So on with the demos. Starting with a piece of total crazyness from the ever expanding de Mestre clan.

Pif, Luc, Georges and Andre have sent us a demo in a discipline that we thought was impossible, the Nightmare 100% of shafted. Of course, we only thought it was impossible because we didn't envision anyone turning up mob handed to take on a room full of 29 shamblers with just some axes. It turns out that if one person distracts them then the others can slowly chop away at the big, white bastards but it can take up to 10:22 to do it. And since they got such a low decimal I have to believe that 10:21 is possible with faster play...

Not often we start with a coop, but then it's not often we get a coop like that. Now on to the regular demos starting with the fastest man alive, Kay Berntsen. He's taken a short rest from id ownage to run his delicate little feet through the Easy Run of hip3m4 in 1:04, two seconds faster than Amrik. Anyone that moves that fast through the spinning blades trap thingy deserves the record in my opinion.

I was moaning to Connor Fitzgerald the other day in #qdq that he's spending far too much time working on project runs and not enough time making regular cool demos. His response? This sweet Easy 100% through the bunny enabled rd1m1 in 1:09, six seconds faster than Stubby.

On to ballshft next, simply because it's got a bit of me in it...

• Your friendly updater and inspiration to the whole world, Richard Skidmore, has recaptured the Nightmare Run by one second from Christian with this 0:25. Don't think there's ever been two DK fire jumps in one demo before. Then again I thought Markus was the last person to send in an id 100% as their first demo so what do I know. (Marv, Joe and Naga all did runs as their first demos, I know, but I did specifically say 100%s.)
• What else has happened on this fine map? Pif and Luc used some spawning shenanigans to complete the Nightmare Run in 0:19 and then in the much smoother 0:17.

Another fine map, another fine member of TeamSDA owns the Nightmare Run. It must be carnage.

• Thomas Bergendorff improved his own record by twenty-one seconds to 1:07 with an insanely lucky 128 unit grenade jump in the middle of ogre mayhem and the most beautiful non-pent-quad-from-lava-grab I've seen in many a moon.
• Naturally, Pif and Luc made two demos showing something similar, but substituting Luc's hefty weapon for the OG jump. They got 1:02 and then 0:56. The excitement was just too much for Luc in both demos... :-)

More on fire from hot new runner Joe Pecoraro.

• He improved his Easy Run by another second to 0:36.
• Which again was all the encouragement Pif and Luc needed to do the Easy Run in 0:33 and then 0:32.
• But they didn't stop there! Oh no indeed, sir!! Because they also did two Nightmare Runs!!! First in 0:34!!!! And then in 0:33!!!!! (I have no idea why I just used so many exclamation marks. Just put it down to the fact I'm writing this while I have an erection. Do you feel a little uneasy now? I would if I were you.)

If ever a map was going to be described as "that big, steep hill one" then it's going to be cbfspq2.

• Mattias Öman wrestled the Easy 100% from Pif by two seconds with a downwards plummeting 0:41.
• But experience, cunning and fucking fast bunnying allowed Daniel Hansson to rule them all with a magnificent 0:34. Smarts, that's what this boy's got. Smarts.
• Before the last demo arrived Mattias decided to have another try at this run and he took Christian Tornberg along to help him. Between them they could only equal Daniel's time of 0:34.
• Mattias still wasn't finished, but he moved his focus to Pif's Nightmare 100% and he shaved two seconds off to get 0:43 and then gouged a large, three second chunk out of that to get 0:40.

We've already seen one fine demo from our new friend BogoJoker in this update, but he's done a whole lot more in this laast week.

• He tried his hand at monster in-fighting on the bast 100%s. (Not the vore-crazy "all kills" version, the "screw the zombies" version).
  • He took four seconds off of Mads-Peter's Easy 100% to get 1:24 which soon became 1:23.
  • And when he moved on to the Nightmare 100% it seems the monsters just couldn't kill each other fast enough and he exited in the fine time of 1:17, eleven seconds faster than Mads-Peter.
• The blister Easy 100% fell to his fury as he brought the time crashing down to 1:01, five seconds faster than Bergs.
• I always thought that Dan's Easy Run of darkages was pretty close to optimal, but I reckoned without some power-bunnying and flawless play (except for one stupid knight) to get the time down to 0:27.
• He made two improvements to Basil's Easy 100% of dm6sp, first to 0:40, which is a very good demo, and then to 0:36 which is an outstanding demo. You can tell that this guy has deathmatched this level a fair bit, shame it's a .1 though. :-P
• Next came an assault on foon.
  • This is Hansson's map. Everyone knows that. You don't go taking his records. It's not polite. Politeness can, it seems, go and insert the external organ of it's choice into the orifice of it's choice as he improved the Easy 100% by three seconds to 1:18.
  • Fleck has enough records that he won't miss the Nightmare 100% too much. But the fact that it's a fifteen second improvement to 1:50 might chafe a bit.
  His final trick of the week was to wrest the 100% records on e1m1rmx away from their current owners.
  • He dragged the Nightmare 100% away from Mattis by two seconds with a 1:13 grunt blast.
  • Evan's Easy 100% was a little more of a challenge but soon fell to the new boy when he stormed into the slipgate in 0:57.

Those of you with a keen eye will have noticed that the two "all demos downloads" have different dates on then. Those of you with keen, analytical minds will have worked out that there was suppossed to have been an update a few days ago. Why wasn't there? Well, partly it was down to GameSpy ripping the guts out of the site with their "maintenance" but mostly it was down me ripping the guts out of my modem when I moved all my stuff out of my office into our small spare room. It wasn't my idea. My wife, Mrs Morfans, said I had to because we need the room for a "nursery" what with her being all "pregnant" or something. I wasn't really listening to be honest. Anyway, you'll be relieved to hear that the modem's okay now.

Marathons. I just love a marathon. Luckily so does George Dickeson and he's proved it by filling the horribly difficult Nightmare Run of the dmsp levels in the respectable time of 3:12. Even if you don't like marathons you have to check out the dm3sp demo. I LOLed. :-)

We've already seen a lot of them tonight, but the two guys that have done their fair share of making this month so god damned demo drenched, Luc and Pif, have only just got started.

• The Nightmare Run of bbelief3 saw them use the ol' quad out of the water trick that made the Easy Run such fun, but this 0:37 has extra carnage to add that little bit more spice to it.
• Next we have the demo that got them into the shambler axing mood that led to the 4-player mayhem that started this update. They chopped their way through the Nightmare 100% of bbelief7 in 1:51 and then, taking a more pragmatic approach to ammo use, in 1:31, one hundred and four seconds faster than Nolan's legendary single player time.
• Simple, boxy, ugly and stupid. No, it's not the return of Amrik, it's the Nightmare 100% of cult which they did in 0:37. I don't think I've actually watched this one yet. Hang on... Pretty good! Nicely timed exit. Luc: what mouse sensitivity do you use?
• They did the long way run of The Door To Chthon without trying to get all clever with the rules and made it in 0:27.
• A rather odd little level is frcastl2. The switch that opens the exit and the exit itself are right in front of you when you start. You don't have to explore any of the rest of the map.
  • This let them complete thr Easy Run in 0:07.
  • And the Nightmare Run in 0:08, which soon also became a 0:07.
• Another bizarrely pointless map, if I had to name one, would be flyer.
  • Task sharing opened the way to the exit and let them out in 0:12 for the Easy Run.
  • And also 0:12 for the Nightmare Run.
• More evil Nightmare Run table filling now as they stomp through Chthon's Castle, or mexx3 as it's otherwise known, in 0:44.
• A wise man once described shoot as rather like slamming your genitals in a car door. To test the theory I tried both. One made my wife and her two friends who were in the car at the time laugh hysterically while I collapsed in agony and the other is a fun map to run. I'll let you guess which is which.
  • Given it's "two buttons" structure it's a natural for coops. Before you could shout "Oui, Madamoiselle. C'est mon pantalons!" our French friends were at the exit. That's roughly 0:12 seconds in English. They then removed the pantalons to take this down to 0:11.
  • Too many monsters to exit that smoothly on Nightmare. So you can either do the Run in 0:15...
  • ...or kill every fucker you can find and complete the 100% in 0:46.
• I have to say that Luc played an absolute blinder in this Nightmare Run of houstrps. All Pif had to do was rocket jump his way all over the map but Luc... Well, Luc exited in 0:31.
• Pif also struck out on his own to make two long demos. One has the excuse that it's a marathon. The other? WTF is this map doing on the archive??
  • Pif asked, in, of course, #qdq, why there was no marathon entry for the Prodigy Special Edition episode. "Dunno", I said. "Go record one and we'll add it." So he did. And so did we. The result is this Easy Run through pse in 4:57.
  • The "other" map that I alluded to above is avatar. A nicely built, fun map which is challenging to play through but the Easy Run record is now 5:26, three seconds faster than Nolans time. No shortcuts in either the runs or the 100%s and five and a half minutes to exit on skill 0. Fair play to Pif for improving this record but in the name of Satan's flowery underpants WHY?

For a couple of rookies you can't really get a more exciting new coop team than the new face of Udder dementia, Mattias and Christian. This new face is just as ugly as the old face (except for Carl who's a real cutey) but they don't smell so bad.

• They went for a swim in The Sewage System and ended up improving Pif and Luc's nightmare 100% by two seconds to 0:51. A few quad nails towards the exit and this could have been a 0:50, I think.
• Improving on another de Mestre table filler we see them hacking at the Easy Run of dm1m2 and taking the time down by one second to 0:41. Then they got recless with the boosts and turned in a damned fine 0:38.
• Ah, roots! Always return to your roots. The level that started these two guys off was coopmine so they returned there and showed just how much they've improved.
  • They ripped four seconds off of the Nightmare Run to 1:17.
  • The Easy 100% faired even worse, getting it's rear minced by five seconds to 1:42.
  • And four seconds to their Nightmare 100% time giving them 1:44.
• They're obviously trying to make enemies of Luc and Pif as they improved their Nightmare 100% of gloin by one tiny second to 0:50...
• ...and their Easy Run of hunter by one second to 0:47...
• ...and both their recent demos on gordian.
  • Their Easy Run by two seconds to 1:15.
  • And their Easy 100% by a big eight seconds to 1:32.
• Next came some clever and perfectly executed grenade work on trinity.
  • The grenade work may have been clever but the route in this 0:20 Easy Run was just plain dumb. :-) Luckily they saw the error of their ways and soon made a beautiful, almost sexual, 0:18.
  • When they did the same thing for the Nightmare Run this 0:18 surpassed "almost" and actually achieved sexual.
• What else was there left for them to do than to drag Mikael Carllsson into the action and go killing on undead.
  • With an extra person to share in the bloodshed the Easy 100% only took them 0:21. No, better than that. It only took them 0:20.
  • Same number of monsters so there's no excuse for the Nightmare 100% to take any more than 0:20 too.

We're there! Almost. If you've made it this far then I salute your stamina. You've nearly made it to the end of the longest ever SDA update. Before we all go our seperate ways I'd just like to suggest that you take a quick look at the cheated page where Stubby has finally posted three demos done ages ago by Connor.

There's also a new version of JoeQuake released this week for those of you that like to use the only, that's right ONLY SDA approved custom engine on the planet. I'd post the link here but i can't find it. It's on our links page, though, but I can't remember the link to that either. Probably this. It's in the menu on the left in case that's wrong. Can you tell I'm getting a little tired? :-)

Since we started the update talking about the numbers we'll end the same way. Check out the hit counter. We've passed 500000! YAY! And not only that but one of the demos in this update was demo number 7500. Are we (and I mean YOU) hot or what? Maybe. Only if we do a triple numbers celebration and break the monthly record. So let me remind you once again. Make a demo in the next day and send it in. Or find an old one on your PC and change the date to August. Whatever. We need so very few August dated demos to break the record that I feel sure you guys and girls will come through. Or if not come very close indeed.

SDA: Like the family you'd choose if you only could (Granpappy Nolan, Daddy Stub, Mommy Hudson, Brother Bergie, Little Sister Wagner and me, the deformed freak you keep locked in the attic).

My only defence is my extreme old age. Maybe it's time I retired from SDA...

It would have absolutely ROCKED to be able to say that we have a new player showing his face at The Archive, and that his first demo was an id 100% improvement. Not since the great Markus Taipale back in 1988[2] have we been able to say this about a player, and that was "only" an Easy 100%. Joe Pecoraro (better known to some as "BogoJoker") has gone spawn-crazy and improved Stubby's hell run through The Pain Maze by twelve seconds to 2:45. Great play and some very lucky monster in-fighting would have made this the best debut demo we've ever had. Unfortunately he sent in a couple of the demos below a few hours before he sent this record and so he moves from "id Nightmare 100% First Demo Legend" to just plain "Joe. No, not that Joe. The other Joe." ;-)

And here are the demos alluded too above. As you'll see, Joe has been taking the fight to Joe in the merry-Joe-round that is "who's the Joe?"

• First he did three impressive runs on fire.
  • He beat Joe's time for the Easy Run to 0:37, one second faster.
  • He also improved Joe's time for the Nightmare Run by one second to 0:38.
  • And to spread the hurt around a little he improved Bergie's Easy 100% by two seconds to 1:10.
• Then it was on to dmc1m2 and a two second humping to Sidd's recent Nightmare 100%, taking the record down to 1:00. Surely someone is going to break the magical minute soon...
• His most recent effort is my favourite of the lot. He went Nightmare 100% crazy on dmc1m3, laying the smack down on Ivans time first by one second to 0:32 and then a ball-slappingly good 0:30.

While we're on the subject of balls, let's see what's been happening on ballshft. Christian Tornberg improved my Nightmare Run by one second to 0:26 using the tricky "top platform" exit jump.

We'll get back to Tonis in a little while, but first we're going to take a look at what France's premier speedrunning duo, Luc and Pif de Mestre have been doing to the Rogue level Easy Runs...

• They only stopped off at one level in the first episode, and that was r1m2. They adopted the plan that they kept to on most of these levels: split up, press buttons, meet at the exit. It got them out in 1:28.
• They made a pretty shakey demo on r2m2, but that was just the earth tremors. HAHAHAHAHA. *ahem* Anyway, they did the job in 0:57 and then soon after did a much better 0:52.
• They moved on to r2m3 where they made a pretty rough 1:23 before realising that if Pif grabbed the RL at the start they could save a ton of time to 1:11.
• Some nice anti-grav work from Pif gave them a 1:45 on r2m4, which they obviously then immediately improved to 1:36. Is there a reason you run the long way through the maze, Pif?
• More button pressing madness (and Luc failing to master the art of staying alive) on r2m5. Started with 1:16 then a slight improvement to 1:14.
• As far as cool map names go, r2m6 is right up there with "Blood Sacrifice". The map is split into two almost equally long long, long halves. They first completed it in 2:10 and then improved that to 2:07.
• Finally they attempted my favourite run in all the Rogue maps, r2m7. Luc pressed the buttons while Pif grabbed the RL and the went to meet the dragon in 0:51 which of course soon became a 0:50.
• They left Rogue maps for a short while and had a play with dm1m2. They might not have invented it but they've made the double-super-shotgun-head-stand boost a kind of signature move. They used it to get 0:42 for the Easy Run and 1:08 for the Nightmare Run. Pif wins the prize for this updates "Most Unusual Death" when he gets killed by running face first into a fiends anus. (Watch it slowed down if you don't believe me...)

Pif struck out on his own just once this week, to fill the Nightmare 100% hole on cbfspq2 in 0:45.

Marathons and more besides from Chinese love guru Weixing Ye.

• He improved upon Pif's recent Nightmare Run of daz, and since it seems to be the theme of this update he improved it not just once, but twice. First by eleven seconds to 2:09 and then, mostly by growing a pair of balls before the shambler fight at the end of the second level, by another nine seconds to 2:00.
• Then he wiped the smile off my face by making my Nightmare 100% of elin look like the hopeless tablefiller it was by taking two seconds off of the time to 0:25.

A new coop duo rears it's exceptionally ugly head now, as Thomas Stubgaard pushes towards the "most id records by anyone, ever" record with a Nightamre 100% of end with Mathias Thore. Lots of lightning through walls and coop grenade abuse gave them a shub-splattering 1:34, twenty seconds faster than Valeriy and Andrey. They also made an "egg" of them exiting with the final shambler on Shub's island quite obviously not taking any damage, but they sat there for twenty minutes shouting at it to die. In the interest of everyone's sanity and to save the two gentlemen any further embarrassment we decided not to include it. Hell, I'm not even going to mention it...

From here on in it's Mattias Öman and Christian Tornberg all the way.

