[Tower Defense] Random Walk TD

[rulerofiron99]

A tower defense with a randomly generated path. Drawing inspiration from many different TDs (as well as maps/games from other genres), my aim is to maximise replayability while keeping it fun and balanced.

• Team/co-op for up to 6 players.
  • Can be played solo
  • If you add bots in lobby, you gain full control of them
• 5 races to choose from (more to come)
  • Each race has 15-20 towers, including upgrades.
  • Many unique abilities, very few towers lack abilities.
  • Each race plays very differently
• 5 difficulty levels
• 3 modes for game length (25/40/infinite)
• Difficulty is automatically adjusted based on path quality
• Auto micro feature. Towers can be set to choose targets themselves using different behaviours, e.g. a cold or poison tower can be set to attack enemies that haven't been slowed or poisoned yet.
• Hundreds of different creep types.
  • Levels 1-40 each has on average 3 variations
  • Level 41+ (infinite mode) picks a random creep type out of normal/fast/swarm/boss, ground/air, 5 armour types
• Path is randomly generated each game, no 2 games will be the same.
  • All players' paths connect and lead to the same goal
• Towers are well balanced. Value is determined by recording how much damage a tower will do on average to various wave types.
• New trading system: giving gold has a transfer fee. This is to prevent the usual obvious way to beat team TDs - gold pooling.
• Gold from kills and income is shared, no players will ever find themselves in a hole where they have 20% of their allies' value with no chance to climb up.

Screenshots

FAQ:
>Can you play it solo?
Yes. You can play with any number of players (1-6).
>When will it be released?
"When it's ready". Core systems are about 90% done. I'll probably release it when that's at 100% and I've added another 2-3 races.
>Need any help?
Testing and suggestions are most welcome.
Need an artist to make a good preview image and load screen.
>Does it have AI/bots?
No, and won't have for the foreseeable future.
>Where can I get it?
The latest version will always be attached to this post.
>Why only 6 players?
Terrain generator efficiency and balance. As I work on and improve the generator, I will increase the player count as much as possible.

 

[IcemanBo]

I love this generator stuff. Will have an eye on your progress, good luck!

 

[WhiteFang]

I greatly enjoy TDs.Ill test it and tell you what i think tomorrow

 

[bethmachine]

Well the map sounds intresting even though I may not enjoy td's, but I will test it out.
Is there AI in this map?? Cause I find it difficult to find match on BNet.
Anyhoo, I wish you good luck on your project and maybe improving the thread wouldn't hurt.

 

[rulerofiron99]

Thanks for the comments.

This map doesn't have AI, but it can be played solo.

 

[Alright]

Kids, chemicals are good for you. http://i.imgur.com/oS2JVmS.jpg

Second time try on normal difficulty, first try was me making towers way late in the maze before realizing it was too far from the spawn so I restarted and I got this nice maze path where enemies turn around with towers attacking you repeatedly... I guess I got lucky.

I also realized Chemical towers are toooooooooooo cost effective (being cheap and has an insane "stun" that makes your enemy walk back in its path... armor reduction is just a bonus), so I spammed it and got highly explosive results. I leaked two bosses on the same level before I realized chemical huts were good, and etc. I made up to 12 gold mines because I feel that's the most optimal number before you start to lose any gold after a while since making a 13th goldmine by 20-25th wave will actually net you in less gold than more.

Definitely a very fun TD game in progress! Will follow through with this map

 

[rulerofiron99]

Thanks for the feedback!

I do need to revisit the balance of all the towers, but I don't think the Chemical Merchant is quite as cost effective as you think. On normal you could spam pretty much anything and win.

 

[WhiteFang]

Well,i enjoyed this one.Ill post my review later today

 

[rulerofiron99]

Teaser for the upcoming race:

 

[Kazeon]

Teaser for the upcoming race:

LOL that gate tower xD Creative idea

 

[Molaf]

A quick feedback:

Easy Mode Gobelins

-The path seems a bit messy it's difficult to know the right path until the units actualy reach your door.
-It would be good to have an indication of the armor type of each wave to optimize your build. (maybe a -next command as in Legion TD)
-in armor type: When you write the strenghts and weakness you should reverse the color. It's confusing to have the weakness in green and the strenghts in red. or just write it in another way.
-I noticed that with the 25% chance to hit another target for the basics gobelins towers, you better build them apart otherwise they attack each other. Is it on purpose because they are gobelins and stupid or is it because you didn't fix it yet ?
-maybe autocast icons for the chemicals mechant ?
-Not enough availables upgrades to my taste.
-reduce the size of the gold mines it's ugly when you have almost a field
-rockets of the tinker are too overpowered against bosses. Also it would be good to have an icon to explain the ability on the turret itself.
-you should have an assassin tower specialized against bosses, or have another tower that deals magical damages and balance the alchemist to make it as an assassin.
-I built 7 gold mines before the level 15 and then it became way too easy. (just a few leaks at the beginning) To balance that maybe you should have only one gold mine that can be upgraded every 3 or 4 levels ... Just a thought
-Need camera commands because I did the mistake to scroll and my camera got stuck closer than it was before.
-I want critical strike !! :'(
-Just to check I restarted the map bunch of times and it seems that my first path was very lucky. I think you could balance it by allowing a minimal distance between the starting point and the door. (I don't know how you did this thought)

Good job ! And good luck for the rest

 

[rulerofiron99]

-The path seems a bit messy it's difficult to know the right path until the units actualy reach your door.

That's what the arrows on the ground are for, to show you the path that the creeps will take. You should look at the whole path before deciding where to build. I'll increase the start preparation time a bit so that new players can have a nice look at it.

-It would be good to have an indication of the armor type of each wave to optimize your build. (maybe a -next command as in Legion TD)

Will do!

-in armor type: When you write the strenghts and weakness you should reverse the color. It's confusing to have the weakness in green and the strenghts in red. or just write it in another way.

The reason for the colour is that in all cases, green is good for the player, and red is bad for the creep. I might change it back to a more traditional scheme.

-I noticed that with the 25% chance to hit another target for the basics gobelins towers, you better build them apart otherwise they attack each other. Is it on purpose because they are gobelins and stupid or is it because you didn't fix it yet ?

That's the point! When placed alone, they're actually pretty strong for their cost. The balance purpose of this is to make them weaker and weaker as the game progresses. PS: I intend to add a tower that will actually benefit from being attacked.

-maybe autocast icons for the chemicals mechant ?

It does autocast, but I am planning to add autocast toggles.

-Not enough availables upgrades to my taste.

Noted.

-reduce the size of the gold mines it's ugly when you have almost a field

Start building at the corner of the map

-rockets of the tinker are too overpowered against bosses. Also it would be good to have an icon to explain the ability on the turret itself.

That's the point. Tinkers are good against bosses, but sub-standard against normal, and bad against swarm. And goblin sorely needs a tower that's good against bosses, most of the rest of their towers are only good against swarm and normal.

-you should have an assassin tower specialized against bosses, or have another tower that deals magical damages and balance the alchemist to make it as an assassin.

The shadow race has a few towers that are good against bosses, and several builders will have anti-boss towers. The focus of goblin is not to have a lot of anti-boss (other than the Tinker), since it's meant to be a co-op game.

-I built 7 gold mines before the level 15 and then it became way too easy. (just a few leaks at the beginning) To balance that maybe you should have only one gold mine that can be upgraded every 3 or 4 levels ... Just a thought

You're playing on easy! Rethink the gold mines when you've beaten it on veteran

-Need camera commands because I did the mistake to scroll and my camera got stuck closer than it was before.

There are commands, I just need to note them in the quests menu. You can type -info to show the commands.

-Just to check I restarted the map bunch of times and it seems that my first path was very lucky. I think you could balance it by allowing a minimal distance between the starting point and the door. (I don't know how you did this thought)

There are things in place to balance out the map, but they need some further tweaking.
They are:
- The path distance has a minimum and maximum, so you'll likely have an average sized path.
- The path's "quality" is determined by how many strong points there are (places where towers can hit two paths), and the creeps' health is adjusted according to this.

 

[Molaf]

That's what the arrows on the ground are for, to show you the path that the creeps will take. You should look at the whole path before deciding where to build. I'll increase the start preparation time a bit so that new players can have a nice look at it.

I got this but as my path were all at the same spot, it was very very messy. So the arrows were all stuck together and it was impossible to clearly see the path.

also after playing I thought of something, maybe you could add some areas where you cant build at all even when its not on the path, some rocks or water spots. and it would be an option for higher difficulty.

Im gonna try in veteran next time ;p

 

[rulerofiron99]

Ah, I see what you mean. It's still possible to carefully study the arrows to see what will happen, but I will adjust the generator slightly to prevent such high density areas from being made.

Good idea about the unbuildable areas, I'll surely add those.

