Showing posts with label Tuesday:. Show all posts

Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 2!

By | Published Thursday, February 6, 2014

Want to get the legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Get some SnD coins by buying any of the Ninja-ja Editions. 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!



Go here to read the latest Pokemon Tower Defense news and Weekly Progress list.

Welcome to Hero Tower Defense Tuesday!



Sketch of logo
Go here to read the Day 1 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays. For this week we got more great art from Kevin plus we start talking about your character's quest in the game.

We tasked Kevin with making us a full set of Epic Plate armor. Taking a cue from popular games like World of Warcraft a lot of the loot drops will be classified by their rarity and each category will be represented by a color. Epic gear is gear that is really hard to get, it has great stats and looks awesome. Here is an example of epic plate armor that your character will be able to acquire in the game and epic one handed swords.



Full epic plate set with epic one handed swords.
The other thing I wanted to talk about is your character. In PTD you can catch an unlimited of enemies to be your towers. Even in other Tower Defense games you can create as many towers as your resources let you. In HTD things will be a little different. In HTD for some time you will only have one character. You start off by selecting your character picking it's race, gender, some customizations, and finally their class. This will be considered your "Main Character", the single player story will be focused on who you picked as your Main Character. The main story of the game will be the same for everybody but each class will have a different point of view of the story. Along the way you will meet with new characters that you can add to your party, you will be able to level them up and equip them just like your main character. You can even bring any of your characters into multiplayer, so you are not limited to your main character.

So why start a new file if the only difference is a new point of view on the same story? Well every class in the game is in search of something special. They are searching for a powerful secret technique that has been lost for centuries. When you beat the single player portion your Main Character will learn this technique but none of your other characters in that file will be able to learn it. So starting a new file will be so that you can get each class' secret technique.

That's all I have for you this week, Dan will be posting more info later tonight, as always let me know what you think!


Dan: In addition to the main story line there will be a bunch of side quests and other things you can do along the way, as well as after you beat the main story line. We definitely want to have optional uber bosses like most single player RPGs have that are much harder than anything in the main story line. I've always found those very fun and challenging and think it would be great to carry that over to HTD.

We want there to be just as much single player content as multiplayer content because some people just like to do their own thing or don't feel like searching for a party. I've played enough MMORPGs to understand how frustrating it can be when you are either unable or not interested in grouping and want to play solo but you couldn't even kill a mob 30 levels lower than you. We're hoping to remedy this scenario. :)

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Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 3! Daily Codes and SnD Coins are up!

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Want to get the legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Purchase some SnD coins and get Ninja-ja bonus items free! 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 to Hero Tower Defense Tuesday!


Sketch of logo
Go here to read the Day 2 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays. For this week we got more great art from Kevin plus we start talking about looting.

Dan and I thought a lot about not only loot in the game but how you loot items in the game. We both agreed that when the enemy dies they should drop some money for you to collect. Also if they were going to drop an item of some sort that a small treasure box will drop and open up in the ground revealing the item.

First the question is how do you get this item from the ground into your bag. Well the first thought was adding more interactivity by clicking on the loot. But we the more we thought about it the less it made sense. If everything you defeat drops a least some coins then you should have to constantly click on the screen. We don't want that so for this game every item that drops will be automatically grabbed for you.

This created a new problem. If you loot everything then your bags could potentially be filled with things that you don't want. The solution to this was to create a "temporary bag", every time something drops (coins, armor, etc) it will automatically be placed on this temporary bag that has unlimited space. At the end of the level and any time during the level you can then transfer any items from your "temporary bag" into your real bag. Anything not transferred into your real bag will disappear the next time you start a level.

The other thing we thought about was to make sure to show you what you had looted without interrupting the flow of the game. When something drops and is automatically looted you will see an icon that will represent the item go into a bag. The icon will let you know what type of item dropped (chest pieces, helm, etc) and how rare the item that dropped is (poor, common, uncommon, rare, etc).

