SDA logo

News from 2003. Newer news. Older news.

Tuesday, December 30th by Morfans

New Sidd On The Block. - 6:40 PM

Cor, what a palaver. Blimey, Guv, and no mistake. In retrospect I suppose that "Let's add seven new specifically designed for speedrunning maps at the busiest time of years when everyone except that lazy twat Morfans is going to be away..." was not the brightest idea, update wise, we've ever had. Because you guys have done us proud and flooded us with some incredible demos on the new maps. We've not had this many demos to post in one update since the infamous "Fleck trawls cdrom" incident back in '98.[1]

But I've tried my best to keep on top of things. I failed, but I tried. The topic in #qdq has been kept pretty much up to date with the latest records so if you're one of those that has worked for hours or even days to produce a demo that is already beaten I do urge you to drop in and check the current times as often as you can. Who knows, someone might even talk to you!

Right, on with the demos. There's so many I won't be able to comment on them or even list those that arrived too late to be records but I'm sure you're all sick of the sound of my e-voice by now anyway.

dmc1m1

dmc1m2 dmc1m3 dmc1m4 dmc1m5 dmc1m6 dmc1m7

And now for the non-DMC demos.

Which only leaves me to give you two more Startling Speedrunning Statistics. Unfortunately they're a little haphazard because I can't remember what order all the above demos arrived in. But somewhere above you will find both the 6666th regular speedrunning demo submitted to the archive and also the 2000th seperate record on a map. Holy hades, guys. We've created a monster here!

[1] Well, it was probably '98. Somewhere around there anyway and I can't be fooked to check. :-)

Wednesday, December 24th by Morfans

Unbridled Happiness To You All! - 4:32 PM

For those of you that were expecting some Christmas Eve demos I'm afraid that I won't be able to post them today due to a serious accident I suffered earlier. I was unexpectedly involved in a rather nasty collision with a whisky bottle as I was peacefully proceding along the highway. Luckily the glass bottle miraculously sort of phased through me but the contents got lodged in my bloodstream which is making any kind of typing a real challenge.

So if you want to know what the fastest times are on the new maps then go join #qdq. And if you already know then it's probably the prudent thing to spend some time working on your December Madness entries. After all, it's not like your going to have anything else to do in the next few days...

But seriously folks, whatever your festival I'd like to wish you a happy and joyous one on behalf of the whole of TeamSDA. Remember that we love you even if no one else does. :-)

CHEERS!

Saturday, December 20th by Morfans

Run DMC! - 11:44 AM

As this is the season of giving, what with the winter solstice fast approaching (and probably some other Jonny-come-lately religions have festivals around now too), it is appropriate that we celebrate this time with a load of gifts. So not only do we have a fat stack of demos for you we also have some new maps. But not just any old "new" maps, it's an entire new episode custom made escpecially for speedrunning. Stick THAT in your pipe and smoke it!

I think we'll start with a little coop action from Evan Wagner and Justin Fleck.

E-mail from the big city. Part fourteen : Sex and the City.

Hi Guys,
    Oh man! I sure am having a great time here now that I've got to know a few people and am learning some of the differences between Odense and Copenhagen.
    For example, one of the biggest differences is in people's attitude towards sex! Believe it or not, here in the city you are allowed to have sex with people that you're not even related to!
    In fact, I met this one girl the other day, she was quite tall with a deep voice and a big, bushy moustache (which seemed to be quite the fashion in the club we were in) and she said that if I buy here enough strong drink she might let me perform an intercourse on top of her! WOW!!! AT LAST I MIGHT FINALLY DO IT FOR REAL!!!!

        Stubby.

Looks like Thomas Stubgaard has settled in nicely. Luckily for us he also found the time to improve his Nightmare 100% of The Wizard's Manse by another second to 2:02. A fine looking demo all the way through. Killing the last monster at the start via RJ is always to be encouraged...

And now for the first of two Startling Speedrunning Statistics. Who has made the most id level demos? Nolan? Jozsef? Ilkka? Well, if you guessed at the third name you'd be correct. Ilkka Kurkella currently has recorded an amazing 163 demos on the id levels. But Stubby's demo above puts him on 154. So only 10 more to go for Thomas to take the record. Assuming, of course, that Ilkka doesn't make a devastating comeback and up his total in the mean time. I know which one of them I'm cheering for. Ilkka! Ilkka! Ilkka! ILKKA!

Our second SSS concerns Optic. Everyone knows he's done more demos than anyone else in the history of the archive, but do you know just how many? Including the four below it's 976. Speculation has been running for a long time regarding whether he'll ever reach the magic 1000. But now, to big grins and shouts of "GO FLECKER!" he has officially announced that he's going to try and push for that big four digit number. In the best SDA tradition I would like to try and add a little tension to this Herculean record attempt and am prepared to offer a bounty of FOUR POUNDS STERLING to anyone that can beat him to the thousand. Yes folks, we're talking cold, hard cash here for anyone that can record 1000 demos before Justin... :-)

Okay, one last thing before we move on the the maps. I've just been informed by a reasonably reliable source that there's a new release of JoeQuake ready for your download. It probably includes new features such as lights, sounds, guns and stuff. Console variable. That kind of thing. ;-)

And now. Ladies and Gentlemen. I am happy to announce the release of the world's greatest custom episode. Oh yes indeed, it's time to welcome DeathMatch Classics by Connor Fitzgerald!

DeathMatch Classics (part 1) is a new single player speedrunning episode built from a set of conversions of "classic" DM maps in the style of the DMxSP maps or aerorun. For full details see the .txt that comes with the DOWNLOAD.

Huge thanks to Connor for converting these levels and also to TeamSDA for testing them. And of course I award a wave of my magic todger in the face of all the original mappers that gave permission, encouragement and even a little help to the making of this episode.

Just to get things started here are three pretty bad coops by Me and my brother Nik. All Easy 100%.

Now you crazy kids run along and enjoy yourselves.

I am replete.

Saturday, December 13th by Morfans

Sometimes Butter's Just Not Enough, Marlon. - 07:57 PM

What a week! Visitors all over the house, birthdays, parties, birthday parties, snow (which "luckily" the sleeting rain and gale force winds have now removed) and just all round general carnage. All of which means that I've been neglecting my SDA duties which is just a bad thing for everyone: You because you've had to wait a whole week to see the demos; me, because there's a huge pile of them for me to have to wade through now. Not that that's a problem per-se, you understand, as the quality makes them a pleasure to watch. Just the time it tales, people, the time it takes. ;-)

We'll start with all the demos that are NOT in some way affiliated with Optic, presented in such a way as to build up a picture of a full set of male genetalia...

And now on to Justin Fleck and all his little American friends. I suppose if we were keeping the theme from earlier going then this lot could be the pubic hairs. :-) Anyway, here we go...

That's all for today. Stay tuned for new profiles, new demos and maybe, just maybe, some new maps in the next couple of days.

Scrub it!

Saturday, December 6th by Morfans

Look At The Location... - 08:37 AM

Time to crank it up again, people. It's been a reasonably quiet week this week demo-wise, but we still have a large shaft of lovelyness to wave in your face so don't you go a frettin' about that.

One possible cause of that is, of course, the start of our December Madness contest. Or should I say "contests" as with five brand new maps to run on it's the only contest in SDA history that is bound to have at least one thing in it for everyone to hate.

Let's start the demos. Dane Plachetta was not totally happy with his recent hip3m1 Easy 100%. He knew he could do it a second faster so he kept trying and in fact improved it by two seconds to 1:27. But it still wasn't a perfect run so he kept trying as he knew he could improve it by one more second. But once again he suprised himself and improved it by two seconds to 1:25. Even in this demo you could see his boost to the 100H secret was a little too strong and he knew that if he did that smoother he could make it down by one more second. Suprise! He did a near perfect boost (and a slightly different kill on the stairs) and actually improved it by two seconds to 1:23. Predictably he thinks it's possible to improve by one more second, but he hasn't managed to do it yet. I have my doubts though and am going to give this a Must Download anyway.

The saga of the Nightmare 100% of dm6sp continues, but now that a new face has joined the race I think I'm well and truly out of it..

Our final five demos of the update come from the new coop duo of total unknowns who have been tearing up the tables for the last couple of weeks. They are called Justin Fleck and Evan Wagner and the are, apparently, American. Here are their demos presented alphabetically.

And so we come to the end of another update. My brother, Fat_Eddie, is coming up for a visit today so if you're very lucky, and we can stay sober long enough, you might be treated to some very, very low quality coops in the near future. :-)

Sunday, November 30th by Morfans

Contest #8 A-Go-Go! - 09:41 AM

Oh yes indeed. The time has arrived. The final part of the Speed Running Championship 2003 is now officially underway. Go here and join in with our December Madness.

Once again, I say go here!

Saturday, November 29th by Morfans

Update : Supplemental - 09:30 AM

Warning! This is not an update. I repeat. This is not an update. Due to lax security one of the demos that was in the all demos download managed to escape before it was posted on the update. So if you downloaded the all demos update and found a demo that made you think "WTF??" it was probably this one...

Dane Plachetta has honked all over Carl's hip3m1 Easy 100% with a five second improvement to 1:29. Some of the improvement is from the wild rocket-play that's fast becoming a Dane trademark but the biggest saving was a new, much quicker, way of getting the quad that I'm amazed no one has found before. :-)

Thursday, November 28th by Morfans

Drink Your Fluids. *SLURP* - 11:00 AM

First, a correction. In the last update I erroneously stated that Ivan and Ilian had done an Easy Run of aerorun. The fact that there was a bloody great shambler stood by the exit should have been enough to alert me to the fact that their 0:07 was actually a Nightmare Run. Just as well for them that it was, too, as Martin Selinus and Anders Nordensten did the Easy Run in 0:06. Looking at the exit time it seems that even this might be improvable. Oh, and it also seems that Ilian hasn't just got one name, he's in fact has the very serious and not at all potentially amusing name of Ilian Duckoff.

Plenty of Nightmare action this week on dm6sp.

Kimmo Polvivaara used some of that famous aggression of his to knock a further twelve seconds off his Easy 100% of dm3sp. He got the time down to 1:24 using more boosts, more risks and less ammo. A-fuckin'-men to that!

If you like receiving e-mail from us then here's what you do. Over the course of several weeks improve a record by eight seconds, BUT as you're working on it save every one second improvement as you go and then when you're finished send in eight one second improvements in eight seperate e-mails. I can guarantee you'll get a mail from Nolan before the last one's even gone cold in our in-tray. :-) And to prove this point that's exactly what Dane Plachetta did with his eight second improvement to the Easy 100% of hip1m3. The final 1:23 is hugely impressive, apart from a slight case of zombie resurrection right in the depths of the mine. It's still easily worth a RECOMMENDED.

Our final demo today (again, not the final one we have, but the final one that was in when we called time on this update a day and a half ago :-)) is the Nightmare 100% of edom by Justin Fleck that I alluded to at the end of the last update. It clocks in at 2:47, a full forty-five seconds faster than his previous time, proving that although he's been absent for two years he's merely been mellowing and improving, not rotting and decaying.

Talking of rotting and decaying, I had a sneak preview of Evan Wagner's first ever map yesterday and I have to admit I was impressed. Not impressed enough to want to add it to the archive, of course, but still impressed. Expect to see it released in a week or so's time. :-P

Toodle-oo!

Sunday, November 23rd by Morfans

]-[3'5 84(|< & ]-[3 0wn5 j00! - 2:46 PM

If ever proof was needed that SDA stays in your bloodstream longer than than a crack/heroin cocktail then the return of the next two gentlemen is surely it. One we haven't heard from in a long time, the other we haven't heard from in a very, very long time. They started off with some coop action and I guess if you wanted a more ol' skool coop duo then you'd have to get Radix to persuade Jeff Preshing to make a demo with him...

Evan Wagner saw Justin Fleck on ICQ the other night and persuaded him to come out of retirement and make a demo with him. Have they still got what it takes? Well, if you watch this Easy 100% of edom in 1:38 you'd think they'd never been away. (For example look at Evan's first telefrag or the effortless jumping along the narrow ledge above the lava while shooting in the opposite direction from Optic.) Welcome back, guys.

Then they single-playered it up for a bit. windlash is back up in the weezy (I've waited over two and a half years to say that! I still don't know what it means but I just really wanted to say it back at Evan. It was the whole reason I joined SDA. I can rest now...) and improved his new coop partner's Easy 100% of edom to 2:17 just to prove who was the daddy and who was the bitch.

But Papa "You're my bitch now!" Optic improved that by another five seconds as soon as he heard about it to 2:12.

Then they settled their differences with a few more coops.

Next today we have Martin "I don't do marathons any more" Selinus doing his second marathon in as many weeks. This one is hugely impressive but he seems very dissapointed with it. He improved his Easy Run of The Netherworld by two seconds to 2:46. Sure, there were a couple of little slip ups and the odd monster getting in the way but he still did the slope bunny to the window, a running gren jump off a zombie over the trigger, the gren jump out of the water, the double grenade off the wall round the corner into the deathknight jump to the trigger, etc, etc, etc (not to mention all the "lesser" tricks) all in one continuous run. Personally, I'd rather be an optimist than an optimumist. (Whatever that means.) :-)

Moving on up, we find that Kimmo Polvivaara is still reaching for that higher ground. His next step up is to make a big forty-four second improvement to my dm3sp Nightmare 100%. It's a mad map to Nightmare on, and Kimmo made this improvement to 3:03 by simply out madding me.

We've got some hefty plans for new maps coming up, but in the mean time I thought it was about time we added the last couple of contest maps to the tables.

Sorry for not listing all the current records on those maps, I'm afraid I couldn't be frigged to type them all out. You see, because Michael is taking a well deserved rest in the pub and Thomas is having penis surgery and Nolan has spent the last few days locked in his room with an illegal immigrant called Mario I had to add the maps and do the tables and upload, etc, by myself. Never let anyone tell you that SDA isn't a team effort just because I hog all the updating glory. However, since this time I did do all the work myself I honestly found myself blanching at the though of having to paste in another eight hyperlinks that were only a click away anyway.

And just to show you how quick off the mark some people are, Ivan Vladev and SDA newcomer Ilian (that's all the info I have. Just "Ilian". Maybe he only has one name just like Sting or Pele or Jesus or Phil or Marylin Manson) have done a coop on a map that was only added twenty seconds ago. They did the Nightmare Run of aerorun in 0:07, three seconds faster than the SP time. Very impressive for a first demo...

That's all. I've just realised I missed an Optic demo that arrived this morning but I'M NOT BLOODY CHANGING THE UPDATE NOW!!!

Lovin' ya.

Friday, November 21st by Morfans

Ka-Pow! - 8:56 AM

We've had some real e-mail problems over the last couple of days so if you've sent us a demo and it doesn't appear in this update or the next one then sorry but you'll have to resend it. Not our fault, but then nothing ever is. :-)

Prepare for the madness. The sheer, sheer madness that is dm6sp...

We should, of course, have demos on our other new map now but I think I'll use Kay Berntsen as a gentle transititon into the gmsp3 demos, a way of throwing a cheap insult at someone and also as a demonstration of just how varied some peoples demos can be...

All the rest of our gmsp3 demos are from Basil de Vries, who I would have to rate as UGLY. [1] He started off promisingly, got better, and then went right down hill. :-)

It looks like it's time for another flurry of demos from Kimmo Polvivaara, which is always nice to see. For those who have not made a study of this fascinating creature the habits of the Northern European Running Polvivaara are as follows: make some demos; get distracted by real life; disappear for 8 months; find some time; make some demos; get distracted; and so on in a continuous loop until he gets tragically run over by a tractor in 2007. Here we have his first demo, otherwise known as the "I'm really rusty so I'll do a tablefiller" demo, the Easy 100% of dm3sp in 1:36. A nice route and some smooth killing and jumping at the end.

Thomas Bergendorff has made another improvement to his "flying through the void" Easy 100% of nesp10. There's some big changes to the already twisted route and a new trick or two to give him a very smooth 1:23.

And we'll finish off the demos with some premier coop action from Robert and Rickard Axelsson.

That's all for today, we've already received enough new demos for another update so expect another update before the weekend's out. Including demos from a couple of faces that we haven't seen for quite some time...

One final little thing. There's been quite a few new faces around here in the last few months so I really think it's about time people sent us in their profiles. Remember, anyone who has sent a demo to SDA can, and should, have there profile listed on the profile page.

And that is all I have to say.

Tuesday, November 18th by Morfans

Run, Don't Walk. - 6:29 AM

Another contest screeches to a halt with all the smoke, sparks and fireworks you'd expect. And once the broken carcasses of exhausted runners are dragged out of the arena it's time for the long, slow process of seeing who's won what to begin.

Thankfully, you don't have to worry about all that because you have me to do the worrying for you. Which means, of course, that you can just head over to the AeroRun page and marvel at the skillz on display.

Congratulations to Timo Nieminen on his victory in the Easy Run, Dane Plachetta for his win in the Nightmare Run and Martin Selinus who took both the Easy and Nightmare 100% wins.

I'll update the Championship Ladder within a couple of hours of now, post a huge pile of demos in a day or two and have the final contest in this series ready for release... soon.

Live long and prostrate.

Saturday, November 15th by Morfans

Don't Buy Furs! It Takes Trees To Make Protest Signs! - 8:54 AM

I think it's now safe to post the demos. Well, mwh thinks it's safe and since he did the actual work I guess he should know. But before we get to them I'll just post a quick set of links for the other bollocks that's been going on in the last few days.

Right, that's all very well and interesting but what we really need are some demos. So let us begin with the Easy Run of the brand, spanking new dm6sp...

Speaking of Dane Plachetta, is it possible this guy's getting even better?

It's been a while since we've seen Hannu Kankaanpää, but it's always a pleasure to see him back. Last time I spoke to him he said he wouldn't submit another demo until he was able to take a record from a total loser with one of his really old demos. Unfortunately for him he wasn't able to do that so instead he took the royalwar Easy 100% time down to 1:30 with a demo he made eighteen months ago. Seven seconds faster than me.

Time for some mad quad-boosting action, courtesy of Kay Berntsen and that fun little weirdo map, trinity. Denn had both Run records in, 0:22. Ripah rode the grenade just that bit harder and improved the time to 0:21 on both Easy and Nightmare. Sweet as a pineapple enema!

With all the cool runs recently on his DMxSP levels I suppose it was only fair that Basil de Vries got in on the action. He filled the gap for the Nightmare 100% of dm2sp in the very good, but hardly optimum, time of 1:15. Monster cooperation is certainly needed in the big room...

Do you know hat time it is? Time for several fraternal coops!

Robert and Rickard Axelsson sent us a demo that wasn't a record. To make up for this foolish behaviour they made this well-oiled machine of an Easy 100% of dm1sp in 0:27, nine seconds faster than the single-player time.

Still on a roll, I'm glad to say, are rising contenders Pif and Luc de Mestre.

Our final coop is from yet another set of brothers. Or it least it would have been if Martin Selinus and Anders Nordensten had had the decency to share the same parents. As it is they aren't actually related and have ruined this whole "coop brothers" section of the update. I'm not going to complain too much, though, as anyone who improves an id marathon, especially one like a thirteen seconds improvement over Sergi and Jordi's The Elder World Easy Run, doesn't deserve too much grief. 3:01. So there we are. No grief for this pair at all. I won't even repeat the rumour that someone told me the other day that "Uppsala" is Swedish for "I like to kiss other gentlemen on the buttock cheeks. Oh yes, this is indeed completely true".

It's all about respect...

SPOILER: Why didn't Robert's 0:08 get an Optimum? Just wait until next update!

Thursday, November 13th by Morfans

Normal Service Will Be Resumed... - 2:01 PM

Hello, everyone. Due to a few technical issues we've been unable to bring you any new demos for the last week. This is sad and deplorable but strangely and arousingly inevitable. Still, we should have the issue solved in a day or two so stay tuned. I still think it's only fair for me to apologise to Martin and Anders and Dane and Ripah and Robert and Rickard and Pif and Luc and Hannu and Basil for the delay in posting their excellent demos.

But this delay doesn't for one minute mean you should stop sending demos in. No, in fact it means you should send more than ever! And to keep you all amused in the meantime I'll round up all the other news that makes this site so god dammned great!

Of course, I'm going to start with a reminder that if you haven't seen it yet, go watch The Dimension of the Gibbed : The Movie!. Comments so far have been overwhelmingly positive, which has made me very proud and very erect. But more (and more and more) feedback is always appreciated.

Now, for the next item of big, big news we have something rather different, but oh so very special from SDA's very own Nolan "Lord of Radix. Hmmm. That's a bit long. Just call me "Radix" for short." Pflug. It ain't Quake, but it shoo is speedrunning and it shooo is an impressive piece of work. It's been three months in the making but he's finally completed an "all items, normal skill" run of Metroid Prime in 1:37! (That's hours and minutes, not minutes and seconds...) Go here for details and downloads, but be prepared for a little wait because it's fucking HUGE!

What else was there? Oh yes! Let me just remind you (or tell you, if you've just stumbled onto the site looking for the Gib thing or the Metroid thing) that the latest contest ends THIS SUNDAY so be sure to get your aerorun entries in before the deadline. Everyone knows AeroWalk and everyone knows how to make the Quake marine walk forwards. So there's no excuse for anyone not to send a demo in! (Apart from "I didn't want to.") ;-)

Is that all we have for you? Hell no! It's new level time! I've had this little muthafukkah sitting around on my PC for the last couple of months so it really is about time it was released. It's the final part of Basil de Vries's conversions of the original DeathMatch levels. It's called, not suprisingly, dm6sp and is a rather original twist on Tim Willits's DM masterpiece. Get it here or get all six together here. Please call your demos dm6x_XXX. This also means that you can now submit marathon runs over all six maps. Please call these demos edmx_XXX and ndmx_XXX.

