Hey guys, Sam here bringing you the news on what is coming up.

Looking for a place to play the game that will always have the most current version of the game? Well now you can play the game right on the blog. When the new update comes out this site will have it ready to go instantly. Click on  the "Play PTD!" tab to play the game. Enjoy.

This week we are giving away a shiny Jigglypuff, thanks again to my friend at PlayTowerDefenceGames.com, the clues are a little harder this time so good luck. Click here to start your mystery gift code hunt.

This has been our closest poll yet! I can see the passion many of you have behind the game, and while I will be taking a break a small update will be released this week, check out below to see what it will contain:

 *Takes out paper full of notes

Pretty much all of these are due to your feedback, so thanks a lot :D

These are all for v2.4 you won't see these in v2.3

1. You can now use Weepinbell in battle (100% done)
2. In Viridian Forest 1 the intro cutscene will now have the correct amount of candy so that it matches the level (100%)
3. Level 3 will now correctly show the ending text box (100% done)
4. When you return to the party select screen from checking a pokemon it will return you to the previous page of the storage that you were in, instead of always returning to the first page (100% done)
5. No amount of spaces or symbols will allow you to get multiple shiny geodude from the challenge mode code (100% done)
6. While your pokeball is open it will no longer scroll the level if you are in the edge, it will still scroll the level if the pokeball is not open (100% done)
7. You can now rearrange your storage pokemon as you see fit (100% done)

Many more bug fixes coming stay tuned.

Also for v2.4 some new shiny wild pokemon!

• Shiny Rattata
• Shiny Caterpie
• Shiny Metapod
• Shiny Butterfree
• Shiny Weedle
• Shiny Kakuna
• Shiny Beedrill
• Shiny Spearow
• Shiny Ekans 
• Shiny Sandshrew

(All evolutions of the pokemon will also be shiny, if an evolution is not on the list it means you can't capture it yet in the wild) 100% done

PLEASE READ BELOW, REALLY IMPORTANT MAINTENANCE ISSUE!

Wednesday night at 11:00PM Eastern Time I will be shutting down the current free server that I'm using and transferring to the new one.

What does this mean? It means that you won't be able to import/save your profile or use certain mystery codes until v2.4. So make sure you save your profile correctly or make the proper adjustments. Once v2.4 is out everything will be back to normal. I'm transferring all the data over so anything you do before Wednesday night and save will be secure. You have been warned.

We have gotten a lot of great artist applications, and if you sent one in and haven't heard from us it doesn't mean you aren't getting picked, Dan and I still need to sit down and decide who has what we are looking for. For those that are interested in applying you can still apply.

Dan and I are looking to add more members to our development crew and right now what we need the most is a capable artist. Somebody that wants to work with us on our next games. This is a paid position. All communication will be done online. Here is what we are looking for:

• A passion for games.
• A passion for making art.
• 18 years or older.
• Must have a portfolio.

Also these next requirements are extra but if you have these it will make you more likely to be picked.

• Be able to animate.
• 3D modeling experience.
• Vector art
• Concept art
• Game development experience (web games, console games, apps)
• Flash experience.

We can't wait to check out everybody's art :) so just email me at sotero86@gmail.com with "Artist Position" as the subject and we can talk about further details.

Want to play Ninja-ja? Get a shiny pikachu, shiny mew, shiny starter, shiny magikarp 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.

Happy Monday!

Ninja-ja's update will be coming this week, we apologize for the lateness.

I will be taking a break from updating PTD this week, meaning there won't be an update this weekend. Constantly updating a game can put a lot of strain so every once in a while I will take a weekly break to recharge my batteries.

Update: I'm considering adding a new mode called "Classic". Basically in this mode your pokemon's attacks will have the same stats as the original game or as close as possible. You will be able to use the same pokemon for both "Classic" and regular mode but there will be different achievements for each mode. In regular mode the attacks will be more balanced and towers will have health. In classic mode towers won't have health and attacks will do the attack power that the original games have (based on Gen 5). Vote on the poll and let me know what you think. 

But I want to talk about what's coming next for the game and just comment in more detail about a lot of the questions and concerns you guys are all having.

First about the move balancing. By looking at the poll I can see that a lot of you guys liked the balancing except for a few special moves that could use some more love or uniqueness.

So for the next update you can expect quick attack and extremespeed (to name a few) will have a lower cooldown.

I will also be looking at how difficult or how high of a level you need to reach to get a move in order to figure out the appropriate damage it should do. If you can just buy a TM then chances are the move won't get significantly stronger, but there are some specific exceptions.