• First came a lot of ultra-violent vore slaughtering rocketry on bfinal
  • They were evidentally very pleased when they managed to improve Robert's outstanding single player Easy Run time by one second to 0:27.
  • They also made an excellent job of the Nightmare 100%, improving Valeriy and Vlad's time firstly by two seconds to 0:33, and then by another two seconds to 0:31. These guys are getting really good. :-)
• Pif and Luc's escape Nightmare 100% caught their attention. "We can improve that" they said. And they were right. First by one second to 1:07 and then a little bit faster still at 1:04.
• They also found a nice new way to get up to the vore on nesp16 which allowed them to exit in 0:37, nine second faster than the de Mestres.
• Still on the trail of Luc and Pif they proceeded to undead where they improved the Easy 100% by four seconds to 0:23.
• Mattis took a quick turn around e1m1rmx on his own so that he could improve his Nightmare 100% by four seconds to 1:15.
• But he reformed the duo so that they could improve the 2-player Nightmare 100% on the same map that he made with Mikael by two seconds to 0:47 and then by another second to 0:46.
• They did one other demo, a 0:30 in hallway which, although it's faster than Pif and Luc's time, is slower than Weixing's single player time from last week. Therefore it is not a valid record. We included it in the all demos download anyway (either because we thought you might like to see it or because we didn't notice until it was uploaded, you choose) but the rule is simple: a coop record must be faster than the current single player time, even if the old coop time is slower.

To bring things to a conclusion I will just point you in the direction of our videos page, where if you're keen eyed you will see that Mathias Thore has made .avis of SBBlite2, Jozsef Szalontai's jaw-dropping (but badly timed, release wise. grrrr. Even after all these years...) Easy Run through Matthias Worch's Beyond Belief episode.

Time for me to exit.

[1] SDA Advisory Notice: Don't do drugs. Drugs are bad. M'kay?
[2] Eight years before Quake was even released. I do, of course, mean 1998.

Kay "The Human Cannonball" Berntsen has improved one of the most prized of all the records, the Nightmare Run on the level where it all began, The Slipgate Complex. With so many grunts and dogs around the chances of dying or getting blocked are always very high, and the chances of getting shot in the face just as you do a huge bunnyhop are even higher. But extreme skills and persistance paid off here as all the kindly grunts decided to team up to help him get this 0:24, one second faster than Sergi.

From the oldest map to the new batch of maps, starting with ballshft and me using a new Nightmare 100% route to improve my record by eight seconds to 0:48. Please. Pretty please. Someone beat my records. I love this map. I want to see it done properly. :-)

Only one single player tablefilling spot remains on cbfspq2. I guess that means it's time for Pif de Mestre to show his face. He bounced down to the bottom of the level, leaving a 0:43 seconds long path of destruction in his wake.

Pif also gave us this week's only wrld11 demo, beating his own Nightmare Run record by one second to 0:26.

Let's take a walk down the world's crappiest hallway ...

• Weixing Ye improved Markus's Easy 100% by six seconds to 0:28. It's just one of those things you always hope you'll be able to say: "I improved a Markus Record!"
• Thomas Bergendorff decided to show everyone that said the Nightmare Run was impossible without the pent that they were wrong and quite easily (he says) got a 0:11.
• Which soon became his only record on the map as Weixing made a six second improvement to his Nightmare 100% to 0:27.

The undead Task Tried To Tax The Talents of Two Total... errrrr... Twats.

• Weixing improved Pif's Nightmare Run by one second to 0:14.
• And Pif filled the Nightmare 100% slot with this 0:43.
• Then improved it to 0:40.
• But Weixing had just done the Easy 100% in 0:37, two seconds faster than Optic.
• So he used the same route to beat Pif's Nightmare 100% by three seconds to 0:37.
• And then tidy the Easy 100% up to 0:36.
• And just to keep things neat the Nightmare 100% also to 0:36.

runthis was also the scene is some pif-illication.

• Lowdis took one second off of Pif's Easy Run to get 0:07.
• OpenGL took five seconds off of Pif's Nightmare 100% to get 0:21.
• Then shaved off another two seconds simply by using that old favourite tactic, better play. 0:19.

Welcome to Ware, Where We Watch With Wanton Wonder While Weixing Wanders Wearily (a)Wound With Weapons ah fuck it. Here's the demos.

• He improved Daniel's Easy 100% by three seconds just with faster play to get 0:40.
• Then he stomped Peter's Nightmare 100% by seven seconds to 0:49.

Always a pleasure to see that people are working on marathons. Especially nightmare marathons. Damned masochists.

• Pif filled the gap for the Nightmare Run of daz in 2:20. A good, solid run but could do with being a little more suicidally reckless in places. ;-)
• While George Dickeson chopped nine seconds off of Pif's time for the Easy Run through dmc to get 1:29.
• Then he survived the Nightmare Run of dmc in the excellent time of 1:39, only ten seconds slower than his Easy Run you were reading about just a moment ago.
• Sidd also improved my Nightmare 100% of dmc by a big forty-four seconds to 8:49. Some great new routes in here.
• He realised, while making the above, that his route for dmc1m2 was faster than Ivan's route and set about capturing the record. After a lot of restarts he realised just how frustrating the Nightmare 100% on that map can be and settled for a 1:04, just two seconds faster.

Weixing is a sucker for a high kill map. So it's no suprise that he's taken both 100%s of jzdoom.

• He cleaned up the level (using coop 2) on Easy in just 0:20, four seconds faster than Ivan.
• And the slaughter that is the Nightmare 100% in 0:25, two seconds faster than Ivan.

What better way to round off the day than with a pile of Pif and Luc de Mestre coops.

• Marlo's odd little castle map, hc, was the first to get the treatment.
  • They improved Martin and Anders's Easy Run by one second to 0:32.
  • Then table-filled the Nightmare Run in 0:34...
  • ...and then 0:33.
• They made an excellent one second gain on their Nightmare 100% of The Sewage System to 0:53. Surely the yanks must fight back soon!!
• The escape Nightmare 100% looked like it desperately needed filling, so they obliged with a fine 1:08.
• It's been nearly four years since anyone touched gordian, must be time for some table filling, French style.
  • They did the Easy Run in 1:17 using the "standing on the head SSG boost" and some spiffy rocket work.
  • And the Easy 100% in 1:40 using pretty much the same route but killing everything as they ran through.
• No one could accuse them of picking the easy maps, take for example nesp16. They managed to stay alive long enough to record a 0:46 Nightmare Run. This is faster than the single-player time by virtue of the fact that nobody has ever survived the Nightmare Run on their own.
• Finally, because of all the improvements to the Nightmare 100% of royalwar lately they thought that they'd better bring the 2 player Nightmare 100% up to modern standards. This meant beating their old time by eleven seconds to 1:14.

Well, what with one thing and another this is another update that's getting posted 3 days after it was started (and with an absolute minimum of humour included, I notice). It's nice to see that during those three days we've already had another mountain of demos sent in including another id improvement from a brand new player. So put THAT in your crackpipe and smoke it!

We're going to start off with ballshft because most of the demos were done by ME!

• Once you manage to get a fairly good success rate doing the deathknight boost your troubles are only just beginning. Following roughly the Easy 100% route I managed the Nightmare 100% in 1:02.
• Using the same start and visiting a part of the map I didn't even know was there yeilded a Nightmare Run in 0:44.
• With only green armor on Nightmare it's insanely difficult to vore-ball jump straight to the top (see Fitzxgeraløt's demo below) but you can get high enough to reach the pent, drop down and then go all the way up. This saved three seconds to 0:41.
• Or you can jump up to the RL, get the pent and RJ up and out. This give the vastly quicker time of 0:27. Why didn't I see this at the start and save wasting several hours on the other routes?? *sob*
• This same start also makes the Nightmare 100% much quicker at 0:56.
• And in Easy Skill action, Connor Fitzgerald completed the map in 0:18, three seconds faster than Qurre's Run using a tricky diagonal shambler smash and a lot of balls.

hallway might be an embarrassingly bad map but it's had a fair whack of attention this week...

• Connor wasted no time in improving Ville's Easy Run by one second to 0:10.
• Mathias Thore started the Nightmare 100% off with a rather banal 0:54...
• ...Which was totally owned by Pif de Mestre to 0:42...
• ...Who in turn was hit with Thomas Bergendorff's owning stick to 0:33.
• Pif and Luc de Mestre are still flying in a coop frenzy. The first of their demos this week are the Easy 100% in 0:32.
• Which they quickly improved to 0:31.
• And the Nightmare 100% in 0:32.

Only one demo on Elin. Pif and Luc racing through the Easy 100% in 0:11.

Into the warehouse now...

• What do we find? Kay Berntsen getting all "big bunny" on Daniel's Easy Run and taking the time down by one second to 0:17.
• Nightmare Run? Same person, two second improvement over the same person. Same time. 0:17.
• So who do you think filled the coop Nightmare Run spot? That's right! Luc and Pif in 0:13.

Quick! To the tower!

• Jonny Andersson wasn't going to let the fact that his mouse was dying from preventing him from filling the Easy 100% spot in 0:21.
• A lesson in riding the lightning next from Jozsef Szalontai as he improves Chris's Nightmare Run by one second to 0:11.

One word to describe wrld11: Mario-rific!

• Pif has so far been the only person to brave the Nightmare Run. He made a very impressive demo, though, which clocked in at 0:27. Will we see a coop, guys? Imagine the starting boost you could get from your buddy: a grenade and a rocket would boost you all the way to the end of the first section! (Probably...)

If standing atop a large column is your thang then get yourself over to runthis.

• Despite haunting #qdq with his lurker slapping trout it's been a year since Tim Doherty has actually sent in a demo. He remedied this with a Nightmare 100% table filler in 0:35...
• ...which #qdq newcomer Pif let stand for approximately ten minutes before sending in a 0:26.
• Pif also filled the Easy Run slot with a solid 0:08.

More tablefilling de mestrage on undead.

• Pif did the Nightmare Run in 0:15, equaling Markus's Easy Run time.
• Both of them then completeld the 2-player Easy 100% in 0:27.
• And the Nightmare 100% slot in the same time. 0:27.

So to round the new maps off, it has to be cbfspq2.

• Luc and Pif took that downward spiral, killing everything in their way for an Easy 100% in 0:36.

On cbfspq1 the battle for the Nightmare 100% continues.

• Pif recaptured the record from Mandel by twelve seconds with a new route incorporating lots of quad flying to get 0:46.
• But then Connor came along and showed everyone what a world class performance looks like with this 0:29. The grunts kills and the ogre kills are simply beautiful.

One more demo from Connor this week. He improved Denn's Easy Run of dwell by one second to 0:32. He even managed to do a Nazarov style .txt!

Weixing Ye has cemented his ownership of the royalwar Nightmare 100% with a four second improvement to 1:22. Now even further out of my reach... :-)

The sm57_pulsar_se Nightmare 100% is a total bitch to do. Room after room of monster madness. Pif managed to find a technique to get him through it all alive and exited in 5:02.

But while watching the demo Thomas Bergendorff noticed a few areas that could be improved on and made a 3:01 soon after.

Another #qdq regular who, although he obviously has some skill, rarely makes a demo is George Dickeson. This week he not only improved his Easy 100% marathon through the dmc levels by twenty-eight seconds to 5:44, he also, realising that he was getting ratehr good at dmc1m6, improved Ivan's Nightmare 100% of that level by twelve seconds to 1:53. Very nice indeed.

If there were dmc marathons being done then, of course, Pif wasn't going to stand idly by and let Sidd be the only one to do one. So he improved his Easy Run by seven seconds to 1:38. Not only that, but he was so fired up with the deathmatch marathon hots that he improved his Easy Run through dmsp by five seconds to 2:19! Go Pif!

We're nearly at the end of this pif-date. But Pif-ore we go, let's have some more Piffing action from..... Pif!

• He did the Nightmare Run of the horrible (running wise, I mean) pushcoag in 3:39.
• Then it was back to more coop play with Luc for an id improvement as they owned, pwned, poinged and phw33nz00r3d the Fleckster and the Wagster by taking one second off their Nightmare 100% of The Sewage System to get 0:54.
• And finally they did some mad boosting on tyrcoag to do the Nightmare Run in 0:41.

Well, we haven't had that many demos in a single update for quite some time. Keep it up, y'all!

I'll tell you what more there is to do, if you'll be so bold as to give me a minute of your time. When I was setting up this contest I got to thinking about some of the great old contests that we've had and wondered why the FUCK, if you'll pardon my language, we hadn't added some of them to the tables before. So I had a little look through the archive and decided to post these two old, old maps...

• ballshft, A Few Balls 'n' a Couple of Shafts by Marc Reilly. Please call your demos ball_xxx. Used for a contest in July 1999 where Sebastian Olsson won both the Easy Run in 0:21 and the Easy 100% in 0:33. Attila Csernyik and Peter Horvath also did a coop Easy Run in 0:15. That means that Nightmare is untouched and since there's no shambler on Nightmare it's vore-balls or ogre grenades all the way up...
• undead, The Undead Task by Ilkka Kurkela. Please call your demos und_xxx. Used for a contest in January 1999 where Markus Taipale won the Easy Run in 0:15 and a young Justin Fleck won the Easy 100% in 0:39. Once again, no nightmare demos or any coop demos at all.

Then I pondered further: why limit ourselves to just maps where most categories aren't done? Why not add any cool, decent sized, old contest map and see how todays runners compare with the 90's crowd. Which gave us...

• tower, Tower of Thunder by Ilkka Kurkela. Please call your demos tow_xxx. Used for a contest in December 1998 where Peter Horvath won the Easy Run in 0:12 and Chris Longden won the Nightmare Run in 0:12 and the Nightmare 100% in 0:18. Jesse van Dijk and Jeroen Coenders also did a coop Nightmare Run in 0:09.
• ware, Warehouse by Attila Csernyik. Please call your demos ware_xxx. Used for a contest in June 1999 where Daniel Lindberg won the Easy Run in 0:18, the Easy 100% in 0:43 and the Nightmare Run in 0:19 while Peter Horvath won the Nightmare 100% in 0:56. All four of these demos come with recams of the runs. Attila and Peter also did a coop Easy Run in 0:12.

At which point things got rather out of hand, and after a brief conversation with Thomas "Have you heard my bands latest mp3?" Stubgaard[1] we thought "why limit this to old maps? Let's just go a bit stupid". And so...

• elin, Feels Like Flying by Robert Axelsson. Please call your demos elin_xxx. Used for a contest in February 2002 where Peter Horvath won the Easy Run in 0:08 and the Nightmare Run in 0:07 (personally, I think this demo is the most amazing out of all these amazing demos), Timo Nieminen won the Easy 100% in 0:12 and then simply because I couldn't possibly add all these maps without doing a single demo myself I banged out a quick Nightmare 100% in 0:27.
• runthis, Run This! by Tim Elek. Please call your demos rt_xxx. Used for a contest in December 2002 where Jozsef Szalontai won the Easy 100% in 0:12 (recam included) and Anders Nordensten won the Nightmare Run in 0:06.
• wrld11, World 1-1 for Quake by Mattias Berggren. Please call your demos wr11_xxx. Used for a contest in April 2002 where Jozsef Szalontai won the Easy Run in 0:19 (very cool recam included) and Timo Nieminen won the Easy 100% in 0:42.

And then, even though it's shit, here's one last map just because Stubby thinks it's fun.

• hallway, Optic's Dumb Hallway Map by Justin Fleck. Please call your demos hall_xxx. Used for a contest in December 1998 where Ville Hyyrynen won the Easy Run in 0:11 and Markus Taipale won the Easy 100% in 0:34.

One last piece of map news, if you look at the page for dmc1m4 you'll see that Kay's runs are back as the proper records and Daniel, Jonny and Luc and Pif's "exit glitch" runs are now listed as "The Cheap Way". So if you think you can beat Kay's proper runs now's your chance! ;-)

Check it out here, and if you want in on any of the maps, just holler at me.

It's not often you see three ID records in an update anymore. But we have just that for you!

Thomas Stubgaard has widdled that nightmare 100% time on The Tomb of Terror to just a hair under 2 minutes, making this Stubtastic 1:59.

Connor Fitzgerald trampled all over Markus's long held nightmare run of Chambers of Torment. By applying the proper ammount of Fitzgeraldness, Connor was able to cut off another second, coming out with this 0:27. Wow is all I can say.

The Physco Hopper Kay Berntsten just seems to be getting faster and faster, when will it all cease!?!? Well, hopefully never in my opinion. Anyways, without the assistance of the fiend boost Kay was able to improve Joe's easy run of Hell's Atrium by one second getting this dizzyingly fast 0:53.

Now onto the non-ID demos.

Thomas Bergendorff got bored and took to the easy run of JJSPQ2, improving his previous record by 2 seconds with a 0:46. Then he improved Marlo's easy 100% by 6 seconds with a 1:26.

Next Bergie took to the nightmare demos of jjspq2. First improving his run time by 2 seconds with this 0:47. And of course the 100% must then be improved, and did it ever get improved! In fact 22 seconds was cut from Anders time and this 1:27.

The one and only Dane Plachetta got up in the mug to knock another second off his 100% of HIP1M3, coming out with this very clean 1:21. Plachettad!

Pif de Mestre thought he would give a go at some marathon running, making this easy run of all of the Deathmatch Arena maps to the lovely tune of 2:24. Pif then went to flex his marathon muscles some more with two marathons of all of the DMC maps on easy and nightmare. First improving Amrik's time on the easy run by 2 seconds to a 1:45, then filling in the empty spot for the nightmare run with this 2:13.

Next Pif thought he would carry on and fill in the empty nightmare 100% spot of cbfspq1 and made this 1:07. But the almighty enigma that is Mathias Thore bumped 9 seconds off that time, making this Thoriffic 0:58.