And if that wasn't enough on the mappage front we also decided to add Glassman's latest masterpiece, GMSP3. It's a huge, beautiful map and, as you can read here, Glassman very kindly released a new version with a couple of changes to make it runnable. So for the love of God please someone do some decent runs on this map otherwise I'm going to look like a right cunt. Please name your demos gm3_xxx. (Note: Make sure you map is called gmsp3v2.bsp. If it's just called gmsp3.bsp then you need to get the new version!)

And finally, I recently did an interview with Dobberman for GameSpot.cz in order to pimp our humble site to every Czech Quaker and gamer possible. So if you speak Czech, or just want to take a look, go here and tell me what I said.

That's probably it for now. Demos to follow as soon as we can. :-)

Monday, November 10th by Morfans

Another Movie Release! - 7:30 PM

Welcome one, welcome all! It's time for yet another in our highly acclaimed series of Speedrunning Movies!

It's been a long time coming, so sorry to those that are in it that they had to wait so long to see their runs in movie form, but hopefully the wait will have been worth it. So, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to give to you....

Actually, since there may well be some new readers here I think I'll take the opportunity to pimp our latest contest, based on the highly popular deathmatch classic "aerowalk". Yes, folks. Go here and run your little hearts out!

...where was I? Oh yes. It is my pleasure to give to you The Dimension of the Gibbed : The Movie!

Tuesday, November 4th by Morfans

A Gynacologist's Dozen of Demos! - 10:53 AM

E-mail from the big city. Part seven : Spare time.

Hi Guys,
    I'm sure you'll all be glad to hear that I'm settling in really well and am having a great time. The only annoyance is that for the next few weeks I will only have dial-up access to the internet. This has meant a slight problem for me but also an unexpected bonus.
    You see, I haven't met that many people yet and the city in the evening can be quite a scarey place so most nights I tend to stay in. Normally this wouldn't be a problem as I would just spend my time masturbating, but without the internet and it's wonderful naked lady websites I find I don't have the imagination to keep going for more than an hour or two before I lose interest.
    This has meant I've gotten to spend more time than usual making Quake demos and in the last week have improved four id Nightmare 100%s including taking my e2m5 record back off that Finnish choirfellah Timo. And I'm not done yet!

        Stubby.

It seems like the big city air has done Thomas Stubgaard's speedrunning skillz no end of good because he wasn't lying in his fake e-mail above, he really has improved four id records in one update. Something we haven't seen in fuck knows how long. Let's take a look at them now...

Connor Fitzgerald just doesn't know when to stop showing off! And that's a bloody good thing, I say, as it's giving us demos such as this 0:09 Nightmare Run of dm1sp, three seconds faster than Timo, using a new set of ogre grenades to blast him to the exit only one second slower than Peter's legendary Easy Run. Highly Recommended

Time for some Hipnotic madness, which can only mean one thing... It's time for Dane Plachetta!

On to the cooperative demos. Starting with some intermission madness from Robert and Rickard Axelsson on dma1. Robert exited in 0:16, three seconds faster than the single player time, with 17/22 kills. Some intermission nails took care of another two monsters but what about the last three? Heh, just watch and see.

France's premier coop duo, Pif and Luc de Mestre, have had another busy week killing and runnin', runnin' and killing...

That's all I have to say for today except... Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to meeeeeheeeee! Happy birthday to me! Hurrah! I'm even older! I think I'd better start drinking.

Crispy!

Wednesday, October 29th by Morfans

Suprise! - 11:56 AM

Suprises, ladies and gentlemen. That's what the first few demos are about today. Sometimes we get a demo arrive and we think to ourselves "Phew, I didn't expect him to do that". It's nice to know that even after all these years you guys can still pull off the unexpected. Starting with...

A big id Nightmare 100% improvement. Obviously this demo's going to be by Stubby, right? WRONG! Timo Nieminen swapped a bunny for a quad boost in The Wizard's Manse which enabled him to do the middle section is a different order and save four seconds over Thomas's time to 2:05. Since this new route gives you loads of spare armour and health at "the button" will we see someone save several seconds by doing the quad-boost out of the lift, as beautifully demonstrated by Robert in his winning Wizard's Pants demo? Ohhhh I hope so. :-)

When we have a really hard fought contest, such as the recent dm4sp contest, and Jozsef beats such notables as Peter, Martin and Timo to win the super fast Easy 100% category you doubt that anyone is ever going to improve it to that next whole second. WRONG! Connor Fitzgerald has really excelled himself and improved the time to 0:10 with a pixel-perfect quad boost and double intermission kill.

Staying on contest maps for the next demo, Robert and Rickard Axelsson have beaten Carl and Daniel's Easy Run of runerun by one second to 0:14. Being a coop demo this of course comes with two .dem files so you can watch the run from both players perspectives. WRONG! Rickard lost his fucking demo. Okay, that wasn't much of a suprise but I'm really starting to struggle now...

Since we're talking about contest maps, fun and Connor this would seem to be the ideal moment to remind everyone about the new contest based around the old Aerowalk map, hilariously called AeroRUN! With puns like that you just know that you have to take part...

The only thing suprising about the next demo, apart from the fact it's an Easy run and not an Easy 100%, is that it's so damned good. Even after three years it isn't easy to improve an Ilkka record, but Dane Plachetta has done it to his hip1m4 record by three seconds to 0:51. This is the smoothest I've EVER seen the trick at the end done.

The final suprise of the update (probably) is a bunch of demos from Pif de Mestre. Why is that a suprise? Well, you don't see a French speed runner for years and years and then two come along at once. I suppose it's slightly less suprising when you find out that the second Frenchman's name is Luc de Mestre and he's Pif's brother.

That's all. No "humourous" comments or letters from Stubbz to finish with this time, I'm afraid. I've been feeling dog rough again and am pumped up on antibiotics at the moment, which somehow seems to inhibit the creative flow of talking utter bollocks. :-/

Enjoy!

Bugger. I forget to say that Timo and Connor's demos are Must Download and Dane's is Recommended. And yes, it would have been quicker to just scroll back up to the top and add them to the appropriate paragraph rather than typing this explanation. Put it down to the drugs, baby.

Friday, October 24th by Morfans

Laying Tracks. - 10:26 AM

*UGH*! What a terrible week. I don't know about yours but mine's been bloody awful. Therefore I think it's time to cheer us all up with some demos, some news and (firstly) a message from a departed friend.

E-mail from the big city. Part one : People.

Hi Guys,
    Well, I've arrived safely in Copenhagen and boy oh boy I've never seen so many people!
    Yesterday I was walking down the street and saw NINE other people all at the same time! I've not seen a crowd like that since last years wedding when my brother married Mom.
    Also, I was a little bit worried I would look out of place here, but luckily I saw three guys stood in the front window of "Hagar's House of Mirrors" that were dressed exactly like me! *PHEW*

        Stubby.

Nice to hear he's settling in okay. We'll be having more from Thomas once I've thought of something else stupid for him to say....

As one Stubgaard moves away, another one comes along to fill the demo-abyss he leaves behind. Mads-Peter Stubgaard has shown us that when he's not carrying his brother in coop demos he can actually be a very good single-player, too, with this Easy 100% of black3 in 1:25, two seconds faster than Optic.

In a true display of dedicated speedrunning, Dane Plachetta has not let Uni work or moving house get in the way of his continued attack on the Hipnotic levels. This time he improved his own hip1m1 Easy 100% by another second to 1:09. This is a actually the second time he did the 1:09. The first time he didn't think the end stats would be good enough for the 100% project so he re-did it with much better stats. Just like that. Show-off bastard. ;-)

Recent newcomer Pif de Mestre has been busy filling tables and beating records...

Thomas Bergendorff has done a fun tablefiller for the Easy 100% of nesp10. Why fun? Well how else can you describe big, curly quad rocket jumps over a large, gaping void? Initially he did it in 1:37 but since he didn't have anything better to do, such as finishing off making .avis, for example (*ahem*), he tidied it up to 1:34.

Our last demo today is a dragon-killer coop from Robert and Rickard Axelsson. Everyone knows that Robert is a boss-map junkie, and everyone knows that this pair are one or the most effective coop duo's of all time. So this Easy 0:21 of r2m8, one second faster than Nolan and Jesse, is, not suprisingly, slick, brutal and very fast.

I really couldn't let another update go past without delivering at least one of the things I've been promising. So it gives me great pleasure to kick off Speedrunning Championship 2003 contests #7 : Aerorun!. This contest is a rune-grabbing conversion of Mattias Konradsson's classic DM map "Aerowalk" by Connor Fitzgerald. It's high-octane fun for all the family and a hoot to play, so go here and get it. Ladies and gentlemen, you have three and a bit weeks to amaze us.

Friday, October 17th by Morfans

Demo-lition - 11:44 AM

Today I am proud to present to you NONE of the things I promised in the last update. But what we do have is a sweet stack of demos.

As I'm sure you are all aware, Thomas Stubgaard is moving from Odense (Population : 147) to Copenhagen (Population : 2693). How will he cope with life in the big city? We'll keep you posted on his progress, but in the mean time he's left us a little going away present.

How many id Nightmare 100% records over 2 minutes would you say it's possible to say were optimised? Until yesterday I'd have said "none", but now I'd ask you to consider The Elder God Shrine. Because of the unique "bastard fiends" element to this map (that is to say one teleports in when you press the button, another teleports in 30 seconds after you kill the first on, another 30 seconds after you kill that one, etc, until 8 fiends have been killed) you are absolutely limited to 3:30 + time to first button + time back to first fiend + kill times + time from last fiend to exit. If you make a small mistake elsewhere it doesn't matter as long as you're in position to kill the fiend as soon as it appears. Clear? Good!

So let's consider Stubby's latest demo. Time to switch : fucking fast. Time back to fiend : a lucky double-knight-telefrag makes this very fast indeed. Killing times : brutally fast. Exit time : heh, just you watch and see. 3:51, five seconds faster than previous. OPTIMUM and MUST DOWNLOAD.

Well, I'm tired out after all that typing. Luckily the adrenaline rush I'm getting from just thinking about the rest of these demos has given me the strength to continue.

When Daniel did the original nastrond Easy Run a week ago it was quite obvious that it could be improved. The man to do it (multiple times) was Kay "Ripah" Berntsen. First he improved it by nine seconds to 1:21 by simply doing the grenade jump properly. He kept getting stuck on knights and corners, though. Next he managed to avoid the corners to save another two seconds but still got stuck on the knights (also added a nice "ride the train!" exit manoeuve). 1:19. Finally he simply blasted the knights apart and bunnied happily over the piles of gibs to exit in an impressive 1:15. WooHoo!

Next we have a pair of demos from the man voted "Mr Startling" in a recent poll of everyone sat at my desk, Denis Nazarov. He has come up with a completely new route for the 100% records on pagan which has enabled him to improve both Ken's Easy 100% and his own Nightmare 100% to 0:37, three and two seconds faster respectively. In some way's this is similar in concept to Stubby's run above. Except here, as long as you can kill everything between the time you quad up and be in position when the quad runs out, all that matters is how fast you get to the quad and how well you can boost to the exit. That's going to make these records very hard to beat.

Finally, back to Stubby, this time teamed up with his more talented and better looking brother Mads-Peter Stubgaard, for a couple of coop demos. Both are excellent demos and yet each, in it's own small way, shows just what a dick Thomas can really be. :-)

That's all for today. Keep watching, though. We're never far away...

Tuesday, October 14th by Morfans

Forgotten Winners - 2:00 PM

The contest ended Sunday Midnight, it's Tuesday afternoon now. Sorry for the delay but I spent pretty much all of Sunday and half yesterday flaked out with the flu. Not a serious bout by any means, just enough to make me not be able to concentrate on the swirling numbers on the screen.

But if you go and have a look at the Forgotten Ritual page you'll see that Anders, Timo and Basil all took wins, with Basil scoring the highest overall marks. Well done all three of you.

It's also thrown things wide open on the 2003 Contest League Table with Anders opening a slight lead up over Robert, Timo moving up into equal third with Martin and Basil becoming the fifth man to break the century.

So with two contests still to go meaning (probably) 120 points up for grabs it's still anyones guess who's going to end up as the undisputed cham-peen of the wurld.

Sunday, October 12th by Stubby

So Long, And Thanks For All The Shoes... - 11:49 AM

This is it boys, my reign as SDA Supremo is over, the man in charge of running things here at SDA will be handed over to Morfans. The reason for this, is that I'm in the midst of moving to Copenhagen. I'll be moving in with my uncle in a little spare room he has, it's about 10 squarefeet :-) I've gotten rid of so much crap I had just laying around collection dust, so I should be fine even though the room is quite small. What worries me though, is that I'll lose the internet connection I currently have, and I'm not sure when I'll get connected to the internet again, so while I'm gone please re-direct everything that were meant for me to Morfans instead, that includes demos for the Projects, Comparison Demos, Cheated Demos etc etc. I'll be able to check my other email from time to time though, so if you have something important to say just email me at stubgaard@sol.dk.

But before I leave I'll post the demos we've received since last update:

Ciao!

Thursday, October 9th by Morfans

A Veritable Cornucopia. - 1:06 PM

Oh yes indeed, as sure as I'm sat here in a low cut dress and stockings this update is all the proof you need of the old adage "If variety be the spice of life, play on, MacDuff."

What have we got? New maps? No, not today, but within a few days, we hope. Contest results? No, it doesn't end until Sunday night. The next SDA movie release? No, not for a week or so. Neekid pictures of TeamSDA? No, but if you mail me I'll send them to you.

So what does that leave us with. Well, we've had our first cheated demos for quite some time from Arturo Garcia Lasca over on the cheated page. Definitely worth a look.

We also have the first update in an age to our bunny comparison page, with demos from Anders, Ripah and Ivan. Some of our newer runners and readers might not have seen this little page before so maybe, just maybe, we'll have a few more bunny demos for you soon.

What else do we have? Oh yes! Demos on the newest map to hit the archive, nastrond.

Those that checked out Ken's cheated runs earlier might have noticed that Pif de Mestre (the second name above I told you to remeber, remember?) has also done three naked demos. Welcome aboard, Piffy. Nice to see yet another new face around here!

Daniel (the first name I told you to remember) has finished the job he started last update and taken TO of a3 with a sweet Nightmare 100% in 2:41, a whole twenty-one seconds faster than Amrik.

Hansson then teamed up with Tholin (the third... oh fuck it. I wish I'd never started this now) to do a whole bunch of id coop improvements.

Oh, I've just noticed that the cheated page has also got a new demo from Valeriy Burmistrov on it. WOOT!

That's it for this shave-up. I'm once again going to shout FORRIT CONTEST ENDS SUNDAY. ENTER IT OR I'LL RIP OFF YOUR FACE WITH MY TEETH! and then I'm going to say no more on the subject and let you go peacefully about your business.

On your way now. Evenin' all.

Saturday, October 4th by Morfans

A Delicate Shade Of Blue. - 10:06 AM

Ah, marathons. You've got to love 'em. I've always said that we don't see enough marathon improvements these days. I suppose that's because they are, by definition, just so long. But this hasn't deterred Thomas Stubgaard from taking another id Nightmare 100% Marathon record to add to his collection, this time it was Daniel's Dimension Of The Doomed which he improved by a massive SIX seconds to 11:53. He started off really strongly and by the end of the Ziggurat he was twenty-one seconds ahead, then things started to slip a bit as monsters went the wrong way and his already notoriously limp wrist started flopping about like a big girl's blouse in a stiff breeze. An impressive feat nonetheless. :-)

Dane Plachetta, after his recent work on the hip1m1, hip1m2 and hip1m3 Easy 100%s has suprised us all by turning his attention to the hip1m4 Easy 100%. First he just ran around like his arse was on fire and improved Evan's record by four seconds to 1:26, then a sneaky little prox-mine boost saved another second to 1:25, and since he enjoyed that so much he started adding prox-mine boosts everywhere and got the time down to 1:24. As this is 1:24.03 I think we may see one more improvement to this before the Aussie Scourge moves on.

We're going to keep things Antipodean now with a little coop action from Connor Fitzgerald and SDA first-timer Tim Sladden. They improved Robert and Rickard's Easy Run of dm5sp by one second to 0:19. Tim didn't really have an awful lot to do, but he did it well enough to take the record. Now go and do another record immediately to make up for that "geek" crack! ;-)

It has been said that Daniel Hansson has a mind like a speedrunning butterfly, flitting from map to map and never making more than one demo before moving on. Why this was said is a mystery as it's clearly bollocks. After doing his 874th improvement on the czg07 levels (see last update) he has moved on to break Amrik's TO of a3 with four cock-slapping demos.

Now that we're done with this weeks demos I think it's time we added another map to this grand 'ol archive. It's a brand new map, only released a couple of days ago, from Vondur and it's called Nastrond. It's a pretty big map but there seems to be quite a lot of potential for cutting corners. I don't think we'll ever see 0:10 runs on this one but we all love it so we're adding it. You can get it from here. Please call your demos nas_xxx.

However, before you all go Nastrond crazy don't forget that there's only just over a week to go before the deadline for the Forgotten Ritual contest, and it'd be nice to see a big stack of entries for this one. And yes, I know the dogs are annoying on Easy Skill... :-)

Finally, in response to the call from a few people for a more normal looking Rabbit Run movie there are now two new downloads available in our videos section (it's under "miscellaneous" in the menu in case you were unaware) of the Rabbit Run using standard textures and lighting and stuff like that.

Go on, you know you love it!

Tuesday, September 30th by Morfans

Just Goes To Show. - 1:51 PM

God bless copy and paste. One flick of the mouse and the update's half done already. So if the layout seems a little deja-vu-esque don't worry I just moved the bottom paragraph of the last update to the top and changed a few words. And added a little bit because some people will insist on doing unexpected demos.

The reason I've moved Weixing Ye up to the top of this update is because I think that this demo deserves a MUST DOWNLOAD, a rare privilege for a non-id demo. He improved his Nightmare 100% record on rings2 by one second to equal Joe's Easy 100% time. He used a slightly different route in order to survive the shambler onslaught and exited in an optimum 0:07.

And now the new maps...

Dane Plachetta shows no sign of letting up on the Hipnotic levels. But before he moves on to any new levels he has tidied up his recent hip1m3 Easy 100%. There wasn't a lot wrong with his previous demo but the whole of this 1:31 up until he hits his head on the roof by the big lift is just so damn smooth. Five seconds faster. Recommended

Dane is not the only person bringing the Hipnotic records up 2003 standards. Connor Fitzgerald has improved two old Nightmare Runs.

Back to Carl and Daniel for a 2:37 Easy 100% of czg07a, twenty-two seconds faster than Nolan and Evan. Carl says that this is the first time that Daniel has played this map, and after seeing the other seventeen demos he's made on it over the last two years I can well believe it. :-)

Finally another coop from the Danish Duo of Thomas and Mads-Peter Stubgaard. They are cutting a pretty cool path through the id Easy 100%s at the moment and continued this by improving Tommi and Kari's Hell's Atrium record by four seconds to 1:03.

Should I say more? I don't think I can.

Thursday, September 25th by Morfans

Blood, Sweat and Detergent. - 10:53 AM

Today we have something for everybody. Demos on new maps, demos on old maps and demos on maps of an intermittent age. What more could a young girl ask for?

First the new maps...

A wise man once stated about a tube of Pringles "once you pop, you just can't stop!", and the same seems to be true about Dane Plachetta and Hipnotic levels. Except he doesn't actually "pop" them he improves their Easy 100% records. Man that was a poor metaphor even by my standards. Especially since I don't even know if they sell Pringles outside the UK and even if they do they probably don't use the same advertising slogan. Probably best if you just ignore me and watch these two outstanding demos...

Our final demo of today is a piece of real quality from Weixing Ye. He has fought back against Connor nicking all his dm5sp records by taking his Easy 100% route, running it smoother and adding a great piece of intermission violence to take the time down to 0:36, three seconds faster. But what's that little hint about it being your last demo?? Say it ain't so, bro!

Finally, the obligatory contest reminder. I hope you all got the message about needing to re-download the map. If not, see below for details.

Have fun and don't forget to purge regularly.

Tuesday, September 23rd by morfans

Forgotten Ritual Remembered. - 3:55 PM

Ladies and Gentlemen. Here is an important announcement regarding the map for the latest contest.

Due to a few incidents of trigger buggered-upness we have released a new version of forit.bsp to be used for this contest. Please go to the contest page and re-download it.

Thanks to everyone that pointed this slight flaw out to us and also thanks to JMad for fixing it so promptly.

Monday, September 22nd by lodis

The STFU update. - 6:45 PM

New maps, presented in a fairly aggressive manner: Oh I nearly forgot: have fun!

Friday, September 20th by Morfans

Fresh Meat For The Grinder. - 2:43 PM

To those of you that I faithfully promised I'd post the update yesterday I can only say this : I lied. Not maliciously or deliberately but undeniably lie I did.

But I'm not going to let that ruin the mood around here. There's just too many first class demos to let a simple little untruth spoil things. And we're going to start off with a brand new runner who is, frankly, pretty damn good.

Our 204th official SDA runner goes by the name of Dane Plachetta and he's showcased his 100% skillz on hip1m2 in a Fleck crushing display of death.

Connor Fitzgerald keeps finding cool new tricks on the DMxSP maps. This time he improved Weixing's Easy Run of dm5sp by one second to 0:20 with the help of a slope and a gib. A trick I thought should be possible but didn't ever expect to actually see. :-)

It's always the way around here. It all goes quiet on the Udder front and then Daniel Hansson comes storming back with a whole batch of demos. The first two of which, like sex, he did on his own...

That's this week's single player demos kicked squarely in the stones. But before we get on to the coop action it's time to announce...

