The History of Doom 2 World Records

hello you absolute legends doom 2 30 levels of demon slaying epicness technically it's a sequel to doom one of the greatest and most influential games of all time but those of us who have played it know that it's essentially the same game just with new levels a greater variety of enemies and of course twice the amount of shotgun barrels we all know of doom's importance when it comes to the evolution of speedrunning being arguably the most impactful game ever released for the niche and for my own part i've taken deep dives into a few of doom's most iconic records these have been for individual level speed runs which i would say is definitely what doom is most known for but what about speedruns of the entire game did they ever happen and if so why aren't they as well known interestingly when it comes to the very first doom game that was ever released full game speedruns were never really performed and the reason for this isn't exactly obvious the problem is that doom isn't really a full game per se but rather a collection of episodes when you reach the end of an episode the game doesn't continue on to the next one everything just stops and you are brought back to the title screen now of course you can just choose the next episode from here and keep going but unfortunately what couldn't keep going is the recording of the demo file when you reach the end of an episode the demo just stops and there is no way to resume it you could start a new recording but then you're left with multiple demo files with no way of confirming that they all belong to the same speed run ultimately this made the category essentially non-existent despite this limitation there have indeed been full game runs either using a real timer just like other games or by using a modified version of the game these runs however are much less popular and don't have the rich history you'd expect out of such a monumental game doom 2 being 30 consecutive levels is where full game runs could finally thrive players could now record a single demo from the very start to the very end of a play through the more conventional structure of doom 2 is why it has over 25 years of full game speed running history and it's this rich history that we will take a look at today while various categories exist the two most popular by far are ultra violent speed and nightmare speed both of these categories offer some fantastic history but today we will focus on ultra violence speed the goal is simply to get to the end of the game as quickly as possible with no restrictions playing on the ultra violence difficulty as is generally the case with full game speed runs it is the best of the best that stand at the very top and doom speed running is no exception so sit back and relax as we explore the world record history of doom 2. now before we go on a shout out to this video sponsor nordvpn and i will quickly show you what i use nordvpn for so last week was around that time of year where i needed to rewatch my favorite movie of all time the shawshank redemption but naturally when i searched for it on netflix it wasn't there me being an absolute genius though i knew exactly how to solve this problem i just did a quick search to see which countries it was available in changed my location through nordvpn and voila there it is in all its glory for just a few extra dollars a month i'm getting access to around four times the amount of movies and tv shows i could normally watch that is incredible value and i end up saving money because i don't need to waste a fortune buying 10 different streaming services and of course i still get all of the other features nordvpn is known for like extra security and privacy nordvpn even has a money back guarantee so if you're not happy for whatever reason just let them know go to nordvpn.com kylejobs or click the link in the description to start using nordvpn today technically the oldest record we have of a doom 2 full game run is a 57 minute and 13 second demo by the player over gerlick this dates all the way back to november of 1995. we won't delve too deeply into this particular demo though and if you check the current archive you will notice a question mark next to the entry when expanded it reads dubious demo player history of cheating uber and his close friend stefan winterfeld are somewhat notoriously known in the doom community for their abuse of tools like slow motion sometimes it's really not possible to definitively show tools were used but experts seem to agree that this first run likely did use some kind of illegal tool one thing i will point out though is something in the attached text file uve states there doesn't exist a doom honorific title for such a recording but i think doom 2 terminator would suit me fine way back in doom's history in may of 1994 even before people competed in doom speedrunning a programmer by the name of frank stellano created a website called doom honorific titles this was a fun casual way for players to show off their skills by completing certain challenges they would submit their demo files which were called exams and if they were successfully verified would be awarded a title a couple of examples were tyson which was awarded after completing levels on ultra violence with 100 kills using only the pistol fist or chainsaw another title was pacifist which was earned after completing levels on ultra violence without harming monsters if you already have