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Work in Progress / Tower Defense

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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 18th Jun 2012 19:38 Edited at: 30th Jun 2012 19:30
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Download the Current Version

Demo 2

Demo 1

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Most recent Screenshot:



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Hi,

this is a project I've been working on recently. It's a quite simple 2D Tower Defense game - nothing unusual.

For those of you who don't know the concept of tower defense: A group of enemies tries to get from A to B and it is the player's job to stop them from arriving at B. To do so the player may build towers that shoot the enemies passing them. Enemies attack in waves of increasing difficulty so the player has to make sure his set of towers is always strong enough to defeat the next wave.
Each killed enemy brings you a certain amount of gold that can be invested into new towers.

One thing that is different from most versions of the game though is the possibility to build mazes with your towers and redirect the enemies this way.

It is still possible to build the "traditional" kind of map where the enemies simply follow a predefined route and you may build towers next to it:



But I don't see a reason to not make use of the mazing feature.



This screenshot shows several game elements: The white circles are individual enemies (the fact that they look like a partially connected chain is somewhat unintended), the green/yellow/orange rectangles are the towers built by the player, the dark red rectangles are waypoints of the enemies and the white rectangle in the bottom left corner is the point they ultimately try to reach.

Since the player knows the path the enemies are going to take, he can arrange the towers in such a way to maximize their walk distance.


The game already includes a map editor. However, this leads to a serious problem since the game's balancing depends heavily on the map that is being played. Consequently I'll have to find a way to change the attributes of enemy waves and/or towers for each map.


Features yet to be implemented:
-Visual Feedback of selected tower and its shot range
-balancing
-enemy path previews (so that the player always sees which path the enemies are going to take, depending on how he builds his towers)
-divide maps into individual zones, each zone having its own gold-cound, to force the player to maze at different spots at the same time
-Content (so far there are a few test maps, 5 towers and 10 predefined enemy-waves)
-polishing
-possibly some sort of campaign (a set of "missions", i.e. small maps that are relatively fast to finish)


I might be going to upload a demo soon. Currently it is quite playable but some polishing certainly remains to be done.

greetings,
MrK


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Update:

Added bullet effects such as slowing, stunning and poisoning. Also changed sprites and made sure the towers fit their respective effects.



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Mychal B
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 06:02
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That sounds like a pretty unique idea. I've been working on a 3d multiplayer tower defense game for about a month now, but I don't wanna post a wip until more is done

The fastfood zombie killer
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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 08:32 Edited at: 19th Jun 2012 08:32
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Well, it's all more or less the same as in many of the original Warcraft 3 Tower Defense maps, so it's not that unique I guess.

Does your 3D TD game have 3D graphics, or even actual 3D gameplay, if I may ask? Because this is something I haven't seen yet in a TD game. For instance building towers not on a flat surface, but floating somewhere in 3D space with enemies flying through the air or something like that. And when you talk about multiplayer, is it competitive or cooperative?

Anyway, I feel almost sorry posting my ~3 days old game here while you must have put much more effort into yours and don't want to post it yet - but then again, this was meant to become a really small game with a focus on basic gameplay mechanics and balancing, so I hope the post is justified.

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Mychal B
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 10:00
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More power to yah if you get motivation by putting up your wip. I was thinking of the maze idea as the pretty unique part of it.

The setting that I am going for in my game is modern era with modern weapons/enemies.

while most of the 3d towers i have made are crappy placeholder graphics, I plan on overhauling them once I have the essentials working. For the moment the path in which the enemies follow is flat, but I might change that, it could be rather difficult going up and down hills. As of right now I'm still working a lot on all of the basic functions, but I hope to incorporate planes. The reason why I don't wanna post mine yet is because I'm kind of hoping to impress the community just a little bit Kinda like fallout with carnage, his work is amazing...which I'm sure mine wont even be able to compare with...lol

Right now everything is from a angled top down view in which you can scroll, just like a real time strategy game. What would really be awesome that I hope to do is have a upgrade ability which puts the player in the tower and is able to use the weapons in first person.

As for the multiplayer, at the moment it is only co-op on a LAN connection, but it would be really easy to set it for competitive, which I do plan on doing.

The fastfood zombie killer
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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 19:56 Edited at: 19th Jun 2012 20:59
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@Mychal B
Sounds like a cool concept all in all. I personally love cooperative TDs, especially playing them with friends and a real strategy.


