Want to get the Shiny legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!


Welcome all! Let's get right to it. If you are very into games then this week was a special treat for you. E3 is going on right now! Giving you a look at all the great new games and systems coming out this year and early next year.

E3
I saw all the conferences from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo and all I have to say that while I wasn't blown away by anything I felt like there was still a lot of solid games shown. What was your favorite thing at e3?

It might be surprising but I actually don't play a lot of video games. I tend to buy the really good ones but I never finish them. I like to get a taste of what the game is like but once I get the taste my drive to finish them goes away. I do find time to finish them eventually but rarely does a game suck me in from start to finish. Some of the games that I recently bought are: Diablo 3, Startcraft 2, Skyrim, Zelda: Skyward Sword, Xenoblade Chronicles. I did finish Zelda, played about 20 hours of Xenoblade and I'm in Act 2 of Diablo 3 (normal difficulty) but Startcraft and Skyrim I have barely played.

Most of my time is dedicated to spending time with the loved ones and making games, blog post, answering emails for you guys! Oh and going to university... So lets talk about what I've been working on!

PTD 2
For PTD2 I wasn't able to get the 1v1 mode finished... :( that's my face! It was actually a bigger task that I had anticipated since there is a lot of changes to the base of the game but I am working on it. I still don't have a solid date for you guys so just hang in there while I put forth my best effort. If I had to guess I would say 2 more weeks. But.. sometimes obstacles are hard to predict so I can't promise you anything.

Some good news is that I've decided that every Mystery Gift pokemon for PTD 2 will be a pokemon that will not be included in PTD or PTD 2 for regular capture. Making the mystery gifts very rare for those of you who are following our progress. So I added a poll for you guys to first decide which generation should the first mystery gift pokemon be from? (Note that future mystery gift can and will be from different generations 3-5) Also in the comments tell me which pokemon and why he should be the first mystery gift!

Small games vs Big games
So besides being the head programmer for HTD, sole developer for PTD and PTD 2, it's also my job to always be thinking about what direction Sam and Dan games should go into. When you think about a path to go into you are also saying that you don't want to follow the paths that you didn't choose. Sometimes choosing to make one game over another game you have to give up or put on hold something else. Life if pretty much about these difficult choices. One of the choices that Dan and I have been thinking about is about the scope of our games. As you know, we are a pretty small team right now. We have about 6 artist but most of them are freelance and they can't put in the same amount of time into working on games. So this impacts the size of our games. So the thought is that instead of thinking of big, huge games that require a lot of human resources (that we can't afford) we would try to think of simple yet deep games that don't require a lot of resources and that our current resources can handle a lot easier. What does this mean for HTD and PTD 2? Nothing! Those game while still pretty big are something that we can manage. Especially PTD 2 since all the graphics are essentially done (since they are taken from the games), HTD will still take its time being made but we have other things in mind that will help us generate resources to make future games for you.

Sadly there is one game that will be put on hold.. Creature Online Universe (aka ANPO) will be put on hold pretty much indefinitely. While this is a game that I very much still want to create, it is currently out of our reach, resource wise. We wish we could drop everything and work on this but we also have bills to pay and food to buy... But there is a bright side!

Because ANPO will be put on hold we will be free to think about smaller projects for you guys to play. Smaller projects means we can get them done sooner which means you get to play them sooner! While working on HTD and PTD 2 we are also working on very small prototypes and pitches for some smaller games. I can't wait to bring them out and show them to you guys soon!

As always let me know what you think! Your opinions and feedback are greatly appreciated and affect the direction that we go in! Thanks again!

Want to get the Shiny legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!


Working
Work, work, work! That is what we are all about right now here at Sam and Dan Games. Let us look at what everybody is working on!

First the artist, since all the graphics in Pokemon Tower Defense are taken from the actual games we don't really need artist for PTD2, I mean admit it you love my attack graphics! So all of them are working on Hero Tower Defense. Kevin, our first artist, made a great blog post about what the artist have been making this past month. Check it out here. Not in the blog is the work that Joel has done. Joel while working on the PTD Fan film and his other projects was able to complete some weapon designs and a weapon model. Dan will also be lending his hand at helping with the 3D models.

Second the programmers. Yes there is more than one! I've been talking to him for a long time now about joining us and now he is finally ready. I would like to welcome Jonathan to the team. He will be helping with the programming starting off with some new game prototypes that I will talk about down below. I'm also a programmer, I'm working on HTD, PTD2, and also some prototypes.