some knowledge of doom speedrunning these titles would sound familiar they are actually speedrunning categories that were adopted over from doom honorific titles and are still used today now going back to doom 2 speed runs the first universally accepted demo comes from the legendary swedish player demon lord demon lord was one of the most prolific and impactful runners of the 90s submitting hundreds of demos and cutting swaths of time from existing records if you've seen my video on the chasm this is the very same demon lord that learned to love those ledgers on the 19th of november 1995 he submitted a full game run of 1 hour 10 minutes and 48 seconds the run was simple and it's obvious that mere survival through the entire game was the priority rather than trying to be blisteringly fast nowadays a top player may even consider this to be somewhat of a casual playthrough but back then it would have been pretty intense over the next year demon lord spearheaded this category lowering the record multiple times he eventually landed on a run of 36 minutes and nine seconds on the 24th of september 1996. it's here that we begin to see glimpses of the type of speedrunning we might see today on map 20 he begins by immediately jumping into the lava and executing a wall run to quickly reach a teleportal a technique that is literally used in the current world record still most levels are played in a standard fashion with very little skips or exploits used despite many levels being obviously far from optimal even with these strategies used demon lord felt that he wouldn't be able to go much lower he concluded his attached notes by saying this is probably my last 30 uv recording i don't think it's possible to push it much more without cheating this was right around the time uve gerlick and stefan winterfeld were being exposed for using slow motion so the cheating remark is likely a direct reference to that entire situation in any case it turns out demon lord believed what he said despite going on to do some incredible work elsewhere over the next few years this would be the last submission in this category he would ever complete evidently demon lord's run wasn't terrible as it would take almost three years before anyone would touch it the late 90s saw a slew of incredible gamers see their way into the doom speedrunning scene one that was particularly impactful was a hungarian man by the name of adam hedgie not only was adam one of the greatest doom players of all time but he also maintained the primary doom speedrunning demo hosting website compete n from 1998 to 2005. the history of competing is actually really interesting and we are going to delve a bit deeper into that specific topic a bit later in the video on the 5th of march 1999 adam hedgy obliterated demon lord's existing record by over 5 minutes with a run of 30 minutes and 54 seconds adam was the first person to really start introducing very precise jumps into the run a perfect example being map 6 where he was able to successfully perform two jumps that shaved off a lot of time the first was a lift jump to make it to the blue keycard something that demon lord had attempted but failed and the second was a tight jump to the yellow keycard door leading to the exit which skips having to activate and wait for a platform to rise another amazing player that came into the doom scene in the late 90s was the norwegian henning skogstoe henning is most known for his prowess in the nightmare category where he was dominant for many years on the 13th of june 1999 he dethroned hedgie's run with a time of 29 minutes and 24 seconds strategic decisions that were made solely in the interest of survivability are beginning to be discarded in map 3 where players would previously take a detour to collect the megarama invisibility and the megasphere henning skipped this completely and even included a jump to the window next to the blue key card door skipping the blue key card as well more sequence breaks were beginning to be incorporated like the red bar skip on map 14. using this one jump alone henning was able to gain over 20 seconds on the previous record the interesting thing about many of these jumps is that they were discovered years earlier most in 1996 but doom was still such a brutal game that many of the known exploits were still unused in full game runs in order to preserve consistency henning's record would remain unbroken for over three years until the american runner vile destroyed it with a 26 minute and 57 second run on the 6th of december 2002. la canning vile was also a nightmare specialist in fact between the years 1999 and 2015 only two players held the full game nightmare speed record henning skogstoe and vile joining in the early 2000s vail has one of the longest careers in doom history and still submits insane demos to this very day again with vile's new run more sacrifices were made in regards to safety even though doom 2 consists of 30 main levels players were still going through levels 31 and 32 the two secret wolfenstein levels an argument for speed could have been made at the time for going through level 31 as reaching the secret exit on map 15 and then going through map 31 was actually faster than completing map 15 normally but one such argument could certainly not be made for map 32 as it was definitely quicker to reach the normal exit on map 31 and go back to map 16. in fact the only reason players were playing map 32 at all was just