- - - - - -


So, I decided to upload a first playable version of my game. It is far from finished and you may find several glitches, but anyway - I think it is already quite fun, although you probably need to get the hang of it before winning the game, since intelligent mazing is required.
If anybody wants to test it, I recommend playing the map cross or maze1. climax as nice as well but may be a bit more difficult.
A short explanation of how the game works:
-if the map is too big you can move the camera using the arrowkeys
-press CTRL to show HP-bars
-the first round is an invicible enemy who's just there to show you the path they are going to take
-avoid blocking the enemy's path, otherwise they just ignore your towers and fly to their next waypoint
-generally a few expensive towers are much better than many cheap towers
-ice towers slow the enemies down, poison towers inflict damage over time, cannon towers attack multiple enemies at once
-on some maps it is possible to force the enemies to move through your maze multiple times - memorize their order of waypoints and make use of the given map architecture

I might be going to add a tutorial later.


Also I finally got around implementing the highlighting - a matter of 5 minutes, but anyway.



Feedback is greatly appreciated.
Thank you and have fun.

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Mychal B
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 03:11
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I'll try the demo in jyst a but here. That;s orretty funny though, highlighting is the next thung in my list.

Just a quick comment. It looks like all of your enemies are bunched up. What I did to spread them out was set up a simple timer with a variable that would control how long it would be before the next one spawned. Easy as pie, and the variable will let you change timing for individual enemies. Fr instance, if you have a big enemy you will have to increase timing to make sure he doesn't overlap the guy in front of him

The fastfood zombie killer
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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 09:42
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Quote: "What I did to spread them out was set up a simple timer with a variable that would control how long it would be before the next one spawned."


That's pretty funny as well, because this is just what I did - the delay between two enemies is just quite low to make sure that area of effect-attacks (the cannon-tower for instance) actually hit multiple enemies. But you're right, it might look better if there was a bit of space between each two enemies.

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FireIndy
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 18:02
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Haven't played the game yet, but I always thought a cool feature in tower defense games, was a special tile. That first person tower defense game that came out not too long ago (that I actually own) but can't remember the name of it at the moment, used them pretty well.

Something like a slowing field or something or other, than creeps can walk over, but just apply an effect to the creeps that are on that tile.

Just some food for thought


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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 18:42
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@FireIndy

Oddly enough that's just what I worked on two hours ago. Right now there are only Spikes that damage enemies on top of them, but adding slowing fields or any other effects would be pretty easy.



Thank you.

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BlackFox
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 19:05
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The demo was great. Now my wife and I are hooked after playing for a few hours.

Keep up the great work.


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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 19:33
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It's a good game. I've never played it before, never heard of it. But I enjoyed it. I never really understood what the enemy were supposed to be. One that looked like a white bush just wandered through everything, and I didn't know why. It needs some sort of enemy profile that pops up.

White Bush
tolerant to poison = 6
tolerant to Ice = 1

etc.

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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 19:54 Edited at: 20th Jun 2012 19:57
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Aah, yes, the white bush. That thing is meant to be god (no blasphemy intended), so it's somewhat invulnerable. I have to admit that I keep pressing CTRL during the game to see how much HP the enemies have, especially when the god-enemy comes by. Maybe I should just display the hp-bars by default.

And you're right, allowing the player to prepare for the next enemy by informing him about its attributes might be a good idea.

Generally I must apologize for the enemy sprites - as mentioned before, I just wanted them all to look different, but didn't put any effort into the sprite files. I'm not sure where this project is going, whether it's worth the effort to create and use good-looking animated sprites - or maybe I'll stay with a more abstract graphical scheme, that seems to be more promising to me.

@BlackFox:
I'm glad you enjoyed it. I didn't expect such positive feedback, because in the past, when I worked on similar games, they always turned out to become annoying after a few minutes. But seemingly the balancing is sort of acceptable (while still far from perfect obviously), which makes the game more motivating.

Right now I'm trying to find a good way to implement level-dependent enemy and tower-definitions. Given that I find a reasonable solution the next step would be to create a couple of more interesting maps with special tasks.
For instance I was thinking about small ~puzzles where you don't have to build a whole maze of towers, but to survive just one or at least very few waves of enemies with extremely limited ressources.
The game mode that is available right now would become the "skirmish" mode so to say. I could also implement an endless mode with enemies getting exponentially stronger over time. Unlockable towers would also be a nice idea... Maybe even a briefing session before each mission where the player has to select an adequate subset of all unlocked towers to use them on a given map.