Next to feel the wrath of The Thore was Daniel Hansson's nightmare run of mexx8b, Thored by 1 second to get a 0:19.

COOP DEMO TIME!

Mattias Öman and Mikael Ulverås have done a few new coops!

• The empty nightmare 100% spot of BUB2 was properly filled with this smoothly done 0:21.
  
• What could produce this quote from Mattias? "FUCKING end I hate that fucking bitch everyone stand in front of me and i dont come nowhere ffs"? Why the nightmare run of royalwar, that's what! And after much cussing by Mattias, and many beer bongs from Mikael, this nightmare run table filler spilled forth in the time of 0:35.
  
• Finally the two improved Pif and Luc's nightmare 100% time by 3 seconds to this spiffy 0:49.

Pif and Luc have graced us with their normal amount of coops :-)

• The two empty spots for the runs of dmc1m4 were finally filled, netting a easy run time of 0:04 and a nightmare time of 0:04.
  
• Next in sight was gibplex, and the target being the easy 100% first in 0:48, then soon after to 0:46. But don't you think for a second that they didn't also do the nightmare 100%, they did, and what they got was 0:47.
  
• Then the two brought their skills to hunter for an easy run in 0:48 and a nightmare to the similar beat of 0:48.
  
• One second was further extracted from the twos gloin nightmare 100%, now ran in 0:51.
  
• Which leaves us with a 1 second improvement over Robert and Rebecca(!) Axelsson's nightmare 100% of jzblue_1, getting a 0:26.

Speaking of the Axelsson brothers, the two happened to pillage all the runes of aerorun in a scant 0:06 seconds. 1 second faster than Ivan and Ilian.

Until the next Wagging.

We can begin to answer the first question with a quick perusal of Jozsef Szalontai stamping around the Castle Of The Damned. He somehow managed to improve "old knickers" (that's Sergi to his friends) time for the Nightmare Run by one second to 0:31. He thinks that 0:30 should be possible. I don't. :-)

Connor Fitzgerald will help us begin to answer the second question with a really quite amazing two second improvement to Marvin's Easy 100% of The Vaults of Zin. A few tweaks here and there (for example, this is the smoothest "quad out of secret" jump I've even seen) and voila! 0:52!

To get the final to answer to both questions it's back to Joe. One of Martin's best and most famous runs is his Easy Run of The Tower Of Despair. It would take a real bunny machine to beat it, and the machine will delight you all with this 0:28. He say's it's not optimum. I think maybe he's right, but just check out the speed of his final curl/bunny combo. My mind is officially blown.

So please join me in giving a big SDA cheer to Jozsef and Connor for giving us THREE ID improvements in a week. And our commiserations go out to Big Marv who lost two id records. Also, just look at which records they were: e1m2, e3m2 and e4m2. If only someone had done e2m2 as well...

Before we go any further I'm going to take the opportunity to quickly pimp the current contest. Don't whatever you do forget to send in your entries before next Sunday night. We've had a few already which is unusual since normally they all arrive in a rush the day before the deadline. But I urge, nay IMPLORE you all to send your demos in even if you don't think you're going to come first. I'll be entering my own demos and so will Tim so it's unlikely you're going to come last. It's the taking part that counts... :-)

No dip in quality now as we say hello to mad, bad Robert Axelsson, who has sent us in two demos that threaten to rip you open from crotch to throat.

• He found an old, old demo lurking on his PC, and when he played it he found it was a Nightmare Run of sgc5 in 0:51, ond second faster than Jordi. Some very nice boosts, and one... less so. :-)
• Then the man known as "Mr Boss Map" improved Ken's Nightmare 100% of bfinal by three seconds to 0:38 to give himself three of the four SP records on this vore drenched hell map.

• First they improved the Easy Run by two seconds to 0:18.
• Then Mandel and Midas (see, Robert. It wasn't too hard, was it? :-P) attempted the monster infested Nightmare Run and manged a three second improvement to 0:19.

That record didn't stand for long, though, as Jonny and Daniel Hansson slapped them aside with this 0:47, five seconds faster.

From now on in it's Pif and Luc de Mestre all the way. And what an explosive week they've had!

• Starting with Pif on his own as he fights his way through the swarm of enforcers that is the Nightmare Run of chain3 in the table-filling time of 1:34.
• Which he quickly improved to 1:31.
• Then the French duo started on the Hipnotic Nightmare Run table fillers.
  • Using a neato "out of the sewers" boost (which may or may not have been used in the Easy Run, I can't remember and can't be frigged to download it. If it isn't then NICE TRICK GUYS!) they completed hip1m5 in 0:51...
  • ...and then 0:49.
  • Then on to hip2m4 for some mine-dodging, gren riding, undead killing lunacy taking them to the exit in 0:40. Check out the egg demo for a double whammy of entertainment. First some hilarious spike mine chasing, then some total weirdness...
  • Soon improved to 0:38.
• They also filled the whole set of two player demos on jjspq2 starting with...
  • ...the Easy Run in 0:40...
  • ...and the Nightmare Run in 0:40 (after first sending in a 0:41).
  • The 100%s feature some of the smoothest de Mestre play I've seen so far, with the Easy 100% in 1:14...
  • ...and the Nightmare 100% in 1:15 is a real Luc-fest. :-)
• The Nightmare 100% of e1m1rmx followed their usual pattern of come up with a route, do a pretty good run of it in, say, 0:54, then soon after do a much better couple of second improvement to 0:52.
• The dark, open expances of gloin was the setting for their penultimate demo, a Nightmare 100% in 0:52.
• And finally a lightning fast Nightmare Run of jzblue_2 in 0:09.

See you next time! Or will I???

Yes! Because YOU demanded it we are once again giving every one of you the chance to pit your skillz against everyone else in the Quake loving world. Go HERE and run your little socks off. Thanks to Connor Fitzgerald for preparing the map for us and also to Bengt Jardrup for fixing the fucking thing after we broke it in the beta stage. :-)

And now..... the latest Speed Demos to be added to the Archive.

Weixing Ye has returned to stamp his authority all over the Nightmare Run of royalwar with this arse-kicking 0:42, three seconds faster than Rickard.

For his next trick he mangled Daniel's Nightmare 100% of the same map by ten seconds to 1:26. I did have hopes of one day taking this record back myself but this is now beyond my abilities. Good work, Weixing, you bastard! :-)

Loads of coop action on sm27_xenon this week.

• #qdq regulars Mathias Thore and Robert Maglic decided to see if they could get a good ping to each other and try a little two player action. The results are pretty impressive as the improved Luc and Pif's Easy Run to 0:16, two seconds faster, and then to 0:15.
• They skipped the intermediate 0:16 on the Nightmare Run and went straight to the 0:15, three seconds faster.
• But along came veteran tag team partners Jonny Andersson and Daniel Hansson and they turned in a virtuoso performance on the Easy Run, improving it by two more seconds to 0:13.
• There isn't such a word as virtuosoer, but if there was then there Nightmare Run would be exactly that being, as it is, one second better even than the Easy Run at 0:12.
• One time, while they were recording the Easy Run, Daniel and Jonny accidently started killing things. By the time they reached the end they'd killed everything giving them an Easy 100% time of 0:33, two seconds faster than the French Duo.

Looking for greater challenges, Daniel and Jonny then turned thier attention to a few of the id level coops.

• They recaptured their Easy 100% of Ziggurat Vertigo from Luc and Pif by two seconds to 0:34. This also happens to be one second faster than the American Trio's EH3. :-)
• Then they laughed in the face of their own Easy 100% of The Crypt of Decay and turned in a hefty seven second improvement to 0:51. Very clever use of his own grenade timer by Jonny and a perfectly executed boost to the exit off a lucky deathknight. WHEEEEEEE!
• A record by Attila and Peter is unlikely to fall easily. But the guys performed a long distance moon, all the way from Sweden to Hungary to celebrate their improvement of the Easy 100% of The Ebon Fortress by three seconds to 0:56.

• They filled the empty gap for the Nightmare Run of e1m1rmx in 0:28. Grunt damage is just soooo fierce here that Mandel has to have a little lie down...
• Then they did the Easy 100% of 2run5 in the very good time of 0:39.
• Mathias became so good at boosting his way around the level that he decided to have a try at the Easy 100% himself. He ended up with a 1:00 which was good enough to take the record being four seconds faster than Pif.

WE ARE IMMORTAL! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Monday, July 12th by by Radix

Don't click on 7004 links - 10:53 PM

Saturday, July 10th by by Morfans

The Machine Still Rules You All! - 10:44 PM (2nd Update)

Saturday, July 10th by by Morfans

Oh, How I Hate. - 1:00 AM

Sunday, July 4th by by Morfans

Blue Boosting Blobs! - 3:50 PM

Tuesday, June 29th by by Morfans

The Purity Of The Clenched Fist. - 9:38 PM

Thursday, June 24th by by Morfans

You have All Been Uddered! - 1:33 PM

Friday, June 18th by by Stubby

You've All Been Stubbed! - 1:33 PM

Thursday, June 17th by by Stubby

Ariadne's Thread - 6:06 PM

Thursday, June 10th by by Morfans

Salivary Gland: The Rudest Sounding Non-Rude Body Part? Discuss. - 7:15 AM

Sunday, June 6th by by Evan

It's shitty update time! - 2:00 PM

Saturday, May 29th by by Evan

CZG & Vondur's First Speed Runs! - 12:46 AM

\/\/3|)|\|35|)4Y, /\/\4Y 26th by 10\/\/|)!5

/\/\4P5 - 13:37 PMS

Saturday, May 22nd by Morfans

Never A Day To Miss 'Cause.. - 2:38 PM

Friday, May 14th by Morfans

Mmmmmmmm. - 2:00 PM

Thursday, May 13th by Evan

Peter Horvath scares me. - 2:58 AM

Yup, he scares the crap out of me folks. Having said that, let's proceed with the update.

Alexander Osipov has joined the recent trend of making an SDA comeback, and has... well... made a comeback! The target for Total Osipovation was the easy 100% of e4m7. Alexander reclaimed his old record spot from Timo by 5 seconds to get this really slick time of 1:57. Put that in your pipe and smoke it Timo.

Luc and Pif de Mestre can't seem to stop making demos, excellent!

• The Dangerous Double de Mestres first owned the gravity challenged e1m8.
  • Daniel and Jonny's easy 100% was improved by one second to this 0:37, and soon after to this nice 0:36.
    
  • A normal gravity easy 100% table-filler was next in line for proper treatment, first getting this 0:35 and then a 0:34.
  
  
• Next victim for massive de Mestreage was the nightmare 100% of m_palace, ran 2 seconds faster than their previous to get this solid 1:22.
  
• Luc decided his whistle wasn't fully whetted after a few coops, so he sat down to make a table filler on his own. No suprise that he chose to make a nightmare 100% of royalwar to the tune of 2:23.

Weixing Ye is back in the house! And it comes as no shock that he has some further improvements for you on the apple of his eye, pagan3!

• The easy 100% was first to be worked, 1 second was shaved off in this 0:25 and a few days later to this great 0:24.
  
• Mr. Ye then further optimized his nightmare 100%, 4 seconds at first with this 0:24 and then to this 0:23. Good work Weixing!

And I'm spent.

Wednesday, May 5th by Morfans

Too Black, Too Strong! Mmmm. Coffee. - 8:00 AM

It seems like Evan mistook my comparison of his update to a bout of self gratification as some sort of insult. Nothing could be further from the truth! Salami slapping and Quake are the two things I most often choose to do when I have 10 minutes to myself, so the comparison was meant to be a complement. Two things in life I take for granted: 1) I'll never get tired of Quake and 2) I'll never get tired of stretching the ol' love bone.

Now, we haven't started an update with a Justin Fleck demo since... the last update. So let's do it again. After taking both run records on zer1m5 last week he has now taken TO of the level by improving both 100%s.

• He improved Ilkka's Easy 100% by a huge twenty-three seconds to 3:17 by simply never stopping and not taking any crap from any monster. Not that easy, as you'd imagine, but when Fleck flecks something, it stays flecked!
  
• The Nightmare 100% is much the same but with a few more monsters which means even less crap taking as he ran through in 3:27, twenty-eight seconds faster than Ilkka.

Connor Fitzgerald could have lived with Evan snagging his czg04 Easy Run record (see last update) but the aussie wasn't going to stand for being called a yank so he recaptured his record by improving it by one more second to 0:40. Very, very good but still not optimum so hopefully we haven't seen the end of this little duel. There's even been talk of an insane trick to get to the ogre secret at the start even quicker but it sounds so damned hard I doubt even these two masters could include it in a run. :-)

Making his return after being missing in action for several months is Chinese destroyer Weixing Ye who has pulverised both Basil's 100% records on pagan3. He grabbed the nailgun for some multi-INK mayhem which saved him three seconds on both Easy and Nightmare reducing the exit the time to 0:28.

It's de Mestre time once again as Luc and Pif run wild on a couple of my favourite levels.

• Not many shortcuts on m_palace but sharing the killing and collecting saves plenty of time...
  • Split up, get a key each, meet up, exit. Done one second faster than Ilkka and Jesse at 0:46.
  • A similar set of routes except also blasting everything out of the way as you go gives a tidy looking 0:54, also one second faster than Ilkka and Jesse.
  • My favourite run from this set is the Nightmare Run in 0:59. With two nightmare shamblers waiting in the last room you'd better hope your coop partner distracts at least one of them or you're toast. Luc, however, seems perfectly happy to just watch his little bro take double lightning strikes to the back until he crosses the exit trigger as nothing more than a burnt crisp. Still, bonus marks for style for ending the demo dead. :-)
  • And just to get the complete set they crashed through the Nightmare 100% in 1:24. Plenty of ammo and plenty to kill. Not often the rocket launcher is completely ignored in a 100%.
• They also improved their con1 Easy 100% by one second to 0:17, equalling the Nightmare 100% time.
• And finally made a tablefiller Easy Run through abw in 1:26.

All the rest of our demos in this update come from last weekend's UdderFest when Jonny Andersson, Daniel Hansson, Daniel Andersson and SDA newcomer Johan Olsson got together for some multi player butt spanking.

• Just to get his keyboard warmed up for the rigour's of the day ahead P-B improved Ivan's dmc1m2 Easy 100% twice. First by one second to 0:39 and then by a further two seconds to 0:37.
• He then dragged Hansson on to the map to improve Luc and Pif's Easy 100% time by six seconds to 0:26.
• They decided it was time to take a few Id coop records, starting with the Easy 100% of Zigurrat Vertigo in 0:38, one second faster than their previous time. Just watch that dumbass float!
• Ash joined them for the Easy 100% of Tomb of Terror and they're either better than they were three years ago or just slightly less cretinous as they managed to improve their old record by three seconds to 0:39.
• Time for Johan to get in on the action as they improved the Easy 100% of The Sewage System that Daniel, Daniel and Jonny did with Big Freddy Eckers a couple of years back. Johan helps add extra curl to the demoleading to a five second improvement to 0:24.
• If you had to bet on one level that they were certain to do a demo on it would probably either be a czg07 level or escape. Johan took a rest and let the other three destroy the Nightmare 100% that Jonny did with KimSvea and Damien by thirty seconds to 0:52.
• Back to Jonny and DanielH for the Easy 100% of hayduke1 which they stole from Luc and Pif by three seconds to 0:34.
• By this time Ash had finished doing whatever it was that kept him out of the last demo (there are several very obvious things it could have been that I feel would lower the tone of the site if I mentioned them. Such as rubbing up a white snowstorm or taking a dump. Let's just try not think about it, okay?) so he rejoined the guys for the Easy 100% of rd1m2 as they improved the DH, JA, FE record by two seconds to 0:35.
• Finally it was time for Jonny to rest his pretty balls and leave Daniel and Daniel to round off the day with a quick Easy Run of undrwrld in 0:53, six seconds faster than Daniel and Jonny.
• Nice set of demos, guys. Glad to see the Udder flag is still flying.

That's it for today. Don't forget to keep an eye on the Other Games page as there's been a whole host of cool stuff posted there in the last week of so. Stubby even went so far as to mail Valve about the HalfLife speedrun and they replied that they really enjoyed it and had the whole office round watching it. So next time they announce a delay in releasing HlafLife2 you'll know it's because Thomas has been distracting them again. GET BACK TO WORK, YOU GUYS!!

Wednesday, April 28th by Evan

Another 'wank' update - 10:50 AM

Well, since my updates have been labeled as only masturbatory in worth I might as well jump right into the demos and save any attempts to humor you all :-)

We haven't started an update off with demos from Justin Fleck in quite some time, so let's do just that.

• First the Fleckmonkey shamelessly wiped Shambler's last remaining record from the tables, improving his easy run of zer1m5 by 5 seconds to get this Flecked out time of 1:12.
  
• With his fancy now tickled towards the likes of zer1m5 Fleck then improved a Nolan Pflug record for this level. Fleck shafted Pflug's Nightmare run up the arse by a whole 59 seconds, coming out with this 2:07.

After Optic was finished gallivanting around zer1m5 on his own, he then proposed we coop the level. I of course accepted, and we came out with this sweet little easy run in 1:01.

