BLDFLOW - 6 maps for Plutonia

[Chris Hansen]

Hello all. This is "Blood flows where my shotgun blows". 6 relatively short maps for Final Doom: The Plutonia Exp.

 

 

They've been sitting on my harddrive for ½ year now unreleased. I had plans for these levels, but that never really materialized. If you need to kill an hour on a boring Sunday, then these might just be what you are looking for. Not Plutonia difficulty; I just wanted to use the textures for once.

 

Spoiler

 

They might be a little unbalanced, but 100% kills etc. should be possible afaik. MAP02 is a bitch! :D They are Boom comp, using MBF sky transfer, so maybe -cl11.

 

>> DOWNLOAD <<

[Biodegradable]

Aha, it's that WAD you had me playtest last year! I'm glad you decided to finally release these maps, Chris. While it's a shame your original vision didn't really come to fruition, this is still a great set of maps people will enjoy.

 

If you kids enjoyed Bond of Hatred and The Mean Green 2, then you'll love this WAD of short, punchy compact maps peppered with Mr Hansen's particular flavour of cruelty and intrigue!

Edited April 10, 2022 by Biodegradable

[MFG38]

2 hours ago, Chris Hansen said:

They are Boom comp, using MBF sky transfer, so maybe -cl11.

 

Sky transfers work in -cl9.

[Chris Hansen]

Thanks @Biodegradable for playtesting and showing your support here! Much appreciated!

 

10 minutes ago, MFG38 said:

 

Sky transfers work in -cl9.

Thanks. I'm often confused over those complevels. I never seem to get it right. I vaguely remember someone once telling me that MBF is -cl11 and that sky transfers are a MBF feature. But nevermind. Thanks for clearing it up.

[Graf Zahl]

This is an MBF feature but since it has no effect on compatibility it was decided that having it in Boom mode is more useful.

 

[CoolerDoomeR]

This is great, Congrats on the release!

[Dusty_Rhodes]

This looks killer. I'll definitely be playing this afternoon. Glad you decided to release them. 

[TheCyberDruid]

Nice set of maps. Especially map 6 is fun to play.

[LerxstInWonderland]

Just played through the set on UV pistol starts with GzDoom 4.7.1. Got 100% kills on all levels. Didn't do as well with secrets, I found about half maybe? (although the ones I did find often saved my ass haha!) Very solid overall. The balance was super tight (just the right amount of ammo/health imo), and the level design itself was really great (I really like that sort of interwoven, connected/looping style that these maps have).

 

The combat meshed well with the level design itself as well. Plenty of crossfire and prioritizing targets, and I couldn't just camp at doors as ammo would run low or enemies would sneak up/teleport from behind. It forced me to get into the the thick of things, making it more exciting.

 

Nice job! Will probably give it another play to try and find the secrets I missed.

 

 

[Kor]

Pretty good levels, I enjoyed them.  Thank you for making a level set that's beatable.  You have a minor issue in level 6, with the crooked crate in the southwest portion of the map (its ceiling height is lower than that of the sector surrounding it). 

[Chris Hansen]

Thank you for playing and providing me with some feedback @TheCyberDruid,  @Lerxst_In_Wonderland and @Kor. I’ll take a look at that crate and fix it.

[Clippy]

Fun times as always - Bio joined for bonus commentary - good times- your maps are always fun!

 

 

[Chris Hansen]

Great video, @Clippy! It was a real pleasure listening to you and your guest have a good time with my levels. You gave me a few giggles and made a shitty day better. So thanks for that!

 

To answer one of your questions from the video: Shortly after having completed The Mean Green, I started making a sequel. I started to struggle with it and wanted to try a small speedmapping exercise instead. I was only allowed to spend 1½-2 hours building a map and then another hour to finetune it. BLDFLOW is a product of this. But as with The Mean Green 2, I ran cold and had to stop. So I had two incomplete projects and I thought "Why not merge them?" Which was a bad idea because they were very unlike each other. But I did it anyway and sent it to some playtesters - among others @Biodegradable. They all said the same thing: They liked the individual parts, not the sum. So I took out the last 3 levels and redesigned them yet again and released them as they were originally intended: As The Mean Green 2! :) And here we are, much later with the first 6 levels. Untouched since they were first playtested and released as is.

 

And yes, I have grown softer with age. I might still spring a trap or two in a level, but I never aim at killing the player. I want to hurt him, but not kill him. That was whole different matter 20 years ago! I would do anything to kill the player which meant setting up bullshit combat scenarios like planting a Baron and a ton of Demons right smack in the player's face while he was armed with only a pistol and a shotgun, no armor and in the middle of either a small ledge, narrow hallway or on some lava. I'm happy to say that I'm not like that anymore. @Kor's post above says it well: "Thank you for making a level set that's beatable".

 

[Clippy]

Interesting thanks for the information! 

 

This is gold and gave me a good laugh 

 

 

[Dusty_Rhodes]

I was right, this was awesome! Great stuff, really enjoyed the layouts flow. The monster placement was mean, but in the best way. Congrats.

