New Tower Defense Game - Suggestions?

[andrew2110]

Hi guys,

We've been working away again on a second Tower Defense game. This time it's a 'real' tower defense game instead of a 'maze defense game' in that the creeps take a pre determined route.

The game itself is pretty unique, I believe there are no other Tower Defense games similar to this one. The games engine can be seen at:

New Tower Defense demo

So far the only part of the game thats been worked on are the:

- Physics
- Creeps
- Basic Level Towers

Any suggestions of features that you'd like to see in a new Tower Defense game please feel free to suggest them... Remember when viewing the game engine that it's probably around 35% complete with more creeps, tower upgrades and the games 'economy and scoring' systems to be added in.

Any feedback on the engine so far would also be appreciated.

Thanks guys

[Ikaruga]

Whoa, pretty cool concept for a TD game! This is way different than any other Tower Defense game I've seen...I'll wait until the game comes closer to completion before giving out any ideas. Nice job on the graphics, btw...very clean and friendly looking.

[lava-lava]

great work andrew =)
this game look like alot fun with all those round graphics and colors =)
also balancing will be much easier with a pre determinated route.
that's a new TD single player I guess!?
what will happen to the old maze TD? and what style does the 2-player TD will be? =)
I still like the old one because of it's strategical potential, but balancing is just to hard.

[andrew2110]

The old maze TD will be given a big facelift and much of the code will be rewritten... From there it should be much easier to balance the game, also multiplayer will be added with this rewrite.

Thanks for the feedback, we'll hopefully be able to turn it into a bit more of a 'game' this week.

[afort56]

Looks like a really cool concept and the graphics are pretty awesome.

I did notice a couple things while I was "watching" the game. I saw one "boulder" get some extra momentum from another boulder to actually propel the the boulder up over the top of the "tree" at right and then disappeared off the screen. Looks like you'll need to extend some "invisible " boundaries up along the right top edge so boulders can't be lost from the game and potentially affect high scores.

And a suggestion early on. How about adding transparent "arrow bars" at the top and bottom of the screen make it more clear the first-time players that the game scrolls top to bottom and there's more than what you see at the start. Whenever the mouse was over the "bars" the screen would scroll.

[andrew2110]

Good suggestions, I'll make sure those ideas are in for when I next upload a new version.

Expected completion time for this game is now 2 weeks

[Flignats]

I don't know if this has been mentioned, but I will state it anyway. I noticed that if an enemy gets caught on the top ledge, meaning it stays there and does not fall down the tree, which happens form time to time, then certain guns will not stop shooting because there is an enemy on the stage. This effects the gameplay because its constantly unloading bullets onto the stage and as other enemies fall, they fall into already existing bullets and they are killed more quickly. So, it is beneficial to the player because the new creeps die faster when we have one stuck at the top, but it isn't fair gameplay because who knows when one will get stuck or not.

[andrew2110]

Thanks for pointing that out flignats,

The levels in the real game will be a little more carefully designed, the branch currently up at the top on the demo is one that is meant to be much lower down. It is expected that the lower down the tree, the faster the balls will be moving so we can afford to add branches that flick the speeding balls up a bit for a nice visual effect. We'll have to do a bit of work also on recovering from a situation when a ball does get stuck so it doesnt cause any fairness issues in the game.

[andrew2110]

Just to keep you all updated..

The first couple of challenges are now playable on the games demo page:

TreeTD Demo

To access these challenges, from the main menu click challenges, then either 'Funnel Tree' or '20k challenge'. Both are designed to be pretty challenging so congrats to anyone who completes them!

[Flignats]

I got through all 22 rounds, 5 lives remaining on the 20k challenge.