Speedrunning Championship 2003 Contest #6 : Forgotten Ritual

Yes indeed. Contest #6 is now underway. See here for the details and map download link. Big thanks to Ivan Vladev for making the map for this contest. Please show your appreciation to Ivan in the traditional manner, by making some demos on his map.

Next we have a whole bunch of coop demos. Starting with a stack of 2-player action from Robert and Rickard, also known as The Bloody Fist Of Axelsson. This name derives from their great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother, Ethel "BloodFist" Axelsson, the notorious fifteenth century large handed lesbian.

A really class piece of coop action from another pair of brothers, this time we see the return of the team of Thomas and Mads-Peter Stubgaard. They improved Nolan and Stefan's Easy 100% of The Dismal Oubliette by thirty-one seconds to 2:07. Consistantly good play from both players was almost spoiled when Stubby muffed a long bunny, but he made up for it at the end and won this weeks "fuck me that was lucky" prize for the final vore kill.

We'll round off this update with the two Udder coops I alluded to earlier. First it was the turn of Daniel Hansson and Carl Tholin to do the Easy Run Marathon of czg07 which they did in 1:51, 5 seconds faster than the 3-player marathon. More please, you two! :-)

Daniel then teamed up with Daniel Andersson to improve the Nightmare Run of czg07c he did with Carl by four seconds to 0:24.

And now.... I go.

Thursday, September 18th by Stubby

The Rabbit Run Video! - 3:57 PM

Here's the tRR video we promised (check the SDA promotion video update for the story) some weeks ago. It weighs in at 284 MB, so it's quite a hefty download. Jozsef Szalontai is once again the man behind the production. The video makes use of the JoeQuake engine along with custom textures and sounds (the super-shotgun sound is awesome!), so there's plenty of eyecandy and fun stuff for those who like that. I know some of you wasn't too fond of the eyecandy in the SDA video, and you probably won't be too pleased about how the tRR video looks, but we can't make everyone happy. The feedback we got from the SDA video has been overwhelmingly positive (mostly), and I doubt the tRR video will be received any different.

And no, there WON'T be a pak file version released of tRR, at least not yet. Maybe a miracle occurs and we somehow get to make the movie tRR was originally intended to be. But until then it's unlikely we'll release a pak version. If you beg us enough, maybe we'll reconsider :-)

And let me just explain to those who have no clue what the Rabbit Run is: It's a sequal to the original Quake done Quick lite run (link). In tRR all of Quake is completed on Easy skill in 10 minutes and 58 seconds! It's a 2 minutes and 56 second improvement over the previous release. The tRR project was started somewhat 4 years ago, and it has been postponed numerous times due to lack of interrest in the project. It was meant to be our greatest and most extensive movie to date, but sadly enough it wasn't meant to be. But as I said, maybe a miracle suddenly appears, that's why we're not releasing a pak version of the video yet... I hope everyone understands.

Grab the video HERE. (FilePlanet). And HERE. (Blueyonder)

Friday, September 12th by Morfans

Something Like A Phe-Nieminen! - 10:00 AM

Since yesterday was international "Knife a Swedish Politician Thursday" it seems only fitting that the demos today come from four of our best Swedish runners...

First up we have two Must Download improvements to id levels from Super-Swede Timo Nieminen.

Our newest Swedish running sensation, Connor Fitzgerald, has produced two excellent demos this week...

Last week we had the first demo from Ken in a while, and now it's time for a demo from another old face, "The Swedish Tornado" Amrik Kochhar. He proved that he hasn't quite lost all his skillz, such as they were, and did a nice tablefiller for the Easy 100% of chain3 in 1:56. Good to see you back, Amrik.

Our final demo is also a Coagula Contest tablefiller and comes from bodybuilding giant Basil "Mr Sweden" de Vries. He filled the tricky discoag2 Nightmare Run slot in the time of 0:39. Quite apart from the sheer weight of monsters that get in your way on this map it's tricky to do because of the vores balling you and the knights slashing you as you try and contend with the final shambler. But a handy double telefrag takes some of that pressure off...

We'll have a new contest ready in, hopefully, a day or two. Until then, keep on running!

Thursday, September 11th by Stubby

Fleck Bless the Danes! - 12:03 PM


Danish Flag

This is an in-joke to last year's american flag update 'controversy' which made me leave SDA in a storm of fury. Looking back at it, it was quite immature, but so were your comments on the message board (you know who you are)! If you don't find this update funny, well, bite me! :-)

Monday, September 8th by lodis

I forgot to put on my pants when I went to work this morning :( - 8:00 PM

The contest is over! Congratulations Robert and Robert you both did a fine job on winning one category each. No one got especially close to Robert, his margin in the monsters category was 8 seconds! But really, I did expect more people to take part. Summer's over (at least on my hemisphere) so what's keeping ya from running?

Check the contest page for the results and demos. So who's on top of the 2003 Contest League Table now? Go see for yourself...

Sunday, September 7th by Stubby

New SDA Menu - 8:14 PM

The new menu should be working now. We made an attempt to use java, but we couldn't quite get it to work with the perl script SDA uses, so we build the menu in html instead. It may not look as fancy as java, but at least this menu works :-) I want to thank Vondur from Vondur's War Supply for building this menu. Btw, if you get the chance, please bug him about the Q1 single player map he's working on, it's suppossedly build with speedrunning in mind, so we're very anxious to see it here on SDA :-) If you encounter any problems with the new menu, drop us a note or leave a message for us on the SDA forum.

Saturday, September 6th (2nd update) by Morfans

Put It In Neutral. - 9:26 AM

Busy week, huh? Menus, movies, forums and demos. Demos? What do you mean "you haven't seen any demos this week"? Ah, that'll be because we haven't posted any. :-)

To be honest we've only had a few in this week, but once again quality kicks quantity square in the nutz...

That's the demos done, and before I go it only remains for me to remind you that the deadline for the Wizard's Pants contest is MIDNIGHT TOMORROW (SUNDAY). I don't know if we'll see an optimum route since every single entry we've had so far has used a different route, but I'm really looking forward to seeing just who can do what. (if you see what I mean...)

Saturday, September 6th by Stubby

SDA Maintenance - 2:02 AM

As you can probably see we're working on a new menu for SDA. It's not fully done yet, and some of the pages the submenus link to aren't finished yet, so please be patient while we fix this. The menu freezes after you've visited a link, but all you have to do is reload SDA and the menu works again. I'll fix that first thing in the morning, but I really need to get some sleep now. In the meantime go post some sillyness on our new SDA Forum :-)

Friday, September 5th by lodis

SDA Promotion Video! Update! - 02:25 PM

I posted a quick blurb about the video at ESReality which is a pretty cool gaming community site. Here's the post itself, where you can find some additional mirrors if Fileplanet happens to be full or whatnot.
Oh yeah, you can rank the movie to so why don't you take your time and vote (of course you'd have to register but I recommend you do that anyway since it's a good site).

Thursday, September 4th (2nd update) by Stubby

SDA Promotion Video! - 11:19 PM

Today is certainly a great day! First the new SDA Forum and now we can present to you the first ever SDA Promotion Video! It's a 101mb video that runs for 5:36 minutes and shows various speedrunning tricks! It's accompanied by some kick ass metal music (none of that techno crap for me thanks!) and made with Jozsef's JoeQuake engine. It's definitely worth the download even though it may be a bit big for people still stuck on crappy connections.

The long awaited tRR video will also be released soon, we just need to spread the word with the SDA Promotion Video first, but I can promise you that the tRR video kicks major beee-hind!

Thursday, September 4th by Stubby

New SDA Forum! - 8:01 PM

You know the old saying out with the old, in with the new, right? In this case it couldn't be more true, 'cause today ladies and gentlemen, I'm proud to announce a brand spanking new Forum on SDA! It's HEAPS better than the old, slow and ugly looking Message Board, so that one will end up collecting dust I reckon ;-) Now we just need for YOU people to post some sillyness on the Forum, pronto! A huge applause goes out to the lovely Jube from PQ.com who gave a BIG hand (no guys, not _that_ kind of hand!) with the Forum, thanks gale (inside joke, don't ask)! ;-)

Monday, September 1st by Stubby

Quake done Chopped - 3:36 PM

Just a quick little note that I found some old demos for the Quake done Chopped project that were thought to be lost (in fact I've had them on my HD for ages, I just wasn't aware that I had :-). Go have a looksie...

Saturday, August 30th by Morfans

With A Face Like That... - 9:14 AM

We're going to get straight on with the demos without too much arseing about this time. I have worn my brain out in the last few days putting the finishing touches to a looong overdue project and I can barely even remember my name, let alone think of any comments to make in this update. Still, we'll see how in goes...

It didn't take Connor Fitzgerald long to break OpenGL's TO of dm5sp. Following the last update it took mere hours before he sent in a 0:21 Nightmare Run, one fiend-jumping second faster. And it was only a couple of days later that he tightened this up to 0:20. Recommended

Various Coagula shenanigans also assaulted our inbox this week...

  • tyrcoag took a pounding from Basil de Vries, who improved Ivan's Easy Run by thirty-four seconds to 0:49 with several stylish ogre-gren jumps and some brand new shortcuts. Shame he missed one RJ. :-/
  • Robert and Rickard Axelsson more than cut that time in half with their 2-player Easy Run in 0:24 with their now famous "get weapon, boost, get weapon, boost, get weapon, boost, boost, boost" combo.
  • If you're going to take a record you might as well do it in style. Joe's recent chain3 Easy Run caused a few gasps of amazement, so Denis Nazarov decided to improve it. Not just by a second, but by a whole four seconds to 0:20. A new fiend-boost gives him the speed he needs for the big time saving... Recommended
  • Weixing Ye demonstarted to Basil the old maxim "if you've got a quad - use it" by improving his Easy 100% of chain3 by thirteen seconds to 1:00.
  • And because I like the look of discoag2 I thought it was time someone did the Nightmare 100%. Eventually I had a lucky run and exited in 2:16.

More deathmatch level madness. This update has already had two Recommended demos and I like to try and keep the numbers down if possible. I think three should be the limit for this week but both of the following demos are totally worthy. So, as part of our never before mentioned (and never to be mentioned again) SDA Interactive initiative we're going to let you decided which demo deserves the honour. Simply watch them both and then say to yourself "I preferred xxxxxx's demo." It's that simple. ;-)

  • Martin Selinus improved Connors Easy 100% of dm2sp by one second to 0:41 using a new route.
  • And Anders Nordensten recaptured his Nightmare Run of dm3sp from Robert using the long bunny to the rocket launcher and then boosting like a madman. 0:31, five seconds faster.

Our last demo is a little beer-inhibited coop action from Thomas Stubgaard and Aleksander Osipov. Alex and the lovely Tanja recently visited the Stubster and they found the time to improve Tommi and Kari's old Easy 100% of Azure Agony. 1:17. ONE second faster. :-)

A few other items before I go. First a reminder about Contest #5. You have just over a week, people, that's all I'm going to say...

Next we'd like YOUR help to stop us looking like unloved rejects. I know we are unloved rejects but that doesn't mean everyone has to know about it. So get along to PQ's Poll Of The Week this week and vote as your conscience dictates on question #3.

And finally tonight, as regulars on the Message Board will know, Stubby has opened up two QdQ projects to the world at large: one is to try and finish off Quake done Chopped and the other is a brand new Hipnotic Easy 100% project. Hopefully these, particularly the second one, will appeal to some of you. But don't let them distract you from the important things in life such as liberty, happiness and the RotW Contests! :-)

Saturday, August 23rd by Morfans

Better Than A Kick In The Donuts! - 9:44 AM

Fasten yourself in, dear friend, as this could be a bumpy ride. Or at least a fairly long one. You see, over the last couple of months I've got out of the habit of writing these long updates and now that one's come along I find that my hands are shaking in anticipation, even after rigorously practising the traditional SDA hand steadying exercises.

I'd like to begin by kicking off Contest #5 in our 2003 Speedrunning Championship. It's a little different from the last few contests but the theme will be familiar to long time SDA devotees. Because several people expressed an interest it's a collectathon on an id map. So go and have fun in The Wizard's Pants.

Now for a swathe of demos for your unedifyable viewing pleasure, presented here in no particular order...

Starting off with Me filling the Nightmare 100% gap on jesus in the very unremarkable time of 2:40.

Still on the same map, Basil de Vries managed to force his way through to complete the life-sapping Nightmare Run in 0:37.

Next we'll take a look at what Ivan Vladev has been up to on tyrcoag. As I believe I mentioned somewhere once before, this map is a real git for falling into the void, so some careful footwork is needed. However, I'm not entirely convinced that playing with trigger-info on is absolutely necessary. :-) 1:23. Now who's up for the Nightmare Run?

The new DMxSP maps have come in for a good kicking this week from three worthy runners, presented here in order of testicular capacity...

  • First up we have Connor "XL" Fitzgerald dishing out the harm on dm2sp...
    • He did a really rather impressive Easy 100% in 0:42 using a nifty route and some good fast killin'.
    • He also thought Anders's Nightmare Run just wasn't aggressive enough so he upped the pain quotient and did a 0:29 two seconds faster.
    • Then he tidied the route up a little and managed to get another second off the time giving 0:28.
    • But the problem with getting it any faster is that you need to get to the floaty platform really fast otherwise you have to wait a while for it to move into position. How can you get there faster? With an excellent new Gren Jump/DK slide combo, that's how. 0:26. Two seconds faster still.
  • There's a lot of monsters to obstruct you on the Nightmare Run of dm3sp. Robert "XXL" Axelsson used a clever mid-air lightning boost, amongst other tweaks, to improve Anders's time by three seconds to 0:36.
  • Weixing "XXXL" Ye has become the first person to take TO of a new map with three ball-breaking demos on dm5sp...
    • Better running at the start and what can only be described as unbelievable luck with the monsters in the last two rooms allowed him to improve Lodis's Nightmare Run by four fat seconds to 0:22. Connor also sent in a 0:22 but his arrived a couple of days later. It does show a much quicker way to reach the switch but he was slightly slower throughout the rest of the run. His demo is also included in the big.dz (below) so that anyone that wishes to topple OpenGl can see how it's done.
    • He also filled the vacant Easy 100% slot with a slick 0:42. Is there a better route??
    • He completed the ownage with a Nightmare 100% in 1:05. I'm glad I didn't send in my tablefiller now because it would have looked embarrassing next to this masterpiece of mayhem. He even stood toe-to-toe with a shambler in an arse-kicking contest when there was absolutely no need. I like.

One more demo, back where we started. Basil de Vries has stomped all over my jesus NH tablefiller (above) getting a much more respectable time of 2:04.

Now, we don't normally report on new custom Quake engines, but this one deserves our support for several reasons. Firstly, because it's been written (see the .txt that comes with it for a better definition of "written") by Jozsef Szalontai; secondly, because it has some cool demo playback features such as demo autocomplete, play demos from within a .dz, and lots more; thirdly, because it's still a beta version and if anyone can find fault and break something it's you fuckers. :-) It's called JoeQuake and you can read all about it here.

Finally, I'm going to post an e-mail we've received from Paul "distrans" Brosche, the mapper who made discoag2. I don't normally reproduce e-mails here (apart from the occasional obviously fake one) but this time I thought it raised some interesting points. I won't say any more, here it is...

This is a general missive to all at SDA,
As a mapper who, earlier this year, struggled through the process of piecing together then tearing apart three attempts at a Coagula style level, I was a bit apprehensive about offering a completed level up to a bunch of speed freaks. After all, if I was going to spend months producing a quality product, I didn't want it blown off in a few seconds. However, after ELEK encouraged all potential coagula mappers to keep speed running in mind, I took the unconventional step of emptying Usher Recompiled on "easy".
Last night I got my first opportunity to view the runs produced on my level. The aerial control in 033, 032 and 031 at the point following silver key acquisition is something I'd never even considered. However, what really made me stand up and cheer was the combination of slope jumps and grenade jumps involved in Jozsef's 027 run. Stand up and cheer?!! Didn't I say earlier that I didn't want the level blown off in a few seconds. Yes, but what I hadn't understood at that point was that speed runners don't "play" levels, they "know" levels (in some ways, more intimately than any straight SP player ever wants to). So Jozsef blew the level off in 27 seconds... to do so meant that Jozsef had to become involved with the level. This makes me a very happy mapper.
Hats off and thankyou, you've put the icing on my experience with the Coagula 2 competition.

It's nice to see courtesy, praise and understanding from someone who is not involved in speedrunning but who makes it possible. And it got me thinking: when was the last time I mailed a mapper to tell him what I thought of his work...

That's about all we have time for, folks. We hope you'll be joining us again soon for more of the usual bollocks.

I should be on Reality TV. Why? So I could switch it off.

Tuesday, August 19th by Stubby

A little bit of this and that... - 6:27 PM

First of all, let me welcome Michael 'mwh' Hudson to TeamSDA. It's going to be loads of fun having him aboard the ship, and I'm sure the readers (that's you people!) will benefit from this as well.

When we added all those Second Coagula Map Mapping Contest Maps (!) we skipped one of them due to problems running it in WinQuake, but all that has been fixed now, and even though the map may not be the best for speedrunning, we've decided to add it to SDA anyways just to have the entire Coagula pack in the archives. The map is called pushcoag (The Vertical Mile) and was made by Pushplay. Please call your demos push_xxx.

On a related note, check out this thread from Func_Msgboard...

Just two demos this time, one of them on one of the new maps, and one of them on a recently new map :-)

  • Basil de Vries plowed his way through jesus on Easy skill, killing all monsters and getting all secrets in 1:13.
  • Dan Stukanev improved his Nightmare Run of ebony1 by 2 seconds to get 0:49.
That's all for today... I think...

Monday, August 18th (2nd update) by mwh

Next stop, the world. - 6:46 PM

Well, the fools who run this site seem to have let ME get access to the holy SDA webpages... Rest assured, I do have an evil plan for taking over the world -- and SDA is an important part of that plan -- but to lull you all into a false sense of security I'll start by uploading an ID demo:
  • Timo Nieminen has been reading the SDA web board and improved Carl's EH of e4m6 by two seconds to 1:51. Nothing hugely revolutionary, just a smoother run.
Right, that's it for today. Morfy's better at words than me, so hopefully abusing my fast uni connection will give him more time to write the damn updates and you won't hear so much from me... but we'll see.

Monday, August 18th by Stubby

Here we go again... - 4:50 PM

...another batch of demos on the new maps:
  • Let's begin with an improvement on the jesus map. Thomas Bergendorff used a tricky double grenade-jump to improve Anders' Easy Run by 2 seconds to get 0:23.
  • Jozsef Szalontai did the first demo on chain3. Using an alternative route and some nice rocket jumping he did the Easy Run in 0:24.
  • Staying with Jozsef for a bit, we have another improvement to the Easy Run on discoag2. He used a different route than Weixing, and added a very clever slope jump from a lamp post of whatever the hell it is, and improved the record by 4 seconds to get 0:27.
  • Going back to Weixing, we have the first 100% demo of the day. Weixing basically took his Easy Run route of discoag2 and applied it to the Easy 100% (the only difference is a secret), which he did in 0:33.
  • And now for three demos courtesy of SDA's very own donkey lovah, Mr. Skidmore. First he did the Nightmare 100% of nesp10, but being the bitch that he is, he didn't want me to post the first attempt he did, but like always when someone says that, it will only make us post it anyway, and Richard shouldn't be treated any different now should he? ;-) So here it is, a crap demo in 4:44, which he later improved to 4:23. Richard seems a tad annoyed at the bounce pads...
  • The last demo he did was the Easy 100% of tyrcoag, which is the first demo we've received on this map. Using a few shortcuts here and there he did this map in 3:24.
  • And last but not least we have a coop demo from the Axelsson Brothers (Robert and Rickard). They had a go at dm3sp flying through it in 0:27. Nice boosts fellas!
Ok, I might as well mention this now (this is the good news I talked about yesterday). We're bringing a new guy aboard SDA to help us out with the demo uploads/updates etc. The major reasons for this is that I'll be moving to the big city (Copenhagen) soon, so I most likely won't be as much online as I am now, but more on that subject later. And the other reason is that Morfans is on a crap connection and he'd be the only one doing demo updates once I move, so it'd be nice to have another guy around to help out once in a while. Oh yeah, I bet you're all curious as to who it is ;-) I won't tell you though, all I can say is that he usually hangs out in our IRC channel... he'll be making an appearance soon, so stay tuned!

Saturday, August 16th by Stubby

Ehm... - 3:04 PM

I thought I'd relieve Morfans from doing all the demo updates, so here goes...
  • Let's kick it off with Anders Nordensten who seems to be on a rampage these days! Not long after Morfans had posted the new maps update, Anders improved both the Easy and Nightmare runs of nesp10, both by 1 second, but that couldn't stop him from sending in another 1 second improvement to both records just a few minutes later. 0:09 (easy) and 0:09 (nightmare). Is 0:08 optimum?!
  • He spent some time on dm3sp, filling out the empty hole for the Nighmare Run in a time of 0:39. Tricky run.
  • He filled another hole for one of the new maps, this time discoag2 stood for fall. No monsters on easy skill makes this map quite easy to survive, but lots of well placed bunnies are required to get a good time. He ran the map in 0:32, but Weixing Ye wasn't going to let Anders run with all the glory, so he put on his favorite pair of running boots and blasted through the map in 0:31. Really nice! But does anyone dare to do it on Nightmare skill?
  • Michael Hudson had a go at the jesus map. Monster avoidance and leet grenade jumping is the key to tackle this map. Michael did it in 0:29, but then again Anders comes along and proves his worth. 4 seconds faster in 0:25. A little sluggish at the end, but otherwise a damn fine run.
  • And the final demo of the day comes courtesy of Connor Fitzgerald, with a 1 second improvement to his record on dmsp2. He managed to squeeze the time down to 0:23. Nice!
We've received one more demo, but you won't be seeing that one just yet. We have some good (hopefully) news to announce in the coming days...

