Jungle 5.0

(last updated: January 1, 2008)

As Jungle 5 enters beta stage, I thought I might as well post the specs as well. Here are the highlights:

(updated) Easy mode is the good-old-days version 1.0 behaviour. Items listed below only apply to Hard mode.

No Tax... is not true. There's a new "invisible" tax which applies on how many things you build/buy. Also, when you buy something at top-right corner, the price of that item increases, for example, SCV increases $1 each time, up to $55 each (original cost is $25).

Cat will also get more cash if they kill more. So take advantage on killing things.

Cat feedages - same as the old ones, such as nexus feed $12, dark archon feed $17, etc... Here are some new feedages:
- Zergling now feeds about $6
- Stargate now feeds about $6
- Zealot now feeds about $6
- Civilian now feeds about $6

Spells for Cat:
[new] Freeze Mouse - freeze a specific mouse for 1 or 3 seconds with 1 or 2 dts respectively.

[new] Mouse Magnet - moves all mice' units in arena towards the Cat, in particular, move the probe behind the civilian towards the cat. Cost=1dt

(updated) [new] Base Raider - this gosu ling rips all walls in its way, but is vulnerable after 3 seconds (ie: it has only 2hp!), dies in 5 seconds after being vulnerable. Cost=2dts and have a $45 refund upon its death.

[new] Acidic Slaughter - a "kill air" unit. It cannot be killed by Scourge, but definitely killable especially to Storm (*this is a hint there!). Cost=1dt. $50 refunds will be given once the unit dies.

[new] Mind Control GOD - a godly unit with the ability to Mind Control indefinitely. Yes, you can mind control SCVs and probes, but probes die automatically, and SCVs can't mine minerals. Cost=14dts.

Cloaked Ghost - a cloaked unit that has a specific role on locking down probes for an extended period of time. While ghost does 0 (zero) damage, you can use it to block exits so to "trap" the mouse or anything. Also it can be uncloaked just to save energy. Cost=3dts. $100 refunds will be given once the unit dies.

Monkey Vessel - a Science Vessel with Irradiate, EMP, and D-matrix for 2 dts. Classic unit.

Queen - a Queen with Ensnare, Broodling (cost 200+ mana), and best of all -> the ability to infest Command Center (it's not an easy task). Cost=2dts.

Kitty - a kitty with no base attack. But it has 2x attack upgrade rather than 1x for the big Cat. Cost=4dts.

Mice Poison - a poison to apply on a specific mice player. It will random an action every second, ranging from doing nothing, to kill one of your unit (meaning your probe if it's the only thing you have). Cost=2dts.

Infested Terrans x2 - a classic bombing spell with 2 bombing units. In the old days people would put a Zergling near the spawn so the bombers will "self-destroy". Now the Infested Terrans spawn 1 second apart, thus the suicidal Zergling could only get 1 bomber to suicide. Cost=3dts.

Rob Money - rob all mice players' cash by $1000 for each dt.

Get $100 for 1 dt - this is a trading mechanism between dt to $100. There is an option for you to set as automatically getting a dt once you have $100, or to leave the $100 unchanged.

SCV/Money Score Board - displays statistical chart at top-left corner.

Probe Locator - repeatedly pings the designated player's probe in the minimap.

As you could guess, I'm quite focusing on Cat's playing experience on this one. I hope the removal of tax and the inclusion of some lethal spells for Cat would do some justice to this wonderful (or would-be-wonderful) map. Any suggestions would be appreciated unless I heard of it before.

What happened to 4.4 beta?

It seems that 4.4 beta has been tested for so many times and it's pretty much finalized... While that's the case, I do think the map itself has some fundamental problems. Such as:

- Does Tax/Upkeep justify the balance of Cat force (a single player) and Mice force (a team of players)?
- How many times have you seen cats use the following listed spells on Mice:
1. Area No Shield / Mana
2. Meltdown
3. Lock Mice
4. Sunken (Mouse Trap)
- How many games you play in Jungle without seeing a Mice get massive Cannons at late game and wall himself in a base, and continuously restoring the base's minerals?
- How many times have Mice players use massive Zerglings (Stupid Devin) against Cat?
- How many times have Mice use tons and tons of Stargate (Hard Cheese) for defensive and offensive (ie: trap cat)?
- How many times have you seen Infested Terrans blow up upon spawning at middle because a Mice player purposely put a Zergling there in advance?

