1. Place a neutral sunken colony.
2. Place minerals over where you want the creep to be.
3. Remove minerals and kill the sunken. Any creep that used to be under minerals will not decay.

Like, the tiles directly under the minerals? That kinda sucks.. Any ideas on how to do it in a massive amount?

...Use a lot of mineral patches? XD

This is already way easier than the null terrain technique.

Neat. This is much more convenient and doesn't have the side-effect of screwing up other creep decay in the map.

Is it possible to remove this permanent creep in any way? I guess put a zerg extractor on it, kill it & remove the geyser? If one were to remove the creep in this manner, could one then regenerate it by placing a sunken + minerals and removing them?

Does removing the sunken work, or do you have to 'kill' it?

I never really tested this extensively since it was just a screwy side-effect I found when melee mapping, but feel free to experiment.

If you put a vespene geyser on top of the creep then it is also permanently creep'd (meaning you can build an assimilator on the creep'd geyser and have creep under it).

Could you post a test map?

I've tried doing this but couldn't get it to work. Tried with creep colony and sunken colony, tried removing and 'killing' the colony and removing the minerals (colony first, then minerals, both in same trigger). Didn't seem to work, I'm using Mineral Patch (Type 3).

Use a sprite.

This is the test version of my melee map where the problem exists at the sunken'd expansions.

It actually doesn't work the way you posted.

I tried using a unit sprite sunken an regular unit mineral patches, still doesn't work.

Could you post an actual working test map? The gridiron map you posted has the sunkens and apparently mineral patches present, but doesn't have any triggers to remove them.

Black sheep wall the map and you notice that mineral patches/geysers are permanently creep'd. Kill the stacked sunkens, and the mineral patch creeps do not decay. Mine out the minerals and they still do not decay. Perhaps you need to kill the sunkens first.

Right, so you actually haven't done this with triggers then?

EDIT2> FUCK YES, working version obtained. Simplest triggers ever, too.

Quote from Lanthanide

Right, so you actually haven't done this with triggers then?

I'm not actually interested in this myself, just thought I'd share, and I assumed that using triggers will cause the same effects. Perhaps you could figure out how you can get it to work with triggers?

EDIT> Since I'll get flamed otherwise, I decided that I might as well try it.

Killing the sunken does not affect creep decay, and the mineral patches do indeed remain permanently creeped.

However, one slight problem: How do you remove the mineral patches with triggers? I assumed that "remove mineral field type x" would do it, but it failed to work.

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Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Feb 19 2010, 2:56 am by doomedrusher.

I have done some further investigation on this, and unfortunatly the creep is not permanent in all conditions (this may be useful depending on your purposes, however). Here are my findings:

1. You can 'remove' the sunken colonys rather than kill them. I did not investigate the length of time required between removing the colony and the minerals, but probably at least 1 trigger loop is required (my earlier tests in this thread did both actions in the same trigger with no wait between them).
2. Zerg can freely create buildings on the creep, but when the building dies, the creep that was underneith it will decay.
3. Decaying regular creep elsewhere will not affect the 'permanent' creep itself, which is good.
4. If the player creates new creep spawners (creep colony, hatchery etc) in the same area as the 'permanent' creep, when the building is destroyed, the 'permanent' creep will decay as normal. It seems the 'ownership' of the creep is transferred from neutral to the player, and it decays from there.

As this method requires a unit sprite to work (sunken colony used, but I'd imagine creep colony, spore colony and hatchery would work), it means that it can only be done once with pre-placed buildings. Once the creep has decayed through #2 or #4 above, there is no way to replenish it using this system.

Modified test map attached - you can build creep colony, spawning pool and hatchery. I suggest building the hatchery somewhere to the south (so the creep it generates does not interfere) to allow you to build a spawning pool on the 'permanent' creep.

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I can replenish the permanent creep through triggers if you figure out a way to place hatcheries near existing minerals with a trigger.

(Or, similarly, a method to use triggers to put minerals over creep)

If it works with any units, not just "unit sprites", then replenishment is possible, because you can create units with triggers easily (but not unit sprites). In my testing, using plain sunken colonies didn't work, but it's possible that I didn't allow enough time between removing the sunken colony and removing the minerals.

The problem, though, is knowing when the creep needs to be replenished. You'd have to track a hatchery/creep colony being built in the area, and then when it was destroyed. Because this is a two-step process, you run into problems if there are units blocking where you need to place the minerals:
1. Place minerals at A, B, C, but spot A is blocked so no minerals are placed there
2. Place colony at spot D and remove it
3. Remove minerals at A, B, C: results in creep at B & C, but none at A because it was blocked at step 1.

Unless you do extra checking to handle the problem of a spot being blocked so minerals weren't placed, you would end up with A never having creep again until someone built a creep generator nearby.

It works with any units that generate creep, however...

1. Creep/Sunken/Spore colonies, when placed, do NOT force any generation of creep around them, and it spreads normally. Normally spread creep do not go under existing minerals.
2. Minerals cannot be planted on top of creep with create unit at location triggers.
3. Hatcheries cannot be planted near minerals or geysers with triggers due to distance. (Hatcheries force a 2 matrix span of creep around them when created so larvae do not instantly die)

The triggers for creep checking is way less potentially faulty than that, assuming that hatcheries can be forced to plant next to minerals:

Creep is generated in a permanent patch A; switch 1 starts out disabled.
If a building is built around the area, set switch 1.
While switch 1 is set, if 0 buildings and less than 1 mineral exist on the creep, attempt to place mineral patches on there.
While switch 1 is set, there is no hatchery in the region, and minerals exist, attempt to plant a hatchery for a different player.
If switch 1 is set and 1 hatchery exists, remove the hatchery and disable switch 1.
If switch 1 is disabled, no hatchery exists, and minerals exist on top of the creep, remove the minerals.

Right, I can understand how this mechanism is working now.

Essentially it seems like minerals act in the inverse way of stacked buildings - if you have 2 buildings stacked in 1 place, removing one of them will mark the ground as buildable, even though there is already 1 building there. It seems that when minerals are removed or mined to 0, the ground is still marked as being occupied by minerals, even though it no longer is. This is reset once you build something on the spot (any building, or spawning pool in our creep case).

Normally creep does not grow under minerals, but if it is under the minerals, then when they are removed the ground is still marked as having minerals there, and hence the creep does not decay - the same way as when you have zerg buildings outside of creep they still retain creep directly underneith them. So the trick here is that we are forcing creep to appear under the minerals, which during normal gameplay wouldn't happen.

Unfortuntately there is no way to move a hatchery closer to a mineral spot due to mineral distance, which means this method can only give us permanent creep in pre-placed locations, and as I showed in my test map, it will decay after a building has been built there.

So a way to make refreshable permanent creep would be to find a building that acts the same as minerals/geyser when it is removed, but that a hatchery can be placed right next to (no mineral distance check) so that we can refresh it. There doesn't look like there would be many buildings that fit into this category; all regular buildings will not act that way, and I doubt any of the special buildings like overmind/temple etc would work. I guess beacons are worth a try, but I doubt them too.

Beacons don't work, I already tested this a while back.

Perhaps we can enslave curious minds to help find out for us .