I tested the same Doom fight 528 times. Here's what I found. | Okuplok Mancubus Cliff Strategy Guide

[@wraithcadmus]

In Bullet Hell games, micro-dodging is known as "streaming", moving as little as possible to maximise the density of attacks in one area, leaving more of the field clear. Thus we can prove Doom is a 2D game.

[@thatsoneoof9308]

The mancubus cliff fight reminds me of stage 6 from Touhou 15 Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, where you have to both stream direct projectiles while dodging lines that fall straight down.

[@niklasstg6957]

That only proves that doom is a 3d shmup :D

[@ThePageofCups]

My Ketsui practice has finally found use.

[@TIIKKETMASTER]

@@niklasstg6957 thisright

[@maudjito]

2D is part of 3D so nothing is proven 😂

[@doondoon859]

33:41 Start --> FACE --> ROCKET --> Exit Totally my strategy

[@brianolsen5435]

I like "Exit --> Exit --> Exit --> Exit", or the "just go home" strategy.

[@megalomaniacnoodles]

I am a simple man: I see Okuplok strategy and I drop what I am doing to watch video.

[@MaxResolve]

Ohhhhh shiiiit! I thought this series was dead! So glad to see you come back to it, dude.

[@nchastan]

Now I want a top down version of Doom to see a Shmup player unleash their own techs on maps like that

[@DinnerForkTongue]

Aside from breaking down the maneuvering, there's a few minor observations and trivia: - Micro-dodging was a very vital piece of your Sunlust UV-fast run! Specifically the Baron ditch where you use the Butterfly Maneuver. The similarity between the streams of Caco lightning balls here and the green jets of fireballs on that one is uncanny. Since watching that, I've used this a lot, and I mean A LOT, against perched Arachnotrons. Probably the best enemy you can hope for to practice micro-dodging with. - This fight was featured in a very old video about the inconveniences of default GZDoom compatibility, showcasing the "vertical thrust from explosions" option in particular. Worse than this big cloud here is an equally as big but also unruly cloud where the rocketed Cacos are pushed up into the sky, or worse, _down._ Since then and realising how much trouble I had with scattering Cacos in all clouds I'd faced before, I've always kept that option set to "vertical thrust disabled". (It also matches rocket knockback the other weapons like the plasma, so that's a consistency and predictability bonus.)

[@gressorialNanites]

Ooooooooo! (kuplok) I was beginning to fear this series got abandoned! Thank you, for continuing it!

[@wah9928]

So glad to see this again. Can't wait for the next fight, since that is still a fight I am very much stuck on.

[@coincident]

Yeah the next one is definitely a bump in difficulty.

[@tonyd6665]

Whenever I click on a Coin video, I know two things: I’m getting a highly polished and professional video, and a video made by someone very passionate about Doom. It’s people like you that ensure Doom will never die.

[@coerce1]

I'm loving this emerging "Doom-theory" genre of videos that have been showing up lately.

[@RMMLz]

I am not a "pro doom player", just play vanilla doom every year once. But I really find this kind of videos you make entertaining.

[@rainesubnaut5918]

It really must be said how well made these videos are. Map analysis and strategy is so much fun to see broken down into concise segments and Doom Builder makes for such a wonderful visual tool. Seeing the math is a nice touch as always, and I like knowing a strategy with minimal rocket flickering is just as viable as one with a lot of it. I always want to try Okuplok whenever you upload these, I'm happy to see another one! I'm glad you promoted the Patreon too, I'll see you there Coin!

[@coincident]

Thank you! See you there and welcome to the club! 😎

[@DasPanoptikum]

So many attempts with so many strategies on a single fight over and over again. That is commitment good sir. That's the stuff a speedrunner is made of.

[@NekoGamiSamaa]

I was wondering if this would continue at some point, I'm really glad to see a new episode!

[@bradleahy]

Thanks for helping me solve the MancCliff! I used your Mid-Start-Mid-Exit strategy with a modification: before the Cacos are released I rocketted the 10 Mancs that have a line of fire at the exit area, making it have less pressure on you at the exit and giving a larger window/area to hide at the exit when rocketting the cacos. Taking out those 10 mancs still left enough mancs for infighting and the Mid-Start-Mid-Exit strategy made sure I had enough rocket ammo pickups to survive. Wanna try out my modified strategy?

