Plutonia: The Great Map Robbery

At the end of last week's Doom Radio podcast I posed a question to our listenership. It came off the back of a discussion pertaining to the aspects of Plutonia's level design that are overlooked in most if not all of the community projects that borrow from its style. Since we really don't have that many listeners at the moment, and since I'm pretty keen to hear what you folks have to say on the matter, I figure it's probably best to post the question here:

How much of Plutonia's borrowing from areas of Doom and Doom 2 are you aware of?

Everyone and his dog knows that Go 2 It equals Entryway. Neurosphere is The Inmost Dens rehashed. Slayer is Circle of Death. Final Frontier and Anti-Christ borrow heavily from The Living End. The start of Speed is Hell's Keep. Caughtyard is Dead Simple. These are the sorts of connections that even the slowest of minds cannot help but notice, with the authors either directly transplanting areas from their map (or maps!) of choice or borrowing the concept and general texture use in order to create their own version. But the list goes on. And on. And on. So "on" does the list go that before too long you're looking at 60% or more of Plutonia being borrowed material or "inspired" to some degree, with every other room feeling strangely as though it's been ported in from another IWAD (I swear I've seen this room before...). And how much of this was I aware of? Almost nothing. It wasn't until Tarnsman pointed out what he had assumed to be obvious during the preliminary stages of FDTWiD's planning that the true girth of this thievery became readily apparent. For instance, did you know that...

• MAP01 = Containment Area. The crate room is the only instance of crates in the entire megawad. Is it wishful thinking, or does that southern RL area not look slightly familiar?
• MAP04 = The Abandoned Mines. A tad more obvious, this one, but I hadn't really fully appreciated it until it was pointed out to me. There's an argument for MAP15 here, as well.
• MAP05 = The Spirit World. Or at least the end part. I'm inclined to say that the BK pickup in the southeast is reminiscent of E1M3, but that might be pushing it...
• MAP19 = E2M1. At first I only noticed the starting structure with the teleportation setup, curved progression and stepping stones over damaging liquid, but other areas of the level also hint at Deimos Anomaly being the chief source of inspiration.
• MAP23 = Tom Hall.
• MAP26 = Tom Hall, redux. But wait, what's with that center-north area with the several pillars, one of which can be used to access a hidden megasphere? How are you today, The Crusher?
• MAP28 = Monster Condo. That library isn't just a library. It's complete with bookshelves that lower when you use them, an archvile, and a YK.
• MAP29 = Downtown. This might be embarrassingly obvious in concept, but there are areas that are outright ripped from the map as well. The center of the map features a RL pickup with several cubby holes equipped with teleport destinations. Want to guess which monster spawns in when you pick it up?

These are only a few examples, and I'm not a learned expert when it comes to pointing these out. Perhaps the penny is yet to drop in other areas of the game! Perhaps some of these findings fall more into the realm of confirmation bias, or "seek and ye shall find"? Whatever the case, it is as the very least true to say that Dario and Milo Casali borrowed heavily - and sometimes outright - from Doom and Doom 2 levels. It's only the full extent to which they did so that we've yet to figure out.

If we could somehow sear this salient knowledge into the mind of the community and alter perception of Plutonian design, perhaps we could start seeing some more maps stealing sneakily from existing, well known Doomworld creations. That'd be swell, I reckon!

While Map32 uses Entryway, it seems to also, in the monster department, have been inspired by Memento Mori's Showdown (since Milo Casali have done both Go 2 It and Showdown). It could also have been inspired by Warrens, since they're both secret levels, and Warrens is a repeat of Hell Keep with the "original" exit as a fake and additional areas.

Map22 = Doom Episode 1.
Map29 = There's Downtown, but that huge crater at the south of the map is just like the one on Industrial Zone.

Let's not forget the design style of the authors.

Milo Casali = Tom Hall geometry (circular rooms, passageways).
Dario Casali = Fusion of John Romero and Sandy Petersen.

Now that we're talking about inspirations in Plutonia, I couldn't help but notice that TNT also borrows some stuff from original Doom and Doom 2.

Map01 = Entryway.
Map03 = The Focus.
Map11 = Interior of large building is Containment Area.
Map28 = Doom Episode 3, The Spirit World, and The Courtyard.

I have still not thoroughly played through Plutonia but first half a dozen or so levels that I know quite well never really reminded me of anything - save for the borrowed Abandoned Mines theme of MAP04.

I find it really interesting that despite 60% of the mapping being transplanted, Plutonia feels very much dislocated from the first two IWADs - not just in the sense that it is much harder either.

Ppl always used other wads as inspiration, borrowed room ideas, gameplay situations, texture themes, etc. I don't find Plutonia particularly special in this regard.

Memfis said:

Ppl always used other wads as inspiration, borrowed room ideas, gameplay situations, texture themes, etc. I don't find Plutonia particularly special in this regard.

I'm mostly trying to gauge the extent to which other people are aware of this trend in Plutonia rather than address the question of whether or not the Casali approach is unique, but all the same: I don't know of any designer who makes their entire mapping career out of piecing together parts of other peoples' work and then dressing it up in their own visual style. To take roughly the same concept and make an entire new level in that vein (like Final Frontier or Anti-Christ) is pretty commonplace so I'll grant you that, but the transplant of entire systems from an area of another level (shape of structure, progression through or around said structure, execution etc.) isn't exactly the way that most folks would go about piecing together a level.

