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AppGameKit Classic Chat / Ultra Low Rez Tower Defense Game

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GarBenjamin
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Posted: 20th Aug 2018 04:51 Edited at: 27th Aug 2018 18:01
Figured I might as well make a thread for my new project.

I find ultra low resolution games very interesting and this time I am working in the lowest I have done so far... a whopping 80x72 full screen resolution. Basically the actual window size / true full screen resolution is 1280x720 but I am using an 80x72 render image that is then scaled up 16x10.

EDIT: THE RESOLUTION HAS INCREASED TO 128 X 90 DURING DEVELOPMENT DUE TO IT BETTER SUPPORTING THE DESIRED VISUAL FIDELITY AND AMOUNT OF INFORMATION DISPLAYED. 80 x 72 would better suit a simpler TD design of only horizontal lanes and / or tiny 3x3 rectangles, triangles, circles for the enemies and towers.

I haven't actually made a completed game in a long time now and want to do that again. I have made many projects but most of them have been example projects just for release on the forum here.

This one I would like to complete and publish on my GameJolt account.

Anyway so I just started on a tower defense game a few days or so back. Haven't worked on it much yet as you might know I spent some time just digging into the features AppGameKit offers so I could take advantage of more of them.

Normally I program animations, movements, etc myself by defining animation tables and tracking positions, velocities, target positions, etc etc. and updating per frame. This game is making use of the awesome Tween and Sprite animation features AppGameKit provides. I must say I really like them and will almost certainly always use these as much as possible from now on.

Oh! I should say I got the idea for making a tower defense game from Blink. Originally we had talked about teaming up for a game jam and he suggested a tower defense. That didn't work out due to other things coming up but when I finished that example platformer project and was thinking what do I want to do next I thought... you know I have never made a tower defense game and I want to do a game very low res. I think this would be a great choice. So thanks for putting the idea out there Blink!

This is what the game looked like after my second dev session (first one was just thinking testing, building tiled map and graphics etc.


And this is what it looks like now after tonight's dev session.


Next dev session I will be working on selecting the military units and positioning them on the playfield. Tonight I focused on tweaking colors and getting a basic GUI placeholder on the bottom of the screen along with placeholder unit icons.
Then I implemented the cursor movement control and color indicator fx for being over ground that can be built on or not be built on (red means "no build here!").
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 20th Aug 2018 20:24 Edited at: 20th Aug 2018 20:33
I was thinking on lunch break sure be glad when workday is over... ah.... I mean I was thinking that but that is not what I meant to say. Lol

I was also thinking it'd be cool to have a bit more to a tower defense. Of course it is like the streamlined focused piece of combat from rts games and that is large part of the appeal.

BUT... I was thinking I always liked concept of hybrid games and it might be interesting if the player had to gather resources to actually build things. Like you still get awarded $x for each enemy killed or at least materials but in addition perhaps have trees, rocks etc you click on to mine resources as well as clear the land to make a new spot to build on.

Or taken further have an entire separate phase of the game where player controls a little character or vehicle and you journey around outside the active TD area to gather resources. If done that way I'd envision having a warning on screen YOU ARE UNDER ATTACK and flip back to TD screen if player hasn't already done so in certain amount of time.

Several different ways to do it. And maybe I won't do it at all but that is the part I like about this stuff is the design playing around with ideas. Well I enjoy the development seeing it all "come to life" a lot too but the ideas part is quite enjoyable. It is where one can innovate pretty easy in a purely non-technical way.

Ah well tonight I will work on this again. Guess I will focus on the core TD game then when done if I am interested I might add in a resource gathering phase and rebalance the game accordingly.
blink0k
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Posted: 21st Aug 2018 01:26
Looking good GB. Plants vs Zombies is a good game to look at as far as TD games are concerned i think.
They use the sunflower as a resource generator. it also has a very simple approach to the map (Right to left straight line rather than winding roads)
It and Kingdom Rush would have to be my two all time favorite TD games
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 21st Aug 2018 04:37 Edited at: 21st Aug 2018 04:47
Those are both extremely well done particularly Kingdom Rush. That last one is most likely made by a full team of people I'd guess.
I was familiar with PvZ as far as I had heard of it and seen some screenshots but it never drew me in. I guess because I thought it was so simple just horizontal lanes and I did not realize there was the gathering sunlight mechanic as well as the sun flower generators until you mentioned it and that led me to watch some lets plays on YT tonight. Also watched lets plays of Kingdom Rush.

