Just in case your wandering why there have been very few updates on SDA lately, it's because of the re-structure. Progress is good, we now have the 589 Quake 100% and Run demos in the database, leaving just the coops left to do. This is proving a bit of a nightmare and I've started it and given up so many times trying to think of the best way to do it. I came to the conclusion that the only easy way to do it would be to have it as a seperate section (table) from the other demos, which means you won't be able to browse between the two, but it shouldn't be so bad...

Here's a few statistics for you. Optic currently has over a third of all the demos on SDA, with a mind boggling 219! Ilkka has 93, Nolan has 80. So those three alone account for over two thirds of all the demos in the database which currently contains 35 different contributors.

Beer!
I hope the big ugly dude with the funny off red color suit and the dirty old beard delivered what you'd wished for on Christmas morning! So, if you celebrate Christmas in your part of the world, Merry Christmas from me and all the SDA staff! Remember, drink lots, and lots, and lots...

Q2 Timer
The last thing Nolan said to me before he went to bed about half an hour ago was "damnit there's still too many problems! I'm going to bed." So, Q2 Timer is probably going to be delayed for a few more days while Mad Hacka figures out what's up with it. While your waiting, drink some more beer... If you don't drink beer, then start.

Total Re-design
The total structure re-design I've been working on should come before the new year providing it all works smoothly and how it's expected. Note: We will not be accepting any Q2 Runs anyway till the design is implemented, so you'll have a few days to touch up on yer skillz before you start sending in those demos.

Well that's about it, have a great holiday and drink lots of beer. Jesse will probably not make it back from Amsterdam alive from the intoxication that his body will suffer, so it's been nice knowing him! :)

This time last year saw the QdQ team release Quake done 100% Quick. Why break with tradition? The new first-person run Qd100Qlite is QdQ's festive offering for this year. It's a run on skill 0, uncovering every official secret and killing every monster in the game, completing it in 42:25, more than thirty minutes faster than last year's Nightmare run. Get it here.

Even when you don't think there's anything happening here at SDA because our updates are so infrequent, there always is! :) Firstly we have taken on another new staff member, but don't get excited about more updates, more on that later. He's more a Quake 2 player, so he doesn't actually have any runs on Sda at the moment ;) Anyway, give a warm Sda welcome to Nazgul, but don't let him near your children :)

Secondly, we are going to be completely restructuring the site very soon making it much easier for us to update, so the frequency of updates should be improved greatly. I spent most of the weekend writing a database backend that will hold all of the demo/level/player information on the site. It will also allow us to add new sections, levels, and even games with simplicity. It should all be ready very soon and it's going to rock!

Before I even start with the demos I'd better say that I'm almost certain that I've forgotten some... If your demo(s) haven't been posted after an update to the right section [ie custom or original] then by all means email us and tell us the date you sent it...

Optic loses more ground

• Max Rebo improved Optic's 100% of e3m6 on easy by 16 seconds to get 2:52.
• Aleksander Osipov improved Optic's nightmare run of e4m7 by three seconds to get 1:02.

Chris wasn't satisfied with his previous runs of e2m7 so he improved them both by one second to get 0:34 on easy and 0:37 on nightmare. They're very close to "optimized".

A few months ago, Attila and Peter did a nightmare coop run of e4m6 in 0:22, but it hadn't gotten posted yet...

The majority of the demos on this update come from me :) I made 100% demos on easy of every level in the prodigy special edition! If you want to know why, read the text files :)

• pse1 in 2:09.
• pse2 in 2:14.
• pse3 in 3:48.
• pse3b in 1:12.
• pse4 in 3:23.
• psexxx in 1:18, two seconds faster than Stefan's run!

If you want all the demos of this update in one foul swoop, then click here (2135 kb).

q2timer

Expect it "any day now" and definitly "before Christmas".

Justin urged me to mention some of the activity on Ilkka's contest page. One of the contests are on a map that Justin made(!). Check them out at: Mineral's.

RDE-page up

The Runner's Delight Episode progress page is finally up. Over the past few weeks I noticed a lot of people didn't know what to expect from RDE, and this page is supposed to give you an idea of what I've been working on. It contains some screenshots, some general info, a faq etc. Head over there now.

New custom demos (and three regulars)

The rush to fill up the custom 100% section continues...
Thomas Bergendorff did these demos:

• The Disturbed in 1:35, new easy 100%
• From out of Nowhere in 1:37, new easy 100%
• Earthworld in 1:57, new easy 100%
• By ConToCon in 0:44, new easy 100%
• The Commcenter in 2:09, new easy 100%

Chris also did some demos, among which three regular id runs:

• The Gibplex in 0:58, new easy 100%
• Hell's Castle in 1:22, easy run, improves Optic's previous demo by 7 seconds
• Hell's Castle in 1:36, new easy 100%
• e2m7 in 0:35, easy run, 1 second faster than Optic
• e2m7 in 0:38, nightmare run, 2 seconds faster than Optic
• e2m4 in 1:49, easy 100%, 1 second faster than Evan

Stefan Schwoon sent in three (old=)demos:

• Ephemerality in 1:14, new easy 100%
• Base of disgrace in 1:09, new easy 100%
• Base of disgrace in 1:36, new nightmare 100%

Richard Skidmore did these:

• Gods of Rapture in 1:18, easy run, 20 seconds faster than his previous record!
• Trouble Down T'Pit in 3:38, new nightmare 100%
• Gods of Rapture in 5:44, new nightmare 100%
• The Fatal Place in 6:59, also new nightmare 100%, longest custom demo to date

Several other demos

We welcome Quake 2-runner Black_Out to the Quake charts. He did an easy 100%: Welcome to Hotel Kique-Asse in 0:49. Mattias Berggren improved Evan's really old Zer1m1 easy 100% to 0:59, 2 seconds faster. He also did the level on nightmare in 1:19, new nightmare 100%. Ilkka used a really cool telefrag in his new easy 100% of ikspq3, 1:59. Daniel Magnusson improved his Beaches of Hell nightmare 100% to 0:25, 3 seconds faster than his previous demo. Last but definitly not least Carl Tholin improved Justin's recent easy run of The Guardhouse by one sec: epoch1m2 in 0:24.

Hi. Justin asked me to update these two demos he sent in about 3 weeks ago. I was getting the impression he had gotten tired of waiting =)

• Easy 100% of e2m3 in 1:20. 8 seconds faster than Nolan.
• Easy 100% of e3m1 in 1:16. 10 seconds faster than Will.

The QdQ team has released an addon to Scourge done Slick, which includes:

• The SdSlite run, 500 seconds skill 0 through the whole mission pack.
• New marine voices
• Some new special effects
• Some bugfixes

Anyone who has viewed SdS must get this! And anyone who has not view SdS must get SdS too.

Ilkka Kurkela and Juho Larvi do a few must see co-op demos.

• Easy 100% of E1M1 in 0:36 improving Gunnar and Limbeck's time by 3 seconds.
  
• Easy 100% of E4M1 in 0:39 improving their previous time by 6 seconds.
  
• Easy run of E1M7 in 0:14 improving Peter & Attila's time by 1 second.

Ilkka Kurkela does a few single player demos also.

• Easy run of E4M3 in 0:41 improving Markus's time by 2 seconds.
  
• Easy run of E4M5 in 0:12 improving his old time by 1 second (didn't think this was possible).

Carl Lloyd-Parker improves his Nightmare 100% of H3M1 by 66 seconds getting 3:42.

I have received a mail from someone saying they were mad that when I update the files haven't mirrored yet and I will say this now. I receive the demos, I upload them, and I do an update. I dont think I should be accountable for the ammount of time it takes cdrom to mirror the files because I am simply doing an update, thank you :)

Lost World Rotw results posted. Also, check the Rotw page and read the stuff in italics.

Nolan got word from Zoid on the exact explanation of the "Double-Jump" bug in Quake2, here's the explanation on how it works:

When walking up stairs in Q2, if you ecounter a vertical surface that is 16 or less units in height, you'll get pulled up it--you kinda teleport up 16 units. When jumping on the boxes like that, you move up to the second box faster because you get within 16 units of the top and get teleported up those units (since the game thinks you've just move up a step). Because of that 16-bit teleport, your velocity doesn't change, so when get to the other box, you still have a good amount of vel from your initial jump. You jump again and build up some more velocity and get up on those high boxes easier.

There you have it....

Quake II ver 3.20 has been released.. with the source .DLL!!! Grab the files from your favourite news pimps and wait for our release of q2timer to start a new era of Quake II Speed Running. Unfortunately, Radix is currently having exams and would not be able to devote too much time on it... yet. BTW, good luck for your exams, Radix.

Some great demos from Ilkka and Markus all of which improve the previous time by 5 seconds...

Ilkka Kurkela does two Nightmare demos.

• Run of E4M1 in 0:20 improving his old time by 5 seconds using the rotw trick.
  
