Running A Tightrope: DOOM's Most Precarious Speedrun

Doom is known for its fast-paced action and incredibly smooth movement. The design of the original Doom showcased this perfectly and was a masterclass in how to build levels. When Doom 2 came out, the developers were becoming much more ambitious and innovative in the way they formulated. stages, this often led to amazing levels that are considered some of the best in the franchise, but sometimes resulted in downright frustrating experiences and seems to go completely against the spirit of the game. Doom 2 hosts one level in particular that was al

most

universally hated by players and that level is the abyss that provides some of the slowest and

most

annoying sections the boy has ever had to deal with, we are forced to crawl across platforms tiny, just a few pixels wide, moving slowly and painfully along beams where a fall. will result in certain death for casual players, this was hell, but for speed racers it produced an exciting challenge that has resulted in some of the most respected speed races in its history.

In this video we will go back and watch the sprinters master this dangerous terrain slowly but surely. Over the course of many years, we'll also learn a couple of advanced Doom speed

running

techniques along the way, techniques I didn't cover in my previous Doom video, so sit back and relax as we take a look at some of the Doom races. more precise speed. Doom story, as with most Doom

speedrun

s, we will focus on the ultraviolence speed category, this is played on the ultraviolence difficulty level and our only goal is to finish the level as quickly as possible to familiarize ourselves with the level we are going to go to.

The way back to the beginning, the oldest known official record on Chasm was set on February 28, 1996, a time of 1 minute and 58 seconds, the player was called Demon Lord and Demon Lord was instrumental in advancing the strategies in This level in the First phase of this

speedrun

Demon Lord collects the rocket launcher and the shotgun, as well as some ammo. It is important to note that in these individual level speedruns we always start with the pistol, we just cannot carry weapons from previous maps. It's actually possible to avoid taking this path through the massive new pool, but that requires getting a blue keycard which is much slower to mitigate some of this damage.

Demon Lord grabs the radiation protection suit. Now we come to the first section of the balance beam, these spokes. they are extremely small and unpleasantly difficult to get through quickly, you can see how careful Demon Lord was when moving forward, he actually takes a slight detour here to grab more ammo, taking the time to collect ammo slows him down but makes the rest of the level much more long. Easier, this is the second section of the balance beam that leads to the end of the level, but to open the door on the other side we must first collect the red key card and a nearby teleportal takes us to the blue room where the access card.

In the room, we must press a series of buttons that lower the platforms and eventually grant access to the key. The room is full of demons and every time a button is pressed to lower the platform, more demons are released upon our return, there are a lot of lost souls in it. wait, this is where the weapons and ammunition that were collected earlier when we originally teleported here for the first time come into play. These monsters started appearing in the level, so once we are done with the blue room, everyone has arrived and is ready for Our return because it takes a long time to get through this section.

Demon Lord made sure that all enemies were dead before even attempting to cross over to the other side once. There are only a few more doors to go through before we reach the exit. this run was very safe and took no risks, it wouldn't take long for optimizations to be found, three weeks later Demon Lord lowered the record to 147, the first improvement was skipping the shotgun at the beginning, the second was bypassing the ammo cache However, in the first balance beam section, this ended up making the ending much more complicated and he eventually had to resort to using the weak gun to dispatch the floating skulls near the end.

Two weeks later, the Cayuga sprinter lowered the record substantially to 1 minute and 30 seconds. You can see that he seemed a little more comfortable during the first section of the balance beam and crossed it much faster than Demon Lord before he also used a different strategy near the end of the level instead of heading to the blue room to get the With the red key card, you would first get to the other side of the toxic pool. Upon reaching the other side, a platform is activated that rises, allowing free movement throughout the area. Now this required you to wait a few seconds while the platform rose, but it also allowed you to completely ignore the lost souls as you crossed the pool early before they became too much of a problem.

A very common theme in Doom is that the faster you go, the easier the levels become. Going slowly means more time for monsters to deal damage. and as speedrunners learn to clear stages faster, the need for direct combat with the elevated platform actually decreases. Kovac would simply run straight for the exit once he returned from the blue room upon learning of the new final strategy that the Demon Lord got to work on. By lowering the record, it only took three days to lower the record to 117. Now that you could ignore the lost souls at the end of the stage, it meant that you really only needed to deal with the demons in the blue room in response to this.

He noticed that Demon Lord started collecting much less ammo in the first phase of the race, four days later, Kuruvi counterattacked with a new record of his own. He realized that the runners were finishing the level with a lot of health, so there was really no point in getting it. The radiation protection suit while crossing the huge new pool, skipping this suit only costs about fifteen to twenty percent health, so it didn't even seem like much of a risk to avoid grabbing it. Also seen in the final toxic pools are some glimpses of mastery over the narrow paths.