Lastly the designers. Dan as you might know is in charge of designing and managing HTD, with feedback from the team. He is also in charge of the HTD blog post and answering SnD Coin orders. I'm in charge of PTD, PTD 2, and the weekly progress blog. Dan and I work together to figure out what we should focus on and which paths should we take as a company.

PTD 2 Improvements
Believe it or not I can't just copy and paste all the code from PTD to PTD 2! A lot of it needs to be refined and some critical parts drastically changed. This is why it has taken so long for the 1v1 mode to come out. I'm here to tell you about some of the improvements that I have been able to make to PTD that I hope you will enjoy. So here we go.

1. You can now swap tower positions by dropping a tower in the other tower's spot.
2. Attack's cooldown won't reset if you change the move, return the pokemon or move a tower from its spot.
3. Damage text will now be white and have a dark background behind it to make it easier to read the text. Also all types of damage will have the same color. Super effective damage will be larger, and ineffective damage will be smaller font. Also critical damage will show up as slightly bigger and in a yellow color. So that its easier to see when you get a critical hit or when somebody critically hits you.
4. When you change the size of the map it will now center itself. (See HTD's map)
5. You can't drag the map so that it will be off screen. (See HTD's map)
6. Many other improvements to the level code.

When you play PTD2 you will notice a bunch of small changes to almost every area in the game. I hope you guys will enjoy them when the time comes. (I'm still working on it!)

Small Games
So last week I talked about small games. Not sure if I mentioned it before but Dan and I are about big complex ideas. We like games with a lot of depth. I tend to go for the more easy to pick up and hard to master, and he tend to go for the hardcore from the start games. A good example would be my love for the Super Smash Bros series and Dan's love for the Street Fighter series. The problem is we don't have the money to make the big complex games, and even something of medium size (like HTD) will take us a good long while to make. So it is with this in mind that we want to produce some smaller but fun games for you guys to play. Three prototypes we are looking at are: A beat em up game designed by Kevin. A barrel jumping game (like the original donkey kong) inspired by the a concept from Joel. A simple RPG designed by me inspired by the 3DS RPG Find Mii. These will be fun games that will be connected in an interesting way that I'm not ready to reveal at this time.

Pick your first Mystery Gift!
So the 5th Generation of pokemon won for the first poll and you guys gave a lot of great comment as to who you wanted from different generations. I gathered up all the names and I picked the top 3 plus I added my own suggestion (Sandile) to the poll. Make your pick!

That's all I have for you this week, thanks for the support and as always let me know what you think!

Want to get the Shiny Starters? Shiny Zorua? Shiny legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!


Hello world! Welcome to another week of Sam and Dan game goodness. Originally we had planned for a big event for this week but we couldn't get all the details sorted out, so it will have to wait until next time. So what is the big event about? Well, basically we will be needing you guys to help us keep developing Ptd2 and Cutd. You can think of it like a kickstarter except it's not really about one project but about the whole company. We are working out some cool prizes for those of you who wish to help us out. Like I said before we won't be starting it this week but I wanted to give you guys the heads up of what is coming.

Security Measures
Many of you have noticed that there are a lot of hacked pokemon flying around in the trading center. This week I will spend a good amount of time beefing up the security among other things. So that one person that keeps spamming my twitter can finally relax for a chance.

Update on Security Measures:
There is a lot of misinformation going around (especially on YouTube videos) about what happened and how it happened. So I'm here to tell you what happened, and how it happened straight from the source.

First I patched up the game so certain hacks would no longer work. Some hackers will complain about this but really they can only blame themselves for this. If they were to hack for their own personal collection and just stay quiet about it then I wouldn't even notice and would leave them alone. But... they decided to start putting up illegal trades and tried to scam other players. That is not acceptable so I had to step in and add more security.

After I did this it was time to remove any illegal pokemon (pokemon that you can't catch in the game yet like Ho-oh for example) from any account that had them. I had a list of all the illegal pokemon and I had the id of who the original owner was (the person who captured/created this pokemon) and who the current owner was (the person who had the pokemon in their account).  Usually for the person who currently had the pokemon I simply removed the pokemon from their account. If the person had multiple illegal pokemon even if he didn't create them I would remove more valuables. You really should know better than to hold multiple illegal pokemon, period.

People who created multiple illegal pokemon also had valuables taken. Creating illegal pokemon is not acceptable either. If you created so many illegals and you tried trading other people for them trying to scam them your account was completely reset.

