Don’t judge this map at first glance. Looks like there is a weakly defended single enemy… but looks can be deceiving. J has coded up a special opponent in this map. Watch carefully and see if you can deduce how the map works. Head to the comments to post what you think. Say something interesting, and maybe J will confirm or deny your theory….
cool!
Stealth units and mobile emiters that are somehow being reproduced. If this is true it would make for a very interesting map.
Wait… EMITERS REPRODUCING THEMSELVES? Oh frak, that would be a nightmare, imagine a map where one emiter appears each 10 seconds next to an existent one… you would have to flood the map with nullifiers and AC to win
I think this one will be pretty difficult if you don’t know whats going to happen next. He build a beam on the PZ and I’m like… why? A lot of saving/restarting would probably be needed here.
I see some terrifying maps being made in the future…
Finally another video 😀 i was getting worried that none would be posted soon.
I’m assuming that the initial creeper node is spawning new creeper nodes?
First! Looks interesting, but I can’t watch now, I’ve gotta go to therapy over my Creeper Withdrawl. But seriously, can we get an updated timeframe Virgil?
Yeah, he’s been pretty clear on not giving out release information until it’s released. 😛
Also, people, stop saying “First”. That died years ago.
Besides, it is especially embarrassing if you are an hour after the actual “first post”, lol.
The game will be release when ready. All I can say is that Beta builds are nearing completion and the main focus is adding story maps and fixing any found bugs
Huh? I don’t understand.
There were invisible spores?
Also, you initially couldn’t nullify that blue thing, but after a while you could.
Was there an amount limit (e.g., nullify 25 blue helper things before you can nullify the main blue thing?)
Or did you have to nullify all the helpers at the same time before nullifying the main blue thing?
Anyway, this demo with the clicking sound and no music and at normal speed is a LOT more enjoyable than the previous videos.
I am pretty sure you had to use 2 nullifiers to destroy it.
IMHO:
Ugh. Magical gimmick maps.
Not knowing the rules is not the fun.
The fun is knowing the rules and figuring out the best way to defeat the map.
100% agree. While I admire the effort that went into creating this map, I wouldn’t want to play it. Well, correction, I would attempt to play it, then rage-quit as soon as my nullifier did nothing to the single visible tower.
To everyone but the author (or fellow map makers that lift open the hood and peek), maps like this will forever be a mystery, and there just isn’t enough time in the day to struggle with them when there will undoubtedly be hundreds of other maps available that use the “stock” rules.
I wish people like you would stop playing video games. Its too hard! *CRY* Go play a game that has been ruined by the “its too hard” crowd or a game with cheats. Nothing worth finishing is easy. Do you really want to site there for 30 minutes “wining” five minute maps? That is boring. Adapt and concur or get back in your box you sheep.
Can’t say I agree with you…
There’s a major difference between a game that is hard, and one that is frustrating. What makes a game fun is using logic and/or skill to overcome a problem. Say I have a game where a monster pops out and eats me – in the fun game, I have to react quickly, shoot at it accurately, dodge correctly, etc. In the frustrating game, I have to aim exactly at its left kneecap – nothing else will hurt it, and nothing tells me where I’m supposed to aim and whether it’s working or not until I land enough shots to kill it.
Now obviously with enough time, you can understand the map – but do I really want to burn the five hours it takes to try every combination of shots until something works? Or do I want to try the map once, fail, learn something about what I did wrong (because, of course, the rules are logical), and then do better next time?
(Note: I don’t know where this map falls between fun and frustrating without playing it or at least watching the video again)
Seriously, cut out the fake elitism. He never said it’s too hard, he said he doesn’t like having to fly blind.
There’s several kinds of hard, and the ones that make it impossible to win without failing a dozen times just to learn what might happen are among the cheapest. Tell the player what they can expect, then make them beg for mercy because they just can’t handle the hell you throw at them. Maybe throw in some surprise which they can recover from if they took decent general precautions and react well.
Do not require prescience by save-scumming just to have a shot at winning. And don’t bitch at people for not liking that kind of difficulty. They probably still enjoy games which are crazy hard despite giving the player full information (or predictably obscured information, like the fog of war in RTSes), and might very well beat you at those.
Hmm, where’s that edit button for a P.S. …
The above is directed purely at the “if you don’t like it, you suck, get lost” crowd. The map itself might give extra information withheld for the guessing here, or be possible (but hard) to do if you built a general-purpose defence like any good player confronted by the unknown, then adapted to what you saw happening. Building nullifiers to hit the flying towers is not really obvious, but if you know nullifiers can be built like that, it’s worth a try. If either of those things is true, or something else saves the player from trial-and-error play, this map might be very fun indeed.