To address the above questions, I completely give up Tax/Upkeep and plan to "correct" the above-mentioned problem in terms of game play in a new version - Jungle 5.0.

Jungle 4.4 beta

Well I've idled this site for quite some time so here's the update.

I'm making Random Cat n Mouse Jungle 4.4 and here's the differences from 4.3

NEW Cat spells: SCV Board (1 DT), Money Board (1 DT), Probe Locator (2 DTs)
Removed Cat spell: Creep Infestation Builder (1 DT) (the drone!!!)

Minor Tweaks are as follows:
- Any probe kills during the process of meltdown are now accounted for.
- Removed all firebats (LockMice) for all mice players from the map to give out space for new cat spells.
- added a trigger to stop cat's units at Save beacon when it is in Easy Mode
- limited Anti-Feed to function only in Hard Mode (so cat will get feeds if some noobs go save in Easy Mode).
- Stable Mode will no longer prevents Move-all-units-to-middle cat spell to function. For info about Stable Mode.



For those who don't know what is Stable Mode. StarCraft has a bug that allows players to mine minerals away from the mineral chunks. As some of you know this bug could be done by using Arbiter with recall on workers when it goes to mine, there's another way to trigger this bug, and this is what Stable Mode is.

Stable Mode allows a player to build a nexus anywhere, and mine any minerals in vision without actually going to the minerals. The draw back is that it stops all your units every second. So you better use it when you're walled in, or at least when you are not in danger to run around. A side note: Stable Mode works only in Hard Mode.

Jungle Q&A

Here are answers for some commonly asked/wondered questions:

Version 5.0
Q: It seems Protoss armor upgrade is faster than shield upgrade, is it true?
A: Yes it is true. Armor upgrades are faster than shield upgrades.

Q: What's the differences between Easy and Hard Mode?
A: I wont go into too detail, but the punch line is that Mice will end up getting more $$ in Easy Mode, thus ended up having an easier game.

Version 3.0 to 4.4
Q: What are taxes? What is the numbers on units' names?
A: Taxes is a map balance technique for Mice to balance out the inability of Cat to gather minerals. The number (example: tax 3, 5) implies after which point of time you will get taxed off every second. In the example shown above, having 3 or more of the unit will started getting taxed off, while having 5 or more of that unit will get taxed off even more.

Version 1.5 to 2.2
Q: Wow all of the sudden all my buildings die, what is this gayness?
A: There's a unmarked/hidden spell for cat that does this with 3 DTs. This is a spell that inspires Area Meltdown spell.

Version 1.0
Q: Wow my (Cat's) DTs are dying to cannons, why aren't they invincible?
A: It's me and RedKatana's fault. It's fixed in Version 1.1

General questions
Q: Where is RedKatana, how come I don't see him?
A: RedKatana seldomly gets online nowadays, that's why he is not in development of version 2 and 4.

Q: What is AntiFEED?
A: That goes to what is FEED. FEED refers to avoidable advantage to Cat caused by Mice. Usually it refers to Cat killing Nexus, Command Center, Dark Archon, Templars, and worst of all, Mice dying. AntiFEED only prevents Mice from saving other dead Mice when Cat is nearby (ie: right at its tail).

Jungle's Version History

Random Cat n Mouse Jungle Version Information


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- Version 5.0 build 5000
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- Removed the Tax-system for Mice players that's based on the amount of assets owned by a player.

- Removed the Age-system that changes the level in Hard Mode as the game gets longer and longer.

- Stronger AntiFEED feature includes auto-kill AFK (away from keyboard) Mice players at game start to prevent feedings to Cat, and auto-kill Mice that are on the safe-beacon at the center of the map when Cat is inside the cliff area.

