Tuesday, 18th November by NahkahiiR
Elders and youngsters in action - 14:47
Thomas Stubgaard has returned to The Elder God Shrine! He won't leave monsters alone (because he is one big Danish monster himself) and finished the Nightmare 100% in 3:46, beating himself by one second, again. Totally astonishing control throughout the map! Fiend kills can't get much cleaner than this. MUST DOWNLOAD
It's awesome that new routes can still be found on the original maps. And this one is a HUGE timesaver. I ran through The Nameless City, killing every monster and finding every secret on Nightmare skill, and got a 4:03, one full minute faster than Thomas Stubgaard. Not as optimal looking as Stubby's e4m3 NH, but nevertheless another MUST DOWNLOAD.
The only custom episode demo was done by Basil de Vries. His adventures in d6 Nightmare Run include a new trick: double ogre grenadejump + fiend push!!! After this trick he took a noob way to finish the map so the final time is 0:54, beating David Spickermann by 4 seconds.
Then to the custom map demos:
Saturday, 25th October by NahkahiiR
Id cooked in many ways - 12:55
Chefs at SDA don't serve you any salads this time but go straight to the main dish, 5 id records! The master of space clearing, Thomas Stubgaard amazes us how fast zombies can be telefragged in The Tomb of Terror. Easy 100% fell down to 7:37, 33 seconds faster than his own previous demo. Why not do the same in Nightmare? Hell yeah! Again Thomas shows how to bore monsters to death with this neat 8:58, 25 seconds faster than himself.
Thomas tightens his grip of the total ownage of The Haunted Halls by a Nightmare 100%. A total of 2 seconds were shaved off by this maniac. I believe Stubby has to keep lights on at night because the darkness is afraid of his axe. The new time stands at 1:52.
The fourth id record by the same man in this update was recorded on The Elder God Shrine. Because of the nature of map demos on it are always very entertaining. Why did iD think that player would pass the fiend spawning place 8 times? The Lord of Nightmare 100%'s squeezed 1 second off of his previous demo, ending at 3:47 thus equalling the Qd100qst demo. Is this the second Nightmare 100% on an id map to be optimized?
Jaakko Alakopsa continued his endeavours in The Pain Maze, challenging the spawny map again. By turning the route upside down, he was 2 seconds faster than Connor Fitzgerald. The new time of the Easy 100% is now 1:37.
Okay, then to the new maps, a large bunch of tablefillers were done in the following order:
That's all folks, keep more demos coming!Thursday, 25th September by dex
Quake: Reloaded - 22:55
Saturday, 13th September by dex
Get me 9 milligrams of demos, stat! - 1:45
It seems as if everyone took a break from speedrunning lately - very few demos in the inbox, and consequently, little reason to update. I actually considered "mailbox doesn't work right" as an explanation for the low number of demos. While I doubt that's the case, if you sent in a demo and it didn't end up in this update, give me a nod on IRC and resend the demo, alright?
Now, to the update itself. 9 demos over the period of several weeks is definitely not formidable, but if the old saying is to be believed, 'quality, not quantity'. And you know what? Old sayings seem to have a tendency to be true. I mean, sure, we only have 9 demos... but they're good. Really good. Really original too. Keeping with the age old tradition, the most important matters first...
...an ID demo! That's right, another Nightmare 100% was blown away. The map that was graced with this demo is The Pain Maze. What might seem slightly unusual is the person doing that - it's not Stubgaard. The insane Finnish runner Jaakko Alakopsa found a few cool tricks, conjured a little bit of magic and actually spent more than 30 minutes making a demo. The result is a great 2:04, beating Stubby by 14 seconds, which should tell you how much quality has been squeezed into the demo. MUST DOWNLOAD, if only for the fact it's the most important demo in the first update for over a month. It's really worth watching.
The one person that seems untouched by the coma that struck SDA is Basil de Vries. Yes, the misspelling and missubmitting master is definitely still on track. He took up Runner's Delight, with unrestricted bunnies (as if to say 'I can bunny!'). First he took on rd1m2b Nightmare Run, which he finished in 39 seconds. There was no run on that place till he tried, but the restricted bunny time was 0:51. Afterwards, he decided to give rd1m3b a spin on Easy difficulty. He killed all monsters and took all secrets in 1:33. Again, no run on that category yet, but the restricted bunny time is 1:44. Those demos are quite entertaining. Orber also submitted a mara on some episode or other, but it was slower than the run already in place.
Time for some digs01 running, d6's Nightmare Run by Laurent Mertens has been improved by David Spickermann. Contrary to what he'd like you to believe, he doesn't suck nearly as much as he likes to say he does. This 7 second improvement for a total time of 58 seconds should be enough to prove that. Also, that is the longest link to a demo I have ever made ;).
That's about it for the single player demos. The rest of the update is coops, and so it happens that 2 people living in New Zealand have decided to make a mini-speedcon with a lot of drinking thrown into the mix. Tim Doherty and Michael Hudson decided their life was too funny and cool and they tried some rogue episode running to remind them of all the bad stuff. r1m7 is a bearable map, so they tried that first, getting a 2-Player Easy 100% in 1:52. That beats an old effort by Radix and Morfans by 6 seconds. After doing this and realising what they have just played, they apparently developed a death wish. And they did 2 COOP MARAS OF ROGUE!! Holy shit!
