It has come to my attention that in some levels it is actually impossible to achieve 100% secrets, because the devs forgot to flag some of these areas as secrets. Instead, you are only required to get all possible secrets for the given level.

For reference, I used this thread on the Doomworld forums: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/110362-new-doom-64-speedrunning-category-wmd-max/ and I believe this is a solid ruleset to follow with the exception of one. Including the "fun" levels as part of the category would require use of the features menu, which adds in some unnecessary tedium to the run. It essentially turns it into a series of ILs once you beat The Absolution, since they're all pistol start using this method.

I'll leave this open for discussion, but for now, if a level cannot be accessed through gameplay, it is not required for a valid Max% run.

Would we still require Hectic to be completed? Because AFAIK you can get 100% kills and secrets visiting only the blue and red key rooms and then leave through the normal exit but it feels a little weird to me not unlocking Features, even though I know doing the Fun Levels is definitely a weird point that needs discussion.

The thing with this port is that the features menu can already be accessed during any level, without the need for completing Hectic. Just start up the game and it's visible for anyone to make use of. I would say that as long as the results screen satisfies the 100% kills and all possible secrets, then completing Hectic that way is fine by the rules.

The reason I didn't want to include the fun levels is, as I said, they are just a series of ILs and we already have a leaderboard for those. Maybe if this were on the original hardware it would be a thing, since it requires gameplay to unlock, but it's already available from the start. That's my take on it anyway.

If others feel differently, like they would prefer to stay in-line with the N64 version, then they are welcome to comment. However, this category has never been explored to its fullest extent before, so nothing's really set in stone. Part of the reason I added it to this leaderboard is because I'd love to see it showcased some day.

That's a fair point with the Features menu, so it really just depends on whether we want Fun Levels in or not and I'm on the fence about that myself for this version.

Realistically, video would be required for every run, but yes, anyone verifying a Max% run would need to watch closely during Staging Area. As for other levels, whatever satisfies the results screen is fine by the rules. Any spawn prevention is allowed because it won't affect those results. It's all up to the game to decide how much is done when you hit that exit switch.