BahdKo's description of: Ocelot


 

Summer, 2003 pictures


Background:

Ocelot is from Helsinki, Finland, and began deathmatching in Fall of 1997, when he was 15. He started out hanging around on BBS's and playing locals he found there. His dooming machine was a 486/66, and smooth animation could only be achieved on it by using the third smallest screen size combined with low detail graphics mode.

Early on, he started recording with his locals to help learn to play better. His first config was the default doom keyboarder config; then he added mouse use for turning (no strafe).  He advanced through quite a few keyboard config and mouse sensitivity changes during this time (final config: esdf). When he found players that were better than him, he would endeavor to play them more often, and he eventually found a skilled local to play regularly named Washi. In Spring of 1998, he began to use the original zipfile release of the Deathmatch Training Facility, and additionally, began to study recordings of better known doom players such as Sslasher and Galiu, and many others. By Summer and Fall of 1998 he had begun to win some games against Washi, although Washi was still winning most of the time.  He went to several small, local doom LANs and acquired a few more doom locals.

In late December of 1998 he got a better machine, a P2-200, and was able to play at a normal resolution and screen size on his own equipment for the first time. He immediately began winning with his locals consistently, although by a very small margin. Then, most of the locals quit doom in early 1999.

He was left with about 3 locals for the year of 1999 and first half of 2000; one that liked to play Map1, Reloadi (who worked a SSG-only D5 M1 game), and one more. By this time, he was actively playing from the perspective of wanting to achieve the highest score possible against opponents.

In the Summer of 2000, he played a lot of csdoom; even though csdoom sucked in some respects and his ping to the servers was frequently bad, he was enthusiastic because it was the first time since the BBS days that he had been able to easily find a game. He had a few LANs with briefly returning locals as well. He met NC during this time, who showed him Doomserv, and he played on Doomserv for the fall of 2000.

In December of 2000 he flew out to the Winter, 2000 LAN hosted by Anders Johnsen in Stavanger, Norway. His games with Andy represented the first time he had gotten to LAN with someone who was an internationally known doomgod. It was also the first time I got to meet Ocelot in person (we had been in general internet contact for a while before that). He beat me down so hard in Map1 that it made no sense, and it seemed like I was being punished for something. I had effectively been Ossinated.

After the LAN in Norway, ocelot had no internet connection at home for the next 9 months. He was using a public library to check mail and IRC for half an hour several times a week. To build and maintain his doom skill, he worked on single player runs during this time, including map18 speed, e1m7 max, map18 nomo, f1m1, and tn06. In Summer of 2001, he had a small LAN with NC, and his technical skill proved to had remained high due to all of the single player practice. This period without internet ended in the Fall of 2001 when he was able to aquire a cable modem. He played many games with NC over Microsoft Zone's 'ZoneLAN', as well as some games with others including Dominus and Sslasher. His Zone nickname was Kaakkuri.

He lost his internet connection for the Summer and Fall of 2002. He used this time to intensely study demos, including demos by Sslasher as well as his own  recordings from 2001. He had a LAN with NC in August of 2002.

Finally getting a good cable modem internet connection in October, he played lots of games, some of them with Anders Johnsen and Sedlo.  He was required to attend Finland's conscripted military service from January through June of 2003.

In August of 2003, he and NC flew out to my August, 2003 netparty in South Riding, Virginia, USA. That's where I got to meet him for the second time, and we actually got to hang out and have fun for a few days. Doomwise, he beat me worse than ever, but at least this time I was better prepared for the gates of hell to open up on me, as opposed with getting it as a rude surprise.

*  *  *

I've known Ocelot online via ICQ and IRC since around 1998. During the years up until the Norway, 2000 LAN, I didn't take him very seriously because he was relatively new and had never played anyone I knew who was particularly good. I appreciated the fact that he was a beautiful, even artful mover in DM, but I didn't know much more about what was going on. I became much better clued in during  the Norway LAN and the years that followed.

 

Stylistic information:

Oce is one of the highest skilled players I have ever played on LAN. He is the best player I have played on Map1, as of the date of this writing, with Andy as a close second (although their skill levels are too similar for players of average skill to notice a score difference, most likely). For someone at my skill level, being trapped with Ocelot on Map1 seems like punishment for something because he plays each game as hard as he can, and is inhumanly consistent. To play him regularly on Map1 would require a strong psyche; his consistency would frustrate many players into simply not playing him on Map1. NC must have an ass of steel, to be able to hang in there for their grueling weekend-long doom LAN marathons.

He makes a point in all of his games, regardless of the skill level of the opponent, to win with as high a score as possible. He plays his games one frag at a time, working hard to get each frag while doing his best to prevent his opponent from getting any. In the event that he gets fragged, he usually takes the perspective that it was due to his carelessness that it happened. He can sometimes react pretty strongly when his opponent gets a frag that he feels he could have prevented.

