Into The Void: DOOM's Strangest Speedrun

ID clip I abused the hell out of this cheat cope and I played doom as a kid in the mid 90s screw searching for key cards and remembering map layouts I just wanted to shoot things and the ability to run through walls helped me achieve this goal in the easiest manner but id clip didn't just allow me to pass through barriers it allowed me to leave the map entirely and I would often find myself in no-man's land requiring the guidance of the mini-map to bring me back home the way the textures on screen become distorted when out of bounds is oddly nostalgic these warped images are unmistakable for the doom engine the void is dark and barren a place few men have ventured without the aid of cheat codes dooms boundaries are surprisingly hard to crack something that can't be said for many of the more modern first-person shooters as difficult as it may be though it is indeed possible to escape dooms walls if you have the knowledge and a bit of luck it's understandable to assume that once beyond a levels limits finishing would be as easy as running to the end there's just one problem as hard as it is to get into the void it's even harder to return the conditions required for these glitches to result in anything useful is exceedingly rare so much so that their use in speedruns is a relatively recent occurrence we've covered some pretty old records in previous videos going all the way back to the mid 90s when it comes to going out of bounds however doom speedrunning saw nothing until almost 17 years after the game's release it's still used rather sparingly on display in only two of Doom's 36 levels in this video we will explore how the act of warping out of bounds has shaped the history of these two levels these runs are honestly really interesting and it's pretty cool how 25 years after release runners are still finding new strategies in Doom in fact while researching for this very video a new strategy was found that allowed runners to smash the existing record on one of these two stages so sit back and relax as we examine dooms most precise strategy and glide our way into the void without the use of cheats escaping dreams walls is something that very few people have been able to achieve even in the speedrunning scene where players were spending countless hours pushing the game to its limits the amount of documented cases of this happening were extremely rare up until relatively recently the only documented cases of players venturing out of bounds occurred when an extremely rare glitch was triggered called the all ghosts effect the old ghosts effect causes the player and all mobs to have clipping disabled allowing everything to move through walls this sounds pretty promising as with this new ability one could simply run immediately to the exit unfortunately this glitch also stops you from being able to activate switches so you're unable to press the end button to finish the level this essentially renders the glitch completely useless the earliest instance I could find of a player legitimately passing into the void without the use of the old ghosts effect glitch was in 2006 the member Vegeta's wrath posted a topic on the doom world forum titled ultimate doom trick he outlined that he had been repulsed back by a monster and clipped through the wall ending up near the exit switch the level in question was episode 2 map 2 halls of the Damned the world record for completing this stage on ultraviolent was 1 minute and 12 seconds at the time and was one of the longest levels in doom speedrunning the exit room is blocked by three keycard doors and the process of scouring the entire level for these key cards was a pretty lengthy one it just so happens that the place Vegeta equipped out of bounds from did not require any key cards to access so hypothetically if you could get straight to the end from here it would eliminate the need to get any key cards at all in the attached picture you can see that he had been backed up into a corner before going out of bounds players didn't know this at the time but this specific geometry is really important and has special properties that will allow to him guide to pass through as mentioned in his post Vegeta ended up near the exit switch but evidently couldn't find any way to actually activate it it was already known back then and it still holds true today once you enter the void it is impossible to return it didn't seem possible to hit the switch from out of bounds either so nothing really came from this trick play is tested at that same location and were able to replicate the glitch easy enough which would go on to be called a void glide it was an interesting oddity for sure but nothing useful for speedrunning void cries aren't free by any means either and it can often take many runs before you nail an attempt first try when I was learning the trick for this video I got shamefully annoyed because I went hours without getting it to work a single time even though I had tutorials at my disposal and people telling me what to do the explanation I'm about to give you on why void glides work is extremely oversimplified and if you want to know the specific details I will put a link in the description to a more technical one when doing guy makes contact with a wall the game attempts to calculate how to redirect his current momentum along the axis of the wall the formula the game uses to make this calculation is workable but not entirely precise this slight error also just happens to always result in a value that is slightly greater than what it should be usually this has no impact on how the game plays but in very precise locations and with the correct angle a positive feedback loop can be created by