I can see this type of map being awesome if it comes with a story or explanation of some kind, as to exactly what type of enemies you are facing.
Actually not knowing the rules and being thrown in with confusion and trying to survive is part of the fun. Imagine you walk into a room and there are several turrets and all you have keeping you alive is your reflexes and adrenaline. Sound fun? It is!
First !!!!!! this page is my home page ^^
See my previous post, lol.
When you guys learn that posts show when they are moderated not when they are created
So I saw (and I use “saw” loosely) invisible things that couldn’t be targeted unless the PZ Spore tower was hitting them.
Was the CRPL tower on the corner simply set up to require 2 Nullifier’s to be nearby to be destroyed? Because it didn’t get hit when a single Nullifier was near.
Also, it’s nice to see predominate ground action again. Nothing against Bertha’s, Strafer’s, and Bomber’s, but variety is good.
2 nulifiers were near it for a while it required a wait time between the last spawned emitter to run its cycle and run a check to see if it was killed or not which then enabled the main emitter to be hit which is required in this set up so the player doesn’t end the game too soon
I think it has to do with reaching a certain point on the map that’s making them spawn.
Either that or massive space bunnies eating golden carrots
Ahahaha love that game.
sweet vid, im guessing the last tower was destroyable after either a certain time or enough other towers get destroyed, or maybe both, a certain time after enough have been destroyed
though my final answer is that it is on some kind of timer, only destroyable after certain intervals, then its not for another round, going with that answer
Another option could be that it can be destroyed when the player manages to kill all floating creep-towers in one “cycle”.
I think your penultimate answer was right: the stationary tower becomes vulnerable 20 seconds after the 25th mobile tower has been destroyed.
On an unrelated note, It’s definitely an auditory relief to have the nullifiers’ charge-up sound stop if they have to idle due to a lack of targets. I might make one more suggestion to Virgil, though—maybe have the fully-charged sound fade away in volume instead of stopping suddenly? Stopping suddenly is kinda jarring and might make some people wonder what went wrong, whereas fading out might help to clue the player in to the fact that it’s actually still charged and that the noise is stopping just for the sake of peace and quiet.
Actually, I like the sound, it lets you know that it’s working right. If it’s stopped it sounds like something went wrong. Also, has anyone noticed that the sound is not in sync with the animation? Things like that just bother me for some reason, I don’t know why.
That was very interesting… I don’t know what to say!
That is quite pretty.
I definitely really appreciated the fact that the nullifiers built but did not go off until something was in range! Good call, V!
Oh no! The creeper have taken to the skies, and have created an invisible missile full of creeper to destroy us! They have also upgraded their armor to cause us to have to use 2 nullifiers to destroy them! Scary upgrade…
That is what I think anyway.
You only need 1 nullifier to destroy it… I built the other one for cores moving at the top of the map.
Not to mention that multiple nulifiers needed to destroy a creeper building is normal(you could make it from 1 to 5 in CW2).
i think:
1) there was a set amount of “defenders”: some spawned spores, other ones normal creeper.
2) the environnement was adapting to the player: once virgil built the spore-beam, after a first “spore-rush”, the game spawned some creeper generating mobile towers. when the system saw even the (low-amount) of creeper didn’t work, he started a small random-generation spore rush, looking for some undefended spots in the player defense line, maybe in the middle of the base.
in both cases, you can’t destroy the main one before the defenders are gone. The main one has a set time of invulnerability after the last defender is gone (that, or a creeper amount controlled shielding device, but it looks more like a timer. why not both?).
it looked like each defender destroyed “sucked” power from the main tower
Virgil wasn’t playing the game
the player, anyway
So is the one visible tower only destroyable with two or more nullifiers in range?
Love that tower, I noticed it repeats, quite enjoyable. What I didn’t see is this “invisible” stuff. But I like the command for spores to spawn at random coords on the map (quite sure it was random). I am assuming that the interval towers (the ones that go vertical and horizontal at certain intervals) are disposed of by the “explosion” effect w/o the explosion. By the way… how much time did that take you overall? a day?
I think I get it. Or at least parts of it. I suspect there’s a very specific amount of floating emitters, some of which emit creeper, some spores, and I think I saw a couple that did both. They come in waves until all have passed, and then they repeat. You have to destroy all of them to get at the ground emitter. I noticed it was 20 in-game seconds from the final floating emitter being destroyed to the grounded one starting to be hit. It could be “20 seconds after all waves are destroyed”, or it could just be that that’s when the next wave would have started. It checked to see if any waves were left, then noticed there were none. It also looked like some of the waves had spores spawning randomly about the map, but you were prepared for those.