We have another 'Fitzed out' ID demo for you from Connor Fitzgerald. The name of the game this time around was an easy 100% of e3m4, and the result was a beautifully played 1:10. Watch this demo if you know what is good for you.

Watching Connor's e3m4 easy 100% reminded me that the yank had recently improved my easy run of czg04. I'm not one to take such improvements to my demos, so I showed Connor what was up with this 0:41.

Daniel Magnusson has made a return to speed running after more than two years of being dormant! He chose to make his comeback on that old favorite map critters, he improved his nightmare 100% yet again to this very entertaining 0:52. 1 second faster.

And that brings us to some fresh new demos from the wonderously quick (yet also wonderously smelly) land of Kay Berntsten. Ripah produced a complete ownage of prison, improving every single-player-record for the level!

• Basil's easy run was quickly flecked by 3 seconds to get this radiant time of 0:23.
  
• Basil's nightmare run was then improved by 3 seconds to get 0:24.
  
• Carl Tholin's easy 100% was improved by another 2 seconds to get this 0:47.
  
• Basil succumbed to the wrath of Ripah for a third time as Kay made this 10 second improvement to the nightmare 100%, getting this 0:46.

Now back to my mapping I go...

Saturday, April 24th by Morfans

Twenty-Eight Years Old And Still Not Dead. - 8:05 AM

Hey there folks, me again. I bet you thought I'd deserted you for good and left you in the tender embrace of Evan's updating heaven. So as a change from the silky vaseline handjob feeling of a Wagster update I thought it was once again time to give you an update feeling like full doggy sex with the film star, popular music singer or profesional athlete of your choice. Personlly, I shall be writing this update thinking about Courtney Cox bent over in front of me, but you can chose whoever you like.

The first demos to send a shudder down your spine are a couple of optimised (probably) runs on corp2 by Thomas Bergendorff. He improved the Easy Run to 0:08, one second faster than before and the Nightmare Run by two seconds to 0:08. He rambles on about how 0:07 might be possible but... NAH!

I'm sure that there isn't a flaccid phallus in the house after those two, and in order to keep you all nicely firmed up it is my pleasure to present to you Mr Michael Hudson and has Easy Run Marathon through doe1. With at least half the Rogue levels having no real shortcuts other than "avoid the monsters" it takes a brave man to marathon these episodes. Or a stupid one, maybe? He cut twenty-seven seconds off his previous record and it honestly would have been more if he hadn't made such a hash of the start of r1m4. :-) 8:47

Some of you might be wondering what, if Evan's updates are a wank and my updates are a hump, sexual activity Stubby's updates can be likened to. After some consideration I think they're like getting really drunk and waking up naked the next morning in bed with your mother. Not nice, I know, but who can honestly say that it hasn't happened to them? No? Just me then...

Still on a roll Luc and Pif de Mestre .

• They improved their evilpool Nightmare 100% by two seconds to 0:45. It should be possible to equal the Easy 100% time of 0:43 but those two shamblers in the final room are a real killer on Nightmare.
• Next up was a run around rettear and a Hansson and de Vries clobbering sixteen second improvement to the Easy 100% with Pif running for the exit and Luc on mopping up duty. They finished in a very respectable 1:29.
• They also improved both 100%s on the small and rather strange con1.
  • There was no time for slacking as they improved R&R's Easy 100% by one second to 0:18.
  • And even less time to think in the Nightmare 100% as they made the same improvement over the same people to grab a 0:17.

Before we visit our last demo of the update I'd like to wish Stubby a very happy birthday for yesterday. Some people might call it bad manners for someone with a face like that to stay alive for twenty-eight years but that aside, I hope you had a good night last night. CHEERS!

Talking of people who look like they should be dead, and smell like it if the truth be told, we come to Justin Fleck and Evan Wagner. One of the best named runs on the whole archive is the Nightmare 100% of carnage since it's a total nightmare and 100% carnage. That's a combination that makes for very entertaining demos and these two rarely let us down. They finished the bloodbath in 1:30 and I must say I was sweating and panting by the end of it just watching. Although that might have more to do with the fact that I'd stopped thinking about Courtney and was thinking about that "7 of 9" from Voyager instead.

Before I go I'd like to remind you once again to keep an eye on the Other Games page because things are getting really hot over there at the moment with Zelda:Ocarina of Time and a Super Mario run being added in the last couple of days.

And that's only the start...

Tuesday, April 20th by Evan

Nolan Pflug stole my balls! - 4:38 PM

Nolan 'Pflugmaster' Pflug has another update for you all on the other games page. Go there for all speedy things non-Quake like, yet disturbingly Pflug-like.

It's always a special thing to have an ID demo for you in an update. Especially since we all know they don't come easy these days. Connor Fitzgerald intruded upon the long-time Selinus-dominated Easy 100% of The Wizard's Manse. Connor improved Martin 'bald head' Selinus's record by 3 seconds to get this shining time of 1:17! This demo is a must get!

Speaking of must-get demos, Kay Berntsten has reclaimed his record of nesp16 from me by 2 seconds. A quicker vore ball jump yielded this time of 0:32, damn close to optimum now I'd say. Kay then figured he would reclaim another record of his, this time shaving a hard-to-get second off Bergy's Easy run of DMC1M7 and coming out with an impressive time of 0:21.

Luc and Pif de Mestre are on quite the demo making binge.

• The two blokes figured they would make some further improvements to the odd prison level.
  • First they ran the Easy 100% in 0:40, 2 seconds faster than Basil and Chris.
    
  • They then gave birth to this Nightmare 100% in a matching 0:40, 2 seconds faster then their previous record.
• Luc and Pif slapped Daniel and basil accross the face with the French Glove, improving their Easy 100% of damaul3b by 12 seconds to get this nicely played 0:46.
  
• Next L&P delivered their wrath upon the likes of hayduke1. Richard and Basil's Easy 100% was further improved by two seconds to this 0:37.

Justin Fleck and I have made a few more entertaining coops for the masses.

• Continuing upon our cooperative-domination of Beyond Belief we made this Nightmare 100% of bbelief4 to the tune of a not too shabby 1:43.
  
• Next we proceeded to do a run I hope we never have to repeat. It just so happened to be the Nightmare 100% of flecksp1, and after managing to stay alive thoughout a run we finally got a time of 2:26.
  
• Fleck then decided he had enough lag and it was his turn to host. After connecting to him, the two of us banged out a solid Easy run of carnage in 0:32.

Optic figured he wasn't happy with his four year old Nightmare 100% of bbelief4. With a just a bit more Flecktimizing he was able to do away with 18 seconds and get this 2:40.

I promised screenshots of EVSPQ2 in the last update and here they are. I appologize in advance if they are too dark for you (fine for me, Viewsonic baby). This level features curves that rival Quake 3 Arena's, I kid you not!

• evspq2_1.jpg
• evspq2_2.jpg
• evspq2_3.jpg
• evspq2_4.jpg
• evspq2_5.jpg
• evspq2_6.jpg
• evspq2_7.jpg
• evspq2_8.jpg
• evspq2_9.jpg

On a final note, we have a few new player profiles for you to read. This time around we have profiles from Connor Fitzgerald, Kay Berntsten, and Luc & Pif de Mestre!

Catch you all in #QdQ!

Thursday, April 15th by Evan

Back up in the weezie! - 4:40 PM

Funny that my last update here was about three years ago. Well, after starting to play Quake an unhealthy amount once again, I figured I might as well help with the updates at SDA also. This should take a little bit of the workload from off of Skiddy "The Updating Machine's" shoulders :-) Thanks goes out to Stubby for doing all the behind the scenes work also for this and countless other updates.

Let's get this party started with some brand new demos, shall we? And what better way to start then with an ID demo from Luc and Pif de Mestre. The dynamic French duo decided to improve Stubby and Skiddy's Nightmare 100% of E4M2. At first they netted this 1 second improvement of 1:13 but decided there was still room for improvement, leading to this 1:11. Surely Morfans and Stubby aren't going to take this sitting down, hmmm?!?

Oh, but Luc and Pif were not done there, no siree! The two also felt the urge to take a plunge into The Evilpool and improve Robert and Rickard Axelsson's Easy 100% by one second to this 0:45 and then to this nicer 0:43. Having improved the Easy 100%, it's then only natural that one goes for the Nightmare 100% next - and that's just what they did next by shaving 2 seconds off of Robert and Rickard's time, ending up with this well played 0:47. Finally from these two, we have a Nightmare 100% of prison done in a swift 0:42, 2 seconds faster than Basil and Chris.

Pif de Mestre improved his Nightmare run of Royal Warriors first by 2 seconds to this 0:49 and then another second taken off to get him a 0:48. The health situation during this run looked a little frightening :-)

Next we have some good new demos from the "electric n00b" himself, Kay Berntsen.

• He decided to improve both Juozas Rimas's Easy and Nightmare runs of gibplex. Coming out in the end with a 1 second improvement over the easy time to this 0:25. Then creating a matching 0:25 Nightmare run, which was a 2 second improvement.
  
• Next Kay took his anger out on Rogue's R1M5. First shaving one second off Robert's run to get the time of 0:58, then soon after a 0:57. Very entertaining demo :-)

DMC1M7 is getting closer and closer to optimised territory, as evident by these two great new demos.

• Kimmo Polvivaara managed to squeeze another second out of Robert Axelsson's Easy 100%, getting himself this quick time of 0:28.
  
• Robert Axelsson had a go at the Nightmare run, and managed to improve Bergy's run by 3 phatty seconds to a 0:25.99!!

Justin Fleck and I have done a couple new Nightmare 100% coop's of Beyond Belief. Fleck even let me host these two runs, which doesn't happen often!

• bbelief1 was our first target as we madly shot our way to this time of 1:13.
  
• bbelief2 naturally was our next choice and we coincidentally ended up with another time of 1:13.

Last and most certainly least is a demo from Justin Fleck. The Fleckmaster decided to pick on Morfans, improving his Nightmare 100% of perssp2 by a whopping 57 seconds to get a 3:59.

After having to learn an entirely different level editor, I am currently back at working hard on my second level, EVSPQ2. Look for some screenshots in my next update :-)

Wednesday, April 14th by mwh

No steenking tripod here! - 5:11 PM

I'm back from fighting with my family and have uploaded Monday's "big dzip" here. So you can all stop messing about trying to get tripod to give you the file without mangling its name or contents. Aren't you lucky?

Monday, April 12th by Morfans

Assault On Castle Morfans. - 5:18 PM

Well, since this week has been a very busy week for us, receiving demos-wise, we've reached the big 7000 demos already. In order to do this properly I'm going to have to list the demos in the order they arrived, so that, and the fact I've got to upload and do the history for all 26 demos by myself, means that I'm going to have to be brief with each one and the whole thing might lack the cohesive flow you've come to expect. It's not my fucking fault. OKAY???

So here's the rundown from 6976 to 7000...

6976. We'll begin with Pif and Luc de Mestre. They improved Robert and Rickard's Nightmare 100% of dmc1m6 by two seconds to 1:22.
6977. Pif and Luc again, this time with a one second improvement to their colony Easy Run makng it a very neat and hard to beat 0:16.
6978. Pif and Luc quite naturally also improved their Nightmare Run of colony by one second as well to 0:16. Seems like Pif is really starting to hot up...
6979. More Pif and Luc this time back on dmc1m6 to improve their Easy 100% by another three seconds to 1:15.
6980. Pif on his own this time doing a tablefiller Easy 100% of 2run5 in 1:04. In theory it should be possible to do this almost as fast as Dane's Easy Run...
6981. Pif and Luc again, this time with newcomer Andre de Mestre. A very simple piece of double shotgun boosting let them do the Easy Run of dmc1m6 in 0:02, one second faster than the 2-player time.
6982. Pif, Luc and Andre doing the exact same thing but on Nightmare. 0:02. I think it's about time we had some de Mestre profiles sent in, guys.
6983. Time for a change of players, I think. And if you're going to change players then you really want to hope it isn't to salty American dog sniffers Justin Fleck and Evan Wagner. Unfortunately for us it is. They did the Easy 100% of black2 in 0:55. Perfect timing on that last grenade...
6984. Optic and windlash didn't stop there, they continued with a rather nice Easy 100% of dm3sp in 1:03.
6985. Nothing was going to take the limelight off of Pif and Luc for long. They came storming back by improving Thomas and my Nightmare 100% of Zigurrat Vertigo (Normal Gravity) by one second to 1:02. Hey, their first ever id record! Congrats guys.
6986. Now to Robert Axelsson and the first of many improvements to Pif's Easy 100% of dmc1m7. He started with a two second improvement to 0:33.
6987. Robert. dmc1m7. One second faster. 0:32.
6988. Pif and Luc did some route refining to the Nightmare 100% of Zigurrat Vertigo (Normal Gravity) and took off another six seconds to 0:56. MUCH better demo. Stubby, we have to LAN and take this back... :-)
6989. Pif and Luc once more. Beating the dmc1m2 Easy 100% I did with Fat_Eddie by eight seconds to 0:32.
6990. Robert. dmc1m7. One second faster. 0:31.
6991. Time for Fern to get in on the Morfy bashing as he improved my terrible Nightmare 100% of rpgsp1 by twenty seconds to 6:15. Maybe I'd like this record back, waddayasaytatha?
6992. Oh fuck a pig it's Optic beating another one of my records. This time in a strange chunk of synchronisity it's on Fern's map perssp2. He did the Easy 100% in 2:14, nineteen seconds faster.
6993. The synchronicity goes on as Kay Betntsen improves the Easy Run of a map made by Optic, flecksp1. He beat Martin's time by two seconds to 1:10 by being very, very fast. :-)
6994. Robert. dmc1m7. Two seconds faster and finally the demo we were all hoping to see. 0:29. The next demo we received was also a dmc1m7 0:29 by Kimmo Polvivaara. If Kimmo hadn't decided to delay sending his demo in until he'd pummelled the purple python in celebration his demo would have probably arrived first. The lesson here is simple: mail first: wank later!
6995. Once more back to Pif and Luc who we now find improving the Easy 100% of abw to 1:47, eleven seconds faster than, once again, myself and Fat_Eddie. Now, I'm quite relaxed about people beating my records since they are mostly tablefillers and quite easily improvable. Eddie, on the other hand, is something of a jealous, violent maniac and would like to challenge Pif and Luc to a fight. Oh, he says you can bring Andre as well if you like, he doesn't mind. Some people, eh?
6996. Pif and Luc again doing the first ever coop on pagan3. It's an Easy 100% tablefiller in 0:22.
6997. Another piece of Easy Run quality from "Hell's Bunny", Ripah. He improved Bergie's r1m3 record by .3 of a second which was enough to make it a 0:16. I'm glad to see the Rogue levels getting some attention at the moment. Maybe a couple more people could give them a look over. Although some of them are too long for most people's taste there are sme real gems hidden away in this mission pack.
6998. Optic and Evan are at it again as we draw inexorably closer to our target. They did this updates second demo on rpgsp1, a map that has been dormant for about two years before today, with an Easy 100% in 1:32. A good map for cooping.
6999. Pif and Luc went back to pagan3 to do the Nightmare 100% in 0:21, one second faster than their Easy 100%.
7000. So Pif and Luc stayed on pagan3 until they had equalled the time of 0:21 on Easy.

And that means that

Pif de Mestre
and
Luc de Mestre
are our
DEMO 7000 WINNERS

7000 demos. It just doesn't seem possible. It seems like only a short time ago I was saying "6000 demos. It just doesn't seem possible. It only seems like a short time ago I was saying "5000 demos. It just doesn't seem possible."" Well done to Pif and Luc for getting the magical number, shame we didn't have time to organise an actual physical prize but you have our love and respect. Respect, anyway. That respect extends to everyone that's sent in a demo recently. You guys keep this whole site, community and scene rocking like a speed-phreak receiving electro-convulsive therapy on a roller-coaster. I think we all deserve a beer.

The first step towards demo 8000 is, of course, demo 7001. This improvement to my Nightmare 100% of flecksp1 by Evan is the bigest owning in an update of ownings. The Owned, pwned and pweened me by seventy-two seconds to 3:34 with a much, much better route and a bit of better play.

See you all in #qdq.

Wednesday, April 7th by Morfans

Signs and Portents. - 8:21 AM

Whereas it's generally assumed in all right thinking areas of the world that Quake is by far the greatest game ever crwe here at SDA do acknowledge the fact that other games do sometimes briefly pop into existence. Recently reality has been increasingly unstable as over on the other game runs page in the last week we've had new runs on Metroid, Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, Metroid Zero Mission, Metal Gear Solid:The Twin Snakes and Prince of Persia, The Sands of Time. It seems that everybody loves a little bit of speed every now and then...

Remember what I said last week about id records? Seems like people can't take a damned hint because this week another one has been improved! This weeks evil perpetrator is Thomas Stubgaard who has been initiating a massacre in The UnderEarth by improving the Nightmare 100% to 2:39, five seconds faster than his previous record. This is the kind of brutality you expect from a really classy Stubby demo: monsters flying in from all sides; explosions going off everywhere; and plenty of blood.