bouncing doom guy off two walls simultaneously the same mechanic that makes wall running possible further increases the players momentum until it's a value per frame is greater than doom guy's diameter at this point the game will predict doom guy's location on the next frame based on his speed which would be on the other side of the wall given that once beyond the wall there are no further obstructions he will be placed into the void getting through walls doors and obstacles by increasing speed is used in so many different games that it feels almost redundant to explain why it works so I won't go into too much detail some games will check to see if there are any obstacles between you and to the place the game wants to put you the doom isn't one of them as long as your speed is high enough to bypass an obstacle than a single frame you able to do it void glides are precise so much so that even with the exact same setup it can still take a while to execute one successfully the level of precision that is required is so high that it is beyond what a human could perceive let alone recreate perfectly it's not too dissimilar to the depo warp in Goldeneye we can understand it on a theoretical level and a computer can be programmed to pull it off every time but when it comes to performing the trick in a real-life setting it all basically comes down to repeatedly running into a wall until it magically lets you through when the level of precision gets to a certain point it ultimately becomes luck several years later in 2010 there was a lengthy forum post by the user Cray ffice outlining the differences between certain types of collides I won't cover the entire post but the important thing about this post was the mention of what he called wobble glides momentum in Doom works very similar to how it does in real life accelerating from a standstill takes time and your speed is tied directly to how fast you are moving through space this is different to a game such as Goldeneye where your speed is tracked irrespective of how far you are actually moving this is why Goldeneye players can build speed while running against a wall Dhoom players can't do this which is why they will back up when opening doors to build up speed through a movement but it's possible to trick dooms engine into believing that you have momentum even though you're not actually moving this trick is called momentum preservation an example of this is the corner we use on a 2m6 to warp into the void even though the glide itself does not happen that often much of the time to imply will wobble around while running into the corner this wobble is different to how team guys should normally behave when running into a wall and is an indication that the game believes he has momentum even though he actually doesn't the post on wobble glides re-sparked interest into the void glide that had been previously done on e to m6 the reason for this is that they appear to be very similar and most of the time when you miss the void glide you end up getting a wobble so they seemed to be connected a couple of the newer doom world members discussed recreating the void glide as had been seen years earlier if a member cack-handed would break the level open when he would post this demo [Music] [Music] cack-handed had shown that there was no need to re-enter the map to finish the level you could do it from the outside so this brings up the obvious question if it was so simple why hadn't anyone done it before if it was as simple as standing next to the button and activating it why didn't anyone try that the problem is that the exact angle and position you need in order to actually hit the button is so minut that in all of the previous attempts no one had successfully hit it it is incredibly specific and if you don't know what you need to look out for it's certainly possible that you may never find that specific angle people simply moved on after trying and deemed it impossible even though I knew that it was possible and I had seen videos of people doing it it still took me 20 minutes of trying to hit it for the first time sure through practice and experience you can get better at it but if you had no idea where or how to do it and you didn't even know it was possible you could spend hours here and achieve nothing it may have been blind to Locke that allowed it to be found in the first place on cack-handed run of 57 seconds he killed the monsters around the void glide area before attempting the glide this is so that he had time to attempt the glide a few times without being interrupted but obviously this took up some time if you grinded the levels sufficiently you could ignore the monsters and go straight for the glide the member kebab did exactly that and smashed the record with a run of 33 seconds the next day two days later he would achieve a 28 this run was pretty decent and would stay as the road record for two years here's something I have to mention though and I've noticed it a few times some doom players like to kill two birds with one stone and play levels as a pacifist and restrained from shooting monsters this is so that they can get the world record in both the ultraviolent speed category and also the pacifist category with the same run kebobs runs were all done pacifist and sometimes that does create a slight disadvantage you can see how the guards can sometimes block his path and he has to wait for them to move out of the way or die the player JC dawn would not play the level as a pacifist and would achieve a run of 24 seconds in 2012 the interesting thing about this run is that he did the Void glide backwards it doesn't seem to provide any benefits one way or the other but it definitely looks cool the run was clean