First went doe1, presumably because it doesn't involve running r2m1. 2-Player Easy 100% again. And since nobody was mad enough to try something as insane as a coop mara of rogue, it's a tablefiller. The single player time is 20 minutes and then some, and the new, fresh and dandy time for the coop category is 14:54. After doing this, the two of them decided to do a mara that makes me doubt their mental health, doe2. That means running r2m1, folks! They again did a 2-Player Easy 100%, which is not surprising considering running a Nightmare 100% coop mara of this episode would be almost certain death. Anyway, those two individuals have finished this evil episode in 21:10, which is a tablefiller (single player time 23:38). Regrettably, Tim didn't send in any comments, but hey, they don't let people have internet connections in a mental institute. Those two are mad, and in the good sense of the word. Hats off! You should download this, if only to see them tackle something that hard to do :).
All of the demos in this update so far were on an episode, and this one's no exception. Terra is a great episode for sure, and terra1 is a very fun map. So, Jaakko Alakopsa, Paul Davies and Me teamed up for some random 3-Player Easy 100% action. We ended up using the 'wait 27 eternities for a few leftover monsters to die' trick, which is a little more entertaining to watch than the wait in a single player demo, thanks to our silly chatter. Oh yeah, the time is 0:49 (2 player time is 1 minute flat).
Lastly, as if to make an update with 2 rogue maras and an id record even more mad than it is, we have a madcoop! And it's mad alright. It's a 6-Player Nightmare 100% of The Palace of Hate, the first madcoop that large in 7 years. I told you, quality stuff! The team consisting of Jaakko Alakopsa, Basil de Vries, Paul Davies, Michael Hudson, Karol Urbanski and David Spickermann finished this map 14 seconds faster than 5 players, in 1:21. There's a bunch of good shooting, a few more or less intentional boosts, a lot of monster killing, some silly axe to ass action, some clever route planning, and as with every madcoop so diverse, a lot of lag (and not only of the Lag.Com kind). Download this, it's worth it!
Till next time. I hope I won't need to wait that long to update again.
Sunday, 3rd August by dex & Co.
420 coop erryday - 23:28
Saturday, 19th July by dex
"Small" update - 3:35
Let's start with Single Player demos. There are only five of them, and two belong to our gibberish spouting master Basil de Vries. Both are made on the lovely dazsp2c map. Basil decided to take both 100% records from Nolan Pflug, and his Easy 100% is 5 seconds faster than the old record - 1:20. Not content with taking down a bunch of monsters on Easy, he changed the skill variable to a more demanding '3', and then did a Nightmare 100% in one hundred and twelve seconds, whopping 20 seconds faster than Nolan. Nicely done, Orbs.
Another of the SP demos is a creation by the gibberish apprentice, Rutger Baks. His map and category of choice was the Easy 100% on dm1m2. Killing every enemy and finding every secret there took him 1:36, which is 3 seconds faster than Justin Fleck. However, it still wasn't good enough for him, and surely enough he improved it further, by 2 seconds, to achieve the final time of 1:34. Quite a great run!
The last SP demo is a courtesy of Laurent Mertens. He did a Nightmare 100% on ssnw, which took him 1 minute and 17 seconds. It's a self-improvement by 6 seconds, and a good watch as well.
That ends the 'lonely' production of this update; the rest of it is coops. And I'm very happy to announce that they aren't entirely done by the 'old crew'. We have a newbie on board, his name is Mikko Ylätalo and he's Nahk's buddy. I tell you, it's a great thing to get a new, fresh runner these days, and it's an even better thing to have such a good player enter the show. His demos show a lot of skill and potential, and I hope he stays for a while. If an old saying is to be believed, a picture is worth a thousand words. So, here comes a huge collection of 72000 words per second, by Jaakko Alakopsa and Mikko Ylätalo:
That was some good running, right? Let's hope Mikko sticks around, because he's great!
The next two demos are a creation by the team consisting of Rutger Baks and Basil de Vries. This duo decided to beat two de Mestre coops. The first one is a deja 2-player Easy 100% in 0:53, which is 4 seconds faster than the old run by Pif and Luc. The second demo is also a 2-player Easy 100%, this time on the sewer map ssnw. They finish in 0:32, which is 14 seconds faster than the coop by Pif and Luc.
A few days before doing those they decided to let Laurent Mertens tag along for the ride. Still on ssnw, the team consisting of Basil, Rutger and Laurent did a 3-player Easy 100% tablefiller in 0:33. Turned out to be beaten by the 2-player run-through later, which is a shame. :)
As an icing on the cake, here comes the maddest of madcoops. This is not only because of the number of people involved - an impressive 5 players - but also because of the people involved themselves. It's hard to find a group less mentally stable than the collective of Jaakko Alakopsa, Basil de Vries, Rutger Baks, Michael Hudson and Me. We also wanted Mikko for this one, but unfortunately technical problems made him drop out :(. Still, this 5-player Easy 100% on Wind Tunnels in 45 seconds is the first madcoop done by over 4 runners since 2006. It's also a tablefiller - the 3-player time is 0:49.
And with that, I bid you good night. Keep the inbox full.
Wednesday, 9th July by NahkahiiR
Coop overflow - 23:21
Important matters first, Thomas Stubgaard seems to be the only human recording iD single player demos these days. At least he knows how to be entertaining and amazes us with a 4 second improvement to his own Nightmare 100% record on Satan's Dark Delight. The new time stands at 1:20. MUST DOWNLOAD!!!
The mad Dane didn't stop there. He tightens the grip of his Total Ownage of The Haunted Halls by recording a Nightmare Run through the hellish corridors filled by bloody ogres. Skipping the fiend he saves 4 seconds again to get a 0:48. MUST DOWNLOAD!!!
The only episode run of this update was done by Basil de Vries. He knows the depths of dm2sp like his own pockets and finished the Nightmare 100% in 1:01, beating himself by 14 seconds.
