Custom Map #1572: Arc Eternal Redemption - Hyper Tower. By: Hubs

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This topic is for discussion of map #1572: Arc Eternal Redemption - Hyper Tower


Author: Hubs
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Arc Eternal Redemption: Hyper Tower (Part 2) Relive the campaign as the creeper! Reclaim the worlds cleansed by Abraxis and get redemption. This mission places you on the planet Carcere in the Inceptus sector. There is an outpost with heavy defenses. You command the Loki Hive. Control the creeper and destroy everything you see. To aid you, the Loki have begun construction of a Hyper Tower. #PlayAsCreeper #PACRedemption

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Loved it! My favorite of your PAC maps so far, Hubs. The map was perfectly balanced. Zero frustration and numerous paths to victory. I had a blast. The finale of spores raining down on the CN and watching all the cannons go silent was great.

If you use the hyper tower again, I think it'd be fun to give them a harder punch. They were pretty weak (but that was balanced with this map) and you needed a lot of them to get much done. If they had a multiplying effect using the creeper you give it, where the spores carried perhaps 10x the amount of creeper it ate, that would be a nice mechanic for a future map.

[Hubs]

Glad you enjoyed it! This map was really difficult to balance but I think I got it. Starting out is easier that I normally do with my maps, but I think it worked in this one. The mid and end game offers enough challenge on its own.

As I'm looking through the maps and code for the Arc Eternal missions I realized there is something unique about each map. Some of the earlier missions just grant new units. Others have custom enemies and scripted events. So I knew that I wanted to emulate that in this series. The first couple of maps don't have a lot going for the in terms of terrain difficulty, so I wanted to add something extra in this map and take PAC to the next level. I also wanted to do something with inhibitors, but not quite the same thing, so I came up with an updated version that does something more than just outputting creeper.  I plan on using the hyper tower on the maps that had inhibitors, so you'll definitely see it again. 

I considered changing the spore health or doing some kind of amplification of creeper, but I found that late in the game it produced so many that it would have too easily over powered Abraxis.  I agree that the finale was awesome (and my favorite part as well), and exactly what I was going for.  I wanted to give the player to get a bit of a show after all their hard clearing the rest of the map.

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Well, you definitely nailed it.

While on the subject, one of the things I liked about this map was the lack of frustration. There was never a point where I was at a deadlock and couldn't really move forward. Some previous PAC maps have had near stalemates and although some people seem to like that concept, it's off putting to me. I find the challenge in looking for holes in defenses and shooting through those. The brute force "clash of the titans" isn't my thing. My point is, this map was much more to my liking and I hope that you're going more in this direction and a little further from the slow-and-steady one pixel at a time collision of armies. :)

But whatever you do, keep making these maps! I'm definitely looking forward to your continuation of this series.

[Hubs]

Well, you definitely nailed it.

While on the subject, one of the things I liked about this map was the lack of frustration. There was never a point where I was at a deadlock and couldn't really move forward. Some previous PAC maps have had near stalemates and although some people seem to like that concept, it's off putting to me. I find the challenge in looking for holes in defenses and shooting through those. The brute force "clash of the titans" isn't my thing. My point is, this map was much more to my liking and I hope that you're going more in this direction and a little further from the slow-and-steady one pixel at a time collision of armies. :)

But whatever you do, keep making these maps! I'm definitely looking forward to your continuation of this series.

That's what I'm aiming for with this series - super fun maps that aren't extremely difficult. The difficulty will increase throughout the series, but it will be more about tactical decisions and planning more than brute forcing your way through.  But for those of you that like the crazy difficult ones, don't worry! I'm still going to make stand alone PAC maps on the side :).

[Xeos]

Just played it and thought the hyper tower annihilation at the end was a pleasure to watch and the balance was very good as always. My only thoughts though were I knew what I had to do from the outset. I understood what you wanted me to do and it was a case of doing it and it would be complete. This is not a criticism of your fine work, but more of a reference to what I like in a map which is a style of map where you must think your way through it from beginning to end and even get to points when you are stuck as you have taken a wrong decision somewhere or wrong tactic. On this map there is still an element of that but I knew the endgame before I kicked off. I was looking for a a tease ha ha :)

Great stuff though - You guys really inspire me :)

p.s where can I get my hands on one of those Hyper Towers on the black market ?