[@coincident]

That's very clever. It feels to me it should be very worth it to kill the Mancs in that corner. I am done with this episode for the time being, so I can't promise that that kind of modification will make it in the series. But I may try it offline whenever I'm replaying Okuplok.

[@karlk5801]

@@coincident If people join your Patreon do they have a chance to comment on the strategies before the video is locked in?

[@iainelder7607]

Love that glitchy music. Is that "Central Park"? I think I first heard it in 8bitdm. That brings back childhood memories of blasting bots in a strobe room. Thanks for combining two of my favorite things: classic Doom and data science!

[@coincident]

Yes it was! Last Ninja 2's soundtrack is brilliant.

[@davidkiss8845]

This is why classic Doom is the goat. To an extent, there is RNG, but at the end of the day, the game is pure skill. Pretty much every map, no matter how insanely difficult & long, can be beaten with the right strategy and consistency.

[@colbyboucher6391]

I like to call Doom the Tetris of shooters. Simple to understand, weirdly deep if you get obsessive over it, literally never going to die because it doesn't really age.

[@Armc31416]

What impresses me is the constant smooth voice describing the tactics for a huge ongoing battle. This, along the score, makes almost an ASMR video!!!

[@Nob1ej0n]

Very glad you did the mid-start-mid-exit analysis as well. As soon as you did the mid-start-exit sequence I was wondering why you didn't immediately go mid again before exit. But this analysis of all potential sequences ended up being much more interesting than jumping right to that strategy. Thank you for putting in so much time on this one! ❤

[@DrearierSpider1]

Been eagerly awaiting this series, the last breakdown was incredibly interesting.

[@themusichole540]

Ive been DYING for more of these videos, thank you! I though you'd given up on the okluplok series!

[@NormalPersonCommenting]

I understand why these videos take so long; that's a lot of work!

[@Klan_Ultra_Terorista]

These series are the reason my doom skills have improved! It is one of the best analysis and strategy videos ive seen in a while about how to beat a map, and oh boy did this not disappoint! Okuplok seemed unbearable to me, but now I can get past both first fights with ease. Whenever you upload another one of these fights it just boosts my dopamine because I know I can clear another fight with steps that are easy to understand and are sutable for everyone. Thank you for these amazing videos again Mr. Face Rocket!

[@benjaminguichard401]

It seems that in every video you go above and beyond my expectations, excellent video, I'm not going to play Okuplok in the near future, but I love to watch

[@MrPizzaMan139]

I've been waiting for so long for this next entry in this series and I'm so glad it wasn't abandoned. Here's hoping for another Okuplok Analysis Video very soon!

[@billabobyt]

Fantastic video!! Would have been nice to see a sped-up IDDT2 view of the strategies as it's quite hard to visualise what the Cacos are doing when you're at the exit cover. It would have been satisfying to see the cloud get whittled down over time too. But this was brilliant, very interesting and methodical

[@dreadwanderer]

I've been waiting for the next episode of this series. Stellar analysis, extremely comprehensive. I really appreciate the use of statistics to support your arguments. Great lessons here. Looking forward to more!

[@TimDoherty]

A big thank you for the time and effort outting this together. After watching your single segment run and seeing what I was comfortable with, I’m pretty sure I ended up mid start mid exit. Maximising infighting was great to take out most of the Mancubi and deal with a bunch of caco. I look forward to future videos when you can do so :) Much Love!

[@coincident]

Thank you Tim! Next fight's going to be spicy!

[@DeltaV287]

I love this whole series. I've learned so much about advanced doom tactics and your explanation is thorough, as rigorous as one person playing long fights can be, and fun!

[@OlleLinge]

I've played through Okuplok once (with some mid-fight saves) and don't plan to do it ever again, but I still just watched this video a second time. Great work! I love this type of video.

[@CaptainPlanets]

So wonderful to see these guides back again. Some of my absolute favourite DOOM content and I had feared this series shelved. Thank you for the time and work that goes into this, Coincident!