Friday, August 15th by Morfans

Kwag My Biatch Up! - 9:38 AM

Attention young ladies! This is not a demo update! I repeat, this is not a demo update!

"Why not?" you may well ask. Well, last night the results of the Second Coagula Map Mapping Contest were posted over at Underworldfan's Site and since then Mr Stubgaard and myself have spent a couple of hours ripping the maps out of the .pak and repackaging them as single maps for your speedrunning enjoyment. And here they are...

  • chain3 - Indigo by Chainer. Please call your demos ch3_xxx.
  • tyrcoag - Outside In by Tyrann. Please call your demos tyrc_xxx.
  • nesp10 - Embers Of Cruelty by Necros. PLease call your demos ne10_xxx.
  • jesus - Jesus Wants You by A Mapper. Please call your demos jes_xxx.
  • discoa2 - Usher Recompiled by Distrans. PLease call your demos dis2_xxx.

Pushplay's map has not been added since it crashes Quake when you run it, but if that gets sorted it'll be added at a later date. We haven't really tested all the maps for runnability or found all the secrets but they looked so damn cool we just had to add them immediately. :-)

Of course, you can download all the maps in the proper .pak and extract them yourself if you want. We just thought this would make things easier for running them with QdQstats.

Finally, I lied about there being no demos in this update. I quickly just knocked out the Easy and Nightmare runs of nesp10 in 0:11.

Enjoy!

Thursday, August 14th by Morfans

A Celebration Of A Celebration Of Death. - 1:03 PM

Righty-ho. Let's get this update posted. I've been working on it for four days now and it's not fair to delay any longer. When I say "working on it for four days" it makes it sound like it's going to be an epic masterpiece. It's not. It's been a fortnight of hay and sheep for me and whenever I sit down to do the update I just draw a complete blank, stare at the screen for an hour or so, then just wander off.

But now the hay's all in, the sheep are all sorted, and I'm not leaving this desk until I've posted the first batch of new map demos. So hitch your wagon to a chicken and feel inspired...

I didn't honestly expect to see any demos on dm1sp, but Timo Nieminen has improved his excellent Nightmare Run by one more second to 0:12. I wasn't expecting to have to type MUST DOWNLOAD either, but I just have.

Some people have had a little trouble working out how to open the start on dm2sp. Hopefully these demos will show just how easy it can be..

  • Thomas Bergendorff started things off with the Easy Run in 0:29 using the quad to clear the way.
  • But Connor Fitzgerald skipped the quad and grenade-boosted himself to a 0:24. RECOMMENDED
  • Anders Nordensten then stepped up and had a try at the monster infested Nightmare Run, managing to exit in 0:31.

On to dm3sp...

  • I thought the fastest route here would be to grab the rocket launcher and blast your way to the exit, but Anders showed that when you have bunny-skillz you don't need rockets. He did the Easy Run in 0:30. Nice work.
  • And just to get the 100%s started, I did the Nightmare 100%, flawed though I might be, in 3:47.

There were a couple of good little battles on dm5sp...

  • First the Easy Run...
    • Anders was first with a 0:23.
    • Using his "home turf" advantage Basil de Vries improved this to 0:22.
    • But some great running from Weixing Ye secured him the record with 0:21. RECOMMENDED
  • Then the Nightmare Run...
    • Basil used a cool fiend-plus-slope boost (on his second attempt) to get 0:27.
    • But Lodis just ran up the stairs instead and fought his way to the gold key quicker to get 0:26.

To round things off we'll go back to Basil and the 100% demos on trinity.

  • He came up with yet another new route which saved him thirteen seconds over Anders's Easy 100% time to take the record down to 2:01.
  • And he used to same route to chop ten seconds off of OpenGl's Nightmare 100%, getting 2:04. A little messy but a sweet piece of map planning.

That's today's round up done. Next update in a couple of days. No. Don't laugh. I mean it. Seriously. :-)

We might even have the next contest ready to post. What do you think, Nolan? :-P

Wednesday, August 6th by Morfans

A Celebration Of Death. - 7:11 PM

While we sit around here in the fortress of solitude that is SDA, desperately trying to work out what the next RotW is going to be, I thought it was way past time we added some more maps.

Now, the plan was to add the other deathmatch maps and the two that have already been used and make it a whole new custom episode! Unfortunately, Basil hasn't finished dm6sp yet and is off on his holidays so it's just going to be the other five for now, and any marathon freaks out there will just have to wait. :-/

To recap the current records from the recent contests on dm1sp and dm4sp...

Now, it'd be obvious to call the demos dm1_xxx - dm5_xxx wouldn't it? Ah, but damaul3 is already using dm3_xxx. Therefore please call your demos dm1x_xxx - dm5x_xxx. For example, Peter's dm4 Easy Run is called dm4x_007.

Finally, you can get the maps here...

Now go kill some monster! And if you see Basil on ICQ remember to thank him for making the levels and also nag him to finish dm6sp. :-)

Wednesday, August 6th by lodis

SORRY MARTIN - 12:30 PM

Sorry Martin we (well actually it was all my fault but it feels better to share the blame with someone) forgot to include your demos in the dz´s. I've uploaded new versions so hopefully people will get your demos too from now on.

Monday, August 4th by lodis

OMG - 9:00 PM

Man did we get some great demos! Congratulation to Peter, Joe, Peter (again) and eixing for their wins. What exactly did they win? CONTEST 4 of course. Go check the results and download the excellent demos.
I want to thank everybody for participating (we had a very good turnout this time) and Basil for making the map.

Oh yeah, you might want to check the Championship ladder.

Saturday, August 2nd by Morfans

Make Me Smile! - 10:16 AM

You know the old saying : Another week goes by, another eight demos roll in. Of course, that doesn't include the huge pile of demos we've had for the RotW Contest #4. But if you're one of those people that haven't yet sent in your demos (and there's still quite a few regular names that haven't) please don't forget that the deadline is SUNDAY MIDNIGHT CET. Avoid looking a fool - send your demos TODAY! (Errrr. Or TOMORROW!)

One man is really on a roll at the moment as regards Id Nightmare 100%s. No prizes for guessing who it is, in fact there's a square kick in the saq for anyone that can't guess who it is. I am, of course, refering to Thomas Stubgaard. Who, because he owns just about all the records anyway, has improved his own Hell's Atrium record. Those of you with a good memory will remember his previous demo as "the one where he made a fool of himself by repeatedly failing to do the slope jump", but there's no such problem this time and so he exited in the spawn-poppingly fast time of 2:17, 13 seconds faster. Super Cool

The madness that is the Nightmare 100% of rings2 has continued throughout the week. I doubt, however, if we'll see any further improvements after this lot...

  • Basil de Vries started things off with a 0:10, five seconds faster than Ivan.
  • But Weixing Ye heard about it and decided that anything Basil could do, he could do better and scored a 0:09...
  • ... and quickly followed it up with probably-optimum-but-I-guess-a-0:07-could-be-done-in-theory 0:08. Spicey
  • Mr Ye has also ended the speculation as to whether a 0:04 was possible for the Nightmare Run in the only way possible: he did a 0:04. Shamb-tastically Optimum

OpenGL also took control of both 100%s on ebony1, the "annoying sinky platforms" map.

  • He improved my terminally defective Nightmare 100% by twenty-one seconds to 1:16.
  • And Basil's Easy 100% by four seconds to 1:04.

And to finish things off we have a display of precision bunnying, or "powerhopping" as some might call it, by Jozsef Szalontai. A simple map, a simple route, one second faster than Kimmo. The Easy Run of dazsp2c in 0:09. Bunn-tasically Optimum.

That's all for today, keep 'em coming, people.

Friday, July 25th by Morfans

Ah'Nuld For Gov'nor! - 10:22 AM

Sorry about the title, that was Stubby's idea. So many things to get through, so let's begin with a look through this weeks small but stunning crop of demos.

If I just mention the name "Jozsef Szalontai" then most people think they're in for a bit of a demo treat. And today is no exception. With a little twist, a little boost and a perfect finish he improved Martin's Nightmare Run of Gloom Keep by two seconds to 0:17. Undoubtedly a MUST DOWNLOAD.

Next, for those that prefer their MUST DOWNLOADs to be longer and bloodier, we have Thomas Stubgaard improving another tricky "shotgun only" demo, the Nightmare 100% of Azure Agony. Spawns, vores and shamblers abound on this level, and you have nothing to fight them with but your trusty boomstick and a hefty pile of Quads. It's staying alive that's the trick... Of course, being a total showoff Stubby improved it twice, first by one second to 3:37 and then by five more seconds to 3:32. Mxxx Dxxxxxxx

We'll head back to Joe again now for our final Id improvement of this update. It's a seven second improvement to Ilkka's Easy 100% Marathon of The Dimension of the Doomed. It's also, and I use this term very carefully, not particularly good. What I mean is that whereas it's far superior to anything I could ever produce, for a demo of Joe beating Ilkka using all the new routes and tricks from the last couple of years it's just not as impressive as expected. The fact that it's 15 months old and he's only just decided to send it in probably explains a lot. :-) 7:42.

Following on from Fragbait's slightly cautious rings2 Nightmare 100% last time, a couple of you have decided to spend a few minutes bringing the time down to a more reasonably level and giving us the biggest ever percentage improvement in SDAs history! Bigger even than Daniels's improvement of Amrik's czg07c or Marlo's improvement of Tim's nhall. So, from the original 1:17 we have Tim Doherty making a fifty-nine second improvement to 0:18 and Ivan Vladev making a sixty-two second improvement to 0:15. So let me see now, that's 77 seconds down to 15, that makes it a .... ummm .... well a pretty big percentage improvement!

Next, a nice coop from two of the oldest (in archive terms) warhorses in SDA history. Evan Wagner has once again risen from the dead to team up with Nolan Pflug to fill the Nightmare 100% slot on bbelief3 in the exit camping time of 1:35. (2:17)

I have a couple of things to add before I go. Naturally I'm going to throw in a quick reminder that there is just a week-and-a-bit to go in the latest contest so don't forget to send your entries in. ALL OF YOU!!! :-)

And also a big thanks to everyone that has sent in maps and suggestion for contests. There's been some pretty cool stuff on off and we will get round to sending you a proper reply soon. In the mean time, keep them coming!

On a similar note, I've had a pretty thorough breakdown/design for a contest map but the author has no mapping experience and would like to team up with a mapper to help turn the concept into a contest. :-) It doesn't look, to my untrained eye, to be a particularly difficult map to make so if someone out there can spare a few hours please mail me and I'll put you both in touch.

And finally a slightly serious and controversial issue. That of scripts. A few days ago someone asked me about whether or not it's "legal" to use a script to help with aiming the nailgun during the intermission. While the use of scripts is frowned upon by most speedrunning purists, it appears that one or two have been used over the years to accomplish small but tricky tasks.

So let's keep things simple: Please do not use scripts. SDA stands for SPEED Demos Archive not SCRIPT Demos Archive.

If you DO feel you need to use a script (or macro or whatever you want to call it), for example for aiming during intermission kills or to face a certain way at the start of a demo, then please credit the fact that you used a script and include the script itself in your .txt file. That way everyone can clearly see what you've done.

As far as I'm concerned this subject is closed. This website and the speedrunning community is about having fun and playing fair, please respect that.

If you don't understand what I'm talking about then don't worry, it doesn't apply to you. :-)

Thank-you for listening.

Friday, July 18th by Morfans

Shiny Phallic Vegetables. - 4:41 PM

Okay, so when I said "Demo update to follow very soon" I was maybe being a little hopeful. I'd like to say sorry to those of you that I promised that I'd do an update last weekend, I'm afraid real life got the better of me this week. Hell, we're even getting moans in the sBox over at Quake Terminus. (Calm down, Chris, we'll get to your demo in a minute...) :-)

Let's start off with a real corker of a demo. It's a MUST DOWNLOAD if you like long, insane Nightmare 100% demos on Id maps using only the shotgun. And let's be honest, who doesn't! So settle back and enjoy Thomas Stubgaard improving his own record (for the fifth time) on the Chambers of Torment by two seconds to 4:07. I just love the "lava sharks" in these demos. :-)

Next up, three demos from Weixing Ye.

  • He used a new route to take four seconds off of Anders's Nightmare 100% of trinity, getting 2:14. He was using a borrowed, slow PC to record this, hence no bunnies at all. It's strange to watch players running through long, open areas without swishing from side to side and jumping like a mexican catfish on angel-dust.
  • He then teamed up with Xiaokui Xiao to reform The SCUT Combo and make two OPTIMUM rings2 demos...
    • Having no coop starts made the Easy Run very difficult: Start, jump, pause, connect, aim, unpause, boost, bounce, open, exit in 5.04, 5.1, 5.08, etc. Eventually they manged to get the magic 0:04.
    • The Nightmare Run was a little easier: Start, jump, pause, connect, aim, unpause, boost, double shambler boost, open, exit in 0:04.

A Hipnotic level improvement is a rare thing these days, so it's nice to see that Carl Tholin can still kick Scourgey arse when he has too. This time he improved Justin's Easy 100% of hip3m1 by six seconds to 1:34. As usual, he makes it look so damn easy. RECOMMENDED

Our next demo is a stunning display from Chris Hamilton, filling the empty Nightmare 100% slot on rings2. The two shamblers in the main arena at the start of this map mean that you'd die if you tried the Easy 100% route, but even so I think there's room for a little improvement to this 1:17, eleven times slower. :-)

And now we have Basil de Vries, who this time has really taken the time for the Nightmare 100% of rit2 below the 2 minute mark. Nine seconds below, in fact. 1:51

Since we're on the subject of Big Bas I think I should mention once again about the next Contest in the 2003 Speedrunning Championship. It's another Basil conversion of an Id DM map, and in my opinion a great, fun running map, although one or two people have told me they find some of the monsters "annoying" on Nightmare skill. But this raises an important point: without feedback we'll just carry on as we are. If there's something you don't like, please let us know. If there's something you really do like, let us know. If you have a suggestion for a contest, let us know. Basically, let us know. :-)

Well, QExpo is over and they didn't actually release any runnable maps, which made our plan of a big map splurge a bit of a non-starter. :-/ There were plenty of very cool maps and mods released, but none of then were really fun to speedrun. My personal favourite was the huge, and I mean HUGE, nesp09 from Necros. The main map is so huge you need a modified engine to run it, and that coupled with the facts that it'd need a custom progs.dat writing and it'd take half a day to do a run on it means we won't be adding it to the archive. (Probably). But just for a bit of fun I decided to do a Nightmare 100% of the "secret" map, ne_os1. It's not included in the all demos download because it's quite large and clocks in at 12:47. That may sound like a long time but there are 621(!!) monsters to kill.

That's it for another update. Don't forget to polish you marrow.

Friday, July 11th by Morfans

Hell and Torment. - 4:41 PM

Do you know what? I think it's time for the NEXT CONTEST.

Demo update to follow very soon.

Hey, my shortest update ever! The same length as a 15 demo Radix update. :-P

Tuesday, July 8th by Stubby

Quake Expo 2003 Speedrunning Event! - 5:33 PM

Just letting you guys know that there's a speedrunning event happening over at QExpo! You have until tomorrow (Wednesday) 12am GMT to get your entries in, but do NOT send them to us! :-) Find out more about the map, rules and where to send your demos over at Qexpo.

Monday, July 7th (2nd Update) by Morfans

And Now... - 4:00 PM

Sorry for the delay, everyone, but the Championship Ladder has now been updated with the results from Contest #3, and it's meant some big changes at the top...

Robert Axelsson has taken a one point lead over Anders Nordensten with Martin Selinus coming up quickly in third place. But with five contests to go it's still anyone's game, especially with the likes of Timo, OpenGL, Ken, Denn and Stubby (if he ever gets his arse in gear and actually sends any demos in :-P) biting at their heels. And now that Joe has thrown his hat into the ring is anyone safe?

Let's be honest, with the chance to win the SDA trophy at stake (something you'll be able to put on your desk or hang on your wall (depends on what it ends up being) with pride and in years to come show your grandchildren) you'd be mad not to take part!

Monday, July 7th by Morfans

Contest 3 Results Are Up! - 1:34 PM

That's right, Folks. We've closed the door on Teh Plaec Of Two Deahts and nailed up the results.

So please join me in congratulating Timo Nieminen (Nightmare Run), Martin Selinus (Easy 100%), Weixing Ye (Nightmare 100%) and .... wait for it ... Peter Horvath (Easy Run) on their well deserved wins.

Thanks to everyone who took part and made this contest another big success. It's great to see new people getting involved, too, so a big SDA welcome to Adam and Megazoid. I'd also like to thank the ever gorgeous Jube for pointing out my slight mistake with the dates to everyone in the world. :-)

So there you go. The next contest will be along very soon, but in the mean time be sure to keep your eye on QExpo as we hope to add a whole splurge of maps, if any of the new ones are runnable, of course.

Finally, the Championship Ladder is not updated yet as I just don't have time right now and I didn't want to delay posting the results. It will hopefully be done before the end of the day.

Tuesday, July 1st by Morfans

Sober on the outside, drunk on the inside. - 8:49 PM

Sometimes I just ask myself is it all worth it? All the effort. All the stress. All the brain-grinding tedium. And guess what? It is! It was a relief to me, I don't mind telling you. So there you are. It's officially all worth it. Thank fuck for that.

One of my all-time favourite Dutchmen, Basil de Vries, seems to have taken umbrage at my suggestion that his last set of rit2 demos were "untidy"...

  • He tidied up my Easy Run by eighteen seconds to get 2:00.
  • And just as I was getting ready to recapture the record he further improved it to 1:49. Looking pretty good.
  • And in a display of typical Basil, he improved my Nightmare 100% by thirteen seconds to 2:07, he decided not to improve it further as he was happy to get below 2 minutes. (???!!!?!??!?)

One of my all-time favourite Russians, Dan Stukanev, has kept working on his ebony1 Nightmare Run and it's paid off with a two second improvement to 0:51. Some nice play and a lovely little spin into the exit. :-)

One of my all-time favourite necrophiliacs, Carl Tholin, has achieved a pretty impressive record with the next two demos...

  • He improved Ilkka's old rd1m3 Easy Run by one second to get 0:38. Pretty bloody impressive to improve a no-bunny "optimum" run and in doing so take TO of the level.
  • Then came an attack on DanielL's Nightmare 100% of rd1m2 which fell by three seconds to 2:24. Once again giving him TO of the level.
  • And that means that Carl now has Total Ownage of ALL the original Runners Delight levels. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in a small golf-clap for Carl. Well done, old boy.

Because Carl has finally completed this Herculean task, it's only fair, I suppose, that I feed his ego and put up a link to this recent picture of Marvin, Pretty-Balls, Rolle and Carl. Now, this might look to you like a slightly out of focus picture of the Village People without their costumes on, but it isn't. Apparently Swedish people always look a little fuzzy around the edges at this time of year.

However, all four of the above wankers gentlemen have guaranteed that they'll have their entries to the latest RotW in on time. So take a leaf out of their book and don't forget, the deadline is Midnight CET, Sunday 6th June. And if you don't receive an e-mail back saying "we have your demo", we don't have your demo!

In case you weren't already aware, the latest and greatest Quake Expo is due to start this Saturday. It's bound to be a feast of maps, mods and general dicking around, so be sure to check up on what's happening regularly. I notice from the schedule that there's some kind of speedrunning event down for the Tuesday. No details yet but with a swathe of new maps promised it's not unlikely that we'll be getting in on the action.

We'll keep ya posted.

Sunday, June 22nd by Morfans

What do you call a Dominican with an Id Record? - 2:39 PM

Think you know the answer to the above question, eh? When asked, 97% of speedrunners replied "That's easy, it's Ken!"[1] but they were wrong. A few days ago they would have been correct but they didn't count on Thomas Stubgaard's relentless drive to own every Id Nightmare 100% record. When Ken took the Gloom Keep record some weeks ago his biggest change to the route was the use of the quad, especially in the "bars" area. Stubby went one better and avoided dropping down at all to save a further four seconds to 1:19. MUST DOWNLOAD

So there wasn't in fact a correct answer to the question. Sorry for asking, it just seemed like an easy way of getting the update started. On with the rest of the demos...

First a little update on the rings2 Nightmare Run. Now, nobody has actually improved my 0:05 by the full second yet, but Ivan Vladev has managed 0:05.2 and Thomas Bergendorff has managed 0:05.06 so it loots as if a 0:04 may indeed be possible. These demos are included in the all demos download, probably.

We haven't seen much from Dan Stukanev for a while, but now he's returned to the ever loving arms of Lady SDA. Time spent away from the archive is like time spent away from your woman. She'll always wonder where you are and who you've been there with, but as long as you come back with a nice present, like a forty-three second improvement to Basil's Nightmare Run of ebony1 giving 0:53, she'll welcome you back with open arms/legs.

SDA : Kind of like a beautiful, forgiving bitch.

Next we have the first of quite a few demos from Anders Nordensten. Never one to ignore an Easy hole, he filled the vacant horror Easy Run with a nice 0:25.

Two more cool demos on dwell.

  • Connor Fitzgerald has made one final (he says...) improvement to his Nightmarre 100%, this time smoothing out a few more rough edges to save another three seconds to 1:31.
  • But not everything on this level is going Connor's way, because Denis Nazarov has stolen the Easy Run off him by one second with, among other small tweaks, a better fiend boost into the end room. 0:33.

It's official, Ogre-grenade jumps are fun. Just check out rit2...

