This topic is for discussion of map #1387: FPS: Platform Peril
(https://knucklecracker.com/creeperworld4/queryMaps.php?query=thumbnailid&id=1387)
Author: Heritor
Size: 256x160
You can cheese it with 4x speed by running up the cliff in the north east with the totem and cache, and then just run across to the nullifier.
Without doing that... I have no idea how you're supposed to make any progress on this map because the creeper comes back faster than you can kill it.
Really nice level, but I had a weird bug. I followed the mesh to the nullifier, charged it to "win" as expected (it didn't seem to overload/detonate, even after continuing to charge it for a long time - is there some way to check on the progress of that?), then left to do the two enclosed rooms that I skipped earlier (both near the starting corner) as they were too difficult until I had tons of weapon upgrades. After doing those, I tried to get back to the nullifier, but the bridge that was activated earlier via an item was gone again - only one of the two platforms out of the central area were still there, stranding me. No creeper in the area, so I'm not sure what caused it.
A couple of the enemies on the steep walls seemed impossible to shoot. It's really fussy about aiming angle (or distance?).
@Malignantmind - I went to the central island, then threw down anticreeper over a bunch of breeder terrain (don't bother with the one to the southwest, you can't keep it until you fix another room connected via an impeller). It kept spreading. The area down the hallway you start looking at was difficult, but doable even after it got taken over, though it takes a lot of weapon switching and autospray+staying close to the creeper is probably essential.
Excellent map thanks and quite a challenge. I wandered aimlessly for a while to find the way to the final emitter, missed the little passage, but who said it should be easy. keep 'em coming please :)
Well i finished the map, almost. the game "froze" and i could see my bullets staying still in the air, i couldn't move and the creep advanced. Then when i respawned my game would not advance. I completed almost all objectives so i just tried to rift jump. which worked despite time not moving on. I think my laptop is doing weird things again as i have had issues with multiple different games today so unless others get this on their screen too then it is just me.
Quote from: Karzon on April 21, 2021, 01:58:01 PM
Really nice level, but I had a weird bug. I followed the mesh to the nullifier, charged it to "win" as expected (it didn't seem to overload/detonate, even after continuing to charge it for a long time - is there some way to check on the progress of that?)
If you stand at the right distance (and right angle) from the nullifier you can see your progress at the top of the nullifier.
EDIT: also you cant be in the upgrade menu.
As always, another great FPS map. My only complaint is maybe the difficulty spike in the two rooms that feel like should be done early on (i didn't do them at all until after I overloaded the skimmer/emitter nodes just for completion) AND the one that affected me the most... that damned middle island's terrain was miserable to get around sometimes getting stuck everywhere possible it felt like. I did see the paths you drew but still my dumb ass would get stuck.
Very interesting, but also rather confusing on how to progress. I'm confused at how the creeper / AC can grow / shrink so quickly over and over. Catwalks, wow, never thought the game could support something like that. Amazing.
Quote from: Karzon on April 21, 2021, 01:58:01 PM
After doing those, I tried to get back to the nullifier, but the bridge that was activated earlier via an item was gone again - only one of the two platforms out of the central area were still there, stranding me. No creeper in the area, so I'm not sure what caused it.
The same thing happened to me (though it was a different platform), I think it's the forbs throwing those little balls of creeper around (the glops) and landing in the void and destroying a platform. Yeah, went back and looked at the recorder, it's 100% the glops.
No clear route to progression, constantly have to backtrack to find where will let you overpower it after progressing somewhere.
The island in the middle is bad enough to traverse with all of the small hills and valleys, but the trees make it even worse to see the 'path'.
Have got it to the point where I've got all of the upgrades, but still can't beat the room with the last tower and item to pickup in it.
I have no idea how to win this map and I even enabled the editor and looked around :-[
How do I progress past here?
Quote from: Shatterstep on April 21, 2021, 07:43:39 PM
I have no idea how to win this map and I even enabled the editor and looked around :-[
If you mean the path to the nullifier, it's like this (starting from the center forest isle).