 

[sonofjay]

A random generated path for TD? Sounds very interesting! I'll play it when I get the time but first I'll just ask if its do-able alone?

 

[rulerofiron99]

A random generated path for TD? Sounds very interesting! I'll play it when I get the time but first I'll just ask if its do-able alone?

Yes, I can beat it on veteran using any builders.

 

[sonofjay]

Ah great, that will make playing alone a worth while.

 

[sonofjay]

Played it. Its a very fun and unique TD and for an early stage map I think it is already polished. I like the idea of the arrow point the direction of where the creeps will go the boards are also well set up and goblin race .\,,/.

I can't judge the tower's balance atm since I only played it once for now but I think they do their roles just like your usual towers on any TD map but I like that there is not much redundancies on tower's roles.

I also like that you do not exaggerate on tower's damage and creep's hp, I always think its weird that most td makers(at least for the TDs that I played) exaggerate on the numbers since it doesn't really help you estimate the amount of dps you throw there.

Since I only played it once atm does the path also get randomized every game? That will be very cool.

And also, are there really five difficulty? The game text only showed me three to choose from(easy, normal and hard).

 

[rulerofiron99]

Indeed, every game is a new maze

The next two difficulties, -veteran and -insane, exist but aren't noted. The intention is to show the command to a player after successfully beating hard.

 

[hiphop4eva]

I always liked random generators. It allows a lot of replayability. I played only once, with goblins and on easy. It was pretty fun, going to play it again soon with shadows. That death gate thing is a good idea too.

 

[jopi]

very nice already.

We played it on the incw funmap evening with 5 players. Maybe bhusta will upload the replay soon. If I remember right we played on normal (or hard?), and it was pretty easy, especially when we started to build together in an area in front of the finish-gate where the creeps had many crossings.

Maybe you could add something like a 'bet' feature, where every player can bet a number of additional creeps to the wave, those additional creeps could give some increased income when you manage to kill them all, or unlock more Auto-Micro slots, as it caps at 30 and from there you can't auto-micro your towers, or have to switch around all the time (not that 30+ towers were needed...).

 

[rulerofiron99]

I always liked random generators. It allows a lot of replayability.

Good to hear, that's exactly what I'm aiming for

very nice already.

We played it on the incw funmap evening with 5 players. Maybe bhusta will upload the replay soon. If I remember right we played on normal (or hard?), and it was pretty easy, especially when we started to build together in an area in front of the finish-gate where the creeps had many crossings.

Maybe you could add something like a 'bet' feature, where every player can bet a number of additional creeps to the wave, those additional creeps could give some increased income when you manage to kill them all, or unlock more Auto-Micro slots, as it caps at 30 and from there you can't auto-micro your towers, or have to switch around all the time (not that 30+ towers were needed...).

Thanks for the feedback. To be honest I haven't played it multiplayer since the very early versions, so I'm glad you did

I think your idea for the bet feature is brilliant, it fits well with my central design theme of minmaxing. I might just make it as an ability for a specific builder/tower though, since I am planning for example an "oracle" tower that will be able to tell you what the next 2-4 waves will be.

---

UPDATE: version 0.26
- Added new builder: City (hastily balanced and not yet thoroughly bug-tested, please provide feedback)

 

[bhusta]

The videos from the funmap evening need some more time.
Here is an unlitsted version of the second gameplay of your map: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTjJSVKopuU

We had a lot of fun playing it and I must say I am reallly impressed.
At first I didn't get what auto-micro is but in the end it is a cool feature.

What I would like to address is the long game time. More than an hour is too much. Would be cool if you could manage it to take about 40min.
After every wave, you could give the builders an ability called next which reduces the wait time a little bit and if every player used this ability the next wave starts immediately.

 

[rulerofiron99]

After every wave, you could give the builders an ability called next which reduces the wait time a little bit and if every player used this ability the next wave starts immediately.

This is already a thing, but unfortunately I still haven't noted all the commands in the quest menu.
A player can type "-ready" or "-r" to mark themselves as ready, and the next round starts when all players have readied up.
I will add the ability version as well as you suggested.

 

[jopi]

ok, just tested the new race 'city'. I have to say that it is indeed special, it's a lot of fun, and has some nice features. I guess it's a bit more lategame oriented, where you have a lot of houses next to your minimal defense and start so get a lot of tax-income while also spawing a lot of milita in addition to your slowed down towers.

Some things I niticed are, that the cathedral does not show a visible buff on buildings that are in range for sure (is it bugged?). Also you forgot the cathedral's and Town Hall's tooltip.