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BlackFox
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 20:19 Edited at: 20th Jun 2012 20:21
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Quote: "I never really understood what the enemy were supposed to be. One that looked like a white bush just wandered through everything, and I didn't know why. It needs some sort of enemy profile that pops up."


That would be a good idea. Having some info on what the enemies are, or how much damage they need to take before being destroyed. I too saw the white "brush" enemy and was amazed how it was hit many times and yet took life from me.

Quote: "I'm glad you enjoyed it. I didn't expect such positive feedback, because in the past, when I worked on similar games, they always turned out to become annoying after a few minutes. But seemingly the balancing is sort of acceptable (while still far from perfect obviously), which makes the game more motivating."


You're doing a great job on it. My wife actually showed a couple of the ladies she works with and they enjoyed it too. Mrs. Fox actually was first to show me how to use the blocks to "guide" the enemy where you might have towers placed. She totally had a blast and would not let me have a turn a few times LOL.

It is games like this that are fun and addicting, and we hope you do well with it.


Twitter: @NFoxMedia
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FireIndy
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 20:20
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The biggest thing for tower defense balance is scaling. Since tower defense games in concept, are simple, their underlying concepts can be unique. In order for a gamer to feel that the game is balanced and continuing playing, the game must scale appropriately. Mostly because in tower defense games, it is blatantly obvious if it isn't, because of it's simple: build, attack, shoot, build, attack shoot.

So as long as you scale enemies properly and types of enemies properly, giving the gamer time to learn the mechanics, I think you'll be fine.

I like the idea of "puzzles" and not just bunches of maps and that's it. Almost sort of mini-games that you have to do (in a sense)


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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 20:51 Edited at: 20th Jun 2012 20:54
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Thanks again for your feedback.

I'll work on user feedback in general, e.g. by informing the player about the stats of each tower, as well as upcoming enemies.

Quote: "The biggest thing for tower defense balance is scaling."


You're absolutely right, but that's also a problem, since as the game designer I don't know how a player plays the game. For example I am expecting the player to have the first ice tower up at wave 5 or so, which is why from wave 5 on the enemies get faster than before. However, if the player decided to build a bunch of cannon towers instead, the enemies most certainly pass his (or her, as it turned out ) maze.
I already tried to implement a very basic form of self-balancing: when an enemy reaches the end, the player loses a life but also gets more gold than he would have for killing this enemy. This way the player gets automatically a bit stronger every time his defense proves to be too weak to handle a wave.
However, I guess an actual play test with users (who are not me) will work best, but that doesn't make much sense before the game has all its features.

Quote: "I like the idea of "puzzles" and not just bunches of maps and that's it. Almost sort of mini-games that you have to do (in a sense)"


Indeed, those levels will be a matter of a few minutes each, but if I make enough of them, I'm sure they'll provide quite some time of relief from the somewhat daunting process of building mazes of towers all the time.


By the way I started reworking the enemy sprites a bit. They are still quite abstract, but now with anti-aliasing and less artifacts. A few examples:








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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 20:53 Edited at: 20th Jun 2012 21:08
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More weapons too.. make like 100 weapons, and some only work on some enemy. You could have a God Cannon £4000. You would have to store up money to buy such things, but storing up money is risky. So you have a choice to store up money, or buy weapons, but you don't know in advance which weapons to buy because the stats would only pop up during the round with that enemy in it. So 1 God Cannon might not be enough, and you didn't think to buy one earlier, and it does absolutely nothing to Ice Monsters.

OH yeah, and one thing that I call a bug is to leave the weapon circle, and glow on the screen during play. Clean the screen during play. Don't allow any weapon changes etc.

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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 21st Jun 2012 01:03
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Quote: "You would have to store up money to buy such things, but storing up money is risky."


This is already the case basically. You always have to decide whether it is better to buy the towers you can afford right now, or wait until you've got more to buy better towers. But you're right, when there are highly specialized towers that are only required in certain rounds, it gets even more interesting - this was done in many Warcraft 3 tower defense maps by having air rounds every now and then. The units in those waves would just fly over your maze, so there were special anti-air towers that were strong against air units only.

Quote: "OH yeah, and one thing that I call a bug is to leave the weapon circle, and glow on the screen during play. Clean the screen during play. Don't allow any weapon changes etc."