The next step was removing any pokemon that had illegal shiny values. For example shadow totodile or shiny vanillite. I followed the same rules as illegal. The more you had the more you lost. Most people only owned 1 and all I did was remove it and move along.

The last check was for shiny starters or shiny zorua that the original owner had not paid for.

Okay so that was the process, I went and checked each account by hand. This wasn't an automatic thing where bam a bunch of random accounts were deleted. If you lost a lot of things the things you lost were hacked and I couldn't allow them to stay in the system. If you buy a stolen good and the police finds out about it, they won't put you in jail but they will take away the stolen merchandise. 

As far as how many accounts were affected by this less than 200 accounts were affected by this. This is out of millions of accounts that exist. So less 1% of all account lost something. Don't for a second think that thousands and thousands of account were affected. Trust me I did this by hand and thousands would have taken me weeks to do. Also like i mentioned before most people only lost 1-2 pokemon and less than 20 actually got their account reset.

Well I hope that cleared some things up for you guys. Thanks for understanding, it was actually pretty sad for me when I have to delete pokemon like that... it definitely took a lot of my motivation out from this week.   

Getting it done
So I've been piling up a bunch of new features and things that I've been wanting to add and it is finally time to get them done. This week I will focus on the things that were left behind from last week without adding too much to it.

Pokemon Researcher
While making the behaviors for the different wild pokemon I started to test them and I was having a lot of fun just watching what they did. So I thought that it would be pretty fun to have a mode that you could just spawn some pokemon and watch them interact with each other and with you. You can't capture them or battle. You just get to play around and see if anything fun happens. This mode is really easy to add since all the work for it is pretty much done. Just have to make some menus, which I hate >.<

Mystery Gift
The poll this week will start with asking for what type you want to see this week and then it will move to a list of possible candidates. Let's figure this out together!
 

Weekly Progress

My Status: Working on blog!
Alpha v1.25 Progress List:
Note: The list below is for v1.25 when it is released.

• Security Stuff (100%) 
• Can no longer log into story mode with an illegal pokemon (pokemon that you can't obtain yet) (100%)
• Can no longer save an illegal pokemon (100%)
• Removing current illegal pokemon (100%)
• Removing hacked shiny starters and shiny zorua and their evolutions (100%)
• Add New Pokemon to the Trading Center (100%)  
• Make all Golett's Genderless (100%) - Might have to cut out a few body parts, ouch!
• Properly align some pokemon when they are following behind you (100%) 
• Better Map UI (100%) - Similar to the Battle UI, it shows time of day and your current money amount.
• Pokedex (0%)
• Saving Pokemon's party and storage position (0%)
• Daily Challenges (0%)
• Day of the Week Spooky Event (0%)
• 1v1 Mode Changes (0%) - As described on the previous blog.
• Sponsor Version of the game (0%)
• Add a confirmation popup to the back button on story mode if you haven't saved (0%)
• Release Pokemon (0%) - Note: You can already release them in the Pokemon Center if you don't want to wait for this to be done.
• Pokemon Researcher  (0%)
• Add list in the FAQ page on where to find pokemon and at what time, similar to the PTD1 list (0%) 
• Fixed bug with the attack Uproar not waking up pokemon in battle (0%)
• Add a graphic for removing a pokemon from the field (0%) - To better tell what is going on when fighting and NPC trainer.
• Add new Level Item interface graphics for the ui (0%)  
• Added which pokemon you will be battling in the next battle in 1v1 mode (0%) 
• Make pressing Enter to trigger a lot of the menu buttons (0%) Pressing enter to log in instead of clicking on it.
• Check the Forgot Password pages for any errors (0%) 
• Top Searchers/Top Request/Latest Trades (0%)

Creature Universe: Map Abilities
Ptd2 introduced the concept of the map. Creature Universe TD will take it even farther with map abilities. An example of this is very early in Pillar Island, the grass start zone, you will be given some bug bombs to throw at some bugs to clear them out. I made an awesome concept sketch to illustrate this example.

Bug Bomb takes out bugs, one of the map abilities you will get

 So instead of only walking around you will be able to equip items to do different actions. Your creatures don't get left out on the action. Each family of creatures will have their own ability that they can use in the map for different effects. In this example the Grass Starter which is still unnamed has a tongue ability that lets him eat certain bugs. You will be able to switch place with your creature so that you can control it while your trainer avatar follows it. Here is another amazing concept sketch that I made to illustrate this example.