Laurent Mertens set a new record time on cjhsp1. The Easy 100% was an empty hole in the tables until Laurent came to challenge all the monsters with a 8:28. For a time, that was good. Then I decided to submit my older but faster demo that wasn't even meant to end up here. Cleaning the map of monsters took 7 minutes, beating Laurent by 88 seconds. The time doesn't seem optimal as both of us had trouble finding the silver door. :)
The other one of active Dutchies, Rutger Baks found a way to Run fast through czg_moon. It wasn't such a Nightmare to him because the time he got is 5 seconds faster than what Daniel Andersson spent long time ago. 0:32 stands as the new record.
Then we got almost ancient demo from Flavio Quadros. He saw that Rutger had conquered the Nightmare Run of deja. Flavio fought back with a 0:31, beating Rutger by 1 second.
Nightmare Runs have been popular recently. Rutger does another one of them in good style on elden1 in 0:13, beating Fabian Kollakowski's almost 9 years old record by 1 second.
Last month a drunken Pole filled the Nightmare 100% hole of sm135_ankh. Some time later another - but sober Pole, Damian Kulot shaved 36 seconds off of Karol Urbanski's demo to get a 1:27. That wasn't the end of action on Damian's map. Basil gave monsters a thorough beating and exited the level in 1:02, 25 seconds faster than Damian.
Laurent thought his own Nightmare 100% of ssnw wasn't good enough so he went and recorded a better demo - 1:23, 22 seconds faster than himself.
Monday, 23rd June by Aspokala
Little pack of demos - 21:32
The "Demo Machine" title of this update goes to Dmitry Demetjev with 4 demos! Great rocket launcher usage in all of them:
Nothing can separate Poles and beer in the summer. Karol Urbanski knew that while exploring Sm135_Ankh after many many beers. The Nightmare 100% endeavour was finished in 123 seconds, new to the tables. Holy cow, that was entertaining.
The last single player demo in this update belongs to Laurent Mertens. The commando came to irc, acquired the info of empty holes, quit irc and recorded a Nightmare 100% on Ssnw. 1:45 later he became the proud owner of the new (and crappy) tablefiller.
One coop was done and it's an id coop by two Scandinavians: Thomas Stubgaard and Mathias Thore. After a little drink in Mandel's end, The Haunted Halls didn't feel too frightening so it was time to record the Easy Run in 0:38, beating Thomas & Mads-Peter Stubgaard by 1 second.
That's all now, thanks for sending demos and keep them coming.
Friday, 30th May by dex
Ordinary routine - 0:15
And so, the marine team disembarks from the APC and starts the search for the elusive Stubgaard's gang.
- I think I heard something!
- Loose formation, team! From where, Collins?
- Around there - said Collins, as he pointed towards extensive foliage a few metres away from them. And then, the marines saw a figure quickly running away! The commander instantly recognised the threat - it was a wanted criminal, Tom Nguyen. He started escaping frantically, going into the little known parts of the jungle...
The place he chose for his escape was called cjhsp1. To the horror of his pursuers, the place was filled with demonic monsters. It seemed as if the superstitions of the folk were true in the end. However, Tom didn't really mind monsters, in fact they helped him get away faster. It was quite an Easy Run for him, and in 1:47 he was already too far away for the marines to catch him. The commander seemed to recall info about a great adventurer Laurent Mertens exploring this place as much as 44 seconds longer. Without any trace of 'sshplur' to be found, the commander decided to continue on with the mission.
Minutes later, they noticed yet another shadowy figure in the dark. Without much consideration, they started pursuing Rutger Baks, known for his fast legs and quick escape routes. This time, his route of choice was in a place very familiar to everyone, filling the marine commander with a feeling of deja vu. The place was literally crawling with monster spawns straight from Nightmares, but Rutger Ran without any regard for that. In as little as 0:32 (8 seconds faster than Laurent the Adventurer), he entered a weird temple. Upon entering it and noticing the floor is above his head, the commander recognised he was inside Ogitrev temple. Rutger again Ran away and avoided all kinds of Nightmare demons, being the first person to come through the temple unscathed, in 0:39. After this display of skill, he entered a drained sewer called ssnw. He Ran the same exact way, evading Nightmares all the time. After 0:23, he lost the marine team chasing him. (Laurent explored the place 1 second slower)
The commander wanted to divide his team into search parties. However, before he could even start, he saw another man running in the same place, the same way as Rutger earlier. This man was none other than Jaakko Alakopsa, the criminal who made running away his artform. Rutger did not stand the comparison with him - Jaakko managed to run through that sewer in 0:20, 3 seconds faster. The path lead him to another complex sewer called sewage. He decided to play around this place extensively. He finished the Easy Run-away in as little as 1:53. Then he again Ran as fast as possible, except with more monsters around! 2:40 was the amount of time this took him. Then, he decided to kill each and every one of those Nightmares, 100% of them. After 5:28, the sewer seemed clear, and yet enemies appeared again, in smaller quantities. Killing 100% of them was way too Easy for Jaakko, who did it in 3:44 (3, 7, 56 and 10 seconds faster than another known explorer, Thomas Bergendorff).
The marine team was clearly not up to par with him, and only the commander and Collins were still on Jaakko's track. He was just too fast for them, and he got bored with running around in dirty sewage, so he decided to move on to classier environment. aow was the place he picked for his endeavours. First he did a bit of Nightmare Running there, and was the first known individual to survive that! It took him just 15 seconds. He liked it so much he actually risked getting caught, and got through it again, this time killing 100% of the Easy to kill monsters, in 0:44.