I'm not quite sure what you mean... are you referring to the possibility to change your maze while there's a wave attacking? I'm not too sure about that. If the player can build towers while there are enemies on the field it might get quite stressfull, so it might be worth a shot to simply prevent him from building stuff alltogether during that time.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


Update:

The game now displays the path the enemies are going to take:



This path preview is always updated in realtime. So the small invincible first wave that was there to inform the player about the path the enemies will take is now obsolete.

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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 21st Jun 2012 01:15 Edited at: 21st Jun 2012 01:15
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Quote: "I'm not quite sure what you mean... are you referring to the possibility to change your maze while there's a wave attacking?"


No, I mean that during play there are graphics left showing from your weapon placements. So if you just dropped a tower it has a circle around it. That doesn't look good during play, so if you turn the circle off when the player presses Return it looks better. Turn the glows off as well.

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Mychal B
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Posted: 21st Jun 2012 11:41 Edited at: 21st Jun 2012 11:46
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Wow, your already getting a bunch of posts! Downloading right now

EDIT: I forgot to mention something to. I don't know if this is something you would be interested in implementing, but I'm going to have different levels of "complexity" in the game to each player. For example:

Easy: build towers, kill enemies, get points, build more towers and upgrade!

Medium: build towers, get money by killing enemies AND building money towers, deploy friendly moving units, slightly more complex tech tree

Complex: build towers, get money by killing/building, advanced units requiring special tactics, enable first person option, highly complex tech tree

That was just a kind of example, it makes it so players can initially learn the game as easy as they like, but also give them the option to take more control if they wish

The fastfood zombie killer
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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 21st Jun 2012 11:56
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Money Towers? Sounds like a funny idea. You just should make sure that it's not exploitable. For instance, if the player controls when the next wave starts (as done here, the game doesn't start a wave until the player presses return) the money towers shouldn't generate any money. But even if they are spawened automatically, it becomes a problem when a wave doesn't start until the previous one is defeated, in this case players would get an advantage if they needed longer for each wave, because they get more money during that time. You probably already thought about these things, but anyway.

Also I think that while these different complexity-modes are a nice feature, I will try to keep the game challenging while still being accessible to everyone. Not sure if that works out, but with a decent learning curve it should.

I'm pretty sure I will build a campaign that starts with just one buildable tower, and each level introduces either a new tower or a new enemy type or effect or something. It would certainly be interesting to have maps with predefined areas with certain effects (as FireIndy mentioned above), but such that cannot be built by the player but are there from the beginning. So the player could try to find ways to include these environment factors into his plans. To make it even more tactical, I might limit the possibility to build towers to areas on the map where already something has been built - e.g. with a required distance of 1 or 2 tiles to an already existing tower, so the player would actually have to expand slowly instead of building in different regions of the map. Combined with an initial decision where to start the maze this would allow for some quite interesting strategic situations I guess.

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Mychal B
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Posted: 21st Jun 2012 12:30
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AGH!!! I don't know if it's just me but I kept on placing towers where I didn't want to because I thought I would be placing the tower after I clicked on buy tower. I resold a bunch of towers the very first time playing and kept doing it!

Seems pretty fun so far, still playing

The fastfood zombie killer
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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 21st Jun 2012 12:43
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Well yes, I wasn't sure about that either - select a tile first and then the tower to build on top, or select the tower you want to build first and the tile afterwards. The second solution is the one used in Warcraft 3 and it may be the more intuitive one. I'll see what other testers say about that and, if they've got the same problems, change the workflow.

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Mychal B
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Posted: 21st Jun 2012 13:15
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sounds good to me, except by then i'll already be used to this way!

The fastfood zombie killer
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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 21st Jun 2012 15:37
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I'm used to it, I didn't make any mistakes.

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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 22nd Jun 2012 00:32
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So, most of what I was planning to work on is more or less finished now. It is possible to define a set of towers available in a map, towers can be placed on maps beforehand (so that they are already there when you start the map), sometimes the player has to select a subset of all available towers to use on a map (even though there's no information on what's awaiting him yet), and it is possible to define the kind of waves attacking on a map.

Here's a screenshot of the tower selection menu:



Now I'm going to work on a few levels making use of those features, and upload a version with a small campaign afterwards. Not sure if that is going to happen today or during the weekend - we'll see, I will do my best and hope to be able to deploy the next demo soon.

greetings,
MrK

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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 22nd Jun 2012 02:14
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Sorry for doubleposting, but I've got the new demo, so I thought it was probably worth it.
It's attached to this post.