to stock up on health and armor vial chose to skip the health attained on map 32 and instead pick up an invulnerability sphere on the next level aside from this movement was getting much better and more individual level strategies were being implemented or at least attempted vile's record would remain strong for an entire year until it was edged out by the czech runner radek pekka on the 28th of december 2003 he would submit a run of 26 minutes and 9 seconds radek would be the first person to implement the archvile trick on map 27. in order to reach the exit portal you need to attain the red key in order to reach the red key you need the blue key and to get the blue key you need the yellow key so ultimately you need to collect all three keys but you can skip everything if you can manipulate an arch file into opening the final door again this was another trick that had been discovered at least seven years prior by the player lazlo mcgorry but as time goes on and speed runs become more optimized players are left with no choice but to bring in strategies that might not be 100 percent consistent radix run would last a long time it would be the longest lasting record in the category's history standing for 2534 days just shy of seven years was this because the run was so impressive that no one else could touch it was it really that optimized well not really and long lasting records around this time weren't uncommon at all quite frankly doom speedrunning in general was going through the most inactive period ever a time that players would refer to as the dark age in order to understand why doom was going through its most dormant phase we must understand the context in which doom's speedrunning came into existence as previously mentioned the website that maintained all of these speed running demos for the original doom games was compete n it was created in november of 1994 by simon widlake compete n was an abbreviation of the word competition and the community instantly grew in popularity with many demos being submitted in 1997 the reigns were handed over to istvan pataki who maintained the site until 1998 at which time adam hedgy gained control something else very important happened in 1998 the release of the operating system windows 98 this was the final release of windows that could allow users to boot into ms-dos mode which is where many doomed speedrunners launched their game from beyond this when windows 2000 was released and the operating system switched over to the nt architecture dos compatibility was lost entirely newer operating systems came with dos virtual machines and certainly were not able to run doom well players that upgraded to newer systems were essentially screwed and unless they kept their old computers they had no way to compete there were other ways of playing doom though and that's one of the reasons that source ports became so widespread as doom's source code was released and easily accessible programmers were able to port the game to any operating system they wished including the newest iterations of windows so source ports were an easy way to solve the problem of playing doom on modern systems but there was a problem when it came to doom speed running the demo website competent didn't allow the use of source port for competition its rules section proudly proclaims compete n is vanilla only and will stay that way vanilla doom means running doom straight from the original executable which requires dos some relief came in 2002 with the creation of dosbox a much better emulation of dos but it was still just that an emulation and not a perfect one for casual players the difference was likely too small to notice but speedrunners definitely noticed some issues like input lag and decreased mouse precision as the years progressed and fewer people had access to operating systems based on the dos platform the amount of runners submitting demos to compete n dwindled dramatically then in 2005 adam hedgie the man who had been maintaining the official website for the past seven years disappeared compete n one of the most active and influential websites in the early days of speedrunning all but died and never fully recovered a cautionary tale about the trappings of being too rigid with rules and traditions with more and more people now using source ports players were growing desperate for a place to submit their new demos in october of 2000 a doomworld admin called opulent created the doomed speed demos archive inspired by the quake iteration of the same name doomed sda didn't accept demos for the original doom games but rather player-created patches of the game called p-wards these p-wards are basically fan created mods of the game with custom levels doomed sda was very important though because it accepted demos from source ports and ultimately ended up hosting thousands upon thousands of demos for almost a thousand separate wads the website itself though was very primitive not only was it hard to navigate but updating it was all done manually and the workload eventually became too much in 2006 when opulent expressed the desire to cease his duties in updating the demo archive the programmer andy oliveira took it upon himself to redesign the entire archive from the ground up introducing a more dynamic database generated website after creating the infrastructure in around six months he then had the task of bringing across all of the existing demos due to this sheer number this