So close to getting caught, he decided it was time to move on. First, he went through desout place, hoping he could shake off the pursuers there. However, he got a bit carried away and killed each and every one of the Nightmarish monsters, which took him 1:41, 6 seconds faster than the last individual to cross here, Marlo Galinski. This wasn't nearly enough to leave Collins and his commander behind. Jaakko moved on through the already visited cjhsp1. Again, he took time killing all the monsters as hard to beat as in Nightmares, thinking that the two people chasing him didn't know the place. In 9:01, the monsters were eradicated, but to Jaakko's surprise his enemies were still on his tail. So, he crossed the land of xnq1002. The enemies here were very Easy to kill, so Jaakko again decided to kill all of them, and check all of the secrets out. 18 seconds faster than the great explorer Laurent Mertens, he finished in 3:12. He still failed to shake off his enemies.
He then entered a very weird temple, and both the pursuers had a feeling that they saw this place today already. Deja vu. Jaakko killed all the monsters from Nightmares on his way, and it seemed as if his 2:10 would be unbeatable, and his pursuers would have to accept defeat...
Then, Collins spoke: - He's making fun of us!
- I'm going after him alone! - the commander replied.
- You have no hope of catching him in your old age, sir!
- I hate official titles, I told you! Call me Richard Skidmore, damnit!
The commander then started a frantic chase, killing all the monsters that mysteriously reappeared in the meantime. And, to both Jaakko's and Collins' amazement, he was insanely fast: 2:02, 8 seconds faster. Thanks to that, he managed to catch the master of running away, Jaakko Alakopsa!
Now, he just needs to transport Jaakko to prison...
Wednesday, 14h May by Aspokala
Stolen flock of sheep - 11:24
Zzzz... for half an hour.
*YAAAWNNN* "Oh where am I, oh yeah, I fell asleep for a while. But... where are the sheep?!! I shouldn't have fallen asleep! I must go look where they could have gone." He sees somebody sitting on a bridge nearby and decides to go ask him. When he approaches the bridge, he's startled to see that the fellow is not human. It is a big, old gnome. He asks carefully: "Excuse me, have you seen any sheep wandering nearby? I fell asleep under a tree and when I woke up, all of them were gone." The gnome looked at him and replied: "I stole them! I need to sacrifice to the gods and those sheep were good for that purpose." The farmer was shocked but pulled himself together and asked: "Is there anything else that you could sacrifice? These sheep are my life." The gnome sank into its thoughts, sighed and said: "There is one other way, the magical herbs that grow in distant parts of this land. I am too old to travel and fight against monsters that eat those herbs. I give you one day to find them before I have to do the sacrifice."
The farmer started thinking: "I could help that gnome to find herbs. I will people from town for some monster hunting!"
He found the gang of seven brave runners: Michael Hudson, Jaakko Alakopsa, Laurent Mertens, Rutger Baks, Karol Urbanski, Pif de Mestre and Luc de Mestre.
The bunch arrives to a strange cave, called Zer1m7. The first herbalist Michael Hudson takes the job and Runs straight to the Nightmarish fortress ahead from the cave. He finds a rocket laucher and does precise boosts across large open areas, finishing in 2:26 (beating himself by 16 seconds). The herb Michael found is a catnip.
The second place they pass is Bast, a church filled with ugly monsters. Jaakko Alakopsa jumps into the water, waits for zombies to walk away from the church roof and does an Easy 100% through the place. He finds a basilica from the back of the church but monsters gather around him. He has to run a Nightmare 100%. All that running back and forth makes him tired, and this second run takes much longer. His times are 3:11 and 6:35 (beating Thomas Stubgaard by 19 seconds and -98 seconds).
They approach a large mansion called Cjhsp1. Laurent Mertens shows up and Easily Runs performing nice grenade & rocket jumps inside the huge place. At 2:31 (tablefiller) he jumps through an exit and finds himself from a hidden place: Deja. It looks familiar and without problems Laurent does a Nightmare Run in 40 seconds! (tablefiller). He walks back with some cinnamon.
Still near mountains, the group sees a high tower: Ftfs100b. Jaakko finds the tower familiar and cleans the tower of monsters. The Nightmare 100% is completed in 1:16 (beating himself by 16 seconds). From the top he brings a bag of black pepper.
As Rutger Baks can't wait for others and does Easy and Nightmare Runs through Hellvill, boosting around with grenades in fast style - 0:24 and 0:25 (beating Thomas Bergendorff by 1 second in both runs).
After the mountain has been crossed, they see some kind of research center, Ogitrev, which appears to study gravity. Karol Urbanski likes the idea of low gravity and goes flying like a bird, meanwhile doing an Easy 100% in 1:21 (tablefiller). Once all monsters are down or gibbed, he catches some chamomile from the ground and runs back to his friends.
In the same facility there seems to be a torrid sewage system, "Ssnw" where a nettle is having foothold. Laurent finds a rocket launcher from the bottom of the sewage and fights his way through the area with many rocket jumps finishing in 24 seconds (tablefiller). The road from that place leads to another canyon, better known as Xnq1002. It is said that a strong guardian protects a blue lotus flower which has magical powers. Laurent did not have enough of running around in the sewage system so he goes and completes an Easy 100%, killing the guardian and capturing the herb in 3:30 (beating himself by 26 seconds).