Quote: "
CONTROLS:
-Arrowkeys to move Camera
-Return to start a wave
-CTRL to show enemy HP bars
-Click on a Tile and select a Tower from the list on the right to build it
"


It features a small campaign consisting of 8 levels which are relatively small and simple. Finishing all of them should be a matter of ~30 minutes I guess.

Note: In case you want to play a specific map, simply change the maps.txt-file in the game folder. It contains the level names (file name without file extension) of all levels that will be played when starting the exe.


Considering that the levels are all new and there are many new features since the first demo, I encourage everybody to try it out (i.e. even those of you who already tested it).


Thanks for your time and I hope you enjoy it.
- MrK

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BlueFox
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Posted: 22nd Jun 2012 02:32 Edited at: 22nd Jun 2012 02:35
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Just to echo my husband, this game is both fun and addicting. I brought it to show a few ladies I work with on my USB stick and we had a blast taking turns playing. From our female perspective, it is games like this that we enjoy. Simple, easy, nice and clean layout, etc.

Keep up the excellent work. You managed to hook five of us.

- BlueFox
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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 22nd Jun 2012 15:07 Edited at: 22nd Jun 2012 15:10
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I prefer the big maps. This game seems better created for campaigns on a big map. Also you didn't fix the bug that leaves the editing graphics on the screen, and pressing CTRL is a waste of time if you always need it. I always forget anyway. So skip CTRL just put the stats up.

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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 22nd Jun 2012 17:05
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Quote: "I prefer the big maps. This game seems better created for campaigns on a big map."


OK then, once there is a main menu with level selection it will be up to the player anyway - so you can decide if you want to play a sort of puzzle-campaign or simply a few big maps. I think the small ones are a good starting point for beginners.

Quote: "Also you didn't fix the bug that leaves the editing graphics on the screen"


Indeed, because actually that is not a bug but intended. It never occured to me that the player should not be able to build stuff during the waves, although that certainly would be advantageous in some situations (e.g. the way it currently is you can easily exploit the AI-behaviour by always selling a rebuilding a tower), so yes, I think I will remove that for the next update.

Quote: "and pressing CTRL is a waste of time if you always need it. I always forget anyway. So skip CTRL just put the stats up."


True true... I'm just not too satisfied with how the hp-bars look. I don't think it's visually pleasing (as opposed to the rest of the game, *cough*), so I decided to keep it hidden by default. I think I will stay with the idea mentioned somewhere above, to use CTRL as toggle-button instead, so everybody can decide on his or her own.

Thanks for your feedback.

@BlueFox's wife:
I'm quite surprised, because I expected this game to be enjoyed mainly by hardcore gamers. Thank you for this "success story" so to say, it really helps my motivation.

greetings,
MrK

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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 22nd Jun 2012 21:07 Edited at: 22nd Jun 2012 21:10
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OK I've had some new ideas to turn this into a complete game that could be a lot of fun. The game...

Disco-Dance
Destruction

Overview: A night at the Disco becomes a Dance-Off nightmare. As the club becomes more merry the people take to the floor. The Conga becomes a Conga from Hell. Dancing around, kicking their legs out the drink starts to take effect as the Mirror-Ball sends out beams of light knocking the dancers unconscious on the floor. Then somebody hands the shots out, and even more fall to the ground.

1/ Replace the weapons with Disco Weapons. Mirror Balls, Shots, Laser lights, Halogen Lamps etc.

2/ Because your graphics overlap I came up with The Conga, but also there could be other dance moves, and music. "I'm too sexy for my shirt".

3/ People start off position is sitting at tables, move to the dance floor, and end up at the bar.

4/ People fall to the ground in a drunken stupor, and fade out.

5/ The blocking weapons are tables, and chairs.

6/ The view is slightly stretched from your squares into rectangles for chairs, and Bars, Tables, and Dancers.

7/ The soundtrack includes timing for the people singing "The Conga.... la la la laaaa, la la la laaaa." And when they die "La la la arrrrggh."

8/ Fancy lighting effects that include mirror balls as weapon lighting.

And I think it suits the fact that this is for men, and women to play.

