[idgames] Plutonic Visions - Vanilla Plutonia megawad

[finnks13]

 

Hello!

 

Plutonic Visions is a 22 map wad for The Plutonia Experiment. I wanted to make maps that felt to play, like my memories of my first playthrough of Plutonia - the goal was to get the general feel correct over the specific details of the Casali's mapping style, so don't expect everything to be in multiples of 10 :P

 

Features mostly very short, action packed maps inspired by Plutonia's first two episodes, with some longer ones inspired by the final third sprinkled in for good measure. There are also five guest maps by @Arsinikk, @taviow & @Yumheart who gave their own interpretations of the goal.

 

I would strongly recommend playing on HMP if you generally play stuff on UV!

 

 

Note on Difficulties:

HNTR is roughly equivalent to Plutonia on UV (it does get a bit more challenging at the end, but not too much), so if you want something that feels similar to Plutonia, play on that skill!

HMP is what I would recommend first playthroughs take place on, as I feel it smooths out a lot of the meanest edges of the maps!

UV is very unforgiving, and I will laugh at you if you complain to me about getting your arse kicked.

 

Play Info:

IWAD: PLUTONIA.wad

Maps: 01-21 & 31, 32

Compatibility: Final Doom (-complevel 4)

Misc: - GZDoom (as far as I'm aware) doesn't have a setting to emulate Final Doom's teleporter behaviour, so some fights will play differently than intended in this port.

        - Going out of bounds in some maps (particularly 06, 09, 16, 19 & 20) may cause a VPO in vanilla. There shouldn't be any if you don't clip around though!

 

Download:

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/megawads/plutonic (idgames)

 

Full Credits:

Spoiler

Guest maps:
 Map04 & 20 by Arsinikk
 Map09, 16 & 20 by taviow
 Map08 & 14 by Yumheart

 

Music:

 All music by zan-zan-zawa-veia (the name of each map's song can be found in the textfile)

 

Hud & M_DOOM:
 Ludi

 

Testing:
 Arsinikk
 Christophine Place
 gabirupee
 Ludi
 Ravendesk
 taviow
 Yumheart

 

I hope you enjoy!

Edited September 1 by finnks13 : updated dl link to idgames

[Firedust]

OH YES

[Ravendesk]

Had a pleasure to playtest this, and highly recommend, very fun and creative plutonia homage.

[Yumheart]

Played through this on HMP during playtesting and had an absolute blast. If you like maps that keep you on edge with vicious traps, but aren't brutally crushing then this comes highly recommended ☃️

[Ludi]

Congrats!

 

I couldn't beat level 1 on UV during testing!

 

Oh no!

[Gifty]

I will be playing this and I will be enjoying it

[taviow]

Kick ass set of maps, another win from finnks!

 

Was a delight having my first experience with vanilla from this. Learned so much and thankful for the opportunity!

[GarrettChan]

Yay, more Plutonia stuff, sign me up.

[EffinghamHuffnagel]

Holy crap! If I counted right, this is the 14th full megawad that's either released, gone into RC, or updated this month, plus a new 3/4 full DBP!

 

I just finished Scorching Earth and started Doomium2. I'm overwhelmed. Where will I find the time?

It is Plutonia. I must make time for this.

 

Edit: I read the first line as '32 map'. My bad. Still holy crap, though!

Edited June 27 by EffinghamHuffnagel

[Arsinikk]

Playtested through all these maps and they are all quality! :)

 

Do not take this lightly, as this is much harder than your regular Plutonia:

Quote

I would strongly recommend playing on HMP if you generally play stuff on UV!

 

Also highly suggest not playing on GZDoom due to the Plutonia teleporting bug being used in many of the maps.

 

For those who want it, I've created a widescreen asset wad:

Plutonic_ws.wad

[Xyzzу]

49 minutes ago, Arsinikk said:

Also highly suggest not playing on GZDoom due to the Plutonia teleporting bug being used in many of the maps.

 

3 hours ago, finnks13 said:

Misc: - GZDoom (as far as I'm aware) doesn't have a setting to emulate Final Doom's teleporter behaviour, so some fights will play differently than intended in this port.

 

 

Shouldn't be the case as of the latest version. Use compat_fdteleport?

[finnks13]

2 hours ago, Ludi said:

I couldn't beat level 1 on UV during testing!

 

as is tradition

 

1 minute ago, Xyzzу said:

Shouldn't be the case as of the latest version. Use compat_fdteleport?

 

I was not aware of this! I will add support for this in the next version, provided it can be enabled via MAPINFO.

