Welcome to the Sam & Dan Games Developer Blog! Let's begin!
Blog updates
I want to apologize for not having blog updates the last few weeks. As my wedding get near things start to get hectic and I have less and less time to sit down and work and so by not doing blog post I saved those precious hours, however things seemed to have calmed down a bit and so I plan to continue with blog updates every week like before. There is much to talk about.
Fundraiser lives on!
The fundraiser is alive and kicking. The last few weeks I made it a point to add new ways for you to donate and the fundraiser has gained dramatically from this. If you haven't heard about the fundraiser basically we are asking you guys to help us keep making PTD2 and Cosmoids while giving out great prizes. Some of the prizes include access to the Cosmoids Early Alpha, Shiny Rayquaza and Cosmoids Starters for your PTD2 account. Instead of going over every detail here on the blog we have made a page exclusively for the funding. You can find it here. Check it out, if you feel like we deserve to stay alive making games then give us a little help.
Phase 3 of the Fundraiser
Today we start Phase 3 of the fundraiser. What does it mean? NEW PRIZES! For funding $10 or more you will receive in the near future your choice of one of the 3 starters from Cosmoids (you can check them out in the Early Alpha). You will get to pick your favorite and they will stats and move set similar to other starters in pokemon. They won't however evolve right away since we don't have the graphics done for the evolutions. You will also receive 2 of the one that you choose so that you can trade it with somebody. Lastly if you are wondering they will not be able to breed with each other or with any other pokemon.
Cosmoids Early Alpha Released
I'm super excited to announce that for those who funded us any amount now have access to the Cosmoids Early Alpha. If you don't have access and would like to check it out it is very simple. Go to the Pokemon Center's Funding Rewards page and watch a video ad to fund a few cents to us and get access.
Okay so now that you checked it out I wanted to talk about a couple of things that you might have noticed. First of a lot of the graphics are not final and some are close to final. Mostly everything is not final except for the creature units. Those are pretty close to the final graphic besides a few tweaks on size and some minor details. Another huge thing is that there is a lot missing. The UI which is always important is not set up yet.
So you might ask what is the point then? Well there are plenty of points. What I want you to check out is that you can put units in any spot on the map, units have different ranges depending on the attack they are doing. Also unit's attack speed will be based around the base speed of the creature. In PTD I always wanted to do that so that electric pokemon would attack very fast and slow pokemon like slowpoke etc would have a long time between attacks. The problem with pokemon is that attack stats are not balanced around speed since speed in pokemon only means who gets to go first. For cosmoids I do want the base speed to affect attack speed and so we will be balancing around that. In the alpha you can see that the chameleon has a high attack speed but doesn't inflict as much damage. While the koala has a lower attack speed but does more damage per hit. All the numbers still need to be tweaked so the balance is not there yet but it should show a little of what I want to accomplish for this game which is...
Cosmoid Creatures should feel different from one another
I think long and hard about the games that I'm making. On one hand I have PTD a game that I have already established so I don't want to add too much or remove things. Then on the other hand I have Cosmoids which is something new. I don't have anything that tells me how the stats should work or what levels and creatures I need to have. This is both a curse and a blessing. Mostly a blessing in my eyes. So I started to think about what Cosmoids is about and in the same thought what is PTD about. Is the whole point of the game to just capture all your favorite creatures? Do you just set a unit down and watch it all unfold? I thought a lot about it and came to some conclusions, but most importantly I came to the conclusions as to what I wanted the game to be about. I want the game to be about you discovering new creatures, trying them out in battle and picking the ones that suit your playstyle and taste and using them to beat the challenges that I lay in front of you. Using the combination of attack speed, attack ranges, defense, hp and attack stats to create very unique creatures that all play a little differently. I hope that the alpha can give you a little sense of how I want to make each creature feel a little different.
Pokemon Tower Defense 2 updates!
Many of you know that I've always wanted to make a Pokemon MMO but obviously I would need the copyright to make it happen. Cosmoids is a way to creature my own original creatures so that I can still make a creature MMO in my lifetime. Cosmoids is very important to the future of Sam & Dan Games cause it make it our first truly original game that we distribute to any place we want. Steam, Android, Appstore etc. So in many ways Cosmoids is going to get a lot of my attention from here on out. That doesn't mean that I'm not going to be working on PTD2. I will continue to do updates for PTD2 but with a slight change in focus.
My focus now is more on getting more attacks and more creatures into the game each week. You might have noticed I'm doing giveaways the last few weeks starting with Luvdisc and then Litwick. These particular giveaways are a sort of experiment. I'm curious to see if eventually these 2 will be common among users as more and more are breed. Luvdisc will take longer in my opinion because right now it can only breed with itself. Another way I'm adding more pokemon is by starting to allow PTD1 transfers over to PTD2. Each week I want to add at least 3 new families that will be able to transfer. Also I want to reach the mighty level 100 soft cap so that most of the attacks are added in the game and will make transferring from PTD1 and adding new creatures faster as more attacks are added. Also this week I'm adding the Dusk Stone and the Reaper's Cloth so that you can evolve your recently new Ghost Pokemon. The story mode is still very important to me and even 1v1 is important. But these take a lot of time to create, this week I won't be doing a story mode level but next week I will.
So let's look at what I will be working on this week.
Weekly Progess
PTD2 Alpha v1.36.1 Released!
- Mystery Gift (100%)
- Testing! (100%) - Super Important to test out things before I hand it over to you guys.
- Bug Fixes (100%)
- Rough Skin Fix (100%)
- Flame Burst AOE Fix (100%)
- New Evolution Items (100%)
- Reaper's Cloth (100%)
- Dusk Stone (100%)
- PTD1 to PTD2 Transfers (100%) - Pikachu, Sandshrew, Nidoran Female and Nidoran Male Families
- Soft Level Cap Increase to 25 (100%) - 37 New Moves!
- Mirror Move (100%)
- Roar (100%)
- Mega Punch (100%)
- Stockpile (100%)
- Swallow (100%)
- Spit Up (100%)
- Sweet Scent (100%)
- Horn Attack (100%)
- Thunder Fang (100%)
- Fire Fang (100%)
- Rock Blast (100%)
- Baton Pass (100%)
- Cross Poison (100%)
- Water Pulse (100%)
- Protect (100%)
- Crush Claw (100%)
- Amnesia (100%)
- Chip Away (100%)
- Assurance (100%)
- Psybeam (100%)
- Metal Sound (100%)
- Dual Chop (100%)
- Imprison (100%)
- Toxic Spikes (100%)
- Silver Wind (100%)
- FeatherDance (100%)
- Air Cutter (100%)
- Smack Down (100%)
- Bulldoze (100%)
- Steamroller (100%)
- Echoed Voice (100%)
- Refresh (100%)
- Torment (100%)
- Swagger (100%)
- Revenge (100%)
- False Swipe (100%)
- Slash (100%)
- New Pokemon (100%) - Pichu, Dusknoir, Chandelure, Aron, Beldum
- Graphics (100%)
- Stats (100%)
- New Attacks (100%)
- Electro Ball (100%)
- Nasty Plot (100%)
- ThunderBolt (100%)
- Magnet Rise (100%)
- New Abilities (100%)
- Heavy Metal (100%)
- Light Metal (100%)
- Clear Body (100%)
- Evolutions (100%)
- Add to Breeding Center (100%)
- Add to Trading Center (100%)
That was a lot to read! Thanks for sticking with us and let's make Cosmoids the best that it can be! As always let me know what you think!
