Custom Map: Quagmire Quest 3: The Dabbed Dam

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This topic is for discussion of map: Quagmire Quest 3: The Dabbed Dam


Author: UpperKEES

Desc:
The dam is breaking and you are trapped at the banks of the lake.

Help is on its way however: friendly creeper is coming to your rescue!

CW2 game mechanics now available for CW1!

[UpperKEES]

Title:	Quagmire Quest 3: The Dabbed Dam
Difficulty:	Expert Only
Creeper type:	Land & air
Remarks:	The dam is breaking and you are trapped at the banks of the lake. Help is on its way however: friendly creeper is coming to your rescue! CW2 game mechanics now available for CW1!
Description:	Today Odin City is trapped at the banks of a giant lake. It seems there aren't many places to go where you are save, so you'll have to work your way out of there. On the other side of the dam the creeper levels rise fast. Every two and a half minutes an enormous gush of creeper will be flowing towards the dam, so it won't hold for ever. Small amounts of creeper already pass the dam where once water was used to generate electricity. Unexpected help is on its way however! A rebellious bunch of spores has chosen your side and turned themselves into friendly dabs. These dabs will release super soaking creeper sponges. Each sponge is able to suck up a huge amount of creeper. Although they are limited in numbers, they are very determined to help you out of here. They synchronized their flight schedule with the creeper eruptions to compensate for them: 8 friendly dabs will arrive after 2.5 minutes 6 friendly dabs will arrive after 5 minutes 4 friendly dabs will arrive after 7.5 minutes 2 friendly dabs will arrive after 10 minutes There's just one drawback: the dabs have to be guided where to drop their sponges. This is why 8 beacons protect the dam. The beacons can withstand the creeper for quite a while, but after every gush 2 of them will break down. I sure hope you will be able to use them to your advantage, because the dabs will definitely save you minutes of time!
Download page:	Quagmire Quest 3: The Dabbed Dam
Full size screen shot:
More maps:	See here for all Nice Jobs, Hard Art and Quagmire Quests 8)

[UpperKEES]

Some additional info about this map:

Effects used for this map can be achieved by manually editing the CWM-file as described here.

The four emitters on the mid right are of a higher intensity than you ever experienced before, but they emit only once per 2.5 minutes, which makes them just as strong as emitters of 8 intensity with a 0.2 second interval.

The 20 friendly spores compensate exactly for their first 5 emittances, so there's no need to worry about them during the first 12 minutes. Each friendly spore is as powerful as 2 fully charged drones (30 bombs), so make sure you don't waste them! This map only becomes a brute force map when you make it one.... ;)

Please note that CW1 was not designed for the use of these mechanics, which results in a rather strange graph after finishing the map. Don't complain about it at the forums and don't post bug reports please; this is inherent to the use of negative creeper values (which will be common in CW2).

dab, dabbed, dabbing (verb)
- To cover lightly with or as if with a moist substance.
- To strike or hit lightly.

dab (noun)
- A small amount, esp of something soft or moist.


Credits to SPIFFEN for the idea of friendly spores (without knowing it would be possible).

[burguertime]

They seemed like black holes to me.

[UpperKEES]

Well, they act a bit like a hole, but their capacity is not unlimited. In this case each sponge can suck up 6000 ccc of creeper. After that you'll see the hole disappear.

When several spores land close to each other (try destroying some beacons to achieve this), you'll notice the creeper flow changing dramatically, but of course I tried go get an even spread as this is safer for the player.

This map illustrates the potential of friendly spores, but also their limitations as they will only go after collectors and relays.

Quagmire Quest 4 will use these mechanics in a puzzle map.

[SPIFFEN]

The spores seems to work very nice as friendly spores =)
But i dont see how you manage to get those collectors to stay alive for so long =P

And i dont have what it takes to build up without useing collectors or relays ,
so i dont get the full benefit of the spore attacks .
( Edit : maybe i should dare to delete the connections when the spores attack and then rebuild them )

Guess you tested them from the right side ,
but then it was to easy i think =P

Another awsome map you have made =)

[RichieRich]

Interesting spores UpperKEES. Easier than some of your earlier ones and didnt find the start as hard as I expected.

I did just slug my way up with a load of blasters and doing it again do it very differently.

Nice to have to change the thinking. Thanks.

[burguertime]

The spores seems to work very nice as friendly spores =)
But i dont see how you manage to get those collectors to stay alive for so long =P

Check the XML map edit thread, to see how to make walls survive longer.

[Sqaz]

First I'd like to say I hate the internet, it got me struggling for 25 minutes to finish this map, not included all pausing, and then he just shuts off without me noticing it and I lost my score, damned.