[Arsinikk]

12 minutes ago, Xyzzу said:

 Shouldn't be the case as of the latest version. Use compat_fdteleport?

Ah didn't realise this was just added!

 

Altho personally I think this flag should be automatically added when COMPLVL value "vanilla" is read and Plutonia/TNT is the IWAD

[Arsinikk]

1 hour ago, Xyzzу said:

 

Shouldn't be the case as of the latest version. Use compat_fdteleport?

After testing the new compatibility setting, we still don't recommend using GZDoom.

 

The compat_fdteleport setting seems to only apply to the player, and not barrels (see MAP04) and/or monsters teleporting in.

[Bob9001]

This looks really good, could you not make 10 more maps? :P

[mancubian_candidate]

I was sold as soon as you said Plutonia and zan-zan-zawa-veia, here's an aul' UV-Max for Map 1: 

 

You weren't kidding about the difficulty! 

I'll be back to this at some other point, firmly going in "immediate backlog" :D

[t3hPoundcake]

Unbelievably difficult. I believe this is the hardest non-slaughter wad I've ever played. Took me a solid 10+ attempts to get past the first map.

[Valboom]

I played the first two maps on HMP, high quality Plutonia style!

[fefor]

Just got done with the 4th map now and had to stop to say this is truly awesome, playing on HMP and still kicking my butt, some very creative setups and map layouts. Love the green skybox and zan zan zawa veia's amazing soundtrack fits these visuals and maps perfectly, I'll continue to blast through this during the weekend!!

[TheShep]

Looks and sounds solid, and I'd def look into that HMP suggestion for myself!

[dashlet]

Gonna be playing through these on hmp this weekend. Havent play through something Plutonia related in a long time, so seeing you made this set is a good opportunity to get back to those vibes. Also really cool idea to design the maps around the memories and feelings you had when playing through Plutonia for the first time. 

[finnks13]

Thanks for all the kind words everyone, it really means a lot :)

 

In other news, I've updated the wad in order to make the GZDoom playing experience better with a ZMAPINFO lump that should hopefully have all the compatibility stuff setup correctly (though if I'm honest I'm not very good at ZMAPINFO so if there's any weirdness then please let me know!), there's also been a very minor change to MAP01 which also fixes a wall next to the start being inexplicably non-solid in GZDoom!

 

Download RC2 by pressing this ----------> arrow (it's to the left)