• Run of E4M2 in 0:37 improves his old time by 5 seconds with the bunny to the exit at the end.

Markus Taipale does an amazing Easy run of E4M3 in 0:43 using some awesome new grenade boosts to improve Ilkka's time by 5 seconds.

This week's Rotw has been posted. This week the task is to run Lost World on skill 0 with 100% kills and secrets. Head over to the Rotw page for more details.

The results from this week's Rotw are up and this week I am bang on time posting them :) Congratulations to Peter Horvath for making it two weeks in a row, but the biggest shock was that Ilkka only managed fourth this week! It just goes to show that he can be beaten, so all those people that write into us moaning about "I'll never be able to beat Ilkka and his bunnies" are wrong! It just takes the effort to find a better route. No disrespect meant to Ilkka at all, but I felt it was a good example to use. Check it out The new challenge will go up either today or tomorrow.

Martin Fernandez was kind enough to send along to us a new demo editor that he has been working on. It's still in the beta stages, but this version should be 99% fully operational. It can be used to perform lots of nifty tasks, and works exceptionally fast on the demo files. You can use it to refilm demos in a similar way to remaic, but with a much greater speed. He's looking for feedback on the program, so go ahead and download it (98k) and be sure to send him some feedback if you find anything you want to comment on.

Scourge done Slick lite (SdSlite) and Quake done 100% Quick lite (Qd100Qlite) are very near release. Watch this space here, and don't miss either of these two great runs!

Speed-Running Tip of the Day
A Quad-Rocket Jump can give you 16x the height of a Normal-Rocket Jump.

Yeah, I finally put the new Rotw up. I'm too tired to write anything worth reading, so just go over to the Rotw page.

Can hardly believe it myself, but here's yet another custom update...

Optic continues making custom-100% demos

• Easy 100% of Court Despair in 2:06
• Easy 100% of The Crypt in 1:51
• Easy 100% of The Cult in 0:52.

Richard Skidmore improves Optic's easy run of Gods of Rapture by 15 seconds to 1:38.

Results from last weeks competition are up, well done to Peter Horvath who has broken Ilkka's run of victory in the rotw. They are still the only two winners so far, with Peter having grabbed 2, and Ilkka 4. New challenge will go up sometime on Monday when we have decided exactly what it will be. It's gonna be something hard though, we have made the contests relativly easy up until now, but I hope that won't discourage people from entering. Roll on over to the rotw page to check out Peter's amazing winning demo.

We've been receiving quite a lot of custom 100%'s lately...very good indeed. This is a category that needs desperate filling. I hope you're all aware of the fact that even though we're not accepting any new custom levels, you are allowed to do a 100% demo of a level that isn't in the 100% tables yet, just as long as it's in the Runs-tables.

[R2]Opt1c

did quite a few demos, as usual:

• Area 51 in 1:37, new easy 100%
• Arcane in 2:24, new easy 100%
• Armageddon 2 in 1:36, new easy 100%
• Badlands 1 in 2:05, new easy 100%
• BC Dwellings in 1:16, new easy 100%
• Blister in 1:08, new easy 100%
• Blister 2 in 1:49, new easy 100%
• Bubbah's Slate in 0:47, new easy 100%
• Tohnsay in 2:35, new easy 100%

Ilkka's SoI-craze

Ilkka obviously fell in love with this level: after his previous improvement over the easy record and a new 100% demo of Shadow of Innsmouth, he did another three demos on this map!

• Nightmare run in 1:30, 16 seconds faster than Optic, using the lately very popular curl-jump at the end =)
• Nightmare 100% in 6:04, new to the tables
• On top of it all, Ilkka and Juho did a coop-easy-100% in 1:59, second longest coop demo to date.

In the course of this new development, I did two custom 100% demos too:

• Mexx 2 in 0:44, nightmare 100%, 15 seconds faster than Matthias
• The Guardhouse in 3:45, nightmare 100%, new to the 100% tables.

Janne Kalliomäki does an (surprise, surprise) easy 100% of IKSPQ2 in 2:22, four seconds faster than his previous time.

Sorry, everyone, no megazipfile this time. My connection was so lousy that it took me a year to get these demos up... next time it'll be here again though.

Results coming tomorrow, honest! Been a hectic w/e, but it's the first time I've slacked off, so you can't moan at me :)

It doesn't happen everyday, but there's a custom-level contest at Mineral's. Ilkka made a really short map which requires some spectacular grenadejumping in order to exit, so check it out. Deadline for this contest in November 28th.

Matthias filled up some more spots in the tables (Matthias: "Another 3 empty slots filled. 289 to go..." =) He did four Mexx demos:

• Mexx 4, nightmare run, in 1:58, new
• Mexx 8b, easy 100%, in 4:01, new
• Mexx 9d, easy run, in 3:38, a 14 seconds improvement over his old time
• Mexx 9d, easy 100%, in 5:57,

Justin wasn't pleased with Matthias' improvements over his Compugib demos, so he improved two of them instantly:

• Compugib, easy run, in 0:32, 1 second faster than Matthias
• Compugib, easy 100%, in 0:39, 2 seconds faster than Matthias
• He also did an easy 100% of Scoop of Chaos: 2:04, new to the tables.
• After a lot of fighting over the Critters-runs with Fredrik, Optic got both the easy and the nightmare record by using a new route: easy in 0:19, 2 seconds faster than Fredrik, and nightmare in 0:20, 2 seconds faster than his previous time.
• Finally he did easy zer1m4 11 seconds faster than Yours Truly, 1:30.

Ilkka did two really cool SoI demos:

• Easy Shadow of Innsmouth in 1:22, 4 seconds faster than Optic
• Easy 100% of SoI in 2:56, new to the 100% tables.

Thomas Bergendorff gets his first entry by doing a proper demo on Arcane:

• Easy run in 1:32, 17 seconds faster than Optic.

Get today's demos in one zip here (2.4M).

One more short thing: everybody in The Netherlands, make sure you get De Volkskrant today, there is a massive article about Quake in there.

Evan mentioned that Peter had beaten Yonatan's time on e4m1, but I thought it was worth mentioning how long this demo has been here. That e4m1_118 won Yonatan a copy of Quake2, and was the winning demo in "Kuhas' Sewage System Challenge".

Peter Horvath has once again freaked me out with his cowboy aim doing an amazing Nightmare 100% of E4M1 in 1:09 improving Yonatan's time by 9 seconds. Just imagine playing deathmatch against this guy *shudders*.

Mr. Kurkela does a Nightmare run of E3M6 in 0:38 improving Mr. Fleck's time by 16 seconds using a new bunny. On a side note I used this same trick in a 0:34 easy run I got a month ago, however I'm not going to replace one of the coolest tricks (that being the double vore ball jump) with a cheesy little bunny hop.

I have improved my easy run of E3M5 by 1 second getting a 1:02 by supressing the second windtunnel (go see for yourself).

Ilkka is running a bit of a weird contest, of which the aim is to be the first person to get 7 on e2m1. You must get 8 to qualify, and at the moment it's just a case of a bunch of people fighting to get the fastest 8 demo. Ilkka's topping the table with 8.49, then me with 8.54, then Fredrik with 8.59, so the competition is tight! Head on over to Mineral's if you think yer ard enuff! :)

Easy Does It
Sorry for not making it clear in the contest description, but like the earlier E2M1 and E1M6 contests, the current E4M1 contest is also in Skill 0. Thanks to those who wrote in to ask.

A Speedy Interview
Psyk's Popcorn Jungle (a Quake Movie review site) has put up an interview with some members of the QdQ team. Unfortunately I was unable to attend that interview because I err... overslept. Damn the time zones. *sigh*

PlanetQuake Gets a Cineplex
Jagged's Quake Movie Reviews site has been assimilated by PlanetQuake (welcome aboard, Jagged!) and been renamed The Cineplex.

Thanks to everyone who participated in last weeks Run of the Week. Head on over to the contest page for the results.

This week we have another "long way" challenge that should spark heavy competition (but take a guess who prevails). Once again check out the contest page for more information on this weeks challenge.

Been awfully busy past few weeks; which meant very little time to update. Apologies, everyone.

Matthias

Matthias did a few cool demos, and conquered two entire levels.

