04. Jun 97
This is a documentation of how the "Pacifist" titles D1P and D2P were developed. Two days after the first suggestion, based on an e-mail Steffen Udluft wrote Frank, Robert Reevy already had recorded as much as 16 D1P maps. Within a few days an international team formed to collect as many maps as possible. Amazingly a total of 27 DOOM and 22 DOOM II maps could be mastered in pacifist style. Based on the experience gained while recording the rules changed slightly to:
Pacifist "Can do any level from scratch on UltraViolence without harming any monster." That is: no boxing, chainsawing or shooting at monsters, not even shooting barrels that do explode next to monsters, not even pressing switches that activate chrushers harming monsters. But it is allowed to make the monsters fight each others, if they are so stupid and agressive, well that's their problem. Note: Even a pacifist cannot always avoid telefrags.After a week in which no new recordings could be made 8 players made suggestions on the level sets according to Franks guidelines. The final level sets were determined by an election.
DOOM Easiest : 11 36 Easy : 12 14 22 25 29 32 37 Medium : 21 24 33 35 44 45 47 49 Hard : 18 23 27 34 38 43 Hardest : 19 26 42 48 DOOM II Easiest : 01 31 32 Easy : 08 15 16 18 20 27 28 Medium : 03 10 19 21 25 Hard : 05 09 12 13 14 23 24 Hardest : 06 11
There are also some comments which give you insight how and why the levels could be mastered, but they contain some tips. If you'd like to discover everything by yourself (that really is challenging), don't read this.
Dance is a problem in pacifist, because you never can clean up a room by shooting the monsters. This means that many levels are instant carnage all the time, try to dance and you are dead. In addition there are levels in which making sound (fist) or standing idle makes things much harder. Besides this the "kill two monsters" rule obviously has to be excluded. Taking this into account the rules for authentication are:
If it's a peaceful start you should do the dance then go and die (because you may wake a monster when you don't want too). If it's instant carnage, as in e2m7, you have the option to ignore the dance or find a place to do it then die - it's up to the player. In either instance, if you do the dance, you are *allowed* to die if you so choose and then start over. Some players may do the dance and just continue playing - that's their choice since speed is not the issue here. Others may do the dance then die because they want to start without disturbing the monsters with the fist. And obviously the two monster rule does not apply to this title.
Finally we hope that you'll find playing pacifist style as entertaining and challenging as we did ...