This QUAKE Record Took 17 Years To Beat 

So relieved to finally get this video out. I really hope you enjoy it. Another Doom video next!

"Then, on this date, this person, would achieve this run..." - I legit get excited each time he says this.

imagine what speed-running must look like to an enemy in the game. some block-headed dude comes flying through the door at 60 miles an hour, bounces past the explosive barrel, spins in mid-air to detonate it with a gunshot, then bounces off down the corridor at 70 miles an hour before disappearing around the corner

24:10 "if I were to explain every single detail going on in this record this video would be two hours long" Karl, do you actually think we'd complain?

Never have I thought I'd ever hear a sentence like "The knowledge of Power Bunnies had been around since at least the mid 2000s"

Thanks for making this, Karl. I'll adress a few things people have been mentioning: 1. Speedruns are restricted to use the official clients (vanilla Quake, WinQuake, GLQuake) or the JoeQuake source port. Clients like Quakespasm, Dark Places, QuakeWorld etc. do not use the same physics as the original Quake and are therefore disallowed. All runs are capped at 72 fps. *Edit: The most recent JoeQuake (0.16.2) introduced independent physics which means you can now use any fps value above 72 without altering the physics.* Values below 72 will behave as normal. Older versions are still restricted to the 72 fps cap. 2. You can't compare Quake movement to games that may seem similar at first glance. It's nothing like HL, CS (csgo lol), Q2 or VQ3/CPMA. Even QuakeWorld is vastly different when you get down to the very core since the fps cap, friction, power bunnyhops etc. of Quake changes everything. 3. You can't preserve speed by bhopping in a circle inside the elevator. This isn't kz or a surf_ map, air acceleration is not that high in Quake. Maintaining speed off the box boost is already pushing the limits of the aa. If you look closely, the 19 even bumps the wall after the box to be able to make the turn. 4. TASing is not really a thing in Quake since there is no method of frame advancing or manipulating "rng". TAS demos for pure movement maps like 100m, e2m1 and e4m5 have been scripted in the past but that's pretty much all that is possible in Quake at this time.

"If i were to explain every single detail going into this record, this video would be 2 hours long". And I would watch every second of it.

I love it that speed runners took an iconic FPS and made it into an advanced platform racing game.

Karl: "And on this day this legend achieved the most amazing infinitesimally precise speedrun abusing the 78th subpixel" Me: "Ah yes, intellectual content" Quake: *Uh Uh-ha Uh Uh ARRRRghgh Uh Uh*

This 19 second run is insane. Inhuman. Impressive.

Excellent overview Karl, it helped me to understand what happened in the past ~10 years while I was not really following this community. It's good to see that there are still some people with crazy skills who are obsessed to beat Quake speedrunning records. When I made :21, I haven't thought :19 was possible. Big congratulations to Conny for proving me wrong. :)

4:22 "... such as rocket jumping, which blew everyone away." That's a joke, lads.

Never knew there was such technique to this

The fact that you take a few seconds to break down what E1M1 means is so good to see. I've had a passing interest in speed runs since the 90s myself, so I didn't need it, but that kind of shorthand and other similar terms can really alienate newer people who can't follow along. It's great to see you talk about Quake and general speedrunning history, especially with how popular speedruns have become, and much of this history isn't known by newer and casual fans of speedruns. This is really the kind of thing that the old classics deserve, to be kept alive with some good and clear communication.

"Rocket jumping *blew* people away" "Bunny hopping was the most famous technique to *spring* from the Quake engine." You can't sneak puns past me.

Quake had the best movement physics of any game, and still influences how I move in any fps.

Every time karl says “he would perform... THIS RUN.” I know im about to witness something great

I feel like a full breakdown of the half life speedrun history would be amazingly entertaining

"He would achieve, this run". *Quake guy noises*

This level is burned into my brain. I remember the shareware for this game had first come out when I was on holidays and getting ready for high school and my cousin, my friend and I just sat there playing the first episode over and over.

