-26 | Mars Core is 1 of 2 new official master levels, this is my first UNM clear.
2 areas that I was mostly scared of here, the section immediately after getting the BFG and the smoke filled room. I think I got myself trapped there at one point in both areas so I was kind of lucky to make it out alive.
Had some ammo trouble with the cyber mancs at the very end in my nightmare playthrough, so I decided to just BFG that section once instead of getting myself killed.
Enjoy!Doom Eternal: Horde Mode [Nightmare]Zero Master2021-10-26 | My first playthrough of the official doom eternal horde mode. Sorry about the loud horde mode effect sounds at the start, I lowered the volume after about 3 minutes.
Died once during the first round, the rest was deathless, so that's kind of annoying :)
Missed one bonus mission because I missed getting all the coins, probably cost me about 10k score. Barely made gold score at the end so clearly it wasn't very good. I know I lost a ton of score on the other two 2nd bonus score rounds, I managed my ammo horribly and it was just a complete mess.
Doesn't look there is any time bonus, so you can take it as slow as you want. 1000 score per extra life is a bit disappointing, doesn't make too much of a difference if you die a few times.
Overall I'm happy with my first playthrough, no shame in dying to the start when you don't really have any idea what's going on and you haven't gotten used to playing again, heh.
Uploading Mars Core and World Spear UNM no hud next as they are already done when this is finished uploading.
I might try this again, getting a high rank would probably take too much of a time investment though.
keybinds and other misc info (written over a year ago, but keybinds are still correct at least): pastebin.com/mwgJEfEXDoom II: Sunder - Map 05 (Precarious) UV-Max in 5:39Zero Master2021-10-23 | Runner: Zero-Master IWAD: Doom2.wad PWAD: Sunder.wad Category: UV-Max Map: 05 (Precarious) Source Port (Demo): Woof v7.0.0 Source Port (Video): DSDA-Doom v0.21.2 Time: 5:39.23
Description: 6 second improvement over the previous record, second half of the video includes ghost players of some failed attempts.
What a map. So many attempts lost to things you have absolutely no control over. I have no idea what was even happening during this attempt, 2 cyberdemons that didn't instantly murder me when I was right next up to them? lots of hell knights left alive?? Cyberdemon all the way to the south??? Nothing fell off the ledge????
I was 99% convinced the cyberdemon had falled of the ledge (my fault I didn't hear it die), the infighting seemed to be so bad that I couldn't imagine they all stayed up there, because they do fall down quite frequently. It really didn't help that I had couldn't hear properly because I had other things running in the background. This is also why I wasted 1-2 seconds at the switch by the arch-viles.
All cyberdemons were low health (1 was dead) and nothing fell down, that is nearly the most perfect RNG you could ever hope for on this level. Unfortunately there was a bit too many monsters left alive and I didn't manage to clear the pain elementals which created a bit of a mess and cost me a lot of time, should have had a better plan for it and the time could have been really good I think. When I got to the last area and I figured the cyberdemon had fallen down I took it as a practice run where I'll just leave any cyberdemon down in the lava alive and at least try to get through the level. I am not sure if it helped me, since I did get a max and I did beat the record I'll go with yes, and because there were more monsters left alive than usual the luck wasn't perfect, so I don't feel too bad taking it safe.
When I saw I had 4 monsters remaining going towards the arch-viles I was even more sure I was screwed... what an amazing sight it was to just see a pain elemental just flying around at the starting area, couldn't believe it.
Despite the the absurd luck requirement this was actually a lot of fun to do, really an awesome map to run.
Route/Strategy: All credits to Ancalagon here, I didn't really have to think about anything, just some small variations that might not even be an improvement. The main idea is to just open up the entire map as soon as possible, you can't fire until you've reached the pain elementals, as you don't want them moving around freely and you don't want to kill them with a shotgun.
Just need to get lucky with the first switch, a ton of attempts die quickly here.
