Discussion about using the 180 turn key, and if it was ever allowed in Compet-N

1 hour ago, Andy Johnsen said:

Putting words like "filty tool-assisted plague" in my mouth to drive a point home is not a good tactic, and uncalled for. Who are you trying to score points for with this? It's a bad look. I've simply stated the genralized viewpoint I claim was held on it back in the day and maintained a respectful understanding for why it might be viewed different today. The idea that it was "always accepted" is what sparked this topic in the first place, this is a claim that does not measure up to the general attitude towards its use, before it resurfaced in recent times.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hyperbole

Throwing around terms like demo being tool-assisted usually implies accusation of malicious behavior or cheating, which is what I'm meaning by not being warranted. 

14 minutes ago, j4rio said:

 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hyperbole

 

Throwing around terms like demo being tool-assisted usually implies accusation of malicious behavior or cheating, which is what I'm meaning by not being warranted. 

 

 

So stating that a tool assisted demo is tool assisted is not warranted? I think there's an interesting discussion surrounding its historical acceptance and how it's viewed today, and another interesting debate on where to draw a line as far as what kind of assists one want to see in comparative record runs.

The users who have been utilizing the 180 turn have done so in good faith, and there's enough material in this thread to show why they perhaps should feel ok about that too. Malicious intent has nothing to do with recent cases of the automated turn key.
 

25 minutes ago, banjiepixel said:

 

I am seeing alot of "feelings over facts" behaviour from people like you. Turn180 and possibly allowing it seems to be just a taboo to you without anything solid to back it up. I am not speedrunner but maybe that's why my viewpoint to this issue is more rational.

You lost me at "people like you" or else I'd take the time to respond, because there's an interesting discussion to be had as to where one should draw a line and why. I think I'll rather have that conversation with someone less prone to attempt insults. Have a nice day :}

1 hour ago, Redneckerz said:

I know Heygi used LMPCHECK by Steffen "Rini" Udluft to check demo's back in the day (And LMPC) but the program is never to be found. So for reasons of complete verification, it would be useful to have this program somewhere and have that checked against any LMP with 180-turn that Heygi dismissed for whatever (Start trickery/not noted) so it can be found out what kind of checks LMPCHECK actually does.

 

Perhaps you have it?

I for one would very much welcome this and if possible, could give this a more permanent home (/idgames, or whatever). History is history and as this thread's topic turns out to be, historic tracebacks are very important :)

I *might* have it archived on an old drive, indeed. Give me some time to unearth this stuff and I'll have a look for it!

41 minutes ago, Andy Johnsen said:

 

So stating that a tool assisted demo is tool assisted is not warranted? I think there's an interesting discussion surrounding its historical acceptance and how it's viewed today, and another interesting debate on where to draw a line as far as what kind of assists one want to see in comparative record runs.

The users who have been utilizing the 180 turn have done so in good faith, and there's enough material in this thread to show why they perhaps should feel ok about that too. Malicious intent has nothing to do with recent cases of the automated turn key.

I'll reiterate - if you want a respectful discussion, it's probably not a good look by initiating it with slapping a label that's historically attached to cheating and malicious intent on one of latest released achievement that were recorded under restraints that were viewed as acceptable in the community (or grey zone, I suppose) up to now.

Yes, it would most likely fall under the definition of tool-assisted if you want to get into semantics, but within constraints of that definition basically all demos recorded with emulators are already tool-assisted anyway.

I have personally never used spinners for speedrunning demos. I've used turn180 in Zdaemon though (Doom multiplayer port), where I do find quite a bit of use out of it. There are many situations where simply having a perfect turn180 helps you a lot. One obvious case is in deathmatch, where turning super fast to gain a tiny bit of time to mess up opponent's timing. In original Doom, one obvious case is actually Doom 1 E2M1 nomonsters/UV-speed/pacifist, where one can simply hit the turn180 key after picking the first key, blue key card, and get an easy perfect turn180. This turn is actually really difficult to optimize if you do the turn manually. It is so easy to lose surprising amount of time there. Like 0.14 seconds out of almost thin air. Also, the turn180 provides a lot of consistency which makes the turn trivial, instead of really difficult. Ridiculous.

