Custom Map: Hard Art 4: Impossible

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This topic is for discussion of map: Hard Art 4: Impossible


Author: UpperKEES

Desc:
Is this impossible cube impossible to you? Don't worry too much about the spores; there will be only 1 from each side and you have 6 minutes to prepare. After about 1 hour 6 of them will arrive from the top, but you should be finished by then. Based on a detail of a work by M.C. Escher.

[UpperKEES]

Title:	Hard Art 4: Impossible
Difficulty:	Hard
Creeper type:	Land & Air
Remarks:	Is this impossible cube impossible to you? Don't worry too much about the spores; there will be only 1 from each side and you have 6 minutes to prepare. After about 1 hour 6 of them will arrive from the top, but you should be finished by then. Based on a detail of a work by M.C. Escher.
Description:	M.C. Escher is not only well known for his regular divisions of the plane (like Nice Job 22: The Artist and Hard Art 1: Horsemen), but even more for his impossible buildings and other structures. Most of these are rather hard to depict as a CW map, unlike this simple cube (also known as a Necker cube), which is based on a detail from his famous work Belvedere (see below). Please note that every 3 minutes one spore will arrive from each direction, starting at 6 minutes playing time. Emitters will increase in strength (both intensity and frequency) after 2, 4, 6 and 8 minutes. ARTIST: Maurits Cornelis Escher TITLE: Detail from Belvedere MATERIAL: lithograph YEAR: 1958 DIMENSIONS: 46.2 × 29.5 cm
Download page:	Hard Art 4: Impossible
Full size screen shot:
Based on:
Detail of:
More art:	See here for more maps about art (and jobs) ;)

[RichieRich]

Unless I am missing something terribly obvious, I think that is one of your hardest maps.

I lost OC about 5 times, then more careful building allowed me to get 2 morters and 2 blasters for the OC pit. Built one SAM as I misread the instructions and thought one spore would come every three minutes and took a hit and lost OC at 8 minutes.

I think I will leave this till tomorrow night.

[UpperKEES]

Unless I am missing something terribly obvious, I think that is one of your hardest maps.

I don't think you did, as there's no special trick or something that I use; just normal gameplay. It's indeed quite hard, so it pays off to think about how to kill the creeper in the most effective way.

I lost OC about 5 times, then more careful building allowed me to get 2 morters and 2 blasters for the OC pit. Built one SAM as I misread the instructions and thought one spore would come every three minutes and took a hit and lost OC at 8 minutes.

Spoiler

Mortars are indeed essential during this game and so are a few SAMs (but not many). To state it even more clearly for others: after 6 minutes 1 spore will arrive from the top (intensity 1). 5 seconds later 1 spore will arrive from the right, another 5 seconds later 1 spore will arrive from the bottom and another 5 seconds later 1 spore will arrive from the left. This cycle will repeat every 3 minutes. The hardest minutes are between 4 and 8 minutes of game play; if you survive these you will most likely finish the map.

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I think I will leave this till tomorrow night.

Good luck! :)

[Miss Melissa]

I agree with Richie Rich, that was pretty rough.. perhaps not the hardest, but indeed quite frustrating in the beginning. My perseverance eventually paid off tho, good map! Keep em coming, and ill keep trying.

[UpperKEES]

I agree with Richie Rich, that was pretty rough.. perhaps not the hardest, but indeed quite frustrating in the beginning. My perseverance eventually paid off tho

Yeah, I guess most people will need a few attempts before they find the best setup. Maybe nice to know that this wasn't different for me after tweaking the emitters. I played the final map 4 times before I submitted my score (the 3rd time I managed something around 25 minutes and tried the 4th time to get it under 20 minutes, but I failed).

Nice to see the first 3 completion times are within 43 seconds, so I won't be surprised if someone is going to beat my time.

good map! Keep em coming, and ill keep trying.

Thanks Melissa! :)

To all: thanks to Roccologic the highscore tables for my maps have been updated again.

[UpperKEES]

Because this map seems a bit harder than expected I'll give a few hints how to solve it:

Spoiler

- First start generating energy by building collectors (this won't be a surprise ;)).

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Spoiler

- Pick up the 2 nearest upgrades as soon as possible and choose wisely.

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Spoiler

- Your initial defence should exist out of 2 mortars. You want to have 1 of them up at exactly 2:00 minutes playing time (on the left) and the second one at about 2:30 (on the right). When you've build your collectors efficiently you should have enough energy to keep building.

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Spoiler

- Add another mortar later on. Try to spread your mortars as much as possible to use their energy efficiently. Occasionally move them around a bit when you need to.

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Spoiler

- Build 4 SAMs 1 minutes before the spores will arrive. You'll be building with a deficit, but you'll make it.

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Spoiler

- Start building reactors when you're out of space.

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Spoiler

- Add a 4th mortar when your energy allows for it.

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From this moment on it should be pretty straight forward. Let me know if you need more tips. :)

[Fisherck]

A hard map indeed. I started out trying to build to far. Small is the way to start in this map. On one of my first tries, I was doing pretty good, until I looked at the time until spore attack. 26 seconds. Needless to say I started over. My next try was much more successful. Great map.

[UpperKEES]

A hard map indeed. I started out trying to build to far. Small is the way to start in this map. On one of my first tries, I was doing pretty good, until I looked at the time until spore attack. 26 seconds. Needless to say I started over. My next try was much more successful. Great map.

Oh man! What a great time! I'm not sure whether I'll be able to beat that one.... But of course I'm gonna try!

[Fisherck]

Revenge! Now I need to go see if I can beat your time on Funneled. Though, I am not sure about that one...

[snowmaker (JM)]

Getting a foothold was definitely the hardest part :) Fun to play!

[SPIFFEN]

I was thinking about makeing an map like this for some time back ,
but i did'nt set my mind to do so , or didnt think i could manage to do so .
It was when i made :

SPIFFENs Stripes 7
And made an comment in that map about optical illusion .

But you did make it look very nice =D

Edit : i made an thread about Optical illusions maps . 

[UpperKEES]

Revenge!

Pfffff, that took a while.... I needed 4 attempts.... :P

Getting a foothold was definitely the hardest part :) Fun to play!

Yep, that's right, although reducing my time by 35% wasn't easy either. Thanks! :)

I was thinking about makeing an map like this for some time back ,
but i did'nt set my mind to do so, or didnt think i could manage to do so.

But you did make it look very nice =D

Edit : i made an thread about Optical illusions maps.

Thanks to you as well Spiff!

[fraterpotens]

very nice map,
hard to get started but each time I died it was clear what I did wrong and how I could fix it.

As I mentioned before, I like the ramp up, but it is good when the emitters reach peak strength within the first 10 minutes, so you can lose 5 times in a row but not feel like you have just been wasting huge amounts of time.

[UpperKEES]

very nice map,
hard to get started but each time I died it was clear what I did wrong and how I could fix it.

Thanks, that's always nice to hear. :)

As I mentioned before, I like the ramp up, but it is good when the emitters reach peak strength within the first 10 minutes, so you can lose 5 times in a row but not feel like you have just been wasting huge amounts of time.

I'll keep that in mind when creating my last few maps, although HA-9 will probably have a bit slower growth of emitter strength, because a tough terrain doesn't allow the player to develop that fast.