Let's look at Earthquake! It hits everybody on the field while it has a target in range for 20 attack power. Most of you think this is too low, which I can understand seeing as how powerful the move is in the real game. I can make it stronger (40 attack power) but there needs to be a drawback to such strength. I tried longer cooldowns but I just don't like how it makes some moves useless. Some people in the chat actually mentioned something that I originally sorta brushed off as I won't be adding that to the game. But today thinking about it, I think it can work. So for the next update I will be introducing.... Tower Health!

That's right your towers will now have a health bar, just like the enemy! But slow down a bit... the enemy isn't going to stop and do attacks towards you. The point is that a move like double-edge can now actually have a recoil damage (and much higher attack power). A move like recover is useful while defending, and best of all, defense moves will be useful both in attacking and defending, a defense move will lower the amount of damage received from all sources.

Another big thing is the duration of defense and offense buffs. It is a pain to keep using rage every time it runs out on one pokemon, imagine keeping it up on all 6! Therefore I'm drastically increasing the duration of these buffs. They won't last forever but you won't have to re apply them nearly as often making it more manageable to use in battle.

Now let's talk about trading. Trading is going to change radically. The trading center is coming, and no more trade codes! You will be able to search for the pokemon you want or search for somebody that wants your pokemon, also transferring pokemon from one save to another will be easier than ever.

Next update will also include two new story mode levels one being the S.S. Anne level and the other being the Vermillion Gym level. You can expect to get the HM Cut, and you can expect to use it on different levels to find secrets.

Lastly I haven't forgotten about Daily Codes, Missing Relearner moves, so those will be coming also.

Below is my progress on these things, keep checking back to see how I'm doing!

Tower Health (50%)
Move Balancing (0%)
Buff Durations (0%)
Trading Center (0%)
Story Levels (0%)
Daily Codes (0%)
New TMs (0%)
Relearn Moves (0%)
New Pokemon (0%)
New achievements (0%) (old ones won't get removed ever)

That's all I have for now, as always let me know what you think, read the FAQ and also read the comments on this blog post before you post as I won't be publishing comments that have already been asked.

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!


Sam and Dan Games: Fundraiser! Phase 3
Help us keep making games and earn awesome prizes like Shiny Rayquaza and Shiny Heatran!  
Our Goal: $50,000

Last Week's Update/Server Issues
We had a crazy week last week, both in a good and bad way. Let's start with the bad. So instead of telling you the story how it unfolded I will just tell you what the problem was and how it caused all the issues that we had. Okay. So Databases need indexes. Imagine you have a giant book and it has no index. How would you find that page you are looking for without having to go through the whole book? You can't! So I had a tiny database (the one that keeps track of what events you had done in the story) that was missing an index. Initially the database was so small that it didn't matter. But as the game grew in size and in users this database grew. It has over 2 million entries and so every day as the database grew so did the slowdown. It got so slow that our host suspended our account. I told them to put it back up so I could disable all logins while I fixed the problem. I was really conflicted about all this. I'm no expert on databases or server administration so I had very little idea on where to start. Luckily I had bought this book called High Performance MySQL: Optimization, Backups, and Replication. While I didn't have the time to read the whole book or follow everything it had to say, it did give me some ideas on trying to find the problem and how to fix it. After doing some test to see how long each thing took to load I found that loading events was taking way too long even when I was the only user playing the game, which brought the discovery of the missing index on that database. Other than that I made some upgrades to the database engines (I changed from mysam to innodb, for those with database knowledge) that should let more people in at a time. There might be some side effects to these changes that I will have to fix but I'm pretty happy that we are somewhat back to working order.

The good stuff is the new content that I was able to bring to the game. I finally put in running shoes into the game which let you move at twice the speed. (Your pokemon will also move fast, I did have a version where your pokemon wasn't as fast and he would be left behind) You can get the shoes by talking to an old man in Cherrygrove City after you defeat Zapdos there. Another big and daunting task that I had was to add fishing. I actually go the chance to stream while I was making the fishing part and frankly I had no idea how I was going to add fishing. Luckily I'm pretty quick at thinking about how to solve problems and so I thought of a way to add it in and it worked out pretty well. You can now get an old rod or good rod by defeating the fisher man on the second part of Route 32 (Read the FAQ page for more detailed info). Once you have a rod you can go to any water source available in the game and fish on it (press spacebar or z) this will trigger a battle. Things like which rod you are using, which location you are in, time of day will affect who you get to battle with. I basically set it up to mimic the actual game. I'm really happy with how it turned out so I hope you guys can enjoy it.

On top of all of this I added all the generation 1 pokemon that you can capture in PTD2 to the PTD1 to PTD2 transfers. This includes: Jigglypuff, Wigglypuff, Zubat, Golbat, Bellsprout, Weepinbell, Victreebell, Geodude, Graveler, Golem, Gastly, Haunter, Gengar, Poliwag, Poliwrath, Krabby, Kingler, Staryu and Starmie. As I do every week there was also a Mystery Gift and a Giveaway pokemon. The Mystery Gift was electric ghost type Rotom and the giveaway was Plusle and Minun. If you got the code in time you would get 2 of each Plusle and Minun. One male and one female.

