Custom Map: Quagmire Quest 3: The Dabbed Dam

[UpperKEES]

Man, I can't keep up with you guys responding! :P

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

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!

Yep, as Burguertime and Kapoios explain above you can change to values for walls as well. The beacons have been built on walls that have a decay time synchronized with the 2.5 minute emitters and the spores, so you lose 2 of them each time. Of course they survive a little longer when many friendly spores land close to them....

Modified walls show up in the game, but they don't in the map editor.

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 )

Yep, that's what I do for at least the first wave (and sometimes the second wave). The drawback of the random spore targeting is that you could replay without destroying anything until you get lucky and all spores hit the beacons anyway. There's nothing I could do to prevent that.

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

Nope, I tested from the left as well. It doesn't matter for the spores which collector is closest; they target any finished collector and relay.

Another awsome map you have made =)

Thanks Spiff! :)

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.

Yeah, that's frustrating, but try what Kap said; it works for me.

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.

To be honest it's still a little more brute force than I intended, but I had 2 goals: make the spores compensate for the high intensity emitters and make them of such a strength that is worth using them (otherwise people would keep playing the old fashioned way). When you play relatively slow you will still have to fight the 2.5 minutes gushes in the end and it was hard for me to estimate how fast people would build up their force. This is why I set my own time playing rather relaxed, so I had to handle 3 floods without the aid of the spores. With hindsight I should maybe have increased the number of friendly dabs instead of decreased their amount, but this is exactly what will happen in Quagmire Quest 4 (which will be completely different).

But the best about this map, and actually QQ in general, are of course the graphics and gameplay.

Thanks Sqaz! :)

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.

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.

The good creeper is indeed represented by negative values, just like in CW2. When the sponges are not all used (and land on one of your collectors), the creeper value for this cell stays at -6000 and this is what you see in the graph at the end of the map.

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.

Yeah, you can still play the map without using the spores at all, but it will probably take you a little longer. You're indeed safe for quite a while, but I didn't want to make it too hard, as this map was merely intended to introduce the concept.

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

Thanks, I do try, but with varying results and success of course, which is inherent to experimenting.

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.

I've set my time during the final testing and knew it could be done much faster as I said in chat (although my fastest time was a minute slower than yours). The creeper from the high intensity emitters spreads out a lot, so indeed isn't a real threat until the final stage. First I was afraid I didn't add enough spores, but looking at your time I think I made the right decision.

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.

It should be to the left of the map score when you hover your mouse pointer over the map title.

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.

In the game all walls are visible, whatever value they have.

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

Yep, QQ-2 also contained walls with a '2' and '3' value. Only integer values are possible (I tried! ;))

[knucracker]

Interesting.... and very cool.  All types in CW1 are integer types (not unsigned integers) since ints are faster than uints in AS3.... so you can do this kind of thing and it kinda/sorta works.... never really planned for it as the graphs indicate :)

But you are right... this is the essence of how friendly creeper works in CW2.

[UpperKEES]

Interesting.... and very cool.

Thanks Virgil! :) Not used to getting a comment by the developer himself! Another example of 'unintended coolness'.... 8)

All types in CW1 are integer types (not unsigned integers) since ints are faster than uints in AS3.... so you can do this kind of thing and it kinda/sorta works.... never really planned for it as the graphs indicate :)

But you are right... this is the essence of how friendly creeper works in CW2.

To clarify to others what they might see after completing the map or when clicking on the time/score display:



I just let the game run for 25 minutes and defended OC with 2 mortars. Have a look at the blue line (creeper coverage):

The yellow numbers 1 to 11 indicate the four strong emitters that emit every 2.5 minutes.

The pink letters A to D indicate the friendly spores hitting the beacons. First 8, then 6, then 4 and finally 2 of them.

The purple letters a to g indicate the reduction of creeper by the other (rather weak) emitters that actually suck away everything above their intensity, plus the damage done by the 2 mortars.

Because in the beginning the 'sucking' capacity of the friendly spores is much higher than the amount of creeper on the map, the total creeper coverage drops far below zero, but as time passes and more creeper gets emitted, the total coverage becomes positive again. Play wise; act fast! ;)

But you are right... this is the essence of how friendly creeper works in CW2.

Too bad negative creeper doesn't spread.... this makes emitters with negative intensities useless.... for now, until CW2 comes out!

