Out of curiousity, is it possible to complete Doom with no manual saves? And if so, who's done it?

[Dweller Dark]

This question has popped into my head a few times, and with or without sourceports, I feel like someone HAS actually done it before. But I felt I should ask here since Doomworld is the best to find information or accomplishments such as this.

[D4NUK1]

Well, yeah i made it. It's can be used with sourceports that's not feature autosave (Like the zdoom family), even with the original DOS release.

Just start to finish in one sitting. If you die on a map you will need to Pistol Start the map where you're died. Repat until you finish the final Boss.

It's a great achivement if you want to do all 100% Secrets Run.

[Dweller Dark]

1 minute ago, jamondemarnatural said:

Well, yeah i made it. It's can be used with sourceports that's not feature autosave (Like the zdoom family), even with the original DOS release.

Just start to finish in one sitting. If you die on a map you will need to Pistol Start the map where you're died. Repat until you finish the final Boss.

It's a great achivement if you want to do all 100% Secrets Run.

 

But can it be beaten without reloading a map too? Like if you only saved at the beginning of an episode and marathon-ed through it, and then reloaded that save if you died?

[Pseudonaut]

Yes, and it's not hard. For example, all speedruns are expected to be saveless (unless it's TAS). Dying is also not allowed unless it's a death exit of some sort.

[Dweller Dark]

1 minute ago, Pseudonaut said:

Yes, and it's not hard. For example, all speedruns are expected to be saveless (unless it's TAS). Dying is also not allowed unless it's a death exit of some sort.

 

 

So speedrunners go through the whole game with absolutely no saves? And by "death exits", do you mean like the end of Knee Deep in the Dead with the dark acid pit of demons?

[GraphicBleeder]

3 hours ago, DavetheDoomguy said:

 

 

So speedrunners go through the whole game with absolutely no saves? 

Man, you have no idea what some players are capable of doing

[Cruduxy Pegg]

All the originals have been done deathless without saves. People did much harder games than Doom without saves (even if they are mostly roguelikes and platformers, there is less margin for error in games like Dead Cells than classic Doom).

[Dweller Dark]

Just now, GraphicBleeder said:

Man, you have no idea what some players are capable of doing

 

I can't disagree with you there, Doom players are insane.

[Mr. LBN]

12 minutes ago, DavetheDoomguy said:

 

 

So speedrunners go through the whole game with absolutely no saves? And by "death exits", do you mean like the end of Knee Deep in the Dead with the dark acid pit of demons?

To be specific, if you're going for an official record you cannot save/load at any point in time during the recording.  If you die, exit the game, then resend the command line.  Speedrunning events allow save/load since they're predominately RTA.

 

A death exit can mean a few things depending on what type of speedrun you're doing.  In most cases in speedrunning a death exit is when the player deliberately kills themselves via rocket, Archvile, stray projectile, or a barrel to slide themselves through tight spots that you'd never be able to pass through normally, or to jump over a a gap an essentially "break" the sequence of the map.

 

You actually have 1-2hr long speedruns of pWADs that are noticeably harder than the iWADs so yeah, speedrunners at the highest level are probably a tad bit psychotic.

[Pseudonaut]

Just now, DavetheDoomguy said:

 

 

So speedrunners go through the whole game with absolutely no saves? And by "death exits", do you mean like the end of Knee Deep in the Dead with the dark acid pit of demons?

 

I could see saves being used in an AGDQ event or something, but non-TAS demos submitted to DSDA have to be single-segment, so no saves allowed. I guess the ending of Knee Deep in the Dead is a kind of death exit, but the term usually refers to cases where the player's corpse has enough momentum to land on the exit teleporter (if there is one, instead of a switch). When this is done, the player must pistol-start the next map. Here's an example: 

 

 

Some custom wads will force a death exit on specific levels in order to force a pistol start on the next level.

[Gez]

Yeah, there are plenty of full-game playthroughs in speedrunning.

 

The end of KDitD is not actually a death exit -- if you use the effect in a regular level, not an episode-ending one, you'll start the next level with between 1 and 9 points of health. It just ends the level if your health is lower than 10, and doesn't actually kill you.

 

Death exits are for levels that make sure to actually kill you, so that you start the next level with 100 health, no armor, and no weapons besides your fist and pistol with 50 bullets. A common way to achieve that is by putting a voodoo doll, a Romero head, and a teleport destination all at the same place, and the exit actually makes you telefrag the doll and the Romero head. Telefragging the doll kills you, telefragging the Romero head ends the level.

[BoxY]

5 minutes ago, DavetheDoomguy said:

 

 

So speedrunners go through the whole game with absolutely no saves? And by "death exits", do you mean like the end of Knee Deep in the Dead with the dark acid pit of demons?

