If any of you hotheads had voted for the Nolans already, your votes didn't get recorded. So please try again :) (make sure you refresh the voting page a few times first, too)

It's the moment you've all been waiting for; the most prestigious event in the Classic Quake calendar. The glamour, the sheer awesomeness is difficult to describe, so just go and vote!

NOLANS 2005

You see, we didn't forget it. Delays seem inevitable, but we hope you aren't too angry. Please don't hurt me!

Nice of you to join us, y'all. It's been far too long since I cranked out an update and I'm not sure I still have the knack. So boobs, bums, scrotes, willies and flaps! Let's go!

Thomas "Tom-Tommy-Tom-Tom" Stubgaard has produced a snorter of a demo on the Palace of Hate, improving his own Nightmare 100% by a startling twelve seconds to 3:09. It's bloody, it's brutal, it's Stubby.

ne_dust2 is proving to be a popular little devil.

• The Easy Run has already seen an epic "bunny and balls" battle. This continued with a 0:13 by Flavio Quadros, reclaiming the record from Sshplur with a 2 second improvement.
• Tom Nguyen fought back yet again with a 0:12. He has stated that 0:11 is possible but so far his efforts have been frustrated. Who will be first: Tom, Flavio or some unknown third party?
• The Nightmare Run has so far been very quiet. Step up Jaakko Alakopsa and a slope and nightmare grunt boosted 0:18.
• Jaakko also improved his Easy 100% by twelve seconds to 2:44 with better monster tricking and more aggression...
• ...and did the same thing to his Nightmare 100% to get 2:43, 34 seconds faster. Both these demos look pretty good, it'll take a real pro to improve them...
• ...someone like Thomas Bergendorff, who took the Nightmare 100%, chewed it up and spat out a 2:16, 27 blood-soaked seconds faster.

After the freeze comes the Mathias Thore. Mandel crashes through czg07b like a flood of melt-water and washes Carl's old run records away by...

• One second on the Easy run to 0:35.
• Two seconds on the Nightmare Run to 0:37.

Back to Jaakko and a long overdue improvement to Basil's gmsp3 Nightmare 100%. Some monster hunting is inevitable on this map but this 220 second improvement to 15:32 is pretty slick all the way through and is a worthwhile quarter of an hours viewing.

Next we have a gaggle of demos from TeamSDA's very own "Mr Underpants", Thomas Bergendorff.

• He attacked another demo from the oldest records list and improved the gor1 Nightmare 100% to 2:58, beating Marlo by 2 seconds.
• A new map follows, and he used a cool new route on hellvill to improve his Easy Run by three seconds to 0:28.
• Back to the old, and a demolition of Fleck-hole's ancient tohnsay Nightmare 100% in 2:42, 10 seconds faster. Smooth and deadly.
• The tohnsay Easy 100% also needed the butter and milk treatment so he licked out a 2:18, 12 seconds faster than Sidd.

We have a saying in these parts: "a re-capture is never a re-crapture". This, however, is pushing it a bit. Nah took Hud's percept Nightmare 100% by one second, so this week Michael Hudson takes it back.... by one second. 3:49.

Back to Jaakko again for a three second tonking of Bergie's placebo Easy 100% with this 2:43.

Jaakko and Jonathan Lenhardt have gone absolutely terra marathon crazy this last week. Between them, they sent in 5 of the bastards.

• Jon did the Easy run in 2:15, 2 seconds faster than Mandel. Powerful stuff.
• Jaak improved Jon's Nightmare run by a gonad stretching sixty-eight seconds to 3:16.
• Navvy fought back with a 2:55.
• Nakky turned his attention to the Easy 100% and improved Pif's time by, ohhhh, quite a lot. Bit more than a minute and a half. Can't seem to work it out with this damned hangover. Anyway, the new time is 12:34.
• He also filled the empty Nightmare 100% slot with an fun filled 16:11.

Three hearty coops will see this update through to its death. Every one a feast for the eyes.

• One more run around ne_dust2 for Jaakko Alakopsa. This time he dragged along Mathias Thore and did an Easy 100% in 1:31.
• Jaakko and Paul Davies had an Easy Run around the map that only those two actually like enough to bother learning the torturously long route on, sm82. Team work and team killing gave them 2:45 (SP time 3:29).
• Finally, Mad Coops don't get much madder than a 5 player Nightmare 100% of the Palace of Hate. Jaakko Alakopsa, Michael Hudson, Paul Davies, Mathias Thore and Thomas Stubgaard somehow managed to come up with worthwhile routes for everyone and schnicked in a fun looking 1:35.

One final piece of news before I go. If Daniel Lindberg is reading this, or if anyone knows a current contact address for Daniel, please get in touch with us. We need you, Daniel baby. Need you.

'Sup 'sup 'sup. Since the inbox has been flooded with demos since wednesday, we couldn't wait any more with this update. And because of the multitude of demos, the update has been split into nine distinct sections.

First, there's great news about a very VERY old hole in the tables finally being filled. The buzzing Finn Jaakko Alakopsa went ahead and did a nightmare 100% on fmb100, a demo I believe a few people have attempted but failed. It didn't take NahkahiiR more than 7:05 from when he decided to give it a go until he was done. Still nice to see someone finally making it to the exit :)

The second section is also about NahkahiiR and his second (methinks?) Total Ownage, this one on sewage. If sewage is a flower, and Jaakko the bee, then the 2:10 easy run, the 4:19 easy 100%, the 3:19 nightmare run, and the 7:59 nightmare 100% are beautiful petals in all the colors of the rainbow, which attract bees.

ne_dust2:

• Flavio Quadros did an excellent easy run in 0:16 which literally made my jaw drop. Backward bunnies?
• but Tom Nguyen backward bunnied a little faster and shorter, and got 0:15.
• NahkahiiR filled the easy 100% hole with 3:09 and then 2:56...
• ...and the nightmare 100% with 3:17. Lots of ammo of all kinds to have fun with. Not.

hellvill. NahkahiiR did an easy 100% in 3:19 and a nightmare 100% in 3:35. What's that you say, you don't find the secrets useful?

whisper next:

• Thomas Bergendorff shows his good style and does a nightmare run in 0:30. Are there no shortcuts on this map?
• Basil de Vries did the nightmare 100% in 0:59, 2 seconds faster than NahkahiiR.

From here and to the end of this update, the rest of the demos are coops made by NahkahiiR and Basil:

• On whisper, they did a 0:40 2-player easy 100% and a 0:25 2-player easy run.
• They improved their lfdm4 2-player easy and nightmare 100% demos by 3 seconds to 0:11 and 0:11. Could still be a second faster if you ask me. And they actually did ask.
• Finally, another Total Ownage flower, this time a twofer. sm94_zwiffle is the scene and 0:08 2-player easy run, 0:46 2-player easy 100%, 0:08 2-player nightmare run, and 0:47 2-player nightmare 100%. I didn't think we would ever see any 2-player runs on this one, because it's so short!

That's all sections already. Enjoy'em while they last! Now, we have 3 remaining holes in the tables. Will it be up to NahkahiiR to fill'em all or is anybody else up to the challenge?

Before we get stuck into the succulent body of this sizeable post, we must first savour the lovely creamy head. And what a creamtacular head it is! None other than Connor Fitzgerald has created another ID record to add to his trophy cabinet, this time the Underearth Easy Run in a blistering 0:30. Featuring a very nice unaided jump to the higher level and some sweet boosts, this is one masterpiece of a demo! Just one second faster than Timo Nieminen, but what a second.

There have been three demos submitted since the last update which aren't on the new maps, so here they are, all by Jaakko Alakopsa and on percept:

• Easy 100% in 2:12 beating Michael Hudson by 4 seconds.
• Nightmare 100% in 3:50 beating Michael Hudson by 1 second.
• Nightmare Run in 3:09 beating himself by 15 seconds.