I know there are other maps (pretty much all the maps to be honest), where I could use the turn180 key to make turns a lot more consistent and _precise_. The interesting thing about the turn180 bind is that you can use it for turns that are not 180 degrees. For example, you can use it for turns around 180°+-45° and be faster, as you can combine your manual turn with the turn180. It makes some turns a lot more consistent with some gained time. I have not used the turn180 in the past because I've always thought it is only for the keyboarders AND for the 'meme maps', where people just seem to be fine to use it. So a case by case ruling. Because the game is supposed to be fun, and spamming turn180 in a meme map can be quite hilarious.

Now, if the turn180 is allowed everywhere, we WILL be seeing it a lot in the coming speedruns of all categories. Now do we want such a viewing experience, where the runner may unexpectedly make a turn180? The turn180 is really tough to follow from others' perspective, for the runner it isn't that bad to follow, but unexpecting viewer will be like "what happened, I blinked and where did the guy warp to?". I've seen this happen many times online. If the turn180 is disallowed, almost nothing actually changes, because the turn180 is still rarely used to gain any significant advantage, except maybe in some meme maps where you gotta spin 180 every frame, but those maps (or complevels?) can be ruled differently.

10 hours ago, banjiepixel said:

It is a very unnatural turn so getting used to it is going to take too much work compared to actually just perfecting natural 180ish turn.

I am sorry but who are you exactly? I don't think I've seen you ever engage with speedrunning or send any demos. This sentence alone is one of the biggest bullshit statements I've seen in many years. I don't mean to be rude, but the sentence just blew my mind how uneducated it is. I read your other comments and it seems like you do not have any clue about speedrunning. It is just that you are super clueless, and doing harm to the thread by derailing it a shitton. I will read your reply, if you have one, but I won't reply to you anymore to avoid further derailing. And please understand, I don't try to be mean.

God bless turn 180 in stroller runs.

6 hours ago, j4rio said:

It seems even peers from your recording period are unaware of spinner being as much of a dealbreaker as you're making it out to be. Can you show at least a tiniest ounce of actual proof that it was actually set-in-stone banned rather than thinking into existence a parallel universe in which said ban took place? A convo, a message, anything.

As beeing pointed out a few times by now. Just because you could argue that a demo submission technically stayed within the rules, it didnt mean it would automatically be validated.
There would be discussions around the topics as they got brought up.  

The general ruling principle is laid down when restricting the recording of demos for compet-n under the official doom . exes only. 
Would it then be reasonable to assume that installing 3rd party drivers performing assisted turning alongside of that? I don`t think so. 
You can understand that by looking at the lack of demos using such tools. 

The ruleset were not designed to stand the test of time for the coming 20 years when they were put down. I gave my own example of having a demo invalidated because I used
"iddt" to spy on enemies. Where it covered by the rules? no...where it invalidated yes. Was there a big discussion around it, no. 
Thats a feature which is a part of the original 1.9 .exe, no source-ports or 3rd party software needed. 
With that in mind, you really think you would be able to freely use 180 flip turns in demos and be given the thumbs up? 

You would probably be kicked out of #nightmare irc channel without warning. Just the fact that you had been looking around for tools like that would have given you a bad reputation.  Cheating was a sensitive topic in the 90s. With the likes of UweG and SteffenW using slowmo and their technical insight to cheat in pretty prestigus runs such as full game runs on nightmare. Anyone even bringing up borderline topics would be really risking their reputation and true intentions. 

I submitted in total of 250+ compet-n demos from the year 1997 - 2005. So I am iterating from that position on how things were back then. Its the best I can give you really. 
If you still are convinced that you would have your demos validated by using such tools on compet-n from 1998 then by all means. However its not very realistic. 

4 hours ago, Andy Johnsen said:

I *might* have it archived on an old drive, indeed. Give me some time to unearth this stuff and I'll have a look for it!

Yes, ofcourse! Any multiplayer hacks to Doom2.exe are also very appreciated if you have them still laying around. Speedrunning history is as important as every other aspect of Doom, but all the MP/speedrunning hacks haven't yet been properly documented. So by all means!

2 hours ago, skogsto09 said:

If you still are convinced that you would have your demos validated by using such tools on compet-n from 1998 then by all means. However its not very realistic. 

Which is exactly another argument why having LMPCHECK could help reaching definitive conclusions. I am of the belief that the program simply didn't support the Turn180 or perhaps Hegyi simply dismissed it, thinking not much of it at the time. If, however, LMPCHECK did support Turn180 and recognized it as such, then that would make up for an interesting point.

