ALL_1949 by Yonatan Donner, Matthias Belz and Nolan Pflug, 5 June 1997.
-------------------
Maps: START (untimed), E1M1-M7, E2M1-M6, E3M1-M6, E4M1-M7 and END
      as a constructed continuous run
Skill: 3 (Nightmare)
-------------------
See later statistics section for kills and secrets details
-------------------
Time: 19:49
-------------------
Demo running time:
27 minutes
-------------------
The individual episode runs are also available separately:
 EP1_0324, EP2_0601, EP3_0432, EP4_0516.
There is also a movie version of this run, QDQ_1949.

You can get them from ftp.cdrom.com, or from the QdQ page at
<URL:http://WWW.CS.Man.ac.UK/~baileya/Quake/qdq.html>

(0) Index

(1) Basics
 (1.1) Statistics
 (1.2) Overview
 (1.3) Credits

(2) More details for those who want to read a bit more:
 (2.1) Timing
 (2.2) How The Run Was Recorded
 (2.3) Biographies
 (2.4) Project History
 (2.5) Information About The Levels

(1.1) Statistics

All maps were run on Skill 3 (Nightmare)

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Level				Map	Time  Secrets   Kills	Player
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Slipgate Complex		E1M1	0:30	0/6	16/42	Yonatan
Castle Of The Damned		E1M2	0:38	0/3	10/42	Yonatan
The Necropolis			E1M3	0:43	0/3	 7/65	Yonatan
The Grisly Grotto		E1M4	0:28	0/3	 6/59	Yonatan
Gloom Keep			E1M5	0:22	1/5	 2/60	Yonatan
The Door To Chthon		E1M6	0:12	0/4	 1/31	Yonatan
The House Of Chthon		E1M7	0:31	0/0	21/21	Yonatan
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Episode One: Dimension Of The Doomed	3:24 sub-total
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Installation		E2M1	0:10	0/7	 2/46	Matthias
The Ogre Citadel		E2M2	1:00	1/3	18/48	Nolan
The Crypt Of Decay		E2M3	0:44	0/4	10/48	Yonatan
The Ebon Fortress		E2M4	1:31	2/4	14/78	Yonatan
The Wizard's Manse		E2M5	1:07	0/2	13/61	Yonatan
The Dismal Oubliette		E2M6	1:29	0/2	14/85	Yonatan
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Episode Two: The Realm Of Black Magic	6:01 sub-total
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Termination Central		E3M1	0:48	1/5	24/67	Yonatan
The Vaults Of Zin		E3M2	0:57	0/3	 8/47	Yonatan
The Tomb Of Terror		E3M3	0:34	0/2	 7/47	Nolan
Satan's Dark Delight		E3M4	0:49	0/4	12/43	Yonatan
The Wind Tunnels		E3M5	0:51	0/4	 3/50	Yonatan
The Chambers Of Torment		E3M6	0:33	0/2	 1/73	Matthias
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Episode Three: The Netherworld		4:32 sub-total
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Sewage System		E4M1	0:48	0/4	10/56	Matthias
The Tower Of Despair		E4M2	0:49	0/5	 9/43	Yonatan
The Elder God Shrine		E4M3	1:21	0/3	17/105	Yonatan
The Palace Of Hate		E4M4	0:33	1/5	 2/78	Matthias
Hell's Atrium			E4M5	0:16	0/4	 0/71	Nolan
The Pain Maze			E4M6	0:26	0/4	 3/81	Matthias
Azure Agony			E4M7	1:03	0/9	16/80	Yonatan
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Episode Four: The Elder World		5:16 sub-total
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shub-Niggurath's Pit		END	0:36	0/1	15/25	Yonatan
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Complete run through Quake	       19:49 total
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Average time for a level: 0:44.04
12 grenade-jumps and 20 rocket-jumps helped us to achieve this.