Lastly I leave you with some prop art for a cave level that Kevin worked.



Different props for a cave level.
Dan will be around later to post some more things.

I know a lot of you know already but I wanted to post this again for those who missed it. Daily Codes and SnD Coins are now available!

The Daily Codes are now out, I want to quickly explain them again for those of you who didn't catch it the first time. Once a day you go to the Pokemon Center and choose which code you wish to purchase, the more it cost the higher the chance to get a rare pokemon. When you purchase you will see what you won, and then you can pick up your prize right away. 24 hours later you can repeat the process. Also I will be adding more and more pokemon to the daily code with breeding moves in the future so look forward to that.

SnD Coins are now out! You can get SnD Coins by buying Ninja-ja, the higher edition you buy the more coins you get per dollar. We added two new edition the discount edition $50 for 225 coins and a Savvy Ninja Edition $100 for 500 coins. Those are not for everybody but those who are thinking long term and wish to contribute to us then it's the best deal. If you want to see how much everything cost then head to the Pokemon Center and then to the Adoption page. We will also be adding more Trial Pay options for different editions. If you know of any other payment method that you would rather use then let me know.

As always let me know what you think!


Dan: Hey guys, just wanted to clear up some stuff regarding the SnD Coin purchase options and the reasons for them. Then I'll touch on HTD a bit.

SnD Coins and Ninja-ja - Some people are confused and feel that they are buying Ninja-ja twice now in order to get the SnD Coins. This is wrong, you are buying the SnD Coins and we're giving you the Ninja-ja stuff as a bonus. Just like how you were buying Ninja-ja before and you were getting the PTD stuff as a bonus. So even if we removed all the Ninja-ja stuff the price of the SnD Coins would remain the same. We understand some people might not want the bonus Ninja-ja stuff but that simply means you just don't click the Ninja-ja download link we send you in the email and don't use the other Ninja-ja stuff when it comes out, but that's completely up to you. There's people that do want that stuff so we're just going to leave it in there for now for promoting purposes.

Something else is we've decided to make Ninja-ja free. The extra stuff will become available for SnD Coin purchase when we release it. For those of you that already bought the older Ninja-ja editions we'll be sending 1 SnD Coin (worth $1 which is what Ninja-ja alone was being sold for) to make up for Ninja-ja now being free, even if you only bought it for the bonus PTD stuff. ;) I'll be sending those out as Apprentice Edition SnD Coin purchases over the next week. If you don't get it by then send me an email at dbell1984@gmail.com.

HTD - Okay now for HTD. I think most people would agree that while auto-looting is very helpful and convient that clicking on a hard earned chest and having it explode with loot is both awesome and satisfying. For this purpose We will also have chests that come with the level and aren't necessarily drops from enemies. Like they might be hidden somewhere on the map, guarded by bosses, or in plain site but inaccessible at the time, etc. These chests will be loaded with stuff and you will need a key to unlock them. You'll get the key from doing something related to the chest. So if it's guarded by a boss it's likely the boss drops the key, if it's in plain site you'll probably get the key from one of the mobs you fight on that level. We also want some chests that you may see all the time but can't open at the time. You might have to do quests in order to obtain the key or perhaps get it off some uber boss later on and then go back to that mysterious chest you could never open to find out what's been in there all this time.

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Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 6!

By | Published Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Want to get the legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Purchase some SnD coins and get Ninja-ja bonus items free! 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 to Hero Tower Defense Tuesday!


Sketch of logo


Go here to read the Day 5 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays.


Dan is hard at work on the next Ninja-ja update, so I'm taking over this post bringing you more news and art for our next game Hero Tower Defense. If you haven't done so already make sure to read past blog post of HTD Tuesdays by clicking the link above this paragraph. I'll wait here until you do..... Okay! You ready now?