All of banjiepixel's arguments in this thread (including the derail Maribo split) seem to be just declaring things as "obvious" or right/wrong purely based on their own aesthetic preferences / intuition, with no familiarity whatsoever w/ Doom speedrunning, its history, etc. The "It is a very unnatural turn so getting used to it is going to take too much work compared to actually just perfecting natural 180ish turn" comment is especially glaring. Have read many combined reports and complaints and I'm inclined to agree w/ them. 

banjiepixel, don't post in this thread again.

Why does the 180-degree-turn feature exist anyways? I can't imagine it being terribly useful, honestly.

17 minutes ago, Ludi said:

Why does the 180-degree-turn feature exist anyways? I can't imagine it being terribly useful, honestly.

Long story short, the feature exists because other people than you have imagined it would be terribly useful, and therefore worked to code it in. Either through TSRs, or directly in the game once ports appeared.

If I recall correctly, Duke 3D had a turn180 key. So clearly there was a demand for this kind of feature in FPS in the nineties.

4 hours ago, skogsto09 said:

The general ruling principle is laid down when restricting the recording of demos for compet-n under the official doom . exes only. 
Would it then be reasonable to assume that installing 3rd party drivers performing assisted turning alongside of that? I don`t think so.

But then what exactly is a "spinning utility", "spinner", "whateverdoesrotations", and why do the rules say that these legendary yet nebulous thingamabobs are allowed?

And why do you keep insisting that stating which .exes may be used is in any way equal to a holy stone tablet with engraved commandments on it? It just doesn't work like that. When taking at face value your claim that there have ever been any holy principles, then these rules are clearly contradicting each other - yet we're being told it should be absolutely obvious what the correct interpretation of these sacred guidelines is supposed to be. J4rio was right on the money when pointing out that retroactively drawing a line doesn't mean we get to pretend it's always been there - and that's what's happening here, because with nothing tangible and explicit to back things up, this discussion isn't going to be headed anywhere.

Having said that, the onus to state what's allowed and what isn't is on the admins. So if you people fucked that up, it's a you problem - not a "modern day speedrunners can't understand holy principles of purity" type of problem... Which also makes statements about the legitimacy of somebody else's accomplishments even more grating.

Regarding the 1 demo by sedlo, there's also a demo from 2000 where he does a 124 turn on tic 1, and a few demos from adam hegyi where he does similar values (but less than 128) on tic 1, so I think it's safe to assume that it has something to do with the quickstart and not some 180 turn key.

Yeah I highly doubt that Sedlo would have used that tool if it was not allowed. He was the sort of person who mainly wanted to challenge himself. For example he rarely used strafe50, even when it was clearly faster, and when asked, he said, "I'm not looking for easier."

1 hour ago, Gez said:

If I recall correctly, Duke 3D had a turn180 key. So clearly there was a demand for this kind of feature in FPS in the nineties.

Both Blake Stone games had it as well, along with keys to turn 90º left & right.

6 hours ago, Gez said:

Long story short, the feature exists because other people than you have imagined it would be terribly useful, and therefore worked to code it in. Either through TSRs, or directly in the game once ports appeared.

 

If I recall correctly, Duke 3D had a turn180 key. So clearly there was a demand for this kind of feature in FPS in the nineties.

Neat! I guess as a semi-casual player it wouldn't be that useful. I assumed it was for keyboard players since turning is quite an issue with digital buttons.

I propose a technological solution:

- The creation of a new options LMP, similar to flags in MBF21, which codifies as many of these "gray area" demo-recording options as possible, thus leaving the choice to the map creator.

- The creation of a new standard, e.g., a follow-up to MBF21, which includes some sane defaults for these.

- dsdarchive can selectively provide and use custom standalone LMPs to validate certain runs. 

I'm not trying to add new opinions to the mix; i'm trying to suggest a technological solution which allows feelings on this topic to be finer-grained and doesn't step on anyone's toes. I feel really bad for the new generation of sensational players who love the 180 key and may feel disenfranchised.

30 minutes ago, siege cunt said:

I propose a technological solution:

 

- The creation of a new options LMP, similar to flags in MBF21, which codifies as many of these "gray area" demo-recording options as possible, thus leaving the choice to the map creator.

- The creation of a new standard, e.g., a follow-up to MBF21, which includes some sane defaults for these.

- dsdarchive can selectively provide and use custom standalone LMPs to validate certain runs. 

 

I'm not trying to add new opinions to the mix; i'm trying to suggest a technological solution which allows feelings on this topic to be finer-grained and doesn't step on anyone's toes. I feel really bad for the new generation of sensational players who love the 180 key and may feel disenfranchised.