Another thing is that the gate only has one orientation, maybe you could add also the vertical one? As city is already very dependant on the right paterns in the path (e.g. a circular path with enough space for a barrack, maybe you should think of lowering its building size as it's somehow hard to use, or at least not to its full potential).

Also the worker plays the work anim forever once you build something, and the sound is a bit annoying, would be nice if you could fix this^^.

 

[rulerofiron99]

Whoops, thanks for reminding me of those. I suppose I could add the alternative gate using one of the remaining slots, it just somehow feels weird to me.

Not quite sure what to do with the barracks. I might change the spawning pattern to allow it to spawn more fewer roads if necessary.

EDIT: Changing the barracks to spawn using 12 different positions, still with the limit of 8 footmen. The result is that with 3 or more sides you get max footies, if the barracks is on the corner of two paths it will spawn 7, and if the barracks is simply along a single path it will spawn 4.

UPDATE: version 0.27
- Fixed cathedral
- Fixed tooltips for cathedral and town hall
- Changed barracks and archery range spawning as above
- Barracks and archery range will now spawn footmen/archers on completion instead of only at the start of the round, allowing you to build them in dire situations.
- Fixed builder looping work animation

UPDATE 2: 0.28
- Fixed cathedral, town hall and archery range not being sellable
- Added vertical gate
- Added command list in quest menu

EDIT: Known bugs:
- Vertical gate has no pathing (waiting for a model - request to make a proper alt gate)
- Town Hall self-destructs when it attacks (spell has the same use order as sell)

 

[rulerofiron99]

Update - 0.29
- Fixed gate and town hall
- Added new auto micro style: target high HP
- Several other small fixes

Focus for the next update:
- More upgrades for all races
- More creep variations
- Path generator optimisation

 

[jopi]

cool, updates! gonna test the new version soon.

Maybe you could make a treant/ancient race? Instead of sell, they can uproot their towers and root them in somewhere else (for some small gold cost maybe). They could also make some use of roots and stuff where effects are applied when enemies walk over it.

Also I find the goblin zeppelin quite unique. Maybe you could add a race that puts some focus on these flying towers. (Idea: a tower that has to be placed on the path. Instead of an attack it can open a portal somwhere on the path for some seconds, and enemies that step into it are teleported to where the towers hovers over the path. Ok this has big trolling potentian xD)

 

[rulerofiron99]

cool, updates! gonna test the new version soon.

Maybe you could make a treant/ancient race? Instead of sell, they can uproot their towers and root them in somewhere else (for some small gold cost maybe). They could also make some use of roots and stuff where effects are applied when enemies walk over it.

Also I find the goblin zeppelin quite unique. Maybe you could add a race that puts some focus on these flying towers. (Idea: a tower that has to be placed on the path. Instead of an attack it can open a portal somwhere on the path for some seconds, and enemies that step into it are teleported to where the towers hovers over the path. Ok this has big trolling potentian xD)

For the "nature" race, I have something else in mind, based on Sprout TD. You'd place the first "seed" tower somewhere, and instead of a builder, you'll spawn more towers from an existing tower. The next race will either by this, or some sort of ice race (nerubians or magics).

I'm not sure I've understood your teleporter idea correctly, but it sounds like a great way to implement a teleport mechanic I've been thinking about.

Thanks for the ideas as always, and keep them coming!

 

[jopi]

Ok, let me explain it a bit more:
First you have a tower that can only be build on the path, it has no actual attack, but places an AoE effect with the attack point ability (smiliar to the upgraded explosive tower from goblins that burns the ground), this sets up the portal (maybe you need to make something so it's only placeable on the path). The cooldown for this portal is rather long, and it stays open for e.g. 5 seconds. While it's open and creeps step into it, they are teleported back to the tower which set up the portal. With this it's possible to move enemies back along the path (but also make them skip a part, when you place the portal wrong).

You somehow also should add a buff to the units teleported so they can't be teleported for some time, or someone could easily port creeps back to start with some of this portal towers.

 

[rulerofiron99]

Ah, that is quite similar to what I had in mind. As you mention, it could be incredibly strong if implemented badly. You could potentially keep creeps in the path indefinitely.

I might do something like this:
Instead of choosing a target location, the creep is simply sent back X amount of steps back down the path.
It would have at least a few seconds cooldown (most of the swarm would come through).
Units teleported would gain resistance, either in the same way they get resistance to the Chemical Merchant's alcohol (every cast doubles resistance), or a X second buff preventing teleport.