This week we are going to talk about the first game that Dan and I had planned but never released. Many years ago Dan and I would meet up once a week to work on our game. It was to be an action rpg, one of the main draws of the game was going to be its unique talent system. Sadly we never got around to making that game but we always wanted to use the talent system, so we are going to tweak it and add it to HTD.

The game world will revolve around 5 different elements. Every character will be linked to one of these elements. The elements will be Fire, Water, Nature (this name could change), Shadow and Light. Each of these elements will have an advantage against two other elements and have a weakness to the other two.

There are 3 categories for abilities (moves you will use in the game).
  • Offensive - These will be moves that mainly cause damage.
  • Defensive - These moves will prevent you from taking heavy damage also healing moves fall in this category.
  • Utility - Moves that will slow down the enemy, or trap them etc.
Element: Fire - Pure destructive energy, also provides light.
  • Main Category - Offensive
  • Second Category - Defensive
  • Advantage against: Shadow and Nature - Fire creates a light that shadow cannot beat, fire can also burn plants and nature very easily.
  • Weakness against: Light and Water - Fire creates light so Light element grows in the presence of fire thus overpowering it. Water can put out fire.
Element: Water - Healing powers and versatility. Water can take many shapes.
  • Main Category - Defensive
  • Second Category - Utility
  • Advantage against: Fire and Light - Water can put out fires. Light going through water gets distorted and weakened.
  • Weakness against: Shadow and Nature - Water helps nature grow more powerful. Shadow and corruption can easily get into water and corrupt it.
Element: Nature - Wild energy, can take many shapes, and fulfill many roles.
  • Main Category - Utility
  • Second Category - Defensive
  • Advantage against: Water and Light - Water and light both feed Nature it's nutrients and allow it to grow stronger.
  • Weakness against: Fire and Shadow - Fire destroys nature, and shadow can easily corrupt and prevent the growth of nature.
Element: Light - Pure energy, provides healing and power.
  • Main Category - Defensive
  • Second Category - Offensive
  • Advantage against: Fire and Shadow - Fire creates light so Light element grows in the presence of fire thus overpowering it. Shadow cannot exist in light.
  • Weakness against: Nature and Water - Nature uses light to grow. Light gets distorted when it goes against water.
Element: Shadow - Evil energy full of trickery and corruption.
  • Main Category - Offensive
  • Second Category - Utility
  • Advantage against: Nature and Water - Shadow prevents nature from growing and can easily corrupt both nature and water.
  • Weakness against: Fire and Light - Both fire and light create light and thus remove shadow.
Linking into an element will give you a passive chance to give your target a passive debuff having to do with your element. It also gives you resistance and weakness to other elements. For example if you link to fire all your abilities have the chance to trigger a fire debuff on your target that will burn him for a period of time but will increase his damage done slightly. Also you will take 5% less damage from shadow and nature attacks but take 5% more damage from light and water attacks.

I will continue talking about elements, talents and abilities next week. Now I leave you with some art that Kevin worked on this week.


You will encounter this monster on the first level of the game.

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Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 7! Talents, Kevin's Blog and game progress.

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Want to get the legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Purchase some SnD coins and get Ninja-ja bonus items free! 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 to Hero Tower Defense Tuesday!


Sketch of logo


Go here to read the Day 6 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays.

Sam again, working hard on the PTD update which is why this came so late.  I will continue talking about the talents and elements in this post plus give you guys an update on where the game is in programming so far.


If you haven't read last week's post then you will probably be really lost so I suggestion you give that a quick look and then come back to read this.


First a lot of you commented on adding more elements to the mix and while that may be possible we want to keep it pretty simple at first and then in the future possibly add more elements as we go. Today when I explain the talents more you will see why we want to keep it at 5 elements for now.