The whole thing kind of reminded me of those boss fights…like in Star Fox 64, where you have to knock off all the minor pieces before you can get at the main body.
Whether I’m right or wrong, this is a very interesting map, and it makes me that much more crazed about this game. There are gonna be some REALLY interesting player-made enemies.
Two thoughts.
1 the creep had to be in small enough quantities to make the stationary node vunerable.
2 or the stationary node was only vulenrable while the invisible spores? Were being shot.
I’m betting on number 1 would be much more interesting.
I haven’t figured out the corner emitter that could only be destroyed at a particular time (though I strongly suspect two nullifiers means emitters etc can have more than one health again). As for the mobile enemy units; I’d say there are a limited number to start with on specific timed routes. (And able to spawn spores at points a considerable distance from the actual spawning unit.)
Just like everybody else said- very interesting!
I have a few theories just for a possibility 🙂
1. Did anyone else notice the massive range on the beams? I believe there is a mode that allows different ranges of certain towers.
2. There was obviously some sort of spawn/de-spawn/re-spawn system going on here. My guess on why you decided to nullify pretty early on? So they will not respawn later, thus ending the game sooner (since all creeper structures must be destroyed to win)
3. I can’t exactly put my finger on why the main building could not be nullified for a certain amount of time. If I were to guess, it would be because of intervals (what another user said above)
Also, did anybody else think this map would be a million times easier with terps!?
I would say only 100 times easier, yes more space for things but it takes energy to use. still would be easier though
Hi, first time posting
My theory is that there are 8 spore cprl towers, 16 creeper emitting crpl towers, and they come in 2 waves of 4(spore) and 2 waves of 8(creeper). to begin u only have one wave of each to start it off. I believe that the invisible enemies talked about in another post are just spores that appear randomly instead of from a certain point and is proportional to the number of crpl towers still left. To destroy the final cprl tower that doesnt move u have to destroy all the other ones and wait for the cycle to finish.
Thist is just my theory. I have other theories but dont want to overwhelm the blog
Do Nullifiers always because like that? Only attack when an eligible enemy is in range, but can be built anyway? Not a huge fan of this map and video, to be honest. A short thing at the start giving the rules/information about how the CRPL tower works would have been much appreciated.
Behave like that. The word was behave.
Okay, CRPL can be made to do weird things. There are many ways of getting the result in the video, but I have no idea what’s under the hood of that CRPL core. Obviously the other ones are basically moving Emitters (and some of them are Spore towers too), and there was a neat movement pattern, but I don’t get how the main CRPL core could not be Nullified.could it be to do with Creeper coverage? Could it be a need for more than one Nullifier? Could it be something simple like time? It’s nearly impossible for viewers to say for sure, but I suppose that’s why we were asked to guess.
Clearly the main creeper spawner was linked to the lesser ones. My guess is it could only be destroyed after all the other ones were eliminated first, since he didn’t even try to destroy it until the others were nearly gone. The use of 2 nullifers may have simply been an indication that it had more than the standard health of a spawner. In CW2 the nullifiers did 1 point of damage to a spawner, and so the spawner’s health indicated how many nufflifiers were needed to kill it.
As for the sub-spawners, They always appeared at one edge of the map, then disappeared at the other… I’m going to guess that it was coded to register something existing beyond the edge of the map. At one point he accidentally destroyed a singular sub-spawner on one side of the map instead of both, and later there was only a single spawner that appeared on one side of the map, IE the ‘survivor’ from before. So basically, the spawner moved off the edge of the map, rotated back around, then came back onto the map later. Those spawners were always there, simply not in the section of the map where the player could fight.
Assuming that’s correct, I’m also guessing that the spores weren’t invisible, but teleporting. The spore tower was also off the map (which is why it didn’t show the time until next spore) and then once they spawned they were immediately teleported into various spots around the map, rather than flying in from beyond the edge. The only question left is why the main spawner didn’t become immediately vulnerable after the lesser ones were destroyed. Must analyze more…
Well I’m now terrified of what people are gonna make.
Will there be any CRPL stuff in the campaign?
CRPL will be in the campaign, it actually drives the tutorial.
Campaign: definitely
Custom: why wouldn’t it be?
Procedural: I don’t think so, but I could be wrong
I just want to see the .crpl pack for Notepad++ to get a feel for what it can do. Please? :D??
Time to explain how this map works =P
There’s a variable stored in the core that goes up when a core is created and you don’t nullify it. It goes down when you do nullify a core. The amount of cores/spores created and their strenght is based on that number. When it falls below a point, you can nullify the core. Of course that will all be shown in the intro tekst (I’ll wait with creating those for my maps until the original story is complete).
