Sqdef, My Tower-defense Game

[reiboul]

Maybe we could automatically gain a small price at each end of round, depending on how difficult it is

Build Colonies and you will


I was meaning, even without colonies, because it's hard to have enough gold at the beginning to build colonies :s

 

[fusion_power]

This is so addictive it's crazy. I think I need a strategy guide though. I cant get past 8 waves yet. Always run out of money

We should wait with a strategy guide, until the final balance is done and the other features are included.

While playing this VectorTD, I was thinking again about money related parts of SQDef. Maybe the Idea with bonus items for each boss is not that bad. useful for problem buildings like the Depot. We could save this building (or use the place for the more interesting Booster Towers) and add the Interest feature to a seperate, not building-dependent feature. Each boss gives special bonus points (one per boss maybe), we could decide how to use them. For increasing the Interest rate for example.
This would require a small Standard Interest of the money, maybe 3% like in the Flash game. After a couple of rounds, the boss gives a point we can spend to increase the % value. So nobody has to much Interest because the game controlls, when the feature is available, or waste all the space with Depots.

Of course this would need much testing I think.

 

[reiboul]

for now, the depot that gives 0,5% is pretty useless... You should have 4000 gold to gain 20, that's nonsense, since a normal depot gives 20$ at each round, and I personally never had over 1500 gold (and that was after killing bosses, level ~35)

I rarely have over 100 gold left after a round lol

 

[Alex.]

Sure, the balance is not final, but the 10 and 24 wave modes are winnable already. I put together a starter strategy guide that walks you until you defeat the first boss, check it out here:

Strategy Guide

 

[reiboul]

Nice strategy guide, i'll test this

My strategy is, spend the first boss' money on flood gates, and make great use of water turrets : with the upgrade, they deal 70dmg/s, costs 55$ for a fully upgraded tower, and sells well (90% of original price, 49$)

Then, upgrade the fire turrets, and build as much as possible!

I almost never use earth tower, except for the beginning, and never used ice turrets... They have no real advantages, only that an earth turret can hit 2 enemies at a time, which is useful at the beginning

The ice turrets misses an upgrade to make it really useful

B y the way, do enemies have weakness? I mean, red enemies could be fire elementals, and be harmed by an ice turrets more than a fire turret?

 

[Alex.]

B y the way, do enemies have weakness? I mean, red enemies could be fire elementals, and be harmed by an ice turrets more than a fire turret?

There aren't such subtleties yet, I'll consider them for a later version. So the ice turret should have stronger upgrades? I'll look into it.

 

[reiboul]

So the ice turret should have stronger upgrades? I'll look into it.

It's just that for me, they're useless, since water turrets are cheap and reasonably powerfull, and fire turrets are much more powerfull (but a bit more expensive) so I don't see the need to buy ice towers... maybe other poeple do? they should explain why

 

[prairiefire]

personally i use the earth turrets to start since they shoot at two at a time. the resale value of the water turrets are great so i use them to supplement the earth turrets. (buy and sell throughout a level). i also have one factory going to collect $20 from each round and after round 3 i can usually get two factories going. I then sell the earth turrets for ice turrets for the boss (also selling my factories) and that allows him to only pass through twice. once the first boss is done, i upgrade a little bit more and buy back my factories. (he gives out a nice wad of cash)... i find the ice turrets are the best turrets for the bosses and flood turrets are pretty good for a while until the waves get tough.

quick tip: if you buy a factory for $60 at the beginning or middle of a round, collect the $20 and then sell it for $45, you make $5 profit. (so it's always a good idea to use your spare cash for factories).

I agree that a strategy guide might not be useful while still ironing out the balance in the game (although it's pretty good for the earlier stages).

 

[fusion_power]

Nice strategy guide, i'll test this

My strategy is, spend the first boss' money on flood gates, and make great use of water turrets : with the upgrade, they deal 70dmg/s, costs 55$ for a fully upgraded tower, and sells well (90% of original price, 49$)

Then, upgrade the fire turrets, and build as much as possible!

I almost never use earth tower, except for the beginning, and never used ice turrets... They have no real advantages, only that an earth turret can hit 2 enemies at a time, which is useful at the beginning

The ice turrets misses an upgrade to make it really useful

B y the way, do enemies have weakness? I mean, red enemies could be fire elementals, and be harmed by an ice turrets more than a fire turret?

Hehe, exactly this is the way I play to (only Single Path Maps so far, I need sucsess experiences! XD ). First boss gives the money for the flood gates and then, the water turrets rock for a while. 70dmg/sec max. is really nice for only 55$ . Same for the later Fire turrets, very useful for a long time.
I never use Ice and Earth turrets. Only useful if you are on hard maps with no money and you need every turret you can buy for your money. I haven't found a strategy for maps like "ISLANDS", here you easily loose lives even in the first round. :lol: Maybe the first waves should be more userfriendly for beginners. Maybe starting with 50 HP wave or so.

Ice and Earth turrets could have bonus features like I mentioned before so people have a reason to build them. ICE could slowdown enemies, maybe and earth turrets could be the only ones with splash damage...