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Virtual Nomad
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Posted: 22nd Jun 2012 22:02 Edited at: 22nd Jun 2012 22:12
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i thoroughly enjoy TD games; this one's no exception.

especially so when the graphics are replacable. i'm no artist but i can pretend to be one (which adds another element of fun, for me):


(btw, that placement failed :/)

questions:

how can i exit the game? (beside going to Task Manager to error the game out)

why the mix of .png/.bmp file types? and graphic sizes (32x32, 24x24), etc.


requests:

enemy path preview prior to placement. i understand that i can add a block and then sell it back to check new paths; if that's intentional functionality (ie, you want it to cost something to preview new path) then disregard the request

tower range preview/display prior to purchase/placement (same as above)


(initial) feedback:

i think the mix of pre-determined paths + full AI pathing apparent on the one level(?) with waypoints is great.

if you leave as much customization available as possible (ie, the replacable graphics, plus sound effects, text dialogue, etc, if/when those are added), players can build their own campaigns with their own themes, premises, etc, to share with others = massive replayability and the "most bang for your (programming) buck".


thanks for sharing!

add: haven't played with the level editor yet = no feedback on that. will when i do...

Virtual Nomad @ California, USA . DBPro V7.5
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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 23rd Jun 2012 14:41
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Thanks guys.

@Virtual Nomad - awesome. I didn't expect anybody to go as far as to "mod" the game, but you're absolutely right.
I changed the code so that the tiles themselves are sprites as well instead of colored boxes, so they can be customized too:



Exiting the game should work with ESC or ALT-F4, as usual - and for me it does. If that is for some reason not the case for you, maybe I should implement a temporary ingame menu.

The mix of bmp and png is due to transparency issues. With bmp's I can use 0xFF00FF as transparent color and thus make sprites partly transparent in paint. However, when using an actual alpha-channel (which I do only for a few sprites so far), png is the better format. Note however, that you can change the sprite file for a unit and for a tower inside the respective .txt-file.


Quote: "enemy path preview prior to placement. i understand that i can add a block and then sell it back to check new paths"


Good idea, I will work on that.

Quote: "i think the mix of pre-determined paths + full AI pathing apparent on the one level(?) with waypoints is great."


Which level do you mean? The spiral one where you have to block certain paths with a few single, well-placed towers?

Quote: "if you leave as much customization available as possible (ie, the replacable graphics, plus sound effects, text dialogue, etc, if/when those are added), players can build their own campaigns with their own themes, premises, etc, to share with others = massive replayability and the "most bang for your (programming) buck"."


Indeed, that is the plan.
The editor is, by the way, not that great. I really only use it for basic map architecture, because that is an irritating task to do directly in a text file. The unit definitions and some other map-depending details are done in the map's text-file afterwards. A strange work flow, but it was the most comfortable one for me so far, even though that's not too modder-friendly (so I might be going to change that as well at some point in time, but not too soon probably).



@Pincho Paxton:

That is certainly one of the weirdest concepts for a game I've heared in quite a while, but also unique and kind of cool.
I will work on the gameplay and the important aspects of the presentation first, but given that the graphics are mostly replacable, such a scenario (even if only for one campaign, not necessarily for the whole game) actually seems realistic.


Thanks for your input once again everybody, it really helps.

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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 23rd Jun 2012 16:23 Edited at: 23rd Jun 2012 16:33
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Quote: "@Pincho Paxton:

That is certainly one of the weirdest concepts for a game I've heared in quite a while, but also unique and kind of cool. "


I've found a picture on the internet of a different game, but the picture looks like what I meant about your game. If you combine the picture with your game you will get what I mean about Disco Lights for weapons...



I thought of the gameplay a bit more, and the dancers are heading for the Fire Escape EXIT, and the weapons are to get them to the BAR to spend money on more drinks. So the idea is to get people to go to the BAR, and not the EXIT. But underneath, it is still the same game as Tower Defence. As the people are zapped by Disco lights they get more tempted to stay, and go to the BAR. I've also made quite a few graphics for it.

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haliop
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Posted: 24th Jun 2012 10:03
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enjoyed the demo!
well done. i am impressed!
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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 24th Jun 2012 21:08 Edited at: 24th Jun 2012 21:08
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Are there any bugs in the automatic pathfinding? What happens if you block the EXIT off?

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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 24th Jun 2012 22:43 Edited at: 25th Jun 2012 01:56
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Quote: "Are there any bugs in the automatic pathfinding? What happens if you block the EXIT off?"


If you block the path from spawn to exit, the enemies will simply not change their route and keep whatever has been their last one, "flying" over your towers.
I thought about changing it so they attack them instead, or alternatively just prevent the player from blocking the path (which seems to be the better option).

