Plutonia MAP22 Solo-net blue key room

[odysseyofnoises]

I've been thinking about doing a TAS demo for Plutonia MAP22 in solo-net mode, because of its insane difficulty. The co-op monsters are quite unbelievable, really.

That being said, I have not been able to figure out a way to deal with the blue key area. There are two cyberdemons, six arch-viles hiding in the green slime falls, and various other gubbins. Is there any possible way to kill everything in that room?

[Memfis]

You can wake up the monsters without falling into that area by shooting while standing on the very edge. But the cybers are deaf so one person has to sacrifice themselves (or miraculously reach the teleporter). Then by standing near the "window" you should be able to make the cybers get rid of all chaingunners, hurt the arch-viles in the process and get killed by them. It is possible to chaingun-snipe up to 4 arch-viles from that window. After that I guess you can enter the area.

I know all this because I played the map in ZDaemon with fast and powerful monsters. :) We had freelook though, I don't know how well the sniping part will work without it.

[odysseyofnoises]

I should probably also specify a few things:

1) I'm playing it by myself, not with other players (that's the whole point of the solo-net category)
2) I'm not using freelook.
3) I must finish the map without dying.

That's what makes it so bloody challenging.

[Degree23]

If the monsters are awake before the AVs are distracted I think you're more or less dead, even with TAS. The Hell Knight can attempt to hit you and instead destroy the barrels, thereby removing the Chaingunners and waking the Cybers. It may then be a case of trying to get them to hit maybe 3 (or 4?) of the Arch Viles to draw their fire while you take out the other 2. You can then pick the remaining ones off afterwards. I'm no TAS expert, so I'm not sure how difficult that would be to manipulate. I messed around in real time in there for a few minutes just now and I was able to get the Cybers to hit the 2 nearest AVs, but it took a few seconds. I'm sure you'd be able to get them to do it faster.

Drawing the AV fire to the Cyberdemons seems to be the only possible strategy I can see.

[odysseyofnoises]

Yeah, perhaps this is just not possible, even in theory. I guess I'll just have to play around with it and see if I can come up with anything.

If I can manage to do this, it may be the best accomplishment of my entire Doom career, lol.

[Degree23]

Well in theory, if you have the Hell Knight destroy the barrels and wake both Cyberdemons, who then kill it, if they stay on opposite sides of the middle and both fire again at you at the same time as you run through, timed properly you should be able to get their first rockets to hit the first 2 AVs on each side and the second rockets to hit the second AVs. Maybe you can also get them to hit the third ones, but if you enter with 100/100 (or more) then you'll be able to survive at least one AV blast.

I don't know how easy all of that is to manipulate in a TAS, but to me it looks possible in theory. Whether it's actually possible to pull off is another matter, but that's what I would be trying to do. If you can only have 2 AVs focusing on you then I think it's definitely possible, so it depends on how easy it is to manipulate the Cybers to be where they can hit 2 AVs on each side with their first 2 rockets aimed at you. The margin for error on the rocket angles look slim though.

[Memfis]

I just tested it and you can chaingun-snipe at least three arch-viles from the window thing even without freelook. After that it should be easy enough to deal with the other 3.

Sorry for the useless coop advice, something made me think we are talking about coop TAS here. :)

[odysseyofnoises]

I have already produced a demo in which I killed everything in the blue key area. I did it with fast monsters, too.

So yeah, now I'll just have the rest of the map to finish...

[Akse]

odysseyofnoises said:

2) I'm not using freelook.

Respect.

odysseyofnoises said:

3) I must finish the map without dying.

W/o dying, huh? Good luck.

[odysseyofnoises]

Update: Finished the demo a while ago, but was too lazy to post it.

There are two mistakes: 1) I forgot to enable sr50 and autosr50 on turns, and 2) I skipped the hell knight, forgot to kill it, so I had to backtrack a little bit to get it.

pl22x326.zip