Nice stuff for sure!

I find games made by a solo dev particularly ones with a tight dev time frame interesting. Things like Ludum Dare where people innovate a lot exploring various genres and mechanics.
I actually found this on Ludum Dare tonight from the last compo (not the one from 10 days ago but the one 4 months back)... it's called Adventure Quest is a very interesting implementation of that idea I was mentioning above.


They made it so you actually wander around the scrolling playfield gathering materials as just part of the main gameplay. Enemies can come in at any time. Which is quite cool really.

For my own part I did spend a little time on the GUI tonight creating images for 4 different unit types and getting the basics implemented of highlighting and selecting (just color coding) icons in the GUI at the bottom of the screen and some tightening up of the mouse, etc. OH! I tweaked the tank tracks a bit.


Not a lot but I got lost looking at LD entries and checking out videos of the two games you mentioned. LOL!

Ah well tomorrow is another day.
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 22nd Aug 2018 02:02
Got my dev session in early tonight. Now I can get other stuff done around here and check out a few hobbyist and Indie games before sleep later.

So basically what is going on here now is there are 4 types of towers available 2 with fixed turrets and 2 with tracking turrets.
I implemented the attack direction and range indicator and placement for them.
Then implemented the idle / waiting animation for the 2 tracking turrets.



That's it for now. Next dev session will be actually implementing the tracking when an enemy comes into range and then making them fire and then collisions and that is probably enough for then.

When everything is implemented and I get to the polish phase I will hand draw the images for the turret rotations because using the built-in rotation is not good with ultra low res images.
But for now this is fine. They "work".
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 23rd Aug 2018 04:50
Well I got the towers scanning their targeting area for enemies and moving into either Attack state (for the two fixed turret units) or Targeting state (for the two mobile turret units).
So at this point they just change color and.... do nothing. But I got more foundation stuff in as well so tomorrow I can get the two targeting and then all 4 shooting.

basicFanatic
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Posted: 23rd Aug 2018 08:22
You could also confine the levels to vertical/horizontal directions. With so low a resolution, diagonal lines kinda look like staircases!
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 23rd Aug 2018 17:42 Edited at: 23rd Aug 2018 18:52
basicFanatic LOL! That's what makes it look unique!

In hindsight I do think going with a horizontal lanes approach would have fit the ultra low res better but I wanted to have some "real" areas with winding road.

I have been thinking that doing it again I would increase the resolution from 80x72 to 128x90 and keep the enemies and towers the same size. That would give more area to work with. I could also decrease the size of enemies and towers for this current resolution. A big part of the fun is working within these constraints.

I will have a better direction once I implement the towers shooting hopefully tonight but I am thinking I will need to decrease units down to about 4x4 pixels. Lol

This is why I almost always make a mockup first to identify sizes of things with just rectangles. Unfortunately I decided to "just wing it" this time.

EDIT: I'm basically just prototyping my way along anyway so maybe I will take time tonight to do it properly. Make a mockup of a level focusing solely on identifying sizes of things.
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 24th Aug 2018 00:41 Edited at: 24th Aug 2018 01:24
Stardate.... wrong kind of log... anyway as soon as I got off work I spent some time on mockups.

Currently the game is at an 80x72 resolution (which I really like the idea of using such an ultra low resolution especially considering people have made many games in a 64x64 resolution for the #lowrezjam)...


I thought objects were basically too large so this gives me two options... either going more abstract and simpler on enemies and towers such as this 80x72 mockup...


...or increasing the resolution up to something like 128x90...


I can definitely use the extra real estate of 128x90. For example it allowed me to make the roads wider so the towers cannot be positioned so close to the enemies.
It also gives me some space at the bottom so I can do a split with the construction GUI on the left and display money, etc on the right.

Also doing these mockups made me think this would be better if each level had only certain locations where towers can be built instead of allowing them to be placed anywhere except overlapping roads and on the structure the enemies are trying to reach.

