Max Exceptions Debate Thread

Let us list what exception categories in general there actually are:

• No secrets in map: Easiest one. Vanilla behaviour for maps with 0 secrets is to show 0% on the intermission screen. This is rectified in a multitude of modern source ports which count it as 100% instead. Compet-N rules slavishly list the occurences, but since this always constitutes an exception, the official definition should be appended with something to the tune of "Maps with no secrets always count as 100% secrets." We'll save a lot of virtual paper that way.
• Monsters on exit floors: The E1M8-like kill room scenario. The current situation is ambiguous. According to C-N rules, E1M8 is silently implied as not needing to kill the final room, but Plutonia is directly mentioned in the exceptions. This means that monsters in sectors with special effect 11 (damage & exit) may or may not need killing? This needs clarification for general purpose use, so it might be prudent to expect 100% kills and list all the no-kill exceptions (say, E1M8, Plutonia map11(?), Plutonia 2 map11).
• Unreachable monsters: Monsters behind a bend that can't be hit. Monsters in the void. Deaf monsters in teleclosets. Broken teleclosets. This is the most egregious, most common exception category. It's usually caused by a mapping error. It is also a clear cut category for reporting-and-listing every case. Keep in mind that the collective may find ways to reach such monsters!
• Unkillable monsters: Monsters that can't be killed due to a mapping gimmick. Most notable scenario is turret snipers revived by hidden, unreachable archviles. Yet there might be extremely contrived ways to kill the archviles, and then the snipers. Another example might be out-of-reach sniper cubbies. Status quo says they're to be ignored, but it might be healthy to discuss that case-by-case.
• Unreachable secrets: Straight unreachable secrets are to be reported and exceptioned, however there might be contrived ways how to reach some of them (say, gliding, weird pain elemental humping). It should be discussed which ones are annoying mapping errors (ripe for an exception) and which are reasonably reachable, or even intentionally hard to reach.
• Destroyed/created secrets: Certain floor actions including texture change will also inflict a change of the floor special. Originally meant to create or remove the corrosion effect (nukage spill/cleanup), it can also create or destroy secrets. These should be treated case by case, taking in account how problematic (or inflicted by the mapper intentionally) they may be for the run.
• Icon of Sin chaos: Certain maps may be too chaotic to realistically allow the player to control if all originally placed monsters are rekilled. Ripe for peer review.
• Advanced source port and scripting issues: Largely untreated and unexplored for now. Includes rule-breaking dehacked changes to monsters. To be determined on the spot. :^)

Also a precaution is warranted: this is not the report thread! Discussion over examples is welcomed, particularly if you think the overview posts are omitting something important, but there's no need to just dump extensive map lists. Particularly if they're exceptions already footnoted in the archive. And keep things on topic, do not derail outside of speedrunning boundaries!

My list with some subjective notes, so of course you are welcome to disagree.

*** Part I - Maps without Max entries. ***

1994tu MAP22. The final version is screwed. 100% kills not possible and I don't even know what is the maximum. There are monster teleport closets at the northern part of the map and my experience says that some monsters teleport. Probably any first entry can be a record and then, if you are faster or you get more kills, you break the record.

FCFF MAP02. "TAS only". That cyber.

marsw301 MAP26. Max secrets: 4/5. Does not apply to marswar which is fine.

NDCP2 MAP20. Max kills: 112/114 (I think). Two deaf unreachable monsters. They can be killed in a movie run by rocket splash damage, but in a pistol start max no, there is no rocket launcher on this map.

o34s. Max kills is somewhere between 872 and 885. Really tricky to figure out.

*** Part II - Maps that already have Max records. ***

1024 MAP10. Maximum kills: 49/57.

2002ADO E4M4. Maximum kills: 114/116. Also, for this WAD we don't use the newest version (2002ad10) unless we play the new maps.

Bauhaus MAP04. Some problematic kills, current Max is not "proper" Max but my max movie kills all the monsters. Not sure. It would be nice to beat TimeofDeath and score all the kills, easier said than done.

CChest MAP21. Max secrets: well, the doomwiki article is very good here. 8/9 is theoretically possible, but I would say, for sanity, it is best to agree that only 7/9 are required. Current record has 7/9.

cod1-11 MAP02: Max secrets: 16/17, MAP03: Max secrets: 8/9, MAP09: Max kills: 144/152, MAP11: Max secrets: 9/10.

darken MAP10. Max secrets: 0/1.

darken2 MAP07. Max kills: 95/98. MAP08: Max secrets: 0/1.

end2 E3M5. Max secrets: 7/8. Max kills: one problematic monster in the void, theoretically killable, I think it's better to skip it, so 208/209. My max has a bonus demo that kills that monster.

hellrun2. Max secrets: 14/17.

ic2004 Max kills: 466/473. ZDoom allows for real 100% kills, but I opted for not using it :) 

icarus MAP13 Max secrets: 0/1. MAP15 Max secrets: 3/4.

lastep1 MAP01 Max kills: 143/144.

