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Yeah he's a right pain tbh when playing normally - way too quick! At least on Stroller he usually teleports away if you turn back for a second.

Thanks. The Spectres finally behaved nicely!

On mapsets like this I tend to do the speedruns after the playthrough so I have killed all these demons before. Here is me playing through this wad so far: czcams.com/play/PLMkJjb2eOmHYWl_Zm2hEA4dExuoS4VdTv.html For speedruns I tend to go for Pacifist/Stroller categories as I like to think of strategies to complete a map passively. And I probably suck at UV-Max tbh!

Yeah the starting area gets pretty crowded and you revisit it several times. The flying enemies do like to get in the way. On this map I was just going for an exit and leaving it at that as it was pretty painful to get through all of the sections.

Yeah a very cool change in design. As with blind runs, at least mine, the ammo management is always a bit of guesswork. My plasma usage wasn't brilliant but I got through it just about.

Yeah I feel you. At least the cave levels were not too mazey for the most part. I think long mazey cave maps are a big turn off to me. The last fight went ok. Not much cover from the Arch Vile but he went down petty quickly. The Mancs could have been meaner too but luckily they weren't.

Thanks. A few hundred attempts, most ending at the Red Key or Yellow Key room. So not loads of attempts in numbers, but a lot of time due to the hassle of getting through all of the Imps to the Red Key.

Thanks for the kind words Gosu. I was surprised this was a 41 as I had needed boosts to get under 42.20 on other runs. Possible boosts that I get from time to time are through the Yellow Door if you wake the Cacos early and sometimes the exit if you are lucky. Both occur on this other run but alas low damage ones: czcams.com/video/CWrxM0xLXgo/video.htmlfeature=shared&t=16 Also it is possible to get one at the start when weaving out of the starting room. And I did try letting the Revenant out at the top of the stairs to try to get homing missile boosts on the walk back on some runs but he was not very helpful and often killed me. The Caco boost through the Yellow door is the only fairly consistent and useful one though - a high damage roll pushing you into the teleporter can save 0.25s or so. To get 2 boosts and get an exit through all of the traffic seems very low odds, as you know you can easily be blocked any time from the Blue Key room onwards.

Thanks Andrea!

I think with the secrets in this wad they boil down to being on the automap, a texture change, a candle/torch clue or the reward being on show and the solution nearby. Similar to a lot of recent wads I guess. I struggle way more with wads of the 90s/00s as they can be illogical - like a linedef somewhere revealing something on the other side of the map or a random fake wall. I used to play a lot of adventure games so I'm always looking out for clues. This is the easiest wad I've played in a while for finding them, mainly due to the automap being very hint-heavy. I'll have a secret exit to hunt for in the next map - I mustn't forget that!

Thanks. One day I'll try again for the boost - but today is not that day :D

@@TheLegendaryEevee thanks. The castle episode is certainly giving off Scythe 2 vibes. Maps 9 and 11 especially for me. Good luck with Liminal Doom - I don't think I've played it before.

Spoiler alert - no succesful Pacifist runs for this episode :( And yes I have got to the end area of this one Pacifist a few times but there is a roaming Archie and Mancs there. Getting these monsters to target the Hell Knights just hasn't worked for me unfortunately. And they don't mobe enough to squeeze past them.

Yeah Map09 was my favourite map of this episode but this map's run was my favourite due to all of the chaos. The ghost Revenant was a real unexpected puzzle to deal with! First death and I doubt the Cyber was even targeting me - oh well!

Thanks. Yeah I'd guess attempts were in the low hundreds. With this map it was a time sink as one could spend time trying to get the Red Key and fail or even worse get to the Yellow Key and fail. And you've lost minutes for each attempt.

Oh yeah that would not be a fun run on Tyson! I did manage to Pacifist it though - a real puzzle!

Yes it's a great map. Nothing too bad in terms of traps. More monsters than previous maps but plenty of resources to more than make up for that. The Archies at the end gave me a little shock. That could have easily gone wrong but there was lots of cover. I really dig the aesthetic and layout of this one.

Yeah there's definitely a Scythe 2 feeling to this episode. And I do love my Scythe 2 so this episode is great for me.

Thx. If you like watching playthroughs of mapsets, then here are two others that are complete: - Autophagy: czcams.com/play/PLMkJjb2eOmHZWMuHDVMT_WFzYFL1QflMy.html - Deathless: czcams.com/play/PLMkJjb2eOmHa0TQcJLL1ncvcglATFHSqo.html

@@ChaingunChaCha Thanks, will watch those after!

