Custom Map #1285: Boom goes the Dynamite

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This topic is for discussion of map #1285: Boom goes the Dynamite


Author: me

Desc:

[Kilroyinc]

This is a good map until you get to the bunkers and then it gets boring fast.  Sitting for an hour watching the darkbeam chew through 15 emitters and 8 portals is not what I call fun.  Put in a way to get to the conversion bomb tech to get through the game quicker.  Also being able to build AC makers is useless unless you have the repulser tech.  Had the there been a way to aquire these two techs the game would have been more enjoyable. 

6/10  For a good concept. 

[tjc999]

Good concept, but this map slows down RIDICULOUSLY compared to other maps. I don't know what you have going on that requires CPU usage of 99%, but it's unplayable, sorry!

[teknotiss]

in extremely laggy maps (like this one for me) it's can be caused by dig packets from multiple gateways, since the cpu has to calculate all the paths from each gateway.
this map was so laggy it was unplayable for me. once i had killed one emitter and one gateway i counted that as a win since i was inevitably going to win and was very bored watching packets tick frame by frame across the screen. (ps pausing and holding "n" for next frame i was able to play faster than at any speed setting, odd eh?)
the map concept is good and the masses of creeper is fine but the lag just killed it for me.
8/10 for effort
i agree that CBombs would be good, or getting repulsors, but just stopping the lag would be enough

[Karsten75]

During map moderation, I discussed this map with Virgil since I got only 1.4 FPS rather than the design point of 30 FPS. Here is his explanation:

...all but one of that gateways has a dig interval of 1.  One of them is 10.  Looks like just a careless oversight.  In any case, there are a load of dig sites (blue X's) in the middle of the map.  Once exposed the gateways will start war-dialing to calculate paths.  In the saved map, the only thing blocking them is some AntiCreeper.  All this translates into a bunch of Gateways trying to path find their way to any of the dig sites... and doing so each frame.  To make matters worse there are large caverns that they can search through, but that never lead anywhere.

This particular setup would even put a hurting on Unity's mono runtime (though not with results this bad). 

My solution was to allow the gateways to dig out the marked dig sites. Even though that was a less than optimal excavation model, it made the map playable and I still had enough energy to finish in reasonable time.

Notes:

The Mono runtime Virgil refers to is the CW3 environment.

To test your own FPS, press the = sign during the game and look in the lower right corner of the screen. You will see the FPS and the frame number.