Speed-runners: "Maybe if I do this I'll beat the 19 sec record." Me: *Wandering around for 5 minutes after killing all the enemies* "Where the fk is the exit.." 5 minutes later.. "Fml I can't be that stupid." Another unsuccessful 5 min later.. "Ok, maybe I am." *Opens console: NOCLIP ON FLYMODE ON * "Aaa, there's the exit.." *Shamely enters the next level* "Here we go again.."

Karl having sex: "Not optimal, we can go faster"

This is my kind of gaming documentary. Keep it up! Glad to be a supporting patreon!

First time I saw RJ in Quake was Romero playing in a semi-final at Quakecon 97'. Took a moment to figure out what he did but then I spent a few days practicing all the jumps he made on DM2 before starting to experiment on different maps. I had by then forgotten about the single player game entirely, so didn't implement them into speedrunning or "hacking" the single player maps. A few months later there were some demos on a PC Zone cover disc of a Quake LAN in London where some of the DC and 4K guys dominated. Players like Q-Tip, Sujoy, Nightwing etc. I studied them for a few weeks and before long I was addicted, paying 5p a minute peak times for Wireplay just to get a sub 80 ping on 56k dial up, 2p a minute off peak (on top of phonebill). Quake deathmatch and Quake III OSP scene probably the most raw, gnarly and epic period / scene in FPS history, possibly forever. Quake forever.

10:10 that technique changed speedrunning forever, not just quake. Some of the most important speedrun first-person games use some form of strafe jumping.

Oh God, you showed the most embarrassing demo I ever made (in my defence, it was only to demonstrate the technique!) I haven't heard of power bunnies, but I wonder to what extent it's framerate-related. Regular bunnyhopping definitely benefited from high framerates, and with Quake capped at 72 FPS I wonder if sourceports which have lifted that limit have allowed for improved speed. I remember that by changing the host_framerate variable (in effect simulating a high framerate) you could get some absolutely obscene speed via air-strafing.

What have you achieved in 20 years of daily effort? John: "I have graduated from two universities, wrote three books and developed a cancer medicine." speedrunner: "I have improved E1M1 run by 1 second."

Damn, this has to be one of the best speedrunning related videos there is. The way in which Karl explains the history of Quake speedrunning is just facinating.

Various addenda from the perspective of someone who played Quake 1 Deathmatch (1on1s/4on4s) competitively for years and only casually enjoyed watching the speedrunning community: An old professional Quake player, Paul "czM" Nelson, once made a script that plays e1m1 on easy mode to completion with a single button press. I don't recall it being amazingly fast, but one could view it as early attempts at a TAS (Tool Assisted Speedrun) :). Wall running being capped at 480 ups is interesting to me - I recall the magic number in QuakeWorld (Quake 1's internet-friendly multiplayer solution, which used the same maps/gameplay but with a different client for netcode and physics) being capped at 495 ups for any on-ground movement, whether it was wall running, zig-zagging via a script, or the movement you do on the ground before strafe jumping. But Quake 1's physics are certainly slightly different than QW's, so this is only a mild surprise to me. Enemy pathing is effectively RNG, but I'm about 99% sure getting shot by the soldier enemies is not RNG - the AI is programmed to aim at a point slightly behind your character as though you have a stick coming out of the back of your shirt and he's shooting at the end of the stick. So if you are looking at the enemy, he'll hit you. If you are looking away from him by 90 degrees, he will definitely miss you. WTF? How did I not know that a world record was broken by a guy whose clan tag was "The|"? 2007 was the height of my QuakeWorld career and a few years after my clan "The Boss" (team name set to " The") had won highly competitive 4on4 tournaments. This is actually baffling to me, and I'll be linking it to my old clanmates to see if they knew about this! I honestly never knew how to do Power Bunny Hopping until now. It isn't necessary in QuakeWorld because the physics tick call for ground friction happens after the check to jump when the player buffers the input for QW whereas it happens in the reverse order in Q1. I remember watching demos of people doing it in Q1 and never making sense of the how, but the instant you said "tapping forward" the reason clicked. With friction being called for 1 frame in Q1, your character's "wish direction" of where movement keys are trying to send him would be 90 degrees of the velocity vector direction, which causes the movement speed reduction. Thanks for finally explaining that little mystery to me! :D Thank you so much for the Quake content. You have provided such a high quality analysis that further raises my appreciation for the game and community, even considering the tens of thousands of hours I already spent in it.