If I make it as part of the Chaos race, though, the portal location would be extremely random instead (random path arrow within ~1000 of the portal).

EDIT: Update

• More creep variations (about 20 new creeps spread across all levels)
• New towers
  • Chemist (upgrade from Chemical Merchant)
  • Soul Chiller (upgrade from Soul Collector)
  • Arch (upgrade from Gate)
  • Keep (upgrade from Town Hall)
• Optimised path generator a bit (on average a 50% reduction in time spent generating a 5-player path, still needs much more work)
• Reworked path-based difficulty calculation. Path quality now also affects the rate at which difficulty increases during the course of the game.

Next update will either be a new race, or another mixed patch like this one.

 

[Chaosy]

Gonna test it~

edit:

list of suggestions

*If you start a wave early you should get some gold depending on how early you start it.
*Please make it display "You've lost a life. (x)" so you see how many lives you have left.
*The arrow model looks buggy to me, why do you have two arrows on top of each other?
*the gate seems to be pretty bad considering how much it costs. It attacks like 3-4 times per wave, dealing 300 * x damage and can only target ground units. Meanwhile an upgraded guard tower can attack air units, got longer range, air splash and deals 50 damage per attack.
*the map is huge for a single player. You could divide the map into smaller parts depending on the number of players, aka set camera bounds to a lower number, this would reduce the generation time a lot too!
​

Generation done right, pretty interesting mechanics too. Sadly it was too hard for me on normal difficulty, I made it to wave 11.

 

[rulerofiron99]

Thanks for the feedback!

*If you start a wave early you should get some gold depending on how early you start it.

Hmmm... sure, why not.

*Please make it display "You've lost a life. (x)" so you see how many lives you have left.

Will do.

*The arrow model looks buggy to me, why do you have two arrows on top of each other?

The model just has a double tip. Best one I could find. Would be happy to use a different one if there is a more appropriate model.

*the gate seems to be pretty bad considering how much it costs. It attacks like 3-4 times per wave, dealing 300 * x damage and can only target ground units. Meanwhile an upgraded guard tower can attack air units, got longer range, air splash and deals 50 damage per attack.

I'll buff it a bit, balance was based around a longer bash duration, which was shortened because you could stunlock bosses between a couple of gates. Anyhow, the towers are balanced by recording how much damage they deal during a test round while placed at an average spot. Compared to a guard tower placed where the wave will pass it once, their "damage dealt per gold spent" actually favours the gate, but as you know in reality you'll mostly be building guard towers in places where they hit the wave twice.

*the map is huge for a single player. You could divide the map into smaller parts depending on the number of players, aka set camera bounds to a lower number, this would reduce the generation time a lot too!

This is already done (minus the camera bounds). There is a different "map bound" region for every amount of players, and the smallest is the size that it is to give the generator enough space to make a long enough path.
Once I've further optimised the generator, I'll make the size a bit smaller. The empty space bothers me too

Regarding difficulty, it could be that my difficulty changes in the latest version were too much. Which race did you use?

 

[Chaosy]

I was playing as human. I don't complain about the difficulty. I am just reporting it ^^

 

[jopi]

And what if you make the gates really close. What I mean is, that they close and stop enemies from passing through them. This again would need some kind of buff so creeps that were blocked by a gate lately can pass through another without problem, and also don't cause it to close. This could 'city' make very potent on stacking strats where you make massive use of AoE towers.

 

[rulerofiron99]

And what if you make the gates really close. What I mean is, that they close and stop enemies from passing through them. This again would need some kind of buff so creeps that were blocked by a gate lately can pass through another without problem, and also don't cause it to close. This could 'city' make very potent on stacking strats where you make massive use of AoE towers.

I'm planning to do this for a different tower, possibly as part of another race. Or maybe even as a very expensive buff for the gate.

My concern is that the stacking strategy would be too good, splash towers would become 3-5x as valuable as their balance point.

A different method I might use would be for the creeps to stop in front of the gate, but spaced apart (about 50 distance). This would increase the duration of a strong point, and also serve to bring fast creeps closer together to make splash more useful against them.

 

[Kino]

I absolutely love the concept. It really forces the player to adapt and figure out how to manage each generated maze on the fly.

