If you'd like to watch a version with the Plutonia Midi Pack, go here: th-cam.com/video/MwKXFNMxz8A/w-d-xo.html
Please note there are much, much more comments and information about the run in the text file included on the doomworld post here: www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/145003-the-plutonia-experiment-in-under-9-minutes-tas/
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THIS IS A TOOL-ASSISTED SPEEDRUN.
IWAD: Final Doom: The Plutonia Experiment
Map: D2All
Skill: Ultra-Violence
Category: UV-Speed
Exe: XDRE 2.22a, XDRE 2.23
Time: 8:54
Author(s): RockyGaming4725, almostmatt1
Comments:
This TAS is an improvement of 3:01 over the older 11:55 TAS by ClumsyDoomer from 2017. It is the result of 490 (we made a point of counting) hours of work spanning 1 year, 10 months, and 15 days. However, we made the decision to not count the hours spent running brute forces long enough to walk away from our computers, and so only counted the hours spent “actively working on the run”. It also does not count quite a bit of time spent with routing and experimenting with test maps. Taking into account all of that, the time taken would probably be around 600 hours.
ROCKYGAMING4725’S COMMENTS:
Not sure how to put how I feel about this project into words, honestly. It's one of those things that I could analyze and explain in great detail for hours, days even. It's difficult to say this without sounding egotistical, but this is probably one of the greatest Doom TASes ever made. Going off of the time spent on it, the effort put in, and the level of optimization in each map. Not only that, but the fact that nearly every map has a trick, makes it quite entertaining, to me at least.
I am very grateful this was a two person project. The amount of burnouts we suffered as a team can only make me imagine what it would have been like alone. Not to mention his expertise and valuable ideas. While I do feel a bit bad for having brought this project up to him just a 2 months after he finished his Doom 2 TAS, I'm sure we both had a blast (well, when at least when we weren't *not*) working on this project. This is going to be my Magnum Opus forever, probably.
ALMOSTMATT1’S COMMENTS:
I’m incredibly satisfied with what Rocky and I made here. It’s difficult to objectively evaluate this demo but in giving it my sincere best try to not be biased, I don’t have any doubt that this is the most time and effort ever put into a Doom TAS (probably up there for TASes in all games in general) and I think that it shows. The general degree of optimisation and the frequency of tricks and skips from the beginning to the end make this a TAS I am extremely proud to have had a hand in making, and after nearly two years of work as I write this I’m relieved to be able to finally share it. I can’t help but compare this demo and the experience of making it to my Doom 2 TAS run since both were such large and similar projects, and there’s not much point in picking favourites but I believe this to unquestionably be the superior demo. I think it’s more interesting technically, I think that the movement is more optimised, and I think it being a demo of a more difficult and complex wad naturally makes it more entertaining. I had more TASing experience during my time working on this than I did working on Doom 2, and of course this benefited immensely from the hard work and experience of Rocky as well. That last point cannot be overstated: anyone that has seen anything else Rocky has worked on will already no doubt know this, but this demo could not possibly have come out as well as it did without his work and dedication to it, and he has my endless thanks and appreciation for his many hours of work, as well as my thanks for letting me jump on board! This was originally his demo before I got in on it.
For all that, working on this TAS has also resulted in such a high degree of burnout that I’m not certain I have it in me to participate in a project like this again. The timing wasn’t great since for 18 of the months of working on this I was also doing a dozen hours of night classes a week after work, so that no doubt contributed to a lot of the stress and exhaustion I was constantly under while working on it, and certainly contributed to this demo taking so damn long to do! Whether I do or don’t do something like this again, I don’t think I’m ever going to work on a demo (either by myself or collaboratively) that I will be happier with than this TAS.