I find, that the barricades have no real use in single build mode. They are to expencive and at the point ingame, when you can build your first one, the fire turrets are more effective. Ok, when managing building a barricade very early ingame (however) they are cool, the single firing one is good as boss-killer. But should be more powerful. 210 Firepower and 90x4 Firepower for 500$ each is nice but for 355$ I can have 2x 200 Firepower with improved FireTurrets.
Ok, the superb Mega Tower beats (mostly) all I have to say

 

[A_SN]

I've just looked at the game files and looked at the map files in hexadecimal. It obviously means we could make our own levels, so, is there an editor out there? Or can you at least publish the file format specifications so we can make our own the hard way? Thanks

Oh by the way, the screenshot button startled many in seems, me included, because to me it only froze the game and even had me wondering if the game crashed. I think it's an awful idea to write them to BMP because it makes big files (like 225 kB) as PNG would be much smaller (more like 16 kB I guess) and thus the freeze time would most likely be proportionally reduced. Also, you could have something flashing shortly on the screen indicating that a screenshot has been taken. My two cents

As for the editor, that'd be great if we could see the community express its imagination, make maps and eventually have people vote for them and have the best ones included in the game.

 

[Alex.]

I've just looked at the game files and looked at the map files in hexadecimal. It obviously means we could make our own levels, so, is there an editor out there? Or can you at least publish the file format specifications so we can make our own the hard way? Thanks

I'll make a map editor for sure, that's one of the things planned for 1.1.

Oh by the way, the screenshot button startled many in seems, me included, because to me it only froze the game and even had me wondering if the game crashed. I think it's an awful idea to write them to BMP because it makes big files (like 225 kB) as PNG would be much smaller (more like 16 kB I guess) and thus the freeze time would most likely be proportionally reduced. Also, you could have something flashing shortly on the screen indicating that a screenshot has been taken. My two cents

Well I was lazy with this, and used SDL's save bmp function. I have no idea how to save PNG files, but I will look into it.

 

[Karrakunga]

Well I was lazy with this, and used SDL's save bmp function. I have no idea how to save PNG files, but I will look into it.

Depending on what your using I've always found this library very useful

http://corona.sourceforge.net/

And great game by the way. I'm very addicted

 

[A_SN]

Well I was lazy with this, and used SDL's save bmp function. I have no idea how to save PNG files, but I will look into it.

I think you should be able to do it with SDL_image (which is a separate project from SDL it seems). You'll have to include SDL_image, libpng and zlib with your game iirc.

 

[fusion_power]

As for the editor, that'd be great if we could see the community express its imagination, make maps and eventually have people vote for them and have the best ones included in the game.

You don't need an editor. I made my map just with editing the textfile, very easy thing. 0 is ground, 1 is path and the numbers under the playfield define start and endpoint.

@Alex: maybe in the small map-preview you could add a point to show, where the Map-start is? ^^

 

[Alex.]

I think SDL_image only handles reading, not writing. Anywho, this seems more trouble than it's worth, it's easier just to disable ;P

 

[b._.o._.b]

I've thought of a couple of things that would enhance the gameplay and lasting appeal of the game. With an editor we would have a tool to make very nice maps but I am not thinking of a mapmaking editor alone, it would be great if we could also change the properties of the enemies.

Properties like:
- type of enemies
- speed
- amount of enemies

I also would like to see different type of enemies added, or the current ones changed. For example an enemy that is normally very weak, but is the strongest when it comes to eliminating the boss.

With more variables and an editor this would be a game you could play forever.

 

[reiboul]

Ice and Earth turrets could have bonus features like I mentioned before so people have a reason to build them. ICE could slowdown enemies, maybe and earth turrets could be the only ones with splash damage...

That's a great idea, exactly what I should have thought for making them useful! but splash damage is pretty useless since enemies are too far from each other... unless Alex introduces swarms of enemies :rolleyes:

I find, that the barricades have no real use in single build mode. They are to expencive and at the point ingame, when you can build your first one, the fire turrets are more effective.

At this point I have never found utility for those things... unless i'm rich and can replace all my fire turrets with those. They should be cheaper, so they would be the next step after upgraded fire turrets! and the laser upgrade is damn expensive!

Ok, the superb Mega Tower beats (mostly) all I have to say

MegaTower? WTF? i heard something from a hidden tower... how do you get it? :rolleyes:

 

[Alex.]

b._.o._.b: That's the kind of editor I planned out initially, then scaled back, then ran out of time altogether I hope to someday do something at that level.

MegaTower? WTF? i heard something from a hidden tower... how do you get it? :rolleyes:

Barricades; perhaps I should not keep it a 'secret', I suppose it's quite necessary to get far into the game

 

[reiboul]

b._.o._.b: That's the kind of editor I planned out initially, then scaled back, then ran out of time altogether I hope to someday do something at that level.

MegaTower? WTF? i heard something from a hidden tower... how do you get it? :rolleyes:

Barricades; perhaps I should not keep it a 'secret', I suppose it's quite necessary to get far into the game

As I wrote it, i suddendly tried to build a lot of barricades to get past level 36... but how can we know their stats? :rolleyes:

 

[Quiest]

Thanks for the game, Alex. My favorite compo entry atm Very nicely done, pretty good interface, and your graphics style is wonderful.

But I find it quite hard... its impossible for me to kill a boss in their first way around, and I also haven`t been able to beat the 24 and more wave levels.

I hope you`re going to tweak it a little / make it a little easier.
And please, could you add a infinite money mode, just for the fun of it?
As you are not saving highscores or anything, this should be okay...

Another thing is, could you move the sell building button somewhere else, to like, L+R, I don`t know how often it happened that I wanted to upgrade a tower and accidentally sold it...
Background music would be nice too, something not to loud/distracting maybe.
And how about a fast-forward button, so you don`t have to wait ages for the enemies to get around the level...

Other than that, I think you`ll make first place with the game, this could even be a commercial game (although I hope it won`t).