The things I felt were really strange, was the focus on attack types and tower size placement.
As the player, you only have 8 towers. I found it much more interesting building around the random path and tower ability synergy as opposed to what attack types would sync with the mob defense types.
If this was a map with 20+ tower types, it would be fine. But here I feel that your ability to answer the challenges the creeps offer is rather forced/limited.
Thats probably the only major critique I would have for now.

Tower wise, it also ended up being very tower-spammy, due to lack of upgrades. Combined with the above, the focus on attack vs defense types became rather irrelevant as you were able to spam all the tower types pretty easily. It also meant that having to plan around the path and tower interactions became a non issue, especially true for the shadow race where you could quickly blanket everything in shadow.

The map also got much, much easier in the later waves (30+), its like all the unusual wave types (like the stunners) vanished and only standard mobs were left.

A few minor things
- Needs a spawn/leak animation when enemies cross the threshold.
- Being able to refer to the multi-board for current wave info/income would be good.
- The shadow basic tower could have a projectile that blends less into the shadow, druid of talon/voidwalker attack would be good.
- Is there a reason why stuns have a freeze visual effect?
- It seems possible that you can have more than 1 mine per sapper?
- Would be nice if the camera was locked to prevent mouse scroll zoom

Still, its the most fun Ive had in a TD in years (no kidding).
Would love to see a panic mode with greatly reduced prep time between rounds.

 

[rulerofiron99]

Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

The things I felt were really strange, was the focus on attack types and tower size placement.
As the player, you only have 8 towers. I found it much more interesting building around the random path and tower ability synergy as opposed to what attack types would sync with the mob defense types.
If this was a map with 20+ tower types, it would be fine. But here I feel that your ability to answer the challenges the creeps offer is rather forced/limited.
Thats probably the only major critique I would have for now.

Tower size is there to add more variety, and force the player to think more careful about how to build clusters of towers so that no space is wasted. Tower size will be less of an issue when I change the maze generator a bit - I plan to have the rows/columns alternate between having a 1 tile gap and a 2 tile gap.

Limited tower options are because the main focus is to make this a co-op TD. I'm trying to avoid having towers be redundant between the different builders; every builder should have some niche.

For solo play, I'm going to address this by giving you 2 builders instead of 1.

Tower wise, it also ended up being very tower-spammy, due to lack of upgrades. Combined with the above, the focus on attack vs defense types became rather irrelevant as you were able to spam all the tower types pretty easily. It also meant that having to plan around the path and tower interactions became a non issue, especially true for the shadow race where you could quickly blanket everything in shadow.

The reason for the spammy nature is that good tower positions can also be thought of as a resource. If towers had endless upgrades, you would just build one of each at roughly the same position where the creeps pass twice, and from that point on you don't really need to think about tower placement anymore. I want tower placement to be important all throughout the game, and as you use up all the best spots you have to weigh the options of building your new towers at subpar locations or selling something in a nice spot.

That said, I will add a few more upgrades for some towers. Currently each race has 10-15 towers (including upgrades), I'll push this up to 20-25.

The map also got much, much easier in the later waves (30+), its like all the unusual wave types (like the stunners) vanished and only standard mobs were left.

Each wave has ~3 different variations, so it's quite possible to not see any flying or stunners for example. I might rework creep abilities to be separate from creep types, so every X waves the creeps will have an ability.

Which difficulty did you play on? I recently changed the difficulty increase formula, so if you played on anything other than easy I'll need to adjust it a little further.

- It seems possible that you can have more than 1 mine per sapper?

Yes, you can have up to 5 before they start to decay. Gives the possibility to stack up a defense for e.g. a boss round.

- Needs a spawn/leak animation when enemies cross the threshold.
- Being able to refer to the multi-board for current wave info/income would be good.
- The shadow basic tower could have a projectile that blends less into the shadow, druid of talon/voidwalker attack would be good.
- Is there a reason why stuns have a freeze visual effect?
- Would be nice if the camera was locked to prevent mouse scroll zoom

Thanks for reminding me; after too much testing I become immune to minor issues

 

[Kino]

Limited tower options are because the main focus is to make this a co-op TD. I'm trying to avoid having towers be redundant between the different builders; every builder should have some niche.

For solo play, I'm going to address this by giving you 2 builders instead of 1.

The issue I have isn't about each builder not being able to fill all niches, but how building towers based on attack type > proper positioning.

The reason for the spammy nature is that good tower positions can also be thought of as a resource. If towers had endless upgrades, you would just build one of each at roughly the same position where the creeps pass twice, and from that point on you don't really need to think about tower placement anymore. I want tower placement to be important all throughout the game, and as you use up all the best spots you have to weigh the options of building your new towers at subpar locations or selling something in a nice spot.