I usually do this kind of thing up front and having not done it this time I can definitely say doing it is very beneficial.

So... I will be increasing the resolution to 128x90 and rebuilding the tile map for the level including changing the layer that marked ground as buildable or not into something that marks a fixed number of build locations. Not sure if I will still use a tile layer as currently or if I will change it to use an Object layer (I am using Tiled) the same as I use to lay down the waypoints for the path the enemies follow. But one way or another it will be implemented.
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 24th Aug 2018 00:53 Edited at: 24th Aug 2018 00:54
As an aside I mentioned the #lowrezjam above and this stuff is very interesting to me. It is quite amazing the games some people have created in a 64x64 resolution...

Jupiter Hadley is awesome she has about a dozen or more videos covering these games for one of the years.

For you 3D fanatics there are even a few 3D games in 6464 resolution covered in this video might be some in the others too but I saw a few for sure in this one...






Alright that's it for that. Just thought someone might find it as interesting as I do. And might just get a game idea or three also.

Back to the dev log.
fubarpk
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Posted: 24th Aug 2018 01:54
You always do such great stuff Garbenjamin
I have been unsure what my next project will be but came across your thread and puzzlers globe algorithm
and created this 3d Variant of a Tower Defense not sure what il do with it yet and still need the turrets to
show their aim better. but basically im using puzzlers code for the globe as turret placement it will adventually
have a sphere in the centre with possibly a world texture



hope you don't mind me posting just thought it was relevant by a tower defense and its kinda
a combined idea I got from a few threads
fubar
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Posted: 24th Aug 2018 01:58 Edited at: 24th Aug 2018 01:59
Looks very nice GB. Coming along very well as usual.
I have some sprites i did ages ago for a galaga game which i never finished. They are 16x16 which is a bit big i think.
I think they might make good baddies. I have about 8 or 9 of em. Let me know if you're interested.

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GarBenjamin
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Posted: 24th Aug 2018 05:24 Edited at: 24th Aug 2018 16:22
Thanks fubarpk I appreciate that. I checked out your project and although I didn't recognize it as a tower defense it was definitely interesting. It's got a unique look to it be cool to see where you take it.

@Blink When I made those mockups earlier I was actually thinking instead of tanks and other "normal" war machines it would be cool to have some weird army attacking like blobs, insects, etc. Enemy size is around 7x7.
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Posted: 24th Aug 2018 05:27
No worries GB. Unfortunately 7x7 is way outta my league.
This is looking very cool right now and good luck with it. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it
Cliff Mellangard 3DEGS
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GarBenjamin
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Posted: 26th Aug 2018 00:19
Thanks Blink and Cliff. I put a couple hours on it earlier this afternoon and made some great progress. Working on the plumbing basically getting a proper data structure set up for 5 levels of each of the 4 tower types and the various methods needed for CanTowerBeUpgraded, WhatIsUpgradeCost, etc and having the systems automatically update radius, firing speed and damage accordingly. Of course I had to redo the tile map including way points and such to support the increase to 128x90 resolution. All of that is done now.

I am going to work on this again soon and focus on a basic money display and spending money to buy towers and also implement upgrading and destroying them (basically scrapping them for materials which will be implemented as simply getting some small amount of money from destroying them. Focus will be on making a very simple streamlined GUI for these things.

When that is all done I might just do another "official" update gif or video OR if I am still in a dev mood I may go on to implement the towers actually tracking & attacking enemies. Like I said a lot of foundational support going in first to build it right.

GarBenjamin
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Posted: 26th Aug 2018 04:06 Edited at: 26th Aug 2018 04:10
Lot of work done today on this. Had a dev session mid afternoon and finally got around to another one tonight after running out to the store and doing some chores.

So what does all of this work bring?

Towers can be purchased.
Tower upgrade system has been implemented.
Tower destruction has been implemented.
Money stat is implemented.
And of course GUIs for the upgrade and destruction options.

In keeping with the minimalistic nature of the ultra low resolution display I put some thought into coming up with a streamlined interface for managing the upgrade and selling.
In the end it works extremely well. I am happy with it.

Unlike the Tower Defenses I have played I wanted to make this more Real-Time so the player can actively build, upgrade and destroy even while the enemies are coming in.