A short interruption from our sponsor, recordbot. NAME YOUR FRIGGIN' DEMOS CORRECTLY! Noticing that many of the Easy and Nightmare times will be the same, some of you have taken it upon yourselves to name your demos all sorts of crap, the favourite of which has been lf4na008.dem. NO! All demos inside a dzip should have the normal name, but then append an 'n' to the dzip if it is on Nightmare and the same time already exists on Easy. C'est simple.

Of the new maps, lfdm4 has been the most popular so far. It's small, tight and you hardly have to kill anything for the 100%. Let the games begin!

• First, Basil de Vries sent in a few demos: Easy and Nightmare runs both in 0:13, and an Easy 100% in 0:19.
• Then Mathias Thore came along and improved that 100% by 3 seconds to get 0:16.
• Next was Flávio Quadros, who decided the runs weren't slick enough, recording 0:12 on both difficulties.
• Arturo García Lasca agreed, beating out a 0:11 on Easy and Nightmare by using lotsa boosts.
• No new map is complete without a set of matching coops. Jaakko and Basil plugged the holes, so here they are, in a nested list:
  • ER2 in 0:08
  • EH2 in 0:14
  • NR2 in 0:08
  • NH2 in 0:14

sm94_zwiffle also got a fair amount of attention in the two days it's been available for running. Inimitably Zwiffle, the map is small, blocky and stuffed with monsters. No coops, then!

• Again Orbs was first to try it out, noticing the handily placed ogre. An Easy Run of 0:11 soon arrived in the mailbox.
• Soon after, the Nightmare Run of 0:09 appeared, thanks to faster grenade serving.
• His other demo on this map was an Easy 100%, a respectable time of 1:18.
• Tom Nguyen had some different ideas about how to use that helpful ogre, and added a fiend into the mix, recording 0:10 on Easy.
• Then Jaakko came along and killed everything. First on Easy in 1:14, swifter by 4 seconds...
• ... followed by 1:17 on Nightmare.

Next on the map-popularity meter is ne_dust2. Counterstrike didn't have so much lava on it last time I checked.

• Lots of slopes make Tom Nguyen a happy man. An Easy Run of 0:20 arriveth.
• But that didn't stand for too long. A very nice long jump at the start means a 0:19 from Flavio Quadros.
• Noticing that the exit is just across a big gap, I did some very short coops. Teaming up with Michael Hudson to achieve 0:05 demos on Easy and Nightmare...
• ... and a quite ridiculous 0:02 with Orbs and NahkahiiR on Easy and Nightmare. You might also enjoy this recam. :)

A fairly small but quite pretty map, whisper failed to capture the hearts of the many. Regardless, it got a few demos.

• I, Paul Davies sent in this Easy Run in 0:34 about 10 minutes after the update.
• So naturally, it got improved. Tom Nguyen took off 4 seconds to get 0:30.
• Then Jaakko started filling the holes, first slaughtering stuff in 0:59 on Easy...
• ... and 1:01 on Nightmare.

Just one demo for hellvill. One demo to rule them all! Thomas Bergendorff sent in a fairly slick 0:31 Easy Run with lots of jumps and stuff. Bravo.

That's it for now. Recordbot informs me that there are still 12 single player holes on the new maps, and... more... coop holes. Get runnin'.

Mkay! Time for another bunch of fresh maps to be added to SDA!

• ne_dust2, something supposedly familiar to all ye CS fans. Name your demos ne2_xxx.
• hellvill. Doesn't get much oldschooler than this! Name your demos hv_xxx.
• whisper. Love the textures. Can anybody get up on the bridge? Name your demos whis_xxx.
• sm94_zwiffle. This should make for some short runs... Name your demos s94z_xxx.
• sewage devastation. This on the other hand will be something for the more endurant. sew_xxx.
• lfdm4. Quick optimizer. Don't kill us, Lodis :) lf4_xxx.

We have tested each map rigorously to see that all monsters and secrets can be found for the 100%s. Not. Don't sue us if they can't. Bitch a bit, and send your demos anyway. We're now eagerly awaiting a monster load of demos! Monster load of maps -> monster load of demos, right? Right?

Thomas Stubgaard is insane. We knew this already, but if you didn't think that luring zombies around for ten minutes at a time was evidence enough, you now can watch for yourself: This 9:23 all-kills Nightmare 100% of the Tomb of Terror as well as being 9 seconds faster than his previous insane outing also includes a harrowing blooper reel.

Also on the ID front we have two 3-player 100% coops on The Tower of Despair, by the new low-ping, high-insanity team of Jaakko Alakopsa, Robert Maglic and Mathias Thore. They first beat the American trio's Easy demo by one second to get 0:43 and then filled the vacant Nightmare slot with a 0:59.

Jaakko has been quite the insane coop convener lately; he's also been responsible for:

• abw 2-Player Easy Run in 1:22 with Paul Davies, beating some frenchies by 4 seconds.
• hhouse 2-Player Easy 100% in 1:17 with Paul, beating the same frenchies by 24 seconds.
• sm82 3-Player Easy 100% in 3:24 with Paul and Basil de Vries, a tablefiller.
• trincasp2 2-Player Easy 100% in 2:11 with Basil, another tablefiller.

He also did the trincasp2 2-Player Easy Run in 1:16 with Basil, but this wasn't a record as Paul Davies and I had already sent in a 1:15.

Now, trincasp2 may be an insane map to play, but we promise you that it's nothing on r2m2. Despite the obvious button-pushing coop friendliness, our 0:46 (faster than Pif and Luc by six seconds) was seriously annoying to achieve. Insane, I tell you.

Lag.Com and I confused the already insanely shifting maze of coop partnership further by teaming up with Mandel and Orbs to record a telefrag-tastic 4 player Nightmare 100% of dmc1m2 in 0:27.

Last night saw a considerable amount of swearing in #qdq as people tried to do something insane: speedrun trincasp2. In addition to the demos listed above, this also produced:

• An Easy Run in 1:24 by Paul (just one second faster)
• A Nightmare run in 2:18 by the eponymous Trinca, also known as Rui Neto.
• This was rapidly obsoleted by Basil's insane 1:58.

To finish up, we have a tablefilling Nightmare 100% on hdn by the map's creator Damian Kulot in 6:26, an 8 second reclaiment of the tspe Nightmare 100% in 1:05 by Thomas Bergendorff, and this picture. Happy bananas!

Hey, the contest ended. Get your results hot'n'fresh here. Congratulations to Tom Nguyen for a spectacular demo! Unfortunately, not a single manette entered...

I do! And I hope you do to...

So here it is! The Slipgate Simplex contest begins today, and ends in only one week. Lick the dust off your skatez, wipe the crap off your WASD and fire up quake. Please find contest instructions here, and send in your demos to the contest address no later than Midnight CET, Wednesday May 17th 2006.

May the bunniest man (or manette, obviously) win!

Exactly how it came to this I'm not sure, but here I am doing my first demo update in over a year... Why? Apparently summer has, combined with work/school, put a temporary end to our 'weekly' updates, so here am I doing what I'm supposed to not be doing, i.e. skipping school based on a lame excuse and updating this site which I hadn't expected myself to be doing again :-) Yeah yeah, enough talk, let's get on with it shall we.

I think I'll start out by hyping my own demo (mostly because it's the only ID single player demo in the update) on The Haunted Halls. I did the Nightmare 100% in 1:54, 8 seconds better than my demo from 2003, yay!

• While we're at it, here's a bunch of other demos on the same map:
  • 2-player Easy Run in 0:39 by Mads-Peter Stubgaard and I, 1 second faster than Attila/Jozsef.
  • 2-player Easy 100% in 1:03 by Mathias Thore and I, 2 seconds faster than Mads-Peter/Me.
  • 3-player Easy 100% in 0:56 by Mathias, Paul Davies and I, 7 seconds faster than Thomas/Me/Richard.

ID coops not on e3m7:

• Ziggurat Vertigo: 2-player Nightmare 100% in 1:00 by Evan Wagner and I, 6 seconds faster than Nolan/Justin.
• The Tomb Of Terror: 2-player Easy 100% (all kills including zombies) in 7:58 by Paul and I, tablefiller. Only 12 seconds faster than the single player record :-) Oh well...
• Chambers Of Torment: 2-player Easy 100% in 1:33 by Mathias and I, 1 second faster than Aleksander/Jaakko.