MM MAP11. ATM I am not mentioning C-N WADs, but this map is the most screwed of them all. Max kills are now possible thanks to a patch which came 20 years too late, and Cyberdemon531 just ignored it, and I actually would ignore it too!

pcurban Max kills: 1063/1065.

pe1_phob E2M9: to get 100% kills you need Boom compatibility. Current max is complevel 9.

pl2 MAP20. Max kills: 349/353.

ruinbros. MAP04 Max secrets 4/5. MAP07 Max kills 196/200.

serenity E3M7. Max secrets: 30/31 even though current record has 31/31. One secret is a similar case to Doom II MAP27., you need a linedef skip. In other words, all max entries (three) are valid.

STRAIN MAP32. Max kills: 169/206. If you use Boom (one demo, 3:03 by Heretic), then Max kills: 204/206.

With PWAD in mind, "Lost Soul" is not a good way to exclude. I guess a better way to say is anything that doesn't count towards kills, or anything in the Lost Soul slot.

Scythe X's Lost Soul replaced something that is counted for kills and the Lost Soul is replaced by something else. In this case, I think Lost Soul needs to be killed.

I have a lot of unfinished UV-Max TAS projects that ignore lost souls. Will they become unacceptable in this case? 

Monster tracking is such a pain in the butt when it comes to lost souls flying around of dead Pain Elementals or their infighting and it becomes hard to track them on multi-level maps where they accidentally fly in places which are either obscure or are complicated to check if there's something behind. 

34 minutes ago, vdgg said:

2002ADO. Also, for this WAD we don't use the newest version (2002ad10) unless we play the new maps.

Is there any reason for this? I know that the old version has an extensive demo history, but typically wads are recorded on the latest version.

34 minutes ago, vdgg said:

MM MAP11. ATM I am not mentioning C-N WADs, but this map is the most screwed of them all. Max kills are now possible thanks to a patch which came 20 years too late, and Cyberdemon531 just ignored it, and I actually would ignore it too!

I disagree, I think the fix wad should be used.

Adding some more exceptions I remember from the top of my head:

• 1024 MAP13: 83/87 kills is maximum - four monsters never teleport out of their closet.
• pwfinal MAP14: 2/3 secrets is maximum - sector 250 is too small to be entered.
• rlmchaos MAP29: 153/170 kills is maximum - 17 Cyberdemons are awkwardly placed and it's nigh impossible to kill them all, so they're skipped in the run by Heretic.

Other exceptions for consideration (down to luck whether it's possible to get max kills or not):

• pl2 MAP25: A teleport closet housing six revenants is somewhat broken, as sometimes the revenants don't teleport like seen in the eschdoom demo (in a similar fashion as plutonia MAP28 it seems).
• crmsn37 MAP03: Some teleport closets have doors operable by the monsters inside them, which can make said monsters get stuck on the doortracks (like happens in the Dashiva demo).

Sort of unrelated, but I believe it's important to ask:

• prcp MAP21: There's a fix wad for this level but none of the runs use it. I suppose it's meant to be used anyway?

@Dimon12321 You probably misread what was said, of course not killing LS is fine. That I kill them in my TAS runs is just a convention.

@Andromeda Exactly, extensive demo history, >300 demos when the new version came out, plus 2002ad10 didn't even fix plenty of past bugs. Another example of a WAD in which we don't use the newer version is Classic Episode.

1 hour ago, GarrettChan said:

With PWAD in mind, "Lost Soul" is not a good way to exclude. I guess a better way to say is anything that doesn't count towards kills, or anything in the Lost Soul slot. 

Oh sure, agreed. I'd say it falls under the last exception in spirit - it is dehacked work that moves the lost soul into another monster's slot. Scythe X as a whole indeed needs an explanation entry in that regard. I edited the rule to reflect that.

59 minutes ago, Dimon12321 said:

I have a lot of unfinished UV-Max TAS projects that ignore lost souls. Will they become unacceptable in this case? 

You must have misunderstood, lost souls will remain non-obligatory kills unless stated otherwise (like the Scythe X example Garrett provided).