- A center island at top-middle of the map, for Cat to easily and faster to choose the target of a spell. A refund location is also in the island for refunding unused spell.

- All buyable units in the buying area for both Cat and Mice will have their HP shown, to give the buyer a sense of how strong the unit is.

- Restoring Minerals work even having units blocking the mineral locations. Units that are blocking will be teleported back to the center of the base.

- A chooser is now available for Cat to choose whether the trigger should convert $$ into dt for Cat at a price of $100=1dt.


------------------
Bug Fixes in 5.0
------------------
- Fixed a bug that fails to remove Protoss Citerdal Adun from the map after a Mice player that previously own it leave the game

- Disabled Terran Vehicle Plating and Weapon upgrades since they are no longer needed

- Added an Overlord for Cat so the player can build Infested Terrans with money after infesting a damaged Command Center


------------------------
Balance Changes in 5.0
------------------------
- Middle left and right bases are modified, increasing the space in the base, increasing the difficulty to wall the base, and increasing the distance of going around the Mouse Hole (Civilian) in the base during a dog-fight

-----
CAT
-----
Spell: Sunken (1dt)
- Replaced this spell with Freeze Mouse

Spell: Area Meltdown (2dt)
- Removed this spell

Spell: Area No-Shield (2dt)
- Removed this spell

Spell: Lock Mice (5dt)
- Removed this spell

Spell: Death God (14dt)
- Removed this spell

Spell: Kill Air (1dt)
- Replaced this spell with Acidic Slaughter

Spell: Acidic Slaughter (1dt)
- New spell to replace Kill Air
- A devourer with 15hp, 31 armor, and 13 base attack
- A refund of $50 is given to cat upon its death

Spell: Freeze Mouse for 1 sec (1dt)
- New spell to replace Sunken
- A spell that gives Cat a token to choose the target to freeze
- Upon frozen, the targetted Mice player would lose control over its probe for 1 second, and will regain control after the 1 second.
- This spell is refundable in the top-middle island

Spell: Freeze Mouse for 3 secs (2dt)
- New spell to compliment its 1 sec counterpart
- It works in the same way as its 1 sec counterpart, except it takes away Mice's control on the probe for 3 seconds.
- This spell is also refundable in the top-middle island

Spell: Infested Terrans x2 (3dt)
- Spawning has changed so now it spawns the first Infested Terran at the safe beacon. The second Infested Terran will follow after a 2 seconds wait.

Spell: Mind Control God (14dt)
- A new GOD unit (Dark Archon with Mind Control) replacing the Death God
- This Dark Archon has 900hp, but 0 armor/shield. So it is very weak against massive units.
- Mind Control cost 0 mana, while the mana would not be reset by triggers.

Spell: Base Raider for 6 seconds (2dt)
- Spawning a Super Zergling with 9999attack (and 2HP) next to your Cat.
- The zergling is invincible for the first 2 seconds of life, this gives the zergling time to freely kill off any nearby walls. After the first 2 seconds, the zergling will be vulnerable to attack for the remaining 4 seconds, and it dies by itself after.
- This zergling does NOT have speed upgrade, so it will lose to a probe in a straight-line chase.
- A refund of $45 will be given to Cat upon the death of the zergling

Spell: $100 Refund (1dt)
- A behavioural change made so the convert $100 to dt will be disabled upon
refunding the $100 if the refund occurs after the first 5 minutes of the game.

Spell: Cloaked Ghost (Sarah Kerrigan, 3dt)
- A refund of $100 will be given to Cat upon the death of the unit

Gameplay: Cat's feed on kills
- With the removal of Age-system, the feeds are now reverted back to the old, non-increasing rate.
- The feeds are given to Cat in a breakdown as follows:
$1 for building, $5 for large building, $1 for razing, $5 for big razing
So for example: Nexus feeds $12=1+5+1+5, Dark Archon feeds $17=5+5+5+1+1

Gameplay: Cat's feed on kills for specific units
- As a balancing measure, some of the feeds are manually given to Cat, such as: Cannons, Zerglings, to justify the feeds to Cat.
- The feeds for Zealots and Civilians were added in Version 4.3.