Only one demo this week on flecksp1, but it's a demo none of us expected to see. Evan Wagner has improved my thought-to-be-optimum Nightmare Run by... Wait a minute. I don't mean "optimum" do I. I mean "laughable". Anyway, he beat it by twenty-six seconds to 1:26. A beautiful silver key grab and some lovely moster slides down the stairs make this as close to sex as you want to get on anything associated with Fleck.

Pif and Luc de Mestre are making the most of the free time they've found themselves with by laying the smack down on as many other 2-brothers coop teams as the could.

• Starting off with dmc1m6.
  • First they tried a little coordinated arena killing and owned the Axelssons Easy 100% by one second to 1:18.
  • Then they produced their first optimised record with a 0:03 Nightmare Run.
• They had no mercy on the dmc1m3 Easy 100% by Fat_Eddie and myself making a big five second improvement to 0:19. Impressive work and a bonus point for getting the last kill in the intermission. :-)
• Pif then struck out on his own to fill the dmc1m7 Easy 100% slot in 0:35. A nice route with a wicked long, curly quad grenade boost.

Despite recently having to do some work for the first time in his life Connor Fitzgerald has managed to send us a profile and also two excellent Nightmare 100%s. In getting them he managed to totally own one third of TeamSDA! Boy, some people know how to make themselves popular...

• To be honest I don't really mind that he improved my dmc1m5 record by twenty-five seconds to 1:03 because his demo contains a quadruple vore-ball jumps, a load of rooftop bunnying and all sorts of other things that I just could never have done. So fair enough.
• And his dmc1m7 Nightmare 100% in 0:45, nine seconds faster than Stubby, is just plain classy. From the the first bunnyhop to the double INK it just reeks the stench of great demo.

Those of you who are of an observant nature will have noticed that the last six demos were all on maps from the Death Match Classics : Episode One map pack. And even though there is a ton of running potential left in these maps I thought I might test the water as to how poeple feel about helping out on a little project I couldn't help but call Death Match Classics : Episode Two. What we're looking for is two things. Firstly, suggestions for great deathmatch maps that you think would, with a little work, make great speedrunning maps. Secondly, people that can map ("mappers", I believe they're called) that are willing to help out with the conversions. If you think you can help with either aspect just mail me (there's a link at the top of this update). For a semi-competent mapper a conversion should only take between 100 and 200 minutes of mapping work and let's be honest, there's absolutely nothing else of any worth or value you could possibly do, mapping wise, in that sort of time. ;-)

Justin Fleck has been licking at ih1m2 like a dog at a pair of peanut butter covered balls.

• He teamed up with windlash to do the Easy 100% in 1:22. Just look at those suckers run!
• He then cast Evan aside to do it on his own just five seconds slower at 1:27, nineteen seconds faster than his previous time.
• With that kind of warm up it was surely only a matter of time before he also improved the Nightmare 100%. This proved to be the case when this 1:44, twenty-five seconds faster than before, arrived the next day. The way he goes through them the monster might just as well not be there.

According to an ancient jewish prophesy the end of the world shall be heralded by three events. "An cowe that is born with thee heade ov a chicken, a raine ov fishes and Michael Hudson doing a demo on an differant levelle". Well it looks as if armageddon might be on it's way because earlier this week we had a chicken born with the head that looked a little bit like a cow (these propheses sometimes get a bit confused), a tin of tuna fell on my head and mwh improved Mad-Peter's Nightmare run of r1m1 by one second to 1:20. Count the ways the monsters can get in your way during this run...

Basil de Vries has given us a Nightmare 100% tablefiller on tyrcoag in the time of 5:45. It's a long and very dangerous level, especially at the start (and in the middle. Oh, and at the end) and Basil plays it quite pedestrian here. Be sure to watch for the section just after the silver key door if you need any tips on how to totally fail to pick up armour. :-)

What kind of demos do you think are going to get produced when one of the all-time great runners, Martin Selinus, 2003 Speedrunning Champion Anders Nordensten and the newest initiate into the "Filthy Few", Mathias Thore, all get together one afternoon? I'll tell you something, my friends, they ain't going to be slow...

• With Martin involved they of course did a Vaults of Zin Easy 100%. The improved Marlo, Fabian and Stefans old demo by two seconds to 0:29.
• A double vertical shotgun boost by Mathias and Anders hd just enough power to propel Marv through "the gap" at the start of The Tomb of Terror which gave them an Easy Run time of 0:19.
• Discharge jumps are always fun to see so they headed for the Wind Tunnels and gained a second over Alex, Will and Ingmar's Easy Run to 0:27.
• Finally they moved away from Episode 3 and on to forrit for an Easy Run where only Martin actually did any hard work (2 of the 4 buttons and exit) but the other guys played their parts with style! 0:14, six seconds faster than the two player time.

This puts our tally of demos on 6975, so it can surely only be a matter of days before we announce the winner of our BIG, nay HUGE demo 7000 sender-inner-winner!

I'd like to end on a personal note by thanking Evan, Connor, Pif and Luc for destroying three of my few remaining records in this one update. Mind you, if I wasn't such a bad player in the first place they wouldn't be so easy to beat.

Let that be a lesson to you all.

Thursday, April 1st by Morfans

Now Who's Laughing? - 2:56 PM

All righty, time to crack one off again. An update, I mean. In order to keep the size of this update down to a minimum and thus hopefully get it finished I will avoid all references to wobbly, dangly, moist, curvacious, long or hairy parts of the body or any activity there associated. At least, I'll try to...

It seems like at the moment we can't go one damned week without someone or other improving an id record. This week it's his highness Martin Selinus who amazes us with his already pretty legendary rocket skills. He improved Robert's Ziggurat Vertigo Nightmare Run by one second to 0:31. Ten rockets, ten boosts. 10/10.

It's been here a few weeks now but flecksp1 is still drawing them in and spitting them back out again.

• Marvin improved the Easy Run in a demo that I think's better than his id improvement above. He took five seconds off of Evan's time to get 1:12. His silver key grabbing technique was slower than Evan's, though, so this can still be bettered. Just look at the way he holds his speed as he runs for the gold key. Makes me shudder to watch.
• If ever there was someone that made the crowd chant "MARLO! MARLO!" then it's this next man, Marlo. Marlo Galinski, that is. Seeing that the Easy 100% was still up for grabs he stamped his mark on it. Twice. First at 2:16 and then at 2:14.

If there's one person I like, admire and who's opinion I respect more than anyone else I've ever met through my long association with speedrunning it's Arturo Garcia Lasca. Now, I know that not everyone shares my opinion on this matter but whatever your feelings you can't deny that he turns in a good Quake demo. Take for example this Easy 100% of hellctle in 1:27, two seconds faster than his previous record. You can't deny it's a goody.

You also have to admire the bravery of Robert Axelsson. Going through life surrounded by the stench, or miasma, that he mysteriously gives off all day long can't be easy. Still, the chicks seem to like it. Chicks also love a guy that can survive p_se_xxx.

• As seems to be the fashion these days he made two improvements to his existing record, firstly by two seconds to 1:12 and then by another two seconds to 1:12. In his own words : Main gain? Kill faster!
• But the real test of a man on this map is the Nightmare 100%. There's plenty of bouncing around in this demo but it's more frog-jumping than bunny-hopping. The end result, though, was a 1:22, 10 seconds faster than Stefan, so the technique seems to work.

Next a man to bring fear to the hearts of the ugly and stupid alike. It's our old pal Basil de Vries. He took time off from whatever sick pursuit he derives pleasure from these days to make two chain3 demos.

• He made a thirteen second improvement to Amrik's Easy 100% with some nice, clean killing. 1:43.
• Then filled the empty Nightmare 100% spot in 3:15. Slightly messy killing in places but a very well thought out route.

Consolidating their position on funrun we have top Gaulish tag-team Pif and Luc de Mestre.

• Just by much slicker and cleverer play they saved three seconds on the Easy Run to 0:28. Luckily that both routes could be speeded up by using difficult, long distance trigger shots.
• Exactly the same for the Nightmare Run. 0:28.

As a final little treat, if treat is the right word, we'd like to share with you a radio interview that Nolan Pflug did with Two Guys on some station or other a couple of weeks back. The subject was, naturally, speedrunning and the interview quite entertaining. Ever wondered what Radix really sounds like? Here's your chance to find out. :-)

Lap it up!

Wednesday, March 24th by Morfans

Holy Toasted Teacakes! - 10:57 PM

No chat! Straight in with an id improvement!

Connor Fitzgerald has taken another crack at The Underearth Easy 100% and made a damned fine job of it. The first 1:15 of the demo is pretty much identical to last time but then he got very lucky with the monsters in the final room and exited (with one health remaining) in 1:24, four seconds faster than last week.

Before we get started with the bulk of the demos I'd just like to draw your attention to two runs on the Other Games section. The first is good old Nolan Pflug doing a tablefiller run on Metroid Zero Mission, which I only mention becaue the name "Nolan Pflug" always get's a good laugh, and the second one is something I've been meaning to mention for some weeks. For those of you out there that like Quake II speedruns, and I know there's those that do, Colin "Mr M" Moore[1] has released his Easy Run through the whole game (individual levels joined together in QdQ style, not a marathon) in 20:33.0. Very entertaining and well worth a watch.

Let's wade into the twisted world of Optic's brain, or at least what passes for a brain in Fleckdom. Yes, it's the latest crop of demos on flecksp1.

• Evan Wagner has started the Easy Runs going with a nice 1:17. Now, I KNOW that at least one person out there has already owned this time...
• He then teamed up with Justin Fleck to do the 2-player Easy Run in 1:05.
• The Nightmare Run necessitates taking a lot more monster damage and thus requires a real man to perform. Which is why I did this 1:52. Worth watching if only for the Gold Key trick (if you don't already know it) and the final second.

Sticking with Optic for just one more demo we find that he's filled the very nasty gap for the Nightmare 100% of nesp16 in the fleck-tastic time of 5:20. This level is just crying out for some kind of explosive weapon, which is probably why infamous Canadian sadist Necros decided not to include one.

Robert Axelsson has found the time to make four impressive demos for us. As expected, at least half of them are boss maps...

• He added an additional rocket boost to his Nightmare Run of doom2_04 to save another second and take the time down to 0:24.
• He then spent several hours FATF and eventually managed to tweak every last speck of tweakage out of the route to save another second on the Easy run and get 0:23. PHEW
• Dragon killing action now as he stepped into the murky world of r2m8.
  • Performing a better multi-rocket boost near the end of the Easy Run gained him one second over his previous time to 0:27.
  • But on Nightmare the dragon has so much health you need to use almost every scrap of ammo on the map. This means running around narrow ledges over a huge lava pit while facing upwards and shooting the whole time. The final time for destroying the big floating machine thing at the end was 0:49, one second faster than previously.

Thomas Bergendorff got fed up of waiting for someone else to improve his Nightmare Run of februus so he did it himself. A one second improvement to 0:22 takes this equal to the Easy Run time. Will anyone try for a 0:21 on either skill?

Time now to say a big "Bonjour!" to everyone's favourite French coop duo, Pif and Luc de Mestre. They've been quiet recently but have now unleashed a torrent of new runs upon us.

• Their first comeback demo was a one second improvement to their colony Easy Run. As before, the server (Luc) does absolutely nothing while the other player (Pif) zooms through the latter section of the map in 0:17.
• They then did an Easy 100% tablefiller on chain3 in 1:29. The hardest part of this demo seems to be trying to coordinate the last few seconds... :-)
• Back to colony to improve the Nightmare Run by one second to 0:17.
• While luc went to have a slash Pif improved his SP time for the Easy 100% of pushcoag by six seconds to 1:57. Better, more confident play all round. With Luc feeling refreshed and ready to run again they moved on to funrun in a big way. As well as good running they managed to make some big improvements by (as far as I know) being the first ever people to realise that there's a quad damage hidden near the start. :-)
  • This enabled them to improve Josh and Warren's Easy Run by nine seconds to 0:31. Ahhh. Sweet quad boosts...
  • Then do the same thing on Nightmare skill. 0:31.
  • The Easy 100% took them 0:58.
  • And the Nightmare 100% took them 0:59. There's no reason why this needs to be a second slower. What are you playing at?????
  • Oh. I see now. They then tidied the Easy 100% up to 0:57, one second faster.
  • And the Nightmare 100% also to 0:57, two seconds faster.
  • At this stage Luc needed to go wee-wee again so Pif struck out on his own, using the quad to great effect to improve Justin's Easy 100% by sixteen seconds to 1:38.
  • To keep things neat he did exactly the same for the Nightmare 100%. 1:38, Fleckteen fleckonds fleckster than Fleck.

To finish we have some strangely erotic demos from Daniel Hansson and some of his other Uddevalla based associates. Bravo!

• He totally destroyed his recent Nightmare 100% of czg07a. More aggression and better quad use gave him a twenty-six second saving to 5:03.
• Mind you, he'd obviously had plenty of practise while he was working on his Nightmare 100% Marathon through the whole czg07 episode. Three hugely long levels, hoards of monsters and only one tiny Hansson to fight them off. But fight them off he did in a time of 18:32, one hundred and ninety-five seconds (!!) faster than Nolan.
• At round about this time Carl Tholin came home from choir practise and asked Daniel if he wanted to coop. These are the results...
  • They had some fun on ikspq5 doing a certainly not optimised but still quite nice Easy 100% in 1:07, six seconds faster than Justin and Evan.
  • Then the rd1m2 Nightmare 100% was thoroughly spanked in 1:23, twelve seconds faster than Stefan and Matthias. You've just got to admire Carl's haphazard grenade work in the last few seconds of his demo (and Daniel's clever shambler taunting).
• Everyone loves a threesome. And luckily Johan Nilsson was avaiable to make a demo which is the nearest thing we'll every see to Quake pr0n. They did the empty Easy 100% of commctr in 0:49. Enough to bring tears to your eyes.

And that brings the total number of regualr demos to 6944, which can only mean that the race is on to see who can claim the honour of getting DEMO 7000.

And if that doesn't bring you out in a cold sweat, nothing will!

[1] Not to me confused with bygone runner Mr J or Mr Shambler as Shambler used to be known before he was emasculated.

Tuesday, March 16th by Morfans

I'm Tho Thore I can Hardly Pith! - 1:44 PM

What a week it's been. The madness that is The Nolans is over. That means we get to have a little rest, right? WRONG! We've had a whole stack of demos, new maps, snippets of interesting gossip and bunny comparisons sent to us this week. Truly 2004 is shaping up to be the Year of the Bunny!

One of our Australian brethren, who didn't do too badly at the awards last week managing to walk away with a clutch of virtual homoerotic statuettes including both Rookie of the Year and Most Improved Player, is really on a roll at the moment. Having recently dipped his toe into the pool of madness that is know as "taking an id record" he has decided to dive right in and has made two more improvements. Ladies and gentlemen, Connor Fitzgerald...

• He kept trying his new double ogre grenade jump at the start of The Tomb of Terror until he managed to shave off another second to 0:23. This must be very close to optimised now. It'd take a Horvath to get 0:22, I think. (Although he'd probably do a 0:21 just to remind everyone who's best :-))
• For his next trick he thought he'd tackle an Easy 100%. His chosen target was Stubby's record on The Underearth. He basically followed the same route except for a clever, and slightly cheeky, little grenade jump that saves him two seconds. Which is why this 1:28 is two seconds faster.
• Connor has also done another demo this week, an improvement to The Elder God Shrine for Quake Done 100% Quick Lite 2. To show you just how awesome this project is turning out to be consider this: there are now no Markus Taipale demos in it any more! The bunny god has been bounced out.

We've had a few old faces popping up recently to show all the new blood that the past masters have still got the pow-wah. One name we weren't expecting but were all, like, OMG, like we were, like, no way, dude, when this demo showed up. It was a twenty-three second improvement to Pif's could Easy 100% by Mr Smooth himself Stefan Schwoon. Personally I would never say, or by omission of action allow to be said, a word against Stefan because he wrote demix and demtool and thus was directly responsible for me spending countless hours in beautiful crippling frustration shouting at the monitor because entities weren't doing what they were supposed to. He did miss an easy telefrag near the end of this 3:39, though.

And if a demo from "Old Cheesy" himself isn't enough to get a few of the other bygone runners sending in a nostalgic demo I don't know what is!

Those of you who are paying attention will realise that today's update title is not only a homage to gods/sex/lisp jokes but also a tip of the hat to Mathias Thore. What's he done to deserve this singular honour? Well, first he did some demos...

• He sent in multiple small improvements (a technique known as the Plachetta Protocol (formerly the Hansson manoeuvre (formerly... someone else who's name escapes me))) to the shafted Easy Run. This run is always slower than it's Nightmare counterpart because the shamblers are soooooo slow to react on Easy skill. He started with a 0:28 before moving on to a 0:27, a 0:25 and finally a 0:24.

But that's not all he did. He also made a whole load of very fast Bunny Comparison demos including an e2m1 which saw him join the Filthy Few who have made the fabled seven second run! Head over to the page to catch the rest of his demos and also some new demos from Ivan Vladev, Kay Berntsen and Martin Selinus (not actually new demos but old ones he forgot to send in, the f00l).

What next? How about a couplr of demos from the other Aussie speed sensation, the Sydney Tsunami Dane Plachetta. He has moved on slightly through the Hip levels and is now bringing his brand of obcessive optimisation to the Easy 100% of hip1m5. He destroyed Nolan's time by, errr, one second to 2:34 and then to 2:32. Love that jump to the 100H!