Mentioning an exception since I came across it today:
1000 Lines Community Project 1 (1klinecp.wad) Map32: 118/128 kills is max. It has a broken monster closet and ten imps inside will never teleport into the proper map.

5 hours ago, dew said:

 

• Icon of Sin chaos: Certain maps may be too chaotic to realistically allow the player to control if all originally placed monsters are rekilled. Ripe for peer review.

I'd like to ask what should be interpreted by "control" here, as the spawners themselves spawn random demons, in some cases there are too many spawners or the spawn locations are so far apart from each other that it naturally outpaces the player's clear capabilities, and you can potentially have a resurrection happen a frame before exiting the level without you being able to do anything about that. So which of these factors would be "controllable" and which would not?

@NightTerror No, that's what I'm asking you! You're right that it's hard to draw a line for such scenarios. We know some exist (Speed of Doom map30?), but we're not looking for a generalized rule, we're looking to identify the cases we think are on the "unfair" side.

I know, I was asking as a general question regarding the potential exception. I think a problem with these is that if they get excepted it's hard to decide what % would be max even if going case by case...

I guess in case this is something needs to be address (or I missed it in the top post):

Double-able secrets: (eg: sihr2 Map31)

The problem of this is, "is it mandatory to get to the maximum secret numbers", or "are you allowed to skip a secret but made up the secret count with a double-able secret".

some to the list:

50monstr Map15: I did a UV -Fast for and there's no UV Max for now. I got the confirmation from AD that one of the secret is broken, so 2/3 is the max secret you can get.

50monstr Map32: Not to mention this map has more than 50 monsters... and I think 3 of them are broken, but it seems nobody ran Max/-Fast for it yet because I gave up on this somehow. :^)

For IoS chaos:

sodfinal Map30: This map is basically impossible to get all initially placed monster killed. Both the current maxes have missing kills.

aaliens Map18: It's borderline possible to kill all initially placed monsters, but it's more like a lottery roll. My 5:18 has missing kills because it was using good old 2.5.1.4's advanced HUD and an AV spawned at the end. VisitorQ's Max is a legit one.

My opinion to these is... just treat everything the same because I think a map that is unmax-able is fine... It's hard to distinguish the technical "not max-able" point. Though not the same, a similar example would be, a map with 50 Cyberdemons without any ammo. How do you tell? Maybe a turbo NIH can beat it, so it's technically max-able...

Similar to Scythe X, Avactor also makes lost souls count as enemies. This includes those spawned by pain elementals, and I've been assuming in my demos so far that these should still be killed for max (like how spawned arachnorbs are required kills in Valiant). This becomes a problem in MAP11, though, as the map has a bunch of monster spawners, which may spawn pain elementals, and those pain elementals may spawn lost souls. Given that the pain elementals came from a monster spawner and don't count as required kills, I think it would make sense if their lost souls also didn't count, but dsda-doom currently doesn't track this chain and still counts the lost souls as kills. This makes dsda-doom's counters ineffective on this map for determining whether the pre-placed monsters were killed (and maxing the map according to the counters is effectively impossible due to the quantity of monster spawners spread out all over the map).

I remember the final fight in Candlemass involves some weird Dehacked shenanigans that makes dsda-doom's counters think a monster was revived but doesn't actually produce a killable monster. I assume this falls under the "Advanced source port and scripting issues" category in dew's post.

For IOS chaos, I think if a mapper is obnoxious enough to put an IOS in their map they should at least have the decency to add a couple lines of dehacked that makes the spawners killable and let players kill them.

21 hours ago, vdgg said:

Bauhaus MAP04. Some problematic kills, current Max is not "proper" Max but my max movie kills all the monsters. Not sure. It would be nice to beat TimeofDeath and score all the kills, easier said than done.

I'm assuming I demoed that map "just for fun" knowing that the resulting demo probably wouldn't be a valid max because of those buggy monster teleporters. I'm not a big fan of exceptions, so I'd chalk it up to "a bad map for recording on".

For iOS maps I think monsters resurrected by viles spawned by iOS should not count regardless of what was resurrected. You still have to kill all the pre placed monsters. My sl30 max went by this "rule" cause who knows what's happening in that map, and none of the ports differentiate between spawned and pre placed viles so it can't be checked currently.

1 hour ago, Ancalagon said:

For iOS maps I think monsters resurrected by viles spawned by iOS should not count regardless of what was resurrected. You still have to kill all the pre placed monsters.

I agree with the example you brought up, that's exactly what I meant. But I'm not entirely convinced it should be a general rule for any map out there, e.g. rq23.