And now with all of this core functionality done starting with the next dev session I can move on to the actual combat!

Of course, I should pop up some text when the player mouses over one of the towers in the construction menu at the bottom of the screen.
At least show the name and cost. But that is for another time.

GarBenjamin
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Posted: 27th Aug 2018 03:27
Another dev session. Tied up some loose ends because I want to get the basics / supporting stuff done with before moving on to the fun of combat.

So I updated the GUI with a message display system that can show whatever is needed... ranging from stats to maybe some messages like "KICK ASS!!" in time. lol
For now it starts out with BUILD to get the point across that you need to get on it.
Then when mousing over a tower the type and build ost of that tower is displayed.
Finally, when selecting a tower and moving out to the playfield the type and build cost of the selected tower is displayed.


Then I realized the fixed single turret and the rotating turret that is limited to 180 or hmm.... actually it might only be 90 may need to update that message.... anyway those need to support rotation.
So I implemented that with a simple Right Click of the mouse. Each click rotates by 90 degrees.


Alright I think this is all quite solid now and finally I can move on to the combat. I will probably take a break from it tomorrow and return to it on Tuesday.
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Posted: 28th Aug 2018 14:09
Looks good! The click-turnable turret is a good idea, gives some more micromanagement. How about a click-turnable turret that can shoot in two directions? (toggling two stages are easier to manage than clicking through four stages)
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 28th Aug 2018 14:20 Edited at: 28th Aug 2018 14:31
That's a great idea. I went from fixed 1 turret to the second being a fixed 4 turret. I can replace the 4 turret with the 2 turret allowing flipping horizontally / vertically. I like that idea a lot. The 4-turret seemed cool at the time but have had this nagging thought seems wastelful and not as strategic. Your 2-turret is ideal. Thanks!

I am finding this project pretty interesting. A realtime tower defense takes it kind of a tiny step between traditional tower defense and rts games. Although when in the Upgrade/Destroy mode over a tower... time is slowed down to a third in the interest of playability. I will adjust that later on when the game is complete based pn playtesting.
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 28th Aug 2018 15:42
I think I forgot to mention that I did make the update to have only a small number of specific locations where towers can be placed. You all probably noticed it in the gifs the darker green blocks mark those locations.

I think it is much better for level design purposes.
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 29th Aug 2018 05:37
I ended up taking break for 2 nights instead of 1. Although I did mess around with ultra low poly coloring tests and updated the saucer landing scene again with vertex colored saucer and better overall lighting and some other improvements.

I think tomorrow I will be ready to focus on this again and push it forward.
fubarpk
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Posted: 29th Aug 2018 09:10
Its looking really good GarBenjamin

Quote: "Although I did mess around with ultra low poly coloring tests"

Its amazing how much time stuff like that can take but I think you have to like some of the more basic stuff
and get the code right how you want before progressing otherwise you end up with code that's been changed
so much its hard for example you may call a bomb a missile in your naming conventions and then do away
with bombs all together lol I have been messing changing stuff like that with my code as I go and that itself is
time consuming but its a godsend when you come back to the code after a big break. Now im trying to work
out just how I want things before I go ahead and make messy code which I must be known for lol.

My point is that playing around first is quite a valuable part of development
fubar
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 29th Aug 2018 10:48 Edited at: 29th Aug 2018 11:30
Completely agree fubarpk. Although I do some thinking before writing code it is not super detailed. I have a habit of refactoring my code every few dev sessions just to make things simpler or otherwise "better".

On the other side of the coin experimenting, learning and tweaking can take a lot of time too and it also adds value for the future. Generally for game dev itself I run into that kind of thing less but it does happen. Many of those times are due to something lacking in the api I am using such as the lack of a FixSpriteToSprite issue I ran into.

First I spent a lot of time scouring the documentation because I couldn't believe FixObjectToObject was implemented and FixSpriteToSprite was not implemented in some manner. When I was finally satisfied "yep it really isn't!" then it was on to a couple of different approaches to writing my own.

And of course other times are because I'm not yet familiar with what all the api has to offer for a solution and how it is used. So that takes time researching, experimenting. And there are times of just doing something in a very specific way... a very specific problem that is different enough from what I have done before that it takes some experimentation... do "fail" learn repeat until it is solved.