Oops, looks like I’ve stopped all the guessing. Mayby you can see which attacks I’m launching at the players…?
im just curious about this but, what was the point that it had to go below to win?
The ‘power’ of the core needs to be 2 or lower before you can nullify it (checks are between waves). The core starts with 9 power and the child cores spawning spores need 5 power each to spawn. If they can finish their run they will send 6 power back to the main core. I won’t tell anyone the values for the other core types until someone does the correct guess 😉
How many child cores would it spawn at one time? We saw 8, but were they superimposed if the ‘power’ was above 40?
Well, J, I thought I had it all figured out. I worked forwards, I worked backwards, I did a dizzying amount of guess-and-check, and I thought I had all the child cores figured out. There’s just one tiny error in one tiny wave that destroys the whole thing. Like any good scientist, though, I’m going to throw out the errant data and assume it was a bug. For now, I’ll post what I have and see if I’m right. If I’m not, I’ll give it another run.
We already know the spore-thrower cores cost 5 points to create, and return 6 if they survive.
I believe the cores that emit creeper cost a measly 1 point, which is why they’re so plentiful, and return 2, a full double what they cost. And then we have a very odd core. It sucks up some of the creeper it comes across, and then when it finishes its trip, it dumps it all on the corner. These ones I’m the least sure about, but I think they cost 8 points and return 9. This is where most of my guess-and-check work went. The coreless spore waves don’t take or give any points, unless maybe they do if they land, but you never let that happen. However, they spawn spores equal to 1/3 of the current pointage, rounded down.
And as a final note, the waves happen in the same order each time. “Magnet” cores, Spore cores, Creeper cores, and then a spore wave. Though the game starts on a spore wave, so maybe that’s the first one.
That was a lot of text…I hope it was worth the effort of writing it all. We shall see.
I’m surprised how accurate your guesses are. Here are the correct ones:
Cores/order: SporeCores, CreeperCores, RandomSpores, MultiplierCores (“magnet” core)
Multiplier core cost 8 power to create
Random spores don’t give or take any power
For every 3 power a random spore is created
You were very close with the creeper cores, I used a formula for that one.
Was the emitter (top left) a clpr tower that spawned more clpr towers with the spore AI and a blank texture, and the floating emitters. Then, it could only be destroyed when all of the floating emitters where destroyed in one cycle. If any of them made it to the end, the main clpr tower was invulnerable.
this map would have been much easier using terps…
First, Thank you for uploading all this videos and updates about C3, it just helps to keep me excited about all the possibilities in the map making options.
I understand the moving emitters and spore towers, but I didn’t get the variables for the last emitter, was it conditioned on no creeper around it? or on the position of two nullifiers?
Any way, great map. C3 is shaping for a great game.
Note to all who post or read these comments… I held back on approving a whole giant batch (around 32 comments) after posting this blog post. I wanted to give everyone a chance to get in their guesses and ideas without being led down one path or the other. So when you read the previous 30 or so comments, keep in mind that they were all written at the ‘same’ time without the benefit of seeing each other’s (or especially J’s) posts.
It was a cool mini experiment, and the ideas folks had were very inventive. Perhaps some of them will even be used in one for or another in a future map…..
When it said a twist I thought it would fire spores that if landed became emitters, that would just be cruel though! XD
What’s left before release? V.
Story missions mostly (and any new features required to support particular story elements). Each mission takes anywhere from a few hours to several days to create. I have over 10 complete so far, and the rest are in progress. The story missions have to be both interesting and embody tutorial elements, so they are tricky to create. But progress is being made and they are moving along.
You have 10 story missions so far, and idea of how many you expect to have at release?
The goal in 25-30
worst case scenario the game comes out in a 140 days :p
Well I think they will be worth the time you are putting into them! From you description, they sound so exciting!
Based on that can we expect the release be rather weeks than months away?
No promises, obviously. but at a worst case scenario (a several days each, we could be looking at 20(ish) missions times (however you define several) days. Plus any other little (hopefully little) things that come up while putting missions together.
I would guess that without any major delays like some crazy bug or something it will be 1-3 months until the game comes out. You have to factor in missions (anywhere from 2-4 weeks for this), finding bugs and fixing them (maybe another couple weeks), setting up the site & such for selling the game (no idea on this since I’ve never managed a site), making a trailer (depending on what is done in it maybe a few days for this), and finalizing any graphics or any other odds and ends.
Fun to watch, and some new concepts I didn’t see before (“invisible” enemies and nullifiers built without in-range targets). Hope the release has up-front explanations, though, since “theories abound” (I think I Patrick Swayze said it in Road House), but don’t help much.