One of the beautiful traditions of

doom

speed

running

is the attachment of text files to each demo containing information about the race and also any comments from the players, It's amazing to have such a rich history preserved in these archives and since 1/10 was the record finish KY had in this scenario I thought we should take a look at some of the comments he wrote. I had some luck with lost souls. They need to look at the wall instead of attacking you. This effect showed up best on my 130. It wasn't. Being able to do it with less than 10 rockets and killing the first four pigs with three rockets isn't that bad, so four rockets for the three remaining pigs, two for the two pigs on the other side, and maybe one for the pig that teleports out, but it always seems that there is to be a space and so that you don't get confused, the pigs are a different name for the demons that we see in the blue room, they can also be called pinkies, you can see in their comments which mentions a space in the demons near the exit teleportal.

In the Blue Room which will allow the runner to pass without the use of rockets, Cry specifically mentions that he felt he needed at least 10 rockets to deal with the demons, this shows that thought was definitely being given to collecting less ammo, which In Ultimately, the fastest record of 110 would only last days, on April 18. Demon Lord lowered the record to 108 over a two-month period in early 1996. Demon Lord and Chi had lowered the record from 156 to 108, but then in June, the speedrunner anthe would revolutionize the way the level was played, all comes from another category that speedrunners like to compete in, called pacifist, this is also played on the ultra violence difficulty setting, but there is one major restriction: you cannot shoot or directly damage enemies.

Either way, sometimes not shooting the demons doesn't really change the overall strategy and will make a significant difference in how quickly a level can be completed, but other times simply finishing the level can be a huge challenge, e.g. only one person has done it. completing map 2 under pacifist rules took until 2017 to complete and the race took over 20 minutes in the abyss case, it actually turns out that trying to beat the level without killing monsters is significantly faster while the demons in the Blue rooms pose some problems, in fact it is possible to navigate them without firing a single shot, you just need to know where to run and be very fast, ignoring the monsters meant that racers could avoid getting the rocket launcher at the start of the stage, saving a lot.

Time On June 1, 1996, Anthe took the record under 1 minute for the first time with a 58-second unarmed run. He needed to spend a little time avoiding demons in the blue room, but overall he was much faster. Instead of trying to kill them two weeks later, Demon Lord would achieve a 56 second run throughout this entire progression. We've seen some pretty big strategic developments, but still those little walkways were a big obstacle, the runners were still very uncomfortable and timid crossing them. dangerous sections in the attached text file for his 56 second run Demon Lord just said this almost drove me crazy.

I hate those damn ledges, the 56 second record would hold strong for the better part of a year in May 1997 and then be optimized again. strategy and lower the record by achieving a time of 48 seconds previously we had seen the runners cross the final toxic pool before heading to the Blue Room to raise the platform, now he headed to the Blue Room first and simply waits for the floating skulls It wouldn't be much of a problem when he returned after a year of practice, players were starting to become much more skilled at navigating the narrow ledges, which ultimately made avoiding enemies much easier, but it did take some Good luck passing without problems.

Anthe was very happy with this record and in his notes he reflected on whether Daniel would be able to beat it again. I'm not sure 1 or 2 seconds faster is possible. I think I ran with wet feet in the last part, it seems that although Anthes slightly underestimated Demon Lord here, since in June 1997, just under two months later, Demon Lord broke the record, but not just by one or two seconds, but by 3 seconds, which reduced the record to 45 and just so you can get back a little. More familiar with how the strategy is progressing, we'll take a look at this race in its entirety.

It's here where we start to see moments that would in some ways resemble more modern

doom

speedrunning techniques, such as backtracking to build momentum through gates. They were being implemented and for the first time we see legitimate strafing runs being used on some of the thicker ledges where previously racers just looked straight ahead to make it easier to balance, strafing is of course much faster, but also much harder in these wolf forms than Demon Lords 45 would make. It will be the last time he held the record at Chasm, but it seems he had finally made peace with those halls.

In his comments, he reflected on his journey. The secret is to really love those shelves. And me, the fight at this level started a long time ago. I think the first results were about two minutes ago, Cuvee and I had an internal battle and the best times we achieved back then were 120. I think at the time we thought we were smart to just grab the rocket launcher and then run towards the exit but then came a T leaving everything behind and reaching the exit alone with the gun so we all followed him and I made a recording of 56 about a year ago I thought it would be the best recording of this level now that he made anthe A new e incredible 48 race, however this was before I started loving the ledges, all of them and they let me pass with a time of 45 on January 9, 1998, the legendary speedrunner from Doom lowered the world record again chasm to 44.

