Wall of Pain, coming soon!

[twoartistic]

I love this game! I had been playing with a new strategy, and found it to be quite fun and challenging to use. However none of the maps I tried it with, rely on this particular strategy to beat the map, so I built one. I don't know if the map can be beat with another strategy, because I only have played it with the one I had in mind. I wanted to be challenged, so I built one of the emitters, to produce a very large dose of creep. All of the creep is channeled by a wall, and when that wall fails it floods the almost all the map quickly, so you have to have a solid plan, at that point.

This was my first map, and I have to say, it is a blast to use the map editor. I have played many of the hard custom maps, and wondered how difficult it is to build one of these maps. It is quite easy to use. I needed no instructions, or tutorials, as it is fairly straight forward. The first time I tried the map I built, I could see that it was going to be way easy to beat, so I bumped up two emitters to a level of 5 and the key emitter all the way up to 60.

What is awesome about that kind of adjustability, is that I then played the map, and 7 or 8 minutes into the game, I still didn't know if the map was beatable. At 15 min. into the game I knew I could beat it, but I had been on the ragged edge for a good portion of the game, and it took another 10 min. to finally pull out the win.

I am a design engineer, and an artist, so I admire quality design, and good implementation. I give CW high marks in both, and the map editor does not fail to impress either.

Thanks for great game design.

P.S. The name of my map is "Wall of Pain". I understand that Virgil is backed up a few days, so look for it to post on around the weekend. If people enjoy this map, I may post some more. In the mean time, I am going to build more maps for myself to test ideas and strategy.

[Karsten75]

So what is your "new strategy" that you have developed? There is a strategy thread over in Gameplay board that you may want to add to.

[twoartistic]

I am certain the strategy is only new for me. I never look up strategy when I am working on a game, unless I can't defeat the game, because I like to see what I can come up with on my own. I have only found one map so far I could not beat, so I have not looked at strategy for CW yet.

I will share the strategy I used, if people can't beat the map. I also think it would be interesting to see if someone beats it using their favorite method.

[twoartistic]

Here is a link to Wall of Pain.

http://knucklecracker.com/creeperworld/mapcomments.php?id=874&page=

[Sniper]

Done in 5 minutes, if I would be more interested in micromanagement, I think it is doable in 3-4 minutes)... now, twoartistic,  please tell us what was your "strategy"?

[hi]

done in mh... I don't know... score was 9600...

Made a screenie to show what the problem is.

[twoartistic]

I played it by keeping odin flying over a network located on the high ground.

How did you manage to keep the creep beat back long enough to build this network, Hi? I didn't have enough power to run one blaster before I had to abandoned the plateau at the end of the wall. I see that you have hi scores all over CW, are you running an infinite power cheat? Some of your scores seem impossible. Would you ever show a screen capture video of your hi score runs?

[twoartistic]

Ok, I built your network Hi, and I did manage to keep several blasters powered, but cannot connect to the totem that is on the far right in the creep. How are you connecting to that totem to charge it, without breaking connection to the other totems?

[twoartistic]

I really am stumped, at how to connect with the totem in the creep on the far right side. Nothing I know how to do will connect with it as shown in your screen shot Hi. I have tried flying Odin over the wall, but then it breaks the connection with the rest of the network, so how do you do that?

[UpperKEES]

Fly to location. Do not land (you can't in this situation). Wait until you see the connection between the network and the totem through Odin city. Pause game step by step. Move OC a little bit down. Pause game step by step. Move OC a little bit up. Etc. Take care you never lose the connection.

And don't accuse people of cheating when you don't master the game yourself!

[hi]

mh... I was fast enough to build the network without holding the creeper back.  If you can't do that you maybe got a problem with "energy management" (high deficit/starvation are bad... consider building less things at one time to keep it low... but you propably know that. And remember to build the connections to totems that are far away from odin with a higher priority). I did as UpperKEES said to connect the totems.