  • Denn did indeed fight back to try and recapture his Easy Run record and managed to get a 0:35, but Anders decided not to wait and sent in his own 0:35 a day earlier. :-)
  • And to prove that it was no fluke, Anders also improved Basil's Nightmare Run by eight seconds to 0:35.
  • Just so the 100%s wouldn't feel left out I tidied up Basil's Easy 100% and got 2:18, sixteen seconds faster.

Truly it has been said that Uddevalla is the prostate gland of Europe. This is best illustrated by a close inspection of one of its citizens, Carl Tholin. He destroyed my Nightmare 100% of rdend by thirty seconds to 328 to take TO of the map, and then started going on and on about how easy it was. Bastard. ;-)

For our final demo of this update it's back to Connor Fitzgerald and an excellent Easy Run of fmb8. He improved Basil's time by seven seconds with another new OG jump and also found a quicker way of placing the grenade to get you out of the gold key area. 0:53. RECOMMENDED

Well, it's finally stopped raining so I'm off outside. Sorry if there's any mistakes in this update, I started brewing some more homemade wine yesterday and there's 24 gallons of "Elderflower Braindeath" bubbling away just behind me. Therefore the carbon dioxide content of the air in this room is very high and I admit that I'm starting to feel very faint indeed. So if any of the above links are b0rked, it'z tha fuumez.

Probe!

[1] The other 3% told me to fuck off and go bother someone else with my stupid questions. :-/

Thursday, June 19th by Morfans

Just Like A Bone Friendly Cattle-Prod. - 2:44 PM

Another update already? No, you're pretty little 3eyes are not deceiving you, it really is the fourth update in the last week.

So what's this update all about? Surely we don't have enough demos for an update already? Well, actually we do, but you're not going to see them just yet. Instead I'm going to add the last two RotW maps to the main archive. Those of you with good memories (I.e. Can remember yesterday) will perhaps be wondering why I wanted to get this done while Thomas was still on holiday. The reason is that I'm also going to sneak on a third, rather silly map at the same time. :-)

First, a reminder of the winning demos from Contest One : runerun...

  • Easy Run : Martin Selinus : 0:18
  • Easy 100% : Thomas Stubgaard : 0:30
  • Nightmare Run : Robert Axelsson : 0:20
  • Nightmare 100% : Thomas Stubgaard : 0:42
  • ER2 : Carl Tholin and Daniel Hansson : 0:15
  • EH2 : Carl Tholin and Daniel Hansson : 0:27
  • NR2 : Carl Tholin and Pezzer Mattson : 0:22
  • NR2 : Carl Tholin and Pezzer Mattson : 0:49
  • Please name any new demos rr_xxx.
And the two winners and one mistaken demo from Contest Two : horror...
  • Easy 100% : Anders Nordensten : 0:27
  • Nightmare Run : Martin Selinus : 0:24
  • Nightmare 100% : Aleksander Osipov : 0:31
  • Please name any new demos hor_xxx.
And as a special treat here's a funny little map that first came to our attention in, ohhhhhh, March 2002, probably, when we were trawling through hundreds of old maps to see what we thought was runnable. There was a very small map called rings2, for which I did the Easy and Nightmare runs in 0:05 within a few minutes. We then decided that since the 100%s could be done in 15-20 seconds it probably wouldn't be much fun to add the map. Then, quite by coincidence, I had a little chat with Joe on IRC a couple of weeks later that went something like this...

Jozsef : Hey Morfy. You busy?
Morfans : No. Just downloading some pr0n.
Jozsef : I just did a demo on a new map.
Morfans : Oh? Which map?
Jozsef : rings2
Morfans : Really. I was looking at that a couple of weeks ago. I got 0:05 in the runs.
Jozsef : The runs are dull. 0:05 is simple and optimum. I did the Easy 100%.
Morfans : Cool. Did you get under 0:15?
Jozsef : LOL
Jozsef : I did 0:07. :-)

Now we all agreed the map wasn't up to much, and everytime I mention adding it people look at me in a strange way, but eight kills, two of them Shamblers, in seven seconds deserves to be seen. In fact, I'd call it MUST DOWNLOAD. Please call any new demos r2_xxx.

There, I've been wanting to do that for ages. I now feel purged.

Wednesday, June 18th by Morfans

Smack Me On The Banjo. - 8:34 AM

Ahhh, demos. Don't you just love 'em? Me? I love 'em. And here, presented in the ancient "Waggy" format, are some.

Easy Run Demos

  • Just the one Easy Run, but it's a stonker. Anders Nordensten, flushed with his current success in the 2003 Speedrunning Championship has once again returned to the world of regular demos. He improved Denn's Easy Run of rit2 by one smooth second to get 0:36. Will Denis fight back? I hope so, a battle between these two hungry young pretenders would be well worth seeing. :-)

Easy 100% Demos

We've had a quartet (quintet if you count the one the was beaten before it arrived...) of tablefillers from Anders and Basil de Vries.

  • First up we have Basil filling the gaping ebony hole with a neat little 1:08.
  • Then he did a nice 2:35 on mymap. Anders sent in a 2:50 soon after but it was blown aside by Basil's better route planning.
  • Basil again with a pretty sloppy rit2 Easy 100% in 2:34, fourteen seconds slower than the Nightmare 100%. :-P
  • Then Anders waded into the fray again with a 2:14 on trinity.

Nightmare Run Demos

  • Basil also did the Nightmare Run of ebony1 in 1:36. This level gets a little bit busy during the Nightmare Run so he basically had to kill most of the monsters along the way. This will be easily improvable if anyone thinks they can run three times through several rooms packed full of the biggest, meanest monsters the game can throw at you...
  • For his last demo of this update Orbs did the Nightmare Run of rit2 in 0:43. Any demo with an ogre grenade jump is always going to be cool... :-)
  • Basil, since you, as usual, got the demo names, times and skills wrong in every single mail you sent us I think you should thank Stubby for sorting them all out and working out what each one was actually suppossed to be and renaming them accordingly. Cool demos, but REALLY! ;-)

Nightmare 100% Demos

  • Connor Fitzgerald sent in THREE improvements to Amrik's dwell Nightmarre 100%. To 1:41, then 1:37 and finally to 1:34, fifteen seconds faster. This is a completely different route with some great tricks in it, starting with a nifty trigger_hurt jump, followed by a Tholinesque piece of haphazard grenade placing and it just gets better from there. (NOTE: Only the 1:34 is included in the all demos download.)
  • Back to Anders again for the last demo of the update. He improved my Nightmare 100% of trinity by twenty-five seconds using pretty much the same route. The difference, of course, is that he has some talent. :-) 2:18.

That's it for the demos, just a couple of other little items for you before I leave. Firstly, Stubby has tidied up our Links page to remove all the old, dead links and also add one new one, Quake Terminus, Megazoid's excellent Quake news/review site.

And what update would be complete without a quick mention of the current contest. I'm sure nobody's going to forget, but I just thought I'd give you an early reminder anyway. :-)

There should be another update in a coule of days containing some stuff that I was going to put into this update, but it was already getting too long. I want to get it posted before Lowdis gets back from holiday, though, or he'll probably try to stop me. :-)

Night night, sweet runners.

Oops, Nearly Forgot This One

There was one more demo, but I doubt you'll be interested in it. What the hell, I might as well post it...

WHO THE FUCK DO I THINK I'M KIDDING?? Jozsef Szalontai has returned from his well earned break by beating a demo that I thought would stand as long as the archive stayed in business. He improved one of the most popular demos of all time, Ilkka's double-fiend-boosting Nightmare Run of The Grisly Grotto by one second to get 0:18. Not quite sure where the saving of just over a second comes from, I guess that Joe2003 is just even hotter than before! MUST DOWNLOAD!

Saturday, June 14th by Stubby

The Grand Finale! - 12:44 AM

This is it boys and gals, the final batch of demos in the tRR series! These demos are (or shall we say WERE...) the cream of the crop, or to put it simple, the best of the best.
  • Since two of the demos in this update belongs to Markus, why not start with one of his. Martin and him had quite a fight over this map, and Markus pulled the longest straw as he's done so many times before. He took the quadded grenade jump a little step further, by throwing the grenade a bit earlier which enabled him to bunny around the corner as well. I think that's what saved him the extra few tenths. The Elder God Shrine in 0:37.
  • I doubt there's little Markus can do about this next demo though, as it already seems optimized! It's courtesy of Martin Selinus, and it was (as far as I know) the last map in the tRR project to be improved over the old project. Martin improved Peter's already tricky demo on The Vaults Of Zin by 1 second to get 0:13. Optimized?
  • Back to Markus again for the third demo of the evening, and probably the final demo you will ever see from him, unfortunately! He rocked the sewers in The Necropolis, luring the zombie at the end VERY quickly to give him a time of 0:32. He got stuck at the gold key door though, and he could have thrown the grenade a bit earlier too. Maybe those two things combined would save an extra second, so if you feel lucky and want to test your skills, why not give this map a go? Of course there's still the issue of the bitchy zombie at the end which will most likely screw up all of your attempts :-)
  • And here it is, the demo everyone has been waiting for! The Slipgate Complex in 0:21 by the devil himself, Mr. Peter Horvath! I will let the demo speak for itself, but I encourage you to read his .txt file AFTER you've watched his demo. He gives a little 'hint' as to how he managed to do the tricky barrel boost as smoothly as he did....
Ok, that's it, there's no more secret Quake done Quick demos waiting to be released! You've seen them all. It's over, finito! So don't come begging for more now ya hear? :-) With that being said, I think we should all give a big applause to two of the biggest legends in speedrunning, Markus Taipale and Peter Horvath! Too bad we won't be seeing anymore demos from these two guys ever again, but that's how it goes sometimes, Yonatan (most likely the biggest legend) quit speedrunning in '98 and the community didn't die from that, so this won't kill us either!

SDA WILL LIVE ON FOREVER! (or for as long as people will submit demos to our site) :-)

One other thing before I jump into bed and dream about the Canadian F1 Grand Prix that's due tomorrow (go Kimi go!). SDA is "Site of the Day" again over at PQ.com, and we're always getting cool scoops from PQ's very own buttercup, Jube. Keep working on those sit-ups baby!! /sda loves j00

Friday, June 13th by Morfans

New Contest, Madam? Ohh, That'd Be Lovely! - 10:16 AM

Oh yes indeed. It's time to kick off the third round of the 2003 Speedrunning Championship. Why today? Well, it's to give you four full weekends (and three of those boring long bits in between) to work on the four contested runs on the hauntingly familiar Plaec of Two Deahts!

It is, of course, a copy of the never popular "DM1 - The Place Of Two Deaths", originally made by someone at Id (Romero, Willits or one of that shower) and cunningly converted into a very fun single player speedrunning map by Basil de Vries. Top work, Loony Dutchman!

As alluded to earlier, all four regular SDA disciplines are being contested and the closing date is Midnight CET, Sunday 6th July. Head on over to the contest page to grab the map and read the rules.

The only new thing here is that the sda_contest mailbox will now generate an automatic reply to any mail it receives to let you know that we've received your demos safely. No reply probably means your demo didn't reach us.

If you don't believe me (I know what a suspicious lot you are!) then try it out now!

Wednesday, June 11th by Morfans

1-2-3 - 10:16 AM

Hoooooookay, people. Let's begin with three small corrections to the RotW results...
  • Firstly, Danny v/d Kleij sent us a Nightmare Run that somehow got missed. Sorry Danny, our mistake.
  • Secondly, Aleksander Osipov has kindly pointed out that just because he sent in a weed fueled Nightmare 100%, instead of a Nightmare Run, that doesn't mean it isn't a valid Nightmare Run. Point taken. Dumbass, to be sure, but point taken nevertheless. :-)
  • Thirdly, Tim Doherty sent me an Easy 100% over ICQ just before the deadline which I said I'd pass on to Thomas, but didn't. Since it was my fault I guess we should include it. But let that be a lesson to you all! NEVER trust me.
These changes have now been added to the horror page and the League Table. Some of you are still reporting the occasional problem sending demos to us. Being the kind and loving people we are we've come up with a solution to this old and annoying problem. To be honest, it was Nolan's idea but I stole it to make myself look good.[1] More details to come when the next contest is posted in, ohhhhhh, a couple of days.

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, settle back for 2:53 seconds of mayhem as Thomas Bergendorff takes TO of a2d2 by beating Justin's Nightmare 100% by a full thirty seconds. Great fun, but he could have been a little more aggressive at the end... ;-)

Now that you've relaxed after that piece of Optic bashing by Thomas, it's time to fire you up again with some Basil bashing from Connor Fitzgerald. He used smoother play (I guess, I can't actually see much difference in the demos :-)) to take one second off of both runs of dwell taking the time down to 0:34 on both Easy and Nightmare. Very nice.

And we'll finish this demo round-up (we've actually had a whole pile of new tablefillers from two players arrive since I started this update (typical!) but they'll have to carry over to the next update now. Why? Because I'm too lazy to change the tables again. :-)) with another bit of Total Ownage. This time, for the first time ever, by ME! I took Andrey's remaining three records on mexx8 to have the whole sweet[2] map to myself.

  • The Easy 100% was pretty simple to improve by sixty-nine seconds to 6:23. I would have improved it some more but it was 69 seconds. *giggle* 69 *snort*. :-)
  • The Easy Run was a bit harder to improve but I managed to get it down to 4:11, nine seconds faster.
  • And the Nightmare Run was an absolute bitch. This 4:39, thirty seconds faster, was only the second time I ever reached the exit. And it'll also be the last. :-)

Only one piece of mail this week, from an old friend...

Dear Mr Morfans,
Were those messages in your last update real or made up? If they were real then how come there were no demos from Helmut or Vinvan?
      Yours confusedly,
      Neil Plug. (USA)

Good questions, Neil. I only wish I had good answers to go with them.

So that's it. More demos, a new RotW and the rest of the Rabbit Run demos coming in the next few days. Really, we're too good to you...

...but you're worth it. :-)

[1] Didn't work, did it? :-(
[2] Actually, although it's a very well crafted level it's pretty much very unsweet, running wise. Can you imagine us adding a map with 5 minute runs these days? HA! Fat fucking chance. :-)

Monday, June 9th by Lodis

The horror of broken legs. - 11:52 PM

A lot of people have been breaking their legs over the last few weeks, and we finally have two winners. Congratulations to Martin Selinus for yet another win and Anders Nordensten for his first win of the season (and a second place too!). Good job lads, you deserved to win. Especially Anders who beat the crap out of every other runner in the easy 100% contest. We usually tell 1st place from 2nd place by milliseconds, but in this case he won with around 3 seconds. Check the horror page for the results and demos. The standings have changed a bit, see the 2003 Contest League Table.

A few notes I made while receiving the demos and watching them:

  • Old runner Evan Wagner made a run! Hope to see you again Evan.
  • Two girls participated. Girls are cool.
  • Alex has been smoking to much of that green stuff (alternatively chewing too much shrooms) because he apparently thought the contest consisted of doing easy and nightmare 100%. His nightmare 100% is included in the big demo .dz.
  • Basil can't ever name his files correctly. He'll get it right when hell freezes over or when the world supply of weed is gone.
  • Ken has BIG problems learning which email address to submit his demos to (sda_contest). This is very strange after being told a number of times and also it says very clear on the contest pages where to send the demos.

We'll post a new contest in a while (I have no clue when to be honest as I'm off to Barcelona on Wednesday).

Thursday, June 5th by Morfans

What's Orange And Sounds Like A Parrot? - 9:21 AM

Today, my friends, I though that as well as bringing you the latest demos (only a few, I'm afraid) I'd let you see just a very few of the e-mails I've received in the last week or two. This may give you some insight into just what speedrunners the world over are thinking at this moment. But first, two tablefillers from me.

Dear Mr Morfans,
This latest RotW map of yours, horror, is just so simple! Surely this must be the perfect map for anyone to have a go on, no matter how bad their running skills or how "retired" they think they are.
      Respectfully,
      Helmut von Bustenhalter. (Germany)

That's right, Helmut! It's simple, fun and it's also been suggested that it's a pretty good cure for piles. So don't forget to send your Contest 2 entries in before the Midnight Sunday deadline.

Our next demo comes from Basil de Vries. Basil decided to get a little sweet revenge on Lowdis for beating him to the Easy Run of mymap record recently by stealing the Nightmare Run. He did it by cutting every corner he could find and then making a mad dash through the shambler hell at the end giving him a time of 1:24, eight seconds faster than Thomas. And speaking of confusing Dutchmen...

Dear Mr Morfans,
Just thought I'd drop you a quick note to say that I agree with the German fellow in the last letter.
      Admiringly,
      Vanvin van Vandervinvon. (The Netherlands)

Thanks, Vinvan. Apart from anything else your letter has given me an excuse to put up a link to the current contest again.

Basil takes a record, Basil loses a record. That's always been the rule around here. Probably. This time it was Connor Fitzgerald who took Basil's Easy Run Marathon through the ikspq levels in the reasonable time of 3:49. He loses maybe ten seconds to a mistake in the first map alone so there's still room for improvement here.

Just the one demo from Thomas Bergendorff this time, but it's a beauty. He improved DanielH's a2d2 Easy Run by three seconds using a new route. It's fast. It's furious. It's 0:40 seconds of RECOMMENDED love.

Dear Mr Morfans,
Hello. It's Helmut again from the first letter (above). Is it just my imagination or aren't there many demos at the moment?
      Respectfully,
      Helmut von Bustenhalter. (Germany)

Unfortunately, Helmut, you're right. What with the RotW, the lovely weather and the fact that this is traditionally a slack time anyway things have been a little sparse in recent weeks. But just to show that I stiil care I've made two demos that, unusually for me, aren't table fillers...

  • In what is probably the best demo I've ever made I improved Fab's Nightmare 100% of mexx1 by a huge sixteen seconds to 1:06.
  • And I also improved Andrey's Nightmare 100% of mexx8 by fifteen seconds to 8:14. Bugger me that's a long level!

That's all for today. I was going to ramble on about some old bollocks for a while but apparently people want to see the update before they go to bed/work. So I'll say goodbye.

Goodbye.

Tuesday, May 27th by Stubby

More tRR Goodness! - 3:36 PM

Today is the day that I'll unleash the 2nd batch of tRR demos. These three demos are topnotch running, it's just a shame that they weren't released earlier 'coz today they might not stand out as they would've back when they were recorded. I'm not saying the demos are bad compared to the demos that gets recorded today, but speedrunning constantly evolves and when they were recorded they were reeeeeally good, but I'll let you form your own opinion.
  • Let's begin with the newest demo of those three. It was recorded in March of 2001 by Markus Taipale. He skipped the tricky slope-jump trick (which so far has been the only way to skip the major parts of this map), and instead he used a monster boost to gain enough speed to simply avoid that trick! Quite 'tricky' eh?! ;-) I think this record will stand forever, unless some loony Hungarian decides to make a comeback to speedrunning.... oh, maybe I should mention what map I'm talking about. It's Termination Central of course, done in 0:23.
  • This next demo was also done in 2001 by Martin Selinus. It was his 2nd demo for the tRR project, beating out Markus by 1 second! It's mostly just mad bunnying, with the exception of the teleport-curl-jumptoexit-thingie at the end. The Tower Of Despair in 0:29.
  • And the final demo is courtesy of Peter Horvath. It was made all the way back in 1999, and it still remains as the third oldest id record on the tables! The bunnies aren't up to todays standards, but the demo includes alot of really hard tricks, well at least it's hard to pull those tricks off in the same demo, and I think that's the main reason why it hasn't been beaten yet, and also because it hasn't been available to everybody yet of course, until now. It's still a mystery to me why he doesn't get stuck on the 'stairs' towards the end (where the grenade launcher is), it certainly looks like he does, but I apparently he just misses them by a few pixels :-) Enough talking, here's the demo: The Ogre Citadel in 0:31.
That leaves us with just one more batch of tRR demos. When I'll post those demos still remain a bit uncertain, but probably not until after the current RotW contest has ended, so stay tuned!

Wednesday, May 21st by Morfans

Smother Me In Garlic And Roast Me On A Spit. - 3:17 PM

HEAR YE! HEAR YE! LATEST RotW CONTEST STARTS NOW!

That's right, my little membranes, it's time once again to get your running and jumping shoes on and pit yourself against the rest of the world in a challenge of pointless simplicity.

This contest, crafted for us by Carl Tholin and Johan Nilsson, is far simpler than the last one, but it contains three of the basic tenets of speedrunning...

  1. Jumping down a slope speeds you up.
  2. Quad rocket jumping is fun.
  3. Some textures can be very, very ugly.
Full details for the contest are available here, any questions, mail us. Now go!

Actually, before you go you might like to download and watch the following demos...