Okay so in HTD the elemental talent system has some pretty unique features.
  • Every character gets the same elemental talent tree, regardless of what you pick.
  • Regardless of what element you are attuned to, you can pick skills from any element. (If you are attuned to Fire you can still pick up water element skills or shadow element, etc.)
  • Skills are separated by Physical and Magic and then by elements. (See picture below)

Mock up of Elemental Talent Trees
  • You can get special combination of moves by fulfilling the requirement of that move. Combination moves are special moves that sometimes give you a different version of the original move or a move that will trigger a special effect on a previous move. An example of this is a Tier 2 Magical Fire move that will create Magma Armor for your character, if you get a Tier 2 Water skill then it will unlock the combination move for the Magma Armor which is dousing the Magma Armor cooling it down and turning it into a Magma Stone Armor. The Magma Armor will help against magic while the Magma Stone Armor helps against physical attacks. In the picture below the requirement for Tier 1 Fire is to get any Tier 1 Light Move. You can see that now the combination move for Fire is unlocked. Note: Combination moves are free and don't cost points.
The combination requirement for Tier 1 Fire is Tier 1 Light, the combination move for Fire Tier 1 is unlocked.
  • You will get 15 points to work with once you reach the highest level in the game. You can go pure on an Element and it will unlock an Ultime move that you can use your last point in.
Using 7 Points on Fire Physical and 7 Points on Fire Magical will unlock an Ultimate Fire Move (not pictured)
  • Putting 3 points into all the elements will unlock all the combination moves for all of them, this will get you more versatility. Doing this will unlock a special move that will be free. But not as powerful as an Ultimate Pure Elemental move.
Putting 3 points into every element will get you the most elemental skills, and will unlock a special move for free (Not pictured on this mock up)
  • Other special arrangements like putting 7 points in one element and 7 points in a different element will give you an Ultra move. Also putting 5 points in 3 different elements will unlock a special move.
I know this is a lot to take in and it might be hard to understand without being able to play with it but this is the most we can offer right now.
With this system you can create a character as you see fit, do you want him to shoot fire balls and be able to heal with water? Go for it. Want to be a pure Shadow Master? Go for it. Want to be a pure physical machine? Go full physical fire and shadow. There are so many possibilities to what you can do! But we aren't done yet.

You might be thinking well what about classes? While the Elemental Tree system will let you go wild and create your own special class, there is also a Specialization Tree that you will get access to. The Specialization tree will allow you to pick more specific abilities both passive and active to your character. These will be more restrictive in that they require certain points to get them. When you put a point in the physical side of the Elemental Tree you will get a Physical Specialization Point that you can use in the Physical side of the Specialization Tree, same with magic. The specialization will help you define you character more with categories such as Defense, Stealth, Healing, Damage. Want to be a powerfull mage that can take hits like a tank? Well you can! Gone are the days of picking a class and being tied down to what you can do, we hope you will enjoy this system and help us fine tune it as we move forward.

Let's talk about our great artist, Kevin, for a little bit here. Kevin came to Dan and I requesting that he wanted to make his own blog that focuses on the art for Hero Tower Defense. While at the beginning we had our doubts on the whole idea, we finally decided to try it out and see how it goes. So click here to check out Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD. On top of that we will be posting small summaries each week here about what's going on in his blog so that you don't miss a thing. So go check it out!

The last thing I wanted to talk about is how the programming is going for HTD. A lot of you keep asking when the game is coming out, and while the game is not close to being ready I will update you on where we are now. Each week I will provide an update.

I'm actually re-writing all the code for HTD using PTD as a reference. I have learned a lot from PTD and using all those lessons to make the code in HTD even better. HTD is also more detailed graphically so it requires more detailed code for attack effects. For example in PTD the pokemon will just tackle and hit the target in the middle of it. In HTD your character will move infront of the target and then swing it's swords. These differences make all the difference as far as presentation and code.

Work in Progress Picture, two characters attacking the dragon whelp.
Disclamer on the Picture above: We aren't going to have 10 units at once, only 5. I have 10 there as a previous test.

