Custom Map: The Temple of Moloch

[Kapoios]

Ok, I am having a hard time understanding what your messages are saying.  I don't understand what the switch is supposed to do.  Is this by design?  I find the dialog hard to follow.  I honestly don't really understand what OPS and Commander are trying to say to each other.  I've read over them a hundred times and it's not making sense.

I realize I have to delay Thor's build so that the creeper doesn't get destroyed so it can be used to break down the walls.  But, I'm not sure what the blasters at the bottom are supposed to do and what this switch is all about.

I don't want everything revealed, but for crying out loud what is this switch?

Try to connect the blaster and let the game play and observe what happens. At some point, the emitter near the top blaster will stop. The switch, which is a relay, will explode, so the blaster disconnects and cannot request more energy. If it would, a baby would die.

The whole setup at the two bottom aisles is to make sure you have zero energy after 4:00. No excess and no deficit. All you need to know is that it doesn't let you send a packet anywhere after a point. You can ignore the details.

Such a setup was necessary, because Odin City always produces some energy and I had to remove it somehow for the puzzle to work. I could have skipped the switch, but then the player would have to deactivate and disconnect the top blaster at exactly the right time, but I didn't want such extreme amount of precision to be required for the solution, so it's done automatically.

Putting aside the flame above, and trying to help my fellow CreeperWorlder:
[...]

Thank you very much for changing your position. Much appreciated. I would like to ask you to remove the last paragraph from your post as I think it's a bit too spoilery. The point of the riddle is to figure out exactly that.

[Karsten75]

Your hint "it involves the concepts of infinite and zero energy" is misleading.  Your factory does not give infinite energy.

It instead should be

"blahlblah."

Could also be "stop being an ass and if you don't like puzzle maps, don't post on the puzzle map discussion thread."

Having a bad day at school? 

[Kamron3]

Your hint "it involves the concepts of infinite and zero energy" is misleading.  Your factory does not give infinite energy.

It instead should be

"blahlblah."

Could also be "stop being an ass and if you don't like puzzle maps, don't post on the puzzle map discussion thread."

Having a bad day at school? 

No, burguertime was spoiling the story and solution in his post.

[burguertime]

No, burguertime was spoiling the story and solution in his post.

I admit I got a LOT frustrated with this map and vented some of it in the boards, for that i am deeply sorry. My apologies to anyone that had to bear with my ranting. I even deleted the posts.

But as much for spoiling the solution??? Unless one post about 3-4 screen shots it cannot be done. This puzzle was greatly done and it is like sudoku:

saying you have to write numbers 1 through 9 in the cells so they follow these rules won't spoil the solution because you have to figure out WHERE each number goes.

Remainder of the post removed by request of author. Not of much use unless gaara edits his post below too.

[Kamron3]

No, burguertime was spoiling the story and solution in his post.

I admit I got a LOT frustrated with this map and vented some of it in the boards, for that i am deeply sorry. My apologies to anyone that had to bear with my ranting. I even deleted the posts.

But as much for spoiling the solution??? Unless one post about 3-4 screen shots it cannot be done. This puzzle was greatly done and it is like sudoku:

saying you have to write numbers 1 through 9 in the cells so they follow these rules won't spoil the solution because you have to figure out WHERE each number goes.

So, if I say: (I will use the spoiler tags anyway because they are cool and some people has the right to disagree with me on what is a spoiler or not).

Disclaimer: if you want to figure out from the map and the text in it what the puzzle is, do not click the spoiler button.

Spoiler

1) You cannot divert any packets from OC after 4:00.

2) You cannot finish building Thor before the walls in the right pits break.

3) The walls break at 4:54 +/- 1 second.

4) Thor's AOE is big enough to kill all the creeper in the pits (and making the puzzle unwinnable) in a single shot.

These are only few of the rules of the puzzle. No spoiling this far. And the logical conclusions of these three rules are:

a) You have to send the last build packet for Thor before 4:00

b) That last packet cannot reach Thor before 4:53 (counting there is the liftoff animation before thor fires for the first time).

from a) and b) we come to the conclusion that:

You have to make the build packet(s) walk the network for over 54 seconds without reaching the Thor Build Site.

[close]

The statement above is in no way the solution to the puzzle. It is just a description of the puzzle itself.

P.S.: At my best i got it to make 4:48. Five seconds too early at least.

We can agree to disagree, I have deleted my posts as well. :)

[burguertime]

 ;D

[Kharnellius]

Cool, thanks for the clarification.  After a dozen or so times, I still keep having a hard time timing the Thor build right with redirects, lol.  Very frustrating.  Also, I pretty much had it one time, but then I discovered OC had produced a few extra packets for Thor!!!!  AAAAHhhhhhhhh!!!!  Timing got messed up from that.  Ugh.

[CJ_Omaha]

After all the restarts it took to arrive at a solution, it is at once the most frustrating and challenging map I have attempted.