Karl, this is by far the best speedrunning video I've ever seen. It's very interesting and I learnt a lot about speedrunning. I'm not a speedrunner myself but I find it fascinating, and the way you tell the progression like a story makes watching these videos very enjoyable. Keep up the great work!

Only youtuber alive where I go back and binge content. Thank you! Got me wanting to speedrun the consoles versions of all FPS you cover.(level specialist style)[doom & quake, PS4].

Karl: the technique has not yet reached maturity Me: is this a documentary or something

4:20: "Quake Done Quick showcased crazy techniques such as "rocket jumping," which blew everyone away" heh

8:11 Gunnar Andre Mo 1997 in 29 9:10 Burninsun 1998 in 28 9:48 Will Marsh 1998 in 27 10:22 Ilkka Kurkela 1998 in 26 12:29 Peter Horvath 1998 in 25 (not promoted or shown for some reason) 13:07 Ilkka Kurkela 1998 in 24 16:33 Markus Taipale 1999 in 23 17:54 Markus Taipale 2001 in 22 20:03 Peter Horvath 2001 in 21 21:11 The Navigator 2007 in 21 22:50 Deniu 2016 in 21 23:14 Jukebox 2018 in 21 23:43 Jukebox 2018 in 20 28:19 Jukebox 2019 in 19 29:38 Karl Jobst 2019 in 25

Rocket jumping blew everyone away. Literally.

I remember when I thought SDA was "Speed Demons Archive." My mind saw "demos" and went, nah that's demons.

As someone who was playing Quake back then when these skills were being developed (and I had a few records here and there), let me just say I absolutely LOVED this video. The sad thing about getting skilled in something like Quake is that people who have not tried it cannot appreciate just how how impressive some of the runs are. For those of us who did play, some of the demos were jaw-dropping. Your explanation of Power Bunnies is great! Back in 2006 or so when I quit speedrunning, I couldn't figure out why sometimes I would gain more speed than other times and why I couldn't be consistent in very simple maps like 100m, which we used just to test pure speed (no obstacles, no turns, no monsters). Talks of "tapping forward on contact with the ground" were already there and I guess I might have intuitively done it in some runs, but not in all jumps. Back then I was decent with "regular" bunny hopping, in fact I remember being able to get 0:22 in e1m1 without the explosion box pretty much on command, which back then I thought was pretty good! But seeing the speed these guys nowdays are gaining is mind-blowing! I also loved the reasoning behinds things I already knew, but didn't know why (like jumping right where a downward slope meets flat ground; also why jumping on an upward slope as close to it's beggining as possible keeps more speed). I think you did a GREAT job presenting all the records and how the technique was evolving. Figuring out where to jump, where to turn, which slopes are worth using and which ones aren't, how to manage stairs... it truly felt like it was some sort of art back then, which is a silly thing to say to a non-player, I know, but I'm sure you see it this way after making this video and trying yourself. Great work!!!

I’m not a big Quake or speedrunner guy but there’s something very cozy about these vids.

Quake brings me back to college, circa 2000, and computer lab multiplayer and team capture the flag marathons!

I actually got chills when I saw how he maintained the bunny hop after the button press. I've never played this game in my life

When one of these speedrun documentary channels says "THIS RUN" you know it's about to go down

I've known Jukebox since he used to play competitive TF2. To this day one of the best gamers I've ever played any game with. A true natural. Salute to Conny!