Demos on mexx8:

• Easy Run in 3:58 by Jaakko Alakopsa, 13 seconds faster than Richard.
• Easy 100% in 6:03 by Jaakko, 20 seconds faster than Richard.
• Nightmare Run in 4:25 by Jaakko, 14 seconds faster than Richard.
• Nightmare 100% in 7:07 by, you guessed it, Jaakko, 67 seconds faster than Richard giving him total ownage over this map.

Demos on abw:

• Easy 100% in 2:22 by Jaakko, 2 seconds faster than Tim.
• Nightmare Run in 2:33 by Jaakko, 5 seconds faster than Anders.
• Nightmare 100% in 3:25 by Jaakko, 5 seconds faster than Tim.

Demos on blister2:

• Nightmare Run in 0:54 by Thomas Bergendorff, 1 second faster than Jouzas.
• Nightmare 100% in 1:40 by Thomas, 5 seconds faster than Ilkka.

Demos on trincasp2:

• Easy 100% in 2:59 by Paul Davies, tablefiller.
• Nightmare Run in 2:19 by Richard Skidmore, tablefiller.
• Nightmare 100% in 6:47 by Richard, tablefiller.

Demos on assassin:

• Easy 100% in 6:31 by Jaakko, 38 seconds faster than Nolan.
• Nightmare 100% in 6:30 by Jaakko, 43 seconds faster than Nolan.

...and here's all the other demos:

• blister: Nightmare 100% in 1:01 by Thomas Bergendorff, 1 second faster than Ilkka.
• bnt: Nightmare 100% in 4:18 by Richard Skidmore, 14 second faster than himself.
• chain3: Nightmare Run in 1:03 by Jaakko Alakopsa, 28 second faster than Pif.
• cult: Nightmare Run in 0:20 by Mathias Thore, 1 second faster than Jozsef. Good demo!
• dmc4: Nightmare Run in 0:21 by Mathias, 1 second faster than Kay. Another good demo!
• frostbite: Easy 100% in 2:19 by Flavio Quadros, 14 seconds faster than Jaakko.
• hayduke1: Nightmare 100% in 1:58 by Jaakko, 5 seconds faster than Richard.
• jzblue_2: 2-player Nightmare Run in 0:08 by Mathias and Robert Maglic, 1 second faster than Pif/Luc.
• jzblue: Nightmare Run in 0:43 by Arturo Garcia Lasca, 2 seconds faster than Mathias.
• obiwan3: Nightmare 100% in 3:24 by Jaakko, 15 seconds faster than Pif.
• polygon2: Nightmare 100% in 3:39 by Jaakko, 56 seconds faster than Matthias.
• sm64_zwiffle: Easy Run in 0:06 by Robert, 1 second faster than himself. Optimal!

See ya in another year or so... Tooooodle-oooo!

Let's not ask a lot of stupid questions and make accuses regarding the lateness of this update. You're more mature than that aren't you? If it turns out you're not, I suggest you direct your anger at Morfans. I also suggest a trout as the means to mediate the physical component of your anger.

If it wasn't for this next demo, maybe we would still be waiting. But when Thomas Stubgaard sends in an iD improvement, there's no option other than grabbing the wolf by it`s teeth and make it write an update. The Haunted Halls is on the wine list, and Thomas is thirsty. Using some random trick which really cannot be explained, somehow Thomas finds 4 seconds to chop off the old nightmare run, and finishes the-most-spacious-but-one level in the whole freaking game in a crunchering 0:52. Aiiiight!

New maps time

• hdn
  • Easy run: Jonathan Lenhardt did the initial 0:21...
  • ...swiftly followed by a 0:20.
  • But when it comes to exploring routes and running them quickly, Connor Fitzgerald really is the main slapper. A wild route with a fatal exit makes the fun end after only 0:18.
  • Easy 100%: Gregory R. Payne opened with 6:51.
  • Thomas Bergendorff spent a little more time on route planning, and got 3:18 followed by 2:53, not only a little faster than Lardarse...
  • Nightmare run: the|navigator was the only one to try this. 0:21 is the time and it's very similar to the 0:21 ER above.

• trincasp2. Wildly difficult, this map has only seen a couple of easy runs so far:
  • the|navigator did the first 1:46.
  • Rui Neto, SDA newcomer and perhaps better known under the name Trinca was 4 seconds faster with 1:42.
  • Pif de Mestre got another couple of seconds off the time with this 1:36.
  • But then, one Paul Davies to slap them all with 1:25.

Yer typical bunch of demos time

• Easy runs first and it starts with something that swims right up my cup of tea. It's the jzblue_2 easy run, it's 0:09, it's one second faster than Martin, it's Arturo Garcia Lasca behind it, and I believe it's optimal.
• percept. Michael Hudson first, beating Damian Kulot by one second to get 1:35.
• But once Lag.Com saw that demo he didn't rest long. In a matter of milliseconds he had recorded, packed, and sent in 1:32.

• Easy 100%. Stubgaard must have been bored or on drugs at some point during this last month, because he has done something as untypical as a custom easy 100%. Thomas has been saying that the cda EH could be done in less than 5 minutes, and this 4:58 shows him proving his point. It also shows him slapping Pif's old record by 102 seconds.
• Tom Nguyen found and old demo in his fmb100 directory lying around collecting dust, and decided to send it in. It's 13 seconds faster than the old record, which means 3:41.
• Next up is mwh taking back the percept record that Jaakko rudly stole a while ago. First with 2:24, and then 2:16, totally 10 seconds faster than Jaakko.

• Nightmare runs. There's only one, and it's by me. For a bit of fun I improved cda by 7 seconds over Jaakko to get 0:34. There really isn't any reason why this shouldn't be almost as fast as the easy run, except the ogres at the start.

• Nightmare 100%. I always like it when Richard Skidmore takes on some mad, long NH and gives it a route-up. There's two demos this time and they are both Optic-table-filler-beating moments of madness on maps I just about never have seen before... First there's bnt (ok, so this one I have seen because of Kay and Manslay) on which Justin gets slapped by 18 seconds to 4:42,
• and then there's cdespair on which Optic takes a 3 second slapping from this 2:30.
• Sshplur opened up a can of anger on misery and improved his old record by 3 seconds to 0:29. Very different route than the EH, but now only 1 second longer.
• Mwh pulled another petal from the percept flower with a 16-second improvement to the NH. The new auto-improving time is 3:51.

Coop's corner

• Evan Wagner and Justin Fleck teamed up to kill'em'all on the first episode of Hipnotic. Using what to me looked like very nice routes and good play despite poor ping conditions, they did the 2-player easy 100% marathon in 5:52.
• But apparently they had more to give, because a little later we received a 13-second improvement, 5:39.
• Stubgaard is charismatic enough to persuade me and possibly even mwh to do anything. This time he chose the 3-player easy 100% on the Chambers of Torment. We did it in 1:19. Wonder what he will ask us to do next time?

Argh. Aight, sorry to have kept y'all waiting so long. Let's see some shiny happy faces, please? Please?

There's been a recent lack of inbox filling demos. It's never a good thing when there's a lack of inbox filling demos. Heck, inbox filling demos is what this site is all about. It isn't about Quake. It isn't about anything else than inbox filling demos.

In order to make you make us some more inbox filling demos, we're adding two new maps to the archive:

• hdn, Hangover Devastation by Ankh. Download, run, call your demos hdn_xxx, and send to us. Can't WAIT to see some 100% demos done on this one...
• trincasp2, Forgotten Tomb by Trinca. Download, run, call your demos tri2_xxx and send to us. Note: There are more than a few versions of this map floating around so make sure you download this zip from here if you want to try it out. Monster count should be 88 on easy and 180 on nightmare.

Wibble!

It's been a week since you were all graced with a bunch of tasty demos to savour; now's time for some more. My calculator can only express their number in the form about 10. That's surely enough accuracy for anyone.