BTW. I have no idea if Dane actually lives in, near or 1000 miles away from Sydney.

Both the empty 100% slots on Vondur's new map ac have been filled.

• Ripah did his first ever 100% record with this 7:06 Easy 100%. You can see why he sticks to the runs now... :-P
• The only way to get the Nightmare 100% below 10 minutes is to set a mad viking loose in the caves. So we wound Thomas Stubgaard up, pointed him in the right direction, let him go and he made this 8:57.

Kay also produced several other ripping demos this week...

• He ran through bast on Easy skill in 0:20, one second faster than Anders. Big bunnys and a little lightning saved the second.
• He did the same on Nightmare except he improved Joe's record by two seconds to 0:20. Big bunnys and a lot of lightning.
• He also attacked the Easy Run on the never popular blister2, beating Juozas by one second to take the time down to 0:52.
• Then he thought he'd try another Easy 100%. The februus record was empty so he ran about in a seemingly random fashion killing everything he could find and exited in 5:24. (Ignore me, it's actually a nice demo :-))

But I was fresh from doing the februus NH when his last demo arrived and it took me precisely two attempts to bang out a 5:04.

Three coops on forrit arrived from Ilian Duckoff and Ivan Vladev.

• They ran a fairly straight forward 0:21 which they quickly tidied up to 0:20. I can't help but think grabbing the rocket launcher and adding a few boosts would save another second or two...
• They also tackled the much busier Nightmare Run and JMad stayed alive just long enough for JMad to exit in 0:22. Next time you could maybe sort Ilian out with his own name? Hmmm? ;-)

So what's left? Just two demos on flecksp1.

• I started things off with a tablefiller Nightmare 100% in 4:46.
• And Justin Fleck and Evan Wagner started the coop demos off with a 1:40 2-player Easy 100%.

"Hang on!" I hear you shout. "WTF map is that? From the name I'd guess that that idiot Fleck has tried his hand at mapping and you've added it to the tables!" And if that was what you were shouting you'd be dead right. That lovely young man Optic has produced his first map and we've added it to the tables. It's called flecksp1 - Azure Influx, you can download it by following the link on the records page and please call your demos flk1_xxx.

Yeah!

Wednesday, March 10th by Stubby

The Nolans 2003 Has Ended... - 11:20 AM

The Nolans Award Ceremony Show yesterday evening was fun, despite a few slight mishaps during the otherwise well written script :-) TeamSDA had a great evening, and it was good to see so many people showed up for the event. Thanks to all who took part, and congratulations to all the winners, you rock!

You can see a list of all the winners here. There's a few silly statistics on that page too, along with logs of the event and an "all winning demos" download. Go take a look.

*BURP*

Tuesday, March 9th by Morfans

It's Tonight. Don't Forget! - 12:16 PM

The voting is over for the Nolans 2003. The votes are counted and so all that's left is for us to announce them in #qdq and #nolans on Quakenet on tonight (Tuesday) at 10PM CET. #qdq will be for general discussion and #nolans will be a moderated channel where we will do the announcing. And p[lease rememebr. If you were nominated please prepare a few words of acceptance just in case you win. It doesn't have to be flamboyant or long but it helps keep things moving if you don't have to think for ten minutes and then type it all in. :-) Hope to see everyone there!

Connor Fitzgerald is just, like, totally on fire at the moment. He has captured his third id record in as many weeks (ish) by using a different, much faster, double ogre grenade jump to improve Timo's Easy Run of The Tomb of Terror by one second to 0:24. MUST DOWNLOAD

The only thing better than an id record improvement is a recapture of an id record by someone we all thought had disappeared for good from the speedrunning scene. However, it seems that the spur to come back that Marlo Galinski needed was for Optic to take his Easy 100% All of Quake marathon. He looks a little rusty in a couple of places (just watch e2m5 to see what I mean) but this is a great reminder of why he's remembered as one of the greatest 100% specialists of all time. 46:02, sixty-eight seconds faster.

To prove this wasn't just a one-off Marlo also filled the empty spot in the tables for the nesp16 Easy 100% in 3:27. A vicious level to 100% on, for sure. Who'll try the NH?

As a special treat to you all the all demos download contains a little map that Marlo made some years ago. Since it was a cramped button presser with no shortcuts that we could find we didn't think we'd add it at this stage. We thought we'd let you all have a play on it, just for the experience. :-)

Just two demos on februus this time.

• Daniel Hansson decided to get in on the action and improved Thomas's Easy run by one more second to 0:22. 0:21 looks possible but damned hard.
• And I got the 100%s started with this cheeky little 6:53 Nightmare 100%.

Finally, some more Hansson magic.

• He made two improvements to Nolan's czg07a Nightmare 100%. first to 5:39, twenty-three seconds faster, then ten seconds faster still to 5:29. So many grunts!!
• He also improved his own Nightmare 100% of czg07b by thirty seconds 4:52.

That's all for now. See you later!

Friday, March 5th by Morfans

Mobbin' Wit' Da P.P.R. - 10:56 AM

The final day of voting is upon us, so if you haven't done so already it's time to gather your limbs and head on over to the Nolans 2003 voting page and make your voice heard. Then just sit back and do absoulutely nothing for 5 days until we announce the results live on IRC in #qdq and #nolans on Quakenet on Tuesday night at 10PM CET. An hour of dry award reading and stumbled "errr. I don't know what to say.." speeches it might be, but that's no excuse not to turn up!

Ah, demos. What better way to start than an id level improvement. Connor Fitzgerald returned to The Elder God Shrine to try and iron out the couple of small flaws in the Easy 100% he made last week. We all thought he might, and were expecting a one or two second improvement. I didn't think we'd see a four second improvement to 1:18 though. MUST DOWNLOAD

And now, a bunch of runs on februus.

• The Easy Run began the day the map was released. I knocked out a 0:43 just to show people on Func_msgboard where the secret exit was. (And also to poke Megazoid with a pointed stick. Miasma indeed...)
• As soon as we added the map I took the trouble to look at the route and soon banged out a 0:30.
• I needn't have bothered because Ivan Vladev had given it a little more thought and decided that with a rocket launcher a 0:27 was possible.
• Hannu Kankaanpää also did a 0:27 with just grenades, but Ivan got there first. So Hannu tightened his barbed-wire thong another notch and sat down to make a 0:26.
• But our new bunny speed world record holder, Kay Berntsen used his world bunny speed record skills to get to the rockets launcher in such a fast time that he managed a 0:24. The cool curve towards the exit also helped...
• Thomas Bergendorff couldn't be arsed (his words, not mine) to get to the RL in only two jumps and so did the safer three-jump-combo. His even-cooler-than-Ripah's-cool exit curl still saved him another second to 0:23. (This is turning into a very-hypheny-update kind of update). Back to you, Rips?
• The Nightmare Run followed a similar, but slighty simpler, trend.
  • JMad screamed in with a 0:28.
  • Ripah replied with a 0:25, also predicting that the Nightmare Run would probably always be one second slower than the Easy Run.
  • So Lodis did a 0:23, the same time as the Easy Run.
• One final thing. A gentle reminder. Athough they're very useful for practising runs, when you send a demo to us make sure it contains NO VISIBLE TRIGGERS!!!

Just one demo on the other new map, nesp16. Evan Wagner recaptured the Easy Run from Ripah by twenty-three seconds by using the OG+fiend trick and adding a brand new shortcut (with a nod to Lurker for coming up with the idea for the new saving). This takes the time down to 0:34. Now what about those 100%s? Hmmm?

Windy also did our first demo on the other, OTHER new map. What other, OTHER new map I hear you cry. Why Adamantine Cruelty by Vondur, I cheekily reply. This beautiful new map ws released only yesterday but we've added it anyway. Given that this Easy Run is 2:27 in length I don't think this is going to be one of those "quick optimiser" levels we all know and love. The problem with mappers these days is that they keep releasing big, intricate, well planned levels full of absorbing gameplay and wonderfully crafted architecture. Whatever happened to short and ugly??? (No, not Amrik.)

Still keeping on an Evan/Kay theme Ripah has improved his Easy Run of evspq1 by a further two seconds to 1:06. Time for someone to take this baby below 1:00, maybe?

Oh, please call your demos for Adamantine Cruelty ac_xxx.

He's been a little quiet for the last few weeks but Dane Plachetta is still working on the Hipnotic ownage. He made yet another improvement to his hip1m3 Easy 100% taking off one more second to get 1:22. A couple of minor mishaps later on but the fluidity of the first 40 seconds is just awesome.

Lodis felt it was about time someone tidied up a couple of the DMC records.

• He started with Basil's slightly shakey dmc1m5 Easy 100%, straightening out a few of the curves to save five seconds to 0:54.
• Then he improved his own slightly shakey dmc1m5 Easy 100% (see above), straightening out a few of the curves to save seven seconds to 0:47. Much more like it.
• I guess he didn't really "tidy up" the Nightmare Run of dmc1m7 since this is the first attempt. So to invent a rather horrible verb I guess he tablefilled it. Did a good job, too. 0:29.

Three demos, two wankers people, one map. The map is kjsp1. The Wankers people are Justin Fleck and Evan Wagner. The demos are...

• Before we get to the demos I'd just like to muse on the irony of calling two Americans "wankers" when the word, apparently, isn't generally known over there. I think it was floppy headed, big cheeked, blandly bigoted motor enthusiast Jeremy Clarkson who described the US as "A nation of a quarter of a billion wankers with no word for wanker". I, of course, disagree with this point of view. Gawd bless 'em.
• Anyway, the guys did the 2 player Easy 100% in 1:58. That's all you need to know.
• Optic improved Tim's Easy 100% by twenty-four seconds to 3:09. That's all you need to know. (Except check out the sheer audacity of the final kill, taking a carelful note of how much health he has.)
• HawpTeeque also improved Tim's Nightmare 100% by, phew, loads of seconds. Seventy-something I suppose. Can't seem to get my brain to do this simple bit of subtraction at the moment. Where's Hudson when you need him. He knows about numbers and stuff. The result was a 4:39. That's all you need to know.

  Finally another coop, this time from our good friends and cornerstones of the Udders, Daniel "Monkey Boy" Hansson and Carl "Monkey Spanker" Tholin. They stuck the Swedish boot squarely into the American saq of Evan and Fleck by improving their Easy 100% of commctr by four seconds to 1:11. On a side note, am I the only one that thinks this would make an interesting tag team wrestling match-up. Daniel and Carl vs Evan and Justin in a no-holds-barred naked jelly pit? NO! I didn't mean to say that! Not the jelly pit! Just a normal wrestling match!!

I really must get out in the fresh air more.

Tuesday, March 2nd by Radix

You were expecting Quake, maybe? - 6:10 AM

It's been months in the working, even once some of the content was already online, but I've finally put up the other games section. Head there for many Metroid speed runs, and other games like Donkey Kong Country and Super Smash Brothers Melee!

Sunday, February 29th by Stubby

Faster Than A Hyena On Steriods! - 9:10 PM

Just a little quickie before The Oscars begins... Kay Berntsen has done the nearly impossible and improved Weixing's lightning fast record breaking time on the 100m map by .1 second, using the "hard to perform" Quake2 style bunnies! It looks easy, but it sure as hell ain't! If you think you can improve this 10:34, go ahead... I'll grow myself a mohawk if you can... (that doesn't apply for Mr. Berntsen though! :-)

Here's what he said on IRC: Besides, the Weixing technique doesnt really pay off in the start...the 2-3 first jumps it's like normal bunnies...but after that you can really gain some speed...

Bunny Comparison site.

Thursday, February 26th by Morfans

Join The Elite? Nah. They Suck! - 9:34 AM

As I hope you're all aware by now the voting for the Nolans 2003 is speeding along like Szalontai on steroids so make sure you get your vote in soon. While you're there you might notice one little error on the page. My name has been mistakenly put in the "Fool of the Year" category instead of the "Lifetime Achievement Award" category. How did that happen guys? GUYS???

One chap I'm sure is going to be walking away with a Nolan or two is Connor Fitzgerald. Now that he's reaching the end of his first year as a speedrunner he felt it was time to go for the ultimate achievement: an id map record. And being the little showoff he is he actually took TWO.

• For his first extravagance he chose Martin's Easy 100% of Hell's Atrium and used some of the tricks he picked up in his recent Qd100Qlite2 demo to improve the time by four seconds to 1:32. Also keep an eye out for the obvious-but-clever new final spawn kill. I'm amazed nobody else has done this before.
• Now that he'd got the taste for id records there was no keeping him away from The Elder God Shrine. A little extra quad and spawn power, and a little route twisting, gave him 1:22, two seconds faster than Daniel. Stupid scrags and stupid zombies that refuse to die on the first shot mean that improvement is still possible if you're psychotic enough to try.
• Since Connor has proved him self to be a great runner as well as a good sport I think it's just possible that I might give him a light hearted verbal kicking later in the update. No promises, we'll just have to see...

How do you follow two id Easy 100%s? With an id Nightmare 100%, I suppose. Which can only mean that Thomas Stubgaard has been putting his mind to business again. He'd been looking at the Oldest Demos page and saw that his Satan's Dark Delight Nightmare 100% had enetered the list at #15. Knowing that it wasn't one of his best demos he decided to try and sharpen it up a little and managed a whomping seven second improvement to 1:24. It's mostly just slicker running but he does get a big saving by using the infamous "Lindberg Curl" at the platforms. Just a shame the last 4 seconds are a bit of a shambles. And just look what record has replaced it on the list... :-)

As you all know by now, we here at SDA like to try and keep things politically correct and so avoid slurs based on race, religion, ideology, sexuality or size of cock (or h00ters if female, we don't like to be sexist either). Anyway, I was just thinking that if Connor Fitzgerald happened to be orientated towards same gender relationships (i.e. he was a bender), not that I have any reason whatsoever to suspect he is and even if he did turn out to be an uphill gardener I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that, but IF he was wouldn't it be mildly amusing if his partner was called Gerald Fitzconnor. LOL Connor Fitzgerald and Gerald Fitzconnor. I'm sure this is a very old joke and he's heard it a thousand times so to avoid causing any offense I shall probably remove it from the update before I post it. Unless I forget.

Phew. It's been a while since we've had three id level improvements in one update. And to make things even better all the rest of the demos are of an equally high standard.

Give your average man a quad, a pent and a rocket launcher and chances are he'll blast himself at random all around the map. But if that man is Robert Axelsson then there's a chance that what you might see are some precision, high speed manoeuvers and a two second improvement to Basil's contest winning Nightmare Run of forrit. And that's exactly what this 0:31 is.

Spookily enough the next demo is also a two second improvement to a Basil record. This time it's Thomas Bergendorff doing the Easy Run of dmc1m5 in 0:22. He says it could have been faster but he's not very good at vore-ball jumping. pfffffff

Next we have a two second improvement to an Arturo Garcia Lasca record. It's done by Arturo Garcia Lasca. Ken improved Ken's time for the Easy 100% of pagan to 0:34 by saving just enough health and armour to do the final rocket jump quadded and then carried the speed to the exit. Worth two seconds of anyone's time.

Kay Berntsen has sent us four top class demos this week. Here are three of them. If you're one of those people that takes the time to read people's .txt files then you'll see that, despite improving really hard records and improving them convincingly, Ripah still hasn't got over that thing all new runners go through of being convinced that "this isn't bad but someone with talent could easily beat it." Maybe it's just modesty, maybe you just don't watch your own demos.... ;-)

• Narrow corridors, tiny lifts, thin walkways, cramped ledges. Oh yeah, jtkmap6 is great fun to run. But a good sense of balance helped him to beat DanielL's time by one second to 0:57.
• Even more impressive is this one second improvement to Denn's Easy Run of fatalpla to 0:46. Be sure to watch the egg demo included carefully for a very strange "mid air scrag boost without taking damage". Could this be a brand new trick in the making?
• But I've saved his (IMHO) most impressive demo for last. David's ih1m2 Easy Run was a jaw-dropper. Ripah wasn't going to settle for a one second improvement, he found a new trick to take EIGHT seconds off the time and get 0:22. An outstanding piece of work. He also includes an egg demo that shows that the adage "less is more" is completely unrelated to this sentence.

Finally, we've added two new maps!

• The first is nesp16 : r_speeds be damned by Necros. A funny, experimental style map by the master of packing as many brushes into a map as possible. Please call your demos ne16_xxx just as Evan Wagner did in this 1:16 Easy Run and Ripah did when he totally owned Evan a couple of days later to 0:57.
• The second map is Februus Depth by master of... well mapping, really, CZG. You can download it here and please call your demos feb_xxx. There's a crappy Easy Run demo by me somewhere over on func_msgboard which shows a couple of tricks if you can be bothered to track it down. But frankly by the time you've found it you'll have probably worked them out yourself... :-)

Well, February is traditionally a slow month here on the Archive. God bless you all for bucking the trend. Hmm. Maybe that should be "Fleck bless you all" or "God fleck you all"... Dunno. See you next time.