Get the first soulsphere to open up the next area, I wait a second near the edge for the walls to the cyberdemon to lower. If you go too quickly then he will start moving sideways and struggle to get out of his little box.
The next platforming section is the easiest. I run back to the entrance and wait a second before I run towards the switch, this way I'll most likely get the cyberdemon out of there and I won't get hit by a rocket around the corner going back. More platforming, I grab the first mega armor so I don't have to grab it later. Then I circle the last area and grab some cells + rockets. A faster route would be to just grab the plasma rifle and leave, maybe grab some extra rockets for the pain elementals. I thought of this only right after I finished this demo, so I didn't experiment with it to much.
Now back to the pain elemental teleport section, best to use rockets since it's faster and you want the plasma for the cyberdemons, of course it's a bit of a risk because of lost souls. If there's too much to deal with I'll switch to the plasma rifle to clear out as much as I can before trying to use more rockets. Sometimes I might leave 1-2 pain elementals alive if they look too difficult to deal with or I'm just too low on health, they usually show up at the last section anyways. Back to the second cyberdemon, here it feels like 50/50 if I just die trying to get across, cyberdemon blocking the path is the worst, but arch-vile or well timed revenant rockets are also hard to deal with.
Straight back to the last section afterwards and just circle around to get infighting going while grabbing the remaining ammo. One should just stay up top and not move down again in this area so you don't drag monsters all over the place. If any cyberdemon has fallen down the run is over.
Back to the first cyberdemon, at this area after you've killed the cyber you can kill revenants and hell knights that have fallen down from the last area. Then go to the start and clear out the viles from a safe distance. I do a setup kind of when going for the exit so I don't do anything incredibly dumb and fall off at the end, happened frequently in practice thankfully so I was aware of it.Doom II: Sunder - Map 04 (Metal Descendants) UV-Max in 11:42Zero Master2021-10-16 | Runner: Zero-Master IWAD: Doom2.wad PWAD: Sunder.wad Category: UV-Max Map: 04 (Metal Descendants) Source Port (Demo): Woof v7.0.0 Source Port (Video): DSDA-Doom v0.21.2 Time: 11:42
Description: 89 seconds faster than the previous record.
I expected to hate this level, just the look of it, the crushers and the platforming.. don't think I've ever even played it before and just skipped it whenever I did my first playthrough of sunder. But it's not that bad, partially because it turned out to be a lot easier than I expected so attempts were mostly fun to do.. with exception of the moments were I died to the crushers :)
Not much interesting to say about this demo, everything kind of went ok, but you don't really need any luck at all to improve the time.
Route/Strategy: Cheese the start and just don't shoot. Hide in the corner of the switch and you're mostly safe until the switches are available, and I'd just reset if a revenant followed me into the room. The hell knights/barons will take a lot of damage to the crushers by the time you get back, as long as you exit through the other door you came in and lock them in. Of course it would be faster to just do this normally, because then you would be able to get the chaingunners as well, but I'd rather just get through this section alive.
Killer5 mentions having lost a few attempts to the cyberdemon on the way back from the chaingunner switch, and it did happen to me a few times during practice.. but somehow it never happened during my attempts, so just get lucky and you'll get past him easily :) (if not, maybe back off until he moves away).
Also like the previous route I definitely didn't want to fight those revenants at yellow key while the barons are coming with just 100 health, no need either as you can get to them later and the barons aren't there. So I just grab the rocket launcher, rocket ammo and yellow key and get out while leaving some 20 rockets in the corner for later.
The reason the time was so easy to improve is partially because of the next room with the imps teleporting in. I just want to activate the switches as quickly as possible and then just leave because the crushers will take care of nearly all the remaining imps. No need to wait around for them to teleport in. I also try to leave the 4x15 rockets in that room for later when I get back there to kill any imps that have not walked into it's own death. I wonder how often all the imps would die, here there was 1 left and I think he would have gone into the crushers at some point. I never tested just finishing the map and ignoring it completely, it might work since those imps that get stuck for a while might move out once you go back to the starting area.