As the incredibly subtle title implies, SDA has received more than its usual share of marathons (about 0) in the last 7 days. The first is very short, but intensely succulent. Think of it as a kind of melt-in-your-mouth sweet which is gone in under a minute. The already swift jzblue Nightmare Run by Sergi Cami has been beaten by 2 seconds; a swifter 0:45 from Mathias Thore takes the record. Some nice bunnies and all the tricks make this a great watch.

The other marathon fills a hole which has been around for over a year. Requiring no small feat of memory and playing skill, running through all 6 levels of terra and completing them 100% is no task to be taken lightly, even on Easy. This 14:11 from Pif de Mestre is more like an eclair; smoothly chocolately throughout, and takes a good long while to chew through until nothing is left.

Next up are two demos which might as well be marathons, considering how long they are. Another hole which has sat around being ignored for a while is the sm82 Nightmare Run. This map is hard enough to move through without running into some ogre, but this 7:18 from the very hard-working Jaakko Alakopsa does the job. I might venture the opinion that it is not quite optimal. This means there's only one single player non-marathon hole remaining, the fmb100 Nightmare 100%. Who's man enough to take on this incredibly mind-numbing job?

...*shudder*... the other long demo is on the very same avatar that received a demo last Thursday. Apparently Richard Skidmore thought he should inflict more pain on us all by submitting an improved 4:59 Easy Run, beating Jaakko's demo by no less than 19 seconds. I had to watch it, and so do you. Here's to less demos on this sorry excuse for a map in the future.

Now for prettier maps. The quite new fr3n1m3 got a self-improvement from Tom Nguyen, squeezing another 8 seconds off the EH to get 1:23. Despite the self-deprecation his text file includes, I feel this is a nice demo. Bravo!

A couple of people have spent a fair amount of time flinging themselves into the eternal void this week. Notably, Jonny Andersson first improved the cbfspq1 Easy 100% to 0:26. Then, deciding he hadn't had quite enough of falling into infinite nothingness, he chopped off another second and submitted this 0:25. The spot-on grenade placement makes this a very slick demo, in fact it now equals the Run time by Kay!

Also suspended in the emptiness of space is pushcoag. Being slightly more of the 'stand around waiting for ladders' persuasion, even an Easy Run on this map takes as much as 1:27. Daniel Hansson achieved this time, beating Pif's previous demo by 4 seconds.

About three more submissions to look at, and they're all by the very talented Flávio Quadros. Firstly he decided that both Runs on the eye-searingly bright frostbite looked a little rusty, so he set about improving them both. On Easy he knocked just 2 seconds off his own demo to finish in 1:17. Then on Nightmare he cut more than a minute off NahkahiiR's unfortunate run; now the time stands at 1:54. Not perfect but a great deal cleaner.

Last one then! A self-improvement from GinKo on colony2 means both Runs are now equal in time. That'd be a 0:14 on Nightmare then. How's it feel to be as fast as Connor?

That's all for now.

Ok, fine. Succubus' stripy bikini. Now scram.

Most of the submissions for this update were sent in while I was writing it, so it has ended up larger than expected.

I said you'd be getting updates more often. Someone must have taken this as an indication to suddenly produce masses of demos; luckily for us, these are nice demos! The most prominent feature of this week's... uh... this Thursday's update is a spot of spotless 0wnage by the Finnish coop juggernaut of 2006. Who other than Aleksander Osipov and Jaakko Alakopsa have decided to deprive the de Mestres of any records on mexx6. The last demos SDA saw on this map were those of Pif et Luc sweeping the board in 2004. One bit of Suomi magic and 15 months later, here they are:

• Easy Run in 1:11 with plenty of boosting (9 seconds off),
• Nightmare Run in 1:17 amusingly claiming to be a 100% by the text file (17 seconds off),
• Easy 100% in 1:40 in which sidd misses with but one grenade (11 seconds off),
• Nightmare 100% in 1:48, alas containing grenade counters, but taking 15 seconds away.

During this massacre, Alex decided to strike out on his own and produce four single player demos, improving the 0wnage he already posesses on this level to excellent standards. These are:

• Easy Run in 1:21 unfortunately missing the telefrag at the end (5 seconds),
• Nightmare Run in 1:33 produced about an hour before this update; this is a very hard run not to get stuck on (8 seconds),
• Easy 100% in 2:08 - nice and slick (2 seconds),
• Nightmare 100% in 2:35. This last demo was produced purely because we whined about him doing the other three, and according to him "it looks like shit tho". Be your own judge! A wee 4 seconds off his last time.

Whoo! Suicide Staccato never knew what hit it. Onto other maps.

A pretty, new but annoying level, percept got a couple of demos since Monday.

• More monster fraggage from Jaakko teaming up with Michael Hudson, a leisurely 3:03 NH,
• And also another Nightmare Run improvement, this time from NahkahiiR on his tod. He exits in 3:24, sneakily taking 6 seconds away off Michael's time.

This wasn't the only map to get a thorough smacking from Jaakko. A wise man was once forced to evoke the image of demonic underwear whilst mentioning this level in the past, and who am I to ignore such precedents? You guessed it, avatar now has a new Easy Run of 5:18. What in the name of Lucifer's lime green G-string was he thinking? The last demo for this category was a 5:26 from Pif, so that's 8 seconds less time you have to watch this ugly level for.

Happily, he has since moved onto nicer areas. The lovely fr3n1m3 has received a possibly-not-quite-optimal Easy 100% from the aforementioned Finn, Michael Hudson and Mathias Thore. It times an embarrassing 0:57, just 7 seconds faster than the 2-player time.

Sometime during an infinitely busy schedule, I managed to produce some demos this week. The first is on a real blighter of a map, sm82. The 100% contains 132 monsters and 5 secrets; they were all duly filed under 'dead' or 'found' respectively in the time of 5:07, beating Jaakko's offering by a minute. Just to show there were no hard feelings, the pair of us teamed up to do a trick-filled Easy Run on my favourite of maps, hhouse. We got 0:48, beating the de Mestres' tablefiller by 17 seconds. Then we split up, and I produced a carnage-filled 3-player dmc1m6 Nightmare 100% with the much-appreciated help of Mandel and mwh. The new time is 1:12, equalling the EH2.

Oh crap, I missed this one. Jaakko ja Alex also did the quite long and complex hobr EH in a time of 2:17, improving half a minute upon the previous run by Pif et Luc. Right, now we've finally ran out of Finnish goodness.

Just one demo is left to mention, and it's no shortie. The mad Thomas Stubgaard has been working on cda for a small while now, and has finally turned out something he can stomach to send in. A mere 2 seconds away from breaking a minute barrier it may be, but this 7:01 of slaying action on The Man's Skill (TM) is a thing of beauty. Evidently it is also over a full 5 minutes faster than Pif's previous tablefiller. Oops!

That's a lot of watching. Get to it.

A few points to get out of the way here:

1. I'm now part of TeamSDA! Woo!
2. The msrj NR dz has been fixed; whereas before it was a direct copy of the NH, now it has the proper files.
3. Nolans 2005 demo nomination is underway. Please be patient.

Right, now onto the actual update. I'll be using tried and tested <ul> tags throughout.

This happy day we have a rather large 36 demos to be added to the archives! As some of you may have noticed, however, a significant fraction of these are by the tireless coop team Pif et Luc. One of the submissions is an improvement, beating an old demo from 2001 by a couple of Anderssons by 15 seconds, making a nifty chessp1 EH in 0:47. The rest are tablefillers.
The cramped-even-in-single-player warehaus got a thorough slapping from the pair, suffering an ER in 0:46, an NR in 1:05, an EH in 1:22 and an NH in 1:52. They also did 100%s on some other levels, and here they are:

• cda EH in 4:39,
• chessp1 NH in 1:12 done shortly after the improvement mentioned above,
• heresp1 EH in 0:39 and NH in 1:40,
• mexx4 EH in 2:14,
• mexx8b EH in 2:21,
• nastrond EH in 3:29,
• tfl EH in 2:36 and NH in 3:41
• well NH in 2:56 and EH in 2:50.