Average time for the episode 1 levels:    0:29.14
Average time for the episode 2 levels:    1:00.17 (thank you, John)
Average time for the episode 3 levels:    0:45.33
Average time for the episode 4 levels:    0:45.14

Average time for American McGee's levels: 0:36.00
Average time for Tim Willits' levels:     0:37.57
Average time for Sandy Petersen's levels: 0:44.67
Average time for John Romero's levels:    0:52.78

(1.2) Overview

This is a complete run through Quake on Nightmare skill in less than
twenty minutes. (The precise way we calculate times is explained in
the "Timing" section.) We're very proud of it. It was constructed by
pasting together recordings of the individual levels that form a
continuous run. More details of how we made it can be found in the
"How The Run Was Recorded" section.

We hope you enjoy watching our demos and movies.

Although we think this is a very good demo, we know it can be improved
still further. We want to encourage other fine speed-runners to help
us to record an even faster run, and we intend to run a large
challenge with prizes as part of this effort.

As a start, we are running an E1M3 challenge. This is almost, but not
quite, exactly in the style of the Ion Storm speed-run challenges on
E1M5 and E2M5: run the level as fast as possible. You will have to be
pretty good to beat Yonatan's time of 0:43, but we encourage you to
try. Read the exact details of the challenge and download the
challenge patch from <http://WWW.CS.Man.ac.UK/~baileya/Quake/>.

If you are interested in single-player demos in general, including
100% kills and secrets demos as well as simple speed-runs, be sure to
check out Nolan's Demo page at <http://fyi.net/~nolan/demos.html>.

(1.3) Credits

The four individuals who are responsible for this recording are:

Yonatan Donner
 <mailto:ruthd@post.tau.ac.il>
 <http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/4704/>
Matthias Belz
 <mailto:un81@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>
Nolan Pflug
 <mailto:nolan@fyi.net>
 <http://fyi.net/~nolan/demos.html>
Anthony Bailey
 <mailto:baileya@cs.man.ac.uk>
 <http://WWW.CS.Man.ac.UK/~baileya/>

Yonatan, Matthias and Nolan recorded the level demos that the
recording is composed of. To discover who recorded what, see the
statistics section.

Anthony Bailey provided technical support in the form of the utilities
that we used in processing our demos and making the continuous
run. (Mostly DemoRelise.)

All four of us worked together in coming up with ideas for the
strategic aspects of this run (decisions about what routes to use,
what items to collect and what to avoid, ideas for special tricks and
short-cuts.)

We also made use of LMPC and the accompanying unofficial demo
specifications by Uwe Girlich, and Film At 11 by Eric Stern. Our
thanks to them for making these resources and tools. And of course we
will never be able to thank id software enough for Quake itself.

(2.1) Timing

We should probably clarify exactly what we mean when we say that our
run of Quake is performed in 19:49. There are several possible
ambiguities to deal with when timing a demo, particularly one spread
across the whole game. We have settled on what we think are the most
sensible ways of resolving them. Our aims were to make the timings
sensible, verifiable from the finished demo, and given those two
criteria, as convenient as possible to calculate.

We hope others will use the same methods to calculate their own times
for individual levels, episode runs and game runs, so that it will be
easy to compare different runs.

(2.1.1) Timing a regular level

Of course, we use the Quake's built-in timer. In fact, this makes the
times longer than they really should be, since the timer starts at
1.39999998 seconds at the beginning of a demo, but there you go.

Normally we just read off the time printed on the intermission screen.
These are always a whole number of seconds. We ignore any residual
fractions as it takes extra work to discover what these were, and as
already noted Quake has already stolen 1.4 seconds from us, so it
hardly seems unfair to take a fraction back again. (c:

There is however a possible ambiguity when Quake times a played-back
demo. On playback, when a level is completed, sometimes the timer may
tick on to the next second before the engine reads the time following
the start of the intermission. This causes Quake to display a time
that is one second larger than the time shown when the demo was
originally recorded. Whether or not it occurs depends on how close to
the next whole number of seconds the demo time actually was, and it
also depends on the speed of the computer you are playing the demo
on. So a slow computer may display a different time than a fast
computer. This needs resolving since we want times to be definitive,
not dependent on the computer the demo is playing on.