That's game dev in a nut shell though... doing... learning... redoing... experimenting... cleaning... streamlining ... just lots of timesinks.
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 30th Aug 2018 03:56
Got a good dev session in on this tonight (and also did a little low poly 3D work too!).

Tonight I focused on the tracking system and was able to do a bit of playtesting as far as the upgrade system and attempting to strategically destroy towers to upgrade one that had a chance to target the enemies.
Of course I decided to do that too late but I will be sure to revisit that test again.

It's actually starting to come together quite nicely. Next dev session I will change that 4-turret tower to a 2-turret horizontal / vertical tower, implement the tracking on the 360 tower which will be super easy now just plug it in and then can get some bullets flying!

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Posted: 30th Aug 2018 04:16
This looks fantastic GB. Those turrets really pop with that 3d look!
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 30th Aug 2018 05:16 Edited at: 30th Aug 2018 05:53
Thanks Blink. It's all basically placeholder art I knocked out so I could work and later on in polish phase I will try to improve the visuals as much as I can with the tiny amount of pixels available to work with. Might not be able to do much to improve things but will try. Lol

I find it very interesting to make a game that in reality is actually taking place on a render image that is this size... that level is a tile map 32 tiles wide and 19 tiles high with each tile being a whopping 4x4 pixels. Lol
Cliff Mellangard 3DEGS
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Posted: 30th Aug 2018 08:54
Looks really great gar
You inspired me to do a small lowres thingy for fun
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 30th Aug 2018 16:22
Thanks Cliff I'm glad you like it. You always do superb work from what I have seen and I am sure you will come up with something very interesting.
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Posted: 31st Aug 2018 04:47 Edited at: 31st Aug 2018 04:51
Focused on the attack of the first tower tonight. Basically I am using this one as my guinea pig to experiment with the values for range detection, shooting frequency, bullet speed, bullet life, etc.
I also had to test the impact of upgrading the tower so in this video I put out 5 towers, the first is left at level 1 and each new tower built is upgraded to be one level higher than the previous one.
Once I get this one feeling "right" I will then be able to implement the attack across the other tower kinds.

I can see from this test this first tower bullet should do some heavy damage and / or I should implement some basic AI for it to determine when to shoot based on position and velocity of the enemy so it has a better chance of hitting them.
Not sure which way I will go yet. Probably more damage for the near term and then maybe later on revisit it if I think it is needed.

Cliff Mellangard 3DEGS
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Posted: 31st Aug 2018 08:08
Thanaks gar iam trying

This is wath i have mocked up during 2 Days after work..
Now do i not show the built in tiler here
I use a larger resolution that is 240x160.


I might end up finishing it or i may not
Now do i have to uppdate 13 Android apps with the latest agk build….
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 31st Aug 2018 12:42 Edited at: 31st Aug 2018 12:50
I think it is fantastic Cliff! I play PICO-8 games fairly often and your game definitely has the basic look & "feel" of them. You're using a higher resolution with 240x160 compared to P8's 128x128 but yours looks even lower resolution!

You must be using 240x160 for the full screen resolution for smoothness in scrolling yet drawing the sprites and tiles scaled up before loading or scaling them in game because the resolution appears to be around 60x36?

In any case this is most definitely ultra low res! Lol

Very nice work!! Keep going not only does it look visually interesting the game mechanics look fun as well!
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Posted: 31st Aug 2018 15:09
Its 8 pixel tiles blown up to 64x64

Iam going to continou it when i get the energi

I sat down to update all my apps to the latest agk build and got tired after one
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Posted: 31st Aug 2018 15:52 Edited at: 31st Aug 2018 15:56
Very nice work and I get it Cliff about job and game dev on top of it. I took 2 days off from this project beginning of the week because needed a break. I have also been spending time testing in ultra low poly but I find that doesn't burn me out quite as much.