[Hubs]

Just played it and thought the hyper tower annihilation at the end was a pleasure to watch and the balance was very good as always. My only thoughts though were I knew what I had to do from the outset. I understood what you wanted me to do and it was a case of doing it and it would be complete. This is not a criticism of your fine work, but more of a reference to what I like in a map which is a style of map where you must think your way through it from beginning to end and even get to points when you are stuck as you have taken a wrong decision somewhere or wrong tactic. On this map there is still an element of that but I knew the endgame before I kicked off. I was looking for a a tease ha ha :)

Great stuff though - You guys really inspire me :)

p.s where can I get my hands on one of those Hyper Towers on the black market ?

I know what you mean about it not being super complicated to plan out a strategy. It's kind of difficult to take the campaign maps and make them fun and challenging as a PAC map. They're all pretty small and don't offer much challenge with the terrain (at least the first few don't). My main way of still achieving a challenging map was to spread out the PZs and make them well defended.

You can get the Hyper Tower script by downloading the map and pulling the CustomInhibitor.crpl script. You'll need the two images as well (I think they are on the 64x64 tab of the custom images screen).

[Xeos]

You can get the Hyper Tower script by downloading the map and pulling the CustomInhibitor.crpl script. You'll need the two images as well (I think they are on the 64x64 tab of the custom images screen).

In the creeperworld3 folder, there is the colonialspace folder and in there in the maps folder, I can only see the 1572.cw3 files. How can I get the list of script files from this please?

[teknotiss]

You can get the Hyper Tower script by downloading the map and pulling the CustomInhibitor.crpl script. You'll need the two images as well (I think they are on the 64x64 tab of the custom images screen).

In the creeperworld3 folder, there is the colonialspace folder and in there in the maps folder, I can only see the 1572.cw3 files. How can I get the list of script files from this please?

if you copy the 1572.cw3 file to the folder of your map (just make one in the game projects and then fins it in an explorer window) and rename it save.cw3 then open it in game the scripts folder will be created in your maps folder.
the one you are after will be in that scripts sub folder.
hope that helps  8)

[Imposter]

These reverse campaign missions are pretty cool. Just curious, is anyone else playing every map (PAC maps) in 2x speed or more? I get caught in such long games if I don't, haha.

[teknotiss]

i generally play at 1x for most, but i speed up for the huge ones later in the game.
in the start every second counts! ;)
i like the hyper tower, but it wasn't very powerful considering the amount of C i was shoving at it, could have had a bit more of a punch perhaps.
but great map, fun series concept too! 8)

[Xeos]

These reverse campaign missions are pretty cool. Just curious, is anyone else playing every map (PAC maps) in 2x speed or more? I get caught in such long games if I don't, haha.

I play them all at 4x and use pause - simply because I am not bothered about how long it takes to finish the game, more that I need to see that I am making progress. The only time I use 1x is when I need to manage a few emitters/spores when the nullifiers are on them :)

[Hubs]

These reverse campaign missions are pretty cool. Just curious, is anyone else playing every map (PAC maps) in 2x speed or more? I get caught in such long games if I don't, haha.

I usually play at 4x speed unless the map is so big that it lags, then I'll turn it down to a point that's not supper laggy (usually 2x or 3x).  I pause a ton and save/reload to get good times. Also use N all the time.

Glad you like the series :)

i generally play at 1x for most, but i speed up for the huge ones later in the game.
in the start every second counts! ;)
i like the hyper tower, but it wasn't very powerful considering the amount of C i was shoving at it, could have had a bit more of a punch perhaps.
but great map, fun series concept too! 8)

I wanted to be really careful to not over power it in the early/mid game, but make it the main factor in finishing the map.  Another thought I had when designing this was that as you get later into the game you have a huge portion of the map that is full of creeper not being used.  The Hyper tower made more of the map useful and 'cleaned up' some of that stagnant creeper.  Their is a field with a radius of 15 blocks that sucks in creeper.  I would probably increase this on larger maps and increase the amount of creeper to build so that it becomes available when you have more emitters available.  I'll keep your suggestion in mind when I put it in other series maps.

I did find it was useful mid game to push all creeper into it for 20 seconds or so and drain Abraxis' energy, then start pushing on the front again with emitters. That helped alot when it was difficult to progress.

[jaworeq]

Hey, I'm digging this up from the grave!
Just found this map/series by accident, really nice PAC series!