  • Thomas Bergendorff went butt-faced crazy on epoch by taking TO of the level with two cool Nightmare Runs. First a 1:13 and then, two days later, a 1:11, three and five seconds faster than Ken respectively.
  • Basil de Vries sent in an Easy Run of mymap using the OG jump to get the silver key and improve Michael's time by nine seconds to 1:13, but unfortunately for him Lowdis had already submitted a 1:13 just using better bunnies. Both players added a boost off the vore and a sweet gren jump over the bars at the end but it's the first demo that counts I'm afraid, Basil. (Both demos are included in the all demos download below.)
  • Speedrunning magician Robert Axelsson and his beautiful assistant, Rickard, sent in two killer coops.
    • They filled the empty Nightmare Run spot on tower with a slick (optimum?) 0:10. (0:11)
    • Then they improved Hansson and P-B's Easy Run of cult by one second to 0:15. They think it's optimum, and who am I to argue. OPTIMUM
  • Carl Tholin continues to do what he does best, taking virginities. This time it was Tim Doherty's coop virginity in a mad 2 Player Easy 100% Marathon through jzblue. This has to be the the most remote coop we've ever had (Sweden/New Zealand) which makes this 1:10 (1:19) all the more impressive.
  • Which leaves us with our final demo of this update. I don't usually include demos that arrive while I'm updating but this time I just thopught what the hell. It's an Easy Run of ikspq5 by rising star Connor Fitzgerald in 0:46, beating Peter's time by two seconds by adding a bunch of bunnys and a better GL pickup. RECOMMENDED
That'll do for today. I was going to delight you all with some music, but that'll have to wait until next time now. :-)

Sunday, May 18th by Stubby

Today Is The Day Of Reckoning! - 8:58 PM

What's that you say? Well, today is the day that I'll post the first three demos from the Rabbit Run (upcoming QdQ project that has been in the works since 1999...). The project has gotten delayed a zillion times and no-one really knows when it'll be out, so I took the decision to post the demos that are valid (demos done from scratch) SDA demos. I know that alot of people has been waiting forever to see these demos, so why not just post them instead of growing dust on them? In this update I'll give you three demos, two of which has been improved even further, but you won't see them until I post the third and final batch of tRR demos. That's right folks, this is the first batch of demos and next week I'll post another batch (3 demos), and in about 14 days or so I'll post the final 4 demos, so stay tuned! This simply doesn't get any better, it's topnotch running from some of the truly great runners that has more or less retired. I guess you could think of this as their final and best work, their grand finale before retiring (given the fact that they won't make an unsuspected comeback to speedrunning that is!).

Enough babbling, here's the demos!

  • Markus Taipale, the grand master of bunnies, was the first man to attempt the tricky barrel boost on The Slipgate Complex. The funny thing is that we actually posted Markus' demo on the Bunny Comparison page quite some time ago, but we never got around to adding it to the SDA tables, don't ask me why coz I have no idea why we didn't! But here it is, e1m1 in 0:22. Peter Horvath did 0:21 a few days after Markus had made his demo, but you won't be seeing that demo until the final batch is posted :-)
  • The next demo is a good example of how much speed you can gain by using a quadded grenade launcher and add a 'couple' of bunnies. I'm talking about the run on The Elder God Shrine of course. Martin Selinus blasted his way through the corridors to get this 0:38. This demo was later improved by Markus, and you will also see this one in the last batch of tRR demos.
  • And the final demo of the evening is also by Markus. This demo still stands as the record, even though with todays highly evolved bunnies, someone could bring it down to 0:29 (I think...). There's no really hard tricks involved, just alot of mad bunnying! The map is Castle Of The Damned and the demo is 0:30. Optimized?
Ok, that was the end of the first batch of tRR demos. Check back in a week and I'll give you three more :-)

* Markus, if you read this, email me! *

Tuesday, May 13th by Morfans

A Right Result. - 3:42 PM

Phew. The contest is finally over. Head over to the Rune-Run page for all the results and demos. Then take a look at where everyone stands in the 2003 Contest League Table (if it's ready).

Congratulations to Martin Selinus, Robert Axelsson and Thomas Stubgaard on their wins. They were thoroughly deserved in the face of very stiff opposition.

Thanks to everybody for the record number of entries. But don't worry. The next contest won't be quite so grueling. Probably. :-)

Sunday, May 10th by Morfans

Chicken Tastes A Bit Like Human Flesh. - 8:42 PM

Okay people, it's Sunday evening already! And that means you only have a little over 24 hours to get your Rune-Run demos in. In fact you probably have a couple of hours more than that because the contest won't actually close until I do a final mail download in the early hours of Tuesday morning, probably around 03:00 GMT when I get out of bed for my middle-of-the-night beer. Any entries received after that will, I'm afraid, not count. So whether they're l33t as |=u(|< or just the best you could do in the time don't forget to send them in. :-)

While I'm here I might as well chuck three new demos at you. First, Michael Hudson improved his Easy Run of mymap by ten seconds to 1:22 by noticing a really bad piece of level design. As he said himself, not quite e2m1 bad, but pretty bad just the same. :-)

Then Thomas Bergendorff filled the empty Nightmare Run spot on the same map in the time of 1:32. Cool way to get the silver key, Bergles.

And finally I did the Nightmare 100% of rit2 in the okay time of 2:20.

That's all for now. Remember : Rune-Run demos : send them here : by midnight tomorrow.

I can almost feel the love from here.

Thursday, May 8th by Stubby

Dzip v2.9 is Out! - 9:33 PM

The long wait is over! Mr. Pflug finally found time in between his numerous gaming addictions to finish the new version of Dzip. Here's what he had to say:

Head to the download page and get what's been in the works for over a year... a new Dzip which is not tied down to it's strange .dz file format. Instead it will work with any files that your installed plugins support. Currently I've only got plugins for .dz and .pak, but I hope to finally start working on .zip support now. When I have it done, you'll just be able to drop the dll into your Dzip directory and it will work!

Only two demos this time and they're both from Denis Nazarov who took 1 second off both his trinity runs. Easy in 0:22, and Nightmare also in 0:22.

Also, some time ago I was goofing around on the 100m map, and I managed to get 14.1 by ONLY zig-zagging, i.e. using the strafe and forward keys only, no bunnying allowed :-) If anyone's up for the challange, go ahead and see if you can beat it, the fastest time will end up on the Bunny Comparison page.

Download the new Dzip, Denis' two demos and the 100m demo in one .dz here (Denmark).

Monday, May 5th by Morfans

I ain't got time to bleed... - 6:42 PM

Think you know a lot of SDA trivia, eh? Okay then, can you remember who said the following in a .txt file back in March 2001 and which map he said it about?

Ok, I know I'll get in trouble for saying this but, IT'S FUCKING OPTIMIZED.
It's theoretically possible to go faster but not humanly possible damnit.

Well, while your all thinking about that I'm going to say a few words about the current RotW contest. Firstly, we've made a couple of minor changes to the rules. The most important is that we have a new e-mail address to send your contest entries to. So from now on any contest entries (not regular demos, they still go to the normal address) should go to sda_contest.
The other change is with the scoring. Now anyone who sends an entry in is sure to get at least one championship point. This shouldn't make any difference in the race for the top position and the grand prize, but it should mean that those of us who battle away at the bottom of the table can make more of a fight of it.
Speaking of prizes, we haven't decided what to do for the winner yet. But I'm of the opinion that it should be something physical that the winner can show off to his/her friends and relatives. Something like a huge, ornate, solid gold trophy with the winner's name on it, except obviously much, much smaller and cheaper. :-)
Remember, you only have one more week to get your entries in!

The answer to the "who said it?" question was of course Daniel Magnusson, commenting about his excellent 1:05 Nightmare 100% of The Slipgate Complex. And who would have doubted him? Not me. I thought that record would stand until the end of time. So when Thomas Stubgaard told me he was going to try and improve it I told him he was insane. In fact, if you'll pardon the bad language, I told him he was fucking mad. But after two months of "ARRRRGH. One kill missing" and "ARRRRRRGH. 1:05.1" e-mails his persistance, luck and route tweaks finally paid off and he sent in the 86th(!!!) demo we have on e1m1. Ladies and gentlemen, beating the current record by one second, I give you this amazing 1:04. MUST DOWNLOAD

Now for a few demos on the new maps, starting with my beloved "red truck map", trinity.

  • I improved Ash's Easy Run by twenty-one seconds with a completely new route to get 0:30. Ohhhhhhh, I just love quad-grenades. :-)
  • SDA newcomer Ivan Vladev used a slicker shot to open the car secret and improved my time by one second to 0:29.
  • But I fought back with an earlier grenade throw and also miraculously managed to preserve some speed after the jump to get a lucky 0:27.
  • Then along came Denis Nazarov with his fancy "bunny hopping" and "air control" and "shooting triggers from a distance through a tiny gap" and blew us away with this 0:23. He did throw the grenade much later than I did, though. Probably a whole second later so 0:22 should be possible... HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
  • Denn also did the same on Nightmare skill to fill the gap in the tables with a 0:23.

And just to get things started I've decided to post my old ebony1 Nightmare 100% which I made some time ago when we first checked out this level for runnability. It's of my usual standard, but I'm quite proud of it. :-) 1:37.

SDA : It's kinda like testicles for women and breasts for men, if you see what I mean...

Saturday, May 3rd by Stubby

If it bleeds, we can kill it.... - 6:58 PM

Here we are again, bringing you the latest demos on the new maps, not as many as we could've hoped for though, but I think that is due to the current RotW contest which is still running.
  • Daniel Andersson started out by doing the Easy Run of ebony1 in 0:40, but Denis Nazarov improved that by 2 seconds to get 0:38. Nice rocket-jumping in both demos!
  • Not many hours after we had added the new maps, Rutger Baks sent in the Easy Run of rit2 which he did 2 years ago.... his time was 0:43, but Denis destroyed that time by getting 0:37, 6 seconds faster than Rutger.
  • Daniel also had a go at the "red truck map", or trinity if you will. He did the Easy Run in 0:51. Can someone do it faster with Quad?
  • And the final demo on the new maps is courtesy of Michael Hudson. He sent a slower demo to start with, but thankfully for him he sent it to the wrong address, so we never received it :-) But anyways, the demo he DID manage to send us is the Easy Run of mymap, which he did in 1:32.
That's it for the new maps, and now here's a little surprise for you all.
  • A bunch of demos were recorded at SpeedCon2001, but one of them was never posted, because it was supposed to be part of a QdQ(ish) project through Beyond Belief. The project was never finished (sounds familiar?), so I'm just going to post the demo now before it gets lost forever. Here you go ladies and gentlemen, 4 player mad-coop through bbelief1 in 0:35, by Ilkka Kurkela, Marlo Galinski, Aleksander Osipov and Will Marsh. Enjoy!

Wednesday, April 30th by lodis

well morfy bloody well twisted my arm - 9:05 PM

Since Morfy told you guys I was going to add some maps it seems I have to. Thanks a lot you bastard. I was going to slouch in front of the telly with a huge glass of the finest single malt. But no, he put me to work with no concern for my well being. Morfy might come across as the nicest person on earth[1], but he is most definitely not.

Enough of my bitching and let's get on with it. Today we are going to add four maps, which is indeed a lot. I hope these maps won't keep you from what's real important in life. Yes the RotW Contest. Remember, the contest will be over in a few weeks but thesese maps will be on sda forever (unless Nolan gets drunk again and decides to erase SDA. Could happen, he's one mean drunk).

The first map is ugly. For the love of God it has a red truck in it. Any map with a red truck should be banned from sda. But Morfy said playing this map was the most fun he has had in years (he leads quite a sad life I'd say...red truck???? goodness me) so here goes: Trinity a.k.a. the map with the red truck. Name your demos tri_xxx.dem.

The second map is a small map with quite a few secrets, I like it, though it has a few annoying details but overall it should provide us with some cool runs. The map is Ebony. Name your demos eb_xxx.dem.

The third map is Escape the castle.... I can see 2-3 different route possibilites for runs so finding out which is the faster should be interesting. Name your demos rit2_xxx.dem.

The fourth and final map is Mymap. Crap name but a good map. Name your demos my_xxx.dem.

That's it. Have fun!

[1] Complete bollocks, I know. But I've always thought of him as a cuddly teddybear. With a rocket launcher of course.

Tuesday, April 29th by Morfans

Clearing The Decks. - 5:13 PM

Since we started the latest RotW contest I've been inundated[1] with e-mails saying...

Dear Mr Morfans,
I've really enjoyed working on my demos for the Rune-Run contest and feel inspired to try some more runs but can't be arsed to look through the tables to find a run to improve. Any suggestions?
      Yours lovingly,
      A. Speedrunner.

Therefore, my esteemed friend Mr Bergas Lowdidorff will this very evening (or maybe tomorrow, he's a very busy man at the moment) be adding a few more runnin' arenas to this grand ol' archive. So now would seem like a good time to get the few demos we've received in the last week out of the way.

After posting his old r1m7 improvement that he found lying around on his hard drive Nolan Pflug thought he might as well further improve it. Massively. Doing what he does best, close quarter rocket killing, he took a further sixty-six seconds off the time to get 3:20.

Next we have the first ever SDA demo from the man who gave us the Rune-Run map, Connor Fitzgerald. He decided to start in a nice gentle way, beating a Peter Horvath Easy Run! He improved ikspq2 by two seconds to 0:56. Impressive stuff. :-)

It's never a disappointment to receive a coop demo or two from R&R, otherwise known as The Axelsson Brothers, or sometimes just Robert and Rickard (that's Robert and Rickard Axelsson in case anyone out there still hasn't managed to work it out yet). They used a sweet double rocket jump on Shub Niggurath's Pit to improve both the easy and nightmare Runs by one second to 0:15. OPTIMUM

It's been a while since we had an update to the Bunny Comparison page, but recently we've had new demos from Weixing Ye, newcomers Oskar Calson and Ivan Vladev, and also some very poor demos from Me.

Finally, I'd just like to mention that for the last couple of weeks Stubby has been trawling through our download directories and has converted every single .zip into a .dz! As you will appreciate, this was a huge job. Of course, if he was running Linux and not Windows he would have been able to script it in about 30 seconds and let it chug it's way through them, taking about 1 hour total. But hey, credit where it's due. ;-)

Kan du ha' det godt indtil vi snakkes igen?

[1] I'm afraid this is a total lie. Nobody has mailed me. Sorry. It just seemed like a nice way of building up to the next paragraph.

Tuesday, April 22nd by Morfans

Rune Run Rules Revealed! - 9:57 AM

Hey there, my pretties. The full rules for the first contest in our 2003 series are now available here.

Feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive so settle back and run your little socks off. Remember, you only have three more weeks to get your entries in... :-)

Saturday, April 19th by Morfans

Clenched! - 11:52 AM

Since yesterday was "Nail Your Messiah To A Tree Friday" across the Christian world I thought that we should have a religious theme to the update. But since my own religion demands the extensive use of donkeys in it's various rituals and bizarre acts of worship it might not actually be a very good idea. Oh well, I guess we'll just have to carry on as normal.

You would have thought that Thomas Stubgaard would have had enough of the Haunted Halls by now, what with already having TO of the map and having done sixteen different demos on it already. But just to prove that his skillz are still getting better he's gone and improved his Easy Run by one more second to 0:42. MUST DOWNLOAD

Since Dima Steklov discovered the new exit trick on corp2 there has been a flurry of top quality demos flying in to us...

  • Following on from the three records he took last week, Thomas Bergendorff improved his Easy Run to 0:09. He admit's that he doesn't have the scrotal capacity to do this on Nightmare though. :-) OPTIMUM
  • He then went on to take TO of the level by improving Dima's Easy 100% by one second to 0:11. This might well also be optimum but perhaps 0:10 is just about possible with perfect play.
  • Then along came Denis Nazarov to reclaim the Nightmare 100% for Mother Russia with another totally new route, beating Lowdis's time by three seconds to 0:34. A nice demo but he was forced to wait for the quad to run out before he could jump to the exit, so...
  • ...he then came up with yet another route, incorporating Weixing style bunny-hops (as seen in his 100M demo) and some super smooth rocket jumping to save yet another four seconds to 0:30. RECOMMENDED

Tim Doherty has once again discovered that running Rogue Marathons is more fun than masturbation and has made yet another big improvement to his doe1 Easy 100%. Seven levels of death in 20:06, thirty seconds faster than previously. Sooooo close to the 20 minute barrier.

And to finish off the demos we have three Udder coops.

  • Daniel Hansson and Jonny Andersson improved their Easy 100% of The Wind Tunnels by four seconds to 1:02. Good, but still room for improvement.
  • Then they improved their Easy Run of escape by another two seconds to 0:44. An excellent piece of coop play with loads of well timed boosts. :-)
  • Then Daniel Andersson arrived back from whoring his butt around the cold streets of Uddavalla and joined them to improve the three player Nightmare 100% of The Slipgate Complex, improving Hannson and P-B's demo they made with KimSvea by two seconds to 0:32.

Next, a little sad news. It appears that IllMind Moves is now closed for business. A great shame, of course, but you've got to respect Ingmar's decision. If it ain't fun any more, stop before it becomes a chore. So lets give a big cheer for the trick-jumping, straight-talking, sheep-shagging[1] dude that truly knows when a spoon is a spoon, even when there isn't one.

On a slightly connected note, you've probaby noticed that the updates have been a little thin over the last few weeks. This is because Myself and both the Thomas's have been under a whole load of pressure IRL, both personal and work related, and so we haven't managed to get all the things we had planned for SDA finished. But never fear, the big suprise Stubby mentioned is on it's way, Bergie will post some new maps once he's got a flat to live in and the new RotW contest series will be starting...

NOW!

That's right! Even though we haven't managed to finish the contest page with all the rules, plans, dates and other assorted miscellany, we (Mr Thomas Bergendorff and I) are pleased to be able to say that the SDA RotW Championship 2003 is finally underway. Full details will be posted within the next day or two, but for now all you need to know is that the first contest will be on this map, you have several weeks to get your entries in, and all four regular disciplines are being run.

I'm sure everyone will be able to manage at LEAST an Easy Run. :-)

[1] I don't know why I wrote that. As far as I'm aware Ingmar has never had carnal ovine relations. But since the phrase "sheep-shagging" is inherently funny I'm going to leave it in. :-)

Saturday, April 12th by Radix

Happy 5th birthday to SDA - 11:59 PM

It was five years ago today that Gunnar and I opened SDA here on planetquake. It doesn't quite seem like it though... Anyway to celebrate the occasion I decided to post a demo I did over two years ago. Yeah I broke my own suggestion of not leaving demos to rot on your hard drive that are better than current records. I improved my r1m7 nightmare 100%, the #1 demo on the oldest records list, by 1:06 to get 4:26.

Monday, April 7th by Stubby

IRC Stats - 9:31 PM

Just a quick note to say that the IRC Stats are working again thanks to _df and Michael Hudson. Cheers guys! :-)

Sunday, April 6th by Morfans

Demos to send a shudder down your shaft. - 11:49 AM

Occasionally we will receive a bunch of demos that are even more fun to watch than disembowelling a total stranger. This update is one of those times. A double Id improvement, a new player, Hipnotic and Rogue demos and some mad ownage. Somehow it makes those small acts of random mass murder seem so very futile...

We shall begin with Thomas Stubgaard doing what he does best: Nightmare axe wielding in the Haunted Halls.

  • As if having TO of the level wasn't enough he consolidated his position by further improving the Nightmare Run by three seconds to 0:56. Survival on this level is actually impossible. The only way to make it to the quad is to shave your whole body, oil yourself up, close your eyes and wait for a passing miracle to whisk you through. As you can imagine, this doesn't happen very often. MUST DOWNLOAD
  • But even that is pretty easy stuff compared to the Nightmare 100%. Consider this demo a lesson in gameplay and ammo counting. 2:02, six seconds faster than previously. MUST DOWNLOAD

And now it's my pleasure to welcome Dima Steklov to the world of SDA as he submits his first ever demo to us. He found a completely new route through corp2 which allowed him to improve Kimmo's Easy 100% by two seconds to 0:12. Nice rocket work and cool hopping! Hopefully we'll be seeing more from Dima soon...

When a demo arrives from Denis Nazarov it's usually something pretty special and this is no exception. He improved Ilkka's Easy 100% of hipdm1 by five fat seconds to get 0:33. TOPPINGLY RECOMMENDED ;-)

Since I haven't contacted him in the last week with the details of the new RotW Thomas Bergendorff has had time to produce some cool demos...

  • First the 100% demos on pb2.
    • He took Justin's Nightmare 100% tablefiller to task and destroyed it by forty-five seconds to 3:10. You may remember a couple of weeks ago I mentioned stupid dying fiends going all solid on you and deflecting grenades. Well in this demo there's and even better incident. Just after the second quad he emerges from the slime and throws a quadded grenade at the monsters in the doorway. However, just before it hits the knight the deathknight kills the knight and it just bounces harmlessly off the dying knight. Dumb metal gits.
    • Following on from the previous demo it didn't take him much effort to improve Marlo's Easy 100% by eight seconds to 2:07.
  • After watching Dima's corp2 demo he borrowed the route to improve both the Easy and Nightmare runs to 0:10, both three seconds faster than Kimmo. He thinks that 0:09 should be possible, so the challenge is on for all you mad optimisers out there...
  • He also used the new method of exiting to completely change the route of the Nightmare 100% and improve Marlos record by two seconds to 0:37. A great, fun demo with some nifty axe work. :-)

The Rogue levels continue to be assaulted by Tim Doherty and Michael Hudson, the rogue-runner and , errrr, let me think.... the rogue-trooper respectively.

  • Michael improved his doe1 Easy Run Marathon by a very respectable twenty-eight seconds to 9:14. A couple of very unfortunate mistakes here showing that 8:xx should be possible for anyone with the balls to try...
  • Tim was not at all happy with his doe2 Easy Run Marathon and so made this small 168 second improvement to 16:03. This is actually 16:03.99 so to improve this you would need to find some way to save nearly a whole second. :-)

That's all from me for today. Keep licking.

