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A brief guide to CREEP SPAWNERS (by Freakling)

13 2012f February 2012 02:10 AM

Posted by: Freakling
A brief guide to creep spawners
by Freakling

Just recently korean mapper TwoS/Single posted his map (4)Telomere that features something new: A ring-shaped high ground plateau in the middle that is completely covered in creep, but with no crepp colonies supporting it as one would normally expect.
So what is this all about, how does it work and, most importantly for us mappers, how can one (re)create it?

I. What's it about?!

The "secret" is a unit that I will call the Creep spawner from now on. It has the unit ID 299 and looks like a marine if placed in SCM-Draft (or like vespene tank if pick&copied as a sprite), in game however it does not show up itself but instead causes creep to cover the area around it at game start. To work correctly in a melee map it has to be placed as unit sprite for the neutral player (p12) as all non-resource-non-critter-units.

II. How it works

Creep spawner do not at all behave like creep colonies or hatcheries that one is used to.

- the created creep covers a square area of 23x23 tiles around where the spawner is placed
- all buildable terrain in that area is covered, even if a part of it is completely cut off by or the spawner itself is placed on unbuildable terrain
- the actual creep spawner is destroyed right at game start, if you have vision of it you'll see, and hear the according sound, an overlord death animation.
- the creep does not automatically deteriorate although there is no supporting structure like a hatchery around
- otherwise it is normal creep, meaning only zerg can build on it.
- if a zerg building is created on the creep and later on destroyed the creep will disappear from the area that would have been supported by that very building (an epiliptic area for Hatcheries, Creep Colonies and their respective upgrades, an area the size of the respective building for all other buildings)
- if a Creep Spawner is placed too close to the left border of the map, so that the creep would extend over the edge, no creep at all will appear
- conversely if a Spawner is placed close enough to the right border of the map, so that the creep would extend over the edge, the creep extends over the edge, reappering on the opposing edge of the map, but moved one tile down.

III. How to create?!

The main problem is that you cannot just select and place Creep Spawners in SCMDraft.
However you can create a creep spawner in SCMDraft by placing any unit and changing its ID to 299. Unfortunately SCMDraft does not provide the functions to convert units to unit sprites or change the unit ID of unit sprites, hence this method in unsuitable for melee maps.
Thus if you want to create Creep Spawners "from scratch" in your maps you will have to resort to a different map editor or other program that allows you to place unit sprites with ID 299. TwoS says he did it in StarForge.
However, you may not want to install additional programs just to place a single sprite (or go to great lengths to actually get StarForge to run).
Luckily for you you don't need to. Although Creep Spawner sprites cannot be created in SCMDraft it handles them just fine if you simply pick and copy them from any preexisting map that has them placed.
Because TwoS protected his map (shame on him) and you might not want to download and unprotect it just for the sprites I have done this for you and created a resource map that you can pick and copy them from instead.

Happy mapping!

Comments:

SpoRe

This is super cool

JungleTerrain

Thanks again, Freakling. This random knowledge on BWMN really is a goldmine for devoted BW mappers.

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