It's almost time for going back to the gnome but there are still two places that must be visited. The first one of them is D6, where chamomile grows in large quantities. While others are already tired - Pif de Mestre and Luc de Mestre - the famous brothers team up to do an Easy 100% and Pif takes a long time collecting chamomile at the exit of the area and finally finishes in 1:37 (tablefiller, single player time 2:11). The last monster hiding place is Watrways where Pif and Luc continue their teamwork. First they do an Easy 100% thinking that the journey is finally over and while looking for the herb of this place, monsters organize again but that's a futile attempt trying to destroy de Mestre clan so they run back to the action and do a Nightmare 100%. Co-operation resulted as very quick clearings of the area: 17 and 26 seconds (tablefillers, single player times 0:25 and 0:33)! Finally they find the last herb - peppermint.
The group of brave runners and the farmer return to the bridge where the gnome is waiting. "You were so quick" says the gnome and continues "Thank you for the herbs. Our gods prefer them instead of sheep but as I am so old, I can't travel that far and your sheep were so easy to steal for the sacrifice. Come to my house, I reward you with lots of wine that you humans praise so much." The group of tired runners accepted the reward and started drinking and singing so loud that the sheep ran away scared of the noise and the farmer had hard time bringing them back home.
Wednesday, 23rd April by dex
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur - 18:50
Right, now that I've tried to sound like an intelligent bastard and failed miserably, time for the second issue. We understand self-improvements in the same update. They are cool. Two demos for the price of one, fine by me. But, you could at least consider restraining yourself from sending us your every successful try. When 3 demos on the same map and same category arrive in the space of an hour, it gets a bit annoying and boring to watch all those demos. Fortunately, the author of that happy spam in our mailbox has told me to only add the last demo from the submission spam. That throws away 6 demos from the update as well.
Even with those demos out for the count, the collection of demos is adequately sized - 16. Most of them are made by the new "Demo machine", Rutger Baks.
The only episode single player demo is however a courtesy of someone else, namely Michael Hudson. Still going around improving stuff on Zerstörer , and still on the same old zer1m7 level. This time he improved the Easy Run by 10 seconds, to achieve a final time of 2:20. It's a self improvement, and it's definitely a nice record. We want more!
tcentral, the relatively fresh map, is still receiving a few demos from time to time. The guy to tackle the Easy Run by Jaakko Alakopsa is Laurent Mertens. The improvement totals exactly 1 second, for a final time of 1:38. The other map Laurent took in his crosshairs was xnq1002. The hole he filled was Easy 100%, the time is 3:56. He also sent in an NH, but unfortunately that couldn't be added to the archive.
And why is that? Well, it was submitted after Jaakko Alakopsa sent in his own, faster runthrough. The time for this one is 4:20, a very nice demo indeed. Not far from the EH, either.
Jaakko has also made a demo on the lovely chain3 map. It's a self improvement of 28 seconds, which gives us a time equal to 25 seconds. The text file may confuse you, but I assure you: Jaakko in fact does NOT see demos where there are none (even though he is probably mentally ill in other respects ;)). The demo he has beaten was simply recorded with the wrong stats, so that's why it's out of the update.
And now, for the part by the new 'demo machine', also known as Rutger Baks. All of the demos left in this update are fully or partially his work. You've gotta hand it to him, that's quite a lot of demo stuff :). Since I'm a lazy bum, I won't go into details of all the demos from this awesome flood.
To finish it up, 2 coops (both with Rutger Baks in, duh). In the first one, he got Jaakko Alakopsa to join the fun. They picked d7 as the theatre of their Quake warfare. The 2-Player Easy 100% in 1:32 thus conceived is a tablefiller, with the Single Player time set at 1:58. Those two then got Paul Davies into the mix, changed the map to heresp1 and went to a more forgiving Easy skill. The 3-player Easy Run previously held by Pif, Luc and Andre de Mestre was done 2 seconds faster, finishing in 5 seconds. Quite fast :).
That's all, I guess. As you can see, the new maps are relatively untouched, so we're waiting and craving for new demos. Till next time!
Tuesday, 22nd April by Aspokala
Mo-mo-mo-more maps! - 11:11
Monday, 14th April by Aspokala & friends
Man in fire - 16:35
Nightmare Run in 12:58 by Jaakko, tablefiller.
Aspokala: Good enough as a tablefiller.
dex: Higher difficulty seems to be of no hinderance to Jaakko whatsoever.
mwh: wow, didn't expect to see this hole filled, certainly not by such a good demo
Nightmare Run in 0:25 by Rutger, beating Arturo Garcia Lasca by 1 second.
Aspokala: Even better than the ER although slightly slower.
dex: Same as above, with additional monsters for a nice, spicy taste!
mwh: i suspect a lot of dying went into making this record
Tuesday, 1st April by dex
These aren't the updates you're looking for - 18:06
How about this, then? iD SP demo! That's right! No joke, the map and category that received an improvement is Azure Agony, Nightmare 100%. Is that enough to convince you we're rolling like usual, or even better? No? The improvement total is 33 seconds. But wait, there's even more to it! The mysterious submitter is none other than...
*drumroll*
Thomas Stubgaard! I'm sure most of you don't believe me, and consider this just an awful prank. Well, 2 minutes and 43 seconds of butter smooth monster killing should be enough to prove you wrong. I missed this incredible smoothness, I really have. Here's hoping the glorious return is not just a one time occurence, since I'm eager to see more. The mad Dane still hasn't lost his edge. Oh yeah, it's the first iD SP of the year.