[@Erik-bt3om]

Happy to see this series continue. Had to review this section in my TAS, and while my strategy was Start->Exit the execution would see me die 1000 times over. The automap may give 360° awareness, but in reality even at 5% recording speed, i got hit countless times. Build Mode wasnt avilable at the time, so rewind was the best i had.

[@reptongeek]

I love this series so I'm so pleased it's back, even though I can't physically play this WAD - I have an old computer The rocket flickering I do confess gave me motion sickness a little bit. I assume that while dealing with the Cacos all the Mancubi die from infighting

[@coincident]

Yeah I can understand the motion sickness; I thought about it before. It feels worse on KZbin because it's only 60 FPS; on my 240Hz monitor it's much more smooth. It didn't bother me much tbh; and I ran this fight over 500 times! 😅

[@karlk5801]

I found that hitting > to speed up the playback made the rocket flickering less disruptive. I've never looked up the shortcut for that before but the fast-forwarding in this video wasn't quite enough for me.

[@DavideGualano1980]

Bonus points for using the Hell March in the soundtrack of the already amazing video!

[@shadowcat6lives639]

This man is breaking out the standard deviation and the confidence intervals. Beautiful work sir I would throw money at you if I had it available and you were approximately close for me to throw it.

[@JustAthel]

I've been practicing a single-segment Okuplok run for the past few months on UV. Unfortunately, due to DSDA-Doom updating a long time ago and me taking a break, all of my saves between segments aren't loadable. These analysis videos are definitely helpful, and I look forward to seeing the rest of the parts broken down. Especially the Revenant Snake fight... 😭😭

[@1ShepardCZ]

Awesome! Very deeply scienced and explained.

[@DinnerForkTongue]

This is the first fight in Oku that I knew from the start was out of my skill range. I could not picture a winning strategy here AT ALL before Professor Coin broke it down into digestible factors. The lack of verticality in the elements complicates matters a lot, as all projectiles are on the same plane and only horizontal positioning matters for dodging or getting either sprayed with flames or with Caco projectiles. A real heart stopper, and I don't say that because the Cacos spit out ball lightning according to the manual. I thought going back to Mid from the start would be more useful than it actually is, because of diverting the cacos into infighting from the sea of Manc flames following us, but I see it's not that good for two additional reasons: 1. The flame spray is only triggered when we are visible to the mancs. They are not going to drop a barrage like that on the Cacos by principle like they do against us, as only the aggroed Mancubi will shoot at the Cacos. There's also the time factor of Caco lightning taking _ages_ to hit the Mancs. It's a slow projectile, and time here is essential. 2. We normally goad infighting to a) save ammo, and b) get the crosshairs off our player character. Both advantages are negligible in the face of this number of enemies and the sheer ammo you have to spend. The infighting triggered by Mancs is only skin-deep on the Caco cloud, not enough to divert more than the outer edge of the cloud to fight them, so you end up back in square one. There's also the point where if you do start-mid more than once, you're only keeping the Cacos on the west side of the arena. Then you have to wait up to whole minutes for them to come into sight at the exit. That's more time for the cloud to disperse, because Cacos are cheeky like that, and you really don't want to deal with strays that can a) bodyblock you, and b) create a multi-directional attack situation.

[@coincident]

Yes! That all sounds very on-point to me.

[@FaceIntoKeyboard]

Oooooo, I've been looking forward to this! I just finished re-watching the single segment run the other night.

[@wasdbee8404]

Amazing video! Highly insightful analysis, so much effort gone into every aspect of it, and (as other commenters have pointed out), really shows off the overlap and transferability between Doom skills and bullet hell skills (at least in slaughter maps, one of the main reasons I love these types of maps). But... my favourite part by far is the stealthy face-rocket at 4:41 XD

[@florentjugnet9733]

I could not wait for this! thanks man your work is great!