Gameplay: Cat's periodic free money
- The free money amount would now increase based on kills, not the time of the game. The rates are as follows:
- HARD MODE: by $3 per 300 cumulative razing score
- EASY MODE: by $5 per 300 cumulative razing score

------
MICE
------
- In Hard Mode, price of each units will increase at a certain rate everytime a Mice player purchase the unit.

- At game start, the amount of money is now vary depending on the active Mice players are in the arena. It starts with $37, and deducts $2 for every Mice player. So the maximum amount is $35 (for 1 Mice player), to the minimum amount of $25 (for 6 Mice players) for each of the Mice player.

Spell: Wicked Thing (Zealot, $125)
- Removed, but is buildable in Protoss Gateway for the same price

Spell: Grr!! (Dark Archon, $35)
- Increased the amount of mana upon purchase to 80
- Increased Maelstorm cost to 85 mana
- The rate of price increase in Hard Mode is $3/purchase, limit at $80.

Spell: Stupid Fred (SCV, $25)
- Increased SCV's full HP from 2 to 8
- Increased SCV's armor to 3
- Decreased default HP upon purchase to 4 when the price is less than $38
- Decreased default HP upon purchase to 6 when the price is more than or equal to $38
- The rate of price increase in Hard Mode is $1/purchase, limit at $55.

Spell: Civilian (Civilian, $100)
- The rate of price increase in Hard Mode is $5/purchase, limit at $200.

Spell: Stupid Devin (Zergling, $50)
- Decreased default HP upon purchase to 78 when the price is less than $100
- The default HP upon purchase will be 84 (full health) when price is more than or equal to $100.
- The rate of price increase in Hard Mode is $5/purchase, limit at $125.

Spell: Stupid Jeremy (High Templar, $25)
- The rate of price increase in Hard Mode is $5/purchase, limit at $75.

Spell: Stupid Rodney (Scourge, $125)
- still 30 air-suicidal damage but note that it does no damage to Cat's Acidic Slaughter as it has 31 armor
- The rate of price increase in Hard Mode is $2/purchase, limit at $145.

Spell: Transfer Money
- A new spell for Mice to freely transfer any amount of money to anyone in the Mice team. This spell is activated upon walking the Chooser (Dark Templar) into the Transfer Money location. Upon activated, a token (Firebat) will be given to the player to designate which team member to transfer to.
- You can increase the amount of money by walking into the Transfer Money location again and again. The amount of money is increased by $200 or less, depending on how much money you have.
- You can also transfer money back to yourself by walking your token back to your beacon.

Gameplay: Property Tax
- Only applies in Hard Mode. Easy Mode doesn't have this tax system.
- This is a new tax system. It differs from the previous tax system by using the amount of units/buildings you have bought/built throughout the entire game. This implies the more you've built, the more you have to pay.
- The tax is charged upon purchasing/building a new unit, or building a new building.
- The below example illustrates the rate of tax charged to a Mice player in Hard Mode. Note that the counting is not per-unit-type basis. It is a combination of units and buildings, which means building something big (eg. Nexus or Command Center) will significantly increase the counter and the player will get taxed off sooner.
- For example: originally building Pylons do not require any money. After building 15 Pylons, each additional Pylon will cost $1 after the Pylon is built. If a player has $0, this $1 charge will be exempted. After building 25 Pylons, each additional Pylon will cost $2.




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- Version 4.4 BETA build 4364
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-----------------------------
Balance Changes in 4.4 BETA
-----------------------------
- AntiFEED is disabled by default in Easy Mode, while it is still enabled in Hard Mode.

-----
CAT
-----
Spell: Creep Infestation (1dt)
- Removed from this version

Spell: Probe Locator (2dt)
- New spell that costs 2dts
- A token will spawn for the Cat player to choose which Mice player to "spy" on. The targetted Mice player will have its Probe's location repeatedly pinged on Cat's minimap screen.
- This spell lasts throughout the entire game, and can freely choose another Mice player anytime.