With this update's kicker behind us, time to take care of other demos, starting with Michael Hudson's influence on the Zerstörer episode. As Aspokala said in the last update, it's the weirdest episode we have on SDA, so it is no surprise it's also my favourite ;). Michael continued playing zer1m7, although he changed the categories he decided to improve. He tackled the Easy 100% first, previously held by Nolan Pflug. Without even watching the earlier record, he got a 6 second improvement (6:46). Then, he decided to stop it from sucking, watched the previous demo, made a few changes to the route and finished the running with a further 1 minute, 1 second improvement, for a final time of 5:45. Between those two, he also improved the Nightmare 100% record. It was previously in the hands of Nolan as well, and it got an improvement of 20 seconds (7:28). Then, Michael applied the magic from EH and improved it yet again, this time only by 36 seconds, which gives us the final time of 6:52. With those records, Michael earns his third Total Ownage. Really good work!
Not the end of the episode stuff, by any chance. The next episode tackled was jzblue, and the person to tackle it was our gibberish master Basil de Vries. He started with a neat marathon, Nightmare 100% one, specifically. He finished in 1:51, half a minute faster than Marlo Galinski. But, since he equalised a record on jzblue_1 during the marathon, he decided to improve the Nightmare 100% there next. He started with a shameless improvement of one second over Flavio Quadros (0:33). Then, a few days later he picked up the map again and got further three seconds of improvement, making the final time 0:30. Pretty nice. It's interesting that Orbs surpassed himself on the amount of mistakes with submission [2 empty e-mails; then an e-mail with both the marathon and the 0:33; then an e-mail which claimed a 0:32 demo was attached, and finally the 0:30], but by now it'd be more worthy of noting if he actually submitted everything right ;).
To top off the singleplayer portion of the update, we have a few non-episode demos. Rutger Baks still doesn't give pcgwhse a rest: Easy 100% gets a 6 second self improvement to yield 1:32, and Nightmare 100% is a retaking of the record from the hands of Richard Skidmore. The time is 1:49, 10 seconds faster. Another TO in this update, nicely done!
The last singleplayer demo is a work by Rickard Axelsson, on the recently added map known as tigcat02. The previous Nightmare Run by Laurent Mertens wasn't quite what Rickard liked, so he improved it by no more and no less than 7 seconds. 0:33 is quite a bit better.
Coops! There's quite a few, and they don't stop on 2 players, either. We also have a few iD demos hidden within, so let's get to it!
2-player Easy 100% on The Pain Maze first. It's a result of a cooperation between Jaakko Alakopsa and Basil de Vries. Thanks to a nice route change, they manage to squeeze 15 seconds out of the earlier record, held by Thomas Stubgaard and Mads-Peter Stubgaard. The time they ended with is 1:08. Very nicely done!
The rest of 2-player demos gets here thanks to Basil de Vries and Rutger Baks. Together, they have first did two very short runs on dmc1m4. Short, really short. Both the 2-player Easy Run and the 2-player Nightmare Run are 3 seconds. Both are also cheap way, and both are a 1 second improvement over de Mestres. The next map they took as the target of their happy endeavours was czg03. Here, they made a tablefiller in the 2-player Easy 100% with 2:59 on the clock (sp time 4:11).
Another map they improved a demo on was tcentral. The previous 2-player Easy Run by Pif and Luc de Mestre was done 5 seconds faster by the typo-team. 1:04 it is. Then they decided that 2 players is a bit too little for nice running, and they decided to bring Jaakko Alakopsa aboard. This team continued hammering tcentral - 3-player Easy Run got a tablefiller which lasts 53 seconds. The 2-player time was printed in this paragraph already, but in case you've got a brain like a sieve, it's 1:04. The 3-player Easy 100% also received a tablefiller - 1:19. The 2-player time for this one is 1:58.
And finally, as an icing on the "April Fool's Update cake" of SDA, there's an iD madcoop by Jaakko Alakopsa, Paul Davies and Basil de Vries. The Underearth 3-player Nightmare 100% by those fellows was finished in mere 91 seconds (2-player time 1:51). Watch it, it's good.
Let's hope I didn't make an April Fool of myself and the update doesn't contain (too many) mistakes :). Till next time, and keep the awesomely high level of demos up!
Wednesday, 26th March by Aspokala
A little change - 13:22
Saturday, 22nd March by Aspokala
Ending of the Championship! - 21:25
Thursday, 6th March by Aspokala
Must learn to count - 23:43
We haven't seen a new single player demo on the weirdest Quake episode - Zerstörer since 2004. Michael Hudson was weird enough to try zer1m7 and managed to complete the Easy Run in 2:30, beating Nolan Pflug's very old record by 4 seconds. Then he abandoned the noob skill and selected the Nightmare Run which ended as 2:42, 2 seconds faster than Basil de Vries.
Another custom episode Nightmare Run came from Rutger Baks. He performed some beautiful rocketjumps in d5 and ate a lavaball for a supper. That burning feeling in his mouth speeded him to a 0:28, beating Jaakko Alakopsa by 1 second.
Then moving on to the newest maps. On dethtrap I got bored of staring the empty tables and recorded an Easy 100% tablefiller, finishing in 2:47.
Pcgwhse was once again the most popular map in the single player front. Rutger took responsibility of improving the Run times, first doing it on Easy in 0:59, beating the SDA grand daddy Richard Skidmore by 4 seconds. Half an hour later he managed to beat Morfans' Nightmare Run by 7 seconds to get a slick 0:58. Immediately after that he thought that the Easy Run can't be slower and ran it in 56 seconds, which is now looking good.
Richard Skidmore didn't let Rutger get the total ownage back such easily and recorded a Nightmare 100% in 1:59, beating the Dutchie by 16 seconds.
Laurent Mertens did not let the Nightmare Run of tcentral rot in the tables and improved himself by full 19 seconds to a 1:45.
Coops! All of them feature Rutger Baks.