One the few occasions when it is necessary, we settle the matter by
looking at the demo itself with an external tool (such as "Film At
11.") The time we use is the time marked on the frame of the demo
before the start of the intermission. This always gives us the time
that would have been shown when the demo was originally recorded.

So, if your computer shows a time for a level that is one second
bigger than the one we have stated, that is the reason why. An example
of where this happens is E2M5, which we time as 1:07. The time in the
demo is 1:07.97866058m. This is close enough to 1:08 that most
computers will probably display a time of 1:08 when they play the demo
back, but it really is a 1:07 demo.

(2.1.2) Timing START

We don't bother to time the sequences on the START level. These
sequences don't really seem like important parts of the proper game,
they are just a chance for everyone to catch their breath. (Quake
doesn't show any time at the end of them, as we're sure you know.) So,
we didn't make an effort to run them as fast as possible. It would be
trivial but very boring to do them perfectly, but really, what's the
point?

(2.1.3) Timing an episode

The time for an episode run is simply the sum of the times for the
individual levels.

Incidentally, we don't consider an episode to be completed unless the
player exits with the rune. We mention this because there is a design
flaw in E2M6 which allows the player to reach the exit without picking
up the rune - you can rocket-jump over the half-barrier into the top
of the exit. This means you can get to the exit slightly faster if you
ignore the rune. However, we decided that this didn't count as
completing the episode since the whole point of running an episode is
to get the rune at the end of it. And it certainly wouldn't work for a
whole game run!

(2.1.4) Timing END

The END level doesn't display an intermission screen with a time on it
upon completion, because Quake instead plays an end of game sequence
with Shub exploding. However this is obviously a level which is worth
timing, so we inspect the demo to calculate a time for this level. The
time we use is that on the frame before the first finale text. This is
the time at which the player enters the final teleport and at which
Quake cuts to the intermission point.

(2.1.5) Timing the whole game

Of course, the time for the whole game is the sum of the times for the
individual episodes plus the time for END.

(2.2) How The Run Was Recorded

This is *not* a recording of a single session of Quake. We'd sure like
to meet the person who could play as well as this through a continuous
twenty-minute run! It might be an interesting idea to try, but
unfortunately there would be no way to be sure from a final demo
whether or not it was recorded in one take, because the Quake *.dem
protocol is inherently unsafe that way - and indeed every
multiple-level demo recording must be hacked slightly in order to get
it to play back correctly at all.

Instead, this demo was created by recording a demo for each level
individually and then using a utility to paste them all
together. However, we were careful to ensure that the finished product
really is a continuous run through the game. We start each new level
with the correct statistics relative to the previous
level. (Basically, these will be whatever we finished the previous
level with, except that the Quake engine always gives you a minimum of
50 health and a maximum of 100, and a minimum of 25 shells, whenever
you start a new level.)

Continuity is very important to us; a demo made simply by pasting
together unrelated recordings of each level in turn would not be a
proper run of Quake. Continuity adds a lot of strategy to the game,
since items that one finds in earlier levels can be used in later
ones, but those that one avoids to save time cannot. Is it worth the
deviation to get that grenade-launcher? Can one afford to sacrifice
health at some point to save time? Many subtle interconnected
decisions have to be taken. It's great fun!

Since some degree of demo hackery is necessary to make a complete run
that plays back, and since this run features a great deal of
absolutely first-class play, people may think that what we have
produced is some hacked-up cheat. It isn't. The demo for each
individual level *was* recorded in a single take, without any cheating
or hacking. It was very important to us to make a recording of
spectacular human play, not of some bot-driven hackery. This is as
close to a "proper" recorded run through Quake as we believe it is
possible to get. If you find any continuity problems with our demo,
*please* tell us. We don't think there are any, but we will want very
much to correct any mistakes that are found. Thanks!

To record levels starting with the correct statistics, we used a
patched version of the Quake-C <client.qc> module. There are details
of how to record multiple-level runs in this way at
<URL:http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/4704/quake.html>. Also, we
will soon be releasing a patch that allows you to select arbitrary
starting statistics from within a single Quake session using an menu
of options. This will make life easier for anyone who wants to record
similar multi-level runs.