Being a new map, fr3n1m3 got demos from a 'varied assortment' of people. Some are good, and some are better. And one is Connor's.

• The Easy Run predictably got a lot of attention:
  • The first demo for this category was a sneaky 0:37 from the map's creator, Chris Ploran.
  • Jonathan Lenhardt righted this wrong, producing a 0:36.
  • The not overly confident Mathias Thore beat this with a nice 0:34, however...
  • Connor Fitzgerald appeared from nowhere and splattered this with a 0:30. Bravo!
• The Nightmare Run was not so sought after, but a battle was had all the same:
  • Again, Fern started the race, getting 0:46.
  • ...er, actually, no. Nobody else tried this. Boo!
• No doubt the tiny differences from e1m3 frustrated the Easy secret-hunters, but there were some successes.
  • For a change, Gregory R. Payne got there first. 2:21 appeared in the SDA mailbox.
  • This was quickly beaten by, yes, Fern's 1:52.
  • However, Tom Nguyen leaped in and beat out a visceral 1:31.
• A couple of people even managed to survive the nasty monster configuration on Nightmare:
  • Keen on killing things, Lardarse made a 6:04. That's a tad long.
  • Thomas Bergendorff thought so too, and sliced off over three minutes to make 2:26.
• Not content on doin' the coop thang on older maps, the de Mestres killed stuff here too.
  • Everything died and was found in 1:04 for Easy...
  • And 2:05 for Nightmare. I'm sure Lodis would have something to say about that time.

Only eight demos remain to be discussed. Most of those are self-improvements; let's make with the lists.

• Aleksander Osipov whipped his very old mexx1 Easy 100% into shape. The time now stands at 0:54, 4 seconds off the clock.
• The lovely Richard Skidmore went frag-crazy on well, creating a Nightmare 100% with the half-evil time of 3:33, as well as an Easy 100% in 3:32. That's signifcant refinement of 24 and 15 seconds respectively.
• Almost an episode long, the sm82 Nightmare 100% record saw itself lose near to three minutes via a more intense 9:56 from Jaakko Alakopsa.
• Michael Hudson slipped by a few more monsters in a percept Nightmare Run improvement of 3:30, saving just over a minute. The more perceptive of you will notice that this is a sort of psuedo-tablefiller.
• Not content with just beating his own demos, Morfizzle then went on to kick out Stefan Schwoon's coagula Nightmare 100%, replacing it with a shiny new 2:39.
• Relative newcomer Flavio Quadros chipped several seconds off relative newcomer NahkahiiR's hobr Nightmare 100%, completing it in the slightly faster time of 3:34.
• The only non-French coop of the update goes to Jonny Andersson and Carl Tholin, squeezing three seconds off the fully coop-tricked evspq1 2-Player Easy Run, reducing it to only 0:38.

Wait, Carl Tholin? His last demo was back in May 2005, so welcome back!
Phew! Expect updates to be slightly more frequent from now on.

The most incredible demo you'll see this week is probably going to be this first one. It's an id treat from the Hungarian black magician Peter Horvath. His latest collection of tricks mixed together make for a nice The Door To Chthon Nightmare 100% demo, in 0:48. This isn't just a second or so faster than Connor, but 4. Sure, 4-second improvements happen, and in NH they aren't even that unusual. But this time it's 4 seconds faster than a demo which was already very fast and close-to-optimal-looking. Peter's demo is even prettier. And faster. And a lot more close-to-optimal-looking. A true, genuine pride stealer.

We're adding another map to the archive. This new map, fr3n1m3 by Fr3n, is... heavily 'inspired' by e1m3. Go on, call your demos f1m3_xxx and send them to us. NOTE: Seems the version we uploaded 2 hours ago had an issue that needed to be solved, so make sure you download the new version!

Now, let's have a look at some demos.

cda

• Easy Run in 0:30 by Me, giving Flavio Quadros the 1 second owning he deserves ;)
• Easy 100%, first 8:01 and then 7:27 by Pif de Mestre. But then...
  Jaakko Alakopsa did 7:14, Pif 7:13, NahkahiiR 6:46...
  But in the end Pif got away with the fastest time, 6:40.
• Nightmare Run in 1:02 by Pif, and 0:41 by NahkahiiR, 21 seconds faster.
• Nightmare 100% in 12:25 by Pif.

hobr

• Easy Run in 1:10 by Flavio Quadros, 32 seconds faster than Pif's demo from last week.
  but along came Tom Nguyen and did 1:06, another 4 seconds faster.
• Easy 100% in 3:25 by NahkahiiR, 27 seconds faster than his own demo from last week.
• Nightmare Run in 1:09 by Sshplur, beating himself by 6 seconds.
• Nightmare 100% was opened by GinKo who got 5:10.
  But NahkahiiR did 4:10 and later 3:47 totally 1:23 faster.
• Pif and Luc de Mestre tried a 2-Player Easy 100% and got 2:47.

percept

• Easy Run by Damian Kulot in 1:37 and later 1:36, totally 5 seconds faster than NahkahiiR.
• Nightmare 100% by Michael Hudson, improving his own record from last week by 33 seconds to 4:07.

killemal

• Nightmare 100% in 0:22 by Pif.

hhouse

• 2-Player Easy 100% in 1:41 by Pif and Luc.

But wait... That's not all! For free, I throw in a bunch of other demos:

• Yada yada yada, Blue hell demos are rare etc. Well, anyway. I went and improved Marlo's old easy 100% marathon by 1 second, to 1:18. Worse running than Marlo throughout, except on the last level. I would *REALLY* like Marlo to take this back :)
• Arturo Garcia Lasca ran coagula Easy Run in 0:21, 1 second faster than Robert Axelsson.
• NahkahiiR went table filling and did a frostbite Nightmare Run in 3:01,
• and a heresp4 Nightmare Run in 1:25...
• ...which was soon owned by a healthy 18 seconds, Thomas Bergendorff, and his 1:07.
• Lodis also did the heresp4 Easy 100% in 1:48, 20 seconds faster than Paul Davies,
• and the Nightmare 100% in 3:39 43 seconds faster than Richard Skidmore.
• Morfans was not amused, and went and did the well Easy 100% in 3:47, beating Lodis by 9 seconds,
• and while he was at it, the Nightmare 100% in 3:57, 23 seconds faster than Ilkka.
• NahkahiiR tried the Easy 100% on sm82 and got 6:07, 18 seconds faster than Gregory R. Payne.

Did you think that was it? That wasn't it! There's even more, namely a few coops:

• Pif and Luc did mexx10 2-Player Easy 100% in 2:47,
• the mexx8 2-Player Easy run in 2:58,
• and the 2-Player Easy 100% in 4:08. Good to see the duo back in action.

Irresistable!

Heya guys! Boy, there's a whole bunch of new demos this time... I can't even count them. There are in fact so many, I decided to do this update in the compact 'bulleted list' form, to keep the binary digit - 'bit' - count down.

Before you get to see the new demos, we have some important notes:

1. Jube from PlanetQuake, if you read this, could you please contact Morfans somehow!
2. Please pay attention to how you name your demos before you send them to us. Normally this isn't a problem, but this week we received 6 demos with wrong name. Tssk!