I can’t see a video, just a great big black box :/
For me it would have made more sense if after the first mobile node was killed if the hp like bar pop’d up on the stationary one. CW2 creeper nodes some of those were more than one nullifier required with the bar showing you had hurt it but not enough… i personally don’t think i would have thought of just needing two if one wasn’t doing anything or that there was something else i’d have missed. nice map though
On another note, is it possible to set a variable that sais an emitter (or CRPL tower) can’t be nullified?
Yes, that’s exactly what I did to make this map.
I think the last tower in the top left have a radius that if creeper is in then it is not class as a creeper emitter
Thanks for another cool video. I hope there are some odd missions like this in the campaign. It is nice every once in a while for the rules not to be followed. Like in CW2 with creeper fields. Just adds some new dimensions.
There were a set amount of CRPL towers ate the start. As you built out, more “woke up” and attacked at once, to a limit of course. Every two towers you destroyed, a large attack wave of spores appeared. When you destroyed all of the towers, you either had to wait a bit or destroy a certain amount of Creeper (I couldn’t quite tell which).
J- If somebody were to nullify the main enemy structure at the beginning, would the game end right then, or would the mini enemies half to be destroyed too?
You can’t nullify the main structure immediatly =)
The creeper is an ever changing substance I guess. Always evolving and changing to adapt to our new weaponry. Good thing we are a creative people and can make new weapons to counter the evolution!
Your words. They are beautiful <:') Its completely true! Lol I would die laughing if there was a creeper 2.0 XD
We counter everything, everything counter us
So… I kicked on CW2 and started playing the map “Drone Factory” on my gaming rig that I completed last week. I’ve got an AMD FX-6300 overclocked to 4.2 GHz and a Radeon 7850 stock at 860 MHz. So basically a solid medium end processor and graphics card. I’m getting under 5 frames per second to start off. I can’t wait to see what Unity can do with this. If AIR chokes on routing packets, then Unity will be a huge improvement and I can actually overbuild without the framerate dying.
So, it’s looking good; great.
But what’s the release date?
He made a comment in the forum that the target date October 17th. We’re all hoping that he surprises us with an earlier release.
link plz
When it’s ready. He described the progress as a ship on the horizon about a month ago. from my knowledge he is just writing story and creating story missions. Also, possibly the editor, not sure if he did that or not. I think he is also creating challenge missions from him.
Too long away. I wanted it 7 months ago XD
Loved seeing progress since then, but these videos don’t show too much new stuff. I’m ready to dive into this game, whenever it finally is released. Glad virgil seems to be pacing himself rather than rushing to the finish though. While I want it NOW, I’d rather wait and have a product he’s happy with, because that will assure that it’s something I will truly be happy with.
No new vids?
New videos are always nice BUT if there isn’t a new video it means virgil must be working on something else! (or hopefully getting some time with the family over summer before releasing the game and going into the hectic “need to patch everything” mode.)
Yes he is working on something else, mostly creating new story missions, adding CRPL functions needed in story missions and fixing bugs (of wich most of them were caused by upgrades like unity3.5 -> unity4 and new audio handling systems). So that’s basically finishing the game I think. My guess is that he does a video every week now, but that’s just a guess.
Can we start with preorder?
Hey!
rather new to this video, but…..
I noticed that in a few past vids the glowing Halo left by a destroyed creeper emplacement ( is it JUST an emitter that leaves these? what other items in the game drops these fields?).
I also saw, in a past vid, that the long-distance Relay was placed INSIDE that field, also the Beam weapon was placed in it this time and it seemed to increase it’s range.
Now, here is my second question:
aside from the obviouse waste of a good opportunity, if I placed a Collector in that space would that collector have a greatly increased range?
What about the Terrain level changing Terp? Would it have a larger range for changing terrain?
What about a Reactor? Since it has no need for space as the Collector does, would it produce more energy?
Would a Bertha be stronger?
What effect would a Guppy recieve?
Thanks in advance to ANY who can answer these questions!
those are power zones. (normal) emitters leave them for sure, spore towers don’t last i checked (could have been changed since), custom objects (cpl objects) determined by creator.
Collectors get a big boost to range, yes.
terp, I think it gets a range and speed boost, possibly an efficiency boost as well.
reactors produce more energy.
berthas get triple shots.
Guppy…i think it gets a movespeed boost? and/or a capacity boost.
Mortars get EPIC range and RoF. can’t remember if they get an efficiency boost per shot or not.
fighter-drones get double-shot, formerly triple shot.
it look gooooooooooooooooooooood