At first he dragged me along to the corridors of desout. The demo was done while dex was writing the update last week so it didn't make it to that pack of demos. The time we got is 1:05, beating Carl Tholin and Johan Nilsson by 8 seconds. Our second demo was recorded on pcgwhse where we produced a tablefiller in 1:14 (single player time 1:38).
The second guy he paired with was Paul Davies. As their adventures in loupus1 weren't enough last week, they did an Easy 100% tablefiller in 0:36 thus equalling the ER2 time (single player time 0:42).
The last but not least team mate is Basil de Vries. The Dutchies travelled through tigcat02, being the proud players to record both Easy and Nightmare 100% tablefillers on that map, finishing in 0:37 and 0:44 (single player times 0:44 and 1:23).
The grenade counter bug which crashed the contest map has been fixed. If your route requires difficult grenadejumps, make sure to download the updated version of the map from the contest page.
Monday, 3rd March by NahkahiiR
Teddython begins - 16:57
Saturday, 1st March by dex
The Quake continues! - 15:05
Paul Davies has disappeared from this world for quite a long time. Many wondered where his bad demos went, until finally he resurfaced a few days back. And he brought us rogue demos. Suffering from what I call 'the everlasting self-improvement' syndrome, he takes down r2m2's Easy Run by a further second to 0:56. Who knows, maybe it'll become a good record if he submits a few more.. ;) Joking aside, the demo is a very nice watch, and it's not the end of Lag.Com's influence in this update. It is the end of his single-player influence, though.
Another player unseen in a long time is closing in to his 10th anniversary of Quake speedrunning. In celebration, he has submitted a demo to us. And, by the powers, it's a good demo. Really. 104 seconds faster than Thomas Bergendorff speak for themselves. The not-so-mysterious submitter is Carl Tholin, and the demo he improves is the Nightmare 100% of czg03. 166 monsters are slaughtered and 7 secrets are found in 5 minutes and 54 seconds. I'd love to see him push through the barrier of 100 records (he has 97 now) before his anniversary truly kicks in.
Not the end of the glorious returns yet! The next player hasn't submitted any demos since June 2006, until finally caving in to the Quaking urge yesterday. Rickard Axelsson decided to improve the Easy 100% on hotel. He manages to do it one second faster than the previous holder Adam Lewandowski, finishing with 37 seconds displayed on the clock. Very nice return, and we want more! :).
The rest of the single player goodness in this update is devoted to two of the recently added maps. The first in line is pcgwhse. Most categories saw an improvement here: Richard Skidmore still hasn't forgotten about us and likes to surprise us with a demo or two every now and then. He used some magic to improve both Runs, which were previously held by Rutger Baks - the one on Easy is finished 3 seconds earlier, for a time of 1:03, and the more fitting skill 3 one is lowered by as much as 13 seconds for a total of 1:06. Great work!
Rutger Baks really got to work on the Easy 100%. He submitted two self-improvements: the first one is 7 seconds faster than his earlier endeavours (1:40), and another one pushes the time 2 seconds further, down to a nice 1:38. It is an entertaining watch!
And we finally get to the map that received the most submissions in the last days. The sheer number of demos on tcentral we found in our inbox can only be matched by the number of grenade launchers, rocket launchers and nailguns on that map. The Easy Run is an effort by Jaakko Alakopsa, a 13 second improvement over what Flavio Quadros managed to get earlier. The time is 1:39.
The rest of the SP demos on this map are from Laurent Mertens, who gets more and more active with each update. You should all follow his example and submit as many demos as you can. Here are his submissions:
And finally, coop time. There were quite a few, and it doesn't stop on just two players either.. but it's where it starts. Generally, there were two coop making teams in this update. The first one consisted of Pif de Mestre and Luc de Mestre. They did some justice to the blessed map that is gonna lead us into promised land, hellchepsout. They got the 2-player Easy 100% done in 1:28. The single player time is 2 minutes and two seconds. As you can see, the second player really helps a lot here.
Another records they have made are 100%'s on the popular tcentral map. The 2-Player Easy one gets tablefilling action in 1:58 (single player time 3:34), and the 2-Player Nightmare 100% is finished in 2:20 (single player time 4:04). I like how the players practically don't see each other for the duration of the demo, and yet everything clicks nicely. De Mestres have submitted one more coop, but unfortunately it had a mistake in a submission and didn't beat the earlier demo :(.
The most recent demo in this update is from Jaakko Alakopsa and Rutger Baks. 2-Player Easy 100% on xnq1002 didn't have to beat anything, since there's no single player and no coop demo they'd have to beat. Fortunately, they went for something better than a first success demo, and the result is this 2:31 tablefiller. I really like the part from NahkahiiR, and Rutger didn't play too shabby either. Nice work!
The first map to get a coop treatment from a part of the second team is loupus1. The submitters here are Paul Davies and Rutger Baks. They teamed up for a 2-player Easy Run tablefiller, in 0:36. The single player time is 0:40.
Then, Jaakko Alakopsa decided to tag along, and he was shamelessly chosen for hosting. This resulted in the first of the madcoops in today's update, d1 3-player run in 0:08. The single-player time is exactly 9 seconds, the small improvement comes from additional boosts.
And finally, we get to the last demo, which could be considered something of a moment to be recorded in modern history. Not only it is the first 4-player madcoop in almost 15 months, but it also is the first coop in which I have had reasonable ping (!) and managed to take some significant part. The team consisting of NahkahiiR, Rutger, me and Lag.Com decided to do a 4-player Easy 100% on d1. We finished the level in 20 seconds, thanks to abusing quite a bit of luck based things. We even dared to have me execute an intermission kill, a worthwhile sight in any madcoop. Let's hope the number of players will still grow rapidly :P
That was quite a lengthy update, aye? See you all next time I happen to be doing the update. And I hope that moment will come fast, so submit demos! There still are a bunch of holes to fill...