Saturday, March 29th by Stubby

Just another quick demo update... - 8:30 AM

Let's kick it off with Daniel Hansson who seems to be on a roll at the moment:
  • Easy Run of czg07a in 1:19, 1 second faster than himself.
  • Easy Run of czg07a in 1:18, again 1 second faster than himself.
  • Easy Run of climb in 0:24, 1 seconds faster than himself.
  • Easy Run of placebo in 1:48, 11 seconds faster than himself.
  • Easy 100% of jdungeon in 0:52, 2 seconds faster than himself.
  • Nightmare 100% of jdungeon in 0:50, 4 seconds faster than himself.
  • Marathon - Easy Run of czg07 in 2:38, 6 seconds faster than himself.
Arturo Garcia Lasca struck back against Robert's attack on his demos:
  • Easy Run of church in 0:55, 1 second faster than Robert.
  • Easy 100% of church in 1:05, 2 seconds faster than Robert.
SDA's very own Thomas Bergendorff has found time in between his busy schedule to do a demo:
  • Easy 100% of epoch in 1:40, 3 seconds faster than Arturo.
It's been quite some time since we've seen a single player demo from Rickard Axelsson:
  • Easy Run of funrun in 0:51, 1 second faster than Juozas Rimas.
Michael Hudson has made another attack on the Rogue maps:
  • Easy Run of r1m4 in 0:47, 2 seconds faster than himself.
  • Nightmare Run of r1m4 in 1:02, 5 seconds faster than himself.
Weixing Ye found what I believe MUST be the very last demo from 2002 on his harddisc!
  • Nightmare Run of scream in 0:18, 3 seconds faster than Basil.
Tim Doherty makes a rather spectacular comeback with this demo:
  • Marathon - Easy 100% of doe1 in 20:36, 74 seconds faster than himself. Nice to see you back in action Timothy :-)
And finally Nolan and I went on a mad chopping spree in The Haunted Halls:
  • Nightmare 100% of The Haunted Halls in 1:39, 28 seconds faster than Morfy and I, and 29 seconds better than my single player record. Man, what a bitch this was to get!

Tuesday, March 25th by Radix

Completely off topic and self centered pimping of my programming skills - 9:17 PM

I'm sure more than a few of you are aware of my mild puzzle game addiction that started a little over two years ago. It's caused many delays in Dzip since 2.6. The latest one was caused by a burst of motivation I got at the beginning of January. I decided to re-write bricks from scratch as a windows program. After over 2 months it's been officially released on the bricks page. If I never convinced you to try it before, or if you like puzzle games, or if you're bored, or just wondering WTF i'm talking about, you should go there and check it out. ;-)

Maybe now i'll finish Dzip v2.9...

Saturday, March 22nd by Stubby

Bleeeargh... - 9:13 AM

We've recieved a buttload of demos these past few days, mostly by the Axelsson brothers also known as R&R. I haven't had the time to watch all the demos yet, so I'll just list them in typical SDA style.

Daniel Hansson was the only one besides R&R to submit demos for this update:

  • Easy 100% of czg07a in 3:55, 7 seconds faster than himself.
  • Easy 100% of czg07b in 3:27, 11 seconds faster than himself.
  • Marathon - Easy 100% of czg07 in 14:20, 74 seconds faster than himself.
Robert Axelsson pissed all over Ken:
  • Easy Run of church in 0:56, 1 second faster than Ken.
  • Easy 100% of church in 1:07, 1 second faster than Ken.
  • Nightmare Run of church in 1:04, 2 seconds faster than Ken.
  • Nightmare 100% of church in 1:26, 3 seconds faster than Ken.
And here's the buttload of coops as promised from R&R:
  • Easy Run of climb in 0:23, 1 second faster than Hansson/DanielA.
  • Easy Run of climb in 0:20, 3 seconds faster than themselves.
  • Nightmare Run of climb in 0:21, new to the tables.
  • Nightmare 100% of close in 0:09, new to the tables. NICE!
  • Easy Run of dwell in 0:34, 2 seconds faster than Hansson/Jonny.
  • Nightmare Run of dwell in 0:34, new to the tables.
  • Easy 100% of gloin in 0:48, 20 seconds faster than Richard/Nik :-)
  • Easy 100% of hotel in 0:27, 7 seconds faster than Johan/Mark.
  • Nightmare 100% of hotel in 0:36, new to the tables.
  • Easy Run of scream in 0:14, new to the tables.
  • Nightmare Run of scream in 0:16, new to the tables.
  • Easy 100% of tod in 0:26, new to the tables.
  • Nightmare 100% of tod in 0:28, new to the tables.
  • Marathon - Easy Run of Dimension of the Doomed in 2:21, 3 seconds faster than Hansson/Jonny, RECOMMENDED!
Note that Tim Doherty has started doing the .txt's for R&R... shouldn't you waste some time doing some demos instead Tim? What about those marathons you promised us? :-)

*SPOILER* something BIG will happen on SDA soon *SPOILER*

Tuesday, March 18th by Morfans

Burn, Baby, Burn! - 11:01 AM

No inane chatter to start this update. The first demo is just too damn good to waste time with idle bantering. Any demo from Thomas Stubgaard is going to be a treat. But this time he's really surpassed himself. Not only has he beaten one of my favourite demos, Kåre Slettnes's evil Nightmare 100% of The Necropolis, he's absolutely destroyed it by ten seconds to 1:42. A couple of new tricks, some outstanding play and a big splat of luck. MUST DOWNLOAD

Weixing Ye has filled all three outstanding gaps in the tables on gloin, and although he filled the tables there isn't a single table filler amongst them, if you see what I mean...

  • First he did the Nightmare Run in 0:36, three seconds slower than the Easy Run. Unless the shambler enters it's pain frames on your first hit, which is rare, you're going to take a full dose of lightning right in the face and thus can do one less rocket boost.
  • Then the Easy 100% in 1:02, six seconds faster than the EH2 we saw last time by... I can't remember who did it now. Nice demo, looks like a hard route to improve.
  • Same thing for the Nightmare 100% but one second slower, 1:03.

Winning this week's award for the coolest .txt file is Daniel Hansson with his rather lovely "signpost" motif. He used it to announce that he's once again improved his Easy 100% of czg07a by yet another five seconds to 4:02. Will he ever get below the four minute mark? Maybe. Perhaps ignoring the grunts and enforcers in the first long corridor the first time through and mopping them up with the SNG when you come back? Maybe not. What do I know about it? I always get totally lost on this map. :-)

Thomas Bergendorff returned from his vacation and proceeded to make two mellifluous erotique demos.

  • He used a sweet intermission kill, and some better play, to improve Optic's Nightmare 100% by three seconds to 1:28.
  • And since he had the route worked out, he thought he might as well have a bash at Ken's Easy 100% too. He made a damn good job of it and improved it by four seconds to 1:19.

One of the things that is sure to annoy any SDA updater is when people neglect to include a line in their .txt file saying "x seconds faster then xxxxx". Luckily most people are very good about this, mostly due to the constant nagging from Nolan if they don't. That's why I was very shocked when this demo from Stubby and Nolan, a Nightmare 100% of The Necropolis in 1:09, arrived. If these two can't even take the time and effort to do the job properly then what encouragement is there for the rest of you??? Luckily I'm such a demo-head that I knew it was twenty-four seconds faster than Nolan and Justin so I didn't waste any valuable updating time looking it up. But even so.... ;-)

That's all the demos for now, just a couple of quick points of (possible) interest to finish off with...

  • I want everyone to start girding their loins in preparation for the start of the next set of RotW Contests which will hopefully be starting within a few days. If I stick my head out of the window (or through, depending on my mood) I want to be able to hear the sound of worldwide loin girding. No excuses, get girding.
  • Our pal Underworldfan has added a new section to his site for speed demos on the fun DMSP mod. If you fancy giving it a try then head on over , all the necessary download links and rules for submitting demos are there.

Back to the burning!

Wednesday, March 12th by Stubby

PQ.com Interviews! - 4:18 PM

The second batch of the PQ.com interviews with the SDA community/staff is online. This time Morfans and I were being interrogated by PQ's very own flourishing buttercup, the lovely Jube. You can read it here!

If you somehow missed the first installment because you didn't quite understand Morfans somewhat cryptic message from the previous update, you can check it out here. It includes Jozsef Szalontai, Ilkka Kurkela and Jesse van Dijk. It's definately worth a read!

Monday, March 10th by Morfans

Bore Da! - 7:19 PM

Do you ever get fed up reading updates written by me? Does the thought of having to sit through one more word from Stubby or Lowdis fill you with ire? Do your lungs collapse whenever you see that Radix has made one of his rare forays out of his protective coccoon to post his thoughts here? Do you yearn to know what some of the other speedrunners are thinking? Me too. So take a look on PlanetQuake and you might just get lucky.

Of course, some of those questions were retorical. It's been medically proven that when you're bored of Morfy updates you're bored of life.

SDA : Pushing up the suicide rate.

Here we go with the demos on gloin

  • The Easy run started well, and just got better.
    • Our Russian friend, the IRC sledgehammer Phil, started things off with this 0:39.
    • Swedish stomach-pump Daniel Hansson smoothed out some of the corners with this nice 0:35
    • But it was back to Russia for some nifty bunny work from Denis Nazarov and this 0:33. I particularly liked the section from the outside to the switch that opens the end room. How he managed to curl round the ogres and through the narrow fiend door while increasing speed with every hop I just don't know. Recommended
  • And that was it for the SP demos (expect for a demo from Chris Hamilton that arrived several days and half a minute too late :-)). Maybe the stupid secrets that sometimes fail to trigger are putting people off the 100%s, it certainly did me... :-)
  • We also had one coop demo. My brother Nik Skidmore visited Me last week and we bashed out a very drunk Easy 100% and we managed to get 1:08 before we finally passed out.

On to the demos on established maps...

Big Danny H also did two rectum rattling demos on czg07.

  • He improved his Nightmare 100% of czg07b by a huge 148 seconds to 5:22 with better and more aggresive play. There is an interesting little thing that happened 235.6 seconds through the demo: watch what happens to his third grenade when it hits the flying fiend that's in the middle of it's death animation. I'm sure we're all familiar with dying monsters blocking our shots, but I've never seen one send a grenade boinging off in an odd direction before.
  • He also improved his Easy 100% marathon through the whole episode by 104(!) seconds to 15:34. In keeping with all good demos on these maps, he spent the last few seconds madly trying to avoid a pack of vore balls. What an annoying place to die. :-)

Two demos from "Player of the Year" Jozsef Szalontai.

  • If anyone was going to do the bunny over the water in both directions on shoot and take the Easy Run time down to 0:18, one second faster than Ken, it was always going to be Joe. Can nobody give this man a challenge???
  • He also improved his own Nightmare Run on hayduke by one second to 0:36. 0:35 would seem possible with a lot of luck (on top of Joe style playing, of course :-)).

And Finally, another coop from Myself and Fat Eddie (who, incidently, is our 200th player on the archive!), this time the Easy 100% of abw in the sober time of 1:59(2:24)! Is this demo optimized? Take a guess...

Other news, errrrr, I can't remember any. Was there something else I was suppossed to mention? Find out in next weeks exciting episode of...

SDA Update!

Tuesday, March 4th by lodis

PND and the remedy - 7:55 PM

I'm sure some of the most passionate speedrunners have been struck by PND. "PND? Now what the hell is that?" I hear you say. PND is an acronym for a certain psychological syndrome: Post Nolans Depression. To help these unfortunate victims (we won't name any names) we've decided to add yet another map. The map in question is Abandon all hope ! (gloin.bsp). The map is of medium size and very open. You start off with a rocket launcher so you should have a field day boosting yourself around this map. It can be downloaded here. Name your demos glo_xxx.dem. Let's hope we've lifted the hearts of those afflicted by PND.

Oh, btw, there is a super nailgun on the map mortal we added some time ago. Have you found it? I don't think it'll make any faster 100%s though. I figure the map author didn't know how to make secrets...

Tuesday, February 25th by Stubby

The Show Is Over... - 7:00 PM

The Nolans2k2 are finally overwith! It was a stressing task to get it all rolling, but damn what a fun evening we had on IRC! Highlights were the ceremony speech itself of course, which kicked major ass :-) Then there was the presence of the big guns on PQ.com, namely Pappy-R and Jube (thanks for showing up!). We reached a new channel peak in our IRC channel as well, we peaked at 52 visitors! We won't be able to top that again any time soon, that's for sure! We also had alot of Doom speedrunners attending the show, great to see you there as well guys! Oh that reminds me, over at Compet-N they're having the Golden Cyber Awards (it's the equivalent of the Nolans) soon, you should go pay them a visit and join their IRC channel. You can find it at ircnet #nightmare. For those of you who couldn't attend the Nolans2k2 show, there is an IRC log available from the show. You can find it all here, along with a list of all the winners! I'd like to thank the other members of TeamSDA for helping me out, and making this all happen, we kicked ass! :-)

In other news, John Romero (former id employee for those of you who didn't know! tsk tsk!) is planning to release the .map files for all the original id levels! Have a looksie here!

On to the demos:

  • Kimmo Polvivaara did some pretty cool demos on corp2. First we have the Easy Run in 0:13, 1 second faster than Justin. Can anyone do it in 0:12?
  • And then he did the Easy 100% in 0:14, 1 second faster than Marlo Galinski, and only 1 second slower than the Easy Run...
  • Denis Nazarov wasn't satisfied with his previous Nightmare Run of p_se_4, so he improved it by yet another second to get 0:35.
  • Next up we have a lethal coop combo from Mother Russia. Valeriy Burmistrov teamed up with his brother Vlad, and together they did the Easy 100% of doom2_07 in 0:08! Optimized? RECOMMENDED!
And to round the day off, we have a shitload of coops from The Udders, presented to you in classic SDA style:
  • Easy 100% of czg01 in 1:55 by DanielH/DanielA, 40 seconds faster than DanielH/Basil.
  • Easy Run of czg07b in 0:31 by DanielH/DanielA, 1 second faster than themselves.
  • Easy 100% of czg07b in 2:06 by DanielH/DanielA, 24 seconds faster than DanielH/Jonny.
  • Easy 100% 3 player of czg07b in 1:58 by DanielH/DanielA/Jonny, 22 faster than themselves. Note: The 3rd demo is missing...
  • Easy 100% of czgtoxic in 0:57 by DanielH/DanielA, 5 seconds faster than Carl/Johan.
  • Easy Run of foon in 0:26 by DanielH/DanielA, 1 second faster than Jonny/FredrikEc.
Note from Nolan: The Udders can't seem to make good .txt files!

That's all for now, bye :-)

Sunday, February 23rd by Stubby

Pre-Nolans2k2 Demo Update - 3:10 PM

Yet another semi-non-wordy demo update from yours truly :-)
  • It seems that Arturo Garcia Lasca is on the Nolans2k2 nominations-list in "most improved player" category for a good reason! He improved Daniel Magnusson's Nightmare 100% of e1m5 by 4 seconds to get 1:28, but not content with that he took it a step even further and did it in 1:23. MUST DOWNLOAD!
  • He also did the 100%'s on bc2. The Easy 100% in 1:00, 2 seconds faster than himself, and the Nightmare 100% in 1:00, also 2 seconds faster than himself.
  • The swedish phenomenon, Thomas Bergendorff continues to deliver high quality demos. This time he butchered Justin's Nightmare 100% of guard, by doing it 7 seconds faster to get 1:36. I love the bunny sequence near the beginning!
  • He filled the remaining hole on shoot, by doing the Nightmare Run in 0:22. Lots of luck is needed to get a successful run! Anders Nordensten also submitted a Nightmare Run on Shoot, but unfortunately for him, too late and too slow :-) Note: I've started putting these demos that won't make the update in the big .dz
  • Moving on to Michael Hudson, who keeps attacking Rogue levels. He snatched the record away from Justin by doing the extremely bitchy Nightmare Run of r1m4 in 1:07, 4 seconds faster. Now where's that marathon Michael? :-)
  • Next up we have Denis Nazarov, who after his successful attempt at the Easy Run, thought he might as well do the Nightmare Run of p_se_4, which he did in 0:36, 9 seconds faster than Basil.
  • And it seems like we haven't received all demos of 2002 yet! Robert Axelsson found two Mad-Coops from December, unfortunately they won't make it to the Nolans2k2. The first one is the Easy 100% of doom2_01, he teamed up with his brother (Rickard) and sister (Rebecca), and together they it in 0:15.
  • Next to fall was the Nightmare 100% of doom2_08, which they did in 0:45. Lots of mad action in this one.
Catch a glimpse of the Nolans2k2 Award courtesy of Jesse van Dijk right here!! It's not for delicate souls, now you're warned! :-)

And remember to check into to our IRC channel tomorrow, Monday 24th, and attend the Nolans2k2 Award Show! We might postpone the event an hour or so, it depends on how many there's able to attend at 19:00 CET... So, if you're home late, make sure to check in and see if the ceremony is still running!

SEE YA ALL TOMORROW!

Thursday, February 20th by Stubby

NOLANS2k2 AWARD SHOW! - 1:49 PM

Yeeehaaaw, we've finally settled on a date for the NOLANS2k2 AWARD SHOW, and we're having it on Monday, February 24th, 13:00 EST, 18:00 GMT, 19:00 CET!

The votes have been thoroughly calculated (the voting finished Tuesday), and there's some surprising wins in there! But also some obvious wins, and we even had a TIE in one category! Tune in on Monday at our IRC channel to see who snatched the desired victories, and cheer along with those who lost :-)

The 'discussion channel' will be our normal IRC channel on quakenet, which is #qdq. You can use the direct link on top of this page, or you can find a list of available servers here. The channel the award show will take place in will be announced in due time.

If you have any questions or comments, email me.

Monday, February 17th by Morfans

Suck the fish, bite the rabbit. - 11:50 PM

Have I ever told you how good looking I am? No? Then maybe I will another day. Because GOD DAMN am I gorgeous. Simply divine.

But anyway, on with the demos.

Continuing the demos on the new map, shoot, we see the destruction of two existing records.

  • The Easy Run fell to Arturo Garcia Lasca who took one more second off of Rutger's time to get 0:19. This is going to take some big bunny work to beat...
  • The Easy 100% saw quite a bit of action.
    • Kimmo Polvivaara showed some fine class getting this 0:38, three seconds faster than Daniel.
    • But once again it was the over-friendly powerhouse Ken that clinched it by another two seconds with this 0:36.
    • And a little whisper from Lowdis on the finer art of route planning allowed him to save a further second and get 0:35. Nice.

Thomas Stubgaard has taken a short break from improving Id records to assault the all-kills variation of bast. Is no zombie safe with this man around?

  • He started off by improving Joe's Easy 100% by twenty-eight seconds to 5:22.
  • Then he did the much harder (but faster) Nightmare 100% in 4:57. This is five kills better than the previous record but three kills still remain if anyone is feeling daring. Although it might just be that the final kill is not possible on Nightmare skill due to the increased speed of the vore balls.
  • One piece of stunningly good advice later he did this one hundred and twelve second improvement to his Easy 100% and took the time down to 3:30. I guess he was just showing off when he did the tricky VB jump twice? ;-)

I'm always glad to see a demo from Denis Nazarov as I think he has one of the most fluid playing actions I've seen for quite some time. He did the Easy Run of p_se_4 in 0:32, five seconds faster than Evan.

Basil de Vries has continued to wage war on the IKSPQ levels. Follow me closely and see what he's done this week...

  • First off, the Nightmare 100% of ikspq3. He beat Ilkka's cool demo by four seconds with an even cooler 3:41.
  • He then beat Tim's Easy 100% Marathon by twenty-six seconds to get 12:25.
  • Then filled the empty Nightmare 100% Marathon slot with this 23:37 to take TO of the IKSPQ marathons. Good work, weirdo!

That's the demos done, on with the news. We have a winner in our 333333rd hit contest. Veteran runner (I've always wanted to say that) Carl Lloyd Parker sent in his screen shot within minutes of the counter ticking over to the big number so he wins the one-of-a-kind custom SDA wooly hat that my wife has kindly knitted for us. I shall send it on just as soon as he sends me a mailing address...

We also received one other 333333 screen shot, but as it arrived two days after the event I'm inclined to believe that you're just having a bit of fun with us. You know who you are. ;-)

Just in case you haven't cast your vote yet, don't forget that the poll for the Nolans 2K2 closes tomorrow. The date for the ceremony will be announced very, very soon. Just as soon as we can all agree when we're available. Everyone that turned up last year had a real blast (or at least they said they did) so come along and enjoy the fun.

Finally, after some discussion we have decided to start a new Run of the Whenever speedrunning championship. Details will be announced very soon but if you have any maps or ideas for contests then mail them to Myself or Lowdis and we'll consider them. Don't send them to Stubgaard, though, as he's going to be taking part and he's a big enough cheat already without having a sneak preview of the contests. :-)

Tuesday, February 11th by Morfans

The World's Latest Update! - 11:53 AM

Sorry for the delay in posting this, everybody. I've had some real problems with my net connection over the last few days. Couple that with my innate laziness and you have one big delay. :-)

First up, of course, the demos on shoot.

  • First the Easy Run.
    • Rutger Baks was very quick off the mark and sent in this 0:21 before the paint had even dried on the last update. Daniel Hansson also sent in a 0:21 but there's no prizes here for second place.
    • Rutger soon improved his time to 0:20 narrowly beating Kimmo Polvivaara to the record.
  • Next, the Nightmare Run.
    • No one's done a Nightmare Run yet. :-)
  • On to the Easy 100%
    • Once again it was Rutger Baks that got things started with this 0:43.
    • This time Hansson had the better route with some nice boosts to and from the redundant third secret to get 0:41.
  • And finally, the Nightmare 100%.
    • I opened the batting with what I thought was a pretty good 1:02. We also received a slightly slower but much more cautious demo from Hannu Kankaanpää which proves that occasionally suicidal play will triumph over skill. :-)
    • But Thomas Bergendorff came home drunk and destroyed my time with this 0:57. Bastard. ;-)
  • And we've also had one coop on the map, courtesy of the hormone brothers, Carl Tholin and Johan Nilsson. They breezed through the Easy 100% in just 0:23.

Now on with the regular demos, starting with a nice Easy 100% of damaul3b by our very own Thomas Bergendorff. He improved Arturo's time by two seconds to 0:40. Cut that last kill a bit fine, didn't you fellah?

Speaking of Arturo Garcia Lasca, he has improved both 100% records on bc2, taking the Easy 100% from Marlo by one second to 1:02 and the Nightmare 100% from Optic by an impressive three seconds to the same time of 1:02.