was a monstrous task that ended up taking 18 months of effort finally in november of 2008 the new and improved revived version of doomed speed demos archive was online the website's look and feel was vastly improved it retained the mission of accepting demos recorded using source ports and best of all it's now accepted and maintained demos for the officially licensed doom games with this new central hub for all things doom speedrunning its popularity was finally able to grow once again one of the players that emerged from this new generation was a finnish gamer who went by the alias looper lupo had been sharpening his skills with various challenges over the years but really exploded onto the doom speedrunning scene in 2010 on the 5th of december he would submit a doom 2 speed run of 23 minutes and 25 seconds beating radik's seven year record for almost three minutes looper would implement huge time saves over previous runs the most notable example being a rocket jump on map 7. the exit switch is located on a platform that is raised and unreachable this platform only lowers once all of the mancubi and arachnotrons have been killed but with a very precise damage boost you can jump to the platform skipping every single enemy the origin of this particular sequence break stems back to 1997. the two players thomas pilger and patrick von massau first used the jump in co-op mode this was done by using the super shotgun to damage boost the second player from a nearby platform to the exit switch it was theorised that it should be possible to achieve the same effect by rocket boost off of a mancubus but the first person to actually do it was sedlow in 2002 achieving a time of six seconds for the level however this particular method of abusing the position of a mancubis is far too unreliable to be incorporated into a full run in 2005 a new rocket jump was discovered by vile with help from another speedrunner dashiva while it was much slower it was created in the pursuit of completing the level without harming any enemies in other words a run for the pacifist category this was still extremely precise but at the very least the position of the wall was always the same so a reasonable setup could be attained when looper used it in his full game run he saved 40 seconds over the previous record with this one trick alone on top of rocket jumps squeeze glides were being introduced as well squeeze glides are movement through gaps that are the exact same width as the player which technically shouldn't be possible but in practice it can be done like many other tricks these had been known for years as well but consistent setups were still lagging behind these glides allow players to skip keys or large sections of level with the addition of so many modern strategies looper's run was a huge leap from previous demos and it would remain the record for almost 4 years but in 2014 a behemoth began to stir doom players across the globe felt a great disturbance in the force the norwegian gamer zero master was entering the scene and on the 16th of november 2014 would beat looper's record with a time of 23 minutes and 3 seconds at this early stage of his career zeromaster's movement wasn't anywhere near as mechanical as loopers but what he excelled at was finding consistent ways to execute strategies that were previously too unreliable to even consider especially when it came to squeeze glides zeromaster developed much more reliable setups to perform glides and he was able to then use them in full game runs performing glides quickly is imperative because you are often in danger of getting mauled by demons when trying to do them and if you simply clear out enemies beforehand you're basically losing most of the time gained along with ammo with his superior movement ability looper was able to take xeromaster's innovations and immediately strike back with a run of 21 minutes and 55 seconds on the 14th of december 2014 over the next several months xeromaster would continue to optimize strategies along with creating many of his own he would begin to scrape the bottom of the barrel of ancient knowledge on the 13th of march 2015 he would achieve a time of 2032. on map 29 he implemented a precise rocket jump that was discovered 15 years earlier and on the chasm he used the extremely precise wall run to cross the toxic pool before the end therefore skipping over the complex ledge section though it has to be said despite incorporating this trick he still wasn't able to match looper's time for that stage looper had spent far too many years grinding the ledges and even in full game runs was able to traverse them effortlessly after five more months of practice xeromaster would submit the first run to go below 20 minutes with a run of 1959 this essentially used the same strategies as his previous submission but his overall technique had been steadily improving 2016 saw the entry of the australian runner elim with a time of 1951. like zero master elim began doom speed running in 2014 after witnessing dime's run of plutonia at awesome games done quick elim had spent a lot of time grinding doom 2 but wasn't quite able to push through to the top spot until this point elim wasn't known for revolutionizing the way the game is played but his hard work ethic allowed him to cultivate his skill enough to challenge even the best players being stripped of his record zero master came back strong achieving a 1936 in december of 2016 and in 1928 on