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VPAC CPACKs download location
Map: VPAC Extermination Protocol
This wiki page references all VPAC CPACKs and will discuss VPAC as a whole rather than focusing on a single CPACK and what it brings. You may also use this page to navigate the KnuckleCracker wiki to find pages of VPAC units ranging from your units as the player, to various enemy units.
This is not a comprehensive list. It's only a list of units that I (Vertu) typically use. There can be and are, other units found in VPAC maps which are not mentioned in this list.
You are a Nexus C.V-S User created by Vertu in the VWC project. Your task is to aid Vertu in the exploitation of the CW4 Universe by following external orders and having the ability to self evaluate targets, situations, and general awareness to be efficient in your task. Victory is always inevitable but it is up to you to be efficient in obtaining said victory. However, sometimes you may encounter defenses so great you will need to work and deserve the victory as opposed to the general inevitability.
You will descend from the realms of the void onto various planets to launch Incursions to exterminate the enemy defenses, leaving the place ripe for Immediate Vertu Installation once nothing but Creeper and VWC systems remain.
Typically we will give you targets that have created a fortress as to aid in VWC project niches. It is not just about winning as you might know. So expect the enemy to always put up some kind of a fight.
Now onto a list of policies and doctrines:
You, as a Nexus C.V-S User will:
For more doctrines and policies see <DATA EXPUNGED>.
VPAC stands for Vertu's Play As Creeper.
For quick context, when I, Vertu, started making PAC maps I found the PAC Scripts (and models) disappointing and flawed. I like optimizing everything I touch and the optimization of the PAC scripts and units is how VPAC was created as this optimization stretched so far, my alterations made that modified PAC unrelatable to the original PAC. That is how VPAC was born.
VPAC is an ADVANCED PAC but at this point, “advanced” and “Vertu” seem to be the same thing as when I make something, it tends to always be extremely advanced. VPAC aims to provide a maximum number of ways to complete a map and maximize and specialize the tools you have to do so. A perfect example is the TCML which fires missiles that can destroy a single target or a group of targets within enemy lines reliably. Very different to using Blobs and Spores and far more specialized. It fills a unique role in your arsenal.
That is the rule of VPAC, have something for every situation. Every unit must fill a niche, a role, a specialty. This rule extends to the original PAC units pre-modification. The Launcher can grow in power over time and be a superior general purposed support unit, providing actual “frontline strength” rather than just more Creeper. The Stash is an efficient wave generator which can release massive impulses of Creep the enemy defenses where not ready to handle. The Egg Fabricator is Creeper transportation to transfer Creeper from one location, mainly the backlines, to another such as the frontlines.
VPAC wants to keep your options opened and have no situation where the units fail you. That is why any unit which fires anything has the ability to hold fire. Maximum user control. One if my biggest disappointments in the original PAC CPACK's is the lack of user control over virtually all units. That disappointment has been utterly obliterated.
VPAC is most certainly a more skill based version of PAC. LPAC (Lazy Play As Creeper) is less skill based than PAC and more chill with less control over all units. VPAC is the exact opposite of LPAC. Now, although that is the case and VPAC is complicated, it is designed where if you put effort into learning the units, you will figure them out quickly. It can be overwhelming with all the special units but you can very well complete missions with just the original, basic PAC units while also finding out of their increased user control. User friendliness is of utmost concern in VPAC but if you are unwilling to learn how to use the units there is nothing that can be done.
Performance is a very high concern for this custom gamemode. Although it is somewhat renowned for being very laggy, it is actually more performance efficient than normal PAC and LPAC. I (Vertu) even helped optimize the more updated LPAC, (most directly, its rebuild script). VPAC however is still more performance efficient based on my very limited insight.
Forget the idea that VPAC is laggy. Forget that it is unoptimized. It is by far the most performance efficient custom gamemode out there with vailla CW4 being the only thing more efficient. By FAR the MAIN source of performance issue in VPAC maps was NOT the VPAC CPACKs! (At least now in present times). It was the custom enemy units added and only them.
The below is temporary and will be replaced in the future.
The Blaster used to (long ago) spam LOS refreshes, the old Flare RL (replaced by Rocket Launcher V) conducted complex mathematics constantly, and every custom enemy tower that could shoot at Creeper in a limited range constantly SPAMMED the search for targetable Creeper where there would typically be 50+ of them doing this every frame, all at the same time. If there was 100 custom enemy tower units on the map that could shoot Creeper in a limited range, that would be 3,000 calls for the moderately expensive API FindUnitEnemy per second, all the time, scanning each cell within each unit's range for targetable Creeper. Lets say each of those units had a range of 20. Each unit scanned about 200 cells for Creeper to shoot at. Tally it up and we get 600,000 checks a second.
The war against lag has been reinitiated. The map VPAC Complex Decommissioning has started it again and all future maps should be vastly more performance efficient than even that very map.
Not finished!
CW4 restricts itself to run off of a single CPU Core when running units. It will never allow additional cores to be used. This obviously makes sense for a simple game like CW4 where there will not likely be hundreds of semi-complicated units. However, with the amount of modding support it has, here comes me (Vertu) who makes a bunch of custom units with dynamic functionality (and various performance inefficiencies like spamming GetUnits and FindUnitEnemy though I have now began to address this obvious oversight with great success), who has many hundreds of units on a single map at times.
From K75 (A KnuckleCracker dev/moderator): “CW4 does in fact multithread where it is possible to do so (cf. the Creeper flow simulation). However the portion running units does not, since being “thread-safe'” is a complicated proposition, and it would only have benefitted limited numbers of units. Thread safety, inter-process communication and creating and creating, managing and destroying threads have a cost and one would have to know whether the savings from those would be such that it was feasible to use a thread. Many of these factors would be beyond the scope of 99.9% of map makers. It would also have burdened CW4 with an extended API and quite possibly many more bugs and vastly extended development time. All for a very limited benefit.”
Also, if any map has Autopilot AI, it WILL lag as a fully functioning AI using the built in units has to do A LOT of calculations in order to actually operate. It needs to figure out how it can place units, how to use them, how to “see”, how to “play”, so on, so on. I also didn't make it so don't ask me for more information about it.
VPAC CPACKs download location
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