That won't do anything for all existing wads, though. Personally I don't think it should be up to map makers to determine what controls someone uses to play the game, or to even have an opinion on it.

7 hours ago, Ludi said:

Why does the 180-degree-turn feature exist anyways? I can't imagine it being terribly useful, honestly.

Vanilla/DOS utilities aside, I was wondering when this started to show up in source ports (I thought maybe there'd be a comment or commit message giving more context to why it was added); apparently it dates all the way back to Boom 2.02 at least, as it's there in the Boom source code release. Someone among the Boom devs (probably Rand Phares, who wrote the code for it) must have thought it'd be useful, but beyond that I got nothing.

On 3/19/2023 at 10:16 PM, Nine Inch Heels said:

But then what exactly is a "spinning utility", "spinner", "whateverdoesrotations", and why do the rules say that these legendary yet nebulous thingamabobs are allowed?

 

And why do you keep insisting that stating which .exes may be used is in any way equal to a holy stone tablet with engraved commandments on it? It just doesn't work like that. When taking at face value your claim that there have ever been any holy principles, then these rules are clearly contradicting each other - yet we're being told it should be absolutely obvious what the correct interpretation of these sacred guidelines is supposed to be. J4rio was right on the money when pointing out that retroactively drawing a line doesn't mean we get to pretend it's always been there - and that's what's happening here, because with nothing tangible and explicit to back things up, this discussion isn't going to be headed anywhere.

 

Having said that, the onus to state what's allowed and what isn't is on the admins. So if you people fucked that up, it's a you problem - not a "modern day speedrunners can't understand holy principles of purity" type of problem... Which also makes statements about the legitimacy of somebody else's accomplishments even more grating.

In the post you quoted me from, I give you my answers on your here questions here.  The line on what was allowed can be understood by the lack of demos crossing that line.
That number of demos have been well documented by now.  The intention behind restricting the recording of demos to only the original .exes draws the main line. That restriction where not made out of convenience either. Its not too hard to understand the many reasons behind this.  It will never be remotely fair to compare records done under the original .exes with those done on dsda-doom.  However a modernisation of doom speedrunning was needed, and has been very welcomed.  However for me, the assisted turning would be a step too far over the legacy ruling principles.

6 hours ago, skogsto09 said:

In the post you quoted me from, I give you my answers on your here questions here.  The line on what was allowed can be understood by the lack of demos crossing that line.

The lack of demos crossing that line can also be explained when taking into consideration the following:

On 3/19/2023 at 12:16 PM, skogsto09 said:

You would probably be kicked out of #nightmare irc channel without warning. Just the fact that you had been looking around for tools like that would have given you a bad reputation.  Cheating was a sensitive topic in the 90s. With the likes of UweG and SteffenW using slowmo and their technical insight to cheat in pretty prestigus runs such as full game runs on nightmare. Anyone even bringing up borderline topics would be really risking their reputation and true intentions.

So, from the outside, this might as well be a result of the prevailing "climate" at the time, which doesn't mean there was a set-in-stone-rule that stated they were outright banned. In the easiest terms possible: People not doing thing =/= There has to be a law that states doing said thing is illegal. Nobody I know spits on their own carpets at home, but that doesn't mean I get to operate under the assumption that spitting on one's own carpet is a punishable offence in the eyes of a court of law -- unfortunately, that's basically what you guys are doing since this thread started - at least it smells a bit like that.

As for the rules being all pure and holy, the contrary seems to be the case:

Quote

OTHER HACKS

Various DOOM spinning utilities are allowed.

These 2 lines taken from this link absolutely tell a vastly different story. Using these nebulous spinning utilities was not only allowed, they were, apparently, fine to use despite being classified as "hacks", and there were several "legal" ones on top of that (hence the word "various").

The argument that there would have been talks about spinning utilities, if only they were ever used, does not compute - you knew they existed, someone gave permission to use (some of) them, publicly for that matter. 

The rules we can still see for ourselves today are in direct conflict with your assertions, and when a thread like this pops up right off the back of a run that's deemed TAS as per your compet-n decree right away, no questions asked, no holds barred, then there needs to be a damn fine explanation as to why this glaring "discrepancy" exists.

Honestly.....seems like it would be a nice thing to have but then, there are also reasons why I don't normally speedrun, regardless of any ability or lack thereof. Does appaear to be a little bit much of a boost though.