So that is what we have so far, the characters can be put on their spots and will attack an enemy that is going around the path. We are tweaking attack code and looking at how we can make the action easier to follow.

So which element will you choose?

That's what we have this week for Hero Tower Defense. As always let me know what you think!

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Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 8 - Character Creation

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Go here to read the Day 7 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays.

This week we're going to take a look at Kevin's WIP human female design, talk about character creation, and answer some related questions that are likely to be asked after reading this.


Kevin has started working on the human female character which I know some of you have been waiting for. It's still early in development though and we're making adjustments as we go. Check out Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD for some additional information and concept art he's working on. He'll also be starting on some hair styles and is interested in some suggestions for them from you guys. Here's the latest version of the human female character:




Early render of a human female in full plate armor


You might notice the usual characteristics that distinguish a female from a male are absent in this initial image. We intentionally started out this way because we want to be sure that you can easily tell the difference between the genders just from their contour and shape even when they are fully suited in armor. This is important for being able to glance at things quickly and knowing exactly what it is.

Male characters can also share a lot of the same features that are typically used to identify females, e.g., long hair, light colors, etc so we don't want to be restricted by these things by fixing them to a specific gender for the sole purpose of differentiating them from eachother. Another thing that falls into this category is having all the females showing a lot of skin regardless of how much armor they are wearing. To me that's a cheap way out for making a female identifiable in heavy armor.. or lack thereof. It makes more sense for lighter armor to look that way since it allows you to be more agile.

Another reason we don't want to restrict specific colors, hair styles, etc to genders is because we want there to be as many options available as possible during character creation so you can create the characters you want. We're still figuring out what you'll be able to customize exactly but right now we're thinking race, gender, skin color, hair style, and hair color (remember this is just for your character, not their armor, weapons, effects, etc). We would like to have some facial features as well at some point but it's a lot for a little so it's not a high priority right now.

Now I'll address a few questions that are bound to be asked eventually:


"What about eye color?"

The style Kevin is current going with doesn't really involve significant detail to the eyes so they are generally just black ovals. They will be quite small as well so only a few colors would be really be noticeable and the rest would kind of all look the same as those.


"Can I change the character's height, size, or proprotions?"

This is very unlikely unfortunately because all our graphic assets are sprites and changing any of these attributes, even a little, would cause all kinds of conflicts with the armors and such.


"Will you see the hair when wearing a helmet?"

This is an interesting topic because it's one of those simple things that is actually quite complex to implement. As of right now we are going with no visible hair while wearing a helmet, even if you have long hair. However, we would allow you to turn off the helm graphic without actually unequipping it and thus still taking advantage of it's stat bonuses.

The reason for this because you'd not only need to create the hairstyle itself but you'd also need to customize every hair style for every helmet in every angle and that adds up to a lot of work very quickly for something that isn't really that significant.

Although something that just came to mind is maybe we could have just a generic "long hair" look while wearing a helmet and that would be applied to all long hair styles and their share their color of course. Shorter hair styles would just show no hair while wearing a helmet. A problem you might realize though is that if your character has a ponytail and it switches to this generic "long hair with helm on" look it wouldn't be in a ponytail anymore. A possible solution could be to just have a couple different "long hair with helm on" looks to cover the majority of the hair styles but we'd probably only start with one for now. We'll have to see, I'm rambling now though so I'll stop there :P

As always feel free to leave us feedback, give us suggestions, ask us questions, or just let us know what you think in the comments!

-Dan

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Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 9 - Character Stats

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Go here to read the Day 8 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays.


Last week we talked a bit about character creation so this week let's talk about character stats.

So since this is part RPG and part TD we of course have to give the characters some attributes that increase and make your character stronger. We decided to go along with the traditional strength, stamina, etc stats because everyone is familiar with them and they work well. However, the actual affect of each stat tends to vary from game to game but they usually follow a general idea. We'll be doing the same in HTD.