Sometimes we wanted to use a demo we had previously recorded, but to
run it relative to different starting statistics, because we had
improved our performance on an earlier level. In order to adapt a demo
in this way, we built a special utility called DemoRelise. This takes
as input two demos of consecutive levels, and relativises the second
one with respect to the statistics at the end of the first
one.

This kind of relativisation will not always be possible; for example,
suppose a player uses some ammo in the second demo that they would not
have following on from the first. In such cases, DemoRelisation will
just produce an error, not an invalid demo. The author was very
careful to make sure that DemoRelise produces correct demos, and it
gives warnings about anything that is concerned may cause a problem.

DemoRelise will be made publically available, but be warned that
it is a reasonably complicated program and so its author does not
intend to offer any technical support for it!

(2.3) Biographies

Yonatan Donner <ruthd@post.tau.ac.il>

When the first Quake Shareware came out, I was already a Doom addict, so I
downloaded it. At first I didn't like it, so it was some time before I
decided to get the full game after all - only because I trust id too much :)
For a long time I wasn't a real player, just watched some demos occasionally,
until after some conversations with Nolan I started playing myself and
started to like the game. So I owe this extra waste of time for yet another
computer game to Nolan :)

Then I discovered it was possible after all to record Quake demos for more
than one level, and recorded a simple run through of Episode 1 on Nightmare.
I hoped to improve it one day. Then Anthony wrote me about it and some time
later I asked Matthias and Nolan if they wanted to try it for the whole
game. A short time later we started this project, which took about two months,
and was lots of fun, and I think the end result is worth it.

Thanks to Nolan and Matthias for doing this with me, it was a pleasure
working with you guys! And of course big thanks to Anthony, without whom
this demo would have been a simple run and not a real movie, and probably 5
minutes slower without all his suggestions and shortcuts.

I hope you'll enjoy this demo as much as we enjoyed making it...

Personal info:

I'm 16.5, I live in Rehovot, Israel. My home page is at:
<http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/4704/>

Matthias Belz <un81@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>

I am a fan of 3D shooters since I played Doom on my 386 back in 1994.
I especially liked to watch those great speed demos that were made for
Doom and Doom2. I eagerly awaited the release of Quake and bought it
right when it came out. I waited for Quake speed demos to appear, but
to my disapointment there were very few of them. Nolan seemed to be
the only player who constantly released demos. So when I discovered a
nice route for e1m5, I decided to try it by myself. Some more demos of
levels where I had found an easy route followed. I thought this would
maybe cause other (better) players to try it too, but only a few more
players sent in speed demos since then. A few weeks later Yonatan
released his episode 1 run, and asked me if I'd like to work together
with him and Nolan to create a better one and maybe even runs for the
other episodes. Of course I agreed and you can see the result here.  I
hope you'll like it.

Personal info:
I'm 23 and study Computer Science at the University of Karlsruhe,
Germany.

Nolan Pflug <nolan@fyi.net>

I started recording Nightmare Speed demos after I found ones at
ftp.cdrom.com for e1m1, e1m2, e1m3, & e1m5. I was very impressed by
them. Jeff Preshing, who had made some of those demos, had a chart on
his web page showing the best times. I picked e2m1 and recorded it in
2:35 with all the kills and secrets. I emailed Jeff about it, but he
didn't seem to care anymore. I continued to make NSDs, thinking there
was only one person who was watching them: Yonatan. Soon, demos
without all the kills and secrets started appearing, Matthias was
making them. Then one day, Yonatan made ep1-0444, and soon asked
Matthias and I to start a project to do all four episode runs. I
decided that there should be a chart to show the best times, like what
Jeff used to have. I asked Matt of Single Player Quake if he'd be
interested. He said he was going to make one, but after a month of
waiting, I got fed up and made my own. It's up at
<http://fyi.net/~nolan/demos.html>

BTW, in case you haven't noticed, I'm a keyboarder!  I've impressed
many people with my keyboarding skill. (Not my words per minute, mind
you.)