 

~~~

 

On 6/27/2024 at 10:10 PM, Bob9001 said:

This looks really good, could you not make 10 more maps? :P

 

I'll be honest, I didn't fancy making a full megawad - the two episodes feel about right for me. I think it's best to stop at a point where I'm very happy with what I've got, and not force myself to make another 10 maps, that'll likely turn out worse, for the sake of it :P

 

16 hours ago, fefor said:

zan zan zawa veia's amazing soundtrack fits these visuals and maps perfectly

 

I'm really happy to hear this in particular! zan-zan-zawa-veia's music is superb, and part of the impetus I had to finish the wad was the hope that more people would find out about it from here :P

 

On 6/27/2024 at 10:21 PM, mancubian_candidate said:

You weren't kidding about the difficulty! 

I'll be back to this at some other point, firmly going in "immediate backlog" :D

 

Thanks for recording a playthrough, it's always very fun to watch people play my stuff! (Good luck with UV-Maxing the later maps!)

[EffinghamHuffnagel]

Geez Louise, this was hard! A lot harder then I remember Plutonia being. A lot more damaging floors and forced runs through damaging liquids than I remember in Plutonia, too. Well designed, though. Dense. More stuff than I expected packed into some smaller maps.

 

Using ZDoom. Found two things.

---

MAP05 - A Manc in the tag 14 pit below ground. I don't think the pit was deep enough. He saw me going to the tag 13 switch and activated. I randomly saw just the top of his head moving around. Probably could have killed him from there with enough ammo.

---

MAP17 - One Arachnotron never teleported in. ZDoom issue. Tag 10 teleport line is 72 units from wall. Arachno radius is 64. Radius+1 has to cross teleport line in ZDoom for monsters to teleport. I don't think its AI allows it to get that close to a wall unless it's forced. Moving the S wall a bit farther should fix that.

---

I hate inescapable deathpits and there were more than I would have liked, but since it's kind of a 'Plutonia Squared' increase in difficulty, I guess it does what you intended. Maybe I'll try this again on lower difficulty.

[omegamer]

Been looking for a mapset, to get back into Doom after a break and this seems to be the correct one.

Looks great and heavily plays into my Plutonia fetish lol

[finnks13]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, here's RC3. I believe I've fixed everything I've seen reported with my maps, and taviow has updated 09 & 16 too.

 

This will probably be the final version before I whack this on idgames.

 

Download it here (RC3)

[Adam Duży]

Hello there, just 100% finished first level and it's great fun! For sure going to play following levels soon.

My thoughts, feel free to ignore my suggestions as I'm easily going super-meticulous (and sorry for poor english) (contains spoilers):
 

Spoiler

Played it on UV (doom2.exe, dosbox), had to reload few times but there was no section that caused bigger problems (average Plutonia enjoyer here).

 

Fights were good, most of the level I felt I'm kinda short with ammo what nicely added more spiciness to already tasty mostly-close combat.

I have to mention that after circa 3 failed attempts to fight in rocket launcher room (would be much easier if I had found soulsphere at this point) I figured that I can just run to switch and back to lift quickly enough, so I can retrigger lift so it moves one or two monsters above where I can easily shotgun/punch them one by one; you may fix it or allow cunning players to not fight monsters like a man (latter option IMO is completely fine) :P.

Quite minor thing - consider unsetting ambush flag in monsters in (some) closets, one pinky in western area of the map woke up after whole fight was done :P. Also another minor (and hilariuos :D) thing was when one lost soul that charged at me teleported away through one of one-time teleporting linedef belonging to sector 94 (place with 3 chaingunners visible from the starting area). BTW note that medikit near the exit can be easily picked from the sector below by bumping into it (not an issue ofc).

Secrets weren't obvious, but also not too hard to find (needed no more than maybe 2 minutes to find both), like they should be; I generally appreciate including secrets even in so small maps.

I also appreciate placing deathmatch starts.

Map generally looks good, it has some retro vibes that I enjoy; I usually avoid giving recommendations about aesthetics as I'm aesthetic perfectionist, but two (still small) things I have to suggest are making water areas on the west bigger (they look very short from player's point of view, while I think that intended effect is that they should look like smth like sea) and making wall (linedef 308) longer as it looks kinda unnatural to see sky there while there clearly is corridor just behind it (let's say POV is on (736, 736) coordinates).

Fun fact: I'm creating deathmatch wad and recently I thought about remapping that sky to green too, although eventually I didn't do it.

Again - sorry for being meticulous, map is really cool! ;), and I'll mention when I play more levels.

Edited July 19 by Adam Duży : Adding small note I forgot to mention.

[taviow]

Very happy to see someone using dosbox to play this, have fun!

[Keyboard_Doomer]

Hello,

 

we're going to play the wad for Thursday Night Survival today.
The session starts 11 hours from the time of this post and you can expect it be fairly active for 4+ hours.

 

On UV, of course, and you're welcome to join us to laugh at getting our arses kicked because that's absolutely what's going to happen and you can bet on someone raising a complaint about that.

[princetontiger]

How is someone supposed to beat map11? As it current stands, it's too difficult with the switch next to the yellow key. I can't figure out how to beat that part.

Edited July 30 by princetontiger

[finnks13]

On 7/25/2024 at 8:00 AM, Keyboard_Doomer said:

Hello,

 

we're going to play the wad for Thursday Night Survival today.
The session starts 11 hours from the time of this post and you can expect it be fairly active for 4+ hours.

 

On UV, of course, and you're welcome to join us to laugh at getting our arses kicked because that's absolutely what's going to happen and you can bet on someone raising a complaint about that.

 

I hope you all had fun with the wad, I'm a bit sad I wasn't around to join in myself. Hopefully nothing was too broken!

 

10 hours ago, princetontiger said:

How is someone supposed to beat map11? As it current stands, it's too difficult with the switch next to the yellow key. I can't figure out how to beat that part.

 

Map11 is a bit of a difficulty spike (by design, mind you), so if you're struggling a lot with it then it might be worth going down a difficulty level for the second episode.

 

Assuming you're playing on UV, the way I do the yellow key area is to focus on rocketing the hell knight & baron horde over all else, if you stand next to the camo revenant block that's further away from the switch then you're in a fairly good place to dodge the archvile's attack if it does that, though tanking a hit from it should be fine. You should have about enough rockets to kill enough of the hell nobles to run past them to the much larger stash of rockets they guard in the lava pit and from there you can either kill the other stuff that hasn't died yet, or take the teleporter and leave. Using the BFG, or focusing on the archvile initially can work, but I don't find either of those things very consistent.