Here are what we have as the Primary stats:

  • Strength (STR) - Increases Physical Damage
  • Stamina (STA) - Increases Health Points
  • Agility (AGI) - Increases Speed
  • Dexterity (DEX) - Increases Skill
  • Intelligence (INT) - Increases Magical Damage

Pretty straight forward however something to keep in mind is that Magical Damage does not refer to elemental damage. Physical Damage covers the Physical side of the elemental skills while Magical Damage covers the Magical side of the elemental skills.

You might be asking, what does Speed and Skill do? For that we have the Secondary stats:

General:
  • Health Points (HP) - Your amount of life
  • Speed (SPD) - How fast you are at attacking and dodging
  • Skill (SKL) - How skilled you are at hitting and recovering

Attack:
  • Physical Power (PP) - How strong you are with physical weapons and skills
  • Magical Power (MP) - How strong you are with magical weapons and skills

Armor:
  • Physical Defense (FD) - How much physical damage you mitigate
  • Magical Defense (MD) - How much magical damage you mitigate

Attunements:
  • Fire Attunement (FA) - Your ability to control and resist Fire
  • Water Attunement (WA) - Your ability to control and resist Water
  • Nature Attunement (NA) - Your ability to control and resist Nature
  • Light Attunement (LA) - Your ability to control and resist Light
  • Shadow Attunement (SA) - Your ability to control and resist Shadow

Speed basically increases how fast you are dashing up to the enemy (if you're meleeing) then attacking and your projectile speed whether it's phyiscal or magical. Speed also increases your chance to dodge physical attacks.
Skill increases your chance to get a critical hit, possibly increases your chance to hit with a physical attack (if we even have missing possible which we are still figuring out), and cooldown rate. If you look at the Skill stat you can see it's pretty awesome, but this is a stat that will be difficult to raise and won't have an abundance of it so don't think you'll be able to make a character with nearly 0 cooldown.. well if you managed to expect something to get nerfed :P

We changed our use of the word attunement, when we first mentioned it we referred to it as the element you initially picked that defined your character's starting point. We'll just call that your Native Element or something instead because the term is better used here. So your attunement stats are dual purpose. They represent both how strong you are with that element and your resistance against it.

Now here's where we add in some S&D flavor and change things up a bit. You won't be getting any actual attribute points to assign to these stats specifically. Instead these stats get raised by items and what we refer to as Class Skill Points (CSP) that you get every time you level up. CSPs are used to get class skills which follow a similar Physical/Magical set up with 5 categories on each side with skills for each. This is how you'll be choosing your class essentially and how you use these points will determine your Class Title (like Warrior, Paladin, Mage, etc). I won't be going into details about this yet but basically what happens is as you level up and build your character by assigning the elemental and class points you have earned your Class Title will change accordingly.

On the art side of things Kevin is working on the female animations and hair which you can find more of at Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD. He also has a poll up on which hairstyle you guys would like to see first, be sure to put in your vote! Here's some sketches:

Human Female Sketches


That's all for now, sorry for the end-of-day post but we were both busy most of the day.

As always let us know what you think and leave your feedback in the comments, thanks!

-Dan

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Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 10 - Story

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





Welcome to Hero Tower Defense Tuesday!


Sketch of logo


Go here to read the Day 9 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays.


Today let's talk about the story for a bit.

This area of the game is still rather open-ended and undetermined at this point, more so than most other aspects of the game. So I wanted to tell you guys a little bit about what we had in mind for HTD's story and single player and then get your feedback and suggestions on it.

Elements are a key part of the HTD world which I'm sure is rather clear at this point. We have 5 elements (Fire, Water, Nature, Light, and Shadow) each with their own advantages and disadvantages against eachother as well as their own physical and magical skills that specialize in categories like offense, defense, and utility. You also have a native element that gives you a bit more power with that element and you also gain combination elemental attacks when you make certain matches in the elemental trees. With that in mind it's pretty easy to say the elements should tie into the story and world rather heavily.