Basil de Vries has scattered his own brand of madness over the IKSPQ levels...

  • He whomped Tim's Easy Run Marathon by an impressive fifty-seven seconds to take the time to 3:54.
  • But the Nightmare Run Marathon was never going to be so straight forward. He had to kill almost all the monsters on some levels to survive so the time is a slightly slower 12:04. :-)
  • He also made a big improvement to the Easy 100% of ikspq2 taking the time to 1:49, fourteen seconds faster than Janne. Before Basil did this demo Janne had made eight successive improvements to this record, a feat matched only on every level Hansson has ever played on. :-)

And to round things off, a nice, loooong Nightmare 100% from me. I recaptured my old record on pg2 from Stefan by thirty-two seconds to 8:33.

Just a couple of small things to remind you of. If you haven't done so already make sure you head over to the Nolans page and register your vote. Already some categories look sewn up but everything could still change so go vote. And stay tuned for ana announcement of where and when the award ceremony is going to be...

Looking over at the hit counter it seems we are only a couple of hundred more hits away from 333333. Don't forget, if you get the magic number be sure to take a screen shot and send it in. The lucky person to do so will be the proud recipient of a one-of-a-kind piece of custom made SDA headgear, the kind of prize you can cherish and tell your grandchildren all about in years to come. (In fact, if you get 333334 or 333335 it might be worth taking a screeny and holding on to them, just in case no one owns up to 333333).

Well, this update has taken me so long to finish that we already have several new demos in waiting to be posted, including two more shoot records. Expect an update very soon.

I'm outta here! (Here being my head).

No all file download at the moment, I'm afraid. Maybe Stubby the Wonder Horse will be able to do one later...

Thursday, February 6th by lowdis

Shoot! - 11:15 AM

Speedrunners are a triggerhappy breed, but it seems all the christmas food have made you too fat to do much running and shooting. So it's only fitting we've decided to add another map by the name of Shoot. This map is quick and fun to play (even though we can all agree that it's just about as ugly as...well, let's not name any names) and it should get you fit and into shape in no time.

The map can be downloaded here and the demos are to be named sht_xxx.dem (it's actually called nightmare, not shoot, but that's just such a crap name, so I've taken the liberty of using the zip-name instead). Oh, and another thing: you'll notice it's a pak-file when you unzip it, so there's two ways to play it properly with qdq-stats. 1) you rip the map out of the pak (using Pakexplorer for example) or 2) you place qdq-stats in the same folder as the pak.

Oh, one last thing: Have fun!

Tuesday, February 4th by Stubby

The NOLANS 2002!!! - 10:53 AM

It's finally here!! The thing you've all been waiting for! The NOLANS2k2 has seen the light of day! It took a bit longer than expected to finish it, but that was due to several different issues I won't bother any of you with. All I can say is that we've worked really hard to pick the categories and nominees, and I mean REALLY hard! We've tried to make everything as fair as possible, and I think we've succeeded with that. In that regard, I'd like to thank Jesse van Dijk, Matthias Belz, Thomas Bergendorff and Nolan Pflug for helping me out with getting this done, they've helped picked the nominees/categories etc. I wouldn't have been able to do it without their help.

You have a 2 week period in which to vote! The voting will end Tuesday, February 18th 2003! There's not a whole lot else to say really, just head on over to the NOLANS2k2 page and vote for your favorite demos/players/contests/etc....

And while I'm at it, I thought I might as well post the latest demos we've received.

  • Jozsef Szalontai has returned from his winter slumber with a high quality id demo! He blazed through The Nameless City on Easy Skill, beating Ilkka's record by TWO seconds to get 0:43. MUST DOWNLOAD!
  • Arturo Garcia Lasca has made three strong demos on climb. He improved Martin's Nightmare Run by 1 second to get 0:23. He found another way of doing the Nightmare 100%, by getting to the Quad faster. This enabled him to beat his own record by 7 seconds to get 0:40. And he did the Easy 100% in 0:46, 2 seconds faster than himself.

Sunday, February 2nd by Morfans

Gold! - 2:27 PM

You are GOLD (gold),
Always something something something,
Something something indestructabllllleeee.

Yes, folks. Those were the words of Spandau Ballet in their immortal 1984[1] hit single "Gold".

Unforunatley the song, and indeed the band, were total shit. Now let's contrast that with something "gold" that most definitely isn't shit. It's the release of Quake ReDone Quick Gold, Ingmar Poerner's final, improved, polished, deluxe release of his one man Nightmare Run through the whole of Quake in just 13:11.

If you haven't had a chance to catch this yet go and do so now. The recams are excellent, the vocals are chilling and the running is, well, adequate. ;-)

[1] It was somewhere around there, anyway. I'm not going to waste 30 seconds of my life looking it up.

Thursday, January 30th (2nd update) by Radix

Down with the king! - 8:20 AM

Thanks 95+% to the efforts of lodis/Thomas B/bergie/lowdis/berfendorf, after the last update I was tied with fleck for the #1 spot in the overall stats. So I took it upon myself to beat one of his demos and do an update to brag.
  • I improved Fleck's nearly 4-year-old Nightmare 100% of r2m5 by 46 seconds to get 4:14.
Of course, me being at #1 could just be a fad... only time will tell how long I stay there.

Thursday, January 30th by Morfans Cheetos?! or

12 Hour Clock My Arse! - 2:50 AM

Okay, my fearsome brethren. Let's have a look at what delights we have for you today.

First, a question. How many Id levels still have kills missing from the Nightmare 100% records? Well, up until a few weeks ago it was two: The Nameless City and The Dismal Oubliette. Then Stubby took that down to one with his excellent Nameless City demo, but surely nobody could do The Oubliette Nightmare 100% with all the kills?!? After all, if there was a 100% equivalent of the Bunny Comparison page, called Balls Of Steel or something like that, I doubt there would be more than two people capable of doing e2m6 in under 10 minutes even with no zombie kills. So that makes Thomas Stubgaard's latest demo, Nightmare 100% of The Dismal Oubliette with all kills in 8:51 all the more impressive. But I'll say no more. For a full critique of this masterpiece go and have a look at what Ingmar has to say over at Ill Mind Moves. Must Download

Now we move on to mortal, where Hannu Kankaanpää has ravaged Amrik's TO of the level.

  • He first took the Easy 100% time down to 1:01, four seconds faster. Watch the ogre in the ogre/deathknight room for some very weird lightning behaviour.
  • Then he sliced fifteen seconds off of the Nightmare 100% with a neat way of killing the two shamblers. 1:00.
  • The same route on the Easy 100%, but without taking a second to get the red armour gave him 0:59, two seconds faster than his demo a couple of lines above this one.
Baffling Dutch gibberish merchant Basil de Vries has turned in another cool Prodigy demo, this time the Nightmare 100% of p_se_3b. Some clever, if a little messy, play allowed him to hack fourteen seconds off of Justin's time to get 1:28.

And now. Ladies and gentlemen. HE'S DONE IT!. HE'S FINALLY DONE IT!!. Thomas Bergendorff has moved into first place in the number of single player records table, finally dislodging the legendary Optic. Excellent work, my friend.

  • He took TO of trr. Not much to say here because I don't really know the map.
    • First the Easy Run in 0:19, one second faster than Pretty-Balls.
    • Then the Nightmare Run in the same time of 0:19, one second faster than Stuker.
    • Next the Easy 100% in 1:51, seven seconds faster than Optic.
    • And finally, a better looking but one second slower Nightmare 100% five seconds faster than Justin. 1:52.
  • Then the map that gave him the number 0ne spot. The rather nice a2d2.
    • Justin's Easy 100% fell by a huge twenty two seconds to 1:29.
    • And the clincher is a totally manic Nightmare Run in 0:47, four seconds faster than Mr Second Place. :-) The first part of this demo is a real lesson in monster avoidance.

And that, Amigos, is that! Before I go I'd like to draw your attention to the hit counter, which is creeping ever closer to the magic 333333. Only 1500ish more hit's to go. As befits such an event, if you get the six-threes take a screen shot and send it in and you will win a fabulous, one of a kind prize. Alex is still living the high life on the huge cash prize[1] he won for getting 250000 so you can expect this one to be even better.

SDA : It could change your life!

[1] One US dollar

Sunday, January 26th by Stubby

IRC Stats! - 7:41 PM

Just a quick little note that we've finally got a new bot in our IRC channel, SHE (it's not a he...) is named TERMINATRIX (taken from Ahnuld's upcoming movie, the Terminator III) and you damn well better treat her with respect or she'll might terminate you! :-) A big applause goes out to _df for installing the bot and being an overall nice fella! Thanks dude! The IRC stats can be found here. There's also a link to the stats at the top of the page...

I bid you all a farewell...

Friday, January 24th by Morfans

Mange Toute! - 5:55 PM

Welcome, my friends, to yet another splat of demos from the cream of the worlds gamesmen. No where else will you see such a display of well oiled bodies driven to the limits of skill and endurance to... errrr... complete Quake levels really quickly.
  • First a fine demo from the well hung Danish/American duo Thomas Stubgaard and Nolan Pflug. They have filled one of only three remaining gaps in the 2P Nightmare 100% Id tables with this 4:19 (5:13) deathfest through The Nameless City. Stubby, as the server, did most of the zombie killing while Nolan prepared the second half of the map for him. I'd love to see this done on a LAN...
  • Next, from China, the SCUT combo of Xiaokui Xiao and Weixing Ye have improved their recent Nightmare 100% of The Ebon Fortress by five seconds to 1:30. Both demos are smooth arse-kickers so maybe it's time Fox took a few records on his own... ;-)

We'll begin the single player round-up with two more demos on mortal, both from the man known throughout Trinidad and Tobago as "The Human Butt-Plug", Mr Amrik Kochhar!

  • He took TO of the level with this 1:15 Nightmare 100%.
  • And then improved his Easy 100% by three more seconds to take the time down to 1:05. Good, clean zombie kills this time.
Let's have a little look-see what Thomas Bergendorff has been up to.
  • Following the humbling display of class from Ilkka in the last update, he has come right back to recapture the Easy 100% of lostwrld in a dazzling 2:09 display of cool play and well time rocketry. Fourteen seconds faster.
  • The then got back on with his mission and took both 100% records from Justin on the rather dull gatordiv.
    • The Nightmare 100% in 3:49, two seconds faster.
    • And the Easy 100% in 3:37, five seconds faster. Nice double telefrag. :-)
  • And finally, the Nightmare 100% of evildead in 2:06, nine seconds faster than Optic.

And that puts the tables in an interesting position. The number of records including coops has Justin on 211 and Nolan on 206, and the number of single player records has Justin on 126, Joe on 121 and Thomas on 117. That means, assuming nobody else takes an Optic or a Bergendorff record, and that Justin doesn't come out of retirement this week, and Joe doesn't make any demos, and all Thomas's records are taken from Optic, and that Nolan can take one non-Justin/Thomas record, that we are only FIVE Lowdis-records away from toppling the legend that is the mighty Fleck from the top of both tables. A place he has occupied since they began!!

Of course, I might very well have got the maths wrong on this. As Nolan says, I'm doing some pretty strange drugs these days. :-)

Friday, January 17th (2nd update) by Stubby

Here We Go Again... - 11:04 PM

Here's the demos we've received on the new map so far:
  • Easy Run in 0:57, by Chris Hamilton. Then Phil brought that down to 0:33, Rutger Baks down to 0:31 and finally Amrik Kochhar down to 0:29.
  • The Nightmare Run was more or less the same story... Chris started out by getting 0:56. Then Daniel Andersson got 0:32, Rutger Baks got 0:31 and finally Amrik Kochhar got 0:29.
  • Only one Easy 100% so far and that one is courtesy of Amrik who did it in 1:08.
Demos on other maps:
  • Ilkka Kurkela is back after a one year abscense! He did the Easy 100% of lostwrld in 2:23, 11 seconds faster than Bergendorff.
  • And he did the Nightmare 100% of lostwrld as well, in 3:09, 28 seconds faster than Bergendorff.
  • Wexing Ye did the Nightmare Run of czg02 in 3:33, 121 seconds faster than himself! NICE!
  • Weixing once again teamed up with Xiaokui Xiao. This time they did the Nightmare 100% of The Ebon Fortress in 1:35, 31 seconds faster than Justin/Evan.
  • Arturo Garcia Lasca did the Easy Run of despair2 in 0:43, 1 second faster than Justin.
I'm sorry if this update seems a bit rushed... it is!

Friday, January 17th by Radix

Another missed demo - 6:56 AM

Morfy must really be doing some strange drugs these days because I just noticed that he forgot another demo in the update he did last week. It was in the all-demos download for that update but he didn't mention it ;-)
  • Thomas B did the nightmare 100% of networld in 2:09, two seconds faster than Justin.

Thursday, January 16th by Lodis

a new mmmmmmmmmmmmmap - 12:30 AM

Xmas is over, the gibbing contest has been finished (Morfy is working on it, don't you worry) and Nolans are coming up (ETA: "when it's done" in true game development fashion...of course we will deliver a lot faster than your average game). Too keep you guys busy and in a good mood we (or I rather...but I don't want to take all credit for it...oh hang on, I just did, didn't I? HAH) have decided to add a new map.

The map is The Mortal Environment. Download it here or here. The latter is a temporary link and the map will be removed after a couple of weeks. Name your demos mrt_xxx.dem. Now surprise us with some excellent demos!

Wednesday, January 15th by Stubby

Blah Blah Blah... - 07:30 PM

Here we go again, another non-wordy update from yours truly :-)

The funny talking dutchman, Basil de Vries:

  • Easy Run of zer1m1 in 0:40, 2 seconds faster than Ilkka!
  • Easy 100% of zer1m4 in 3:08, 26 seconds SLOWER than Justin, BUT with 2 more kills. NOTE: It turns out that Justin's old demos were invalid... no-one noticed this until Basil approached Nolan about the issue!
  • Nightmare Run of zer1m1 in 0:40, 6 seconds faster than Ilkka.
  • Nightmare Run of zer1m4 in 1:42, 7 seconds faster than Justin.
  • Nightmare Run of zer1m7 in 2:44, 16 seconds faster than Nolan.
  • Nightmare Run of p_se_4 in 0:45, 14 seconds faster than Justin.
  • Nightmare 100% of zer1m1 in 0:59, 1 second faster than Justin.
  • Nightmare 100% of zer1m4 in 3:35, 24 seconds slower than Justin, but with 2 more kills (just like in the Easy 100%).
Fuckdoll, Arturo Garcia Lasca:
  • Easy 100% of despair2 in 1:44, 3 seconds faster than himself.
Check your .txt files for errors next time! :-) Mr. Weixing Ye:
  • Nightmare 100% of czg02 in 5:33, 107 seconds faster than Basil, and 1 second faster than Weixing's recent NR...
Optic-basher, Thomas Bergendorff:
  • Easy 100% of lostwrld in 2:34, 15 seconds faster than Ilkka.
  • Nightmare 100% of lostwrld in 3:37, 32 seconds faster than Justin.
Finnish bonghead, Aleksander Osipov:
  • Easy 100% of mexx6 in 2:10, 4 seconds faster than himself. RECOMMENDED!
Timo Nieminen just managed to squeek out one more demo before joining the army! We'll miss you dude! You can bitch all you want about my lack of words in this update, but my life has taken a turn for the better and that means I don't have a whole lot of time for Quake now! But I'll still be pumping out these non-wordy updates when none of the other SDA updaters have time, or just couldn't care less :-)

Friday, January 10th by Morfans

Demoz From Da Boyz. - 8:48 PM

Here we go with another set of top-notch demos, most of them this time coming from the SDA crew.

First, yet another Id improvement. Thomas Stubgaard has gone to war with the zombies in The Nameless City and improved his Nightmare 100% to 5:14, that's twelve seconds faster than previously and with two more kills, leaving only one zombie unaccounted for. But frankly that isn't good enough. So he very quickly stopped pissing around and did it even faster with ALL the kills to get 5:13. MUST DOWNLOAD.

Next up we have Nolan Pflug, who was so disgusted at the cowardice displayed in Bergies recent Nightmare Run of ikspq4 that he felt forced to improve it. Much more aggressive play leading up to the gold key gave him a nine second improvement to 1:56.

And since he was on the map Radix joined in the Optic bashing and improved his Nightmare 100% by thirteen seconds to 5:24.

Another busy week for Thomas Bergendorff, this time beating records by five different people, but mostly still Optic.

  • Much like his phallus, he can't leave ikspq1 alone.
    • He improved Ilkka's Easy 100% by three seconds to 1:17, but it was a sloppy demo considering Lowdis's usual standard.
    • So he soon improved it to 1:14.
  • Next, the 100% records on thetomb.
    • A generally solid run for the Easy 100% except for a very lame piece of play at the end gave him 2:34, five seconds faster than Justin. It's not often you see someone do a quad RJ out of some lava without a pentagram.
    • No gimp-swimming on the Nightmare 100%, though. 2:38, fifteen seconds faster than Matti to take TO of the level.
  • He then took the Nightmare Run of the small, tight (hey, that sounds like my ex-girlfriend. You'd only have to add "pig ugly" and it'd be an uncannily accurate description) bc2 from Optic by one second to 0:35.
  • On to Area51, or as it's better known jtkmap6.
    • He swept Jusin's Nightmare 100% away with this 2:19, nineteen seconds faster.
    • Then he finished with an excellent 1:05 for the Nightmare Run, seven seconds faster than DanielL.

One more single player demo before we get to the coops, and it's a one second improvement to the demo that for many months no-one could do, the Nightmare Run of czg02. Weixing Ye has improved Nolans record by one second to 5:34 with some nice play, but I still think that he could have been a few seconds faster if he'd played the end slightly differently. Watch the demo and you'll see what I mean... :-)

OpenGL then teamed up with Xiaokui "Fox" Xiao to make a quick improvement to Kimmo and Timo's Easy 100% of dazsp2. One second better gave them this 0:38.

Our final demos for this update are from premier coop slaughtermeisters Robert and Rickard Axelsson. No 2-player DooM record is safe...

  • First they attacked the Easy 100% of doom2_08. The .txt says it's the Nightmare 100% but that's just the Swedish tendency to lie at every opportunity. This 0:49 is still a cool demo and six seconds faster than Marlo and Fab.
  • Then they took the Nightmare 100% spot on doom2_01 from Valeriy and Andrey with a nifty 0:27, two seconds faster.

We've also received demos from Timo and Basil since I started writing this update but they will have to wait for next time. Sorry, but since it's taken me nearly three days to get this far I feel it would be pure folly to try and add more. But don't worry, they're worth waiting for...

Saturday, January 4th by Stubby

Coop-Mania! - 10:05 PM

I'm not in the mood to write a whole lot about every demo so here goes...

While Daniel Hansson was cleaning his HD he discovered quite a few coops he had forgotten to send in! Here they are in classic SDA style:

  • 4 player Easy 100% of The Sewage System in 0:29 by Hansson, Jonny, DanielA and Eckers, new to the tables. (0:53)
  • 2 player Easy 100% of rd1m3 in 1:10 by Hansson and Jonny, 1 second faster than their previous record. (1:44)
  • 3 player Easy 100% of czg07a in 2:25 by Hansson, Eckers and NEWCOMER Glenn-Thore Kristiansen, 9 seconds faster than Hansson, Jonny and DanielA. (4:07)
  • 2 player Nightmare 100% of badland2 in 3:01 by Hansson and DanielA, new to the tables. (3:14)
  • 2 player Easy 100% of civil in 1:07 by Hansson and Jonny, new to the tables. (1:35)
  • 3 player Easy 100% of fatal-error in 0:53 by Hansson, DanielA and Eckers, new to the tables. (2:01)
  • 2 player Easy Run of fmb8 in 0:55 by Hansson and DanielA, new to the tables. (1:00)
  • 2 player Easy 100% of rwa1 in 0:47 by Hansson and DanielA, new to the tables. (0:57)
Basil teamed up with NEWCOMER Chris Hamilton to kick some ass on prison.
  • 2 player Easy 100% in 0:41, new to the tables. (0:49)
  • 2 player Nightmare 100% in 0:44, new to the tables. (0:56)
Kimmo Polvivaara convinced NEWCOMER Timo Kossi to do a coop with him, but they only managed to produce one demo...
  • 2 player Easy 100% of dazsp2 in 0:39, new to the tables. (0:45)
We'll finish this update with 2 single player demos:

First up we have Morfans the Ugly. He took it upon himself to deliver a frantic demo on the very popular rdend. He did the Nightmare 100% (un-restricted bunnies) in 3:37, 21 seconds faster than the non-bunny version.

Ok, a few words about this next demo! This demo has to be ABSOLUTELY optimum! Anyone thinking otherwise will get kicked silly in the bollocks! Will you please welcome the return of Valeriy the Mad Optimizer Burmistrov! He improved his Nightmare 100% of doom2_07 by 1 FAT second to get 0:15!!! Watch it in slow-mo! MUST DOWNLOAD! Check the big .dz for an egg demo on this map...

Thursday, January 2nd by Radix

Missing demos... - 6:52 AM

It seems Morfy somehow missed a set of six demos that Bergie sent in one email on the 26th, so I just thought i'd do a little update with them. The demos are in the 'all demos here' link from his update and they were already in the tables though! All demos are improvments over Flecker's records, of course ;-)
  • Easy run of r2m5 in 1:17, 4 seconds faster.
  • Nightmare run of ikspq1 in 0:58, 3 seconds faster.
  • Nightmare 100% of mexx10 in 5:47, 5 seconds faster.
  • Nightmare run of r1m2 in 1:42, 2 seconds faster.
  • Nightmare run of r1m6 in 1:23, 2 seconds faster.
  • Nightmare run of r2m5 in 1:30, 2 seconds faster.