Quake done Quickest lite

It's such a rare occurrence to see one of the truly legendary id records being beaten, so rare that it took 22 years to beat this one!

Let's take a stroll down memory lane to where it all started. The first run to grace the e4m2 Nightmare 100% tables clocked in at a whopping 2:35 (video link) and it was recorded all the way back in June of 1997 by Nolan 'Radix' Pflug. As is evident in his demo, Nolan played with only his keyboard back then. Yikes! It's also pretty evident that e4m2 doesn't lend itself to too many route choices to pick from (well, Peter Horvath proved that theory wrong, but we'll get to that in a minute). It's basically the intended route that id Software had in mind.

A little less than a year later, in March of 1998, Justin 'optic' Fleck improved Nolan's run by 25 seconds to end up with 2:10 (video link). The route stayed the same, but execution compared to Nolan's demo is much better. Justin worked the Quad better and actually aimed in the direction the monsters were in =). According to Justin's text file, he felt it was a pretty easy demo to do...

In January of 1999, Peter Horvath enters the fray. I think it's fair to say that Peter wasn't in his prime yet at that point, but he still managed to improve Justin's run by 28 seconds to get a 1:42 (video link). He came up with a brilliant idea to reach one the secrets. Remember, this was before all the crazy tricks in Quake that we're all so accustomed to nowadays had been invented, or even thought possible. If my memory serves me correct, Peter was the first to use an Ogre-grenadejump in a demo. Pretty mind-boggling at the time, but not something you'd be overly impressed by these days. For historic purposes though, this new trick opened up many new routes on the original id maps, not just e4m2. As for the run itself, Peter does a fair job all the way through. This was also before bunnyhopping was a thing for most runners, so surely his demo would've been faster had he used that technique.

Now, almost two years later, Peter had worked hard on sharpening his skillset. He submitted one amazing demo after the other, but this 1:17 (video link) stood (and still stands) out as one of the best ever. The route planning, the execution, the tenacity, was way beyond what anyone else were doing at the time. Sure, runners like Markus Taipale and Ilkka Kurkela were also at the top of the food chain then, but Peter's demos just had that "something extra" to them. They were wild and highly creative. Just watch his recammed (video link) of the run to see how spectacular it really is. It was just unheard of at the time to pull off so many crazy tricks in a 100% demo.

Just think about it, only four demos (now five) have ever been submitted on e4m2 (again a testiment to how good Peter's demo is) until Muty suddenly popped up out of nowhere 22 years later and recorded this 1:16 (video link). Muty's demo is the perfect display of super smooth movement, modern day powerbunnies, and "almost" perfect excecution. I dare say almost because he had a little minuscule encounter with a Knight claiming it lost him 0.6 seconds. I seriously doubt it cost him that much, but even if, it doesn't take away from the fact that this demo is one of the best Quake demos ever produced. He took Peter's already perfect run and made it even better.

Bonus: See the end of this (video link) for Muty's own reaction to breaking Peter's record. This is how it feels to join the legends. Pure joy and amazement!

I honestly don't feel I can do the run proper justice with my own words, so I asked Muty a few questions on Discord. Feel free to join us on the Quake Speedrunning Discord server.

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How long did you spend working on the demo?
1) I spent a week grinding it and roughly 40 hours of complete focus on the run. I feel like it should have taken longer than that but seems like this is becoming a habit of mine.

What are your own thoughts on Peter's demo?
2) I don't even know where to start. To think someone would be able to create a demo like this in the early 2000s is beyond me. Unstable framerates, ballmouse, no mousepad, CRT monitor that makes your eyes hurt after 3 hours of usage. And to create a route that stood the test of time to this very day. Simply astonishing.

How many attempts did you have that were almost there?
3) I have had countless attempts where I was half a second or even a full second ahead coming out of the SK teleporter, but only about 3-4 of them had the necessary kill count to go with it. I simply had to prioritise time over making sure I get the kills. Usually at the end I would also have trouble with either lack of ammo, DKs blocking my path, failing to dance around the vore missiles or the boost itself.

Seeing as you're relatively new on the scene, I'm curious as to how you got involved with Quake?
4) I submitted my first full game Quake run to the speedrun.com leaderboards in Spring of 2020, back then I didn't have the experience, skills, nor the naive belief I could pull off something miraculous like this, even with all my movement experience in games like Half-Life, CS 1.6 and Adrenaline Gamer.

Wednesday, December 14th 2022 by Justin Fleck

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