This topic is for discussion of map #3801: Tentacle Takeover
(http://knucklecracker.com/creeperworld3/queryMaps.php?query=thumbnailid&id=3801)
Author: planetfall
Size: 181x141
Desc:
A familiar battlefield with an alien adversary. Can you defeat the ever-expanding web? #NoDigitalis #NoSpores #NoRunners #CRPL #CustomEnemy
Those tentacle things take a lot of killing!
I hardly know what to say except wow! 10/10.
10/10 :)
Same here, WOW!!!! 10/10 ;D ;D ;D
TY For the great map!!!
Yep, again WOW and 10/10, Planetfall does not make maps often but they are of the absolute highest quality, flawless.
Looking forward to a replay tomorrow, would like to try and challenge Coca's impressive time of 31 mins ;)
That was a solid 11, Great map, I just hate that no matter how much aether I use I can't get N's to fill faster. Oh well. Either way great map. Thanks for making it.
It just keeps getting better.
For anyone who has difficulty:
Safe:
Spoiler
Your starting area is fairly safe, as long as you install Mortars and a Sprayer (always on). You can then Nullify anything that appears on the wall.
Once you feel ready, push outward. Keep hitting the central node, and each hit will destroy something attached. You should be able to gradually chip away at the network. The network can be destroyed for that PZ you wanted only when there is exactly one Emitter left in the network. If it has a brain, hit it twice in quick succession to kill it.
AC (to hold off new spawns) is a must, as is build speed (for the Nullifiers).
Quick(er):
Spoiler
Encircle the network you wish to destroy, otherwise you can end up with a fistful on the other side of the central node, and a hit to the middle will only kill one of them. Much faster to flank it and hit all of them. The more you hit, the less there are which can spawn more, and so on...
I doubt there will be much need for those spoilers, but just in case...
Quote from: GoodMorning on July 23, 2016, 10:34:47 PM
Spoiler
The network can be destroyed for that PZ you wanted only when there is exactly one Emitter left in the network.
Call me a pedant, but this is not technically true. You just need to nullify the entire network in one go (granted, this does usually mean one emitter.) With shields, high ground, and a bit of luck with the emitters' spawning pattern, it's possible to take out the entirety of one of those 8-child networks with a single nullifier.
Glad to see people enjoyed this one - but it was mostly a throwaway proof of concept, hence the plagiarized terrain :P I'll take this as confirmation that I can put this enemy in other maps, then.
The brainy emitters are a bit unfortunate in that you can entirely cheese their "panic mode." What's SUPPOSED to happen is they produce a giant creeper wave, acitvate a repulsion field, and emit faster. What I bet happens is each player encounters this exactly once and then figures out it can be bypassed by timing the nullifiers a few frames apart. To be fair, the non-center brain emitters have such a short timer that this is borderline mandatory for them. What I may do for future maps is increase the panic timer but make the the emitter invulnerable for the first 10 seconds of it.
Pedantry override: The CRPL sacrifices all other Emitters first, so at the point where the root dies, there is exactly one left.
Regarding brains, what happened for me was that the non-roots died as normal. The roots need a bigger multiplier and repulsion field if you intend that they will be harder than that. What happened the first time for me was:
Spoiler
Fry rest of network.
Hit root. Oh, it turns red and lives.
Existing units take care of the extra Creeper without noticing much difference.
Start new Nullifier.
Darn, it's back to normal before the Nullifier is finished. Disarm. Build extra.
Rearm a few frames apart. (Try two at the same frame later, be puzzled that it doesn't work.)
On a later brainy root, notice that there is a crescent opening in my AC, though a Sprayer keeps the root flooded. Infer weak field.
I would increase the timer, and change graphics twice, perhaps making the pulsing effect stop for the duration of invulnerability.
The biggest thing I noticed on this map was that the major strategic change was the AC supply going out of debt.
I'm not sure if the best strategy is to Terp everything eight ways to Odin, or to take the outside first. Certainly the standard "minimum surface area" approach was not the fastest.
If I may, I'll
steal borrow some elements and upgrade the Breeding Emitter script I started out with.
Love the idea, hate the execution.
Turned into a lagfest pretty fast, with the central brain constantly adding new emitters. Please consider adding an upper limit as with the outer brains.
Awsame map! One of the best maps i ever played!!
But now i have to replay it and try to beat D0m0nik again ;D
Quote from: Laithaldien on July 24, 2016, 08:28:35 AM
Love the idea, hate the execution.
Turned into a lagfest pretty fast, with the central brain constantly adding new emitters. Please consider adding an upper limit as with the outer brains.
What game version are you using? It's possible you're on an ancient version and the map uses CRPL commands that have been added since then. While the center emitter technically has a ridiculous limit of 3^999, it is in practice limited by forcing new emitters to be a certain distance apart. That's what happens for me on 2.12, and what is decidedly not happening for you.
Quote from: planetfall on July 24, 2016, 10:25:28 AM
Quote from: Laithaldien on July 24, 2016, 08:28:35 AM
Love the idea, hate the execution.
Turned into a lagfest pretty fast, with the central brain constantly adding new emitters. Please consider adding an upper limit as with the outer brains.
What game version are you using? It's possible you're on an ancient version and the map uses CRPL commands that have been added since then. While the center emitter technically has a ridiculous limit of 3^999, it is in practice limited by forcing new emitters to be a certain distance apart. That's what happens for me on 2.12, and what is decidedly not happening for you.