Edit: Actually at the beginning you'd have to go straight to the totem then go north, I missed that part up slightly on the map. Also, you can see that platform that got destroyed in my save.
Quote from: joebywan on April 21, 2021, 08:19:41 PM
How do I progress past here?
If you are talking about clearing those last 2 rooms, persistence. It took me an extra 40 minutes to clear those 2 rooms.
Quote from: yewstmlab on April 21, 2021, 08:35:08 PM
Quote from: joebywan on April 21, 2021, 08:19:41 PM
How do I progress past here?
If you are talking about clearing those last 2 rooms, persistence. It took me an extra 40 minutes to clear those 2 rooms.
It helps to stand on the totem to keep as much of the floor clear as possible.
Quote from: ikkonoishi on April 21, 2021, 08:39:02 PM
Quote from: yewstmlab on April 21, 2021, 08:35:08 PM
Quote from: joebywan on April 21, 2021, 08:19:41 PM
How do I progress past here?
If you are talking about clearing those last 2 rooms, persistence. It took me an extra 40 minutes to clear those 2 rooms.
It helps to stand on the totem to keep as much of the floor clear as possible.
Can't get to the totem to stand on it. I tried giving it a hit with the fab gun, but that doesn't work.
Ran through the creep to stand in the corner with the AC, couldn't push it back from there. Fired at the totem with different weapons for about 20mins, every time the breeder pulses it refills the room completely and all progress is lost.
The last 2 rooms (technically the first 2 rooms) are the hardest to clear by design - I wanted to make a range of optional objectives ranging from easy to hard. They're at the start as a 'fright' - you can't clear them early on so you have to 'run through the fire' so to speak.
The bottom-left room requires expert use of the mortar (simply focusing fire on one spot doesn't work - you need to range the mortar left and right to wear down the creeper) then switching to cannon to clear the leftovers before the breeder can fire off.
I'll have to pay closer attention to the activity of the Forbs for future FPS levels - they shouldn't have been able to throw their globs close enough to the platforms from the mesh.
All good feedback - I'll take it on board for my next one!
Quote from: heritor on April 21, 2021, 10:27:57 PM
The last 2 rooms (technically the first 2 rooms) are the hardest to clear by design - I wanted to make a range of optional objectives ranging from easy to hard. They're at the start as a 'fright' - you can't clear them early on so you have to 'run through the fire' so to speak.
The bottom-left room requires expert use of the mortar (simply focusing fire on one spot doesn't work - you need to range the mortar left and right to wear down the creeper) then switching to cannon to clear the leftovers before the breeder can fire off.
I'll have to pay closer attention to the activity of the Forbs for future FPS levels - they shouldn't have been able to throw their globs close enough to the platforms from the mesh.
All good feedback - I'll take it on board for my next one!
Tried that too. I still maintain that the breeder rate is too high. All progress is eliminated with each pulse. Maybe you'll get the next one right.
Quote from: heritor on April 21, 2021, 10:27:57 PM
The last 2 rooms (technically the first 2 rooms) are the hardest to clear by design - I wanted to make a range of optional objectives ranging from easy to hard. They're at the start as a 'fright' - you can't clear them early on so you have to 'run through the fire' so to speak.
The bottom-left room requires expert use of the mortar (simply focusing fire on one spot doesn't work - you need to range the mortar left and right to wear down the creeper) then switching to cannon to clear the leftovers before the breeder can fire off.
I'll have to pay closer attention to the activity of the Forbs for future FPS levels - they shouldn't have been able to throw their globs close enough to the platforms from the mesh.
All good feedback - I'll take it on board for my next one!
In addition with Forbs just due to the deign of the map, I found like in the end there was roughly 10-15 spitting up everywhere along the track under it just.. stuck that I couldn't stop (and mostly was right at the emitter too.
I too ended up stalling in a position where the breeder outpaced any damage I could deal and made progress impossible. Gave up and clipped through to the top-left totem at 4x speed, nullified the enemies, and then like halfway through trying to clear out the map from there the same thing happened as in the below quote, breaking it completely.