• The Crucible, easy run, in 0:10, 1 second faster than Rikkert
• The Crucible, nightmare run, in 0:10, 1 second faster than his previous record
  
  
• Death Church, easy 100%, in 1:17, new to the 100% tables
• Death Church, nightmare 100%, in 1:49, new to the 100% tables
  
  
• Compugib, easy run, in 0:33, 1 second faster than Justin
• Compugib, nightmare run, in 0:35, 2 seconds faster than Justin
• Compugib, easy 100%, in 0:41, new to the 100% tables
• Compugib, nightmare 100%, in 1:19, new to the 100% tables
  
  
• Bob (frcastl2), easy run, in 0:10, 1 second faster than Justin
• Bob, nightmare run, in 0:10, 1 second faster than Justin
• Bob, easy 100%, in 0:40, new to the 100% tables
• Bob, nightmare 100%, in 0:10, new to the 100% tables

Demos by others

Ilkka does six demos:

• Drakopf, easy run, in 0:12, 1 second faster than Fredrik
• Drakopf, nightmare run, in 0:12, 1 second faster than Optic
• Beyond Belief 3, easy run, in 0:52, 2 seconds faster than Optic
• Prodigy SE 1, easy run, in 0:38, 3 seconds faster than Optic
• IKSPQ1, easy 100% in 1:22, 4 seconds faster than Optic
• Ilkka did a coop with Janne too: IKSPQ1 easy 100% in 1:12

Fredrik improves both 100%'s of Critters:

• easy, 0:57, 1 second faster than Max Rebo
• nightmare, 0:58, also 1 second faster than Max Rebo

Justin does only two demos:

• Polygon 8, nightmare run in 0:08, 1 second faster than Mr. Shambler
• IKSPQ1, nightmare 100% in 1:56, 15 seconds faster than uhmm....err...

Janne does IKSPQ2 easy 100% in 2:26, new (sorry Mattias Berggren, who sent us an easy 100% on this level in 2:35). Jim Paris remains the undisputed ruler over zer1m6: 2:30 on easy, 9 seconds faster than his previous time, and 2:29 on nightmare, 20 seconds faster than his previous time. Talking about Zerstoerer, Mr. Shambler did a massive 99-second improvement over Evan's zer1m5 run by using a cool double-grenadejump: 1:28. Another very large improvement was done by Stefan, he ripped 55 seconds off of Nolan's easy Mexx9c-run: 1:47.

Get the 27 demos in this update in one zip here (2.8M).

Status of Runner's Delight

Just like this update the promised RDE-page is delayed. Although I spend quite a lot of time on the project at the moment, I won't be able to finish the site before the 1st of December.

Ilkka Kurkela did the impossible getting an unbelivable 0:24 on E1M1 improves Peter's time by 1 second.

Will Marsh sent in a couple new demos

• E2M2 Nightmare run in 0:45 using the Ogre grenade jump.
  
• E3M1 Easy 100% in 1:26 improving Optics demo by 3 seconds.

I have done an easy 100% of E2M4 in 1:50 improving Nolan's time by 5 seconds.

Check out the guestbook... There are some ehh interesting messages from PumpkinBoy*ND*

There's the usual amount of demos from Ilkka and Optic this update, but before I get to those, newcomer Markus Taipale has improved two demos:

• He improved Ilkka's easy run of e1m6 by one second to get 0:09 using better bunnies than Ilkka!
• He also improved Peter's 100% of e2m2 on easy by twelve seconds to get 1:06, using a new route.

Congrat's to Markus on these two; hopefully we'll hear from him again.

Ownward to Ilkka's demos:

• The improvments of e1m1 refuse to stop as Ilkka improved the nightmare run by one more second to get 0:27.
• The improvments of e1m7 don't want to stop either since he improved the nightare run/100% to 0:33.
• He beat Attila's nightmare run of e3m1 by one second to get 0:29.
• Since Peter got a faster time on nightmare than he had on easy, for the run of e3m3, he improved his easy run by two seconds to get 0:27.
• He improved Optic's 100% of h1m3 on easy by 19 seconds to get 1:43.
• He proves himself crazy, in Optic's terms at least, by improving Optic's nightmare run of hdm1 by one second to get 0:25.
• Ilkka finally does some DoE demos: r1m1 in 1:19 on easy, three seconds better than Evan.
• r1m2 in 1:33 on easy, four seconds better than Optic.
• r1m3 in 0:26 on easy and 0:23 on nightmare, both using a new trick.

And here's Optic's demos:

• h1m1 100% in 1:21 on easy, four seconds better than me [damnit].
• runs of h2m6 in 1:11 on easy and 1:17 on nightmare, both improving on his previous demos.
• h3m1 100% in 1:40 on easy, 14 seconds better than me [damnit^2]
• h3m2 100% in 1:55 on easy, 18 seconds better than me [gee, I guess Optic's getting even...]
• r1m4 in 0:58 on easy, improving his last one by seven seconds.

WoW! Thanks to everyone who participated in what has been the most popular and most closely fought contest so far. Speed over to the Contest page to check out my write-up and the results. Thanks to everyone who took part! Go check out the new challenge aswell, we hope you like it!

Also, QdQ are holding a mini poll to do with bunnying in Quake2. If you feel this is important to you, please head over there and vote. Thanks!

Just a quick reminder that you have roughly 13 1/2 hours to get your submissions in for this weeks contest. The response on this has been overwhelming with something like 28 quality demos having come in (not including people who have sent several entries).

We were thinking of doing some sort of a time challenge for the next contest, give you say 30 secs in a level to get as many kills as you can, what do people think of this idea? Mail Us your thoughts.

Good response so far on this week's contest, loads of demos and it's only been a few days. That's reasuring as this one was my idea :-) One thing.... Everyone stop asking what Ilkka got, we won't tell you, ok? :)

Speed on over to the ROTW page to see who was victorious in this week's challenge. The three at the top were very close! New challenge is also up, so get running again! :)

Thanks to Gerald for the Birthday greeting, 19 means pretty much sod all in this country but it's definitely a good excuse for a mass partying session tonight. Woohoo!

Justin have been waiting a long time for some of these demos to be updated. I sincerely offer my deepest apologies, Mr.Fleck. Anyway, here they are:

• Nightmare run of h2m1 in 0:32. Improves Yonatan's (SdS) record with 1 second.
• Nightmare run of h2m3 in 0:52. Improves his own record with 6 seconds.
• Easy run of h2m4 in 0:41. Improves Ilkka's record with 2 seconds.
• Nightmare run of h2m4 in 0:47. Improves Yonatan's record with 5 seconds.
• Nightmare run of h2m5 in 0:41. Improves his own record with 4 seconds.
• Nightmare run of h3m1 in 0:53. Improves Yonatan's (SdS) record with 4! seconds.
• Nightmare run of h3m3 in 0:48. Improves Yonatan's record with 15! seconds.
• Nightmare run of hdm1 in 0:26. Improves Ilkka's record with 2 seconds. (check the .txt Ilkka =)
• Nightmare run of r1m3 in 0:41. Improves his own record with 7 seconds.
• Easy run of r1m3 in 0:42. Improves Evan's record with 4 seconds. Strangely enough, one second slower than the nightmare one. Keep up the good work, Justin =)

Ilkka improved Justin's h2m3 100% record with 10 seconds, to get this 2:10. He also improved his own hdm1 easy run to get a 0:18.

Even though I said this was a SoA and DoE update, I'll add this cool nightmare run of e3m3 in 0:28 by Peter. He improves Justin's demo with 25 seconds with this, and even improves Ilkka's *easy* run with 1 second. Cool new variation of doing the double ogre-grenade jump =)

Qdqstats 1.5 released
Nolan has added quite a few new features for co-operative running in this release. With Mad Coops[tm] in mind, I imagine =) He also added some other things, like an ogre-grenade counter that sounds really interesting. Check it out

Our dear Chris Longden turns 19 today! Congratulations, Chris! Now you can legally... err... declare that you're 19 years. Not sure what's the age limit for drinking, driving, sex, viewing pr0n there in UK, but either you're there already or you're one year closer.

Speed Fortress is a page dedicated to speed running Team Fortress maps on QuakeWorld Team Fortress servers. Maps currently being run are 2fort5, well6 and bam4. If you are a Team Fortress fan like myself, you will definitely want to check this out. If you have never tried Team Fortress, you're missing out on the best teamplay mod ever created for Quake (apart from Mad Coops, heheh).

Just a quick reminder that there's about 29 hours left till deadline for this week's rotw, so don't forget to send in ya demos to us! Some good demos come in so far, but not as many as last week, so keep em coming!

Patrick O'Shaughnessy improves Justin's nightmare e1m1 100% with 3 seconds to get a 1:13

Steinar Vatne insists the easy e2m5 run belongs to him with this 0:34. Improves Tommi's record with 1 second.

Attila gives us these two:

• Nightmare run of e3m1 in 0:30. Improves Ilkkas record with 1 second.
• Nightmare run of e3m2 in 0:26. Improves Justins record with 19 seconds.

Hard-working Justin gives us these to look at:

• Easy 100% of e3m2 in 1:03. Improves Evans record with 4 seconds.
• Easy 100% of e3m5 in 1:36. Improves Peter's record with 6 seconds.
• Nightmare run of e4m4 in 0:24. Improves Ilkka's record with 1 second.
• Easy 100% of e4m5 in 1:51. Improves Nolan's record with 8 seconds.
• Nightmare run of e4m6 in 0:51. Improves his own record with 27! seconds.