[@Wus83]

Very nice Guide and work !!! I played Okuplok 4-5 times but always with mid combat saves. Thank you for your hard work with this guides. When you done with the guides, i think you can never hear the name Okuplok again 🤣🤣

[@swampybwoy]

I watched your save less run and now I’m obsessed with this map

[@kianushmaleki]

I love your analysis. I love the approach, the error bars, calculation and perfect explanation. 💙

[@UbergamR447]

OMG assuming that one of these fights take about 5 minutes, but i guess it takes more so on average i think we can calculate with 6 minutes, then doing this fight 528 times means that you were shooting cacos for around or over 3168 minutes which is around 52.8 hours DAAMN. thank you for this great video! you inspire me with your endurance :) love your vids! (my calculations come from pure guessing so dont take it too serious :) )

[@coincident]

Glad you enjoyed! 😎 528 is a lower-bound estimate; the real number is probably above 600. Only half of the runs appear in the video because I came up with new strategies half-way through the data-collection process. So I restarted everything in order not to normalize data. But your calculation for the number of hours is probably quite accurate :)

[@UbergamR447]

@@coincident Haha nice! I didnt have the honor of getting a reply by any of the video authors since i think im watching youtube yet! It just felt good, thanks :) Correcting the 528 up to 600 lands you in the 2 and a half days of just shooting cacos and dodging balls period which is quite insane! :D But i guess finishing the whole map without any saves took far more than this?

[@coincident]

If I count the time spent in practice, then yes, probably more.

[@Vordikk]

At first impression too similar strategies but too different outcome so wow Nice eplanation and nice 40 minutes of evening passed Note: I haven't expected to hear Hellmarch 1 in there :) nice one

[@chooseyouhandle]

Nice to see that you are continuing with this

[@LddStyx]

Regarding the 100% survival rate. There is a shortcut in statistics for including your sample size (and the likelihood of the rare failure event) in the final result by adding 2 more cases 1 success and 1 failure - Thus when you take 100 tests and succeed on all of them then you get a result of 101 / 102 = 99.01% instead of 100%.

[@coincident]

Oh that's interesting. Maybe I could have added 1 failure only, and have the survival rate be a "lower bound". But honestly I think calculating the error margin is more accurate (unfortunately I didn't do it for the survival rate)

[@LddStyx]

@@coincident 3Blue1Brown explains it better in his "Binomial distributions | Probabilities of probabilities, part 1" video. it's possible that I've missed something that would make it inapplicable to your analysis.

[@coincident]

Interesting. That looks like the kind of video I like. Thanks for the reference.

[@karlk5801]

This is called "Laplace's rule of succession" and it only applies in cases like this where you know failure is possible. That way each trial is only narrowing down the size of the failure region that you know exists. Thanks for introducing us to this!

[@petofiarkwright3236]

YOUR VIDEOS ARE SO UNDERRATED GUHHH I'M SO HAPPY I FOUND YOU THROUGH DECINO'S VIDS WE NEED MORE DOOM CONTENT AAAA

[@MeowgiTV]

GOD BLESS! HE CONTINUED THE SERIES

[@coincident]

😁 To be fair I might do strategy analysis for other maps outside of Okuplok in the future.

[@MeowgiTV]

@@coincident Long live the king!

[@_Helm_]

the okuplok mancubus cliff is my happy place (at least in a -nomo sense) what a beautiful, singular sector world. Any excuse to spend more time here! All the best in 2024 Coincident. Thank you for all the cool stuff.

[@Khrada]

What a crazy map! Thanks for the detailed breakdown.

[@requem90]

Hearing Red Alert music on Doom-focused channel is unexpected but welcome surprise! Good job on this video though. I see lifetime project is about to be created for next months or even years 😄

[@EduardoAndFriends]

You got me good with that Tactic #3: Subscribe, lolololol. Brilliant stuff, man. Razor sharp analysis!

[@DuckReconMajor]

this got buried in my notifs, this series is still incredible.

[@kattybratt1353]

YAY! i love your okuplok videos and look forward to each one, this is so hype :)))

[@ancalagoonn]

I don't feel the flickering was necessary in this fight, even if you only look at the cacos the manc fireballs are still on the screen, and even if it was needed, say if the mancs were more to the right, they are so far away that you don't need to do it with every rocket.