The game is of course based in a fantasy world so that opens up a lot of paths. That also means there is a lot to consider.. how much technology is there and how advanced is it? Is the current state of things peaceful or chaotic? Is there some major event currently taking place? etc. The same goes for your character and characters you meet in single player.. how old are you? Are you a king's son or a lowly peasant? Is there something unique about you or your family? Do you have some hidden past? etc. I personally don't like things being too cliche but it's a bit difficult to avoid because there's so much out there that people have already seen but, hey, we'll try.

We have some ideas in mind but without giving away too much I can say you'll be old enough that you're out on your own doing things like adventuring and exploring and whatnot. During single player you'll meet other characters that may join you, probably some from your past and some new. At least part of the story will be about you seeking out something related to your native element, perhaps how to master it so you can acquire greater skills with that element. During your quest there will probably be trials that test your skill with the elemental system. So there might be like a crazy shadow boss you have to fight or a water cavern you have to get through. While I wouldn't say there's a doomsday character who's out to destroy the world you'll definitely come across characters/creatures that are much stronger than you and are terrorizing that area or blocking your way.

So as you can see there's a lot up in the air story-wise. As I mentioned we have a several things in mind that are more solid but I don't want to give it all away. This is also mainly for single player. The multiplayer will continue the story to an extent but have a wider scope. We're interested in hearing what you guys would like to see though. Do you like the uber, evil, insane guy wanting to take over the world? The mysterious past that you gradually uncover? Perhaps just the idea of going out and discovering the unknown?

There will also be side quests and such as well that will probably be completely unrelated to the main story but that's why they're side quests right? I know we have some writers out there with ideas they'd like to share as well. Let us know what you have on your mind! But try to summarize it. ;)

Also don't forget to check out Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD for all things art related to HTD! You'll find additional concept art, polls to help us decide on certain art aspects (currently which female hairstyles to start with), and he recently added a progress list. Here's a new WIP logo design Kevin made:

WIP HTD Logo

As always let us know what you think and leave your feedback in the comments, thanks!

-Dan

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Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 12 - Pets

By | Published Tuesday, February 4, 2014



Go here to read the Day 11 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays.


For this update I want to discuss pets, specifically pet placement.

Right now having pets is still a concept as far as development goes but we're getting closer to the point where we'll need to have it figured out so it can be ready for programming and such. Since a lot of it is still up in the air it means any ideas and suggestions from you guys are even more helpful. As I mentioned above I'm only going to be talking about pet placement though. Not pets overall, we'll get into those details later. So let me throw out a few ideas to get things started and then see what you guys have to say in the comments.

First, let me clarify that I'm referring to active pets. Ones that attack, level up, have skills, etc. In other words, not the ones that just follow around behind you. We'll have those too most likely but they are much easier to implement for obvious reasons. Another thing is every character can essentially have a pet because it'll be a class skill and as I mentioned in another post your class is dynamic based on the skills you choose. So you could basically put one point into the pet skill and now have the ability to fight with a pet. Granted you'll need to invest a lot of points in the pet skill and probably other pet related skills to make your pet feasible as you level up. In other words, you can easily have a pet but if you don't invest many points in your pet skills it'll be rather lackluster.

Having pets in a TD game is a little tricky. For example, where do they go on the field? If you have them in the same location as your character would probably look a bit strange because they'd practically be on top of eachother. They could be beside you but then what happens if there is no available area around your character? For example you're a ranged character on a small island safe from melee but only enough room for your character, where does your pet go? Having it just show up at the nearest location probably wouldn't work too well and would be a hassle. It could be possible that if there's not enough room for your pet then it just wouldn't be out, which means you'll need to think a bit more about character location. However, this mostly applies to grounded pets. Flying pets can get away with a lot more but we need something that works for both unless we just go with the idea that flying pets are more versatile since they are in the air.