[snowmaker (JM)]

Kees, I definitely did not understand what you were talking about, when I first played the map... I will try again and let the "dabs" do their work. I do like the idea  :)

[UpperKEES]

Kees, I definitely did not understand what you were talking about, when I first played the map... I will try again and let the "dabs" do their work. I do like the idea  :)

Well, there's no need to use all of them; I surely don't. Even when you ignore them completely about 50% of them will probably be attracted by the beacons anyway, so I guess you already profited from them without realizing it. I can tell you that their effect will be much more required for QQ-4! ;)

[DethbyIT]

Fabulous graphics and some outstanding game play.
Thank you for putting it together.

As Ahnold says... I'll be back.

dbit

[Kapoios]

Fabulous graphics and some outstanding game play.
Thank you for putting it together.

As Ahnold says... I'll be back.

dbit

Haha, I almost posted a "wtf" in that other thread! :) It all makes sense now!

[UpperKEES]

Fabulous graphics and some outstanding game play.
Thank you for putting it together.

As Ahnold says... I'll be back.

dbit

Thank you dbit! :)

Haha, I almost posted a "wtf" in that other thread! :) It all makes sense now!

Hehehe! :D Yeah, I noticed that too and could only hope it would be meant for me.

[DethbyIT]

Sorry about that fellas - I had one of those "Senior Moments".
:)

Actually, I was wandering through that thread trying to find out if there is a chart somewhere about "Energy vs. Weapons".

For example, if I figure out that I need 11 Blasters and 3 Mortars to finish a game, is there a chart somewhere that will tell me how many Collectors and/or Reactors I need - or a known formula?

I know this isn't the right thread to ask that question, but I figure one of you will know.

Thanks,
dbit

[UpperKEES]

Actually, I was wandering through that thread trying to find out if there is a chart somewhere about "Energy vs. Weapons".

For example, if I figure out that I need 11 Blasters and 3 Mortars to finish a game, is there a chart somewhere that will tell me how many Collectors and/or Reactors I need - or a known formula?

Roughly, very roughly, you need about 1 energy per weapon per unit of time, so in this case you'd need about 14 energy. A reactor generates 0.3 energy and a collector 0.004 per green square (which comes to an average collection of 0.12 to 0.15 per collector).

To read more about this I suggest this, this and this topic. :)

[Sqaz]

For example, if I figure out that I need 11 Blasters and 3 Mortars to finish a game, is there a chart somewhere that will tell me how many Collectors and/or Reactors I need - or a known formula?

That of course depends on which weapons you use, and more importantly which technique (With paratrooping you for example you only need 1/5 of the energy than when fighting ordinary). You can also expect some blasters to cap emitters, with drones you don't always need them and after a while you'll disable mortars.
The 1 energy/weapon is quite good, but for paratroop attacks or drones it's better to build some storage, and you'll also need to think about how much you'll need a weapon.
So a formula is quite impossible to find.

Edit: However a chart about when to use collectors and when reactors, or the combination, should be makeable. It'd however take a long time to do so.

Edit 2: If you however don't care about the fact that with the energy of your collectors you can already build stuff while your reactors, because they take longer to build, are still being constructed, you'll see that the pay-back time of reactors is 133+1/3, which is a little bit more as a collector harvesting 19 fields.
So 19 fields is the turning point (which isn't exactly true for the reason stated above).

Edit 3: An example of the above, if you place collectors harvesting only 18 fields in the game you'll get to 2 energy 14 seconds earlier than with reactors, this due to the above about the fact that collectors deliver their energy quicklier than reactors.

[DethbyIT]

uK - good stuff thanks.
I'm reading the links now.

[SPIFFEN]

Finally i figure out an way to finnish this map =)
And I think tower placement is really important here ,
to get the best useage of your energy .

Im happy with finnishing the map ,
so i dont think im gonna try to improve my score =P

Backspace did'nt work for an pic of my graph ,
but the Creepers got way under the window somehow =P

[UpperKEES]

Backspace did'nt work for an pic of my graph ,

Backspace indeed doesn't work for the graph, so you have to use Alt-PrintScreen for that (and paste the image into a paint program).

but the Creepers got way under the window somehow =P

Yep, that's correct. See here for an explanation.

[Katra]

Interesting effect with the negative spores - which I pretty much ignored. (Actually I think the two that landed right beside my relays for crossing the river worked perfectly as drains.  ;))

To me; the key to this map is managing to make the river crossing to be able to use both banks on the left. Then start clearing riverbed when bank space is all used.