Nolan sent in the last minute a demo to me. An easy 100% of e2m5 in 1:35. Improves Justin's record with 22! seconds. Lots of action here.

A few coops

The hungarian friends Attila and Peter improved Evan's and Cameron's easy e4m6 run with one second to get a 0:22.

We also did a Mad Coop[tm] a while ago. A 4 player easy 100% of e1m6 in 0:32. Run by Gunnar, Will, Nolan and Evan.

That's right boys and girls, it's that time of the week where we announce a new challenge, and praise the winner of the old one. Congrats to Ilkka for really running his socks off (silly pun i know) in this one, his demo was pretty awesome! Head on over to the Rotw page for details on the new challenge, and for the write-up on last weeks challenge 'e2m1, the long way'.

The time is drawing near for the close of this weeks Run of The Week, so if you haven't submitted your efforts, you have about 12 1/2 hours left to do so... We are seeing some good competition in this one, although the current leader is several seconds ahead of the rest of the field...

Announced on Disrupter's .plan, the beta version of v3.20 is out. Hopefully this beta won't last long and the full version with .dll will be out soon after. Quite a few changse, but one REALLY nice change is that we can finally bind keys to F1-F10 and use them during demo playback! Woohoo!

Just in case you were wonding, here's the actual email zoid sent to me after I sent in two mails asking about the source:

Hi Nolan.

We are working hard on a 3.20 patch now that addresses issues that appeared in 3.19. There are several fixes to the game library, so we're holding after that.

3.20 addresses most of all the current outstanding bugs and issues with Quake2. We are currently in internal testing and will be releasing a 3.20 as a public beta (it is fully interoperable with 3.19).

I understand your frustration (I know I would be if I was on the other side of the fence!), but we'd like to make sure we have a stable base first.

/// Zoid.

I also sent my messages to John Cash but I didn't get anything from him...

More Delays to Quake II Speed Running
According to inside information, the .dll source for Q2 v3.19 will continue to be witheld while id prepares to release a beta of v3.20. The .dll source will probably not be released until a few days (or weeks, or months?) after the the final v3.20 is released. Without this .dll source, Radix cannot write Q2Timer which we need to use for Q2 Speed Running and Q2dQ2.

ROTW Update
There has been quite a lot more competition in this contest compared to first contest. A lot of good entries. The deadline for this contest is the 23rd. Don't miss it!

Here are the usual 'late' demos... Optic did some more:

• Drakopf, nightmare run, in 0:13, 1 second faster than his previous time
• Drakopf, nightmare 100%, in 0:25, 8 seconds faster than Matthias
• Eye Socket, nightmare run, in 0:59, 4 seconds faster than Matthias
• The Funrun, easy run in 0:55, 3 seconds faster than his previous time
• Polygon 8, easy run in 0:08, 1 second faster than Mr. Shambler

Max Rebo improved his own nightmare 100% of Critters: 0:59, 8 seconds faster.

Matthias did two demos: nightmare run of Corporal Punishment II in 0:14, 1 second faster than his own demo, and a nightmare run of ikspq2 in 1:49, a demo full of bloodshed.

Peter Horvath did another incredibly fast demo: nightmare 100% of Doom2 map 1 in 0:42, 5 seconds faster than Stefan

Get the 9 demos in this update in one zip here (870K).

We've seen too little new demos up here at SDA lately, so I decided to get this awaited custom update over with. All those Optic demos spamming my mailbox, I just couldn't take it anymore =)

New News feature!

After earlier 'large' updates I made, some people complained it was such a painstaking task to download all the separate demos, and suggested to add all demos from one update to one, massive zip-file. At first I didn't think this was worth the effort, but I've grown somewhat weary myself of uploading all demos... so, here it is, a 5 meg zip, containing all 33 demos from this update. Ofcourse all the demos can still be obtained separately by following the linked times. Let us know if you like the idea. (don't expect this link to work forever though =)

Fleck's demos

Here we go. Surprise surprise, Optic remains the undisputed ruler over the custom level runs. He did some really cool demos this time.

Easy 100%:

• Doom2_04 in 0:51, 8 seconds faster than Stefan
• Teleporters in 0:31, 'new' in the 100% tables (does 19-6-98 sound 'new' to you? It does to me so shut up! ;)
• Drakopf in 0:21, 4 seconds faster than Matthias
• The Guardhouse in 0:53, 3 seconds faster than Carl
• Erotique in 1:29, 13 seconds faster than Stefan
• Evilpool in 1:39, 'new' in the 100% tables
• Mexx2 in 0:29, 4 seconds faster than Matthias

Nightmare 100%

• Doom2_04 in 0:54, 5 seconds faster than Stefan
• Teleporters in 0:32, 'new' in the 100% tables

Easy runs:

• The Forbidden Base in 0:37, 4 seconds faster than his previous record
• Blister 1 in 0:46, 2 seconds faster than his previous record
• Corporal Punishment II in 0:14, 1 second faster than Matthias
• Base of Disgrace in 0:47, 2 second faster than Rikkert
• The Guardhouse in 0:25, 1 second faster than Evan
• The Map of Flo in 0:53, 8 second faster than Rikkert
• The Lost World in 0:45, 3 seconds faster than Evan
• Village of the Dread in 1:46, 9 seconds faster than Evan

Nightmare runs:

• The Forbidden Base in 0:38, 5 seconds faster than his previous record
• Blister 1 in 0:46, 9 seconds faster than Matthias
• The Colony in 0:36, 5 seconds faster than Matthias
• Doom2_04 in 0:27, 3 seconds faster than Matthias
• The Map of Flo in 0:53, 27 seconds faster than his own time
• The Funrun in 0:55, 3 seconds faster than Matthias

Newcomer Jim Paris takes on one of the gloomiest custom levels to date: zer1m6 in 2:39 on easy, 13 seconds faster than Evan, and 2:49 on nightmare.

Max rebo improved Fredriks Critters easy 100% by one second to 0:58.

Ilkka did four demos: an easy run of The Colony in 0:33, 2 seconds faster than Optic; an easy 100% of Azurette in 2:19; he also improved his old Harmsway easy 100% by 10 seconds to 2:49; and finally he did Beyond Belief map 1 in 1:54, another easy 100%, 17 seconds faster than Nolan.

"Stafan" Schwoon improved one of his Beyond Belief 100%'s: bb1 in 2:29, 15 seconds faster than his previous time.

IK1 100% bizniz

After the initial improvements Janne sent us over both Carl's easy and my nightmare demo of ik1 100%, we got two faster demos by him on (1:33 on easy and 2:29 on nightmare) but Optic interfered: he got 1:26 on easy and 2:14 (24 secs faster than Janne) on nightmare, which was fast, but not fast enough to beat my 2:11.

Status of Runner's Delight

I've been quite busy lately getting RDE (an episode designed specifically for speedrunning) over with, I think everybody's waited long enough...so, a progress page will launch this week, with some more details, screenshots, tech info etc. Estimated release date of RDE: january 1999.

It seems Chris wasn't clear enough on the rules for the new e2m1 contest. He said "The only catch is that you are _not_ allowed to jump between the two overhangs of the water" Several people are finding a hole in that statement... they've been getting the grenade launcher from the secret and then gjumping to the exit. That's not allowed either! Its called "the long way" for a reason. Go through the whole level you lazy bum :)

Congratulations to Peter Horvath who won the first Run of the Week, pipping Ilkka to the post by 2 tenths of a second. Head on over to the Challenge page for results, and the details of the next competition.

(We really must post some more demos soon, we know. Things have been hectic lately, but we are getting there, and we will be making some huge demo updates soon.)

The deadline for the first run of the weekly challenge, at midnight EST tonight. That's exactly seven and a half hours from when I added this news...

The demos for the first round of Twisted Speed Run contests are now available from their Archives page. Now I'm gonna check out how Hermes completed that E1M2 in 55 seconds....

After having being visited by someone from the US Government, SDA had 2 more visitors from the US Military. Rumours are that the US Marines may be planning to kidnap Speed-Runners and sending them on Speed-Running missions to take out some terrorist bases in Africa....

One of the acclaimed gods of speed-running, has started a page for demos, which has nothing to do with speed. Yonatan's new site called simply Quake2 Custom Level Demos will accept submissions of all Quake2 demos done on custom maps, regardless of how fast they are. Sounds like an interesting prospect, so be sure to check it out if your growing tired of waiting for id to release the 3.19 source, so we can get down to some real Quake2 running ;)

Nolan pointed out (from looking at the counter stats) that he noticed we had a visitor using a hostname inside the US Government extension. Wander what the government wants with SDA? ;)

Big Brother is watching us all....

The Twisted Speed-Run Contest results are out. Darkhold won the E1M1 contest in a time of :48.1, Hermes won the E1M2 contest in a time of :55.4 and Illka won the E1M5 contest with a time of :59.0 The demos are not available yet. Man.. I'll definitely like to check them out.