His DM movement is as fast and perfect as I can imagine, similar to Andy's, or even Sedlo. I call his movement art because it looks so good and agile.

He has an unusual perspective on his game. He is highly self-blaming. He views  almost every frag that happens to him as a singular, wholly avoidable event that occurred due to some mistake on his part. His usual reaction to being fragged is to intensely fault himself. There were times at the Norway LAN when he would get fragged and become furious at himself, complete with self-directed insults in both finnish and english, some pretty scary looking faces, and even the occasional mild, brief temper tantrum. When I told him that I was going to write about his uncommon behavior on Doom2.net, he began applying more self-control, and was therefore more normal-acting for the second half of Andy's LAN. At the South Riding LAN, he was a lot more contained; but it could also be considered that this LAN was different from Norway in that  he did not lose a single Map1 or Dwango5 Map1 game, which are his primary maps of concentration. So, I don't objectively  know how much of that self control would have stuck around in the face of him playing, perhaps, his clone. I've never seen a player with quite his dynamics before.

He's got what I call a "photographic doom memory", which is to say, he has detailed memories about all different aspects of specific doom games, both his own games and recordings of other people. By that I mean: demo names, scores, dates, specific frags that happened in games, and in what order the games happened during a particular LAN or group of internet games. I have read that some chess geniuses also have mnemonic abilities like this. I can personally attest that if a trick in-game works on him once, especially if you get a frag or could have gotten a frag had you not missed the shot, enjoy it while you can (or, conversely, dread what is coming next), because you're not likely to get a frag or an opportunity like that again; definitely not in that game, and possibly not ever. In fact, if you happen to get a frag with your trick, he seems to goad you into trying it again so he can kill you a few times as a reward for your ah, creativity. I don't know if that last  assertion is actually correct, but that's how it seems.

He has a tendency where, if you play him and you get a better score than is in line with his personal goal of how far he wanted to beat you down, he will put a ton of effort into the next game and beat you to absolute hell, usually halving your frag count from the prior game. For a while when he and I were playing alternating sets of Map1 games on Zone, I decided that I would always try to choose the lagged player first (green, 140MS connect), because if he was green first and perhaps due to him adjusting to the lag I ended up getting over 10 frags to his 50, the next game where he was Indigo was just total, unbelievable hell. There was an honest danger of a 50-1 or maybe even a 50-0 game in those circumstances, and that's hard to take when you've been playing since 1996. If I took the lag first, it gave him time to warm up or whatever, and things just didn't seem to go quite as punitively (although it was always bad).

Anders Johnsen and I thought up some fun pet names for him due to our common  traumatic in-game experiences (primarily Zone games). The primary ones would be Monster, Thing, It, and Wall; and you can insert various profane adjectives in front of each to get the full effect (hopefully none who reads this will go around calling him those names - - those aren't really great to call someone if they don't really know you. We never even told him we were using code words to identify him, although I imagine he knows it now that I wrote it here). At the 2003 Virginia LAN, Ogreslayer came up with a new one: Terminator. There's also what Andy and I are calling the 'wall effect' where the map feels locked up and, somehow, it feels like you are playing against, well, a wall. Nothing you do seems to make a difference when you're trying to beat up or otherwise move a wall, you know? This exists in specific games, if he's not playing his hardest it's not there quite the same way.

He's the most intense player I've ever been around. It seems like he is terrified of the remote possibility that he might, somehow, suck in his game. He plays with an intensity that looks similar to someone whose life depends on the outcome of each frag. It is kind of scary to watch him play a hard game. I believe he is the Bobby Fischer of Doom2 deathmatch, and that if DoomGod were still a singular term referring to the one highest-skilled player, he would be it. In the context of having studied the surviving recordings of the prior Map1 doomgods, he's the best Map1 player to date, and probably the same goes for a number of other common maps.
  

Other details:

Ocelot is about 6' tall. He does long distance running. I watched him run a quarter mile in 1 minute 2 seconds when we went to a running track at my Virginia LAN (i run too.. but nothing like that! Try that sometime.. really).

When he plays doom, his whole body is tense, including his mouse and keyboard hands. At the Norway LAN, Zokum made a joke that if while Oce was playing, we removed the chair from under him, he would maintain the same body position and continue playing.

He can yell about as loud as a jet engine when he feels like it. Fortunately for the not-yet-deaf among us, he usually talks very quietly.

Have you ever seen the Far Side comic where there's a kid standing, books in hand, trying to get into the door of a school for the Gifted and Talented?  There's a big sign on the door that says "PULL". The kid is obviously pushing on the door, and naturally, the door is not opening. That would be Ocelot. (I only say this of course with the utmost respect... i don't need it taken out on my hide in the next oce style deathmatch). He's also shy as hell.