Thanks - this one was a real fun and often frustratring puzzle!

@@ChaingunChaCha ya, doom specifically is especially annoying to speedrun lol.

Yep. This is that map. Video here: czcams.com/video/iKOMN98DzQA/video.htmlfeature=shared

Thanks. I was not expecting to beat the time, but more get some practice in and explain the many blockers alongside some potential boosts I'd thought of. Never imagined I'd do it "live" tbh knowing how much can go wrong! I checked back and noticed that I did not get a Caco boost and so it was generally just a smooth run. I may try this again sometime to try to get a good run with the boost included. Maybe even a boost from the Revenant. Maybe both if RNG is perfect!

@@ChaingunChaCha Go for a 41 ^^

Yes this was a fun map. It didn't feel threatening at all until the end room, possibly as I was pretty stacked with pickups. Plenty of fun secrets and a hectic fight at the end. Being able to kill the Archie so soon and then circle the remaining enemies really helped make that fight go well.

Yeah - lots of enemies in a pretty small space. At least the secret is easy and it's on the way to the switch. I was trying (and failing) this map on Pacifist and noticed that the monsters that teleport in at various stages all require you to have made a shot - so there could be some tactics there on when to let them in, which you'll need to do at soime point to release the Mancs.

Same thing happened to me. Just checked back to see if my comment got a reply and it's not there lol

Not sure why both your comments were missing. They were not put into moderation or anything. But it's happened to me on occasions too on other people's videos. Thanks for the info on the All Ghosts bug. I get it now. It seems like this map/run is prone to it. Appreciated.

@@ChaingunChaCha Yeah CZcams auto filters comments with links and doesn't show you them at all. Not in the studio, in your notifications, nothing lol. Sometimes you can view them by sorting comments by newest, but it doesn't work on this video for whatever reason

@@billabobyt That filter also triggers on many words. Im getting my comments deleted half the time and i put no links in it. Extremely annoying.

Thanks for explaining the CZcams filter Billa. That explains some comments I've left for others disappearing too.

doom cannot run on a 286

@@Retro_Bits_W It can when you press the turbo button that max the 8088 to1.75ghz

@@argonaut31 1.75ghz LMAO.

@@argonaut31 turbo button slows the cpu down (crazy i know) it most likely turned your 286 to 1.75mhz 16 bit. You need 32 bit for doom 286 is 16 bit it cannot play doom

@@Retro_Bits_W Maybe he meant 386. That's what I played Doom 1 on (unless I too am misremembering!)

Yeah it can easily become a slideshow. I can normally play it fine though at a high number of FPS. Every few runs it seems to do this though where all collisions are ignored. Not sure if it is just my setup, Nuts itself, or Doom. I'll post it in the "weird demos" to get some help.

Haha see this is kinda funny because old-school wisdom is all it takes. Back when we were rocking 386 and 486 processors on the original Doom, most of us would reduce the screen size to about 80%. It kept the game visible and playable, but really ramped up the speed. Same trick works here. Just dial back the resolution in GZDoom.

@@adamb89 I remember those days. I had to make the gameplay pretty tiny on my old PC. I think this issue is different from a performance one as it happens on smaller resolutions too, and Nuts runs fine usually for me even on 1440p144. Reading into it more I think I am triggering the "All Ghosts" bug. www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/114499-the-all-ghosts-glitch/ Which this bug happens it then leads to performance issues. I am just unsure how I am triggering it so consistently.

@@ChaingunChaCha Yup that's the Intercept Overflow, AKA All Ghost effect.

Thanks. This was far from a clean run but my only exit in the session. And it fills the table so happy enough.

Yeah I noticed that the Red Door doesn't seem to actually need the Red Key as it is not tagged properly. Bit of a shortcut!

Thanks. The only exit I managed and I skip the line! 🤦‍♂️

Thanks. This was my favourite of the two Strollers. You can easily be blocked at various points though by the random crowds that form. One could go across after grabbing the Red Key instead of going around but in my runs I lost too much health that way so couldn't exit. My Map01 run is a bit clunky honestly but actually not that easy to get an exit so I'll stick with it.

Yeah that last room could have easily been my first death. I was fortunate to be able to circle around the enemies so soon after they emerged. If I got stuck I'd probably have been ok given the health and armour and lots of cells, but you never know how it will go.

