This is a DooM .LMP "Competition" Entry - Please forward it...

NM13-1ST.TXT

 NM13-1ST.ZIP

  NM13-334.LMP - NightMare! ( CAN handle it! :-)
  &
  NM13-325.LMP -   "    "

  Recorded using Doom2 Version 1.9
  Doom2 -PlayDemo with Version 1.9

  DooM II - Level 13 - "DownTown"

  Kills     50%
  (Items    34)
  Secrets   12%  and Time  03:34
                           -----

  Kills     43%
  (Items    37)
  Secrets   12%  and Time  03:25
                           -----

  Introduction...

  I recorded this collection of NM13-??? .LMP's over the past two
  months in preparation for an attempt at a DHT D2I title...

  Anyway, after waiting for *OVER* two months [ ! 8-( ] for this
  exam, I figured that continuing to secretly hold onto these - so
  that no-one would get the chance of copying the methods used and
  "steal" this Out-of-Base D2I level which I had considered to be
  "mine" - was getting to the point of being a joke...

  I wrote to Mr. DHT and asked him if this is what he "intended":

  ie. Potential candidates practicing the required Out-of-Base D2I
  levels to the point of getting SOoo... good at them that we would
  soon become TOO good at them, eg. On NightMare! AND Under the Par
  Time, such that to re-record a lesser achievement for a DHT D2I
  title would become just too easy; fairly boring to both -Record
  and -PlayDemo; and overall a pretty pointless(?) exercise... AND
  All this time feeling that we needed to keep these achievements
  to ourselves so as to prevent candidates that HAD received their
  exams from using any of this knowledge to complete the title for
  themselves... ALSO The l---o---n---g delay between requesting an
  exam and receiving it was IMHO getting rather ridiculous and had
  the effect of introducing yet another "race condition" of needing
  to complete our exams as soon as possible (any which way) after
  receiving them because it was quite likely that other candidates
  would be working on the same Out-of-Base levels and whether or
  not they would be successful would depend almost entirely on the
  time it would take Mr. LMPS to "pass" previous uploads... would
  we have a day, a week, a month... [ two !?! ] to complete these
  before the then uploaded Out-of-Base levels would be GONE ?!?

  Mr. DHT has asked me if he could publish the e-mail, with these
  concerns, that I sent him ( and I have agreed ;-) and so maybe
  they are justified... [ ? ]

  Anyway, I had decided to release these NM13-??? .LMP's without
  any further delay and on that VERY day [ The CTN-APR1.ZIP update
  was almost complete though I had got side-tracked doing yet more
  D1I analysis (See CTN-APR2.ZIP for those details...) ] and guess
  what ? ... Yes, I got my exam !!!

  I knew that, due to the above "race conditions", I just had to
  complete this exam ASAP - ie. make it quick and not necessarily
  great - as I already knew that another D2I candidate [ George I.
  Bell... although we had already e-mailed each other and "traded"
  our intentions :-) ] was going to use the SAME Out-of-Base maps
  and there may well have been others [ ? ] that also intended to
  do similarly...

  I completed (and uploaded) my D2I exam in two (or rather three)
  days - a record in itself perhaps for an advanced title [ ? ] -
  but since [ I believed that ] I needed to do this as soon as I
  possibly could, I felt "forced" to use the substitution rule to
  replace my assigned (unpracticed) "hard" level with a second (!)
  (practiced) Out-of-Base level. This has the effect of denying a
  future D2I qualifier and since the levels were all "just done"
  none of them are particularly great... Almost ALL of the .LMP's
  in this NM13-??? collection are better, but I did have *thirty*
  times the amount of time to think about, practice plus actually
  record them...