Update: Apart from a few internal things I updated the graphics a bit, somewhat inspired by Virtual Nomad.



Those sprite are probably still not final, but temporally improve the game's look quite a bit when compared to the old over-simple style.

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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 25th Jun 2012 20:02
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So, here's the next version, with improved graphics and a few new features. The levels are mostly the same, but some are changed so that there's more time to build mazes. Don't expect too much new content though, since the changes are mostly regarding presentation and usability.



What is still missing are path previews before building a tower, information on tower statistics, upcoming waves etc. and some other features that were mentioned in this thread, and I will hopefully be able to implement them for the next version.

Thanks for your interest,
MrK

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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 28th Jun 2012 13:13
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Well, time for a triple post I guess.

I once again changed a few sprites and worked on some other things, such as a live preview of the tower you're going to built including its stats, range and how it will change the enemy path:



Furthermore I added immune units (can't be slowed down or poisoned) as well as flying units (they ignore holes in the map and your mazes and simply fly to the next waypoint):



Also the player may now build towers directly on top of others before selling the existing ones. The difficulty selection can be changed when the player lost a map to ensure he/she doesn't have to restart the complete campaign to beat that map.

From the gameplay perspective the game is probably round about feature-complete, so now I can spend some time on a good campaign, menus, player profile (settings, saving, loading...) and so on, may be going to upload a new "highly playable" version within this or the next week.

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FireIndy
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Posted: 28th Jun 2012 17:45
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I'm not on my own machine, currently at my work one, but I just want to say that it looks fantastic I'll try it again, when i get the chance.

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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 30th Jun 2012 19:28
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I improved the overall look a bit - now there's a parallax scrolling background, gold/life/wave-information has been moved to small appropriate boxes at the top of the screen, tower-ranges are no longer visualized by cheap green circles but a transparent blue one:



I already made 15 new maps for a better learning curve and hopefully more fun for the player. Considering the (quite understandable) decline of posts here recently I will probably wait with uploading the next version until menu, sound etc. are implemented as well.

Thank you everybody for your support so far and stay tuned for the "final release".

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FireIndy
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Posted: 1st Jul 2012 16:53
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Sorry Mr Kohlenstoff. I've been busy with my game and just life in general. I promise that I will get around to playing the newest build. The screenshot looks really good though.


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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 1st Jul 2012 17:23
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No need to apologize or hurry. My post wasn't intended to sound negative or even accusing.

Luckily I was able to watch a friend of mine test the game yesterday which led me to a few new insights, which are for the most part already implemented by now. On top of that I added the planned "briefing" before each level to inform the player about approaching waves (and which of them are flying or immune), as well as a small info screen showing him all towers that are available on this map.
A few maps now make use of the tower selection-feature - since the player now knows what kind of enemies are going to attack, he should be able to decide which towers are most suitable for the situation.
The next thing to work on will be a better win/lose-screen (which is currently just a windows-message and highly counter-immersive) and a menu.

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FireIndy
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Posted: 2nd Jul 2012 05:58
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I know Just wanted to let you know why I wasn't able to try it.

First off: Love it, everything works like it should. Can't block paths, healthbars of creeps work fine, towers work as they should.

I would work in sounds sometime soon. The gameplay is solid and I actually played it for quite awhile. Adding sounds would make it that much more sleek.

One criticism, well more like an opinion, is it possible for the health bars as the lower, turn red. Or some gradient as it decreases? Or maybe some visual indication that a certain creep is hurt more than the others. I can tell by their health bars, but since they overlap sometime, I was just throwing up some things I think may help this. Once again, it's more my opinion. Everything looks great however.

Great job though. It plays great.


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FireIndy
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Posted: 12th Jul 2012 16:56
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Mr Kohlenstoff any updates on this?


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Mr Kohlenstoff
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Posted: 12th Jul 2012 19:37
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I haven't got too much time lately due to upcoming exams, but I added a simple menu and profile system, so the game now keeps track of your progress in each campaign and it is possible to simply continue from where you left the game.



There's not that much to be done, but as I said, I don't have much time either, so something that's actually new will take a bit more time.
Thank you for asking.

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swissolo
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Posted: 12th Jul 2012 21:42 Edited at: 12th Jul 2012 21:43
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Found a bug
If I try to place a piece that would entirely blocks an enemy's path it does not place the piece(this part is correct of course) but is still reduces my funds

swis
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