You know I always like to comment on a map, but I found it hard to do so (maybe the background was a pixel too much to the left :P). Cause this map is, according to me, brilliant.
It already starts off great, the challenge of minimizing your collector building the first 10 minutes (actually only the first 7.5min, cause then everything was build and I thought, well I'm not going to build all that stuff again).
But then I thought, oh no another brute force map, but then I saw that you could do it without clearing all, I think I still fought too much seeing my score was still 7 minutes higher than yours, so this was also perfect.

But the best about this map, and actually QQ in general, are of course the graphics and gameplay.
I love the idea of the good creeper spores, but I wonder how you can explain the graphs at the end, all the going beneath zero stuff, so if you know how this comes please tell me.

Edit: What's the reason that the collectors survive so long, there aren't any walls beneath them. Did you altered their health in the file?

[SPIFFEN]

In the map editor i cant see any walls ,
but i dont use anything else to play or make maps .

But i like that others manage to make so nice maps ,
by useing other stuff to do so =)

Edit :
I had the idea for friendly spores for an while ago ,
but i only posted it in the Beta thread .
And UpperKEES found an way to do so =D
( THX for the credit =) )

[Kapoios]

Nice use of weird mechanics! Leave it to UpperKEES to put something new on every map!

I did just slug my way up with a load of blasters and doing it again do it very differently.

Me too. I even played it a second time to try a different approach (quickly conquering stuff), but ended up doing the same thing, only a bit more efficiently (and halved my time). I don't think I utilised the spore waves as I should. I basically ignored them all after the first one. Those super strong emitters seem to be too far to make a difference until I'm much closer. It's as if the map is trying to tell me I'm missing something, but I still can't see it.

First I'd like to say I hate the internet, it got me struggling for 25 minutes to finish this map, not included all pausing, and then he just shuts off without me noticing it and I lost my score, damned.

Can't you resubmit it?

but I wonder how you can explain the graphs at the end, all the going beneath zero stuff, so if you know how this comes please tell me.

The graphs show total creeper volume. Anti-creeper is negative! (Notice the intensity of those spore waves) I suppose you are more likely to get more negative stuff when sponges fall in non-creeper, so they never cancel. That's what happened when I ignored a few waves and let them fall wherever.

Edit: What's the reason that the collectors survive so long, there aren't any walls beneath them. Did you altered their health in the file?

I see walls beneath them!

[Sqaz]

Can't you resubmit it?

I don't think so, or atleast doesn't know how to do it.

I see walls beneath them!

This is weird, in the editor you can't see those, only if you destroy the collectors in-game.

[Kapoios]

Can't you resubmit it?

I don't think so, or atleast doesn't know how to do it.

You go to the list of custom maps, as if you were planning to replay it. Put your mouse over the map, but don't click it. You should be able to see a button saying "resumbit score" on the bar, just like the "online" and "x" buttons, assuming you have the latest version (0572). In theory, the game should know that it has failed to submit the score, but I imagine lots of things can go wrong.

This is weird, in the editor you can't see those, only if you destroy the collectors in-game.

I recall reading in that thread about manually editing .cwm files, that the editor doesn't display elements it doesn't understand. Maybe those walls are one of those.

EDIT: I found it. The map-editing guru, Mopa42, says:

Also, you can set walls to other values than 0, 1, or 1000000 (a 2-value wall survives about twice as long as a 1-value wall; the editor doesn't display it even though the game does)

[Sqaz]

You go to the list of custom maps, as if you were planning to replay it. Put your mouse over the map, but don't click it. You should be able to see a button saying "resumbit score" on the bar, just like the "online" and "x" buttons, assuming you have the latest version (0572). In theory, the game should know that it has failed to submit the score, but I imagine lots of things can go wrong.

Hmm, is this button invisible :P
No?
Weird, I have version 0572 but it doesn't show up, well I guess I'll just play it again.

EDIT: I found it. The map-editing guru, Mopa42, says:

Also, you can set walls to other values than 0, 1, or 1000000 (a 2-value wall survives about twice as long as a 1-value wall; the editor doesn't display it even though the game does)

That's only about the fact that the game doesn't show the difference between a normal 1 wall and a 2 wall.
Cause in QQ2 you also had modified walls, but these were visible.

[Kapoios]

EDIT: I found it. The map-editing guru, Mopa42, says:

Also, you can set walls to other values than 0, 1, or 1000000 (a 2-value wall survives about twice as long as a 1-value wall; the editor doesn't display it even though the game does)

That's only about the fact that the game doesn't show the difference between a normal 1 wall and a 2 wall.
Cause in QQ2 you also had modified walls, but these were visible.

I'm pretty sure mopa meant the fact that walls with health >1 aren't displayed at all in the editor. Well, whatever he meant, the fact is that the editor doesn't display them :)

I didn't notice there were modified walls in QQ2. Maybe those are <1 and the editor understands them.