And now... THE DEMOS:

hhouse

• Easy Run in 1:27 by Richard Skidmore, and 1:12 by Paul Davies, 15 seconds faster.
• Easy 100% in 2:06 by Lag.Com, and then 1:58 by Lag.Com, 8 seconds faster.
• Nightmare Run in 2:06 by Morfans.
• Nightmare 100% in 5:59 by Morfans.
• 2-Player Easy Run in 1:05 by Pif de Mestre and Luc de Mestre.
• 2-Player Nightmare Run in 1:34 by Pif and Luc.
• 3-Player Easy 100% in 1:11 by Jaakko Alakopsa, Lag.Com and Michael Hudson.

percept

• Easy Run in 2:14 by mwh, 1:51 by Nahkahiir, 23 seconds faster, and then 1:41 by Nahkahiir again, another 10 seconds faster.
• Easy 100% in 3:03 by mwh, and 2:26 by Nahkahiir, 37 seconds faster.
• Nightmare Run in 4:32 by mwh.
• Nightmare 100% in 6:47, 5:48, and finally 4:40, all by mwh.
• 2-Player Easy 100% in 1:53 by Nahkahiir and mwh.

cda

• Easy Run in 1:15 by Pif, 0:32 by Mathias Thore, and 0:31 by Flavio Quadros.

hobr

• Easy Run in 1:42 by Pif.
• Easy 100% in 3:52 by Nahkahiir.
• Nightmare Run in 1:15 by Tom Nguyen.

killemal

• Easy 100% in 0:15 by Arturo Garcia Lasca, 1 second faster than his own contest winning entry.

During the week we also received a good amount of demos on maps other than the five newly added ones:

• gor1 Nightmare Run in 1:09 by Morfans, beating Justin Fleck by 3 seconds.
• dm1m2 Easy Run in 0:52 by Jonny Andersson, beating Justin Fleck by 2 seconds. Always good to see some Udder action!
• Arturo did the rest; aerorun Nightmare Run in 0:09, 1 second faster than Dane Plachetta. This one was also an old contest entry.
• wrld11 Easy Run in 0:18, 1 second faster than Jozsef Szalontai,
• wrld11 Nightmare Run in first 0:19 and later 0:18, totally 5 seconds faster than Pif.

Thomas Stubgaard, Kay Berntsen and Paul Davies made some very complex mad coop demos during the weekend, together with various guests. You will have to look hard for a collection of more well played and precise demos than these:

• the Tomb of Terror 3-Player Nightmare 100% in 1:14 by Thomas Stubgaard, Paul Davies and Kay Berntsen.
• the Tomb of Terror 4-Player Nightmare Run in 0:23 by Ripah, Stubgaard, Lag.Com and Nahkahiir.
• Azure Agony 4-Player Easy Run in 0:38 by Ripah, PB, Lag.Com and Stubgaard.
• Azure Agony 5-Player Nightmare Run in 0:47 by Ripah, Stubgaard, Lag.Com, PB and Nahkahiir.

And that's it for now! Keep those demos coming. There are still a few holes to fill, and I'm sure quite a few of the demos above are improvable as well :)

This should have been posted last week to clear the decks before the new maps were posted, but I screwed up. So here they are now.

We shall start with Thomas Stubgaard and the first id Nightmare 100% of the year. It's an excellent 5:03 of the Nameless City which is 10 seconds faster than his previous time. As always, the zombie kills are just soooooo tight.

After two updates running with Blue Hell demos in them, we definitely thought we'd seen the last of these puppies for a couple of years at least. But this was not to be the case because Mathias Thore had decided that Joe's Easy Run marathon was just not up to scratch, and proceeded to whack off (*snigger*) a two second improvemnet to 0:39. Heh, a 39 second marathon. :-)

And that was it for single player action this week. But coops? Yes, we have coops.

Back to the the Nameless City for Thomas Stubgaard, but this time he dragged Mathias Thore with him for a 2-Player Nightmare 100% in 3:55 beating Stubby and Pfluggy by 24 seconds.

Aleksander Osipov and Jaakko Alakopsa are really the new "impressive coop duo of the moment". Their dearest wish, they say, is to become known as "the new Pif and Luc". :-)

• They did the arma2 2-Player Easy 100% in 0:44 beating Justin Fleck and Evan Wagner by 9 seconds.
• And the Nightmare 100% in 1:14.
• Finally they braved the darkness of mexx1 to do a 2-Player Easy 100% in 0:38, 2 seconds faster than Pif and Luc.

Mad coops don't get any madder than Thomas Stubgaard, Jaakko Alakopsa, Michael Hudson and Basil de Vries doing an Easy 100% of the Chambers of Torment in 1:05. Top routage!

Leaving us with a five player Easy 100% to finish with, as Thomas Stubgaard, Jonny Andersson, Mathias Thore, Michael Hudson and Basil de Vries take a trip down to the Underearth and kill stuff in 0:42.

That's it. New maps demo blues to follow.

For your running pleasure and our viewing pleasure, we're adding a couple more maps to the swelling archive y'all know and love.

• First one is the contest map from below, killemal, Kill Them All, by Matthias Kunze. Call your demos kill_xxx.
  • Already in the tables you'll find the contest winning demos from Arturo Garcia Lasca, the easy 100% in 0:16,
  • and nightmare run in 0:04.
  • We also add a cheeky easy run from Michael Hudson, who got 0:05,
  • and an optimal one from Arturo, who got 0:04.
  You'll find the table for this map here.

• Next map we're adding is cda, Castle of The Dark Ages, by Jean-Philippe Lambert. If you already have this map you can download the special qdqstats patch for it here. The progs is, of course, included in the full download above. Call your demos cda_xxx.

• Next one is from SDA comebacker Kay Berntsen, and is called hobr, Halls Of Broken Records. Call your demos hobr_xxx.

• Then there's hhouse, Fall Cleaning, by Scragbait. Call your demos hhou_xxx.

• Last one this time is percept, Perception, by Rich 'XeNoN' Thorne. Call your demos perc_xxx.

Good luck and happy running.

The contest results are in! From a whopping total of 22 demos, only 2 can be the best one. Arturo Garcia Lasca took home the easy 100% category with a wide margin, while Arturo Garcia Lasca proved to be the fastest nightmare runner by a very small margin.

Double congratulations to Arturo Garcia Lasca and a big thanks to everyone who sent in demos.

The result tables and all demos are available here.

Contest soon? You heard it earlier today, and now it's here.

This one is called Kill Them All. Two categories are being contested, Easy 100% and Nightmare Run. Contest deadline is Midnight CET, Sunday February 12th 2006.

Now, put on your speedrunning jockstrap and start running the shite out of this little map.

Well, it's not hard to think of which demo to kick this update off with. The latest 'well-he's-pretty-good-WOW-NOW-HE'S-BREAKING-ID-RECORDS!' runner to emerge, Arturo Garcia Lasca, has taken one second off Kay 'Mr. Bunny' Berntsen's Easy Run of Azure Agony to record 0:42. Not bad :)

The only coops in the update are also on ID maps. First we have a pretty high quality 2-Player Easy 100% of the Chambers of Torment in 1:34 from Aleksander Osipov and Jaakko Alakopsa, beating some forgotten Swedes by 3 seconds. Then we have a frankly terrible 3-Player Easy 100% of Shub-Niggurath's Pit from Thomas Stubgaard, Michael Hudson and Mathias Thore in 0:51, one second faster than the EH2. Fortunately the way end.bsp works means we can get away with me dying, Stubgaard stopping playing for five seconds and Mandel wandering around aimlessly and firing one grenade (which misses) and _still_ get an ID record :) 50 might be worth trying for, though...

The e3m6 EH2 wasn't Alex's first or even second speed demo in over a year, though: these were the Easy 100% and Nightmare 100% of arma2 which he took from Daniel Lindberg and Justin Fleck by 6 and 5 seconds to record 1:20 and 2:09 respectively respectively respectively.

SDA newcomer Basil de Vries proved he has the skills to do more than just ID records by beating Thomas Bergendorff's Nightmare 100% of tspe by 6 seconds to get 1:13.

The two most recent actual SDA newcomers are also featured in this update: the inaccurately named Joshua Anthony improved Jaakko's Easy 100% of colony2 by nine seconds to 1:25 and Robert Axelsson's Easy Run of the irritating darkfst by 3 seconds to 2:39. Flavio Quadros meanwhile took on Fabian Kollakowski's old Easy 100% of elden1 and spanked off a five second improvement by recording 0:55.

Now, if you thought like me that the last update was "the jzblue update for the next few years" you would have joined me in being wrong: Mathias Thore applied some serious power bunnies to Sergi Cami's Easy Run of jzblue_4 and finally squeezed out an impressive 0:08, one second faster. There can't be many more seconds to shave on these tiny little maps, can there?

