Wizard Defense Alpha

[Rick]

https://dl.dropbox.c...zardDefense.rar

 

 

1 level of a Tower defense game I'm working on. With this test release I want to:

 

 

1) Make sure it's working on other PC's (as I only have 1 capable of running LE and it's my dev machine). If not, what error, and what are your specs please.

 

2) Get negative feedback on the game so far.

 

3) Get positive feedback on the game so far.

 

 

If you want to play around with the waves, modify Assets/WaveData/Tower001.xml. You should be able to see how it works. If you want to play around with the enemy stats (some aren't relevant yet/if ever) you can modify Data.db3 which is a sqlite db (so you'll need a sqlite db editor). If you put an entry in the enemy table, and put your enemy model in the game folder, you should actually be able to load your own enemies if you also add their name to Tower001.xml file in a wave. I haven't tested this but should work. It won't preload the model right now so you'll probably get a lag when that enemy shows up for the first time.

 

Thanks

Rick

[Pixel Perfect]

Cool. I'll try it tonight Rick and provide some feedback.

[Gandi]

i just tested it.

workin good so far, some things i didnt like that much:

- the shadows of the trees are not very nice. due to the animation of the trees theres single pixels just jumping around in the blurred shadows.

- the wizards waited to long before they attacked. usually when a tower has longer cooldown for the attack it still attacks as soon as someone gets in range, but then it takes some time until he can attack again. my fire-mage was just watchin the first enemy passin him and attacks it when its nearly out of range again. (maybe thats wanted, but i dont really like it )

 

i know this is just a test but still some things for visual design:

your terrain is completely flat, you could try to lower the street a bit (usually has a pretty nice effect), and decals would also add a lot of eyecandy..

 

whats planned for the future?(maybe larger maps with scrolling?) or is it just a test u dont want to keep on evolving?

[Josh]

That was really cool. I don't play these kind of games, but I think the ability to place objects anywhere would make it more fun because there would be more creative input for the player.

[Pixel Perfect]

Nice work Rick. It looks good, sounds good and performs well. I agree with Josh that the user needs more involvement, I did feel a bit like a spectator. Being able to place the characters and possibly move them as well as choose the wizard type would add more to the game. But all in all, pretty polished

 

Spec in signature below.

[shadmar]

Very cool, classic tower defense, played some these on mobile (robodefense/tankdefense etc..), they are quite enjoyable.

Keep it up.

[Chris Vossen]

I really should have been working but I decided to give it a try!

 

First off it was very enjoyable and oddly relaxing!

 

Thoughts:

 

1. Without being able to re-assign wizard types (or maybe you can but I couldn't figure it out....) there is no incentive to purchase the cheap wizards since they just take up a vital wizard slot.

 

2. The ability to re-position wizards would add an extra gameplay element.

 

3. The AOE wizards are too much awesome! I played a round where I set all my slots to AOE wizards and only took 1 point of damage the entire game... but it did make me feel like a champ at the game. Possibly reduce their damage, or casting speed, up their cost, limit their slots... or just keep them awesome.

[cassius]

Not my type of game but I can see a lot of clever work has gone into it and I saw plenty to admire. A scrolling screen would open it up a bit. Intersting work.

[Rick]

Thanks to those who have tested to this point. I'm glad to hear nobody had issues running it. I'm going to take this feedback and tweak the game. Being a 1 man show in a game I sometimes have a hard time stepping out of my own idea of what the game is. It's great to get other ideas.

 

 

@Gandi Yeah to get the 2Dish look I use a pretty low camera zoom value and so I move the camera way out to get enough screen space to do anything and I'm guessing the camera being that far out maybe messes with the shadows. I might have to just scale my assets to be smaller so the camera can be closer with the same zoom value. I like the wizard attack idea also. I start a timer when someone is in range, but instead I'll change that to see if the attack is on CD and if not instantly attack, and use the timer for the CD instead. I also like the idea of sinking the road down some. I'll give that a try. Nice suggestions! I want to keep evolving the idea and make a finished game. This is just the gameplay part and I need to add around it a little story and a way to play more levels, but just wanted to get a feel for the gameplay from people and possibly tweak it some before moving onto those parts of the game.

 

@Josh & Pixel I'll play around with the idea of letting the player place a wizard anywhere near the road, with maybe a required distance between wizards so they aren't stacking up on each other. Will have to think about the best way to implement something like this. I do like giving the player more options and letting them feel more in control instead of just watching. Thanks for the input.

 

@shadmar Thanks for testing!

 

@Chris Get back to work! I need to add a sell option for a wizard so you can re-assign, but this topic you speak of is one of balance that I'm still playing around with. My hope was, which failed it seems , to require frost wizards to slow really high hp enemies (orcs at this point) and to join them with shadow wizards because their DOT's stack or fire wizards because they do the most damage. So the frost wizard would slow the enemy allowing other wizards to beat on them. A fire wizard alone attacks to slow and a shadow wizard needs to get multiple DOT's to really do enough damage. That is the goal anyway. I think at this point it's about tweaking the wizard damage/speed vs enemy hp. The arcane wizards (which seems you enjoyed (as do I) were meant to be required to handle the fast dense goblin waves that come at you.