I've been taken by surprise by the red key crushers a few times. The pattern is the same if you arrive at the same time, but since that doesn't happen I was killed a few times. This fight is extremely trivial, just circle around and don't get caught by the hell knights/barons coming from the starting area. One could leave here even earlier, perhaps also use the monsters against the cyberdemon which teleports in later at blue key room.
I'm not a big fan of platforming, so I think I lost 2 attempts here to bad movement and getting caught in the crushers. Like the red key you could maybe go for the soulsphere at certain times instead of trying to look for the correct pattern. I managed to get a hang of it in the end though, you can usually run across 2-3 platforms easily when the outer wall opens up. Would have been much faster to use plasma rifle (or rockets if you are crazy enough) instead of chaingun of course, so a bit of time can be saved here. Also need to be careful of linedef skip when reaching the end, if you run too fast you might not kill the mancs as you don't activate the crushers.
Final area is quite easy, I killed the mastermind before hitting the first switch, obviously a bit faster to do it the otherway around. Once the revenant reach you I go through the teleporter and hit switch 2 and 3 before attempting to go back to switch 4. If you don't get switch 4 on first attempt it's fine, you kind of want to drag monsters into those crushers anyways, so meanwhile I go through the teleporter and fire some rockets on the mancs which you need to kill at some point and then try again if I didn't get it. Even if you get the switch first try it might be good to circle the arena again, but I didn't test this much so I'm not sure how long you should stay there to clear it as quickly as possible.
Now I leave the final area and close the blue key door twice, monsters won't get through and meanwhile I go clear out the other areas where I left monsters alive. Once that's done I can just safely use rockets and clear nearly everything that's left in the final room while it's all gathered at the door. Some mancs will always survive so I need to be extra careful to make sure I got them allDoom II: Sunder - Map 03 (The Dreaming Garden) UV-Max in 9:35Zero Master2021-10-09 | Runner: Zero-Master IWAD: Doom2.wad PWAD: Sunder.wad Category: UV-Max Map: 03 (The Dreaming Garden) Source Port (Demo): Woof v7.0.0 Source Port (Video): DSDA-Doom v0.21.2 Time: 9:35
Description: 38 seconds faster than the previous record. This was a lot easier than map 01 and 02, a few improvements to the route made it quite straightforward to beat.
Was surprised by 9:35, I lost about 15 seconds to what I did in practice attempts before red key, then my rockets after red key door felt terrible, and I usually got a low 9 minutes time with save/loading. So I was thinking this was going to be closer to 9:50-10:10. However this run was basically saved by the red key door cyberdemon absolutely destroying those barons in the final area.
Woof displays kill count a bit different than dsda-doom so I checked the monster count when there were a few demons left. I was convinced I had 2 more monsters remaining than I actually did, so I lost 5 seconds to that. Also threw away 1 second to get 100% items because why not.
Route/Strategy: Get a bit of infighting going between the cyberdemon and hell knights, doesn't really do much, but it's at the start so it's worth doing. After I kill the arch-vile and grab the cells I do a linedef skip on the second linedef which spawns in the barons + revenants, but not the linedef that I need to trigger to progress. Then I do a glide so I can safely kill the cyberdemon. Kill the remaining hell knights + mancs and leave around 100 cells for the 5 revenants, which are much much easier to kill when they are trapped and can easily be accessed by using the teleporter. Then kill the 3 arch-viles, the 2nd arch-vile managed to really irritate me when they sometimes resurrected up to 9 hell knights before I could kill them, absurd.
Now I can trigger the linedef and I just go back to red key, wastes a bit of time running around, but when you can safely land really good rockets on 40 barons+revs so it'll save a lot of time and rockets.