There's also the option of having the pet be manually placed just like a character. It doesn't have to hang around you perhaps but the disadvantage might be that certain pet skills that your character has might have limited range. So if your pet is on the other side of the map your pet buff might not reach it.

Another solution is to only have the pet appear when it's attacking. Almost like how a projectile from your character acts. I don't see this being a popular choice though because peope like seeing their pets around and it would mean the pet doesn't have health, take aggro, or protect one of your sides while fighting side by side with you.

And finally the last idea was to have the pets literally be characters. The first game that comes to mind where they had this is Dragon Age. Basically, the pet would be one of your 5 active characters that you have out on the field. This is a slightly different route than the other solutions. I wouldn't expect them to have armor and weapons really or maybe they'd just have equipment that doesn't display (we don't want to drive Kevin insane). Also they wouldn't be nearly as customizable as the other characters but they would have skills and such, maybe some skill points that can be assigned as they level up, etc. So think of them as just being more specific and less customizable characters. This might sound like they'd be lesser characters overall but I'd expect them to be quite strong, just more limited. You could maybe even have special combo moves that can only occur when you have certain pets together. For example, maybe you have one character and 4 wolf pets. Maybe you'd get a special passive skill called Pack Leader that gives all your units a nice buff. Just something like that perhaps.

Kevin has some new stuff on his blog, KXN @ HTD. He's always looking for comments on his work so be sure to stop by and let him know what you guys think about the HTD art. Here's a cool sketch Kevin did for uhh...something:

Creature Concept Sketch

Leave your feedback in the comments and let me know what option you like best or if you have your own idea be sure to let us know!

-Dan

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Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 13 - Maps

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Go here to read the Day 12 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays.


In this post I want to go over some ideas regarding different types of maps in HTD.

I've mentioned before that HTD will have both defense and offense when it comes to gameplay. Some maps will be full defense like traditional TD games while other maps are offense. There will probably be some with mix of both to varius degrees. There will also be the usual waves made up of different types of enemies but also bosses that you have to move your characters around in order to attack and avoid certain attacks. Another fun way to beat maps is to require you to survive for a certain amount of time or require you to solve a puzzle-type problem. It'd also be cool for some maps to have multiple options available for completing it or having things you could trigger. For example have you destroy some support for a bunch of rocks and they cause one of the enemy paths to be blocked, etc.

All of the things mentioned above allow us to have a lot of flexibility for making some cool maps in HTD. When I play a game I always like having some variety so things don't get so repetitive and this allows us to do that. The maps will probably vary in size as well with larger ones not fitting on the whole screen when you are viewing it at 100%. However, there will be controls for you to zoom in and how to get a better idea of what's happening on the majority of the map. Some maps might even require you to split up your party in order to cover multiple areas of the same map instead of having them all in the same general spot and able to assist eachother.

With HTD being on a bit of a larger scale and having a more progressive nature the majority of the maps will probably be connected in some way, like having zones. For example, if you enter a cave it won't be just one map unless it's a very small cave. Instead it'll consist of multiple maps each one leading to another sending you further into the cave. There might even be some branching that takes affect in these caves so you would end up doing some exploring in the process.

I realize having maps set up like this can be a bit of hinderance when all you want to do is travel somewhere but we'll definitely have ways available to make traveling easier and more convenient. Think about it like an RPG in this instance. Traveling usually becomes easier as you become more powerful and acquire more money, mounts, and abilities.

On that note I'll leave you with an image that gives you an idea of what a finished map looks like:

A Finished Map

So let me know what you guys think in the comments and check out Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD for more HTD artwork!

Note: As some of you have noticed, we are now looking to have the first playable version of HTD out by late December. Keep in mind this will be like version 0.1. In other words, it'll just have some of the core mechanics and other things for you to play around with. We like to release the games when they are very early in development in order to give you guys as many chances as possible to participate in helping us make the game and for us to gather feedback every step of the way. Thanks!

-Dan

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