EDIT: To put it another way, you say that other people "borrow room ideas", and that's true. But oftentimes in the case of the Casalis, that phrase is precisely one word too long.

I kinda think the MAP01 resembling E2M2 is kind of a stretch. FWIW MAP13 and MAP15 from Doom 2 are E2M2 inspired simply for the fact they have crates somewhere in them. The rocket launcher trap is sort of close but I'm sure I've seen many other traps with a similar design so it's a tough call, especially when these are minor parts of a larger map that has little semblance to it.

I think I've recognized the rest except for MAP28 being like Monster Condo. I think the predominant brown color has more to do with it than anything, as Monster Condo has much better trap designs that the Casali's probably would have taken influence from.

I'd have to examine 05, 23, and 26 again to comment on those.

40oz said:

I kinda think the MAP01 resembling E2M2 is kind of a stretch. FWIW MAP13 and MAP15 from Doom 2 are E2M2 inspired simply for the fact they have crates somewhere in them. The rocket launcher trap is sort of close but I'm sure I've seen many other traps with a similar design so it's a tough call, especially when these are minor parts of a larger map that has little semblance to it.

The areas that I pointed out alone wouldn't be enough to draw a conclusion from, for sure. Crates certainly doesn't mean Containment Area, heh. The inclusion of crates coupled with the area imitating the backpack/YK setup of E2M2 tips it over into the realm of feasible comparison though, I reckon. For MAP28, unless there's something else I haven't noticed, the buck pretty much stops with the library room.

I've been scrounging around for hints of awesome theft for long enough that I might be starting to invent comparisons where none exist, but I'm reasonably confident in most of the ones I've sited.

Map 01 has the only crate room in plutonia, the RL trap is not just close but a near 1:1 rip, oh and those wood "archways" you pass through at the start? Tom Hall did those in E2M2 and E2M7 made out of METAL and they appear nowhere else in Plutonia. Also the start is the end of E4M7.

Also Plutonia's blatant rips should be expected. Milo made a TNT map that is just 3 areas straight from Doom 2 connected with a hub.

40oz said:

I think I've recognized the rest except for MAP28 being like Monster Condo. I think the predominant brown color has more to do with it than anything, as Monster Condo has much better trap designs that the Casali's probably would have taken influence from.

Now that you mentioned Map28, I sense a bit of Gate to Limbo, in regards to the concept where you got a bunch of radiation suits to traverse the toxic sludge (blood in the original E3M7).

Map 28 is only Monster Condo for one room, the YK Library which is straight out of monster condo. Plutonia did single area homages as much as it did entire map homages.

I believe Casalis didn't give much of a damn about design, the only points Dario kept bringing up in that old interview was stuff like gameplay, tactics, resource management and difficulty.

It seems clear that MAP01 draws inspiration from E2M2 -- I think crates could just be a coincidence, but the archways and rocket launcher area are a definite homage, which means the crates probably are too. I don't think anything was actually ripped and transplanted, though -- the crates and arches are simplistic enough to recreate, and the rocket launcher area is nearly an identical concept but its geometry doesn't match up at all.

When I played Plutonia it was just "cool, more of the Doom I love."

The only doom game I played as a kid was Doom 2 and Doom 1 shareware.

Eventually I saw the Doom Collectors Edition (it's dated 2003, apparently this was further back than I thought) at Walmart and saw Final Doom screenshot on the back. I was like "wooah, there is more doom that I have not played!!!". So I bought it and played the rest of Doom I was missing out on. After Ultimate Doom, Plutonia was the third megawad that I ever completed (I might have played the first half of Evilution first but I can't remember).

I definitely noticed the obvious Circle of Death in Plutonia and Living End styled maps. But for the most part, the mapset was just more of the same doom. A "ripoff" of a portion of a map in Doom 2 used in Plutonia probably just registered as elements of what good doom maps are supposed to be; or at most, "heh, that feature is how they did it sometimes in Doom 2". Structures like giant lava cutouts in Odyssey of Noises, or crates (if the crate positioning is the same i definitely didn't notice that), or support arches, or imp ambushes were just good doom-map-elements that good doom maps happened to be composed of. I then compared Plutonia with Evilution and decided that I liked Plutonia more and concluded that it must have used better layouts and gameplay, not because it was Doom 2 influenced or a rip-off per se.

Relatedly, my favorite map of Evilution is map 15, and it has the general main concept that The Citadel and Factory had in Doom 2. They all have a big open area with a cool playground in the middle with fun micropuzzles and toys to play with. The Abandon Mines ripoffs in Plutonia work the same way. They have the general layout style, but because the side-toys in the map are modular and swappable, they are still very different maps and fun to play. Even if the set-pieces from individual maps are rearranged, because they are rearranged differently they still work.

After thinking about it though, I do think the maps I referenced from Plutonia are more similar to Abandon Mines than TNT-Map15 is to Citadel, so they are more "ripoffy". But still, you can't go wrong by taking Doom 2 map elements to make you maps. (I played Doom 2 more than any other mapset)