43 minutes ago, dew said:

I agree with the example you brought up, that's exactly what I meant. But I'm not entirely convinced it should be a general rule for any map out there, e.g. rq23.

Same thing applies for pl2 map 32, which replicates rq23. Go4it has the arc trapped that can be killed by crushers, but it is slow and pointless. Should it be killed?

Ghost monsters yes, of course.

@dew

I guess in the "unreachable monster" section, we can also discuss some of the maps can somehow achieve all kills on unintended complevel. Examples:

Urania Map03, Tangerine Nightmare Map08, Unholy Realms Map23

All these mapsets are in -cl4, -cl2 and -cl2 respectively, but they all have max kill demos on -cl9.

I guess people assumed that all kill should be strictly followed no matter what they do, even on wrong complevel.

I personally disagree with this, and I would say just leave those unreachable monsters alive and call it a Max. As right now, it will make D2All UV Max of a certain mapset very strange as you probably don't want to do vanilla/limit-removing mapsets on -cl9 because the monsters can fall into pits all over the place...

I guess @Vile can have some opinions on this topic as I remember he wanted to do Tangerine Nightmare D2All UV Max but not do it later due to this problem.

9 minutes ago, GarrettChan said:

@dew

 

I guess in the "unreachable monster" section, we can also discuss some of the maps can somehow achieve all kills on unintended complevel. Examples:

Urania Map03, Tangerine Nightmare Map08, Unholy Realms Map23

 

All these mapsets are in -cl4, -cl2 and -cl2 respectively, but they all have max kill demos on -cl9.

 

I guess people assumed that all kill should be strictly followed no matter what they do, even on wrong complevel.

 

I personally disagree with this, and I would say just leave those unreachable monsters alive and call it a Max. As right now, it will make D2All UV Max of a certain mapset very strange as you probably don't want to do vanilla/limit-removing mapsets on -cl9 because the monsters can fall into pits all over the place...

 

I guess @Vile can have some opinions on this topic as I remember he wanted to do Tangerine Nightmare D2All UV Max but not do it later due to this problem.

I agree, vdgg pointed out an even more egregious example above:

On 12/12/2021 at 9:18 PM, vdgg said:

STRAIN MAP32. Max kills: 169/206. If you use Boom (one demo, 3:03 by Heretic), then Max kills: 204/206.

Another general problem is monsters that are in principle killable, but there isn't the ammo or other method to kill all of them, and no amount of trickery, Tysoning and map breaking will change that. One example is the big load of leftover cybers in Nuts.wad (you could argue it's possible to punch them all in principle, maybe), the room of cybers at the end of ISM.wad (symoism.zip) and the "outside" pain elementals in HR map32. Each individual one of these monsters is entirely killable by standard means, but the whole group is not.

The traditional default is "the demo that kills the most of the problematic monsters is the better Max", but it is generally a readily agreed community exception that they can all be left alive, especially if any other case means the run flat-out sucks and no one will ever bother with it. I don't see any problem with having a "Max" and a "Max*" (or several of them) in these instances, so those who want to play the map in more perverted ways can do so, while others stick the more standard/fun way.

Regarding lost souls, I don't think this exception should be generalized to "anything that doesn't count towards the kills percentage". If it looks, walks and takls like a monster, it should be considered one, unless there is a specific reason to exempt it (in the case of lost souls, this is the fact that PEs can easily spawn them into the void). For instance, Batman Maxes don't exist just because of the authors' odd decision to make the monsters not count.

54 minutes ago, GarrettChan said:

I guess @Vile can have some opinions on this topic as I remember he wanted to do Tangerine Nightmare D2All UV Max but not do it later due to this problem.

The confusing bit for me was the suggestion of recording the whole thing in cl2 and dealing with the potential missed monsters on map09 when I felt like cl9 would have been better if it fixed the monster issues there, so I wasn't sure which approach was more correct.  I hadn't looked into it further so I don't know if cl9 throughout would have been a great solution either, though.

Here's an interesting example for "unreachable" secrets, with a scenario I don't think anyone has mentioned yet:
Summer of '69 MAP01 has a pair of secrets where one is entirely inside of the other, inside of a cavern with a scrolling floor that flings you out (you can return however many times you want, however.) when you enter the sector. They are sectors 345 & 742. The TAS Max of this map, I believe, manages to get both by doing a precise(?) rocket boost while being flung out of the cavern, but in my playing around with the secret, the only way I managed to get both to trigger was by spamming the archvile jump bind to go against the direction of the scrolling. Theoretically you could get both of these, but for what purpose? They're the same exact location, one is completely inside the other, and going for a max on the map now would turn most of the runtime into the runner running into the cavern over and over, trying to get the 2nd one to trigger.