 

There are a a few different kinds of death exits, some intended and some not. The one at the end of E1 is from a specially coded sector type (11) that ends the level automatically when your life gets low enough. However you can also exit any map while dead if it has a walk-over exit line, because your corpse can still trigger it. Sometimes this is forced through map scripting to make the player start the next map with the pistol, and sometimes it's a speedrunning tactic to launch their corpse into the exit in a way that's not intended (Plutonia map12 being a really fun example). :)

[Spie812]

Even from a more casual point of view, it's not too tough an ordeal for a skilled player to go through. Both of the original Doom games aren't really that difficult all things considered except maybe for a few trouble points, and people have certainly had a looong time to get good at Doom.

 

I'd hardly consider myself a Doom god, but I've managed a single segment run of Doom 2 on several occasions:

Spoiler

 

 

[Rei is now real]

1 hour ago, DavetheDoomguy said:

This question has popped into my head a few times, and with or without sourceports, I feel like someone HAS actually done it before. But I felt I should ask here since Doomworld is the best to find information or accomplishments such as this.

i think Civvie11 did this. 

[Bauul]

Looper beat the world record for speedrunning Doom 2 in one sitting without saves just last week.  You can watch the full video on the thread: 

 

[Edward850]

3 hours ago, DavetheDoomguy said:

 

 

So speedrunners go through the whole game with absolutely no saves? And by "death exits", do you mean like the end of Knee Deep in the Dead with the dark acid pit of demons?

Saving isn't even technically possible depending on the category. Vanilla Doom, while it technically allowed you to save during a demo (though this presented issues, least of which what slot you saved to would be repeated and performed while playing back the demo overwriting whatever was there, a left over from multiplayer) had no mechanism at all to load during a demo or resume a recording from a save. And as demos are usually a requirement for submitting speedruns, this required them to be single segment by force, there was no alternative.

 

Also, the E1M8 exit is the only thing a death exit isn't, given you never actually die for it to trigger (it blocks you from dying). Death exits mean you are dead when an exit occurs, which would force all your inventory and health to reset. This is usually by means of suicide over a walk-over exit trigger.

[DooM Bear]

Yeah it’s definitely possible :-) As others have said, speed runners do it as they usually have no saves or loads as a part of their rule set.

 

Also, it isn’t that hard to do if you aren’t worried about going fast! Have even done it myself Getting 100% kills and secrets (minus episode 4 of DooM 1- had to do between level saves for that) and I wouldn’t consider myself a particularly good player :-D 

 

I would definitely recommend giving it a go!

[ASD]

I do 100% episode playthroughs of The Ultimate Doom and Heretic (E1-3) on skills 4 and 5 respectively. Everything else is a slog to play at one go.

[leodoom85]

Before playing Doom on PC, had a SNES and played Doom with it (you know that controllers are hard to get used to). Practiced enough to say that I did the whole thing in one sit without deaths and saves are non-existant anyway.

 

Also, since Ironman sessions are featured in this site, I managed to complete Plutonia deathless.

[Optimus]

It's not hard. I am pretty sure I've played the whole Doom 1 and Doom 2 in one sitting without saves in UV several times. Maybe one evening with lot's of time where I had nothing else to do and was "you know what? Let's storm through the whole Doom 1 episodes or full Doom2 game". Doom 1 is easier because there are episode intermissions, so you have to start a new game anyway, so the duration is only for 8 or 9 levels each. Doom 2 is more of a marathon, and I admit I could start one and have some bad luck with some Cyberdemon or falling into a pit of inescepable acid (are there such in Doom 2? I remember many in Doom 1). So I could very well fail one attempt. But since if you know the game, all the secrets that help you, all the traps to expect, it should be fairly easy in UV. Now, nightmare is another story. But there are speedrunners who did full nightmare runs of the whole game, after main attempts of course, even Plutonia and TNT which are harder (I am not sure if I ever tried these ones without saves, probably not, it would be fun to try in UV and just quit if I die once. I did them all pistol start though.. with some deaths in few levels) they did a speedrun even in nightmare.

[MFG38]

If some truly insane individuals have gone through full-on slaughtermaps without saving, I don't see why going through the original games saveless wouldn't be possible.

 

In fact, this thread gives me the idea to attempt it myself at some point.

[ReX]

It used to be fairly common for players to use pistol starts and complete a given map without saving (as vanilla Doom demos typically required). I, myself, completed & recorded the games with pistol starts in each map with no saves, achieving 100% stats. But I have never played the entire games from start to finish with no saves.

[Dr. Toboggan]

On 10/20/2020 at 6:51 PM, Pseudonaut said:

(video)

 

This is still pretty much the best Doom run I've ever seen... No one touches Zero Master, I swear to god

[TenenteZashu]

On 10/21/2020 at 12:32 AM, DavetheDoomguy said:

 

But can it be beaten without reloading a map too? Like if you only saved at the beginning of an episode and marathon-ed through it, and then reloaded that save if you died?

that's pretty much how I usually play episode 1