I adored the Quake games while stuck in the 90s internetless. The few Quake lan parties I attended define the few fond memories of my youth. Eventually I got online and followed my friends to new games where aimcone/cone of fire/disconnected reticle mechanics dominated, became defacto, and progressively shat on my soul. Resultantly I haven't played an fps in probably a decade. This video specifically is tremendous! It singlehandedly brought me back to a joy I lost decades ago by reacquainting me to the series I long thought dead. Thank you!

these are the Legendary Karl Jobst videos ill be passing down forever

Such a great video! Well done. I think it’s worth talking about just how much Jukebox has revolutionised the long-dormant quake scene in the last couple of years. His marathon through all of quake, for example, is 12 minutes of nerves-of-steel perfection, and in my opinion, just as crazy an achievement as runs like the OOT any%. And the e1m3 100% and any% runs are two more records that stood for 19 years before Jukebox beat them by a single second. Basically his combination of ‘next-gen’ bunny hops plus many tiny optimisations means he has been crushing records left and right that the ‘older’ generation (myself included) all thought were unbeatable. I love it!

This is amazing. It has the same delivery and punch as any documentary I've seen on anything done on big name TV channels, but the content is something I'd much rather watch. I was actually cheering inbetween the demo replays!

"Why it is not as popular as it was, 20 years ago." It was at this moment I realised I was exactly 3 years old in 1999. Amazing content!

I just love it that all these old demo's still exist to this day.

10:22 amazing how strong my memories got intensified by hearing the original ingame sounds.

Perfect, a fresh Jobst-video on a friday afternoon!

Quake speedrunning: Rocket jumping TF2: “Write that down!”

Thx Karl for paying homage to one of the greatest games ever created.

I love it how u explain that Speedruns things, I'm your Fan since the "The Chasm" video.. Bip Up and make more of this, U Absolute Legend!!

"huh... Huh... Huh" *Aarrggh* "Huh.. huh... Huh" Then the level finished

Shoutout to quake for having such good speedrun tech that it migrated into valve’s games

The first records were already amazing, but my jaw dropped at the last one. That was some insane levels of precision, I could hardly even recognize what was happening before it was over

When Karl said 20 seconds isn't optimal, I couldn't believe it. So I pressed on my phone to see how much time is left in the video. I really wish I would have known about speed running back when I was younger. Now that I'm older and busy with no real spare time, I just watch videos like this.

Awesome video man. I used to be 2nd fastest in the world on E1M3 - The Necropolis - behind some Finnish guy who called himself Perkele. It took me months of practice. You had to use a monster trick that would open a teleporter early so that you could skip a slow up elevator section. Good times. Must be 20 years ago now - sheesh.

I love to re-visit this video so much. Not only 'cause Quake is one of my moste favourite games ever, but also because of how deep you dive into analyzing all of the Doom's and Quake's tricks of those many speedruns. Really wish there were more of these.

This video is a new record in speed running commentary. The more I watch your videos the more I become enthralled with speed running. Keep it up!

Many of these movement techniques are still present in modern Quake titles and in many games derived from Quake, these games are usually known as "arena shooters." Some examples being Warsow/Warfork, Diabotical, Reflex Arena, and many more.

ah man, this made me feel really nostalgic. Great video, it's hard to make something so engaging on such narrow, nerdy interest, hats off. You've just made me play Q1 for the fist time in 20 years, thanks! :D

Thanks for showing everyone what started it all somehow. I remember watching those demos and then try to emulate those runs... wasn't too bad at it myself but never got to a speedrunner level of skill. Especially the last episode of Quake, things were way too hectic.

I really like how you explain things one after the other. From the casual run to the world record. Excellent video. I subscribe !

Loved you showing how the level was designed to be run first then all the attempts. Great vid!

When I saw the final 19 second run button press, I literally when "ooooh that's so smooth"

I found your videos a week ago and can not stop watching. Before this I had not any real interest for the subjects you talk about, now i do. Great work getting people enthusiastic and thank you for all the videos!

This was actually an amazing video! Thank you for it, and it's inspired me to give speed running a try

This is awesome I love how Quake Is the grandpa Of speedruns

Finnish names must be a fun thing for non-finnish people xd 10:14

Karl, I don't care to actually watch a speedrun, but I'm obsessed with documentaries about speedruns, if that makes any sense. You're the best at making said documentaries, and I appreciate all the amazing videos you've put up. Thanks, dude.

wow just wow, brilliant video and i used to play when all this was being discovered i'd not realised it was still being worked on in 2019! great stuff.