3 new speed-run contests are up.

• E3M1, Skill 1, 100% kills, 3/5 secrets
• E3M2, Skill 1, 100% kills + secrets, Quad
• E3M3, Skill 1, 100% kills + secrets, Quad + God + All weapons

Ilkka Kurkela has done alot of awesome demos.

• Easy 100% of Elektra in 1:04 improves his old demo by 1 second.
  
• Easy 100% of Harmsway in 2:59 new to the charts.
  
• Nightmare 100% of Harmsway in 3:41 also new.
  
• Easy run of Azurette in 0:51 finding a new grenade jump.
  
• Nightmare run of Azurette in 0:48 with help from an ogre :)
  
• Nightmare run of E4M4 in 0:25 improves his old time by 1 second.

Janne Kalliomäki improved Jesse's Nightmare 100% of IKSPQ1 by 13 seconds to get 2:38

And I have improved Optic's E3M2 Easy 100% by 7 seconds to get 1:07

According to the news page of the Twisted Contest Site, the results to the speed-run contest aren't out yet, and they're still being checked. The Speed-Run Contest page has been changed to show that there will be a new contest starting today.

It seems the end map madness will continue, and Fredrik Arvidsson is the one keeping it going at the moment. He has beaten Ilkka's time on skill 0, by 1 second, to get 0:18. The question is, who will be first to do it on skill 3? And can it be done faster? I doubt it, but im learning not to think that way..:)

Ok, we are finally ready to launch our new 'Weekly Challenge'. Basically each week we will set a new challenge, give you all a week to get a really rocking time, then announce the winner's name in glory, stick his demo up for everyone to watch, then set another challenge. This week, we start off with e2m3, skill3, 100%. Nolan's current time has been around for quite a while, and he reckons there's some room for improvement, so go for it!

Challenge Page

Check it out, and get running! You have one week!

Last night I received a mail from Mr. Fleck saying he beat my Harmsway time by 1 second getting 0:12. The time looked optimum so I decided I would have to come up with a new trick. Anyways I found this new bunny to the exit teleporter which cut Optic's improved time in half!

I did an easy run in 0:06.
And Optic did a Nightmare run in 0:07.

Enjoy :)

Hopefully I dont mess up in this update :)

Coops

Cameron Engles and I have done a few co-op's:

• Easy 100% of e1m5 in 0:35 Beats Attila and Peter's demo by 3 seconds.
  
• Easy 100% of e3m5 in 1:16 improves our horrible old time by to much.
  
• Easy run of e4m6 in 0:23 reclaims our old record from Gunnar and Optic.

Ilkka and Juho did an easy run of e3m4 in 0:39 new to the charts.

Runs

Optic does alot of Rogue+Custom demos

• R1M1 on Nightmare in 1:26 improves Jan's demo by 19 seconds.
  
• R1M2 on Easy in 1:37 improves his old time by 5 seconds.
  
• R1M3 on Nightmare in 0:48 improves his old time by 6 seconds.
  
• R1M4 on Nightmare in 1:11 improves his old time by 30 seconds.
  
• R1M5 on Easy in 1:08 improves his old time by 12 seconds.
  
• R1M5 on Nightmare in 1:36 improves his old time by 13 seconds.
  
• R2M4 on Easy in 1:53 improves Nolan's time by 7 seconds.
  
• Colony on Easy in 0:35 improves my old time by 1 second.
  
• Assassins on Easy in 0:30 improves my time by 3 seconds.
  
• Assassins on Nightmare in 0:29 improves Mr Shambler's time by 5 seconds.

I have done some demos also.

• R1M1 on Easy in 1:22 using a new bunny hop to the silver key.
  
• R1M3 on Easy in 0:46 using a new route.

Ilkka Kurkela improves his Nightmare E4M5 to an amazing 0:12 using a fiend push.

Newcomer Janne Kalliomäki improves Carl Tholin's Easy IKSPQ1 100% by 3 seconds getting 1:36.

Will Marsh does R1M6 on Easy in 2:40 which he claims to be his last demo for some time.

Matthias Belz does Colony on Nightmare in 0:41 improves Optic's demo by 2 seconds

Still flabbergasted by Yonatan's e1m3-run, I almost forgot to update Peter's demolition of the IKSPQ easy-times. He improved them all!! They're all a pleasure to watch, especially ik1, and ik5, which features some of the coolest grenade-jumping I have seen to date (a fabulous 'twin'-gjump for instance =)...

• IKSPQ1 in 0:47, 4 seconds faster than Evan
• IKSPQ2 in 0:58, 8 seconds faster than Evan
• IKSPQ3 in 0:17, 1 second faster than Rikkert
• IKSPQ4 in 1:03, 7 seconds faster than Optic
• IKSPQ5 in 0:48, 15 seconds faster than Optic

Ilkka did two demos:

• Easy 100% of Evilworld in 1:44, new in the 100% tbales
• Nightmare run of zer1m1 in 0:46, 2 seconds faster than Optic, with a cool enforcerjump

Fredrik Arvidsson did Easy Critters 100% in 0:59, 7 seconds faster than Max Rebo.

Yonatan Donner, one of the most respected and well known speed runners has made his final SDA demo which looks very unbeatable. *Drum roll* He did E1M3 on Nightmare in 0:28 which beats Will Marsh's time by 1 second. If anyone gets a 0:27 they would either have to be Ilkka on speed or Peter with another one of his wacky new routes :)

Thanks to Carl-Lloyd Parker for pointing out that Evan messed up in is 'Talk like Optic' update...

He posted the wrong r1m1_140; Optic accidentally sent us a 1:43 first, but sent the right one soon after. I've fixed that, so this is the real 1:40 now.

He also said Optic did r2m7 in :58 on nightmare, but that was his easy time; he did it in :59 on nightmare and Evan didn't post it...

As far as I know that's all he did wrong... now I must go hurt him.

Personal note from Evan: Sorry people but hey you try and talk like Optic and see if it doesn't go to your head :)

World famous speedrunner Yonatan Donner is back. He just improved Justin's easy e1m5 run with one second to get a 0:18. Just didn't think this was possible. Congratulations on that run Yonatan - I almost did in my pants =)

B3c4use Gunn4r c3l3br4t3d 4nn0y 0pt1c d4y I th0ught 1t b3 0nly r1ght w3 h4v3 t4lk l1ke 0pt1c d4y :) F0r 4ll th0s3 wh0 h4v3n't 3v3r m3t 0pt1c pl34s3 r34d d1s t3xt f1l3.

Optic and Ilkka

I1kk4 Kurk3l4 f00king 0wnz Bbelief2 1mpr0v1ng 4ll t1m3s f0r 1t

• Easy run in 0:16 which looks optimum
  
• Nightmare run in 0:16 definitly optimum
  
• Easy 100% in 1:27 improves Stefan's by 18 seconds
• Nightmare 100% in 2:08 improves Stefan's by 8 seconds
  

G00d job 1llk4 but r3m3b3r St3f4n st1ll 0wns j00 :)

Mr 3b0n1cs h1ms3lf h4s d0n3 m4ny R0gu3 d3m0s

• Easy run of r1m1 in 1:40 improves Gunnar's by 9 seconds
  
• Nightmare run of r1m2 in 1:47 nice comment about me there :)
  
• Easy run of r1m3 in 0:48 improves his time by 4 seconds
  
• Nightmare run of r2m7 in 0:58

Ilkka Kurkela improves Peter's e4m8 by 1 second getting 0:47 he now ownz e4

More demos coming tomarrow from Jesse :) Ph34r my l33t upd4t3s

Peter Horvath improves Justin's nightmare 100% of e1m6 with 23! seconds, to get a 0:56. Wacky route and lots of hard tricks. Impressive Peter =)

Welcome Jan Schob who improves Justin's (again) nightmare r1m1 run with 10! seconds, to get a 1:45. Introducing a new trick at the end that saves quite a lot of time. This demo also improves my easy run with 4 seconds - just a tip =)

Also welcome Richard Skidmore who (surprise, surprise) improves Justin's nightmare run of r2m7 with 29! seconds to get a 1:20. Nice route =)

My sympathies, Justin.

I've made two demos on the beyond belief maps that are really unbelievable...

First I improved that really crappy attempt of a demo, which Gunnar called the worst demo he'd ever seen, of a run through bb6 on nightmare. The old time was 6:31, and the new time is 1:25!!! That's over five minutes faster than my time, and 12 seconds faster than the time in speed Beyond Belief.

Second, I took up Stefan's challenge to do a 100% of bb7 on nightmare and got 3:15. Definitly worth watching.

Demos from other people coming later...

As usual, I forgot a demo in my update...

Ilkka did EvilWorld in 0:32, 5 seconds faster than Optic. Nice ogre jump.
Stefan pointed out to me that I placed his in name behind the colony 100% row while it should have been Evan, Sorry Evan, I fixed it.