Spell: SCV Scoreboard (1dt)
- A new information-oriented spell that costs 1dt
- A token will spawn for the Cat to activate the scoreboard that shows the amount of SCVs (known as Stupid Fred) that all Mice players have

Spell: Money Scoreboard (1dt)
- A new information-oriented spell that costs 1dt
- A token will spawn for the Cat to activate the scoreboard that shows Mice's (and Cat's) mineral amount

Spell: Area Meltdown (2dt)
- Behavior changed so that if a Probe is killed by the Meltdown, it would also be counted as a kill for Cat.

Spell: Mouse Attractor (1dt)
- Behavior changed so it moves all Mice's units (not buildings) towards where Cat is, rather than the Spawning area in the middle of the arena.

------
MICE
------

Spell: Stupid Rodney (Scourge, $125)
- A new Anti-air unit, with 30 air-suicidal damage



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- Version 4.3 build 4300
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- Restore Minerals can now be activated even if there are still minerals left in the base.

- Added mode selector to the map so Mice player can choose between Easy Mode and Hard Mode. Easy Mode simply disables the Tax and Age systems.

- Modified the booting system, so that a player cannot boot himself out of the game. Also, when booting a player, one of the player that boots must be alive in the arena.


------------------
BUG Fixes in 4.3
------------------
- fixed a bug that doesn't remove Neutral's Cannons

- fixed a bug that Yellow Cat (the defaulted Cat) gets out of jail sooner than a randomized Cat.

- fixed a visioning bug for Mice players by repeatedly activate visioning among Mice players.


------------------------
Balance Changes in 4.3
------------------------
Cybernetic Core:
- Decreased shield and increased hp from 40/20 to 10/30

Broodling:
- Decreased hp and increased armor from 30hp/0armor to 5hp/19armor

Probe:
- Increased attack to 30

Protoss Upgrades:
- Armor is now $15 with increase rate of $4/level, time is 50secs with increase rate of 8secs.
- Weapon is now $10 with increase rate of $5/level, time is 50secs with increase rate of 12secs.
- Shield is now $0 with increase rate of $8/level, time is 50secs with increase rate of 10secs.

-----
CAT
-----
Spell: Creep Infestation (1dt)
- Spell changed from placing a Creep Colony in the map, to spawn a Drone that let Cat player to build a hatchery manually.

Spell: $100 refund (1dt)
- A new spell that refunds the dt into $100. Note to Cat: this spell does not disable the trigger that turns $$ into dt, thus your $$ will probably get converted into a dt soon after you refund it.

Spell: Mouse Attractor (1dt)
- A new spell that moves all Mice's units to the spawning area in the middle of the arena.

Gameplay: Cat's feed on kills for specific units
- As a balancing measure, some of the feeds are manually given to Cat, such as: Zealots and Civilians, to justify the feeds to Cat.

------
MICE
------
- Modified the behavior of the tax system. It now doesn't kill certain units or buildings if the player does not have enough money to pay the tax. These units are: Nexus, Forge, Engineering Bay, Cybernetic Core, and Command Center




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Version 4.0 to 4.2 build 4067
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- New Age-system has been implemented, along with the Tax-system inherited from Version 3.0. The Age-system times the time of the game, and increase the level of difficulty as the game goes by altering the settings of the Tax system.


-------------------------------
Balance Changes in 4.0 to 4.2
-------------------------------

-----
CAT
-----
Spell: Area No-Sheild (2dt)
- A new spell that reset shield and mana in a surrounded area of Cat

Spell: Creep Infestation (1dt)
- A new spell that puts a Creep Colony at the location of Cat, so the creep would spread out and prevents Mice players to build nearby until the Creep Colony is killed.

Spell: Cloaked Ghost (3dt)
- The ghost is now back, but cost 3dts.
- The ghost radar that's seen in version 2.2 is no longer here, so all detections have to be done manually. There is also no notification to Mice upon the purchase of ghost.