Sadly I got no idea how to make videos. And on the computer I currently use I can't even install things. But if you got no idea how to get close to a highscore don't hesitate to ask in the forums or somewhere. Someone will propably give you some hints and I could give you some screenshots.


Question: What was the tactics you thought of?

[twoartistic]

Sorry for the accusation Hi, that is my personality, direct, and to the point. On one of the game websites, somebody posted the link to infinite power cheat, so I was asking a direct question, if that is how the high scores are achieved. Certainly some of them are, or are we going to pretend that nobody would do that.

I am at least in the top 50 all time in Story, Conquest, and Special Ops, without using even any game tips, but on some of the worlds the high score appears to be theoretically impossible, without being able to build an instant network. Gump for example, scoring 9000 would put you in the top 10 or so of all time, yet the top two all time scores are well above that. I barely broke 8000, and used most of my energy beating back the creep, rather than building a network. If their is a strategy that gets you to 9500 without a cheat, it is well out of the abilities of 99.9% of those who play. But hey, I have been wrong before, and I don't always get the obvious.  ::)

[twoartistic]

Ok, I found the sweet spot to link with the totem in the far right creep, and I can see how flying odin over your network can let you build faster, that helped me get my time down, but still not fast enough to avoid using a blaster at the end of the wall. You are clearly the man when it comes to speed Hi. You also have a lot of patience, because maintaining the link between the network and totem requires very small moves, and many, many game pauses. For a while I couldn't see the totem being charged, just because the time spent with the game live, was sooooooo short.

I built the map to force a player to fly odin while building a network on the high points on the left side of the map. With the idea, that when the wall dissolved, they could fight their way down the ridge to finally cap the emitters and connect to the last totem. I made the mistake of making a wall close enough to the emitter that it could be connected to by flying odin over it. I tried that when I made the map, and when I didn't connect, I assumed it couldn't be done.

Like I said in my original post, it will be interesting to see if anyone can beat it using a different method. Well someone did, so I at least learned a few things.

[UpperKEES]

On one of the game websites, somebody posted the link to infinite power cheat, so I was asking a direct question, if that is how the high scores are achieved. Certainly some of them are, or are we going to pretend that nobody would do that.

I am at least in the top 50 all time in Story, Conquest, and Special Ops, without using even any game tips, but on some of the worlds the high score appears to be theoretically impossible, without being able to build an instant network. Gump for example, scoring 9000 would put you in the top 10 or so of all time, yet the top two all time scores are well above that. I barely broke 8000, and used most of my energy beating back the creep, rather than building a network. If their is a strategy that gets you to 9500 without a cheat, it is well out of the abilities of 99.9% of those who play. But hey, I have been wrong before, and I don't always get the obvious.  ::)

I've never heard of a cheat and to be honest I don't want to hear about it (although they probably exist). I'm pretty sure every high score in the new tables is a valid one. When posting a screenshot of the graph at the end of a level you can determine that no cheat was used as the energy production and consumption are displayed. Please read for instance this topic and watch some of the video's mentioned, while realizing this is done on Double Down mode. I learned a lot from it myself. You can find similar threads on this forum, also with video's. It might open your eyes to things you've probably not thought about (yet).

[hi]

I can give you a hint on gump: the strategy siccles and I thought to be best for a long time was usinga mortar and a blaster. Try to move the city neat to the elevation and than use the mortar to clear the mouth and the eyes at the rightn time.

But we realised than using a mortar is a very retarded strategy if the valleys are pretty small (like on gump). iirc the help says that blasters should be used to fight creeper that isn't deep. well, fighting deep creeper with blasters is often also a good strat if the valleys are pretty small (for example less than the size of the zone effected by the shot of a mortar.... (we found out about that on chopraider. try to do it with one blaster)) A superior (but maybe harder strat) is to use 3 blasters place them in the valleys at certain times. Siccles got his highscore with 3 blasters. I was too lazy to try it with that strat.

btw.: maintaining the link didn't take any much pausing on your map. at least if you move it to the right places.

(sorry for being drunk)