I agree on that.
Im not expecting infinite upgrades, but a more balanced tech vs expansion.

Which difficulty did you play on? I recently changed the difficulty increase formula, so if you played on anything other than easy I'll need to adjust it a little further.

I played on normal.
That said, I think the issue overall is pacing more than anything else.
1-20 is a blast.

By 20-30
- Mazes tend to feel very "complete" as in you don't have any weaknesses that need addressing.
- It also tends to feel very slow as the gap between the early towers vs the last tier of towers is huge.
- The ultra tier towers also come across as very "meh" in how useful they are and how late in the game one can build them realistically.
- You no longer really think about tower placement at that point and it becomes just a another TD.

AFAIK you could easily do the following
- max of 25 rounds
- shorten each maze by ~30%
- bring down the cost of the end tier towers

The map is definitely beatable, its just that the cool part; having to adapt to a random maze is lost after a certain point.

 

[jopi]

Ok, let's push the random walk function to the limit...

What if after a set amount of rounds (or maybe in a range e.g. after every 7 - 10 rounds) All players get their towers refunded fully as they are warped away, and the maze is rerolled (think of it as switching into a different world, maybe also with tiles? So players have some feel of progress, you could make every 'world' end with a boss and also make the creeps more themed to the world). Then they have some time to build in the new maze.

You also could make the gold refund in steps and not all at once, this would also mean, that the first few rounds (e.g. first 3 if you make the gold refunded over 3 rounds) should be a bit weaker.

EDIT: Here are some ideas:

Ice world: no special terrain effects, creeps are a little slower but have a bigger health pool than normal at the given round. Stun/freeze creep ability is more common. At every round start there spawns a random number of stationary 'chilling winds' (e.g. ice tornados) somewhere along the path and slow the attack rate of towers.

Fire world: randomly along the path there are lava areas that are unbuildable, here a builder with flying towers would be good in this world. Also creeps in this world move a bit faster.

Forest world: Trees(neutral passive shop building) are generated along the path randomly (still quite often). They have to be 'cut down' for some gold before the space is buildable. The gold spent on cutting trees would still be refunded when the forest world ends.

 

[rulerofiron99]

The issue I have isn't about each builder not being able to fill all niches, but how building towers based on attack type > proper positioning.

Agreed, I'll adjust them from 80%/160% to 90%/130% or so.

AFAIK you could easily do the following
- max of 25 rounds
- shorten each maze by ~30%
- bring down the cost of the end tier towers

For the time being, I'll just add the option to pick game length (short = 25 rounds, normal = 35, long = infinite).

What if after a set amount of rounds (or maybe in a range e.g. after every 7 - 10 rounds) All players get their towers refunded fully as they are warped away, and the maze is rerolled (think of it as switching into a different world, maybe also with tiles? So players have some feel of progress, you could make every 'world' end with a boss and also make the creeps more themed to the world). Then they have some time to build in the new maze.

You also could make the gold refund in steps and not all at once, this would also mean, that the first few rounds (e.g. first 3 if you make the gold refunded over 3 rounds) should be a bit weaker.

Excellent idea, but not something I'll add any time soon.

Ice world: no special terrain effects, creeps are a little slower but have a bigger health pool than normal at the given round. Stun/freeze creep ability is more common. At every round start there spawns a random number of stationary 'chilling winds' (e.g. ice tornados) somewhere along the path and slow the attack rate of towers.

Fire world: randomly along the path there are lava areas that are unbuildable, here a builder with flying towers would be good in this world. Also creeps in this world move a bit faster.

Forest world: Trees(neutral passive shop building) are generated along the path randomly (still quite often). They have to be 'cut down' for some gold before the space is buildable. The gold spent on cutting trees would still be refunded when the forest world ends.

I've been planning these things separately, but the way you structure it sounds much better. I'll definitely do this.

 

[jopi]

yes, I totally agree with you, that this is something what can be done in later versions. Still I really hope you will add something of this kind, as 'story' or rather progress, were always things I was missing in TDs, you play some kind of faceless builder, holding back hundreds of meaningless enemies for more or less no particular reason xD

 

[rulerofiron99]

yes, I totally agree with you, that this is something what can be done in later versions. Still I really hope you will add something of this kind, as 'story' or rather progress, were always things I was missing in TDs, you play some kind of faceless builder, holding back hundreds of meaningless enemies for more or less no particular reason xD

Hehe, you're asking the wrong mapper for that, I have zero interest in stories

 

[jopi]

well, I'm not asking for stories ^^, but with the 'world' thingy you could add a (faked) feeling of progress or achievement, not simply the next round with a new number and different creeps...