I guess that's my argument for why instances like this should have an exception, the fact that the 2nd secret is completely inside of the first one makes it redundant.

This is what they look like inside the automap:

There's three particular instances I can think of that I would like to add to the discussion:

1klinecp MAP30: There's 80 arachnotrons in the first room, you don't get any ammo to kill them, they can't be crushed, and you can't teleport back to that room to kill them later. Even if you somehow come into the map on a consecutive playthrough, given how there's a bit of platforming involved in this room, with a damaging floor below and no teleport down there to save you, I can imagine trying to kill them all would be very annoying and probably not worth it.

The Journey MAP31: This one's interesting because neither exit will allow you to get 100% kills or secrets. The paths to get to either exit cut you off from the rest of the map.

Kama Sutra MAP15: You can get 100% kills and secrets just fine on a normal playthrough. Problem is when you do a D2ALL/ep 2 run and have to go to MAP31. Then you have to skip the end fight with 25 monsters just to get to that secret exit, rendering 89% kills as max in a max/-fast/NM100S movie run.

3 hours ago, Grazza said:

If it looks, walks and takls like a monster, it should be considered one, unless there is a specific reason to exempt it (in the case of lost souls, this is the fact that PEs can easily spawn them into the void). For instance, Batman Maxes don't exist just because of the authors' odd decision to make the monsters not count.

In Boom compatibility and above, though, there's a fix to prevent pain elementals from spawning lost souls out of bounds (the "comp_skull" option), so that reason ceases to be a problem depending on the complevel (unless the fix doesn't actually work, I haven't checked...).

And now for the hotter takes, the initial post doesn't address the core issue that was maps where sometimes monsters are unkillable. Everyone knows if a map has a monster you can't kill in any way you skip it, it's been like that forever.

The best example is sunder map13, it has some pains that I've heard spawn about 50% of the time, they didn't spawn in Arby's max so his 6 hour run got invalided. Is this reasonable? What is the cut? Would the demo be max if the pains only spawned 10% of the time?

If a map has a closet of 1000 monsters but only between 800 and 900 teleport into the map cause the mapper managed to break his closet that badly, what would be the max? Would this just be a lottery of who gets more monsters to teleport in regardless of the quality of the demo? I've only seen a closet this bad in holyhell but closet where anywhere between 0-5 monsters don't teleport in are more common, mayhem18p map17, tat03, tat25 as examples, I've never seen all monsters successfully teleport in the tat maps, while in the mayhem map I had to get multiple exits in a 30 minute demo just cause that closet is an abomination of mapping.

And the last case was monsters that were theorically possible to kill for the player but become unkillable later, such as those that fall into a pit the player can't reach,  is sunder05. In su05 the monster only becomes unkillable if it's a cyber. But, even if it's a rev, you can see in my 5:45 run that I had to shoot 30 rockets into a wall until that rev died which is similar to killing the vile in pl27 that was decided long ago you don't need to kill.

It's these 2 cases, together with iOS chaos maps, that really need to be talked about. The other cases mentioned in the thread are mostly settled, and some of them were never even a point of debate.

7 hours ago, Revved said:

The Journey MAP31: This one's interesting because neither exit will allow you to get 100% kills or secrets. The paths to get to either exit cut you off from the rest of the map.

Similar case to sacrment MAP04. I'd say take the path which allows you to get more kills and secrets.

6 hours ago, Ancalagon said:

And now for the hotter takes, the initial post doesn't address the core issue that was maps where sometimes monsters are unkillable. Everyone knows if a map has a monster you can't kill in any way you skip it, it's been like that forever.

TBH, I thought this is the biggest point of the thread, so hopefully it's getting address, which also introduce another thing to be discussed:

Whether D2All runs can be forgiven when this happens, comparing to IL runs?

I don't know about this. For my hot take, I don't support this idea. However in the meantime, doing any type of D2All with this potential risk along with IoS maps definitely is very very painful because you have no control over it, so I wouldn't surprise that D2All could have a bit of exemption, but then where is the cut becomes very annoying to decide.

Some examples for potential run ruining (sometimes broken teleporter, or IoS): Plutonia (pl28), Ancient Aliens (aa18), Speed of Doom (sd30), Sunder (su13)

This thread is why only demo recorders should be allowed to make maps :)