Post by Mailchan in More Than 2 Towers comments

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I love how they just turn into lasers if you level them up enough.

I also loved the game, it's pretty fun, I even played it twice (To see all of the towers' lasers) I didn't expect the towers to have completely different stats, I just assumed that the second would add to the original. I'm glad it's not like that so there's more strategy with how you combine.

The game itself is pretty solid, I didn't have any problems, except not being able to buy a tower sometimes. (Which I assume is an engine limitation rather than a bug, because I had a ton of enemies on screen when it didn't work.)

Playing the game though, could be a bit neater. I'm not gonna blame you for the lag, it's to be expected in a browser game. However, it'd be nice to see when towers are going to shoot, so you can line up your shots. And it'd also be nice to "lock" your cursor so the towers won't shoot at nothing while you buy something.

Other than those issues, still a really fun and neat game. I'm excited to see where you take this concept in the future! Good work!

P.S. It seems that the game only runs on Chrome, I couldn't get it to even load on Opera (or Opera GX) I haven't tested Firefox, but I assume it'll run there.

MissingWilliam2 years ago

Thanks for the support and feedback! About the stats change, yes that was intentional. I recently went and tried some free-to-play tower defense games for a matter of reasons, and discovered this concept was actually pretty used, but in the poorest way possible. Just one tower, you mix it again and again until it's OP, done. That's boring, it's like grinding but you have to do it each run. By mixing the towers you got available, I discovered you could actually interpret differently how the boosts will work. Scout + Soldier gives you a firerate boost for the Scout, while Soldier + Scout gives you a damage boost for the Soldier. Which is better? It depends. Cost is the same so you mostly have to focus on strategy.

I really wanted to make a neat game, try to bring something new, but actually found it's not that hard to re-imagine and ol' boring concept and actually make it enjoyable.

About the tower placement, I didn't know that happened. Probably is because of either the lag or some other things.

Sadly this project will take a while to be developed since I ran out of events in Construct 2, but I'm trying my best to get it done on Unity so I can continue to explore the potential of the idea.

Locking the mouse is also an idea I had but I'm not so sure about if it would be benefitial or not. What I enjoy most about Tower Defense Games, is the challenge that you get when you are just starting to play, which gets lost mid-level if you already have a good setup. I think the main problem with this demo is the firerate boost, which basically allows you to AFK. Don't get me wrong, I like afk-ing but I think too much of it and the game becomes an animation that's longer that it should be. Also since I see both you and a friend that tried this game liked the change to lasers (which was unintentional lol), I probably will try to make lasers return in the completed version, just in a different way to avoid that much lag.

If you read till here, thank you. You actually gave me the main idea for the project and I really appreciate your help. Wether is it Unity, Ct.js or any engine you can imagine, I promise a fuller version of this will definitely arrive.

Mailchan2 years ago

I thought stat changes were intentional, which is nice. As you said, many Tower Defense games with combining gimmicks often are just so you have to spend more time playing the game (Padding) , with usually spending money to make it faster. But with the stats changing depending on the combination, it really allows a whole new level of strategy. It reminds me of the PvZ2 mod, Eclise. (Instead of leveling up plants, you can select tiers with different strengths and weaknesses.)

There's a different kind of challenge with this game, and it's the ability to control where the towers fire, without the need for the enemies to get within range. I agree that the some of the joy of a good Tower Defense is laying the groundwork, but most of it should be from the success of a great strategy. Mid-level should keep the player on their toes, but also allow them to prepare for the end wave. (Which, understandably isn't coming, so I suppose this argument doesn't work here...)

I like what you did to stop the AFK grind, which was the enemy that went straight for the towers themselves, and not only stopping the one hit, but blocking all shot behind it. It makes the player stop what they're doing to deal with it. I believe a way to challenge here, it to add special units the player must focus on. This is entirely okay, because the player has full control over where they shoot, but makes them unable to just leave it running for as long as they want. But then again, I'm no game theorist, so take that with a grain of salt.

For the mouse lock and lasers I have a few words. The mouse lock, in my eyes, is just there so the player can grab some towers without sacrificing DPS. But now that I think about it, having that struggle to let off the heat to get more towers, or risk getting overrun without those towers seems pretty fitting for what you have here. The lasers are pretty fun (and funny to be honest) and I believe you can keep it to one unit. If you set a limit to how many Fire Ups the towers get, it'll stop the lasers completely. But here's the kicker, don't add the limit for the Scout. Seeing as they already have a high fire rate, they're the first to become lasers anyways. You get to keep a laser, but the players also can't make everything lasers, win-win!