Do a linedef skip on closing the red key door so that the cyberdemon will infight both barons and hell knights that teleport in at that area. Might take a while to get him infighting sometimes, but usually it works out pretty well. Obviously get the next cyberdemon infighting and just try to get as much damage done as possible, you don't want to kill everything as you'll come back here once you get infighting going in the final area. I try to drag the hellknight/baron horde away from the door before going to the switch. There's a linedef on the floor in that room that triggers the second wave of hell knight and mancubus teleports. I can't activate the switch as it can only be used once and it'll open the already open door which would close if I cross the linedef again. So first get some more infighting going with the hell knights and cyber, then activate the linedef for the door and then activate the switch and just hope the cyberdemon doesn't kill you.
For the final area I want the cyberdemon once again to infight, this time with the barons to the left. Usually he'll either be dead or really low on health when I get back. I had enough health and armor this time to just grab the soulsphere, if not I can go straight for the megasphere. Now just activate all the switches in the final room, grab invulnerability and the 2x25 rocket ammo and just kill the arch-viles. I leave to let the cyberdemon in there infight and die while I go clear the other area. Then come back and clean up + grab key and exit.Doom II: Sunder - Map 02 (The Burrow) UV-Max in 5:13Zero Master2021-10-02 | Runner: Zero-Master Date: 2021-09-30 IWAD: Doom2.wad PWAD: Sunder.wad Category: UV-Max Map: 02 (The Burrow) Source Port (Demo): Woof v7.0.0 Source Port (Video): DSDA-Doom v0.21.2 Time: 5:13
Description: 17 seconds faster than the previous record.
Damn, the most perfect cyberdemon infighting RNG I will ever see and I didn't get the most out of it. The arch-vile being at the top area was really unfortunate, was too difficult to deal with that quickly. I actually didn't believe the cyberdemon by the switch was dead the first time I saw it, rare enough for him to be on low health by the end of it, but for the revs to actually kill him is a first.
Should have died several times, so it doesn't look pretty. Ran past a cyberdemon at close range twice while he was firing and I also ran into 2 revenant rockets. Nearly got stuck in the revenant room too, got lucky there.
Under 5 minutes is possible, but I think there's still some improvements to be made to the route. My practice attempts were all over the place, anywhere between 4m30s to 5m50s (but usually 4m55s or so, which isn't good enough), but that's with a lot of save load so I think that getting under 5 minutes would have been too much of a grind with this route, and I spent enough time routing this already so I'll leave it here for now.
Route/Strategy: Get the SSG and fire to wake up the demons, then I run through the shotgunners instead of the chaingunners because it's more consistent, less annoying and I have to go there at some point anyways. I visit the hell knight room 3 times, the reason is because it is extremely annoying to try and kill them in 1 run through since they will spread out and they need to be killed 1 by 1 near the end. So by killing a few of them and coming back they should be more grouped up. I also leave the soulsphere for the 2nd run through since there's quite a bit of health on this level, so I'd rather just get up to 100% health then leave here with 130% health or something.
Kill most of the revenants on top of the stairs while they are gathered up, can be done before the hell knight fight if you want to have the arch-viles+cyberdemon remaining idle until you get to them. That can be better if you want to kill the arch-viles immediately. If you don't kill the arch-viles you risk them ressurecting 40-70 monsters, but I just hope they die somehow, which backfired a bit during this attempt, but still far better than average.
Now instead of clearing everything I decide to just go to the next area, I hope to get the cyberdemon by the switch infighting by running into the hell knights once up top, if not I go for it anyways and die 60-70% of the time. Just hit the switch to open up the revenant room and I ignore the soulsphere for later. Now I go back to the hell knights, would be a good idea to try and kill some of the arch-viles on the way there perhaps. Kill most of the hell knights before I go get some more infighting started, then all the way back to the revenants again.