Last but not least Cosmoids had a nice update. I added more losing conditions, if you let enough bug creatures pass you will lose the level. You can tell how many lives you have left by the heart graphic on the top left. Evan, one of our freelance artist, also did a revision on the grass graphic for the first level. While I thought the original ones looked fine, Dan thought they needed more work. And so Evan did the job and they look great! The other thing I added was a fainting animation to the units. Instead of disappearing you will now see them flip on their backs and then flash before they disappear. These types of details go a long way in making a game. Each of them bringing us closer to a full game.

What's happening this week:

Pokemon Center Bugs
I need detailed information about the Pokemon Center Bugs with Breeding, Trading and Picking up pokemon. The more step by step information you can give me the better.

Mystery Gift
Like every week we will have a mystery gift and a giveaway for the runner up of the poll. You have one day to vote for which of the remaining types should be the new mystery gift. Then I will post specific pokemon that can be the mystery gift and giveaway.

PTD1 to PTD2 Transfers
My goal this week is to add a lot of Generation 1 Pokemon into PTD2. So this week I plan to add: Vulpix, Ninetails, Oddish, Gloom, Vileplume, Paras, Parasect, Venonat, Venomoth, Diglett, Dugtrio, Meowth, Persian, Psyduck, Golduck, Mankey, Primeape, Growlithe, Arcanine, Abra, Kadabra, Alakazam, Machop, Machoke, and Machamp. Adding these will make it so that you can get more than half of the Generation 1 Pokemon into PTD2!

Sun Stone
Since we are adding the Oddish family and Bellossom is part of Generation 2 then I'm also adding the Sun Stone so that Gloom can evolve into Bellossom!

Cosmoids Level Select Screen and Level 2
For Cosmoids this week I want to start work on Level 2. I really want each level to feel different than the others so each level will take some time to create. On level 2 is when you finally get your first creature, but please note that you won't be able to save just yet. Since we will have multiple levels we also need a level select screen. Very similar to PTD1 there will be different chapters. I'm looking forward to making this!

Weekly Progress

My Status: Not Working. Not Streaming. http://www.justin.tv/samsndgames

Cosmoids Released!

• Level Selection Screen (100%)
• Added new Title Screen Graphic (100%)
• Added new Character Graphic (100%)
• Level 2 (100%)
• Added the level 1 intro cutscene (100%)

PTD2 v1.42.1 Released!

• Mystery Gift (100%)
• Make Bellossom's graphic bigger (100%)

PTD2 v1.42 Released!

• PTD1 to PTD2 Transfer (100%)
• Add New Pokemon to Trading Center (100%)
• Add New Pokemon to Breeding Center (100%)
• New Item (100%) - Sun Stone
• Implement in game (100%)
• Implement in Pokemon Center (100%)
• Test New Pokemon, attacks, and abilities (100%)
• New Pokemon (100%) - Vulpix, Ninetails, Oddish, Gloom, Vileplume, Bellossom, Paras, Parasect, Venonat, Venomoth, Diglett, Dugtrio, Meowth, Persian, Psyduck, Golduck, Mankey, Primeape, Growlithe, Arcanine, Abra, Kadabra, Alakazam, Machop, Machoke, and Machamp
• Graphics (100%)
• New Attacks (100%)
• Sunny Day (100%)
• Moonlight (100%)
• Aromatherapy (100%)
• Spore (100%)
• Signal Beam (100%)
• Earth Power (100%)
• Tri Attack (100%)
• Fake Out (100%)
• Pay Day (100%)
• Switcheroo (100%)
• Power Gem (100%)
• Soak (100%)
• Covet (100%)
• Karate Chop (100%)
• Seismic Toss (100%)
• Kinesis (100%)
• Miracle Eye (100%)
• Ally Switch (100%)
• Telekinesis (100%)
• Vital Throw (100%)
• Low Sweep (100%)
• New Abilities (100%)
• Drought (100%)
• Stench (100%)
• Effect Spore (100%)
• Wonder Skin (100%)
• Anger Point (100%)
• Defiant (100%)
• Marvel Scale (100%)
• Water Veil (100%)
• Stats (100%)
• Evolutions (100%)
• Bug Fixes (100%) 
• Fixed a bug with stat change buffs and debuffs (100%)

Thanks guys for sticking with us! As always let me know what you think on the comments below, on twitter or email us at support@sndgames.com Thanks!

Want to play Ninja-ja? Get a shiny pikachu, shiny mew, shiny starter, shiny magikarp 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.

Get Ninja-ja: Apprentice Edition for free, after completing one of the offers provided!  

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!