The Plutonia Experiment

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Final Doom - The Plutonia Experiment title screen

The Plutonia Experiment is a 32-level official Doom II IWAD, released in June 1996, which forms one half of Final Doom.

Development

Brothers Dario and Milo Casali, who had contributed three and one level respectively, to TNT: Evilution, were assigned the task of creating what became Plutonia (after having sent an 8-level WAD of their design to American McGee, and managing to impress him along with the rest of id Software). They created 32 levels for Plutonia in four months' time, and submitted them in January 1996. Unlike their contributions to TNT: Evilution, which were edited after submission (four were also rejected due to being too large), these turned out to be the final revisions of the levels; Dario Casali later commented, relieved that no further changes were required, "thank God because I was ready to throw my computer out the window at the time"[1].

According to an interview with Dario Casali from 1998 [2], he and his brother created 16 levels each. However, in May 2012, Dario shared accurate author information, which revealed that Milo actually designed 18 maps while he created 14 himself [3].

Dario used DETH for his levels [4].

Compared to TNT: Evilution, Plutonia is considered much more difficult due to the influx of strong opposition in the earlier levels, massive amounts of said enemies in the later stages, especially on the Ultra-Violence difficulty, and level designs and effects that were against the regular norm (such as usage of invisible bridges). According to sources, the Casali brothers intended to make Plutonia harder than the usual Doom fare in order to challenge already battle-hardened players.

Six levels from the IWAD are also included in the Sony PlayStation version of Final Doom.

Story

After Hell's invasion of Earth, the United States took steps to prevent another such invasion. The old UAC was refounded under completely new management (the previous owners being deceased) and given a new mission: to research tools and technologies that could prevent Hell's resurgence.

UAC's scientists began work on quantum accelerator devices, machines intended to close interdimensional gates from a distance. The experiments are carried out in a secret research complex, with a stationed detachment of marines. The work seems to be going well, but...

The creatures from Outside have their dire attention drawn towards the new research. A gate opens in the heart of the complex and unnatural horrors pour out. The quantum accelerator performs superbly — the gate is quickly closed and the invasion stopped. Research continues more boldly.

On the next day, a ring of seven gates opens and an even greater invasion begins. For one hour the quantum accelerators manage to close six of the gates... but the hellish army has become too numerous and too strong. The complex is overrun. Everyone is slain, or zombified. The last gate of Hell remains open, manned and guarded by a demon Gatekeeper.

The government, frantic that the quantum accelerator will be destroyed or used in some evil alien fashion against humanity, orders all marines to the site at once. The Doomguy is close to the site and gets there first. There he concludes that by the time reinforcements arrive that the demons will be too numerous and powerful.

The marine decides to enter the complex and stop the Gatekeeper alone.

Levels

As in Doom II, the levels can be divided up into three sets, defined by the skies and separated by a textual intermission in addition to the standard intermission screen; as well as two secret levels. Additional textual interludes appear before level 7, before each secret level, and at the conclusion of the game.

MAP01 to MAP06; initial Earth levels:

MAP07 to MAP11; later Earth levels:

MAP12 to MAP20; hellish levels:

MAP21 to MAP30; devil-hive levels:

MAP31 and MAP32; secret levels:

Speedrunning

Current records

The Compet-N episode records for Plutonia are:

Run Time Player Date File Notes
UV episode, MAP01-MAP10 0:08:50 kunkun 2013-06-16 0850pl01.zip
UV episode, MAP11-MAP20 0:10:17 kunkun 2013-07-19 1017pl11.zip
UV episode, MAP21-MAP30 0:12:31 kunkun 2013-08-10 1231pl21.zip
UV run 0:29:30 kunkun 2014-02-17 30pl2930.zip
NM episode, MAP01-MAP10 1
NM episode, MAP11-MAP20 1
NM episode, MAP21-MAP30 1
NM run 1
UV max episode, MAP01-MAP10 0:38:49 Vincent Catalaá 2005-02-25 3849pl01.zip
UV max episode, MAP11-MAP20 1:00:27 Revved 2011-10-04 6027pl11.zip
UV max episode, MAP21-MAP30 1:11:03 Revved 2012-10-06 7103pl21.zip
UV max run 2:54:33 Vincent Catalaá 2005-02-25 30plmax.zip
NS episode, MAP01-MAP10 1
NS episode, MAP11-MAP20 1
NS episode, MAP21-MAP30 1
NS run 1
UV -fast episode, MAP01-MAP10 1
UV -fast episode, MAP11-MAP20 1
UV -fast episode, MAP21-MAP30 1
UV -fast run 1

The data was last verified in its entirety on July 7, 2013.

  1. Uncompleted as of the most recent Compet-N database update.

TAS runs

File

The Plutonia Experiment is contained in an IWAD file called PLUTONIA.WAD. The most common version is 17,420,824 bytes in size and contains 2,984 entries. It has the following hashes:

MD5 75c8cf89566741fa9d22447604053bd7
SHA-1 90361e2a538d2388506657252ae41aceeb1ba360
CRC32 48d1453c

See also

Sources

This article incorporates text from the open-content Wikipedia online encyclopedia article Final Doom.