[@ultimathorax]

Woot! These videos are why I subbed - great to see them back

[@ZomB1986]

I like to bind the strafe key to a mouse button so I can micro-dodge with microscopic movements. Alternatively, in some places where the wall behind you is angled with respect to your heading, you can tap the back button to slowly move, or combine the back and a side-move button simultaneously if the wall angle allows it.

[@coincident]

That's true. I didn't go into that much detail because of time constraints. This video is huge already. But I avoided using mouse-strafing because of one big problem: elastic collisions. Either at Mid or Exit; if you hug the wall very closely with the mouse you might get stuck, or bounce off unpredictably.

[@summersmashhit9177]

@@coincident A certain wall in a certain room full of Cyberdemons and Hell Knights comes to mind.

[@miguelantonioguerra9297]

I love these videos because they show us a different approach to beat this map (even if we use saves to beat it 😅). It would be interesting to know the average time every strategy takes and the total amount of times you ran them (probably you ran all of them the same amounts of times)

[@Tod_x]

Math and Science are applicable in anything

[@obbscur2]

love these okuplok videos

[@gnort_neyugn]

Luckily the caco cloud is at the same height as the edge of mancuby. Imagine the map release them from higher position it would be nightmare :(

[@mstarsup]

4:38 : "with the added bonus of infighting", you said, right before self rocketing yourself lmao XD That part was funny ^^ Joke aside, big gg again for your huge accomplishment, and thx for them guides!

[@besusbb]

haha great video you did a great job i love this series a lot

[@Jjeternal]

Love these Okuplok Video's!

[@andyl8055]

Oh gawd, the rocket flickering bit was puke inducing. Loved the guide though, thanks man!

[@drachefly]

"Exit->Exit->Exit->Exit" The coward's route

[@nosirrahx]

It would be interesting to also record left over rocket boxes to see which strat is most infighting efficient.

[@coincident]

It's not very relevant, because you always reach the next fight with max rockets.

[@patricklaune5712]

Best. Doku. Ever.

[@maxis_scott_engie_maximov_jr]

Mancubus Cliff The spiritual successor to Imp Cliff

[@Hydronisa]

HELL YEAH!! Thank you for this meal!

[@thomassynths]

I guarantee you I could only survive using the IDDQD strategy.

[@karlk5801]

I would use IDCLIP to fade back into the wall like Homer Simpson backing into the hedge.

[@gileneusz]

0:00 Cacodaemons looks sooo cute here 🥰

[@OfficeHyena]

BEEN WAITING FOR MORE OF THIS SERIES I FUCKING LOVE IT

[@OmegaTyrant]

Deep rocketing Cacodemons... 😳

[@lecoindugamer7644]

Finally i thought the series was dead

[@drachefly]

given the effort going into each, it seems like 'finally' ought not be used. I'd even go so far as to say 'you might want to back off on getting statistics, especially on the tactics that clearly aren't going to be the best'

[@lecoindugamer7644]

@@drachefly 🤓🤓🤓

[@romerogoon]

Coin ahould be awarded an honourary PhD in Okuplok.

[@relic374]

fuck yeah been waiting for the next okuplok video for quite a while! thanks so much coin

[@AlexanderWilithinIII]

I love this series.

[@luszczi]

I can play Plutonia on UV and even enjoy it, but this is way too nuts for me.

[@NikolaiProkoschenko]

Slightly off-topic: you mentioned somewhere else that you'd played Profane Promiseland once it's released and judging from the forum topic on doomworld, this will happen soon(ish) without much change from the RC1 (it seems someone wanted to implement real difficulty changes, but that didn't happen). Is a live stream of that something we can look forward to in 2024?

[@coincident]

Not exactly Profane Promiseland, but actually something bigger - a "live stream like that", is what you can expect **tomorrow**. Check the community post I wrote today for more details.😉

[@NikolaiProkoschenko]

@@coincident Thanks, watching a replay now. Since you mentioned you like the design which brings you back to past areas, you are going to love PP.

[@sr_cwyac4231]

4:41 FACE ROCKEEEEET

[@sr_cwyac4231]

33:39 FACE ROCKEEET

[@ordovicicosilurico6799]

i came just for this comment xD

[@YHS999]

Search for passata making techniques brought me here.