Saturday, 23rd February by NahkahiiR
More than a myriad of demos - 12:15
10000 DEMOS!
Who would have believed that in the beginning? Anyway, more demos keep coming and only God knows how many there will be in the end. Now sit comfortably, prepare some drinks and snacks to watch all 21 demos of this update.
It's nice to see a rogue demo once in a while. Paul Davies continues improving his Easy Run of r2m2 with a nice 0:57, 2 seconds faster than himself. I don't understand how anyone can speedrun this level (I have never completed it) but it seems to be possible.
The rest of single player demos were done on recently added maps:
That was all about single player demos. First coops of the year are offered to us by the famous de Mestre clan. The tablefilling Run performance by Pif de Mestre and Luc de Mestre started in sm28 as a 0:44 on both skills, Easy and Nightmare. At this point Raymond de Mestre joined the funny action to record some 0:27's again on Easy and Nightmare skills. Nice boosting all around. :)
Tcentral turns out to be well balanced for coops. Pif and Luc recorded an entertaining Easy Run through the weird teleporter complex in 1:09 and then switched to the Nightmare skill to get a 1:11, both tablefillers.
The number of demos in the last contest rose to 25. Check out the final results from here. Sorry for updating this late, you can blame me. :)
Wednesday, 13th February by NahkahiiR
Contest results - 21:36
Congratulations to the winners:
After all the confusion, go view the results.
Friday, 1st February by dex (2nd update)
Oops - 15:00
Friday, 1st February by dex
Confusement is the spice of life - 2:02
As I said, you got to work on the new maps, although there are still several tablefillers to be had. Let's start with my personal favourite, hellchepsout! The only run on this gem of a map is an effort by Flavio Quadros, who gets quite a portion of this update. The run in question is the old fashioned Easy Run, done in 0:45, a tablefiller. Who will bless this incredible map with more demos upstanding to said maps' insane quality?
One map that got quite a treatment was dethtrap. The Easy Run saw the comeback of Rutger Baks with a 0:15. Then, it got improved to a nicer 0:12 by Flavio (told you he has quite a part in this update). I was thinking about labelling it optimal, but I have to check it up yet, and I think 11 is achievable, albeit very hard to get. In any case, the other demo on this map is again by Rutger, who decided to change the skill to number 3 and do a Nightmare Run in 15 seconds.
There's also the need to note that after Rutger was done with his ER 0:15, we have received an 0:15 from a somewhat anonymous runner going by the nickname zzzKOTzzz. Of course, we can't add it to the list of demos, but it would be unfair to not mention the runner in the update just because he was late with his submission. Here you will find his demo. It's also included in the big dzip under the name 'dethtrap_015.dz'. Too bad you were a little late, mate, hope you get better luck next time. We await your submissions with open arms :).
With dethtrap behind us, let's move to the most popular new map in the last days: loupus1. This one got an almost unhealthy number of demos, and as if that weren't enough, most of them didn't include a textfile, and they weren't even dzipped. I had to improvise text-files out of the demos myself and manage to avoid being utterly confused by the sheer number of so closely named demos :). And here they are:
Other maps weren't nearly as popular. The small but sweet tigcat02 map has seen two tablefilling submissions by Flavio Quadros. The first one is a 0:27 Easy Run with a nice boost at the end. The second one is a bit of monster killing during the 44 seconds this Easy 100% lasts.
The longest map in the entire update, xnq1002, wasn't exactly the one with the biggest income of demos. In fact, the only one, by Flavio Quadros again, is an Easy Run in 2:39. There's quite a lot of room to bunny there, I liked the demo.
Finally, the last demo on a brand new map is a tcentral demo by... you guessed it, Flavio Quadros. And again, you guessed it, it's an Easy Run. The time for it is 1:52. The movement is quite slick in this demo. Also the map seems like a wallhug heaven.
That's all for your endeavors for new maps. But, there's still quite a few demos on the older maps. So, let's get going... the good old terra2 gets a nice treatment from our very own Jaakko Alakopsa. And boy, it's a great treatment indeed. With a very nice trick, Jaakko accomplishes an Easy Run in 0:29, 7 seconds faster than Mathias Thore himself! That's quite a demo. But NahkahiiR also did a Nightmare Run in the same time, forcing me to realise that he indeed stopped making moderate quality demos in limited amounts of time with a regularity of a machine gun and started owning instead. Nice work!
The Master of Mistakes, also known as Richard Skidmore, has yet again surprised me with an entertaining demo. It's black1 Nightmare 100%, this time in 3:44, 11 seconds faster than himself. Now get it even lower. :P
And lastly, Flavio Quadros has improved the quite recent sm26_necros2 Nightmare 100% by Pif de Mestre, by no more and no less than 29 seconds. The new time is 0:55, which is a pretty nice demo with quite a few good ideas.
And that's it for tonight, ladies and gentlemen. And remember: there's no glory in store for demo number 10001...
Tuesday, 29th January by NahkahiiR
Updatus Surprisus - 20:30
Wednesday, 23rd January by NahkahiiR
Rock and roll - 20:35
I can't wait to see new tablefillers, let the party begin. :)
Friday, 18th January by dex & NahkahiiR
Coop-update without coops - 00:42
Our hunger for new demos increases as the milepost of 10000 demos approaches.