Finally we head to the comforting barbarism of the second episode of the rogue maps. Firstly, I realized that even on maps like r2m6 pentagrams are only for little girls and further improved my Nightmare Run by six seconds to 2:56. Joining me in the insanity club is Paul Davies who tackled the exceptionally hostile Nolan-owned r2m2, firstly improving the Easy Run by 3 seconds to get 1:01 and then somehow surviving the even more chaotic Nightmare Run in 1:11, 21 seconds faster.

Contest soon? You heard it here first.

Our first demo is yet another improvement to an Id level, but this one is slightly different in that it constitutes THREE (remember that number) firsts in SDA history: The first ever Id SP record from a Dutchman; the first Id SP record made using a trackball (no, seriously, he does); and the first Id SP record made by Basil de Vries. He took the Easy 100% of the Palace of Hate off of Joe by two seconds to 1:55. Those of you familiar with the Mighty Joe's demo will have guessed that some serious route mangleage was required to perform this feat. How long will this last once the big, bad boys catch a sniff of this route?

Next comes a trio of demos from yet another SDA newcomer. Flavio Quadros.

• He chose the snowy wastes of frostbite for his devirginisation, and turned in not just one, just two Jaakko shredding demos.
  • First was the Easy Run in 1:19, 2 seconds faster. Heeey. This guy has some skills...
  • Then he made a great first half of the Nightmare 100%, and a pretty poor second half. But hey, he's new. We'll cut him some slack. :-) This 7:27 is still 47 seconds faster.
• His other demo was a neat colony2 Nightmare Run in 0:15 beating Basil de Vries by 1 second. The difference? Not one but TWO enforcer boosts, the first one being about the smoothest 'forcer slap I've ever seen.

Trying to cover up your own ignorance by hacking a map to try to be clever and produce a demo that we wouldn't have accepted anyway out of principal. That's the kind of behaviour guaranteed to piss us off. But then coming clean about the problem and producing an excellent OPTIMUM demo in a perfectly legal fashion, such as improving the runthis Easy Run by one second to 0:06, makes us smile. Dmitry Dementjev, we smile upon you.

My favourite demo of this week comes from Mathias Thore. What is so special about this undrwrld Easy Run in 1:15 (one second faster than The Fleck)? The bunnying? The tricks? The route? No! It's the almost superhuman mouse control he uses to execute some unbelievably smooth turns while he's waiting for the lift at the beginning. How does he do that???!!??

There seems to have been a bit of a 3 theme going on so far in this update. This continues now with the first of, you guessed it, three improvements to JZblue levels. Nobody has touched these buggers in years, and then suddenly Mandel goes and does the jzblue_1 Easy Run in 0:11 (which, incidentally, is OPTIMUM), and then...

...Martin Selinus goes and improves the jzblue_2...

• ...Nightmare 100% to 0:16, ripping Joe's gizzard by 1 second, and then...
• ...the Nightmare Run to an OPTIMUM 0:10, beating Sergi by 1 second and coincidentally giving us our THIRD opti' of the update. See? Again with the 3.
• For this third record Marvin then improved his own Easy Run of pit by two seconds to 0:50. I've always loved the "pit" section of this map. Such a cool trick.

Back to Basil and a stormingly fast Nightmare 100% on that odd little map whippet. Quad, pent, RL, LG and SNG all within 0:22 seconds, plus Intermission Nail Kill, gave him a one second improvement over Ivan.

Our last piece of one-man love (not in the Stubgaard sense...) is a warehaus Easy Run in 0:56 by Jonathan Lenhardt, beating Basil by 3 seconds. Makes a nice change to get a demo from Navvy that isn't a trick demo. :-)

The age of the Mad Coop continues with a Chambers of Torment 5-Player Easy 100% in 0:58 by Thomas Stubgaard, Mathias Thore, Paul Davies, Martin Selinus and Basil de Vries. Think this look like fun? Like to have a go? Got an idea for some route? Come to #qdq and join the fun!

And finally, a nice little 2-Player Nightmare 100% on the weirdest of wierd little maps, zippie_sda. Orbs and LagDotCom give it some beats and exit in 0:26.

The End.

There are a few ways to get your own update here at SDA. The typical one is to make a truly amazing iD-demo. We simply cannot resist those.

The other, lesser known way is to ask for it. But for this method to work, you have to have something really special to show. Something unsane. Something incommon. Or something cooped.

Jaakko 'NahkahiiR' Alakopsa and Aleksander 'sidd' Osipov have something cooped to show this time. Over the past few weeks, these two speedrunners (and a few others) have been working secretly on a project which they call The Harvest of Secrets. Running in deathmatch mode but as a coop team, all secrets on all maps are visited. While, of course, going as fast as possible :)

So get downloading NOW! Get the movie HERE (dz) or HERE (zip). And enjoy!

So another LOTW is over, complete with some spectacular demos. The regular results look like this:

Easy Run	Easy 100%
1 Connor Fitzgerald 16.42898 2 Martin Selinus 18.97249 3 Jonathan Lenhardt 21.34869 4 Pif de Mestre 25.06734	1 Arturo García Lasca 29.44013 2 Paul Davies 35.17658 3 Michael Hudson 37.09963 4 Basil de Vries 37.33841 5 Jaakko Alakopsa 41.30261 6 Pif de Mestre 42.86386
Nightmare Run	Nightmare 100%
1 Basil de Vries 19.63335	1 Peter Horvath 27.69258 2 Basil de Vries 37.03907 3 Michael Hudson 42.80805 4 Jaakko Alakopsa 44.90298

So it's congratulations time for Connor Fitzgerald, Arturo García Lasca, Basil de Vries and Peter Horvath. Though Basil didn't have much competition for the NR :)

You can download everyone's best demos here. The winning demos have all been added to the tables and are available for beating :)

For this contest we also accepted cheated demos, and these saw more attention than I expected:

Cheated ER	Cheated EH
1 Arturo García Lasca 9.37267 2 Dmitry Dementjev 9.37884 3 Mathias Thore 11.67543 4 Pif de Mestre 14.54296	1 Arturo García Lasca 22.42604 2 Jaakko Alakopsa 32.28964
Cheated NR	Cheated NH
1 Dmitry Dementjev 9.85531	1 Arturo García Lasca 22.88417 2 Jaakko Alakopsa 30.95845

So Ken is better at cheating than Manslay, it turns out :) (though only by a massive half a frame for the easy run...).

Oh, and in case you missed it in the last update: Martin Selinus beat a SP ID record! Go read it again!

New tricks are very rare these days. Old tricks put to new uses are more common but still pretty rare. Extremely infrequent curiosities that couldn't possibly be used in a run being deliberately used in a run never, EVER happen. Until now. You know how roughly one in a million times when an ogre swings his chainsaw he mysteriously does a short distance teleport? You'd have to be insane to rely on that happening in order to improve a run, wouldn't you? Well Thomas Stubgaard IS insane! He used that very trick on the Easy Run of The Haunted Halls to improve his time by two seconds to 0:40. Just to show you how many things can go wrong with this run, quite apart from the ogre trick, he even made a blooper reel. Great fun.

By the way, if you've never seen the teleporting ogre phenomenon you might like to try the following, which is the easiest way I have found to force it to happen. Start gor1 on Nightmare (might need god mode on if you are of a weak or "Scandinavian" constitution). Go down the ramp, round the corner and up to the end of the wooden jetty so that you are stood in the water and the ogre is on the end of the jetty above you. Now stand close enough so that he tries to chainsaw you then step back out of range. If it behaves the same for you as it does for me then about 50% of the time he will disappear. Now go play hunt the ogre. :-)

The new year has only just begun and already we have our first new player. This is the kind of behaviour we approve of and hope that it will encourage all the other budding runners that are lurking on the shadows waiting for the opportune moment to show us their skills. Regulars in #qdq will be famialr with a guy called ziel how's been around for a few weeks asking all sorts of questions of anyone who'll listen. I think some of it must have sunk in because Joshua Anthony, as he's otherwise known, ravaged the colony2 Nightmare 100% in the grunt-slapping time of 2:23, beating Jaakko Alakopsa by 22 seconds.