Probably because I am a software engineer and spend my workdays programming so working on graphics is actually "something different". So maybe that is key just switching between the kind of work being done although eventually it all is just more to do on top of everything else that needs to be done off the computer.
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Posted: 2nd Sep 2018 04:28 Edited at: 2nd Sep 2018 13:02
Implemented attacking for the stationary single turret and the 90-degree tacking turret.
Changed graphics on the stationary 4-turret unit into a 2-turret unit and the GUI icons for the two tracking turrets. Should have left that for the polish phase but decided do it now since I had to change the other one.
Lots of tweaking on movement and tracking speeds, delays and so forth.
Getting a solid foundation built where soon I can focus on enemies and progression of level design.

I also did some upgrades during this playtest to illustrate how upgrading changes the"power" of a turret.

In this test each wave of enemies moves a bit faster than the previous wave.

All in all I am quite happy with how this looks as a whole particularly for taking place on a 128x90 resolution screen. Of course polish needs to be done still such as proper explosions of enemies. That kind of thing will be done at the end.

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Posted: 2nd Sep 2018 05:46
I like the way it shows the angles it will rotate with the white dots very useful
fubar
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Posted: 2nd Sep 2018 07:41
Coming along nicely GB. I think balancing with these games is the bulk of the work.
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Posted: 3rd Sep 2018 02:46 Edited at: 3rd Sep 2018 03:13
Thanks you two! It's a fun project.

Been a busy but enjoyable holiday weekend here but I got some more work done.

All 4 tower types now attack. More tweaking speeds for gameplay balancing and so forth.

Of course, everything is rough. I am trying to focus on getting stuff done and pushing polishing to the end phase in the majority of cases.

Polish phase will be things like...

* Choose the actual theme for the game (the tank and current towers are just for implementation of mechanics and may or may not actually be in the game at the end... the same basic things will be in as far as "how they work" but for example maybe a farmer is trying to protect his land from an army of mutant zombie rabbits in which case for example the 2-turret gun could very well be two of the farmer's friends standing back to back firing their guns or perhaps throwing pitch forks. That is just one example... setting/story/theme could be anything)
* Center the turret rotations around the base instead of the middle of the object itself
* Make death animations for the attacking army units
* Give the attacking army units little health bars
* Change the color palette to something more pleasing
* Add sound FX
* Add Music
* Adding the actual Splash Screen, Title Screen, Info Screen, etc
* And so on...

For now I am still in the core mechanics & systems implementation phase.

I did add in the check for All Enemy Waves Spawned and All Enemies Defeated and a check on those in the main game loop at which point currently (after a brief delay) the program ends which is what happens at the end of this video.
puzzler2018
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Posted: 3rd Sep 2018 07:06
Awesome work Gar looking really good
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 3rd Sep 2018 17:07
Thanks puzzler! I plan on getting in another dev session on this today later on after my belly is full! Nice to have an extra day off from work due to the holiday!
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 5th Sep 2018 21:37 Edited at: 5th Sep 2018 21:39
This project is not dead. I just got sidetracked by other projects the past two days.

I've been thinking about something for a while now that I want to experiment with so will probably be throwing out part of the current game code so I can implement a different more reuseable way and see if this idea that keeps nagging at me is good or not. I think so but only after taking time to do it will I really know... trial by fire so to speak.

Anyway I plan to return to this project tonight and start ripping out code to change the architecture somewhat.
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 11th Sep 2018 05:43 Edited at: 11th Sep 2018 13:03
After a week or so I finally got back to this project tonight.

I like to wait til game is done to do this kind of thing but I kind of needed a break from all of the programming lately so I decided to focus on a round of polish.

Speech is always tricky to get right so it is not too repetitive and annoying. But this is just a first round and I will go over again in later rounds.

I need to find the setting on this dang laptop that makes sounds fade out every time a loud sound plays. It has always done this in my video recording (hmm... maybe it is the video recorder I suppose) and it is annoying. Will have to sort that out.

Anyway I had fun doing this. Enjoy all of the wonderful audio made by myself vocally with headset on and then FX applied. lol I've made sounds this way many times over the years. It works. Well for the most part. Can't do everything yet.

I only used simple random selection and out of the 3 possible audio ("Get ready men. Here they come!", "Time to kick some ass" and all but the first wave "Here comes another wave") it chose the first most of the time. I will add a couple more phrases and then recode the selection.

george++
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Posted: 11th Sep 2018 07:25 Edited at: 11th Sep 2018 07:28
Very nice Gar. You have scary voice, lol!
How do you setting up the number and the type of each wave of enemies
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 11th Sep 2018 13:10 Edited at: 11th Sep 2018 14:31
LOL george that was me roleplaying a commander out on the battlefield and then fx applied. Not really my normal voice.