Thursday, February 19th by Stubby

THE NOLANS 2003! - 9:15 PM

ATTENTION! ATTENTION! The Nolans 2003 are finally here! Yep, the 3rd annual speedrunning awards are finally up. It was slighty delayed due to several reasons I won't bother any of you guys with, but better late than never, right? :-)

You will have just a bit over 2 weeks in which to vote. The voting will end Friday, March 5th, 2004, entries received after this date won't count. Go HERE and cast your vote, but please don't haste through it, go through the entire list of demos to ensure a fair voting, thanks.

We couldn't find a suitable date for the award show itself that all of us could agree on, so we ended up with Tuesday, March 9th, 2004, 10PM CET/4PM EST. Print this date into your head! We know the date and time might be inconvenient for some of you that lives outside of Europe, but weekends were generally bad for us, sorry :-(

UPDATE: That's just around 12AM, March 10th for the Aussies (I think...)

GO VOTE!

Monday, February 16th by Morfans

The St Valentine's Day Hangover. - 9:35 AM

Ah, St Valentines Day. I'm sure you all spent yesterday in a celebration of love in all it's myriad physical and emotional forms. Why here at SDA we spent the day in a variety of beautifully erotic and occasionally barely legal pursuits including cunniforming (me); pythagorating (mwh); clottaging (Radix); flowers, dinner and intercourse (Lodis. Very traditional lot your Bergendorffs); fleectiality (me again); and , of course, wanking like a monkey (Stubby).

All of which has meant that the update has been pushed back to today, allowing these already great demos to mature that little bit longer.

Jozsef Szalontai took a very important step in his rehabilitation last week with an improvement to The Sewage System Easy 100%. This week he has taken another big step by improving it again by another second to 0:51. I think 0:50 can only now be a dream. Still, now that he's broken his "not making demos at the moment" mental block there's a chance that we might maybe soon perhaps possibly see a few more from the Big Hungarian Love Machine. (Or is that Bunny Machine. I never can remember.)

On a similar subject, since we're Joeing it up at the monent. There's a new build of JoeQuake out a week or so ago. So if you're one of those people that enjoys that kind of thing, go grab.

It's been another explosive week for Kay Berntsen. As usual he's been improving records that everyone else thought were safe.

• It's just a collection of box rooms, flat textures and ogres but for some reason people just can't keep off of climb.
  • Daniel's Easy Run came in for the Ripah treatment and fell by one second to 0:23.
  • As did Ken's Nightmare Run which also took a one second pounding to 0:22. Would either of you gentlemen care to fight back? ;-)
• Another map that used to be popular is compugib, but it's been over two years since Alex took TO of the level. But a dog boost (YEAH!) and soem Norwegian style bunnys improved the Easy Run by one second to 0:29.
• It's been a funny old time in #qdq recently. There seems to be more aspiring mapper there than there are in #terrafusion. So when, a few days ago, I was discussing maps by the mighty Necros with Ripah and he said he was going to try some mapping. I jokingly suggested he improved the Easy Run of n3sp03 to pass the time while I found him a copy of Worldcraft and by the time I sent it to him this 1:23, five seconds faster than Anders, had appeared in my inbox. You can tell he rushed it through by the massive, embarassing mistakes half way through. :-)

Oh. I've just remembered. PlanetQuake's e-mail system (in fact, the whole of GSN) is experiencing a few problems at the moment. This means that we have been unable to send any e-mails for the last week and a half and some recieved e-mails are getting to us several days late. So if you mailed us and haven't got a reply it's probably because of this rather than the fact we are rude and hate you. Only probably, mind.

Did I mention Arturo Garcia Lasca a minute ago? Well everyone's favourite Barbie accessory has made his first appearance here in quite a while by recapturing both the 100%'s of pagan back from Denn.

• First the Easy 100% by one second to 0:36.
• And then the Nightmare 100% also by one second, also to 0:36. Completely different routes for the two skill levels, obviously...

Ken also had a few things he wanted to share with you all but... no... I'm not even going to go there. ;-)

Michael Hudson has taken a well deserved break from improving his Easy Run of r1m4 and is instead working on improving his Nightmare Run of r1m4. Nothing like a little variety, hmmm? Using some of the tricks he found on Easy skill he improved his time by a big seven seconds to 0:55.

Next up we have Dane Plachetta making multiple improvements to the 2r5 runs.

• He swiftly beat his own time by one more second to 0:50 with a slight mistake in the ramp room. Then got 0:49 with the mistake ironed out and finally he polished the whole thing down to 0:48.
• The Nightmare Run was a little more straight forward. After perfecting his technique doing the Easy Run he just switched to Nightmare and ran a 0:49, losing a second because of the hoards of monsters he has to balst around.

Finally, a bunch of whippet demos.

• Connor Fitzgerald read Basil's .txt from his 0:09 runs and agreed with the part that said "I think this is optimised but the optimisers might not." Indeed he was soon proved correct when he ran 0:08 on both Easy and Nightmare.
• Basil de Vries managed to salvage his presence on the map with a neat 0:24 Nightmare 100%.
• But it wasn't to last long as Ivan Vladev had set his sights on 0:23. Still two seconds slower the the Easy 100%, chap...

NOTE: I wrote this update yesterday but forgot to post it. Therefore that bit at the start about valentines day is a day out. Try to let your mind drift back 24 hours when you read it to get the proper impact. Or, if you don't read this for a few days, pretend not to notice. Go on, be a pal.

Sunday, February 8th by Stubby

Let's Keep It Short - 1:59 PM

Yep, another one in my series of "classic" SDA updates...

• Let's kick things off with Jozsef beating his previous Easy 100% of The Sewage System by 1 second to 0:52. How does he make it look so easy? Anyways, this is a MUST DOWNLOAD.

• Next we have an Easy Run on bnt by Kay Berntsen. He improved Lindberg's demo by 1 second to 0:44. Some very slick moves in this one, despite Kay not being able to hit a certain Scrag...

• Dane Plachetta moved away from the Hipnotic maps to do the Easy Run of 2run5. He improved Robert's winning demo from the contest by 2 seconds to 0:51.

• Robert Axelsson pissed all over jzdoom. First he improved Basil's Nightmare Run by 1 second to 0:17. Not content with that demo he went on and improved it even further by 1 second to 0:16, and while he was at it he did the Easy Run in 0:16 too.

• First one to try sm27_xenon since our last update was Ivan Vladev. He did the Nightmare Run in 0:24, but then along came Basil and improved it by yet another second to 0:23. Basil also did the Easy 100% in 0:51 and the Nightmare 100% in 0:56.

• And for our final single player demo of today we also have Basil with a Nightmare 100% of 2run5 in 1:12.

• ...which brings us to 3 coops by the two yanks Evan and Justin. Congratulations on your 1.000 DEMOS by the way Mr. Flecker!
• First did they the Easy Run of pg3 in 0:22. Very nice demo! Then they did the Nightmare Run of fc in 0:16, and finally but not least they did the Nightmare Run of ih1m4 in 0:16.

I guess that's it for today, bye...

Saturday, February 7th by Morfans

A Thousand Butt-Monkeys. - 7:59 AM

Last weekend two hardy runners sat down at 10:00 PM with just one goal in mind. Colourful, good natured pimp Evan Wagner was determined to help his main whore, Justin Fleck complete his six and a half year ordeal of being the first ever runner to have 1000 demos posted on this hallowed archive. When we last left you he had a mere eight to go. Can anyone produce eight new record in the space of one night? One thing was certain, this was going to be a Fleckathon.

• Where better to start than Evan's own map, evspq1? They made a quick Nightmare 100% tablefiller in 1:13 just to warm up their Quake muscles.
• Next came czg04. Plenty of opportunity to go their seperate ways for maximum death dealing and a happy time of 2:28.
• Back to evspq1 for the 2-player Nightmare Run. The middle area gets kind of full of monsters but the odd quad and a well placed telefrag soon clears the way for a 0:49.
• A quick diversion to cdespair to bang out an Nightmare Run in 0:41...
• ...and then it was on to hellctle to do the very linear Easy Run in 1:10, only four seconds faster than their Easy 100%. :-)
• Only three demos to go, but by now it was 07:00 AM. Was fatigue and too much weed starting to cloud their minds? By the look of this Nightmare Run of guard in 0:28 I'd say that maybe the opposite was true. Only two to go.
• They did a quick tablefiller Nightmare Run of cult in 0:17 but frankly who gives a stuff about that because...
• Evan quickly went and punched Cameron Engles repeatedly in the face until he agree to make the final demo a three player Easy 100% of evspq1 which they did, at 09:00, eleven hours after they started, in 0:51 and that, ladies and gentlemen, means...

A thousand demos? Jesus. And that doesn't include contest or QdQ project demos. I think this man has definitely earned himself a pint. Hell, some of our younger runners weren't even born when (SC)(]0Pt1C[) sent in his first demo back in September 1997. That demo, and the next three or four he sent, are all lost to time but as a little of fun, and just so you can see how far running has come in that time, we've included his 0:57 of Azure Agony from 19.09.97 (back when any idiot could get an id record) in the all demos download.

What does a man do when he's just completed an eleven hour fleckathon and submitted his 1000th demo? Why he makes a couple more demos just to wind down, the sick fuck...

• He improved Fab's Nightmare 100% of doom2_08 by thirteen seconds with some fat boosting and no-mercy rocketing to get 1:51.
• And then once again back to good old evspq1 for a table filler Nightmare Run in 1:16. And then the world's first thousand demo speedrunner slept the sleep of the just, proud and very tired.

A couple of nights later Evan was once again itching for some coop and wanted to see if the American Trio could reconvene for a couple of hours but Justin had to work, so Nolan Pflug and myself called to order the first meeting of the Transatlantic Trio. Pings being what they are I was only able to assist with mopping up the start and getting a couple of secrets but it enabled the chaps to improve the two player time for the Easy 100% of hip3m4 by ten seconds to 1:20.

windlash still hadn't had enough of a coop fix, though, so he dragged Cameron back in to improve Daniel and Carl's Easy 100% of Gloom Keep by one second to 0:31. Excellent play!

Some people might say that Thomas Bergendorff is a strange man. First he finds a level that he doesn't like. Namely evildead. He then discovers that it's also very boring to run. So does he stop? No. He carries on doing boring runs on a level he doesn't like until he's improved both runs. The Easy to 0:44, two seconds faster than Daniel, and the Nightmare to 0:56, five seconds faster than the same fellah.

There was a bit of a ruckus over who was having the record for the Nightmare 100% of dmc1m3. Basil de Vries improved Ivan's time by nine seconds with a new route and some intermission nails to 0:34. But Ivan Vladev wasn't having any of that. He changed the route again and recaptured by one second to 0:33.

Can you bunny? Well, if you know of a new trick that'd save a second on the runs of a map, say a new way to get into the coffin on thecrypt, but the records are currently held by Timo and Jozsef then this is the question you need to ask. Can you bunny? It seems like Kay Berntsen has answered that question about himself by improving both records by one second to 0:40 on Easy and 0:42 on Nightmare. Yeah, he can bunny.

That's the regular demos. Time to add the December Madness maps to the tables so you can improve what's been done or have a go at what's not. Yersee?

• 2run5 by Phil. Please call your demos 2r5_xxx. Easy Run in 0:53 by Robert Axelsson.
• shafted by David Hocking. Please call your demos sha_xxx. Nightmare Run in 0:19 by Ripah. NOTE: Runs only accepted on this level. Unless you really think you can kill all the shamblers in which case I can't wait to see your demo...
• sm27_xenon by Xenon. Please call your demos sm27_xxx. Easy Run in 0:21 by Timo Nieminen.
• whippet by Marc Roussel. Please call your demos whi_xxx. Easy 100% in 0:21 by Timo Nieminen.
• jzdoom by Jason Zukowski. Please call your demos jzd_xxx. Nightmare 100% in 0:27 by JMad.

Getting slightly ahead of himself was Basil, who sent in some demos on these maps before we'd even added then. Normally this would result in chastisement of some kind but what the hell.

• Easy and Nightmare runs of whippet in 0:09.
• Easy and Nightmare runs of jzdoom in 0:18.

As always, be sure to keep a check on the current best times for new maps in #QdQ to avoid you spending time beating records that have already fallen. Such behaviour makes me weep, and I'm not a man easily given to tears.

SO DON'T MAKE ME CRY, OKAY?

Friday, January 30th by Morfans

Total Madness! - 9:24 AM

I had a little bit of trouble deciding which demo to start this update off with. You see, We've had four demos that are all absolutely MUST DOWNLOAD and to try to decide which is the most worthy of starting this update is an exercise in futility. Hell, don't get the idea that they're the only good demos on offer. It's been a week of QdQ : Quake demo Quality. Oh, hang on, that acromyn has already been used for something, hasn't it?

On reflection I think it's only fair I start off with Thomas Stubgaard's demo as it's not only an id improvement, it's the first id improvement of 2004! He improved his Easy 100% of the Tomb of Terror by one second to 0:50 by sheer luck and bloody hard work. Remember: monsters are STUPID.

Now it's time to travel up that tallest of tall towers[1], Tur Torment, for some real high flying action.

• Connor Fitzgerald found a new trick to avoid spawning in the friendly shambler and found a faster quad boost to improve Peter's legendary SdSlite Easy Run by one second to 0:42.
• Justin Fleck is not making his race for 1000 demos any easier by reclaiming his Nightmare Run from Amrik by one second in this mad 0:51. SPIKE MINE JUMP! I just never get tired of shouting that. SPIKE MINE JUMP!
• But this record was suprisingly short lived. Connor decided not to use the SPIKE MINE JUMP but used the cable-car ballet instead and saved the health for a big quad boost instead which gave him a time of 0:45, six seconds faster. You know what this means? No more SPIKE MINE JUMPS! :-(
• Not content with just pissing on Optic from the top of the tower, he decided to piss on Dane too and improved his Easy 100% by two more seconds to 1:21. Please note that since this is easy skill it also doesn't contain a SPIKE MINE JUMP!

The next demo is one I've been waiting a long time to see. Not for any particular reason other than I know how long and hard the runner in question has been working on it. Michael Hudson is a man of few levels, but those he does run he can be very tenacious with. Take, for example, r1m4. It's been nearly a year since his last improvement to it and he's been spending the time polishing the route until it shines (check out the neat way he gets to the top of the platform thing). Two grenade jumps and five rocket jumps gave him this 0:43, four seconds faster than his previous.

Three new demos on evspq1, none of which include SPIKE MINE JUMPS!

• Kay Berntsen reclaimed his record from Thomas by one second to 1:08.
• Then Stubby decided that tablefillers just aren't good enough for this map. He showed Optic the difference between a really, really good Nightmare 100%er and a really, really, really good Nightmare 100%er by improveing his, errrr, Nightmare 100% by thirteen seconds to 1:50.
• And then he did what I suppose could technically be called a tablefiller because it's the first Easy 100% on the level but frankly it'd take some smart playing to beat this 1:41.

One of my all time favourites, Robert Axelsson, has decided to reclaim what's rightfully his. The Easy 100% of dmc1m3. He improved "Iron" Ivan's time by one second to 0:20 using the same route but a little bit of "who's the daddy?" play.

But Ivan Vladev was not going to sit back and see his number of records erroded in such a sly manner. He hoofed Timo in the knackers with this Easy 100% of dmc1m6 in 1:36, one second faster.

Thomas Bergendorff made two nice demos just becasue he was bored at the time!

• He improved the Nightmare Run of gloin to 0:35, one second faster than Weixing with just better boosting.
• Then he recaptured his old darkness Easy Run back from Ken by one second to 0:41. Will this provoke a response from Mr Lasca?

Evan Wagner is not a man that scares easily. I don't know why I'm mentioning that, I just am. Perhaps it's got something to do with the fact that not many people have the stones (or the patience) to attempt five minutes records any more. But the Wagster laid into Marlo's Easy 100% of oblivion and improved it by twenty-seven seconds to 4:43. Slightly messy at the end but hey, just finding your way through this maze is quite an achievement.

Which was probably helped by the fact that he'd just finished doing the 2-Player Easy 100% with Optic. The routes they came up with are all over the place and hard to understand even if you know the level fairly well. Is 2:55 a good time? I don't know! I got confused!

Our final demo is Flecker's 991st. He improved Bergie's Nightmare 100% of mexx4 by twenty-eight fat seconds to get 3:12. This relentless monster pineapple buggery means that he only has nine more demos to go before we hold a special Fleck parade in honour of the weedster speedster reaching his millenium. Ohhh golly!

Now I'd like to take a moment to talk to you all about madness. In particular December Madness. Now what would be the madest thing you can think of? Well, personally I think that making everyone wait for a whole month for the results is not just madness, it's downright rude. But that's what I've done so please, and I'm not pissing about now or trying to be funny, accept my sincere apologies. Now, back to business. The outright winner of December Madness was the legend that is Timo Nieminen, with wins in the Easy 100% and Easy Run categories and second place in all three of the others. But don't let that even begin to detract from the well deserved wins of Kay Berntsen (Nightmare Run and MUST DOWNLOAD), Ivan Vladev (Nightmare 100%) and Robert Axelsson (Boost-a-thon).