To end this off, I have to say that it's nice to see an attempt to branch out, not many are too fond of changing to a different engine once they've been working with one for so long (myself included.) Unity's pretty good, not be the best one out there, but it's up there!

P.S. - I really didn't do anything, this one's all yours. Your concept, your ideas, your game. All I did was saying what I thought out-loud (or in this case, typing.) Anywho, keep up the good work!

MissingWilliam2 years ago (4 edits)

About end waves, I was planning to add boss fights, so the possibility of it is actually quite probable. I will try to take your advice on that. Prob however add an Endless mode tho, but yeah I kinda get what you say about preparing for the end wave. Gonna write that down.

Also yes, that enemy is there because of AFK grind. I really like the part where I can just sit up and relax while playing a tower defense game because my strategy is working, but I don't like it when the game turns into an animation I gotta see x50 times to get some reward for doing it so. AFKing is good in Tower Defenses but I don't like the abuse of it, so yeah probably in the finished projects, there will be more enemies the player will have to take care of. Might as well add some other maps to reduce AFK-grind. Some other things I've thought about:

- Nerfing Fire-rate boost upgrade

- Buffing Money boost upgrade

- Adding secondary paths or enemies that ignore the path

- Stun mechanics maybe

I really have a dilemma with the lasers. They were unintentional but cool, while they are also the main cause of lag. While I like your proposal about the scout, I think a better approach would be to maybe create lasers as separate projectiles once the firerate boost is at its max level. To add some diversity, I could interpret in different ways how lasers would work for each tower, so it's not just the OP version of its projectile, but yeah, I'll have to think about it. A troop that shoots lasers is also a thing I would consider, but probably it would be too OP so luckily I'll get to there once I have the rest of the game ready, still, I like your idea of not making every tower's bullets become lasers.

Mouse lock is also a part of the strategy of the game and there are many ways on how could it be either a good or bad thing, if I get the idea to work out, maybe then I'll be able to decide which approach is the best. I've also been considering the idea of a number pad to select towers so you don't risk losing DPS twice (both when you go to pick the tower then you go to place it) I actually like how the game works now but while the idea is good, it doesn't seem that good in practice and maybe players could get mad at losing DPS for trying to pick more towers. So yeah, another thing to test out.

I'm having some minor difficulties with scripting rn but when I can't work in code because I'm tired, I work in the graphics of the game, so I guess I can be somehow more productive by doing it so.

The only thing that backfires about my mixing mechanic is that, for each tower I add, I have to add more combinations with it than the previous one, so probably the game won't have a lot of towers for that reason, but I think being able to choose 3 towers per run with a roaster of 9-12 towers (81-144 combinations, prob 9 towers, while it sounds crazy, as I only have to make a sprite and not a whole animation, and the style is pixelart, I could probably draw 30 sprites in a day if I'm inspired so yeah, it's not that crazy unless I ran out of ideas for towers) would be more than enough material, but yeah that's why all tower sprites are static.

I'm also changing the bullets so instead of just some colorful rectangles they will be actual sprites. I already have some designs I would show you but I'm kinda adjusting everything in place. Also, I've made some modifications so all pixels on screen are of a similar size, instead of what happened in the demo where the tower slot had a lot of pixels and they were smaller.

EDITED PART: BAD NEWS

I got 2 bad news for ya. Sorry about this:

1. The project is being moved from Unity to GDevelop (Because I can't learn C# yet, and if I want to release this game, by the time I learn to make it in Unity, I probably will have lost all motivation. I want to do this a big project and seeing that after the first week of using Unity, I barely could make the graphics look good enough, I'm leaving Unity for now. Although I know that Unity is probably better than GDevelop, I think this is the best I could do for the release date of my game. Still, I'll go back to it later probably, because I know how important it is to learn to code. I'm just not ready yet to take that step or to make a game as big as the one I want to in Unity.

2. PvZ Pool: is officially cancelled. I'm sorry if you enjoyed the series pretty much, but I sincerely cannot find the motivation on said project, and as I thought about working on it, I realised I had 3 options:

- Using Construct 2, having everything set-up but having events against me, leading to a worse sequel than the previous games.

- Using GDevelop, having to build everything again, trying to addapt things that are unique from Construct to GDevelop, and essentially, taking a lot more time than it should just to make a game that ain't even mine.

- Cancelling the game.

Right now I am myself having trouble focusing on my main game, and realised if I barely have any motivation to work on it, I don't really ever feel like doing the 3rd part, even if I tried promising it. That's why, I wanted to say sorry to you. I've met you because of this series, but seriously I think I have to let it go now if I want to finish the demo for MT2T. It was fun for a while, but after coming with an unique idea, I don't really feel like spending a week or so working on a project that wasn't even mine.

itch.io

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