In the revenant room I just try to drag everything out so that I can "safely" kill them from the exit switch room. This usually fails pretty badly (it's not difficult though), but at least it'll make the end fight a lot easier. Most of the time I easily get out of the room once I'm done. Back yet again to the hell knight room to clear any remaining enemies, then once again back up to fire some rockets from safe distance. I should have fired more rockets and the clean up would have been much faster, but the cyberdemon was still alive so I was hoping he'd get some more infighting done.. but then he died.
What I was supposed to do at this point was to run back to the arch-vile towers and clear out the few revenants that still remain here so I could drag the majority of the remaining revenants to the cyberdemon at the switch, but he was also dead. So mostly just spread out revenants + 1 vile remaining and I lost a lot of time to it.
This route kind of seems terrible, running to the hell knight room 3 times and back to the final area 3 times, but sub 5 minutes seems within reach unlike with the previous route. I swear I tried absolutely everything here, but maybe someone else can come up with something better. This route is a lot easier than some other terrible ideas I had.Doom II: Sunder - Map 01 (Python) UV-Max in 2:58Zero Master2021-09-25 | Runner: Zero-Master Date: 2021-09-25 IWAD: Doom2.wad PWAD: Sunder.wad Category: UV-Max Map: 01 (Python) Source Port (demo): Woof v6.3.1 Source Port (video): DSDA-Doom v0.21.2 Time: 2:58
Description: Someone asked me to max a sunder map, so here's the first map and the easiest one, improves the previous record by 9 seconds.
Uses the old sunder wad since the new one is being updated with new maps and will not be finished anytime soon, no idea if there are any differences.
Half of the video is free camera mode, since the cyberdemon killed like half the demons it's only fair that he gets his time on the video... and to make sense of what happened inside the building while I was outside.
I start by running straight for the switch and firing afterwards to wake up the imps to get them moving out as quickly as possible. Then I run to the start to move the monsters downards towards me until the 11-12 second mark. Run back to the stairs and stay in the corner until 19-20 seconds such that enough imps have moved out of the hallway. I then run up the stairs and wait about 6 seconds to get the remaining imps to move further back into the room where they started while getting some of the hell knights out of the way from the stairs.
Now getting past the imps is really annoying, partially because of unfortunate blockmaps position which causes some of my pellets to go through the imp at the left corner where it's easiest to get through, and also because the shotgun sucks. Once I get the SSG I fire it 3 times to wait for the mancs to move out of the mega armor section. Usually there's a few monsteres left at mega armor which is annoying, sometimes it's better to wait for them to move out of there, but sometimes you just have to try and kill them.
Getting to the next switch after the mega armor is usually quite easy, but here I was slowed down too much and I decided to try and get past along the wall which was a mistake, the monsters moved back and blocked the path. I got lucky getting past the cyberdemon afterwards, but I wasted a lot of time already. Now while this was quite slow, it was actually really fortunate because of the position the cyberdemon has. He ends up destroying the arch-viles that spawn in and that saves a lot of time.
Once I get outside I take the right path because there's 40% health along the way if I need it and it's more likely to keep the cyberdemon next to the arch-viles. I clear out the left arachnotron/cacodemon first because they are close, and then I hope the 2 other cacodemons nearest to me are infighting with the arachnotrons which is exactly what I got here. Didn't manage to get the 4th cacodemon infighting, but it's not much of an issue.
Now ideally you would just circle around and kill the arachnotrons/cacodemons + mancs and then go inside, but only if you have perfect infighting.. since that happens so rarely I go inside as soon as I can to get the infighting going again and try to pick off any remaining viles.
Run outside again and clear everything, this can be done a lot faster if you just pray your rockets hit, but also taking more time might be good for the cyberdemon to keep infighting. If there's a ton of monsters left alive once I get back I can reset, that's normally how it goes.. this time however nearly everything was dead and I had a few rockets spare to clean up much of it. Then of course you need the final bit of luck, a low health cyberdemon, which is exactly what I had so I managed to just barely get it under 3 minutes.
With my luck I was surprised I didn't get max-rolled by that last mancubus, a bit lucky there.