Can confirm the map does work as intended : after a while, the tentacle reach the map borders and almost never grow a new emitter. I'll shamefully admit I didn't finish the map though (I'm not very good and it would have taken too much time given my play style) but it's still a 10/10 without a doubt.
At a guess, a list copy error for Ancestors/Descendants?
Quote from: GoodMorning on July 24, 2016, 11:02:39 AM
At a guess, a list copy error for Ancestors/Descendants?
It's more likely the OperateWhilePaused (though it was added in the same patch as CopyList, so that's mostly irrelevant.) As far as I can tell, when an old copy of the game encounters an unknown command, it simply exits the script. Since OWP is just about the first thing in the :awake function, the rest of that function never runs and the map of forbidden areas is never initialized. CopyList failing quietly would create oddities when trying to nullify, but not when spawning new emitters.
Quote from: planetfall on July 24, 2016, 10:25:28 AM
Quote from: Laithaldien on July 24, 2016, 08:28:35 AM
Love the idea, hate the execution.
Turned into a lagfest pretty fast, with the central brain constantly adding new emitters. Please consider adding an upper limit as with the outer brains.
What game version are you using? It's possible you're on an ancient version and the map uses CRPL commands that have been added since then. While the center emitter technically has a ridiculous limit of 3^999, it is in practice limited by forcing new emitters to be a certain distance apart. That's what happens for me on 2.12, and what is decidedly not happening for you.
At first 2.08, updated to 2.12 in hope of less lag. PC is half a year old (Intel® Core i7-6700K (4,0 GHz), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970, 16GB RAM).
Didn't restart the map after updating, but since there was nothing new added, this should not have any impact on FPS.
Strange. I did restart and let it run for 20mins. Guess that's the intended behaviour.
Do player actions have any effect on the growth?
Quote from: Laithaldien on July 24, 2016, 11:39:00 AM
Strange. I did restart and let it run for 20mins. Guess that's the intended behaviour.
Do player actions have any effect on the growth?
Odd, this. I had a go in 2.08 and it worked as intended. There's definitely still some weirdness going on here...
Emitters won't grow into a cell occupied by a player unit or covered in AC. The presence of AC within a few cells of any emitter connected to a brain will also cause it to grow slower in favor of emitting faster. Those are the only ways the player can control how the emitters grow.
Quote from: coca on July 24, 2016, 09:16:12 AM
Awsame map! One of the best maps i ever played!!
But now i have to replay it and try to beat D0m0nik again ;D
Bravo! Nicely done, I will naturally have to try again but I don't think I can beat your score, my last go was building at full speed where as my first go was a blind funble about! Very replayable map.
I have one comment though, I thought the main unit in the centre should have been a little better guarded or just emitted a little more creeper so that to attack it you first have to suround and cut down the tentacles. It is mutch to easy to just go for the centre and hit it with 40 nullifiers. The more tentacles it has the stronger it should be up to a rate of about 50 or even 100.
Middle brain just started to disregard the creeper guidelines on emitter placement again, but not as massively as before.
3 savegames attached.
Mine looks slightly different than yours, playing on 2.12 steam version.
At that point it's unplayable, even though my PC is decent.
Quote from: jaworeq on July 24, 2016, 01:54:15 PM
Mine looks slightly different than yours, playing on 2.12 steam version.
At that point it's unplayable, even though my PC is decent.
Mine is the exact same. Strange it says 2.12 Steam as I never activated a Steam copy and have only updated from the KnuckleCracker site.
This creates huge lag as I also have hundreds of emitters on the map only 30 minutes in, even though I have a strong PC.
It seems there is also a limitation with CreeperWorld on computer resource usage as my computer is showing 27% CPU usage across the four cores and I still have 5GB ram unused of 8.
Otherwise this map is incredible and I look forward to making a variant of this as well! Thanks!
Oh, OK. I found what the problem is. Don't save and reload, basically, and it'll work right. I know what's causing this... shoult be simple enough to fix.
All right, I'll give it another bash after work today then ;)
Cool map when played without a bug, although there's not enough ore patches for AC based mechanic.
Quote from: jaworeq on July 25, 2016, 11:52:32 AM
Cool map when played without a bug, although there's not enough ore patches for AC based mechanic.
The start can be a little tight, but there's more than enough ore to go around. You should be prioritizing AC efficiency over weapon upgrades most of the time in this map.
I'm looking at an extension to the script, and I think the issue could be that NotPersist is working, but that the map is not recreated, because the creation is inside the once block. If so, then moving the endonce might fix this, or at least leave it less broken.
Still, using ints for it means that the save size expansion is largely because it is script variable, as the actual data is smaller than the Digitalis data.
In a word...................... NICE!
How and when can we get the fixed version planetfall? Very keen to finish this but I can't finish it in one sitting and the level has slowed to being unusable for me!
Thanks for your work on this. CW3 is dangerously addictive and amazingly replayable. Best value game ever.
Here's the save file with the fix. I have about 50,000 things to do within the next two weeks, and beating this again to upload the fix to CS isn't high on the priority list.
Wow, I got a game time of six hour without the fix, about 3-4 hours straight with pauses.
Hope the save bug can be fixed in an uploaded map, also, a slightly less maratonish map for us non-speed-freaks?
I wonder how those times of 24 minutes were achieved, some people really must know the strategies.
I've been tinkering, and have a variant up under "Void and Tentacles", with the suggested save fix implemented, and a few extras bolted on. It should be faster to finish.
Thanks, planetfall.
Started out fun, but (like many big maps) got unplayably slow pretty quickly.
Kudos for the cool new enemy type! That was a fun addition.