IWAD:        doom2.wad
PWAD:        FW.wad
Map:         MAP32
Skill:       5
Category:    NM100S
Exe:         dsda-doom v0.29.4 -complevel 9
Recorded on: 2026-07-17
Time:        21:36
Author:      xormatrix
Attempts:    1207
Video URL:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K65YmRHzCv4

===========
Description
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I love this map. One of the most magical maps I've played in a long time. Amazing
atmosphere, truly a work of art :) This turned out to be the most interesting map I've ran on
nightmare so far. There's no way to skip half the map, and almost none of the fights are
directly cheeseable, instead requiring good strategy, planning and lots of practice.

I did this run around a month ago, but I've been very unmotivated to upload this run due to not
being that happy with it. Lots of time loss (the arch-vile at 4:23 taking literally 50 seconds to
respawn and come down), me playing badly and making stupid decisions, bad luck with
cacos, etc. It's possible to save 2 or even 3 minutes over this and getting a sub-20 minute run.
I've tried to get a better time but eventually just got burned out from running this. I thought
I could take a little break and then return to get a better run, but even now I'm unmotivated.
After 2658 attempts in total over multiple weeks, I'm done. As I don't have the motivation to
run this any further (for now), this will have to do. I've been very reluctant but with time
I've come to accept this demo. This is good enough, and I realize I've been way too hard on myself
with too high of a standard. Maybe some other time I'll have a go at this map again? We'll see.
I still have a few more small ideas on further improvements.

I know it's a bit ridiculous to not have uploaded this earlier, but it's honestly very difficult for
me to accept something I know with certainty can be improved much further, and especially
considering I've come so close to getting a good run: I had one excellent attempt
(see the attached demo in failed-attempt/ or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGysUkPTsRo) where I got all
the way to the final fight and on a great pace (sub-19 minutes), but somehow I completely messed it up.
The first setup I developed to zero press the exit switch used automap textures for correct alignment.
But of course, when recording demos you don't have access to a textured automap, so I was completely
in the blind and couldn't really do much :/ I tried for a couple of minutes before deciding to try
doing the final fight legitimately, but that went down the drain quick. As you can imagine, I was
disappointed beyond belief and felt like a complete idiot. I have no idea how I could've forgotten or
missed that automap textures aren't available during demo recording, especially considering that
I even use the automap during this run! It's been very difficult for me to accept this demo over the
almost-successful attempt, as that one was much faster and a bit cleaner in my opinion. I continued
speedrunning for ~2 weeks or so to get a better time, but in the end I settled for this one.
As I stated, I just got burned out from running this map.

I wish I was joking when I say that the fight at 14:10 has a less than 25% chance of making it.
That's the absolute worst part of the entire map in my opinion. Any time a cyan cyber respawns I have
to go out of my way to kill it. Infighting is basically garbage, nothing is reliable at all. You have
to do most of the work yourself. The two cyan cybers infighting with the mancubi isn't reliable.
The pain elementals infighting the cacos is mostly reliable, but even that can go straight down the drain.
The arch-viles will basically never infight any cacos, as the cacos just fly upward. In this run I even have
to improvise and go for "plan B", barely making it out alive. Not only that, arch-viles from this fight can
enter the little area before the next fight and zap you from there. Just horrible. There are some other
strategies I found, but all of them have their pros and cons. It's a pick-your-poison type situation:
no good strategies, you just pick the one you feel is the least crap. I have found a new strategy with an
arch-vile jump that is a bit better than the one I used in this run, but even that one isn't consistent and
has its pros and cons. If I play this map again I'll probably go for that strategy.

Also, please note that the setup I use to zero-press the exit switch is done in dsda-doom.
Other source ports will have it differently of course. And to be pedantic, the zero-press can be done faster;
the timer should actually be very very slightly above the blockmap line for the perfect setup. You can get
a better setup by looking directly forward (toward the exit switch), then move your FOV one shorttic angle
to the right, then move carefully backwards a little bit (using vertical mouse movements).

Credit to Coincident on YouTube for his Butterfly manuever strategy: https://youtu.be/jfiUHQf4aV8?t=1958.
This is the strategy I used for the secret fight at 11:17. Although in this case I don't actually move
diagonally as I found that to be too much of a risk of getting zapped by an arch-vile.