I'm 17 and live north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the US.

Anthony Bailey <baileya@cs.man.ac.uk>

I'm the token crap member of our group. I had great fun playing
through DooM II and Quake, but I'm no gaming god, and I found it all
pretty challenging. So it's been a real pleasure to work on this with
such cool people and players as Nolan, Matthias and Yonatan, and to
bask in their reflected glory. (c: I get away with it by programming
some tools and utilities for them.

When I saw Yonatan's EP1_0444.DEM, and realised how much room there
was for strategy and inventiveness in making speed-runs across
multiple levels, I immediately caught the bug. Of course I still have
to run the levels by proxy because I'm too crap to do them well enough
myself. Maybe one day I'll wake up and be able to grenade-jump
properly. (c:

I'm 26, and coming to the end of a maths PhD in Manchester, UK
Home page: <URL:http://WWW.CS.Man.ac.UK/~baileya/>

(2.4) History Of The QdQ Project

(Here's a brief overview of how this demo/movie came to be,
 by Anthony:)

Speed-runs and other clever demos have always been my cup of tea. And
when one day I saw this recorded run all the way through Dimension Of
The Doomed called EP1_0444 by some guy called Yonatan Donner, the
first thought was "now, this is cool" and the second "I wonder just
how fast it's possible to do this... or even the whole game?"

Figuring I could maybe barter some programming skills and ideas for a
piece of the action, I wrote Yonatan a couple of months back with a
few ideas about how the time might be improved. "I reckon episode 1
could be done inside four minutes, just about, by someone with enough
talent", I e-mailed him. As you can see from the final 3:24 time, this
was wildly pessimistic! Rather more optimistically, I also guessed we
might squeeze a run through the whole game under twenty minutes. At
the time I had no idea just how hard that would be, but I guess that
time became a sort of Holy Grail for us as time went on. I'm glad we
managed it in the end. Ticking clocks had begun to haunt my sleep. (c:

Yonatan contacted Nolan and Matthias, since they were also making
speed-runs through individual levels and sending them to Walnut Creek,
and so we got down to planning how to run through the whole game and
seeing what routes and shortcuts we could come up with. Figuring the
episodes were essentially independent, we started with the M1s and
went from there. We worked out how to patch Quake to make the
consecutive recordings, and I hacked up a utility that would let us
adapt existing runs to use different starting stats in case we needed
to do that.

About a month ago, we had a run for Episode 4 that we reckoned was
about as good as it was going to get and we noticed that the QuakeLab
MultiMedia contest had opened its doors to simpler demos as well as to
more elaborate movie productions, so figured we might as well enter
it. We wondered if maybe we could alter the camera position in our
demos to make them more movie-like to watch. It was just a passing
fancy but after I'd written a simple program to do that sort of thing,
we all got fairly into the process of filming demos. It's great fun,
and if you want to film your own demos, give the utility that these
initial experiments grew into a try (it still takes some nous and
patience): <URL:http://WWW.CS.Man.ac.UK/~baileya/Quake/ReMaic.html>.

All the way through this project I have been outrageously demanding
about what these guys should try to achieve considering that I can't
play for toffee. And they have constantly surprised me by coming up
with the goods and then some. Now we finally have a complete run under
twenty minutes. We hope everybody else reckons that it's as cool as we
do and enjoys watching it.

But the challenge doesn't stop there, and I'm looking forward to being
even more demanding for even better times as we extend the project to
get the rest of the Quake community involved. Stop by our page at
<URL:http://WWW.CS.Man.ac.UK/~baileya/Quake/> if you want to offer us
your ideas or your playing skills, or if you want to win some stuff.

(2.5) Information About The Levels

Below each of us talks a little about the levels that he did.

E1M1 : The Slipgate Complex (Yonatan, 0:30)

A rather small level, the runthrough is simple. However it is hard to
survive with all the humans firing at you, and not delaying is very
hard, if someone is on your path, he must be dead before you get
there. I think 0:30 is the optimal time, I wasn't able to do it faster
even on skill 0.

E1M2 : Castle Of The Damned (Yonatan, 0:38)

A very nice level, running through is simple here too. There is only
one critical area, it's the switch that raises the bridge to the
silver key, you need some luck to have a clear path to the switch and
back, the knights can get in the way. The level is pretty easy.

E1M3 : The Necropolis (Yonatan, 0:43)

This was by far the hardest level for me in the whole game. At first I
tried the conventional route, taking the key and then going all the
way back to the door, then I thought I could perhaps get back up right
away. I managed to do it with a rocket-jump, so I knew a grenade-jump
could be done too. But nothing prepared me to just how hard it
is. First of all, throwing the grenade is tricky: it can easily bounce
off that platform. You can throw it up, but then it's harder to jump
in the right moment. The jump has to be extremely accurate, or else
you won't get up. You have to be running up the slope at the moment
you do the jump - this gives you extra upward velocity. I managed to
do it once every one hour of trying, or so.

Afterwards there is another possible trick which Matthias found, doing
a grenade-jump over the opening to the sewers, which saves some
seconds. However I never had enough health to do it.

The last trick is not getting locked in the lift in the end. It takes
it a very long time to rise, and I didn't want to waste that
time. Anthony suggested a long time before I tried it that I try and
find a way to get out of there (then go up using the teleporter),
maybe using an explosive. I found a better solution: use the fiend to
stop one of the bars. It's hard, because the fiend has to cooperate
with you and get right into its position to block the bar. In this
try I was lucky and he cooperated with me and got very fast into his
position, usually it takes several seconds of luring.

To sum it up, the level itself is easy except for the tricks which are
damn hard to do.

E1M4 - The Grisly Grotto (Yonatan, 0:28)

The grenade-jump to the silver key was suggested by Anthony. It is
easy to do, the optimal jump is to land right on the key. There is one
ogre in the end who blocks the way, so I had to kill him. The
disadvantage of this route is not getting the super nailgun, but it's
not very much needed anyway. The level is quite easy.

[Stop Press... we have a new idea now of how to do this level even
faster. - Anthony]

E1M5 - Gloom Keep (Yonatan, 0:22)

This is a different route than the standard "from-scratch" route. It
was suggested by Nolan and Anthony. It is quite hard, the first
grenade-jump is always successful but the second one is hard to do
without getting hit, and then you mustn't get hit until you get the
rocket launcher and do the rocket-jump. Even so, if you get more than
94 points of damage during the two jumps, you have to take the
healthpack. It is possible to do it, I've managed to do it on skill 0,
but never with everything that went around me.  It might just be too
hard. If it works, the time can be maybe 0:20, which is probably
faster than what can be accomplished with the standard route
(Shadow's) on skill 3.

E1M6 - The Door To Chthon (Yonatan, 0:12)

The rocket-jump to the key was originally done by Matthias. I knew I
had to leave with a good health so that I'll be able to do many rocket
jumps in E1M7. It takes some luck to get both 0:12 and a good health,
but it was quite easy, took very few tries. The key is to have the
shambler fight an ogre and to get both ogres after the gold key into
pain, when they don't attack you for a brief moment.

E1M7 - The House Of Chthon (Yonatan, 0:31)

This isn't very much the standard route. It was first done by Nolan. I
first jump to the rune and to the right, so that I won't waste time
with a normal jump. Then I rocket-jump up and do 3 more jumps later,
from one switch to another. This saves a lot of time usually wasted
running around from one switch to another. It is quite hard to get all
rocket-jumps go well without getting hit from Chthon.

[We had hoped we could use even more rocket-jumps, to go from the
third switch back to the first again. But if you are that quick, the
pillars seem to get in the way of your jump across the lava. - Anthony]

E2M1 - The Installation (Matthias, 0:10)

This is probably the easiest level to run fast. One jump of medium
difficulty is all you have to do. Nolan first made a 0:11 demo for
this level, I improved this to 0:10. I think this the optimal time, so
this is one of the few levels that cannot be improved any more
IMHO. (The other levels of this kind are E1M1, E1M6 and E4M5.)

E2M2 - The Ogre Citadel (Nolan, 1:00)

There were several possible routes for this level, but I had to get
 the grenade launcher so we could do Matthias's grenade-jump in E2M3.
I imagine under a minute is possible with this route, but I got help
from an ogre as it was...  :)

[There's another route that gets the grenade-launcher and is probably
a bit faster, but it requires two tricky grenade-jumps and more
importantly, misses the super shotgun. And that weapon is always very
useful, so we decided we had to get it, really - Anthony.]

E2M3 - The Crypt Of Decay (Yonatan, 0:44)

I used to think this level is extremely hard, mainly because of the
deadly end. But now I find it rather easy. The grenade-jump shortcut
was discovered by Matthias. It is quite a hard grenade-jumps, almost
maximum height. In the end I had to kill the first hell knights to
open the exit and then wait for the ogre and shambler to come out,
because they block the passage. I got quite lucky in this try and they
got out quite fast and I managed to sneak to the exit with quite good
health and armor.

E2M4 - The Ebon Fortress (Yonatan, 1:31)

This is the hardest level to survive in the whole game, considering I
wanted to leave with lots of red armor for E2M5, because of the two
rocket-jumps and the underwater ride. I took the super nailgun,
because it's very useful and very needed. Then I took the yellow
armor, because the rest is extremely hard to survive without it. There
are several possible routes in this level, this one was done first by
Nolan in a skill 0 speed demo, with some small changes by me. The
silver key area is very hard, getting the silver key and jumping into
the slime alive is the first hard part, then getting out of the slime,
you will be bombed with tons of grenades and shambler lightnings. I
decided to get out of there with a rocket-jump, because the damage
taken from the rocket is much smaller than the damage caused by the
environment when doing it the normal way (regular jumps). Then I took
a health pack because I had to let the Quad end just when I'm entering
the exit area, for the final rocket-jump, which was discovered in a
mistake by Nolan, who accidentally pressed his rocket-jump key in an
early demo and jumped up there.  I thought it'll be easier that way,
since you get a clear shot at the switches, without monsters
disturbing you.

E2M5 - The Wizard's Manse (Yonatan, 1:07)

I didn't do the rocket-jump in the start because I didn't think I'd
have enough health. Then I did two jumps to the cage instead of one
because it's very hard to survive that one, there is a shambler right
behind you there.  The cage ride is very boring and you must have more
than 40% health, because you lose that while drowning. Romero, why did
you do those extremely boring sequences?? [We love you really, John.
(c: - Anthony] The last room can get violent, but those monsters don't
stand a chance against me and my Quadded super nailgun :) The level is
medium in difficulty. The route here is also Nolan's.

E2M6 - The Dismal Oubliette (Yonatan, 1:29)

Another very boring sequence - the descending lift. The rocket-jump in
the start is very simple to think of, I guess I was the first to do
it, plus the later return to the yellow armor and the second jump. The
level is quite easy, but very boring to do. I let one shambler
telefrag the other and be telefragged by me. The rocket-jump to the
rune is Anthony's idea. [One could even try rocket-jumping out again
as well - Anthony.] We know we could finish the level without taking
the rune, but we don't think we really finish the episode if we don't
take the rune.

E3M1 - Termination Central (Yonatan, 0:48)

The explosives jump is the idea of Anthony and Matthias, but is quite
hard to do. I had to take the red armor, because otherwise I didn't
manage to survive. But this way I got to the yellow key fast. You need
to blow one of the explosive boxes before blowing the one using which
you jump, because otherwise for a certain reason you don't take any
damage. [It seems to be a bug in Quake. - Anthony] The level is hard.

E3M2 - The Vaults Of Zin (Yonatan, 0:57)

This level is quite easy, even without taking the ring of shadows. The
whole route was done first by Matthias. I modified it a bit to have a
faster time (different weapon usage, killing less, etc.). There are no
specific tricky parts, you just hope everything goes fine.

E3M3 - The Tomb Of Terror (Nolan, 0:34)

This was about the only grenade-jump I could do, since you don't have
to go up very high. I only have a 486-133 Mhz, so I only get about 10
FPS in Quake. And, in case you didn't know, the higher your FPS, the
higher you can reliably go in a rocket/grenade-jump. [Because there
can be less time between the jump and the explosion, so you're closer
to the blast, so you get more of a boost - Anthony.] I got VERY lucky
in this level, near the end, the monsters just stepped aside and let
me pass...

E3M4 - Satan's Dark Delight (Yonatan, 0:49)

One of my favorite levels. The route was suggested by Anthony. It's
also quite easy. I killed the ogre who guards the switch above the
lake so he won't disturb me later, it's not a waste of time since I
did that while swimming. The rocket-jumps are rather easy, the second
one is optional but it's faster that way.

E3M5 - The Wind Tunnels (Yonatan, 0:51)

The brilliant grenade+rocket-jump was discovered by Nolan. The trigger
was placed too low, obviously we can reach very high :) This is the
only tricky part in the level, the rest is easy. I like watching both
shamblers hitting me from the camera view.

E3M6 - The Chambers Of Torment (Matthias, 0:33)

The Ring of Shadows makes this level quite easy. Yonatan first played
it, Anthony suggested the jump in the beginning. There is another
possible route here where you don't have to get the gold key, but I
think it's a few seconds slower than the one we used.

E4M1 - The Sewage System (Matthias, 0:48)

Another level where you just have to run through, no shortcuts
here. Surviving is not easy and you need some luck too to dodge all
those grunts and enforcers. Well, theoretically there is a shortcut:
Anthony pointed out that one could use the explosive box to reach the
gold keycard. But since there is no armor or megahealth in this level,
there's no chance to survive it.

E4M2 - The Tower Of Despair (Yonatan, 0:49)

Quite an easy level. The route was done first by Nolan, who also was
the one to suggest skipping the invulnerability and the first Quad. No
tricky parts here, maybe jumping on the wood beams without falling.

[Stop Press: we've now done this level a couple of seconds faster,
just too late to make it into this demo. These guys just keep on
improving! - Anthony]

E4M3 - The Elder God Shrine (Yonatan, 1:21)

The basic route was my idea, but Anthony and Nolan helped make it much
faster. I was quite lucky in this demo, no monsters blocked my way
back from the silver key area. Surviving is easy, but many things can
go wrong. I killed the scrag in order to open a shortcut on the way
back. I got rid of a pursuing spawn by throwing a grenade forward,
which exploded right on time to blow it to bits.

E4M4 - The Palace Of Hate (Matthias, 0:33)

Again it was Anthony who discovered the route for this level. I used a
triple grenade-jump sequence to finish the map quite fast. The jumps
itself are not too difficult, but it's difficult to do them all in a
row. Also you have to take care that you don't open the room with the
fiends while getting the super nailgun.

[Matthias has run the map a second faster from scratch by missing the
super shotgun, but we wanted it for the rest of this episode - Anthony]

E4M5 - Hell's Atrium (Nolan, 0:16)

Not much to say about this level. Just run, turn some, jump some, and
exit.

E4M6 - The Pain Maze (Matthias, 0:26)

Anthony and I discovered this route at about the same time. I realized
that a normal grenade-jump is sufficient to reach the opening that
leads to the exit. Yonatan made a 0:27 demo real soon, and it took me
some time to improve it by a second.

E4M7 - Azure Agony (Yonatan, 1:03)

It is easy to get to the exit alive using this (Nolan's) route, but
getting a good time is harder. It's hard to aim at the vores when you
get hit from rockets all the time and can't see where you're firing.

END - Shub Niggurath's Pit (Yonatan, 0:36)

A bit of a boring end level, and pretty simple. I had to wait for the
teleport destination (the spike thing in case you don't know) to enter
Shub, so it can't be done much faster than that.

Yonatan Donner <ruthd@post.tau.ac.il>
Matthias Belz <un81@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>
Nolan Pflug <nolan@fyi.net>
Anthony Bailey <baileya@cs.man.ac.uk>