Matthias improved two of Fredrik's runs a while ago:

• Corporal Punishment 2 in 0:15 on easy, 1 second faster, using a quaded rjump
• Corporal Punishment 2 in 0:15 on nightmare, also 1 second faster

Rikkert finds two faster routes than Optic once again:

• Base of Disgrace in 0:49 on easy, 11 seconds faster
• The Map of Flo in 1:01 on easy, 18 seconds faster

And finally, Stefan adds another map to the custom 100% table:

• Erotique in 1:42 on easy, and 1:48 on nightmare.

I thought id better warn you all that im transfering most of the site content gradually over to the SQL server here at PQ, so if everything stops working, it probably means that i've cocked something up ;) An another note, Stefan suggested to me that it might be a cool idea to have sda news updates emailed to a mailing list as and when they are done, and you could subscribe to the mailing list from the site. Anyone who wants to tell me their thoughts on this, drop me a line. Im also working on some new stuff for the site, including a weekly competition that we will be running to seperate the men from the boys ;) This should be quite cool when it's done, all the backend coding is finished now, it's just figuring out a cool way to output it all. /me goes off to buy a 'Making the transition from Access to SQL server' book :)

The Twisted Speed-Run Contest deadline is the 28th, only 3 or 4 more days. If you haven't sent in your entries yet, do it quick before it's too late. Good luck, SDAers, and may the Bunny be with you.

Optic complained that I didn't post some of the demos that he sent to us a while ago, or failed to place them in the tables. Whatever, here they are (again? =)...

• BC Dwellings on nightmare in 0:44, 8 seconds faster than his own time
• Court Despair on nightmare in 1:28, new record
• Earthworld on easy in 1:19, 6 seconds faster than his own time
• Earthworld on nightmare in 1:20, new record
• Eye Socket on easy in 0:58, 2 seconds faster than his own time
• The Forsaken Citadel on nightmare in 0:19, 2 seconds faster than Matthias
• Fireworld on easy in 0:43, 2 seconds faster than his own time

The tables still have some other errors in them; I'll fix them this week.

Max Rebo improved his Critters easy 100% demo with one second to 1:06.

Will Marsh is filling up the empty spaces in the DoE 100% tables:

• Nightmare 100% of r2m6 in 5:05. Was down to one health here... =)
• Easy 100% of r2m6 in 4:04.
• Nightmare 100% of r2m7 in 6:56. Taking on 2 shamblers with only 3 health left =)
• Easy 100% of r2m7 in 5:31.

Keep up the good work, Will =)

Quite a few custom demos here :)

Optic does alot of demos:

• Hip2m2 on nightmare in 0:30 improves Ilkka's by 1 second
  
• Hip1m4 on nightmare in 1:25
  
• Hotel on easy in 0:25
  
• TRR on easy in 0:47 improves Chris's by 2 seconds
  
• TRR on nightmare in 0:47 improves Chris's by 4 seconds
  
• Cult on easy in 0:24 improves my time by 1 second
  
• Cult on nightmare in 0:25

Stefan Schwoon continues his Beyond Belief rampage doing BBS 100% on nightmare in 2:44

I did a pair of runs on the custom map TRR today while I had some spare time.

• Skill 0 run in 0:49, 6 seconds quicker than Mr.Shambler.
  
• Skill 3 run in 0:51, 5 seconds quicker than Mr.Shambler.

HA released their single player level pack today and are running a little (non prized) contest of who can run their maps the fastest. Although there are no prizes it still sounds fun so get running!

I am of course taking about End Map madness :) And the answer is, yes, I think it will now. Ilkka has produced two demos, that _seem_ unbeatable, and if someone beats them, ill erm, well ill prolly collapse.

• End, skill 0 run in 0:19 !!!!!!!
  
• End, skill 3 run in 0:19 !!!!!!!

The trick Ilkka used here is awesome. Commiserations to Atilla, who also sent us a 0:19, but unfortunately for him 2 hours after Ilkka. I never imagined that Nolan and me doing those coop runs would ever spark off such enthusiasm for the perfect time on the end map, but I can't see there's any improvements to be had now.

Custom Runs

Max Rebo did two Critters 100%'s

• Easy 100% run of critters in 1:07 beats my time by 8 seconds
• Nightmare 100% of critters in 1:07

Mr Shambler has done some normal runs

• Easy run of TRR in 0:55 improves Josh's by 17 seconds
  
• Nightmare run of TRR in 0:56 improves Josh's by 17 seconds

Peter Horvath improved errr Pevan Lagner's easy 100% time of e2m2 by 4 seconds to get 1:18 boy do I feel sorry for Pevan :)

Well after seeing Ilkka's end_029 I knew it could still be improved a lot by using the trick I talked about before, the grenade and rocket jump to the secret exit. Well Fredrik Arvidson took the bait and did this:

• End, skill 0, run in 0:22!!!! 7 seconds quicker than Ilkka's demo with the quad jump route.

Fredrik said in his .txt file his demo can be improved, and I would have to agree, his start wasn't that great, but this trick is hard and credit to him for being the first one to do it. It would also be cool if someone managed one of these tricks on nightmare, but that's _much_ harder because that shambler on the island goes nuts on skill 3.

Me updating two days in a row? I must be ill. Or perhaps it's the marvellous updating system Chris gave us =)

Yesterday Nolan went to his school to play coop with me. We've been trying to do an easy run of e1m8 a few times earlier, using his modem, but we couldn't even beat Steinars single player run, which was a bit of an embarrassment. Well, we managed decent 0:30 easy run. After that we did the easy 100% and needed only 16 seconds more, to get a 0:46. Quite fun to run this map =)

Mad Coops[tm]
Nolan, Evan and me did an easy 100% of e4m3 a while ago. We managed to get it done in 1:27, which is only 8 seconds faster than DooMfienDs single player demo... what did we do wrong? =)

Welcome on the team Evan =)

Well this is an all time record for SDA with 6 updates in a day :) Here are a couple more 100%'s.

Max Rebo did a 100% of The Beaches of Hell in 0:31 on Easy.
DooMfienD improved his great E4M3 100% by 7 seconds to get 1:35 on Easy.

Once again I would like to thank Chris for the update system as it obviously helps out big time. What was an update every few days has now turned into many updates a day :)

5 updates in a day? Well thanks to the system Chris gave us its quick, easy, and possible :) By the way I am Evan Wagner and have been running here for quite some time and just joined SDA yesterday to help Jesse with the custom level updates. Speaking of which I have added two great 100% runs for you

Max Rebo did The Beaches of Hell in 0:28 on Nightmare.
And Stefan Schwoon did the Beyond Belief secret level in 1:45 on Easy.

Time for another big custom update...I'm very glad to report that Evan has joined the SDA team to assist me in updating the custom levels. Hopefully custom demos get posted sooner now...

As always, lots of demos from Optic.
Easy runs:

• Discordia in 0:51, 2 seconds faster than Evan
• The Dwelling in 0:44, 2 seconds faster than his own previous time
• Escape in 0:54, 4 seconds faster than his own previous time
• The Giblex in 0:29, 3 seconds faster than Josh Zayas
• Hellbase in 0:57, 6 seconds faster than his own previous time
• The Soul Grinder in 1:11, 3 seconds faster than his own previous time
• The Place of Belonging in 2:19, 14 seconds faster than Rikkert
• Bridge to Fire in 0:31, 1 second faster than his own previous time
• The Epoch Turning in 1:01, 4 seconds faster than his own previous time
• The Tomb in 1:41, 10 seconds faster than Josh Zayas

Nightmare runs:

• Badlands 1 in 1:06, 9 seconds faster than Matthias
• BC Dwellings 1 in 0:44, 8 seconds faster than Matthias
• Blister2 in 1:06, 7 seconds faster than Matthias
• Bridges and Towers in 1:13, 8 seconds faster than Matthias
• Death Church in 1:16, 2 seconds faster than Matthias
• The Dwelling in 0:46, 9 seconds faster than Matthias
• The Colony in 0:43, 7 seconds faster than Stefan
• Ephemerality in 0:53, 9 seconds faster than Matthias
• The Giblex in 0:29, 4 seconds faster than Josh Zayas
• Hellbase in 0:57, 7 seconds faster than Matthias
• Bridge to Fire in 0:33, 2 seconds faster than Matthias
• The Tomb in 1:42, 18 seconds faster than Josh Zayas

Matthias did some runs:

• The Beaches of Hell in 0:10 on easy, 7 seconds faster than Ilkka. Now that's a sentence we don't see too often =)
• The Eldencross in 0:17 on easy, 12 seconds faster than Optic
• The Eldencross in 0:18 on nightmare, also 12 seconds faster than his own previous record
• Mexx7 in 1:53 on easy, 19 seconds faster than Mr-J[!!]
• The Eldencross in 1:56 on nightmare, 23 seconds faster than Mr-J[!!]