11 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

 

The lack of demos crossing that line can also be explained when taking into consideration the following:

 

 

So, from the outside, this might as well be a result of the prevailing "climate" at the time, which doesn't mean there was a set-in-stone-rule that stated they were outright banned. In the easiest terms possible: People not doing thing =/= There has to be a law that states doing said thing is illegal. Nobody I know spits on their own carpets at home, but that doesn't mean I get to operate under the assumption that spitting on one's own carpet is a punishable offence in the eyes of a court of law -- unfortunately, that's basically what you guys are doing since this thread started - at least it smells a bit like that.

 

As for the rules being all pure and holy, the contrary seems to be the case:

 

 

These 2 lines taken from this link absolutely tell a vastly different story. Using these nebulous spinning utilities was not only allowed, they were, apparently, fine to use despite being classified as "hacks", and there were several "legal" ones on top of that (hence the word "various").

 

The argument that there would have been talks about spinning utilities, if only they were ever used, does not compute - you knew they existed, someone gave permission to use (some of) them, publicly for that matter. 

 

The rules we can still see for ourselves today are in direct conflict with your assertions, and when a thread like this pops up right off the back of a run that's deemed TAS as per your compet-n decree right away, no questions asked, no holds barred, then there needs to be a damn fine explanation as to why this glaring "discrepancy" exists.

I don`t remember seeing you on the compet-n scene in the late 90s early 2000s? because you act like you were there the whole time.
You talk about what was "allowed", and fine to "use".  We have been over many times on this thread how those ruling lines you refer got interpreted.
I dont think it will help if I re-iterate them again. 

Any software utility, broadly speaking that would give you a benefit, that was not attainable without the given utility where regarded as cheating.

This is why you don`t see demos using such software utilities from that era at all. Those few times they were used pre-1998, noone noticed.
I am not sure why that is hard to belive for you. I could understand your confusion if there actually was alot of demos that clearly used various utility hacks, but

thats not the case either. 
 

Perhaps its just about disagreeing to whatever as a principle. 

Cool thread. It has managed to chronicle a bit of demo and Compet-n history that may otherwise have stayed hidden.

If Andy Johnsen and skogsto09 recall that a 180° turn key or button was banned in the heyday of Adam Hegyi's administration, it must be so, considering their involvement back then. If so, Keyboard_Doomer's data seems to show it was a decision by Adam that wasn't introduced, considered or shared by his predecessors. By the wording, that "DOOM spinning utilities" line in the rules certainly refers to the DOOM Mouse Spinner v0.15 in the database in the "utils" section of /idgames, or anything like it. Pataki himself was quite aware of terminate-and-stay-resident (TSR) utilities of this type, given he made Novert.

The DMS v0.15 is pretty useless for mouse users given it forces you to set the mouse sensitivity at 9, unless that's your preferred setting. It's also not really any more of a hack than Novert, which wasn't banned by Adam, right? The advantage the spinner TSR gives to a keyboarder doesn't really surpass those of mouse use. Maybe Adam originally banned it for other reasons? Perhaps by disallowing it, it was easier to detect TAS demos?

Moving this to the discussion subforum now that it's not getting a high concentration of posts (figured it was best to leave it in the top level forum for a bit) so it doesn't get lost among the actual demo threads.

Before the bump is too late on this (And because this seems to turn into a thread of historic significance) @Andy Johnsen, any news on digging up on LMPCHECK or any other *useful* stuff? 

On 3/19/2023 at 3:39 PM, Andy Johnsen said:

I *might* have it archived on an old drive, indeed. Give me some time to unearth this stuff and I'll have a look for it!

On 3/26/2023 at 8:17 AM, myk said:

Cool thread. It has managed to chronicle a bit of demo and Compet-n history that may otherwise have stayed hidden.

Welcome back, Myk! Glad to see you are still around. (You obviously do not know me, but your webpage and your DW posts on esoteric things has really been useful for me, so in that regard, thank you!) 

On 3/29/2023 at 2:40 AM, Maribo said:

Moving this to the discussion subforum now that it's not getting a high concentration of posts (figured it was best to leave it in the top level forum for a bit) so it doesn't get lost among the actual demo threads.

Thank you for doing so.

On 3/19/2023 at 3:39 PM, Andy Johnsen said:

I *might* have it archived on an old drive, indeed. Give me some time to unearth this stuff and I'll have a look for it!

I believe its okay to ask: Did you had a chance?

In addition, i realized i totally forgot to tag you on a question regarding AV's Intermission screen, here: