This topic is for discussion of map #2887: Hell Rocks - The City Attack
(http://knucklecracker.com/creeperworld3/queryMaps.php?query=thumbnailid&id=2887)
Author: JoaoPistori
Size: 256x256
Desc:
#PAC -> Spore Towers can create runners -> Emmiters are stronger -> Human units are upgraded NOTE THAT YOUR STARTING POINT IS AT THE TOP-LEFT CORNER OF THE MAP This map is the 3rd and last of "Hell Rocks" serie. It shows what happened before "Hell Rocks" and "Hell Rocks - The lost city". Years before Abraxis arrived, a big human city lived here... and got invaded by an extremely powerful creeper army. This is how it all began: the creeper invaded the planet and made a landing zone for the evolved slee
I'm trying to play this, but the lag is awful. At 4x speed I'm getting about 1 second game time per 2 seconds real time. This looks like an incredible map and I love some of the additions, but I'm not sure I have the patience for this. Given the rating I'm guessing that's the case for other people as well. Not sure what's causing the lag.
yeah this one lags for me pretty badly...
i think it must be to do with the packet passing for the abraxis, this seems to be the issue on my large and slower PAC map...
still i can play this ok. it's about 2 rt secs to 1 gt sec, and that's getting better as i destroy more stuff! 8)
I don't know if I can finish this, 1hr 30 mins and I have a game time of 23 mins, I have not paused once!
I almost fell asleep waiting for things to happen. I was almost 2 hours into the game at 4x but the game clock only shows about 20-ish minutes. I still couldn't get out of the NW. I will file this away for another day.
Pretty sure it does not help that a lot of spaces have 2 things in one place, making it hard to tell what one might be, and or allow for more troops making it hard to get through the ac.
Wow, finally finished. My time is 1hr 9mins and yet during this time, without pausing I managed to:
Make numerous cups of tea
Prepare, cook and eat dinner (Johnny - potato chips wont cut it here)
Ditto breakfast
Shower, morning routine, stare out the window at the birds (flying variety in garden)
Catch up on emails
I tried to run on faster setting but I hate the jumpy look. Shame about the lag. The map is a monster and lag aside is not actually too hard and the new units are great.
Spoiler
I worked round the edges taking the whole top and both sides, didn't bother with bottom corners.
The top base was the hardest to take but beam cover is light so spread pout lots of spores rather than concentrating them and basically carpet bomb an area to destroy the tight collector network.
The bottom two bases are way too easy, I just turned all units to spore, synced the timing and aimed straight for the left and then the right CN, no need to touch any of the defenses.
I think this map could be a 45 min job or less, I just don't have the energy to try again!
That map is very lagging, Sorry, i can't play this :(
Beautifully laid out map. I like the idea of flip towers.
Sadly, the lag makes it un-replayable for me. I'm not going to try to improve my gametime of 2:53:37.8
Dom's right - there's so much lag you'd go through an entire grocery aisle of potato chips. I got so desperate I actually installed the game on my newer computer just to play it. Made quite a difference, and played it on 1x speed so there wasn't any graphic lag, but the clock speed was still only slightly better than .5x speed - think I counted 17 seconds per 10 seconds. This is definitely a game best played on either high-end computers or played VERY afk. As much as I personally enjoyed the map, I felt compelled to take a couple points off due to the fact that this simply isn't designed to run on most machines. Were it not for that, I'd say 9/10 - nearly perfect! Excellent design :)
Spoiler
Spore towers are a LOT more effective than emitters in this version. I let the game run for hours with emitters and then with spores just to see the difference. If the game is running smooth enough for you to sit and do stuff, you can target clusters of collectors with each spore - it takes a long time for collectors to build in this game for some reason. You can hit up to 6 with just one spore tower (pick 2 targets & go back and forth). The CN & its network will be red (power-deprived) in no time. If that's not an option, then just hit all the collectors that are supplying power to one area of defenses and slowly make your way toward the middle.
Great map, I loved the intricate layers that weren't symmetric. I would say the lag is almost prohibitive to playing it though, which is probably why people rate some of these large PAC maps low compared to the smaller ones.
Is there some way to make the game more efficient or optimize it to play big maps better? I only have lag on these massive PAC maps, but if someone knows how to make the game run better, that would be great.
You can uncheck all but the absolutely necessary options under "visibility" and that will help a little. After running it on two different computers it seems that the main lag is caused by the 2D and perhaps polygon rendering ability of the computer's video card. My CPU was barely breaking a sweat on my old computer but it lagged really bad. But I dunno. I'm a bit geeky, but not geeky enough to buy a new video card to test out my theory. Guess I'm more cheapy than geeky.
Holy lag... map looked amazing though, and I really liked the flip spores.
Maps like this make me wish Virgil had included an option to hide packets ::)
This was the first 256x256 PAC map I made, and it is the last too :P
I wanted to like this map, I wanted to like it a lot.
Even with the lag I could have liked it.
But its also just the wrong size of a slog fest. AC is 20 deep in some places, I can't get anywhere in the face of your superweapons, the first few I took out by taking out their air, but now you've got some behind air defense as I round the first city and I just can't get in.
Typo, try clicking on the "spoilers" in the earlier comments. There are several options. I chose to go with the option that put the most hurt on the powergrid. ;)
Tried it three times, game would crash when I finally got to bombard the CN, rage quitting :-\