Not a very good score though.  No worries, wasn't the goal.

Thanks for the obvious effort it took to build the map.  It was a great challenge.

I have a question (and I'm sure many of you can answer it) about Thor after it is successfully built.  Some may consider this question a spoiler so I will designate it so.

Spoiler

I moved Thor to cover the lower emitter and it fires constantly.  At this time the blaster runs out of power due to me now being able to build and rescue the infants.  If you do it long enough, the blaster (assuming you never move it) will eventually be destroyed. 

The question is, how can a blaster keep the emitter at bay, that Thor cannot?

[close]

[Kapoios]

After all the restarts it took to arrive at a solution, it is at once the most frustrating and challenging map I have attempted.

Nice job! I hope you enjoyed it.

Not a very good score though.  No worries, wasn't the goal.

This is by design. A good score isn't very meaningful. It's basically you beat it or not. Of course, you can optimise the very last tidying up, but that is not interesting.

Thanks for the obvious effort it took to build the map.  It was a great challenge.

It's my pleasure! Thanks for your comments.

The question is, how can a blaster keep the emitter at bay, that Thor cannot?

This puzzled me a bit too. I did some testing and now have found that Thor fires a bit less frequently than a blaster. Specifically, Thor fires every 8 frames while blasters fire every 7 frames (without the fire rate upgrade). So, in the case of capping a quick emitter (that particular emitter has 0.2 interval) the Thor is actually worse at this job than a humble blaster. If you take a careful look, you'll see that the emitter manages to spread its load to the surrounding squares occasionally, when capped by the Thor. Of course, for this particular map the Thor does an adequate job (I actually had to take this into account and move the emitter a square to the left from earlier versions when I discovered the baby would die with the Thor defending it!). It's still a way stronger weapon, obviously, it just shoots WAY more powerful shots a little bit less often than the blaster.

This whole talk about frames might sound confusing to you, but if you are interested feel free to ask me more stuff about mechanics etc.. Also you could search some threads in GD and Support, where you'll find a wealth of information if you care though they might be a bit hard to find. Try UpperKEES's mechanics knowledge quiz (in gameplay discussion), I'm sure you'll find it very interesting.

Welcome to the forums!

[CJ_Omaha]

Thanks for the quick answer, an interesting situation with the differing firing rates.

I find the discussions regarding frame rates and the like intriguing.

Thanks for the heads up regarding UpperKEES' quiz.  I actually got a big clue for my solution from one of the questions.  A particular quiz question, along with your choice of energy produced after the reactor factory is connected, led me down the path to my solution.

[UpperKEES]

Thanks for the heads up regarding UpperKEES' quiz.  I actually got a big clue for my solution from one of the questions.  A particular quiz question, along with your choice of energy produced after the reactor factory is connected, led me down the path to my solution.

Funny you say that; it's probably the same question (well, answer I should say) that lead me to the solution.

[ctuna]

Thanks for the hints, gang. Kaps, it truly is a great concept map (another "teachable moment"). It took me a few tries to optimize (tho not quite) the cleanup.

[Kapoios]

Thanks for the quick answer, an interesting situation with the differing firing rates.

I find the discussions regarding frame rates and the like intriguing.

My pleasure. I've also recently found that the Thor is not affected by the +15% fire rate upgrade. Not that it would matter in any sort of real situations that involve it.

Thanks for the heads up regarding UpperKEES' quiz.  I actually got a big clue for my solution from one of the questions.  A particular quiz question, along with your choice of energy produced after the reactor factory is connected, led me down the path to my solution.

Funny you say that; it's probably the same question (well, answer I should say) that lead me to the solution.

Oh, I get what you mean now! Interesting thought process!

Thanks for the hints, gang. Kaps, it truly is a great concept map (another "teachable moment"). It took me a few tries to optimize (tho not quite) the cleanup.

Thank you very much! Although I obviously tried to optimise that (hey, it's my only map so far, I like having the top score! :)), I insist that scoring isn't very meaningful here. I hope you enjoyed figuring it out!

[mopa42]

A thoroughly enjoyable puzzle map. Great job!
It took me a while to figure out roughly what I had to do, then a lot longer to come up with a way of doing it that worked. My solution is far from ideal, but figuring this map out was highly satisfying.

[Kapoios]

A thoroughly enjoyable puzzle map. Great job!
It took me a while to figure out roughly what I had to do, then a lot longer to come up with a way of doing it that worked. My solution is far from ideal, but figuring this map out was highly satisfying.

Thanks very much! And thank you for playing!

Also, please allow me to take this opportunity to shamelessly advertise my new map, The Testing Grounds. It is of a similar genre, so people who liked this one, will probably like the new one too. It doesn't feature an equally novel idea as the Temple, but it certainly requires a bunch of counterintuitive tricks and will attempt to keep you sleepless equally long! :)