Fredrik did two runs:

• Critters in 0:21 on easy, one second faster than Optic
• Welcome to Hotel Kique-Asse in 0:26 on nightmare, one second faster than Optic

Coops

Ilkka and Juho did two easy runs together:

• Mexx9a in 0:34
• The Beaches of Hell in 0:10 ...apparently Ilkka found the new route too, because this is not really a coop =)

Evan and Cameron Engles did some easy coops too:

• Mexx9a in 0:55
• The Colony in 0:32
• zer1m1 in 0:40

The two also sent in a very very VERY dull demo of Evan exiting zer1m6 in 0:04 (the end-teleporter emerges direcly from the pool in coop for some strange reason) and even though Evan promised to put up a "Jesse is a p1mp-site" if I posted it, I won't do it. Haha Evan =)

Status of Runner's Delight

Due to a malfunctioning network-card I didn't have access to my computer for a rather long period, but even though it still isn't solved, I restarted working on the project today; I'd say it's somewhere near 50% of completion right now, so don't expect a release within the next two months. Much more important news concerning RDE though is the following: with some genius QuakeC Nolan has compiled a progs.dat that will disable bunnyhopping. Yes people, it's true. I can't say how glad I was when I heard he got it done. Finally we can cut out the annoying boings and get down to the real running...

Ilkka made an easy 100% of e4m1 in 1:00 a few days ago. Improved Peters demo with two seconds. I forgot all about it when I made that update earlier today - sorry man. There's a special message for you in the text-file Peter =)

Well Ilkka didn't like Optic beating his e4m6, so he sent us this 0:47, which I honestly didn't think was possible, oh well, I guess ill learn not to think that one day :)

Peter Horvath, just like Optic, decided to make Ilkka work for his near monopoly on the 4th episode. Here he improves the easy run of e4m8 with one second, to get a 0:48. New trick alert! =)

Stefan Schwoon continues to fill in the last spots in the Beyond Belief 100% column. This time doing 2 nightmare 100%s: bbelief5 in 6:54, and bbelief6 in 6:17. Both are improvable he says.

Well the End Map madness has continued, and today Ilkka sent us a demo based on the trick Nolan and I developed for our coop end runs, that was beaten by the disharge gib of Atilla and Peter. We never thought it would be possible to get to the secret exit on end in single player using this trick, and thought the only possible improvement was a difficult grenade and rocket jump up to it. As usual Ilkka has proved us wrong, and beaten the current record set by Atilla the other day, by 4 seconds, to get 0:29. This demo rocks, and the trick is so much harder than it looks at first...

Optic decided he wanted to steal one of Ilkka's times in the Episode 4 runs column, which we know Ilkka doesn't like to see. Justin produced a pretty much perfect demo on e4m6 to get 0:48. This beats Ilkka's time by two seconds, and I will be amazed if Ilkka can better it...

The QdQ is mainly working on 3 projects at the moment. Quake done 100% Quick lite (Qd100Qlite) is next to completed and just needing a few final touch ups. The QdQ Production team will also be working on the movie version of The Rabbit Run (first person perspective version just released ), and from first looks, it may even be a movie to rival the standards of Scourge done Slick! Speaking of which, work has just started on Scourge done Slick lite (SdSlite) too. Meanwhile, work on Quake done double Quick (QddQ) still goes on. Work on Quake 2 done Quick Too has not yet started, and will probably start right after the new Q2Timer for Q2 v3.19 is released.

Evan and Cameron did a whole lot of 100% coop demos, all on easy skill:

• e1m3 in 1:10, one second better than Attila and Peter.
• e1m4 in 1:02, eight seconds better than Attila and Peter.
• e2m2 in 0:53, three seconds better than Ilkka and Juho-Jussi.
• e2m3 in 1:25, new.
• e3m2 in 0:49, nine seconds better than Jesse and Coen.
• e3m3 in 0:54, new.
• e3m5 in 1:32, new.

Attila and Peter also three coop demos, all with discharge jumps!

• They improved the easy run of e3m5 by seven seconds to get 0:38.
• And they improved the coops Chris and I did on end by six seconds on both easy and nightmare getting 0:16 on both.

Chris and I also did a coop 100% of e2m4; we improved Chris and Ilkka's by nine seconds to get 1:26. This demo has something 'very interesting' about it :)

Some single player demos
I improved another one of Optic's 100% demos: I got e4m5 in 1:59, 31 seconds faster.
Newcomer Tommi Reinikainen improved the easy run of e2m5 by one second to get 0:35 with a different rj.
Peter Horvath improved the easy run of e2m2 to 0:36, three seconds faster than Carl, by finding a new use for a fiend jump.
Ilkka improved the easy run of e4m6 by one second to get 0:50.
Attila improved the long thought unimprovable runs on the end map on both easy and nightmare, getting 0:33 on both.

This is the first time I try out our new update-system here. Seems like it's just as easy as everyone says. Now let's try to add a link:

• 2 player easy coop run of e4m6 in 0:24 by Justin and me. Improved Evans and Camerons demos by one second.

Hot damn this was easy. Thanks for this system Chris! =)

Quake II ver 3.19 has been released, but don't hold your breath just yet. I haven't seen the .dll source code for it yet so Radix won't be able to work on Q2Timer yet. But it should be really close, really close, really 'soon', I hope. You can find the links to Quake II ver 3.19 upgrade from here.

Recently we had someone submit a demo to us which included a use of an alias which changed the host_framerate value. This person will remain nameless because we all believe it was a genuine mistake after some consultation. I would just like to make the point clear, because some people may be confused, you may not submit demos to SDA which change server side variables, if unsure on what these are check our rules page. If anyone does in future, there will be no grace, because we have now clarified the situation. We can tell very easily if any of the *cheat* variables have been changed in a run, even if it's only for a fraction of a second. Articles over time about speed-running have included various alias's that change server variables, one example is Anthony Bailey's piece on Zig-Zagging, which you can read over on the QdQ page, so we can see that it is possible some confusion over what is acceptable may have arrisen. I hope we have made this very clear now, if you have any questions feel free to contact us. You have been warned ;)

If you didn't already know, there is a Speedrun Contest going on at Twisted Into Form. Our own Finnish bunny has managed to take the lead in all three runs. No, the :55.4 for E1M2 by Hermes is definitely not possible and has to be a mistake. So, everyone go over there and give some tortoises a schooling about speed running, and when you win the contest don't forget to tell them SDA sent you :)

I suddenly got to like this map after getting the 1:58 on skill 0, 100%, which Nolan said wasn't possible, so ive done it on a few more variations:

The End Map rules!

• Nightmare 100% in, 1:59, 4 Seconds quicker than Yonatan's time for Qd100Q.
  
• Coop Run with Nolan, skill 3 in, 0:22 9!! seconds faster than the current record.
  
• Coop Run with Nolan, skill 0 in, 0:22 also 9 seconds faster than the current record.
  
• Coop 100% with Will, skill 0, in 1:56.
  

3 Other Coop demos to post:

• Max, Will, and Optic did e1m2, 100% on skill 0, in 0:40.
  
• Ilkka and I beat Nolan and Evan on e2m4, 100% skill 0, by 4 seconds and got 1:35.
  
• Will and I did e2m6, skill 0 100%, in 4:08.

The last demo I have to post is from Will Marsh, not content with beating the longest standing nightmare speed demo last week, he went onto improve the time by another 7!! seconds and got 2:32.

The extension pack for Quake Done Quick Lite, entitled, The Rabit Run is now released. This is a speed run through all of Quake using the same skill level as QdQlite, but completed in under 13 minutes! Star of the show is our resident Finnish bunny Ilkka, and he has hopped his way to some previously not thought possilble times, and come up with some great new tricks. For more information and to download this, head over to the QdQ site, at planetquake.com/qdq/. Enjoy!

A completely wacky movie version of this will be released sometime in the near future.

Here's four more Quake demos for you...

Peter Horvath did two demos on episode four:

• He improved Illka's 100% of e4m1 on easy by four seconds to get 1:02.
• And he got 0:51, on e4m6, 18 seconds better than Illka with a new trick.

Will Marsh improved the oldest unbeaten Quake speed demo in existance. How old was it? Well it was made in December 1996! Figured out the demo yet? It was Jeff Preshing's 100% of e1m3 on nightmare in 2:48, and Will improved it by nine seconds to get 2:39.

I improved another of Optic's 100% demos, e1m8 by 11 seconds to get 1:04 .

Quake 2 stuff

• Since the 2nd mission pack has gone gold, v3.18 should be released soon, along with its source. But I can't guarantee anything, of course.
• I only got about ten votes concerning the style of Quake 2 100% demos, but the majority liked the new kind better so that's what we'll do.
• I dont think I ever mentioned it, but I did get the restart command working, so when q2 demos start up again you won't have to wait 15 seconds for the level to restart.