Jaakko also lost a record this week to Paul Davies who has been working on the sm82 Easy Run for some time now. The result is a nice 3:29, 32 seconds faster. Not perfect but very mistake free for a 3 1/2 minute Run.

Of the last bunch of maps we added the heresp4 Nightmare 100% is the most glaring of the "oh come on, it's not that hard" gaps that remain. Basil de Vries made a 5:42 tablefiller that is so disgracefully bad (so bad that it looked like the kind of demo I used to send in about 6 years ago.*SHUDDER*) that I took a few minutes out of my hectic schedule to make a 4:22 just to stop Basil's demo from being an SDA record and thus preserve the purity of the archive. It's still not particularly good but 80 seconds faster and a lot less messy. No offense meant Basil.

Almost as mad as Stubby is Michael Hudson and his bizarre fascination with trying to improve Nolan's Runs of the Rogue episode 2 levels. Long and hard might sound attractive to some people, but to others it's just too much to handle. He's being trying for simply ages to improve the r2m6 Nightmare Run and finally make a 3:14, two seconds faster, yesterday. Being the plucky fucker he is he kept on trying today and with a little (extreme) luck and a better end tactic got the time right down to 3:02. In his own words, under 3 minutes has to be possible...

A nice little suprise for us this week was a demo from legendary twat Jonny Andersson. He improved his Easy 100% of rwa1 by one second to 0:50. Could easily have been two seconds but his grenade aiming is not what it once was.

Our final two single player demos this time round are the dam100 Nightmare 100% in 3:16 by Jaakko Alakopsa and the Easy Run of The Elder World in 3:07 by Martin Selinus. They should have been posted a couple of updates ago but due to a slight oversight by someone who shall remain nameless (okay, it was me) they were left out. Jaakko's demo has since been beaten but for the sake of completeness it's included in the all demos download. Marvin's demo hasn't, obviously -- that would mean someone other than Martin doing an ID episode Easy Run and that hasn't happened in nearly five years.

On to the coops, starting with the 2-Player demos. The first of which is a couple of Swedes beating a couple of Danes. Martin Selinus and Mathias Thore beat the Brothers Stubgaard's 2-Player Easy 100% of Hell's Atrium by four seconds to get 0:59. Pure class.

Next we have Jaakko Alakopsa and Michael Hudson on frostbite doing an Easy 100% tablefiller in 2:04 (SP time 2:33). What a bastard of a map this really is.

Cranking the number of players up to 3, we have Thomas Stubgaard, Paul Davies and Jaakko Alakopsa making short work of the the Grisly Grotto Nightmare 100% with a 1:39, 8 seconds faster than the 2-Player time.

Getting a little silly now. Four players-a-go-go for the Easy 100% of the Nameless City in 1:26 by Thomas Stubgaard, Paul Davies, Michael Hudson and Basil de Vries. Nice route planning, but you can't help but think that this needs one more player...

...and fuck my badger if Thomas Stubgaard, Paul Davies, Michael Hudson, Jaakko Alakopsa and Basil de Vries don't do exactly that and get a time of 1:15. Mad Coop season is definitely here again! WOOHOO!

Because I think it will be fun and Thomas "bum" Bergendorff isn't around to do it, I'd like to introduce you all to the second recordbot-assisted LOTW. The map is the newly released sm116_adamllis (func_ thread) and features a lot of explosives :)

As with last time, send your demos (named 116a_XXX.dem and dzipped) to the usual address (i.e. quake@). recordbot in #qdq will track the entries from each player in all categories (including coop, cheated, etc -- though naked and careful demos might be a bit tough :). For example recordbot: lotw er, recordbot: lotw er table, recordbot: lotw long and just recordbot: lotw should all do interesting things (once some demos have been submitted).

Again like last time, you have a week to get your effort in which means that demos will be accepted until 17:00 on Wednesday the 18th of January. After that the best demos will go into the tables and the map will be treated like all the others.

What do Connor Fitzgerald, Arturo Garcia Lasca and Thomas Stubgaard have in common? Remarkable 100% skills, blonde hair, blue eyes, Scandinavian heritage, rambling text files, single demo updates... some of these things are true.

In particular, this is an update devoted to one remarkable demo. Yes, boys and girls, Thomas "Chopper" Stubgaard has improved the Easy 100% of the Tomb of Terror by one second to get 0:49. Enjoy. He didn't :-)

First, a seasonal greeting. TeamSDA wishes all you Quake speedrunners a happy new year!

Quickly on to the 'new' demos. First up is one that's been sitting in our inbox for far too long. Using a devilish trick to dodge an ogre (which has a success rate that looks like 25% in the game code) Jozsef Szalontai managed to improve his own old nightmare run through Satan's Dark Delight by one second to 0:37. Impressive going.

The easy run department has only received one single demo since the last regular update, but the one we got certainly has nothing to be ashamed of. Tom 'powerbunnies done my way' Nguyen slashed through heresp4 like there's no tomorrow, beating Lodis by 3 seconds with this 0:47.

Richard 'powerbunnies done my way' Skidmore has made a couple of easy 100% demos since last time, for example this 4:34 on aard100, 1:02 faster than Jaakko. As another example, the 2:06 demo through dam100 deserves a special mention. It isn't often we get to see Morfans dash through a level with a funny name like this one. I mean, come on. Minimal Devastation is brilliant for a level name. And the improvement? It Also minimal when compared to the aard100 one: 7 seconds. Gonna fight back, Jaakko?

Daniel Magnusson is a #qdq regular, but one that seldom makes demos (or conversation for that matter...) If you don't even know who he is, I recommend you have a look at his EP1 NH which still stands solid against the attacks of the Danish. But anyway... To fill up his yearly quota, Daniel made and sent us a self-improvement on critters, namely a nightmare 100% in 0:51, one second faster than last time.

Other nightmare 100% demos have been made by Morfans and Jaakko Alakopsa. Having already done the easy 100%, Morfans had a quick go at the nightmare 100% on dam100 and got 2:57. It includes a telefrag that looks like luck but might be skill (???) and is 34 seconds faster than his own old demo. NahkahiiR had a go at colony2 and finished it in 2:45. I call it a tablefiller. Gonna take this one as well, Morfans?

From here and down, it's COOP FRENZY. The first demo is a bit of a shocker, and could maybe be called a COOP FRENCHY by a less successful comedian. It's the return of Pif and Luc de Mestre, two brothers who are well aware that two small shot- and nailguns kill a shambler much faster than one. Using this knowledge, they finished klz100b2 in 0:19 together on easy skill, leaving most of the monsters alive and kicking.

Martin Selinus teamed up with ME for a 2-player easy 100% through The Wind Tunnels. 5 seconds faster than Daniel and Jonny, our time is 0:57. Nice going, us.

Me and NahkahiiR plowed through the 2-player easy 100% on aard100 in 2:48, a time I've been told cut the current single player record time in half back in the day. However, that was before Morfans sent in his demo presented above.

Pif and Luc again. After having done the run on klz100b2, the 2-player easy 100% seemed like the only natural thing to do before the abrupt ending of 2005. 0:26 is their time, and not a single monster was left alive this time.

heresp4 got a 2-player easy 100% from Paul Davies and NahkahiiR. Finishing time is 1:21.

Thomas Stubgaard, power ID NH player and the wayward son of SDA, teamed up with NahkahiiR to spend some quality time together in the Chambers of Torment. First they spent 3:18, but when they discovered how much they liked the way it felt, they spent another 3:04. Later, they also made a couple of 2-player nightmare 100% demos on the level.

Last demo now. Team Basil 'fourth friend' de Vries - Lag.Com - NahkahiiR got together for a short bit of Tuesday afternoon coopery. The terrible outcome of that session is this 0:50 3-player easy 100% on Satan's Dark Delight.

And then it turned off. And that was it. Because, you see, SDA never really did exist...

No wait...

Oh. nothing.