Thomas Pilger, this is the same person who hit the first nine on the hanger that we discussed in my previous Doom video. The strategy used in Thomas' 44 was essentially the same with slightly better execution. There was a fairly significant error when trying to open the red key. card gate, costing Pilger about a second overall, although the race was starting to get pretty smooth, in theory the level still had plenty of room to lower the record, but to do so, the speedrunnersThey would have to take a lot more risk when crossing those ledges. However, it would not be a task for Thomas Pilger and in the comments he confessed that he really hates those shelves.

April of '98 was when we first saw a sprinter really start to push the limits of the catwalks. The ESCO client surpassed the previous races. water with a 41 on its run, you can clearly see that a big jump was made on Traverse on the second section of the ledge, the 41 even had obvious imperfections in other parts of the run, confirming that it could be lowered and in May 98 s go did it. just that and he managed a 40 second run even without any strategy change. ESCO was able to lower the record by 4 seconds simply by implementing better movement, but the level still had more to give.

By 1999, skills had improved considerably and in June the runner Hennings toed. he took the record to 39. This was the only record hand he would make in Chasm and it would stand for 2 months. In August 1999, a monster would awaken and that monster's name was Sadler. Satellite was the player that would really take Chasm into the modern. In August he lowered the record to 38. The race seemed almost perfect and he said he himself doubted his ability to do better in his comments. He wondered if this was possible to overcome. I really do not know. I definitely didn't spend too much on it.

Many hours to get this one, but there was one key moment, except that no racer to date had attempted to implement the ledges on the first section of the balance beam are ridiculously thin and not a single player had been able to successfully implement the strafing run. here even though the records were beginning to get incredibly optimized, the runners still walk quite cautiously along this walkway which, of course, is until said escape finally took the plunge and said goodbye to playing it safe, it ended up giving its fruits, since on November 18, 1999, he said that Lowe achieved this race after he said God of the Lowood state.

He was already done by then, talking about 38 being optimal, it was too cowardly. to try to strafe running on those first ledges this time I practiced a lot, I said the lows 37 were amazing but again it wasn't perfect, he even said in his attached comments that he was a little shaky on those ledges in the starting room but he was pretty nervous after I saw how well I got through the Blue Room, I somehow managed to stay in it and finish, damn, my heart almost stopped when I got stuck in that exit door, but seeing 37 was a relief.

I think 36 is impossible, but maybe I'm being stupid again. who knows, do it if you think you can do it low, he referred to Ledger slightly slow near the start and a jam at the final gate, while 37 was good, it seemed like it was possible to get 36, he stated that he thought the law was No It's possible, but as history ended up showing, he seemed to change his mind pretty quickly over the next year. He said Lowe would continue to play for the perfect run. He could see it in his mind, but unfortunately he would need the highest kill speed of all time.

Fate dictated that said charge would not be the first to achieve the legendary 36, not because he was not the best chasm runner as he certainly was, but because, as always happens in speedrunning, a new strategy was found, the new discovery takes advantage of a technique called wall running in my previous video I mentioned that walls and doors will destroy momentum and this is usually true, but it actually turns out that in specific circumstances, as long as you go fast enough and run at the right angle , it is possible to gain speed by running along a wall.

The reason this happens is quite technical and to be honest I've read the explanation several times and it's still over my head, but the important thing is that it works. Looking at this example, you would think that Wall Run would be used a lot, but there are a couple of key reasons why it is rarely used in Dhoom speedrunning. The first is that it can only be used in the north or east directions. The second is that you actually lose momentum upon initially entering. Doom Run's levels are often extremely complex, missing long hallways and passages that would make wall running a viable option.

However, the abyss is an exception where wall running can be useful for a very specific reason in December 2000 Doom Runners. Adam H and Adam W were discussing the possibility of jumping the gap between the x' teleportal and the platform near the end of the stage, this would completely avoid the final section of the ledge. It was already known that the jump was possible using the rocket jump technique. we will definitely cover that in a future video, but since the runners no longer picked up the rocket launcher, this was obviously not an option, the space is just barely too wide to jump, but it turns out that when using wall run, you can just build up speed enough to reach the other side on December 21, 2000.

Adam H successfully implemented the strategy and was the first person to complete the chasm in 36 seconds, the race was decent, but since the jump saved at least two seconds, it did not it was. quite up to the previous 37 level said that Lowe had already spent a lot of time trying to get 36 before this new strategy was found and that he was committed to his goal even though the new technique was faster, had a vision and was He became attached to her. If he would continue playing the abyss without the new jump on June 25, 2002, the satellite succeeded in its mission.