 

@cassius Thanks for testing!

 

 

I do have plans for wizard upgrades while the game is going to make it more interactive while the waves are coming. Something like increasing the speed of attack, or % more dmg, or wider area for arcane mage. Each wizard type will get a couple different upgrade directions.

[tjheldna]

Hi Rick,

 

It ran fine for me my work computer specs are:

 

Intel core 2 Duo 2.4 ghz

4GB ram

Win 7 32bit Enterprise (Bootcamp)

 

I think you should be very happy with that! I wont pick on anything as I can see things are a work in progress and I'm at work anyway. I'll take a more in depth look at it tonight and give you some more feedback.

 

Good work!

[Furbolg]

Hi Rick!

 

Runs smooth but sometimes the wizzards just dont aquire the target, maybe too short range ?

 

Intel i5 2500k 4x 3.3 GHZ

8 GB Ram

Win 7 64 Bit

Geforce 670 GTX

[Guest Red Ocktober]

sorry Rick, will take a look at it as soon as i can... my world is in a mess right now...

 

--Mike

[Rick]

@tj thanks for checking it out. Please do pick on it, I like to hear feedback good or bad. It's the only way I grow and learn from this kind of stuff

.

 

@Furbolg, there might be 3 reasons for that. Sometimes their cooldown on their attack might be up (mostly fire this happens to), sometimes the enemy might be in the far "lane" and they can't reach it, and sometimes while they start to play the attack animation on a special frame of that animation is when a check is done to see if they are still in range and they "misfire". I should probably just change that and if they are in range at the time of starting the attack animation, they will always follow through with attacking that enemy no matter what.

 

@Red np. looking forward to hearing your thoughts on it.

[Gandi]

i should be working right now, so you get some more input from me

 

usually in Towerdefenses there is a grid for placing Towers (mages). As your map is not really big, i think it will not take a lot of memory if u store which position is free, and where you can not build. For initial blocking you could for instance load some kind of binary texture.

 

What i think greatly increases the fun of such games is:

- special abilities for enemies (short invulvernability, boss with speed aura, etc)

- a large set of different towers (combining towers for towers with new abilites, giving items to towers for increasing their stats (attackspeed, dmg, and so on)

- special abilities on towers (reduce armor, chain-lightning, critical strike, stun, buffing near towers for a short time and so on (the more, the better, even if there's just little difference between the abilities))

- some kind of rock-paper-scissors system (enemies have different armor types, towers have different attack-types)

- promoting towers which get a lot of kills (just a little increase in their stats)

- something you can do while the waves of enemies are running (if you play for longer time it will get boring to just watch the enemies running down the road.)

- a lot of different visual effects. I really love it when there's a lot going on on my monitor.

 

What also makes TowerDefenses a bit more interesting are multiplayer modes, where eather your can play together with a friend and/or against someone (meaning you can send some extra enemies to the next wave, what costs some gold aswell)

 

That's just some ideas that came into my mind for helping you increasing the gameplay-fun

 

Looking forward to your next update.

[Arska134]

Works nicely on my computer. Specs are in my signature. I agree with Gandi's improvement suggestions. Kind of boring when waves are coming and all i can do is watch.

 

I don't play these kind games, but this is great because it's made with Leadwerks.

[Guest Red Ocktober]

this is great... runs smooth on a mid/low end system (Geforce9600)... and i could see this being lots of fun in it's final form...

 

i got 135 on my first run, without reading docs...

 

first thoughts...

this would be ideal for mobiles/LW3 dev...

would like to be able to change the wiz when he's not attacking...

is there a way the wiz can be hurt/killed by oncoming hoards...very nice artwork and flow...

 

nice job Rick...--Mike

[ChrisMAN]

mass aoe towers ftw

[Rick]

@Red

- I agree with mobile/LE3. I think the only way a game like this could be successful is if it's on mobile platforms on lower end specs.

- What do you mean by change the wizard when not attacking? This isn't anything I've thought of so curious as to what/why your thoughts are with this idea. My thought process is currently in other tower defense games where you can't change towers, but can sell and replace towers. Or maybe I'm not understanding what you mean.

- Currently the wizards can't get hurt, but that's a good idea. I think I have a new enemy type in mind that could harm the wizards. Will play around with the idea to see how it plays.

- The 3D art is mostly dexsoft & a game creator pack as I suck at all art so can't take any credit there

 

 

 

@ChrisMAN I think I need to make the orcs stronger then because aoe towers should really only be useful vs the goblin masses that come at the player

[gamecreator]

What do you mean by change the wizard when not attacking? This isn't anything I've thought of so curious as to what/why your thoughts are with this idea. My thought process is currently in other tower defense games where you can't change towers, but can sell and replace towers. Or maybe I'm not understanding what you mean.

I think he means upgrading wizards during battle.

I'd suggest playing GemCraft for what I consider a quality tower defense game. Notice that waves advancing doesn't stop the action at all; in fact, it intensifies it.

[Rick]

Oh ok yeah if he means upgrades, that's on the to do list

[Aily]

Works here, good job! One of my favorite gameplays.