Maybe someone else also reads this and likes the idea, so I'm dropping it here
'TD campaign incoming!'

 

[rulerofiron99]

Update - 0.31
- Game length now selectable (short [25]/long [40]/infinite)
- Infinite mode starts after level 40, every level rolls a random creep out of 40 (5 armour types * 4 creep types * ground/air)
- Improved verbosity of life lost message
- Changed attack/armour type factors. Damage dealt to primary armour: 130% (down from 160%), damage dealt to other armours (excl unarmoured): 90% (up from 80%)
- Added SFX when creeps spawn/leak
- Added income to multiboard
- Fixed camera to keep zoom even if you scroll or use another camera key

 

[jopi]

I FACED JARAXXUS!(and won )

Nice updates so far, and city is my new favourite race^^

Also I've found a mistake on the Soul Catcher, as its upgrade has the same tooltip as the Soul Catcher itself.

Also I have to admit that I find the chemist a bit disappointing, as he loses the ability his base tower has (what at least for me was not intuitive). Maybe you could change him, so he really 'rages over the battlefield' when something special happens, making him work similar to the milita of city?

Still haven't tested all changes, for this I have to make some infinite games

 

[rulerofiron99]

Also I have to admit that I find the chemist a bit disappointing, as he loses the ability his base tower has (what at least for me was not intuitive). Maybe you could change him, so he really 'rages over the battlefield' when something special happens, making him work similar to the milita of city?

Brilliant idea. I'll probably make that the result of gaining X stacks of rage, so there is more incentive to spam arrow towers to activate him.

 

[bhusta]

After playing version 0.31 for hours in singleplayer mode I think this td is dc worthy
But nevertheless I have some points.

Is the bat level intended to end the game or am I just bad?

Just for esthetics, could you change the facing of the worker in the direction he teleported?

Could you give towers a range test spell like in this map?

Before the first wave spawns, I can't see what wave will come with -n

Goblin

-Skywatcher
--I would like to have a more seeable missile just for control.

-Zeppelin
--What does it attack? Only ground?

-Chemical merchant
--same what jopi said

-Goldmine
--You should increase the efficiency because the other races can get way more money.

-Knife Juggler
--Maybe add a crit ability. Seems to be quite weak.
--You have some space left. I think the bamboo style http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/2447074-post22.html would fit.


Shadow

Overall this race has too many magic type towers. If the magic immune golem wave spawns one has nearly no chance to survive.

-Altar of Darkness
--the slow spell does not autocast
--and the ability seems to be redundant because I used the Soul Chiller for slowing units. Maybe something like black arrow would be cooler.
If it kills a unit it can spawn a skeleton archer which works like the city melitia.

-Soul Chiller
--Maybe you can let it keep the earned damage buff with the Soul Catcher.
--and it should keep piercing damage

I have no points for the city race yet. Although I played it about ten times already

 

[rulerofiron99]

Thanks!

Is the bat level intended to end the game or am I just bad?

Bug; the bat wave had 700 times more health than it should on that version.

Just for esthetics, could you change the facing of the worker in the direction he teleported?

Could you give towers a range test spell like in this map?

Before the first wave spawns, I can't see what wave will come with -n

Will do.

-Skywatcher
--I would like to have a more seeable missile just for control.

Will do.

-Knife Juggler
--Maybe add a crit ability. Seems to be quite weak.
--You have some space left. I think the bamboo style http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/2447074-post22.html would fit.

Thanks for the link, will definitely grab something from there.

I've been wanting to give the Knife Juggler a unique ability, just haven't thought of anything fun enough yet. NOT crit, it's too boring.

Shadow

Overall this race has too many magic type towers. If the magic immune golem wave spawns one has nearly no chance to survive.

Magic immune rounds aren't meant to be magic immune, in the new version I'm fixing this.

-Altar of Darkness
--the slow spell does not autocast
--and the ability seems to be redundant because I used the Soul Chiller for slowing units. Maybe something like black arrow would be cooler.
If it kills a unit it can spawn a skeleton archer which works like the city melitia.

I'm going to remove the slow ability.

 

[Acutesharpness]

Absolutely fun game, I played as shadow and the concept are kind of nice, some from dota others original, keep it up!