Quote from: dwilkinson on April 21, 2021, 03:35:26 PM
Well i finished the map, almost. the game "froze" and i could see my bullets staying still in the air, i couldn't move and the creep advanced. Then when i respawned my game would not advance. I completed almost all objectives so i just tried to rift jump. which worked despite time not moving on. I think my laptop is doing weird things again as i have had issues with multiple different games today so unless others get this on their screen too then it is just me.
Quote from: dwilkinson on April 21, 2021, 03:35:26 PM
Well i finished the map, almost. the game "froze" and i could see my bullets staying still in the air, i couldn't move and the creep advanced. Then when i respawned my game would not advance. I completed almost all objectives so i just tried to rift jump. which worked despite time not moving on. I think my laptop is doing weird things again as i have had issues with multiple different games today so unless others get this on their screen too then it is just me.
I had this happen with a different FPS level (#1324, return to bunker) by the same author. It happened just after buying an upgrade when the level was ~90% complete.
Quote from: Karzon on April 22, 2021, 11:07:37 AM
Quote from: dwilkinson on April 21, 2021, 03:35:26 PM
Well i finished the map, almost. the game "froze" and i could see my bullets staying still in the air, i couldn't move and the creep advanced. Then when i respawned my game would not advance. I completed almost all objectives so i just tried to rift jump. which worked despite time not moving on. I think my laptop is doing weird things again as i have had issues with multiple different games today so unless others get this on their screen too then it is just me.
I had this happen with a different FPS level (#1324, return to bunker) by the same author. It happened just after buying an upgrade when the level was ~90% complete.
That's probably a bug with my upgrade script then, if that's the bug I'm thinking of, it was fixed for the autobuild 6 map. Heritor should switch to using the most recent Auri's fps tools cpack for the next map.
Quote from: heritor on April 21, 2021, 10:27:57 PM
The last 2 rooms (technically the first 2 rooms) are the hardest to clear by design - I wanted to make a range of optional objectives ranging from easy to hard. They're at the start as a 'fright' - you can't clear them early on so you have to 'run through the fire' so to speak.
The bottom-left room requires expert use of the mortar (simply focusing fire on one spot doesn't work - you need to range the mortar left and right to wear down the creeper) then switching to cannon to clear the leftovers before the breeder can fire off.
I like the idea of this, but I think the tweaks to the breeder terrain duty cycles made it unnecessarily difficult - the extra-long cycle on the Creeper Breeder gives it significantly more momentum to overwhelm areas that were already cleared, not to mention reducing the time the player has to act between cycles.
Regarding balance - the level takes a few minutes to actually get started, the impellers and forbs take a bit too long to "seed" the map. A quick player can lock down about 60% of the map within 1:30, leaving just the two breeder-filled rooms and the hallway.
I really like the bridges and platforms - the idea of a multi-layer level is quite unique to CW4, it's clever. Is the wide-ranging ceiling needed, though? It's a neat take on mazes or single buildings, but in wide spaces it's sort of distracting, and there's some z-fighting going on with it.
This map is super frustrating and not particularly fun. Like others have said the progression is very wonky. There are a lot of cool features in it, but it feels like a poorly designed VR level.
If any of you are having trouble with any part of this map:
Finish this map in one sitting, do not save -> load this map unless you already have all the upgrades
I'm being told this bug is fixed in newer maps, but basically if you reload from a save, any upgrade bought from this point on will not apply. If you happen to reload from a save very early on in the level, you may end up in huge trouble due to lack of firepower. The last chamber with the very strong C breeder is nothing short of impossible without upgrades.
This one issue aside, this is a very fun map, gave me strong "90's fps" vibes with the atmosphere :)
I "fell off" the bridge (north corner room) and went into the corner where there was the anti-creeper corner was and bombed the crap out of it. And with the the anti-creeper helping it still took a while. Once you have that room won, the next room is much easier as the creeper stops being fed. YEY!
I'm not sure if the falling off was a glitch or if it was intentional coding; but I decided to take advantage. ;D
Quote from: joebywan on April 21, 2021, 08:19:41 PM
How do I progress past here?