  Finally, I may have done the DHT system a dis-service by rating
  NM13 and NM20 as medium and easy levels respectively... NM20 may
  actually be the more difficult level for the average player to
  complete. It's just that [ you can see that ] I had had SOoo...
  much practice at NM13 that it was TOO easy for Me but I remember
  that it took quite a while to first complete it - I'd had some
  assistance with NM20 [ it had already been done by others ] and
  solved it within a day. I have now re-played NM20 several more
  times and have had a rate of failure of perhaps over 80% whereas
  with NM13 - although I really can't see this level anymore - the
  only place where I might fail is at the "tele-jump" to the blue
  door and that rate of failure is, I believe, less than this 80%

  If I were asked to reconsider rating NM13 and NM20 as medium and
  easy - with other mediums such as 04(!), 05, 07, 10, 30 and 31 -
  I would say that the levels NM13 and NM20 are BOTH "Easy" ! ;-)

  Now, it wouldn't make sense to release ALL of my .LMP's of "Me"
  completing this level, [ I have over 50 of these ! :-) ] but it
  does make sense to release *some* of these - showing my progress
  over the lengthy period of practice ;-)

  Back to the actual .LMP's...


  Description :-)

  Now, this is NOT the first time that I completed this mission...

  These were the second and third times, respectively... The first
  looked really messy and I screwed up over-and-over but I suppose
  that that first time was necessary for Me to KNOW that it really
  was possible... I soon [ within a day ] followed up with these
  two successful attempts ! :-)


  The trick to completing (M)ANY of the DooM (II) missions on the
  NightMare! difficulty is, first of all, to know a fairly "safe"
  lightning route... If you can simply "fly" by the monsters on
  UltraViolence you can often do the same on NightMare!. You just
  need to keep moving... AND, secondly, you need to know what you
  must do - like get the keys, weapons and power-ups - and also
  what you must NOT try to do... re-visiting areas is often NOT a
  very good idea because the goodies are gone and those monsters
  will probably have returned... Sometimes it may be necessary to
  just "chance it" - Sometimes whatever the trick used works and
  sometimes it just does not !?! It becomes a case of just trying
  it over and over until you "pull it off"... though if there are
  more than three places where you need to "chance it", each with
  a 25% chance of success - .25 to the power of 4 which equals =
  1 potential success in 256 attempts, I'd suggest that you should
  [ do these kinds of calculations and ] forget it :-(

  The difficult parts of this level are quite simply getting each
  of the keys and avoiding taking a fatal amount of damage during
  meeting your objectives... And this also includes getting your
  fragging weapons... Finally, of all of the monsters that might
  get in your way, and thus require the most attention, are those
  damn Ravenants that surround the room with the blue door which
  contains the "second" invulnerability sphere plus the only (?)
  teleport to the yellow yey.

  Now, level 13 has two VERY useful invulnerability spheres it it.
  You don't have any choice about when to take the "second" one of
  these but there is a scope for some choice about the first one.


  I began by taking the descision to leave this "first life-ball"
  for that critical "tele-jump" to the blue door of the room with
  the "second life-ball" plus teleport. Instead, I chose to take
  the secret 200% armour (right at the beginning) and use that to
  get the rocket launcher - It doesn't matter how much damage I
  took to get it, since I would always be left with at least 100%
  armour ( Think about it ! ;-) and I could use the berserk box to
  maximise my health after that :-) [ And besides if I got killed,
  it was early enough so as not to matter - just try again ! ] The
  rest of these attempts were pretty straight forward except that
  I reserve using the plasma-gun and/or rocket-launcher until the
  final parts of my runs. This has the result of Me being so very
  low on health at some point during both runs - 8% at the end of
  the first and just 1% in the middle of the second. This doesn't
  matter because I can pick up that little bit more right at the
  end OR while invulnerable BUT it does go to show that neither of
  these runs were completed at all "safely" leaving much room for
  improvement... [ See NM13-2ND.ZIP for those ! :-) ]

  Actually, in both attempts, I "wasted" plasma killing imps where
  this wasn't necessary and later waste time picking up health and
  an invisibility sphere that doesn't do me any good at all but I
  learn from this for later attempts...

  One fascinating part of one of these .LMP's [ & I forget which ]
  is that, in one, I trap a pink demon behind me in the yellow key
  room and, for some strange reason, it doesn't bite me... I don't
  understand why it didn't ! ;-)


 S.;-)  D1I

 S. Widlake

 s.widlake@rl.ac.uk

