Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
Springy

Plutonia 2 No Monsters demo pack [-complevel 4]

Recommended Posts

Gusta said:

hmm ... my secret RJ has been found, nice! :-)

Oh my dear lord it's Gusta. Will you be participating?

Share this post


Link to post

Another fight, huh? :)
Map05 in 0:19
---
EDIT: Phewww! 0:15!
I could beat myself by 12 seconds in such a little map :) though I was stuck after rocketjump, I could get 14... Anyway, I''m fired off :)

p205o015.zip

Share this post


Link to post
ClumsyDoomer said:

Another fight, huh? :)
Map05 in 0:19
---
EDIT: Phewww! 0:15!
I could beat myself by 12 seconds in such a little map :) though I was stuck after rocketjump, I could get 14... Anyway, I''m fired off :)


Nicely done! I haven't known myself about this RJ variation ... and it's even a little easier this way! (at least for me)

Springy said:

Oh my dear lord it's Gusta. Will you be participating?

Well ... maybe? :-)

Share this post


Link to post

Map 03 in 14. Recording this went from "gee I'll just see what I can get" to "I'll get 29 or die trying" to "oh you can just jump to the exit". What a nightmare to optimise, bunch of stuff to get stuck on and both the key grab and that 190 unit jump feel like pure luck (damn it mappers, you should know about these tricks by now).
First demo I ever post, wahey.

p203o014.zip

Share this post


Link to post
kunkun said:

(damn it mappers, you should know about these tricks by now).


Well, I think they are intended 'secret' routes, not sure. IMO those routes just ruin maps, and it's not even fun to play the same "wow rocket jump, this is so cool" "wow, 32-unit glide" shit over and over again. Tricks are okay if the mappers doesn't realize them, but intended shortcuts are not okay.

Share this post


Link to post
Looper said:

Well, I think they are intended 'secret' routes, not sure. IMO those routes just ruin maps, and it's not even fun to play the same "wow rocket jump, this is so cool" "wow, 32-unit glide" shit over and over again. Tricks are okay if the mappers doesn't realize them, but intended shortcuts are not okay.


I planned both of those tricks while making the map of course :-)

Well, Looper, you are right at some point. But this mostly works if you are mapper and you don't know almost anything about speedrunning (or you are simply not fan of it).
So, for me it was absolutely natural to think about speed routes / shortcuts while making whatever kind of map.
And when the project is lead by Vincent Catalaa you really cannot avoid thinking about and planning speed shortcuts :-) Thats why almost all allowed (and even disallowed:-) route possibilities are intended.
Luckily there were some exceptions and few pl2 tricks found so far were became a pleasant and unexpected surprise for me.

Share this post


Link to post
Looper said:

Well, I think they are intended 'secret' routes, not sure. IMO those routes just ruin maps, and it's not even fun to play the same "wow rocket jump, this is so cool" "wow, 32-unit glide" shit over and over again. Tricks are okay if the mappers doesn't realize them, but intended shortcuts are not okay.

oh get over yourselves. this is a sequel to plutonia, speed tricks are pretty much mandatory, because that's what defines plutonia for speedrunners. i'm absolutely down with SOME megawads, FROM TIME TO TIME, giving speedrunners a dose of hyperoptimized ridiculous speed routes. if you don't like it, go speedrun eternal or something. i can't believe this is even an issue. modern highprofile megawads would get maybe one or two such tricks per 32 maps, mind you!

Share this post


Link to post
dew said:

i can't believe this is even an issue

I think such complaints are easy to understand. It's one thing to find a pretty obvious trick that was intended by the mapper. It's a completely different thing to "break" a map by doing something that the author wasn't aware of. The latter is a lot more exciting of course. But the problem is that nowadays, mappers know a lot more than guys from 1994-1995 who weren't even aware of straferunning. As j4rio implies, Plutonia turned out uv-speed-friendly by accident. Such accidents are very unlikely to happen with the modern knowledge of Doom, so the only way to achieve something similar is to intentionally put a lot of shortcuts in the maps. You could say that it's a necessary evil.

Share this post


Link to post

i thank you for explaining this to the rest of the world, but it would be brutally ironic if that was actually aimed at me.

Share this post


Link to post
dew said:

i thank you for explaining this to the rest of the world, but it would be brutally ironic if that was actually aimed at me.


Isn't it, like, your job to actually explain it, Mr. Mod?

Share this post


Link to post
j4rio said:

Isn't it, like, your job to actually explain it, Mr. Mod?

nope, not at all. it's very much a matter of personal taste and there's no official trail of thought promoted as the "correct thinking" in this subforum. you can't task anyone with explaining why a niche genre is fun, i certainly don't see anyone telling vdgg or grazza to defend the goals of slaughterfest against the people hating on it.

i'm interested in defending speedrun-mapping, because i was brought on board of several similar projects for a particular reason - to discover unwanted exploits and advise on possible interesting shortcuts. speedrun-friendly wads like doom2 or plutonia are simply impossible to create accidentally in this day and age.