The Quake and Doom videos have been superb. I love how you track the history of each level and take us on the journey of evolving strategies. It's fascinating and fun. I'll never miss one of these.

The expert level commentary had me on the edge of my seat in appreciation of how difficult and amazing these runs were!

Some of, if not the best speedrunning coverage yet.. Thankyou for posting!

Such a great video. I keep coming back to it. Thanks Karl!

I keep imagining the feeling these folks must get of, "This is going well, this might be the one, omg omg omg" and I wish I knew what it sounded like the the room once they saw that end screen. That's one thing you lose with the Quake demos, you don't get to see the hype.

Wow, Half-Life 2 owes so much to Doom and especially now that I'm seeing it, Quake. I played a lot of the multiplayer version of HL2 and it was all about movement and accuracy. It's crazy because the speeds are the same as Quake. 320 is max in a straight line. I could probably get into this and feel right at home with the thousands of hours I logged on HL2DM. This was amazing Karl, thank you man!

My favourite speedrunning video ever. The speed bar at the bottom helps see the progression more clearly and the length of the run itself is perfect for noticing the gains and being extremely tight

It's also interesting to note that the rocket jump in team fortress came from Quake. Without Quake, the game itself wouldn't even exist, it being a mod for quake at first and all. This game is truly incredible

Quake movement techniques are so amazing. I can just watch Quake 3 DeFraG for hours and same goes for these runs.

Man what an amazing video! Thank you for taking the time to create such an in-depth look into quake speedrunning...i can really appreciate the effort that must have gone into making this! You are awesome Karl!

This was nostalgic. Reminded me of cross map strafe jumping the buildings in urban to enemy spawnpoint in aq2, killing the enemy team before they had their guard up.

RU-vid was starting to get really tiring and boring before I really started watching your videos, these documentaries are truly a breath of fresh air. I don't say this about a youtube channel almost ever but your videos are truly entertaining and I really hope you keep them up.

I love it when Karl says, "So sit back and relax..." It announces that I've got a nice, relaxing half hour to look forward to while Karl chaperones me through the history.

Please, never stop making these videos! Great content. And yes, I would love to see more of Quake speedrunning...

I love how you always switch to game audio when you showcase a run. It really puts me in the moment. Excellent video as always!

Absolutely love your content, thank you for your work!

Great video, i could watch that 2hr video you talked about, you do a great job explaining speedruns to your audience

To me Quake is themother of speedruns. No glitches or bugs yet high velocity and metric skill are required.

That was amazing. Thank you for all the work and research put into this video. Quake will always be my number 1 game and have meant a lot to me. This was emotional.

I loved this video! The movement in Quake is insane!!! I would love more Quake speedrun videos!

i can not imagine the happiness of that guy when he managed to get the 19 sec run

our elementary school had quake 2 lan parties every computer class, our school was the literally the best

This is such an awesome video. Informative, entertaining and well edited. It was a lot of hard work for sure. Thanks for all the time and effort.

Speedrunning is something that I previously had no interest in until I was repeatedly recommended your DOOM 20 year record video a while ago. It was very interesting and entertaining. Well yesterday I was again recommended a video from you and recognized your name and I've been consumed by your videos, watched most of them at this point. I really appreciate that you explain the runs and techniques to someone that has no previous knowledge so I'm not left wondering what just happened. Thank you!

My jaw literally dropped at the final run, you did a great job building up to it and adding complexity at a manageable pace. This is my favourite of your videos so far, I really like the challenge at the end too you should keep doing that whenever possible.

Awesome video! It’s amazing that after all this time developments were still being made to the E1M1 Easy Run. Fucking incredible that it got this low and equally awesome to watch. You can see the slope boost when he jumps across the acid and still makes it because he’s going so fast. iD maps were the most sought after records and that they’re still being broken is incredible.

I just stumbled upon your channel today. I appreciate all the work you're doing! You're a tribute to gaming history!

Awesome video, it's so interesting to look on history of speedrunning, jus incredible. Thank you and good luck!