[PasokonDeacon]

Played through this on UV, managed to avoid any deaths until the end of the final map. This felt like a very well thought-out "beginner's Plutonia" set, with its gentle difficulty curve and escalation of crossfire & pressure traps. In a sense, it's like a very Ultimate Doom-ish take on Plutonia's design tropes, emphasizing hitscanners and close quarters combat/exploration over Doom II heavies and concept mapping. Really cool episode! I hope you iterate on this and use some of the more unconventional Plutonia resources too.

[Chris Hansen]

Thank you @Dusty_Rhodes and @PasokonDeacon! Glad you liked it. And yes, I have a fondness for Ult. Doom style gameplay where you get to mow down 100s of monsters in tight spaces in seconds!

[Graf Zahl]

6 hours ago, Chris Hansen said:

And yes, I have a fondness for Ult. Doom style gameplay where you get to mow down 100s of monsters in tight spaces in seconds!

 

This is something I really miss in most modern map sets which tend to overuse Revenants as lower tier monsters. There's nothing more satisfying than unloading some ammo into a tight crowd of zombies (all kinds of 'em) and imps. :)

 

[LadyMistDragon]

What cancelled project were these maps going to be a part of?

[Chris Hansen]

1 hour ago, LadyMistDragon said:

What cancelled project were these maps going to be a part of?

Nothing fancy or particular ambitious. See my answer to @Clippy and @Biodegradable's video a while back.

[galileo31dos01]

Hey, so glad to see more of your work, I think I say this every time but it's true.

 

Bunch of FDAs if you're into that: bfwmsb_FDAsbygal.zip (prb+ 2.6.2, cl-9)

 

Cool stuff as always. 

[Chris Hansen]

Thank you @galileo31dos01! I'll check out the demos later.

[ryiron]

Hi Chris. Big fan of your maps, so this was a cool surprise. A fun little Easter Friday jaunt. The map names are great, I think I got all the references :-). All the maps are fun to play, and a reasonable, but fair challenge. Some of the chaingunner traps are pretty mean if you aren't expecting them. I had fun hunting out all the secrets too.

 

Map05 has a soft-lock issue. In my first attempt at the outdoor area I strafe jumped into the pit that raises without triggering the linedef and couldn't get back out. I was expecting it to be a secret :-). Map06 felt slightly ammo starved towards the end, but that might be my poor resource management.

 

Here's a playlist of UV-Maxes. Most of these I got on the first attempt, so completely blind. Map02 was the trickiest I think. The first three attempts got ended by early chaingunner traps.

 

[Chris Hansen]

Thank you for playging and for taking the time to upload those videos, @ryiron! It's good to hear that you enjoyed playing the maps. I'll take a look at that softlock issue in map05 before I upload the maps to /idgames.

[The_SloVinator]

Played it through HMP & UV.

 

I enjoyed it a lot! Balance was spot on, encounters were engaging & maps were simple, yet effective.

No complaints, really.

 

It wasn't difficult at all, at least for my skill but most importantly, it was enjoyable.

[Pistoolkip]

Short and thoroughly enjoyable maps. Not as mean or difficult as Plutonia, but the Chaingunners got me
 

 

[NightFright]

On 4/11/2022 at 3:59 PM, Graf Zahl said:

 

This is something I really miss in most modern map sets which tend to overuse Revenants as lower tier monsters. There's nothing more satisfying than unloading some ammo into a tight crowd of zombies (all kinds of 'em) and imps. :)

 

Someone should make an episode or even a full megawad only with zombies, shotgun guys, chaingunners (if D2 is used), imps and maybe some Pinkies to have an absolute blast. But hordes of them at times, ofc. Pretty much KDITD mostly, but on steroids. Even though it can turn into a hitscanner festival if not done right. (To compensate, you could completely omit the Plasmagun or BFG.) Has this ever been done before? I doubt it.

[Chris Hansen]

Thanks for the video play through, @Pistoolkip! The reason I keep armour a bit tight is because I want the lower tier enemies to pose a bigger threat. I can go on and on for pages on my design philosophy, but that'd just derail the thread. These 6 levels, "The Mean Green" 1 and 2 and "Bond of Hatred" represent this philosophy very well and it's got something to do with what @NightFright and @Graf Zahl are talking about: Namely the unloading of tons of ammo into lower tier enemies without bigger weapons while taking place in a small, cramped setting where you never quite know which wall or door will open. That was really the core of The Mean Green's gameplay. Sadly, it's not a megawad, but only 3 levels. The Mean Green 2 introduces bigger enemies and bigger guns in a more traditional Doom 2 way in terms of gameplay. Thanks for commenting and playing the levels! It's nice to see that you enjoy them.

[NightFright]

I am going to play these ASAP. Respect for making Plutonia maps without imitating the playstyle. That's rare and should be done more often. Pure slaughtermaps with tough monsters in dickish positions are often lacking creativity and hurt my LMB finger.

[Sectorslayer]

14 hours ago, Chris Hansen said:

I can go on and on for pages on my design philosophy,

I would love that 😏