[@Sentinelord]

This is so great

[@HamidKarzai]

I love this series

[@christopherpatton6193]

Need some help for some reason when firing rockets the cacodemons that are damaged are flying up and down instead of staying on the horizontal plane, making this fight so much harder and can't figure out why

[@coincident]

If you're playing in GZDoom, make sure to use the compatibility settings "Boom (strict)". I hope that helps. Alternatively, use a vanilla source port like dsda-doom, prboom, or woof.

[@jonathonworner360]

What if the Cyberdemon wandered out of the Archvile cave fight, and triggers the fight against the horde of Cacodemons? Will he last long against them, and how much of a help is it, before he gets eventually destroyed by the Cacodemons?🤔

[@jonathonworner360]

I saw on a video the Cyberdemon has 4000 HP, and that Cacodemon fireballs do 40 HP damage. This should mean the Cyberdemon can take 100 Cacodemon fireballs, but no idea how many he will destroy first. Got to look up again how much damage his rockets do, to calculate how many he might kill

[@lucierymelez9204]

Yess thanks @coincident 💜💜💜💜4:57 perfect strategy 😂

[@nibblrrr7124]

I feel 10 videos down the line, each entry in this series will have enough combinatorics and empirical data to write a doctoral thesis on one fight.

[@thatsoneoof9308]

I heard clicking the sub button is banned in speedruns because it instantly kills every demon spontaneously.

[@coincident]

Why do you think the director was so mad? Speedrun ruined.

[@KernelLeak]

Doesn't the "subscribe" button count as a TAS tool?

[@turhiki]

Now THIS is what science was invented for!!! Coincident always makes these fights look sooo easy.... I wanna be like Coin when I grow up, minus the face rockets!

[@user-ed8hb7cu6k]

Love these cyan videos. Not that there's anything wrong with red.

[@KernelLeak]

I think "rocket flicking" would have been a better term, since you're mostly flicking your wrist to look to your side and back in time for the next rocket to fire - "flickering" sounds like turning your rockets off and on again... And as we know from User Friendly (RIP) - "it's all in the wiggle", at least with Quake...

[@sparda4474]

awesome video, was curios while watch you rocket the Cacodemon cloud, you aim straight ahead but would there be any advantages to spreading your shots across? maybe with your mid-start-end strategy if you aimed at the far left, it could give you more time at the middle phase in start position?

[@coincident]

My experience with aiming on the left/right edges of the cacocloud, is that the kill speed is lower (no deep-rocketing), but worse than that: it causes more Cacodemons on the edges to float out of the group and spread out more. That's why I aim center by default. But I didn't try all of the combinations you mentioned, so there might be something that works better than just aiming center.

[@OfficeHyena]

Paused, i think start exit strat works best %wise, could you not start at the start wall and slowly micro dodge all the way to the exit to maximise how many manc fireballs hit the cacos? edit just seen you kinda did that with the later strat!

[@OfficeHyena]

How about skipping linedef, going to exit and prefiring as many rockets as possible And runnning back to linedef to open Cacos just for a better head start?

[@GibusWearingMann]

I'm curious how the strategies that cause a lot of cacodemon/mancubus infighting affect the second half of the mancubus cliff once you get there.

[@coincident]

You can clear the 2nd half of the Cliff after the next fight is over (the Blood Oasis). But that part is trivially easy and ammo is aplenty, so it's doesn't matter much how many of them die at this point.

[@GibusWearingMann]

@@coincident Ah, makes sense. I wonder if/how infighting might have more of an impact between "fights" later in the map, though.

[@coincident]

I think it never really matters much, because of the way people define what "a fight" is. If in-fighting from a previous battle will still have impactful consequences on the current battle, then you're still in "the same fight", I guess. But I'm sure there are exceptions to this.

[@anthonyhodges7184]

Commodore 64 Last Ninja 2 track music! ❤

[@squishymusic9723]

Did you account for the Frank Klepacki coefficient? Hell march doubles your chances 😉

[@starc0w]

Zero Master has managed to do this successfully, hasn't it?