Share this post


Link to post
dew said:

oh get over yourselves. this is a sequel to plutonia, speed tricks are pretty much mandatory, because that's what defines plutonia for speedrunners. i'm absolutely down with SOME megawads, FROM TIME TO TIME, giving speedrunners a dose of hyperoptimized ridiculous speed routes. if you don't like it, go speedrun eternal or something. i can't believe this is even an issue. modern highprofile megawads would get maybe one or two such tricks per 32 maps, mind you!


Personally I don't really mind speed tricks, provided that they don't skip the entire level (say, e2m2) and can be made consistent with practice. I guess a "good" example of a trick would be the three switches in doom2 map29 - either you gotta go fast and press one, aren't feeling too sure about the jump and press two or are doing a stroller and go for all three. When I started with that level, I probably had less than 10% success rate with the jump, but with practice I get it now fairly consistently.
With a keygrab or its evil cousin 190+ unit jump I can feel like I do the exact same thing every time but sometimes it randomly works and sometimes doesn't because it depends on "subpixel" stuff not really visible to the player. Even if you know the exact position where you can make some jump it's hard to get to that point with dooms controlling precision. 32 unit glides fall into the same "I do the same thing every time but different stuff happens" category.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that when Adam Hegyi was recording e1m4-012 he probably wasn't thinking "I GOTTA GET ME MORE LEVELS LIKE THIS".

Bottom line, here's Map02 in 10.94. Beatable, but 9.something should be impossible.

p202o010.zip

Share this post


Link to post

What the hell's happening here lads? People have different opinions on speed tricks etc. Some intentional, some not. On topic: I've had a time for map 15 for about a week now but I am going to optimise it soon before posting, just been balls deep in assignments and for once I am actually doing them at home will edit the list in a little while.

EDIT: Kunkun that puts my TAS 0:14 demo to shame. The grab is easy (well, I found 9 times out of ten I'd get it) as you just strafe straight after the open bars and make sure you do NOT bump into anything as you need all of that speed). The exit jump I found extremely hard.

Share this post


Link to post
dew said:

speedrun-friendly wads like doom2 or plutonia are simply impossible to create accidentally in this day and age.


Yeah, I guess you are right about that, and they fit Plutonia wads well. I just hate those fucking glides.

Share this post


Link to post

you know what i hate more? linedef skips. but i like you guys so much i got map10 out of the way so no one else has to suffer through the SHIP LAUNCH!!!

p210o055.zip

Share this post


Link to post

I don't particularly want to clog up a demos thread with discussion posts, but I'll just quote myself from an earlier discussion of deliberately-allowed short-cuts (specifically the rather crass ones in dv2):

Grazza said:
On the subject of what makes a speedrun interesting, it should need to involve some creativity. An exit switch that can be pressed from the player start position clearly doesn't qualify from that viewpoint. A route that, e.g., features a keygrab that enables a player to reach a point where a cyberdemon will open a door for him (from the 'wrong' side), so that he can then reach a position where an archie blast together with a rocket boost will enable the player to make a death slide along a raised linedef under a locked door to reach the exit line, will be somewhat more interesting.

By deliberately leaving rather simple methods to exit the maps, I feel Huy showed bad judgement. It basically killed the Speed category in these maps, since it leaves them as very uninteresting routes. It's just a case of looking for a relevant sector in an editor, and then finding how to reach it most quickly. It's hardly even worth spending time trying to optimize the running, since the resulting demo won't be good to watch in any case. I recorded a few essentially as bug demos, and expected that they would be treated as such.

This error was probably a result of Huy wanting to make the maps Speed-friendly, but not being a speedrunner himself. An excellent example of a Speed-friendly megawad is Kama Sutra, which was created by two highly experienced Compet-n players. They left all sorts of shortcut possibilities (mostly intentional, some perhaps not), and left it to the players to work out which were useful, and how they should be used together for best effect. Some were just a bit too simple though, and the best maps in this respect were the ones where there was some monster resistance to overcome, thus complicating the task of assessing the best route. Leeds Castle was a nice example.

Another very Speed-friendly megawad is Icarus, where the shortcut themes were mostly unintended. In a few cases the suicide exit possibilities do render the route trivial, but in many they open up some extremely interesting route ideas. See maps 19, 22 and 28, for instance (or just watch the ic30 TAS run). TVR! also falls into a similar category.

tldr version: They're a great idea as long as they leave scope for creativity and skill in how and whether they are used. More generally, that goes for any category of demo on any map; the more interesting ways there are to record on a map, the more successful that map is from a speedrunning viewpoint. Of course, that does require players to be somewhat flexible in terms of which categories they consider.

Share this post


Link to post

Sorry for the derail, I just saw Gusta in this thread and wanted to know if all the stuff I found annoying in Map03 was intentional. Guess I already knew the answer before asking anyway, but thanks for replying Gusta :)

Map28 in 1:11 (.97, woo). 1:09 or at least 1:10 should be doable but I can't be bothered trying to improve this.

p228o111.zip

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×