Improved Doom 3 Nightmare run

[Ghoti]

won't using the BFG early mess with the Vagary strat? I thought you needed all four cells for that fight.

[Spider-Waffle]

Ah sweet, glad I brought up the stamina.  How long time wise does adrenaline last anyway?

And if you could save more time with BFG ammo later, what about using grenades, I saw there was a grenade pickup on the route in this level.

That's another thing, it'd be good to know exactly how many grenade pickups are in-route or very close to in-route so grenade usage on things like this can be calculated.

[Kibbo]

Vagary needs 1 BFG shot and 1 soul cube attack.

I haven't actually timed it but a good guess would be that adrenaline lasts 30 seconds.

The BFG is a bit tricky to use effectively since it doesn't quite work like in Doom 1 and 2. In Doom 3 you can charge your shots so they deal more damage, but if you have a full mag it will drain it completely, whereas if you only have 1 shot in the mag it will only use that one shot but still deal roughly the same amount of damage as a 4-charge shot. And instead of having the ability to insta-kill everything (or at least almost everything) that happens to be in the player's sight when the plasma ball explodes it has a limited blast radius, although it's bigger than that of other weapons in the game. The BFG also damages the player, so you can't run right up into their faces and go "suck on this!", because that will kill you as well.

So far there are 2 places where I need to use the BFG. Vagary in Alpha Labs 4 and the hellknight fight in Delta Labs 4. There is more BFG ammo in the Delta Labs maps as well, so in case there's an ammo crisis it is possible to get some more ammo for this thing.

[Kibbo]

Ok, after about 15 minutes of attempting I managed to get this successful attempt pushing the bridge button at 15.216, slightly slower than earlier attempts but I am picking up the adrenaline here. It will save a lot more time in the next segment. Might be possible to shave some more time, but I kinda doubt I will ever be able to topple this.

Edit: So I was wrong. Time down to 15.116, and further improvement should be possible.

[Spider-Waffle]

Always nice to progress on this, brings me joy

[Kibbo]

Got the time down to 14.7, and this would've been final if it wasn't for this small little thing. Going into the corridor before the EFR chamber, the strafe jump was a bit off, and I actually got saved by machinegun boosts from one of the marines. If it wasn't for that I would've hit the wall dead-on.

[slYnki]

Can't wait to see this finished.

/gentle words of encouragement

=D

[Kibbo]

Thanks!

Well, this thing is far from finished and I wanted to let you know that I'm working on it like crazy. Yesterday I spent 5-6 hours straight (short toilet breaks only) trying to edge that 14.7, the closest I got was 14.85, but at least I can pull off sub-15 consistently now. I also try to get in at least 1-2 hours of attempting every day as well. At least the segment after this is going to be relatively easy and shouldn't take nearly as long as segment 22.

[Spider-Waffle]

I don't see what's so wrong about the strafe jump in the 14.7, if the time is this hard to beat maybe it's good enough.

[Kibbo]

I'm jumping towards the wall instead of the door, the angle is completely off. The secret ingredient, or whatever you want to call it, is the boost. That's the thing I'm missing in my recent attempts, and it requires a shitload of luck (as this segment didn't depend on that too much already) to get it right.

[Spider-Waffle]

The angle isn't that bad, like 30 degrees off at most, but also it might be the only reason you were able to get the boost because the marines move over the side and might not have vision on you if go down the middle or right side of the hall instead of the left side of the hall.

[Kibbo]

I get the boost as well when going for straight jumps, it's just that I'm unlucky with damage and always die just before I'm out of harm's way.

[Spider-Waffle]

ya I could see that if the marines stayed in line with the middle of the hallway, but then it's easier for them to shoot you as your leaving the door.  What if you used the soul cube at the right time so it could kill one of the marines as you get to the door?

[Kibbo]

I finally managed to beat 14.7 by 0.1 seconds. The main issue is that this attempt has an even uglier mistake than 14.7, I'm messing around near the EFR console before I managed to push the friggin button. So not done quite yet

Edit: Managed to get 14.583, without any boost though. I am however willing to call it final in case this drags on for too long, I really want to get on with the rest of the run. I'm gonna work quite a bit on the run this weekend and if I simply can't get it done, 14.583 is final. WIP video uploaded.

[nubonamission]

nice