So, that brings the Speedrunning Championship 2003 to a close. Before I announce the winner I'd just like to thank EVERYBODY who participated in this series in any way for their support. Mr Bergendorff and myself have had a real blast running it and if there's enough demand we might just run a feew more contests for you all. Maybe not another whole series like this, but if you enjoyed these contests please let us know and we will, undoubtedly, sort something out. But now I'd like to give you the top three contest runners of 2003. In third place, the bastard from Sweden who's been in first or second place the whole way through, Robert Axelsson! In second place, the bastard from Finland who was very quiet in the first few contests but blew away everyone once he got into the swing of things, Timo Nieminen. Which means our winner is the even bigger bastard from Sweden

ANDERS NORDENSTEN

A big slap on the gonads for Anders please everyone (by e-mail if necessary), and if you send me your address your prize will turn up within the next month or two.

Now go away. All of you. Immediately.

[1] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I KNOW that mexx9b's "Tower of Twilight" is taller. Gimme some room to work in, will ya??

Friday, January 23rd by Morfans

Don't Fleck Up! - 12:38 PM

Before we get to the demos I thought you might all want to have a bit of a chuckle at THIS. It's an interview with a couple of guys asking some questions to some other guy and our very own Nolan Pflug. It mostly concerns speedrunning in the Metroid games, particularly Radix's recent Metroid Prime run. He bravely tries to turn their attention to proper speedrunning a couple of times but they're really only interested in Nintendo stuff. Mildly distracting, nonetheless.

Let's see what we have in the way of demos this week. Presented in what I can only describe as "alphabetical" order. (Because I'm reading them straight out of the big .dz.)

So, what's first? Aha! It's a demo on black1, and unless I'm very much mistaken it's a Nightmare Run by our Norwegian friend Kay "Bulgin'" Berntsen. He improved Stubby Jr's time by five seconds to 1:04. Very similar to last weeks Easy Run but he has to blast more monsters out of the way.

Next we have an obsolute cracker from Connor "Phearsome Phallus" Fitzgerald. He improved Evan's Easy Run of czg04 by two seconds to 0:42. If you've never seen a run on this map prepare for a treat. OG jumps, VB jumps, cheeky shortcuts, big bunnies and a pixel-perfect dive into the exit.

We'll stick with Connor for the next two demos, as he chops a second off both of Ripah's Runs on dmc1m1 make the times on Easy and Nightmare 0:16 and 0:17 respectively. These will be damned hard to improve, I think, but I've said that before and been proven wrong the next day.

I didn't think it'd be long before Ivan Vladev improved his Nightmare 100% of dmc1m2, and sure enough he swept through the level like a Bulgarian enema in a time of 1:06, seven seconds faster than before.

Next up we have some coop action on dmc1m6 from Sweden's greatest coop duo who's names are both Axelsson, Robert Axelsson and Rickard Axelsson. They surfed the waves of monsters in this Nightmare 100% in the butt-curdling time of 1:24. This demo goes to show just how difficult close quarter coordination is, even for a duo as experienced as these two, but the cool exit RJ makes up for any small mistakes. The only thing I kept thinking was "why isn't the one that gets the quad also picking up all the enforcer cells..." ;-)

Another coop, this time from America's greatest coop duo who's names aren't Axelsson but Fleck and Wagner, Justin Fleck and Evan Wagner. They absolutely destroyed Fabi-K and Matti-B's Easy 100% marathon through The Netherworld, clocking in an eighty-one second improvement to 5:52. Top route planning and no skimping on the tricking.

Back to Connor again for two more pieces of "ohhhh, my new computer plays Quake sooooo smoothly" mayhem. Firstly an improvement to Ilkka's hip2m3 Easy run, probably the first demo that ever made me grip onto my chair with fear at the speed the player was going (you know, that rocket sequence just before the castle). This is obviously even faster. Two seconds faster, in fact, at 0:37.

The also improved Bergie's Easy Run of jesus by two seconds to 0:21. Same route (roughly), just plain faster.

Now to see what Optic's been up to on the single player front this week. Basically a little Bergendorff bashing on some Mexx levels as he reclaims three of his old records taking his total demo count to 989.

• First mexx3 and a convincing recapture of both 100% records by basically just giving it more fist. He took the Easy 100% down to 2:14, ten seconds faster, and the Nightmare 100% down to 3:11, a huge twenty-four seconds faster. Painful to watch without r_fullbright 1, though.
• If twisty, sloping platforms are more your bag them may I draw you attention to the Easy 100% of mexx4. Not a map for the faint of heart, but here Justin improves the time by nine more seconds to 2:19. I've played this map quite a few times (going back a couple of years when this record looked like it was possible for someone of my skill to improve) and ALWAYS ended up getting lost. Bastard. I hate it. Nice demo though.

Next we have a pretty bad table filler marathon by Me of the Nightmare 100% all the way through dmc. All I'll say is that at least this 9:57 is under ten minutes. :-)

And finally for today we have three runs on Prodigy Special Edition maps.

• Connor snicked one second off of DanielL's Easy Run of p_se_1 reducing the time to a boost-tastic 0:34.
• And it seems that this update has gone full circle now as we finish with two p_se_2 runs from Ripah whotore down both of DanielL's records taking the Easy run time to 0:46, one second faster, and the Nightmare Run time to 0:48, an impressive eight seconds faster.

Before we go I'd just like to point you at some new and updated player profiles. On the new front we have Dane-P and JMad and for updated ones we've got Stubby, Optic and The Poern-star. Worth checking out just for the new hog-lee pictures. :-)

In case you're wondering if that's all the demos we've had then just look at the date on the "all demos download". Man am I SLACK.

Thursday, January 15th by Morfans

Who's Da Face? - 10:39 AM

Wasn't it nice to see Stubby back in the ol' updating chair last week? I thought so. And we may be continuing on the theme of "nostaglic updaters" in the next few weeks as they are likely to be quite turbulent for me. So keep watching for faces that are strangely familiar, and yet slightly grizzled by time.

dmc1m1 seems to be pretty much locked down for the moment, but on dmc1m2 we find that Ivan Vladev has improved my Nightmare 100% by 1 second using a completely different route to get 1:13. This is not over yet!

JMad also recaptured his Easy 100% of dmc1m3 from Robert with some uber-tweakage to take the time down to 0:21.

I have never liked to see an empty Nightmare 100% slot in the tables, so I filled dmc1m4 in 2:24 and dmc1m5 in 1:28. dmc1m5 was an absolute hoot to NH on with it's hoards of big monsters and just the trusty shotgun. I hope someone with some actual talent gives it a go soon. :-)

Wave upon wave of pissed off enemies falling from the sky to end your bitching. It can only be dmc1m6. (Okay, it could also be that prodigy map too, I suppose. But it isn't. It's dmc1m6.) We received three demos for this map but only one will be entering the tables. Robert and Rickard Axelsson stormed the Easy 100% in the respectable time of 1:20. And Justin Fleck went to work on the Easy and Nightmare 100%s getting 1:26 and 1:40 respectively. However, he used coop 2 to clear the dead bodies away which, as I'm sure you are all aware of by now, is absolutely not allowed on maps with coop starts on them. Sorry, Flecker, but rules is rules. We've included the demos in the all demos download anyway as they're still quite entertaining and show you the tricks he used to get these quite amazing times.

While we're on the subject of Optic I hope that you've all been keeping an eye on what's been happening on the Qd100Qlite2 project page, because he's totally tearing up the records at the moment. Not even the combined might of Timo, Martin and Stubby can slow him down. Outstanding!

Anyway, here are some marathons for you...

• Basil de Vries broke the hymen of the All of DMC Easy Run in 1:57.
• Amrik Kochhar defeated that time by seven seconds to 1:50 but he was very unhappy with a couple of the stoopid mistakes.
• So he improved it by another three seconds to 1:47 and was reasonably content.
• But Basil is not the kind of man to let an update go by without successfully holding down a marathon tablefiller. He thought long and hard over what he could do and settled on the Easy 100% of All of DMxSP which he cruised through in 5:45.

If you thought that was all the excitement we could possibly cram into one update then just you wait and see what Kay Berntsen has been doing...

• He started off by plundering the "Phantasmal Garrison", first the Easy Run of pg1 in 1:16, five seconds faster than Rickard.
• Then the Easy Run of pg2 in 1:29, three seconds faster than Rickard. Is this personal, we ask?
• He quickly improved that record again to 1:27. This level is monster mayhem but some sweet barrel-boosting makes it all worth while.
• Before moving on he went back to pg1 and destroyed his own time by another seven seconds to 1:09. I love this demo, the biggest saving is obviously the fast dragon kill but there are so many tiny little tweaks. A great display of obsessive speedrunning. Shame about the slight wobble at the end. ;-)
• When he did move on he went to black1 and attacked Amrik's Easy Run. He improved the time by three seconds to 0:56 with a masterful silver key grab.
• Ripah was also the first person to have a crack at the Easy Run of evspq1 which he did in 1:15.

Then Thomas Bergendorff came along and dispensed some wisdom born of experience and showed "the electric n00b" (as nobody apart from me calls him) that there's truth to the old saying "if you don't get the quad and the time saved using a non-quad shortcut is greater than the sum of the time saved between getting the quad and not getting the quad for the guardian kills and getting the quad, then don't get the quad". These wise words and a little power-bunnying enabled him to take the time for evspq1 down to 1:09.

And that, my friends, is the bitter truth.

Keep 'em powdered.

Wednesday, January 7th by Stubby

As Oldschool As It Gets! - 3:50 PM

Yep, that's right folks, I'm back, and if you expected me to write long meaningful updates think again. And besides, Morfans has so much on his hands these days, so it's only fair to relieve him from some of the work it involves making SDA updates. So, I will try my best to keep this as minimal as possible :-)

Let's get the ball rolling with dmc1m1:

• Kay Berntsen improved his Nightmare Run by 1 second to get 0:18.
• Thomas Bergendorff improved Ivan's Easy 100% by 3 seconds to get 0:20.

Demos on dmc1m2:

• Ivan Vladev improved Hannu's Easy 100% by 1 second to get 0:42. Soon after he improved it to 0:40.

Demos on dmc1m3:

• Robert Axelsson improved Ivan's Easy 100% by 1 second to get 0:22. Ivan sent in a 0:22 too (included in the big .dz).
• Ivan improved his Nightmare 100% by 4 seconds to get 0:43.

Demos on dmc1m4:

• Kay improved his Easy Run by 1 second to get 0:20.
• He also improved his Nightmare Run by 5 seconds to get 0:22.

Demos on dmc1m6:

• Timo Nieminen improved his Easy 100% by 12 seconds to get 1:37. Nice quad boost to the exit!

Demos on dmc1m7:

• I went trigger-happy and filled out the empty hole for the Nightmare 100% which I did in 0:54.

And that leaves us with 3 demos on evspq1, Evan's new map:

• Justin Fleck teamed up with Evan to do the Easy Run in 0:41.
• They also did the Easy 100% in 1:05.
• And finally Justin did the Nightmare 100% by himself in 2:03.

Tuesday, January 6th by Morfans

Another Year Vomits Forth. - 1:42 PM

Once again it's been a week since the last update. Still, that's the new-year for you. Isn't it also a week since the end of the December Madness contest, you ask. Yes, but once again we haven't had the time or the inclination to add up all the points yet, but it shouldn't take long considering how few of you actually entered so stay tuned. ;-)

Big respect to Stubbz for maintaining the tables this week as I faithfully promised, day after day, to do this update. So let's see what you've been missing...

dmc1m1

• Easy 100%
  • Ivan Vladev made two improvements to Brent's time, first to 0:24 then to 0:23.
• Nightmare Run
  • Kay "Barrels o' Fun" Berntsen blasted his way past Mathias to exit one second faster at 0:19.
• Nightmare 100%
  • This proved to be a real scrap. I sent in a tablefiller at 0:35.
  • Ivan quickly improved that to 0:34.
  • So I retaliated with a 0:33.
  • And he fought back with a 0:32.
  • So I did a 0:31.
  • Then Ivan did a 0:30.
  • And just as I had worked out how to save another second and was trying to get it to work Ivan beat me to it with a 0:29. Fair enough, I thought. Ivan has bested me, he can have the record and well deserved it is too.
  • Then Bergendorff, the smug git, did a 0:26. ;-)

dmc1m2

• Easy 100%
  • Another very close battle for this one. Brent Wise set the standard with this 0:45.
  • Ivan Vladev stormed in with a 0:44.
  • Then Hannu Kankaanpää emerged from hiding to win the day with this 0:43.
• Nightmare 100%
  • Just the one. Me in 1:14. A tablefiller but not a bad one for me.

dmc1m3

• Easy Run
  • Kay Berntsen managed to improve his run even further to 0:11, just hours before old SDA favourite Qurre sent his 0:11 in. Both gentlemen agreed that this would seem to be unbeatable.
  • But Connor Fitzgerald seemed to disagree, and it looks like this 0:10 proves his point. Does ANYONE think they can improve this???
• Easy 100%
  • JMad had obviously found a run of form as he improved another one of Brent's records. This time by two seconds to 0:23.
• Nightmare 100%
  • Once again the Nightmare 100% tablefiller was mine. Many killings in 0:47. A very frustrating demo to make.

dmc1m4

• Easy Run
  • Ripah wasn't putting up with any of this so called "Selinus" behaviour and stormed his record back with a 0:21 using a faster and even more risky grenade placement.

dmc1m6

• Easy 100%
  • For his first EVER non id level record (excluding contest demos) Timo Nieninen improved Ivan's record by ten seconds to 1:49.

Time to see what Justin Fleck and Evan Wagner have been up to. Easy 100% coop marathons, particulatly when done over the net, are notoriously hard. These guys make it look easy and this Easy 100% of The Elder World in 9:13, forty-eight seconds faster than their previous time, is, I think, their best piece of work so far. Loads of really impressive tricks from both players and routes which, almost without exception, enabled them to finish within a second or two of each other on every map. Watch this shit. It's good shit. I'm not shitting you.

During the recording of the above they improved the Easy 100% of The Sewage System by two seconds over Marlo and FAB to get a glorious 0:35.

Just to pass the time while they weren't working on the coop marathons Optic kept himself amused recording a 6:56 improvement to the second longest (in terms of a combined level/time criterion) marathon on the archive. Marlo's Easy 100% of All Of Quake. Thirty-one levels of destruction and stupid tricks. Just check out (for one small example) the return from the gold key in E4M3 (also seen in the coop marathon above but in single player quad grenades hurt). 47:10. /me bows down.

On to other news. It looks like Stubby has organised a big push towards getting Qd100Qlite2 finished. For those that don't know this is going to be the absolute ULTIMATE easy 100% through the entire game, recorded one level at a time by the worlds greatest runners. There's only a few levels left to go (unless someone thinks they can improve an existing "finished" level) and looking at the talent that's lined up to complete what's left I don't see how it can fail to be, if you'll excuse the slightly excitable bad language, fucking amazing. The cream of the active old school, new school, and new blood runners have all galantly come forward to see if we can't finally close the lid on this epic project.

And finally[1] we have another new map for you! It's the first proper, full size map from Evan "Draven" "Windlash" "Wagster" "Lovepump" "Wastegate" Wagner. It goes by the enchanting name of A Subtle Dagger or the even more enchanting name of evspq1 and you can get it here. I found it pleasant to look at, fun to play, challenging in places and the last secret was a right bastard to find. Please call your demos on this map ev1_xxx.

Right, time for me to watch all the demos that have turned up yesterday and this morning. But before I go, and since I didn't get round to it before last Thursday, I'd just like to thank, on behalf of myself, Nolan, Thomas, Thomas and Michael, everyone that's kept this site going and made it so much fun for everyone. That's YOU, the people that send the demos in. I hope I haven't missed anyone out and if so I'm truly sorry. So it's a big SDA cheer to Rickard Axelsson, Robert Axelsson, Rebecca Axelsson, Kay Berntsen, Martin Selinus, Basil de Vries, Ivan Vladev, Brent Wise, Mathias Thore, George Dickeson, Evan Wagner, Justin Fleck, Nik Skidmore, Cameron Engles, Amrik Kochhar, Connor Fitzgerald, Dane Plachetta, Kimmo Polvivaara, Ilian, Timo Nieminen, Anders Nordensten, Luc de Mestre, Pif de Mestre, Mads-Peter Stubgaard, Denis Nazarov, Carl Tholin, Daniel Hansson, Tim Sladden, Weixing Ye, Arturo Garcia Lasca, Aleksander Osipov, Dan Stukanev, Jozsef Szalontai, Peter Horvath, Tim Doherty, Chris Hamilton, Xiaokui Xiao, Daniel Andersson, Pezzer Mattson, Jonny Andersson, Dima Steklov, Phil, Valeriy Burmistrov, Vlad Burmistrov, Johan Nilsson, Rutger Baks, Hannu Kankaanpaa, Ilkka Kurkela, Timo Kossi, Marek Bartoszek, Adam Terwilligar, Doug Merrill, Danny van de Kleij, Ingmar Poerner, Keith Fancher, Megazoid, Sebastian Olsson and Dmitry Dementjev. Hope you hang around for at least the next year, too. ;-)

[1] there's actually a couple of small things but they'll keep for a day or two. This update's overdue enough without me starting another paragraph, getting distracted and missing another day. :-)