Tower defence - Static Vs Dynamic building

Published October 30, 2014
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[indent=1]When we sent the link of our pre-pre beta release to several friends that were not into Tower Games, the first feedback was always the same : "cool...but well, a bit static...".In that version of the game, towers were being built automatically on click (Build Tower button - Choose position - Click - Tower built and fully working). While this is quite traditional for TD players, i get it that somehow seems unnatural for people otherwise used to RTS games.We want to keep with us all the traditional TD followers, but why not making a game that can make more people happy?So approx ten days ago, i backed up all the code, and went for a deep refactoring of the building system. What i decided to add was the following :
A limited amount of workers will be available on the map (their number depending on the skills of the player. They will leave from the castle (or from the workers tent when this building is available due to research and closer to the construction site than the castle) and walk until the construction site.There they will build the tower in a certain amount of time (progress shown by the building bar beneath the tower) and then come back to the castle.Construction sites are queued when the amount of builders available is smaller than the amount of sites.But then we decided to add some spice to it. Builders can be killed by passing too close to incoming enemies, therefore they try to avoid paths as much as possible, and in case of death, they will respawn in a certain time (unless the player spends some resources to make it instantaneous). The builders stats can be increased through research and skills.

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BuildersWork.PNG Building2Paths.jpg

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[indent=1]Now, what do you think of this concept? So far in the test it performed beautifully. We think it gives much more importance to the time between waves (so sometimes now skipping that time for money ain't worth anymore), it forces the player to develop a much more interesting building plan, and brings somehow the game to a level of vitality that was missed before. (again, ignore the graphics that in the test image are totally temporary)

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[indent=1]Additionally, unlocking the builders tent becomes a very important achievement of the game, and increasing the number of workers and their skills (hp, speed and working time), gives additional interesting features for the research.

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Any comment on it?

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1 likes 6 comments

Comments

Simon Johansson

I think this concept sounds interesting but I would like to have an option to choose from.

Maybe have the possibility to choose some kind of "mods" or something.

October 30, 2014 11:27 AM
EiR_TD

Mmm it was one of the few design choices on which I didn't think to allow a choice to the user, you might be right. I am only a bit afraid that then one of the two modes might end up being unbalanced (unless by changing that I change a lot more of things like waves composition, time between waves, spawning times, etc etc).

Do you think that traditional TD lovers might be "upset" by the dynamic building system they are not used to?

October 30, 2014 12:06 PM
Simon Johansson

I dont think its a problem if its unbalanced. I just see it as a different challange.

If you let the players chooce you will cover more people and probebly more people will play it.

Lets say you can pick normal, hard, expert and so on.

Normal spawn, fast spawn, ultra fast spawn.....

Normal building, fast building,...

Workers "can die/ can not"

etc etc

Hardcore TD lovers might want it superfast and stressful "newbies" maybe want it slow to learn etc.

Soory for my bad english tho :)

October 30, 2014 02:48 PM
slicer4ever

I dont think its a problem if its unbalanced. I just see it as a different challange.
If you let the players chooce you will cover more people and probebly more people will play it.

Lets say you can pick normal, hard, expert and so on.
Normal spawn, fast spawn, ultra fast spawn.....
Normal building, fast building,...
Workers "can die/ can not"
etc etc

Hardcore TD lovers might want it superfast and stressful "newbies" maybe want it slow to learn etc.
Soory for my bad english tho smile.png


I can agree on the speed settings for diffrent difficultys, but the workers die/not dieing seems rather integral to the overall mechanics, and disagree with making something like that an option.
October 30, 2014 04:11 PM
EiR_TD

Hi Simon,

part of what you say makes sense to me indeed, that more choice to the player might attract a wider variety of people, but i also think that those options that make such a difference will need all an additional tuning. On the other hnd, I think that somehow a sort of balance has to be kept (of course difficulty level, at the moment we have 4 to choose, influencing a lot of variables already, including spawning speeds, construction times, etc).

Difficulty level settings, by coming on each as a" list of settings", coming as "full packages", are somehow easier to balance among them, while by allowing the setting on a single strongly gameplay-influencing parameter, i am afraid that more could go wrong in the balance.

But again, you are right that some choices of settings might attract different players. big dilemma in my mind now ;)

Your English is good enough man, no need to apologize for it at all! Thanks for you opinion, there are so many things that are in front of me and I don't see, that every external thought is welcome!

October 30, 2014 04:16 PM
EiR_TD

slicer4ever, you answered while i was writing my answer ;) . I agree with you about the overall mechanics and balancing indeed.

October 30, 2014 04:21 PM
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