He achieved what many believed to be the greatest Doom speedrun of all time. In his comments, he said it, so once again I was wrong once. I decided to play with him. I focused only on this map to finish something I started a long time ago when Adam H and W discovered the new trick it didn't affect my way of thinking, even with the new trick I stayed on my path and that was getting 36 first, how difficult It was, I don't need to explain everything, the numbers speak for themselves, the final number of thirty-seven that I did was 430, my lowest 37 was of course thirty-seven point zero zero, of which I got two. days before 36, but I had a lot of thirty seven point zero two, the first one I got over a year ago, so you'll see how much I had to work to break just a few frames, in the end I got 36 point eight five and something.

That completely surprises me. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that I could achieve something like this. The race was perfect exactly how I always imagined 36 should look three days later, on June 28, Lowe said he used the new strategy to lower the record. up to 34, this is where the record remained until 2004, most of the execution seemed pretty optimal, so it seemed like the only way to improve the time would be to find a strategic optimization. In January 2004, Sedlar found a much faster way to carry out the execution. world jump previously, the racers had backtracked quite a bit to gain enough speed to cross the jump, it's a pretty precise thing to navigate, as the teleport czar got in the way, making it difficult to do the wall run easily, but unfortunately it was realized that the jump could be done with a much lower acceleration if the sr 50 was used.

If you haven't seen my previous video and aren't sure what the sr 50 is, it's basically a slightly faster way but much harder to strafe to get. a full understanding of how sr 50 works and why it's difficult, definitely go and watch my video on the twenty year old Doom record that was recently broken and you'll get a much better appreciation once Doom Guy has returned from the Blue Room there . There is enough room to backtrack slightly into the teleportal before it activates. If the angle is perfect and SR 50 is used, the jump can be performed, but it is much more difficult to execute successfully if done correctly.

The jump now would save three. seconds versus using the ledges on January 23, 2004 he said bass used the new jump to lower the record to 33 and this is where the record remained for a long time the race was already seemingly flawless there were no obvious flaws so how could you? lowers the record well. I just mentioned the technique that would do it and that is that SR 50 chasm is a long and precise sprint, which means that no player had yet implemented the technique in two races, you already had to worry about navigating the ledges successfully, no . being blocked by demons in the Blue Room and doing the ridiculously accurate wall jump, adding more complications was too much for most, however, there was one speedrunner who was up to the task and that was looper.

I talked about looper and his run with four shockblasts to be the first to have eight seconds on the hanger in my last Doom video which was relatively recent and took place between 2017 and 2019, but Looper has been around for many years. In 2011, Looper decided to aim for the abyss on July 8 and was able to achieve a 30 2.94 in the non-monster category, most of the race would be identical to the UV speed category, but much better lines would be possible in the Blue Room without monsters to block the looper. He could use SR 50 on the entire Blue Room, which is simply not possible, normally Looper realized that if he scraped the bottom of the canyon and used every known time-saving technique 32, it would be barely feasible on Ultra Violet in the Blue Room, would incorporate two new optimizations, the first takes advantage of a mechanic called elastic collision, the way collisions work in it is really complex and it is beyond the scope of this video to explain it, but to put it very simply, looper he would intentionally crash into the first switch when he activated it, by doing so, there was a small chance. that he would bounce off the wall and conserve 50% of his momentum in the opposite direction.

The second optimization was taking advantage of a mechanism that allows the Dark Guide to conserve momentum when he strafing running between an enemy's goblin and a diagonal wall. Before runners would just do it. wait for them to lower the platform housing the red card so they can pick it up, but Looper would actually use a nearby demon and dash between it and the platform, by doing this he could continue attacking, run towards the red card and start moving as soon as since the platform would allow it while maintaining its speed, I would use SR 50 whenever possible, even on the first few ledges.

We had gone from seeing runners advancing little by little to now moving at the maximum possible speed after 2 months of work on August 20, 2011, which happened to be his birthday, Lupa would achieve this race for all intents and purposes, this race is As good as it will be with currently known strategies eight years later, this is where the record still stands and it doesn't look like it will be challenged soon in December 2017 Looper returned and confirmed his dominance of the level by achieving a 34 second run in the category without monsters without using the final jump, a crazy feat that looper suggests perhaps his best run of all time and While we're on the topic of Looper, he's recently started streaming, so follow him on Twitch and say hello.

Looper was instrumental in making this video a reality, so go out and show your support for him. I have also created a second channel. This channel will be for smaller videos, news and comments about speedrunning, so subscribe, the link will be in the description. A huge thank you to the following absolute legends for supporting me on Patreon. His donations are helping keep this channel alive and I really appreciate them. I hope they do it. You guys are having a fantastic day and we'll see you in the next video.