It's a great wad so far. Just perfect for me. And yep that was a sneaky place to hide a monster, especially an Arch Vile!

Lol this mapset does make the titles sound odd! Although one can exit in several ways whilst dead: - Dying but momentum goes over the exit line. (Sometimes an intentional gimmick.) - Icon of Sin is defeated and the map exits even if you die - Death exits occur in some Doom maps - Maybe more that I haven't though of off the top of my head

@@megasphere308 thanks. Yeah the Chainsaw could have worked better I guess. Thanks for the tip. I think I have a mindset of once you have the Berserk, that the Chainsaw is no use but I need to get out of that habit. I hate melee for Cacos as I'm worried about their bite.

Thanks for the thorough comment! This is not in any way a fair way to measure difficulty of a map, or even a hot-start in general. This is more of a casual look at the maps we've played many times but with the oddity of taking no action(s) that would affect the game. So that means staying still and seeing how long it takes to take damage and also die. (Doom has RNG for most actions but a fixed RNG table so it replays the same every time.) It's all a bit silly but it was born out of my challenge of trying to complete levels without taking any damage and then thinking about doing what no player does - stand still at the start. Player actions would change the outcome totally by advancing through the RNG table, thus affecting enemy actions. It would be like asking you opponent in chess to checkmate you as quickly as possible without you having your turns. And then when you do the same again but this time take your turns the opponent's actions are affected. But analysing the start of every level has brought out some funny RNG moments like in E1M2 in the previous video and Map01 in this video. Anyway back to your main point - it's not fair, as in a real game the player would be taking actions and affecting the play. If we're talking measuring the difficulty of hot-starts (and potentially maps in general) then you bring up some great measurements. I'd also add: - Enemy types (along with positions, damage output and likelihood to fire) - Health, armour and other pickups available (along with distances from the start and their value) - Weapons and ammo (along with distances from the start and their value) - RNG table sequence at start of play - Player skill and style (and how cautious they allow themselves to be before it gets silly) - Geometry of the level - I'm sure there are plenty more variables that come into it Overall though in my view it would only give a vague, general view of the difficulty as a lot of difficulty in Doom comes from organic situations like how enemies path, damage taken by particular shots (every shot is RNG damage) and many more things. Playing differently for just a second or so will change everything beyond that second. There are so many RNG checks in a second of play that it is hard to replay a level section exactly the same way. Firing your pistol just once can alter whether an enemy will hit you with their shot and also what damage it does. Doom difficulty is an interesting idea but hard to quantify. Edit: Added comparison to chess.

@@ChaingunChaCha Very interesting. I code social forums, and the idea of measuring doom difficulty almost has me tempted to code in some hidden utilities to allow users to submit their successes and failures and calculate those scores. Then you could measure. Of course you would have to find people interested in submitting that. The advantage might be for them that they could use it to find maps that hit their skill level exactly, 50% odds of success on a blind run. It really has me thinking about that if only to code it for fun. In fact to make the data valid, or at least consistent, you would have to only accept blind runs. But who knows. Maybe blind runs are fun if you are guaranteed a map that exactly hits your difficulty level. So you could also use it to get a random suggested map, make an attempt, and then report. You could then play random maps without getting instantly destroyed and also without having a map that is a snooze fest.

That seems like a better measure of difficulty compared to analysing the level properties. If you are focusing on the offical levels in Doom and Doom 2 then I think that the challenge would be to find people who have not yet played them. This idea would likely work better for all of the community made maps. The Doomworld forum also runs something interesting - a monthly "Ironman" competition where users play a community wad (set of maps) and see how far they can go without dying. And then they submit their score. It's all just for fun but that does in some way assess how difficult a set of maps is.

Yeah the Waste Tunnels remake was really good. It felt all geometrically identical but in a new style. Probably the best Doom 2 tribute map of the set, imo better looking than the original. I'm still unsure how that secret near the start is supposed to work. I went and checked the original and my memory was right so the secret must have a different trigger, but I can't find it! Oh well.

Thanks for dropping by. E3M5 was a tough one and I was happy to get the Rocket Jump 1st time on M6. I'll be checking out your playthroughs.

Yeah lots of cramped, awkward bits for Pacifist in general. I think it's more of a call back to the original iwad. Yeah the last Baron was just not wanting to come out of the exit room. That ended a few attempts. I thought I was done for in the end area but somehow managed to get an exit after shuffling around.