the 9th of march 2017. by this point the amount of time that could be saved by introducing existing strategies was dwindling dramatically optimizations would save a few seconds here or there though nothing close to what had been seen in years prior but surprisingly even 20 years after the game was released game-changing mechanics were still lying in wait to be discovered in july of 2017 zeromaster finds a brand new exploit which would become known as the zero press this new technique allows players to press switches from further away than should be possible and it even works through walls this causes a drastic shift in the routing of a couple of levels on map 15 a zero press can be used to quickly activate the door leading to the blue key card previously players would have to navigate multiple obstacles to the very top of a building in order to reach that same switch which can now be hit from outside because doom isn't technically 3d you can hit the switch from far below on the ground level the fact that the blue key card took so long to collect is why before this technique was found speedrunners would use the secret exit and go through map 31 the secret level this ended up being faster even with the extra map now players could reach the normal exit much quicker and therefore skip map 31 entirely on map 17 you could hit the switch behind the yellow keycard door from the outside through the wall this meant that you could skip the yellow key saving at least 30 seconds using this new zero press xero master took the record below 19 minutes with an 18 48. from here most known strategies were already being implemented slight variation saving at most a few seconds were constructed here and there but players knew the main way this record was going to go lower was by refining the existing techniques and making sure their mechanics were rock solid over the next few years a three-way battle ensued between looper zero master and elim with each player exchanging blows by february of 2020 it was elim on top with an 18-17 with the 18-minute barrier looming ahead the question was who would be the one to destroy it in may of 2020 it was looper who eventually decided to take the initiative to grind for the first 17 minute run and best of all he would stream his attempts on twitch which i have to say is relatively rare for doom speedrunning in june several weeks into attempts he would take back the record with an 1812 in july he would cut it down again to 1806 august would see another two seconds shaved off on september 10th coming into the second last map he was eight seconds ahead of his 1804 but some unlucky pathing with a caco demon cost him barely enough time to put the milestone in doubt after four entire months of grinding with a personal best of 18 flat the task seemed to take much longer than anticipated but finally on the 26th of september 2020 looper would achieve this run this map can still fail i [ __ ] did it oh i'm actually quite happy it's not 1759. that took some time to get the sub 18. from its humble beginnings as a test of survival the doom 2 full game speed run had certainly evolved over the years into a true test of speed in the modern age of doom speed running movement and precision are now king pixel perfect jumps glides and presses now litter the landscape lupus 1755 was the pinnacle and culmination of 25 years of progression and then in december zeromaster casually drops a 1754 out of nowhere spurred on once again by the competition looper began streaming again in january to fight back after tinkering with his control settings and upgrading his computer and monitor looper felt better than ever no longer restrained by the looming possibility of breaking a new barrier he went on a tear over a three-week period he lowered the record a total of four times landing on a 1729 on the 11th of february 2021 and this is where the record stands today the doom 2 full game speed run had gone from a time of 1 hour and 10 minutes in 1995 to just under 17 and a half minutes over a span of 25 years i must say i had an absolute blast going back in time once again to learn more about the history of doom speedrunning of course there are still many more stories to be told and i hope you can join me when we make this trip down memory lane again in the future now a huge shout out to the doom speedrunners who are always happy to answer my questions if you are thinking about speedrunning doom i will put a link to the doom speedrunning discord in the description and i really recommend you join as always thank you so much for watching you legends i hope you are having a fantastic day and i will see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Karl Jobst

Views: 406,172

Rating: 4.9495535 out of 5

Keywords: doom, ultimate doom, doom 2, doom speedrun, speedrun, classic gaming, doom classic, pc speedrun, speedrun history, world record progression, gaming history, karl jobst, karl jobst doom, doom history, documentary, gaming documentary, speedrun documentary, id software, john romero, world record

Id: rqbc4nTivlg

Length: 29min 7sec (1747 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/TYBEEEZ]

From the absolute legend himself.

[u/cobblecrafter]

Gotta love how Doom has stayed pretty active since releasing almost 30 years ago.

[u/MrDysprosium]

Jobst, the absolute legend.

[u/mitchybenny]

I love how new things can constantly be found after years and thousands of hours of playing the game