Okay, this seem to be a problem at the moment and I kinda have a different take here, so let me go all out.

While speedruncom doom page is merely a small fracture of doom speedruns it would nice to understand what and why is being done. Also for reason of this actually being related to doom speedrunning in general some rules have to be applied in one way or another.

As of right now demos aren't a necessity, however they help moderators to verify your runs on many levels (sourceport, actual stats, input check for weird behavior, such as auto sr50 and so on). Also by creating a demo you create an actual legit entry into actual doom leaderboards, doesn't matter if the category that you run marked as Other in dsda.

While I do understand that some of you might be unwilling to go extra step, I'd have to politely ask you - record demos for your runs AND only use listed sourceports. It is generally accepted practice. You wouldn't go to, let's say, GTA leaderboards and then submit run with framelimiter off (banned by rules, if you wonder) and then provide an excuse on why it should stay there and why it won't affect leaderboards.

Many games require you to go extra step, like downpatching or upgrading to certain version, which is especially annoying with console games. And the only reason why I can see demos - an extra step - being annoying to you - not doing that before. It has way more positives than you might even think of:

1. It doesn't require any processing power. Which allows you to do runs on shittiest PCs possible and then still get it to perfect quality with 2)
2. It can be converted into a video with prboom features. Which allows for whatever visual quality standard exists in current day and age, be that 2k,8k,256k or something else.
3. It can be studied with TAS tools, such as xdre, where you can learn what you do wrong, learn how to adjust your inputs. Greatest example I can name is current D2ALL WR-holder Looper. He does study his failed attempts during stream which is extemely important on that high-end performance.
4. And then it also does provide all the info about your run, more than you can imagine, which legitemises your run.

If you aren't getting top time, then I personally really don't care for how you record your run to these leaderboards. But if you manage to get 1st place in whatever category you run - having a demo not only would contribute greatly to everyone, but will also help to prove how exactly do you got that first place. Also if you are capable of doing actual top-tier runs - why not legitemise them by community standards? Make you stand out. Before ILs were removed, some new runners, who appeared from speedruncom leaderboards got actual WRs in categories that stood for decades!

That isn't made for leaderboards to make you feel annoyed. That is being made for leaderboards to be 100% valid. You can still record your videos and submit them to provide an easy way of "consumind media". But please, do record demos. While currently it isn't a necessity on speedruncom - it will become eventually.

Now with that out of the way, let me quickly address the m8 confusion. I've been getting runs without m8 in a past, and even though I think it is quite clear written in a rules, that map 8 must be finished unless stated otherwise, it isn't quite clear why that is the thing to some people, even though, yet again, it is explained in a rules, that "if your run doesn't use saves/loads then final In-Game time - sum of level times (can be seen at the end of a level, certain sourceports do count sum for you aswell) except map 8 UNLESS stated otherwise by subcategory rules (Such Compete-N rules for that, we not gonna bother, even though you can time it with certain sourceports)". This has been a historical issue, which ONLY exists in Compete-N entries. In that case it really is Ultimate Doom only. Back in a day, old sourceports were going to intermission screen after m8, as result it wasn't possible to get actual time. Even though it isn't a case anymore, Ultimate Doom is Compete-N "entry" and to avoid any confusion on what's considered WR by community and what's not, we just apply that ruleset here for consistensy. That is why m8 have to be completed even if it doesn't count to your final time. (Maybe dsdarchive will fix that issue, by splitting UD runs into CN and other entries, I have no clue).

I'm not gonna lock this thread, you can ask questions about demos or m8 related stuff here.

i lost all of my older demo files because i reinstall windows a lot, i gotta redo most of my times now (2 12.00s on e1m4 NoMo so far HaHaa)

edit: also, i heard that there is another way to upload to dsda other than emailing the guy who runs it, but i have completely forgotten what it is and would like to know

@depr4vity: Uploading your demo in a post on Doomworld's speed demos section will result in it being added to DSDA on the next update.

ty, will upload once i actually get the 11s again

I'm new to the doom running scene, and one issue I have with recording demos is with OBS. When recording a demo, the game launches straight into the game, but OBS takes a moment to recognize the game and display it properly. One easy fix for this is to use display capture instead of game capture, but even display capture has this issue when playing in full screen, which I do due to having a 2K monitor, and crispy doom not displaying on the screen correctly in windowed.

Is there an easy fix for this that would help RTA runners keep their splits and record demos?

If you are recording demos - you can use demo reset button, no need to close game (that feature should be in crispy and dsda-doom ports for sure) If you are running rta (I suppose you are talking about multiepisode categories) just wait until game fully loads then start your run. And if you are recording demos then you don’t even need videos for submissions. If you want to do videos of your demos - look into viddump thread on doomworld by daerik.

Thanks Tezur0! I don't see the demo reset button on crispy doom though, I found reset level, but that desyncs the demo. Is the setting in the crispy doom setup, or in the crispness settings?

In crispy it might be in settings that you launch not from the game (separate exe), but I haven’t used this port much

@death_unites_us Head into the Crispy Doom Setup exe. "Configure Keyboard" -> "Other Keys...". You are looking for "Restart Level/Demo". That should restart demos at the first level they originally started at.

Edit: If that doesn't work then idk. Make sure you have the most up to date version as well.

Awesome, the issue was the earlier version I was using didn't have the option.

One final issue, when I use this option, if I restart demo, when I play it back it places the demo in 1-9 instead of 1-1, any idea why?

Here's a link to the two demos if that helps, the first one is just me starting and then hitting reset demo, the second i am supposed to be running through 1-1 but it starts up 1-9. https://4-8productions.com/downloads/kneedeep.lmp https://4-8productions.com/downloads/kneedeep-00000.lmp

It should restart demo from whichever map you started recording (-warp argument in a bat file). Can’t really help much, my best suggestion would move to dsda-doom and potentially use launcher which is developed on a side - it has many useful features. Unfortunately I haven’t been around for a past month so can’t coordinate you any better. Can try asking in dsda discord which is linked in some pinned thread.

Yeah unfortunately I wasn't able to figure out the issue with Crispy Doom. But, dsda-doom works great! Thanks for the help 👍

I keep all of my demos on dropbox so I won't lose them