and it would remain the record for almost seven years even though the concept of void glides had been known about for years they still couldn't be implemented on other levels the ingredients that make this trick viable are pretty specific and rarely found in doom firstly this can't be done on just any corner any corner that has access aligned to walls are completely ruled out and this eliminates the vast majority of corners secondly the corner almost always needs to be facing east this is so that the mechanic that allows for wall running can be used which as I mentioned in my previous doom video is usually only possible traveling north or east thirdly it's impossible to re-enter the map this means that the exit button must be both reachable and you need to be able to actually press the button from the void both of these factors are rare as hell so as you can see it's probably a miracle that this glitch was even useful on any doom apps to begin with as fate would have it though in 2015 a second level was about to be broken on the 2nd of March the user K pa6 posted this really weird demo of him accidentally executing a void Glide the interesting thing about this glide was that it didn't appear to use a corner and it wasn't immediately obvious what had happened what they soon realized was that in order to execute a void glide you don't actually need two walls in kPa sixes demo an imp had created an artificial barrier this simulated the exact geometry required to create the same feedback loop that had been used in e2 m6 armed with this new knowledge players began scouring every level to find any place this could be applied to the speed runner looper would find one and the level was a one m8 eewan m8 is the final level in the first episode of doom the intended way to complete the level is to defeat two Barons of Hell that serve as the episodes boss fight once the boss has been defeated the outer walls lower allowing access to a teleportal that sends doom guide to the final room once in this room doom guy is unavoidably damaged until the point of death once dead the level is completed before 2015 the record stood at 46 seconds set by said low in 2004 on the 4th of March 2015 JC Dorn completed this run triggering the end on a one m8 is really easy the sector that causes damage and ends the level extends out from the final room to the edge of the map so you only need to cross the invisible line to trigger the end you'll notice that JC uses the barrels to damage himself before the glide this is so that he has less health and ultimately dies quicker at the end a year and six months later for a shock blast would optimize the level further achieving this run 19 seconds is where the record remains today in September of 2019 one of the doom speed runners known as depravity knew I was researching e 2 m6 for this video and decided to try and beat the record before the video came out on the 21st of September he was successful in this goal and managed to complete a run of 23 seconds for the strategy he used this run is really good but unfortunately for him on the very same day a brand new strategy would be unearthed the legendary doom speed runner zero master was about to drop this bombshell zero master had found a different way to avoid glide taking advantage of a corner that was closer to the starting position this is not your standard glide and the only way to get out of the map here is to use a damage boost from the rocket launcher to get enough speed to pass through the wall there are two steps for this new Glide first he lines up a specific angle and backs up into the corner achieving a wobble once again this wobble is confirmation doom guys momentum is being preserved then while still wobbling he lines up another very specific angle and shoots the rocket launcher into the wall several meters ahead this provides just enough speed to get into the void two days later depravity was able to use the new strategy to achieve a run of sixteen seconds two days after that on the 25th of September JC Dawn sold back the record with this run and this is where the record remains today who knows what lies in store for this bizarre strategy considering the fact that doom has been out for almost 26 years it's shocking that these new strategies are still being discovered it really is impossible to say what lies ahead for today's video challenge I achieved a time of 1 minute and 1 second on e 2 m6 on the ultraviolence difficulty setting I'm pretty happy about this time and I think people are going to have a lot more trouble beating this one than my previous challenge if you can be to this I'll put your name in the next video and I will select it run at random to play in order to enter post a video or demo in my discord channel congratulations to the heroes on screen for beating my previous challenge of 25 seconds on quakes II 1 M 1 it was interesting to see the different types of bunny hopping and different strategies people used and it was great to see a few new people give quake a try a massive thank you to the people supporting me on patreon it really really means a lot thanks for watching you absolute legends I hope you are having a fantastic day and I will see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Karl Jobst

Views: 1,118,503

Keywords: speedrun, karl jobst, speedrunning, doom speedrun, ultimate doom, id software, world record progression, john carmack, john romero, class gaming, pc gaming, retro gaming, retro speedrun, world record history, video game documentary, doom documentary, doom classic, karl jobst doom, doom history, speedrun documentary, 4shockblast

Id: wWe8g8R7ZKI

Length: 19min 53sec (1193 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 05 2019