Grass starter using his map ability on a bug creature

  In CUTD your character will perform more functions than the characters have ever had in ptd and ptd2. That's all I have for you this week, keep checking back to see how we are progressing. As always let me know what you think! Sam out.

Want to play Ninja-ja? Get a shiny pikachu, shiny mew, shiny starter or have your suggestion for a weapon design to be used on Ninja-ja? Click here for more info on how you can get those things.

Hey guys! Another week of updates is upon us, so let's get started.

This week we are giving away a shiny Rattata, thanks again to our new sponsors PlayTowerDefenceGames.com, the clues are a little harder this time so good luck. Click here to start your hunt.

Looking at the poll it seems that most of you liked the change of scenery around here so I will keep this new layout for a while until we all get tired of it.

An update about the artist position, we still haven't decided on who are going to pick but we have narrowed it down from 77 applications to about 17 that we really liked. If you haven't applied but are interested then you are more than welcome to submit your portfolio to sotero86@gmail.com. But before you do, look at past blogs to find out what the requirements are.

New APK v2.5.3 fixes many issues found on 2.5.1 and 2.5.2, download it now!

This week is Ninja-ja first update, and here is the list that Dan and I came up with:

• Android Version (0%)
• Tweaks (0%)
• Adding the Health Bar (50%)
• Graphic (100%)
• Programming (0%)
• Being able to lose (death) (50%)
• Graphic (100%)
• Programming (0%)
• Simple Point system (0%)
• Programming (0%)
• Sword mode (75%)
• Graphic (50%)
• Programming (100%)
• And a new different Bo Staff Mode (0%)
• Programming (0%)

For Pokemon Tower Defense: (Looking at a Sunday release EST Time)
Just FYI, trading is disabled until the next update, you will be able to go up to the preview mode but the security code will not work.

• Getting the APK out for v2.5.3(100% done)
• Shiny versions of all current wild pokemon (100%)
Nidoran Female, Nidorina, Nidoqueen, Nidoran Male, Nidorino, Nidoking,
Zubat, Golbat, Mankey, Growlithe, Arcanine, Poliwag, Poliwhirl, Poliwrath,
Oddish, Gloom, Vileplume, Bellsprout, Weepinbell, Victreebell, Vulpix, Ninetails,
Paras, Parasect, Clefairy, Clefable (100%)

Nidoran Female Shiny: Step one: Find shiny picture on bulbapedia.

Nidoran Female Shiny: Step two: Make copies of the pokemon sprite and recolor them.

• Move Relearner - For a small price you can re-learn moves that your pokemon could previously learn (100%)
• New moves (2) (100% 2 move done) Don't have enough time, so adding the other moves in a later update.
• Programming (100%)
• Final Touches, publishing, and distribution (100%)
• Challenge Mode Level - can you grab the old rod before you run out of energy?(100%)
• Level graphics (100%)
• New attack mechanic (100%)
• Level design (100%)
• New Pokemon to capture - use your old rod to capture this pokemon (100%)
• Graphic (1) (100% done)
• Stats in game (1) (100% done)
• New Moves (1) (100% done)
• Shiny Graphic (1) (100% done)
• Level Cap Increase- Will mankey finally evolve? (100%)
• Moves to 26 (2) (100% done)
• Moves to 27 (7) (100% done)
• Moves to 28 (9) (100% done)
• Evolutions (100%)
• Graphics (2) (100% done)
• Stats in game (2) (100% done)
• Shiny Graphic (2) (100% done) 
• Bugs
• APK version won't allow you to get past movie scenes. (100%) New APK available that fixes this issue you can get it now (v2.5.3).
• Can no longer trade certain illegal pokemon like (Kyogre, Mew, Onix, Blastoise, Horsea, Shellder, Staryu, Starmie), or pokemon with a higher level than the current cap. Applied to the game right now (100%) Mew is a special pokemon, too much copying of him going around, so trading has been disabled for him. Once I fix the copying issue I will return him to normal.
• Crush claw will now do damage when it removes an enemy's defense buff. (100%Thanks Zivan for the tip) 
• Level 10 Cerulean Gym will now have gym battle music (100% done) 
• After saving your profile on v2.6 you will no longer be able to save it on any lower version (Postponed)
• Trying to save an older profile online when a newer one has been save previously will no longer be possible (Postponed)
• Fixing the stop evolution button crashing the game (Postponed)
• Fixing the ally switch move (Postponed)   

As always I will be updating this post as the week progresses so check back to it from time to time.

Let me know what you think.