------
MICE
------
- Prices for units vary depending on the Age that the game is in at the time of purchase

Spell: Goliath
- Removed from this version

Spell: Engineering Bay (free)
- Removed and modified so it's now a buildable building for Mice players

Spell: Stupid Devin (Zergling, $50)
- Increased base armor, decreased HP from 0/96 to 2/84.

Spell: Loan (free)
- A new spell that lets Mice to borrow up to $1000 (with $100 each activation)
- The rate of clearing up the debt is 1% of the remaining debt. For example: If you borrow $300, the rate will be $3/sec. When your debt is lowered to $200, then the rate will become $2/sec. When your debt is lowered to $100, the rate will become $1/sec.
- This spell is not available in Easy Mode
- This spell is not available in Level 1 and Level 2 in Hard Mode




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- Version 3.0 build 3041
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Introduced a new Tax-system that's based on the amount of certain types of units and buildings owned by a Mice player at each second. If a player owns a type of unit that exceeds certain amount stated in the name of the unit, the player will get tax'ed by $1 or $3 each second depending on how many of that type of units the player owns. If the player does not have sufficient money to pay the tax, one of these units will die every second until sufficient money is collected and get tax'ed.


------------------------
Balance Changes in 3.0
------------------------

-----
CAT
-----
Spell: Cloaked Ghost (2dt)
- Removed in this version




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Version 2.0 to 2.2 build 2056
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Redesigned layout of the banning area, and the unit-buying islands.

- Added Observer Mode. This mode can be triggered by walking the Chooser to your own beacon upon game start.


-------------------------
Bug Fixes in 2.0 to 2.2
-------------------------
- fixed the way Mice's death are counted so fast-kill on multiple Mice players' probes will reflect the correct amount of Choosers the cat should get.

-------------------------------
Balance Changes in 2.0 to 2.2
-------------------------------

-----
CAT
-----
Spell: Cloaked Ghost (Sarah Kerrigan, 2dt)
- new spell for Cat. This unit allows Cat to use Lock Down ability to lock down Probes. This unit has stats: 31hp, 10armor, and 0 attack.
- maximum 1 ghost at a time
- note that the Mice players will have a periodic ping of your ghost's location
- modified default mana to be 60% of 250 (roughly 162)

Spell: Mice Poison (2dt)
- a targetting spell. Upon purchase, a token will appear in Mice's unit buying island. The cat player can choose which Mice to poison by simply walk the token to the Mice player's beacon. Upon designated the Mice player to poison, cat cannot re-designate it to anyone else.
- The poison randomly picks an action to do each second. It has a rather high chance that it does nothing. But just in case it does something, it will:
1. randomly kill a unit/building that you own
2. randomly kill a SCV that you own
3. order all your units to go to the spawning area, the middle of the arena.
4. order all your units to stop moving.
5. order all your units to patrol between the current location, and the
spawning area, the middle of the arena.
6. randomly kill a Civilian in the arena
7. randomly unally a Mice player

Spell: Queen (2dt)
- Broodling cost increased from 150 to 230 mana
- Ensnare cost increased from 75 to 100 mana

Spell: Kitty (4dt)
- Decreased armor and attack from 2/3 to 0/1

Infested Command Center:
- increased HP to 200

Infested Terrans
- reduced build cost from $100 to $80

------
MICE
------
Spell: Hydralisk
- Removed and replaced by Goliath

Spell: Goliath
- new unit that replaces Hydralisk
- it has an optional range upgrade at Terran Machine Shop
- The unit stat is: 40hp, 0armor, 12ground attack, 30air attack.
- maximum 1 goliath at a time for a Mice player

Spell: SCV
- attack increased from 8 to 20

Spell: High Templar
- Psionic Storm mana cost increased from 25 to 50
- Limiting maximum templars per player to 6
- Default mana upon purchase increased from 50 to 100

Spell: Cure Mice Poison ($600)
- Simply walk your Chooser to your own beacon to cure a Mice poison
- You'll need $600, and have no more than 6 SCVs to cure this poison.