I usually do stuff like waves and other data in the code. And that is all this uses just a wave type and there is an array of waves per level (the video shows all of the waves defined for level 1 which is all that I added so far). The wave data has the type of enemy, how many in the wave, their movement speed, delay before the first one spawns, delay between each one and that is about it.
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 11th Sep 2018 20:04 Edited at: 11th Sep 2018 20:35
Busy lunch break. First I mowed the back lawn then had to get back to this. The sounds were nagging me.

I discovered it wasn't my laptop in general and in fact it only happened with my own projects. Or at least it happens in my projects and doesn't happen in Diablo 3 but I do remember it happening with Unity too. It might be because I have always thought audio was super important.... at least as important if not more important than graphics. So I generally have a lot of audio in my games compared to most folks I guess.

So I spent the rest of my lunch break writing a Smarter Sound System. It is not perfect yet but is much improved. I also knocked out two more speech sounds for added variety.

I will improve it more tonight to have a truly SmartSound system and that will be one more fundamental thing done that I hadn't even planned on.

Then once that is done no more time on polish until after more "game" is implemented! Polish is great and a lot of fun but before you know you are in a blackhole happily spending all of your time on it and not getting anything done. Lol

GarBenjamin
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Posted: 12th Sep 2018 04:42
Now have a Smart Sound System with a new PlaySmartSound function. Huge difference.
Then finished up this first round of polishing on the audio and a huge (whopping 22x22 pixels) explosion.

Future dev sessions on this will be focused on completing the gameplay and then will return to polish at the end.



GarBenjamin
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Posted: 13th Sep 2018 19:19 Edited at: 13th Sep 2018 19:49
I know I am perhaps "weird" but I find it very cool & interesting knowing this is all actually this size in reality... lol



128x90 image used as a RenderImage that is scaled up 10, 8 for the 1280,720 window size.
GarBenjamin
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Posted: 15th Sep 2018 02:34 Edited at: 15th Sep 2018 02:36
Alright after a tiny break I returned to this project tonight.

Focused on adding multiple level support and blocked out the end of level (which I see as a day) scrolly text.

The levels were reduced to 1 wave each for testing and probably the first level will indeed have only one way because that should "gently" lead the player into the game and scale up gradually over the following levels.
blink0k
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Posted: 15th Sep 2018 07:34 Edited at: 15th Sep 2018 09:09
Looking very slick GB. Nice UI touches and fx.
Just a suggestion;

1. If you take the higher ground (green), make two copies of it, shade the second (behind the first) copy darker and shift it down a couple of pixels
2. then add a thin 2 or 4 px line around the road and upper ground
3. shift the layers of your turret up a couple of pixels
4. The colours communicate height so the grass layer could be a little more saturated and light
5. You would have to add in some depth logic so the enemy would go behind cliffs

you'll get a nice 3D kinnna look to it. Again. Just a suggestion. That raw pixel look is nice as it is

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GarBenjamin
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Posted: 15th Sep 2018 15:46 Edited at: 16th Sep 2018 03:33
Thanks Blink that is an interesting visual style for sure. I will keep it in mind when I get to the polish phase.

The way I develop is I don't think much about polish because am focused on developing the game.... the core structures and gameplay, etc.
Then iteratively I focus on polish more toward the end.

Like this is a quick mock-up of what I would do for the first round toward the end and is what I mean about polishing the game.

The left is what it looks like now... the right is after a round of polish has been added in the final development period.


I just don't spend much time on such things now because it simply isn't needed when focusing on building the game but definitely will polish it when I get to that point.

And I definitely don't mind if you want to do some polish on the visuals either. See right now I don't even know if there will be tanks in the game or not. There might be creatures attacking. Or maybe instead of turrets the player controls robots, or a bunch of farmers or maybe the player controls monsters and indeed tanks are coming in and in reality at the end player finds out they actually were the bad guy the whole time, etc. lol

All of that stuff will be sorted out as it goes along but the core gameplay, the structure is vital so am working on that.

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