QdQ:
Care to introduce yourself?
Perkele:
I'm
Juha Miikka Kujala.
I'm 22 years old, live in Finland, studying computer science at
University of Jyvaskyla (or that's what I should be doing instead of
playing Quake all the time. 
)
QdQ:
You are probably best known in Quake for speed-running, where you top
the field. But can you tell us a bit about your clan and your other
non-running Quake activities?
Perkele:
I'm a member of Finnish
Allied Quakers, one of the oldest clans in Europe. We are also one
of the best in Europe, our biggest achievement being winning the first
(and so far only) clanring eurotourney. You might also know FAQ from
such great products as Axu's
Quake Server Monitor and the
FAQ-Proxy
which was written by me and
Zibbo.
QdQ:
When did you start your speed-running? Was it back in the DooM days?
Perkele:
I did play Doom a lot, but never speed-running.
I think the first speed-run I did was for
Romero's E2M5 challenge back in February.
(Perkele came seventh in that one, which was won by Plok, who was second behind Perkele in the follow-up, Shadow's E1M5 challenge. Since then Perkele has been third in the Single Player Quake challenge, and won a whole string of contests: Skillz Test #1, Jailbreak, Skillz Test #2, and most recently Skillz Test #4, which started life here as the QdQ challenge.)
QdQ:
What do you like/dislike about speed-running?
Perkele:
I like the
prizes.
QdQ:
Heh,
I mean, in comparison to DeathMatch... to what extent do the skills
needed overlap?
Perkele:
The skills needed are basically the same, both require precise
movement and aiming. But the most important skill in speed-running
is persistence. It can take hours to get a good run.
QdQ:
How long did you spend on Skillz Test #4 to get that 0:35?
Perkele:
About half an hour to an hour a day, and maybe twenty days,
so fifteen hours would be close.
QdQ:
How often could you make that first
grenade-jump
when you started? And how good did you get at it by the end?
Perkele:
When I started, with Yonatan's method, I could make it about once
every 20 minutes. By the end I could do it almost everytime (the
way I do it in the demo).
QdQ:
Yes, we certainly saw a few nice ways of positioning the grenade used
in the contest. (The demo
reel for the contest shows a lot of these.) One particularly neat
and fast one was by Jeff Preshing (Creep), who bounced it into
position incredibly neatly, but he had trouble with the fiend at the
end, so ended up not winning anything.
Perkele:
Sometimes it's better to go with a slower route to get more
attempts. Jeff's route was fast, but very unlikely to succeed.
QdQ:
Yes, he ran out of time to make a demo with a better ending.
Perkele:
From all the demos, I think ripsnorter had the best route,
it is as fast as Jeff's with a pretty good success rate.
(Ripsnorter came second with a time of just under 0:37.)
QdQ:
Let's ask some questions about technique that the speed-running
fanatics like QdQ want to know the answers to. Framerate is important;
what's your computer system?
Perkele:
PPro200.
QdQ:
And what sort of input controls do you use?
Perkele:
Mouse: left = fire, middle = cycleweapons, right = jump,
mlook on all the time. WASD-keys for
moving/strafing. And no macros.
QdQ:
We noticed you look down a lot when you run... what's going on there,
are you trying to get a better framerate by having Quake render less
brushes?
Perkele:
I just don't want to step on fiend
pewp.
I don't know really, could be that I subconsciously try
to get a better
framerate.
QdQ:
So what things do you think you do that help to make you such a fast
runner?
Perkele:
I don't give up. I'll keep trying until I have the optimal
time.
QdQ:
Do you have any general thoughts and tips to help other people
improve their technique?
Perkele:
First rule of speed-running: there's always a faster route.
( God, that's
the truth. At QdQ we've learnt it over and over. And over.)
QdQ:
Until you entered Skillz Test #4, we thought maybe you'd retired, you
were very quiet for a while...
Perkele:
There just weren't any cool contests for a while. I haven't
quit speed-running.
QdQ:
There are still prizes left to win,
then.
One of the problems of all the cool prizes is that quite a lot of
contests have had entries from cheats who use
HOST_FRAMERATE and other techniques.
You were even accused of cheating yourself by some dishonest idiot in
ST#2 just because you have a good framerate, right?
Perkele:
Most of these cheaters are just ignorant. Their reaction when they are
caught is usually: "Yeah, but the other guys are cheating too."
Luckily it is very easy to weed out cheaters by examining the demo
files. And I can say that no cheater has ended up with a prize in any
contest I've been involved with.
QdQ:
Well, that's about it. Anything else you want to tell the world?
Perkele:
Hmmm... Go get
FAQ-Proxy
now!