I finished off the auto-archiving for the news this morning, I think it's working quite well now. Basically it prints a headline for every news update that we have had, and then offers the option to view any headline you want. Ive set the maximum ammount of news items on the frontpage to 15, and once we reach that, the archive system will display all news headlines, apart from ones from the current 15 on the main page. Nifty! :) As alyways if you find any problems, mail me. Thanks.

Had four of what Nolan would call 'Normal Demos' in my mailbox, ie from the original maps, and without 15 players in the game :) Will mentioned doing a 12 player mad-coop to me at some point, sounds like it could be interesting! Anyway, here are the demos..

• Will improved his e2m2 on nightmare, by 1 second, and got 0:46
  
• Optic improved his e2m4 on easy, by 2 seconds, and got 0:47
  
• Peter Horvath produced one of the most impressive short runs ive ever seen, and beat Ilkka's easy time on e3m2, by 1 second to get 0:14
  
• I improved one of the demos that has been here for quite a long time, and got a 1:58 on end in easy, 100%.

Must sort out that damned Guestbook this weekend, keep meaning to do it! Oh, and with any luck Quake Done BunnyHopped could be hitting your quake dir by the end of the weekend. :)

Optic cried at me on ICQ when he saw I hadn't included one of his demos in this update, so I thought I might aswell add it...
E1m5, skill 0, in 0:19. Beats Gunnar's time by 1 second, which has stood almost since Gunnar began his page, a long time ago...

Here's my first update for the new site. I know I still have a lot of demos to post; I just want to get a little more familiar with the new system. It seems Chris did a good job since this took me less time than usual. Then again, this time I don't have to post another 80 demos...

Optic
As usual, Optic didn't let us down, and provided us with many new demos. It seems that the fact that no new levels are allowed doesn't keep everyone from doing speedruns; something we are really happy with.

Easy runs:

• Area 51 in 1:02, 4 seconds faster than Evan
• The Disturbed in 0:55, 1 second faster than Rikkert
• The Empire in 0:22, 3 seconds faster than Josh
• The Forsaken Citadel in 0:19, 1 second faster than his previous record
• Mexx 8b in 0:49, 2 seconds faster than Matthias 'This level is mine' Belz =)
• Bridge to Fire in 0:32, 2 seconds faster than Matthias

Nightmare runs:

• Area 51 in 1:18, 15 seconds faster than Matthias
• Armageddon 2 in 0:34, 28 seconds faster than Matthias
• The Disturbed in 0:58, 32 seconds faster than Matthias
• The Eldencross in 0:29, 2 seconds faster than Matthias
• The Empire in 0:22, 5 seconds faster than Josh
• Erotique in 0:24, 4 seconds faster than Matthias
• The Forsaken Citadel in 0:19, 2 seconds faster than Matthias
• Fireworld in 0:44, 3 seconds faster than Matthias

As I said before, more Optic demos to come.

Fredrik
Fredrik Arvidsson is through with waiting for Quake 2 running to start again, so he did a couple of custom levels.

Easy runs:

• Bubbah's Slate in 0:13, 1 second faster than Optic
• Corporal Punishment in 0:16, 4 seconds faster than Josh
• Drakopf in 0:13, 1 second faster than Optic
• Welcome to Hotel Kique-Asse in 0:26, 1 second faster than Optic

Nightmare runs:

• Bubbah's Slate in 0:13, 1 second faster than Optic
• Corporal Punishment in 0:16, 4 seconds faster than Josh

Demos by others
Mr-J did one run:

• Mexx 8b in 1:00 on skill 3, 2 seconds faster than Matthias

Ilkka improved one of Optic's easy runs:

• Beyond Belief map 4 in 0:20

Even I did a speedrun after a very long time:

• The Guardhouse in 0:37 on skill 3, 36 seconds faster than Matthias!

That's it for now
The other demos will follow soon. Right now I think I'm going to stare sadly out the window a little bit, since Will just told me e1m3 in 0:28 will never be done...AAAARGH! Don't let us down Will!

Chris Horry, webmaster of www.wibble.co.uk sent me a mail saying he liked the new site, and i checked out his web page and came accross the funniest .wav file I have ever heard. Go to that site, and download the 'The joys of hard drive failure' item from the 'Classic Tech Support calls' section. If you are one who doesn't stomach bad language, dont listed to it :) Nothing to do with Speed Running or Quake, but extremely funny!

Well it didnt take me long to decide that I wasn't happy with the layout of the previous design, and everyone was bugging me to put the news page on the front page. So now the news is on the front page and it's even easier to navigate because every page is on the site is listed on the left hand side of the page. We thought this was a vast improvement, and I think everyone else will aswell. Ive also cut out things like the PQ pull down menu from all the pages, which will make loading times even faster. Anyway, if you have any feedback, please send it to us at sda. Oh, and don't worry, I wont get up again tomorrow morning and decide to change it all again :) I think it's looking pretty good now and lets hope everyone agrees with me. I had to resize the logo slightly, and make it slightly smaller, but I personally think that it looks better now. Now that all things to do with the news engine are finished just about, ill clean up the guestbook code next, should be done in a few days.

Quake Done BunnyHopped is due for release very soon, maybe even this weekend. For those of you that don't know what this is, it's basically where Ilkka has hopped through all the Quake levels on skill 0 and totally destroyed the QdQlite time, which was made by about 15 different runners. There are currently only about 4 levels that don't belong to Ilkka in QdB :) Unlike previous QdQ release's we are releasing the FPS version first, and we will then be working on a movie version, which if turns out well, is going to be quite ammusing :) Thats all for now....Expect an update from Jesse real soon, he has loads of Custom demos to do now, Optic still hasn't stopped sending us demos!

Had a lot of positive reaction to the new site from various people that do lots of stuff for this site, that I also speak to on ICQ. The only negative thing said so far has been that the news is not on the front page. Now, Im personally not in favour of this, but if the other guys at SDA are, I know Gunnar is, then it will have to change. There are several problems involved in this for the techies of you out there, firstly, I have found no way of using SSI inside Cold Fusion Metafiles, so does anyone know anything about that? If they do, email me. Apart from that everything else seems to be fine as it is for now.

Evan has designed us a cool new logo which sort of more impresses the theme of SDA, I think it's looking pretty cool myself. While I was waiting for him to finnish and send that to me, I coded the search engine, which was very simple, you can see a beta version of it here if you want to. It is designed for searching the news, but is pretty useless at the moment, as we only have 2 items of news so far as I write this :-) The following things are on my todo list: Finnish up the guest book bringing it inline with the site design, add the archiving facility to the news database, and resolve this issue of wether or not the news should be on the front page or not. Anyway, ill keep you all posted through my turbulent quest to get it all working right :-)

Joost pointed out to me that he was visitor 33,000 :) hehe. I must say that a lot of this wouldn't have been possible without the help from him and dweomer, and them putting up with my constant mails and messages about doing this and doing that for the site. Thanks guys.

Over the last few days I have been pretty much working non-stop on changing a fair few elements of the SDA site. Firstly, I wanted to make navigation to the different demos tables easier, and divide them all up into pretty similar catagories so they were easier to find. By splitting the tables into more catagories I was also able to make the pages smaller in size, and some of them like the custom runs page was getting on for 75k!! I also thought it would be a lot easier if I designed a simple news engine, which would enable me to add a news search facility in the future, which I will do soon, but I need a brake from programming for a few days. I hope you like the new layout and feel free to send us feedback at the usual address, sda. Big thanks to Evan Wagner for the new logo, hes also in the process of designing a banner for us, and maybe a button :-) Check out his very nicely put together and informative site hosted at planetunreal, Nali, where he reviews all the latest unreal addons.

Despite the many moans we had from people about our decision on new custom level maps, Optic has not stopped sending us demos in the last week, I think theres about 50 from him already since the last demo update, and these are all improvements to the current times on the custom levels tables, which is great. It is having exactly the effect we wanted, the runs are getting more optimised. Many others have been sending us custom demos aswell, so expect a big update from Jesse soon :) I probably wont be doing any updates for a week or so, ill be working on a search facility for the news engine and auto-archiving (tricky). It is now unlikely that we will remove any of the very short runs, Mr. Shambler and Matthias put forward some convincing opinions about this to us through mails, so we will probably keep them all for the time being.

You will notice that the Q2 tables have been completely cleared, but we still cant accept new Q2 runs. We need id to release the source before Nolan can compile his timer for the new version, and we want to be sure that it has settled. As Gerald mentioned a while ago, once Q2 running starts, the old record holders on the tables will have a week to secure their spots on the tables. So, please don't send any Q2 demos, we will tell you when we want them.

Anyway, hope that you all like the new site, I will sort out the guestbook at some point this week aswell so it has the same design as the other pages, but i cant be arsed to do that at the moment, there also seems to be a slight problem with it in IE when the name entered exceeds so many characters, so i will have to sort that out cause it looks silly with the tables shifting all over the place. That's all folks!