[SA Game Jam 2016] Layers of Defence

- Jam Name: SA Game Jam 2016
- Project Name: Layers of Defence
- Experience: Student (I guess, programming students but not game design students)
- 48 hr entry (we have a second build up on itch which we polished up a bit before 5 PM on Monday, so I suppose that counts as a 72h entry)

FINAL BUILD https://fireprufe15.itch.io/layers-of-defence

Team of 2, me and Storm.

Description: Its tower defence, where you can customise your own towers and stuff.

Comments

  • All the best with burning the midnight oil!
    Thanked by 1StormGameDev
  • That looks really rad! Giving players the ability to customize their tower's appearance and attack properties is very clever.
    And the balancing of attack properties with price means you can customize towers to suite you play style.

    Very exited to play this :)
    Thanked by 1StormGameDev
  • Thanks a lot :) Hopefully we can get done in time.
  • I'm also attempting a strategy game, although of a different sort. I'm not confident that my game gives players enough room to express themselves though. Units can be customised, but mostly in terms of stats and not nearly as much as with yours it seems. The fact that your towers also change visually when their stats change makes your game all that more expressive.
    Thanked by 1StormGameDev
  • Thanks a lot :) Yea we had the same problem (we still do actually) but we managed to find a way to have the player play through the game in a style the he/she felt comfortable with, which is different because most TD force you to play in a certain way and build in a specific pattern in order to get to the higher waves. We wanted ours to be more about playing with different combinations and find a way that works for the player as an individual. I really hope you can find a way to incorporate more of theme into your game, because I love strategy games and I would really like to play it! best of luck :)
  • Looks great so far! Very impressed with your customisation. I'm also making a TD, though with cards and deck building instead of customisation. I'll keep watching how you progress. Good luck!
    Thanked by 1StormGameDev
  • Yea I saw your post earlier, I think the cards open up a whole new array of ideas and opportunities. I really think your game will be fresh and the 2 genres will make for interesting game play. Will definitely be playing your game :)
    Thanked by 1Pixel_Reaper
  • https://youtube.com/watch?v=SAiKDz_VZ7g&feature=youtu.be

    Some more Stuff has been added, fixed and broken :D
    Thanked by 1EvanGreenwood
  • edited
    https://fireprufe15.itch.io/layers-of-defence Build is up, uploading a second build with some changes now, hopefully it is there before 7PM.
  • https://fireprufe15.itch.io/layers-of-defence Build is up, uploading a second build with some changes now, hopefully it is there before 7PM.
    Sweet !
  • Me: "Hey MG lucky we're software engineers, so we were able to make super efficient code"
    MG: *Laughs hysterically* "Sure..."
  • Ok so here's the final version: https://fireprufe15.itch.io/layers-of-defence

    So just some thing to point out (because our friend "Time" decided to leave so soon)
    - Click on a block to change its color. This is in the create tower screen of course (Close the color picking dialog before changing the color of another block, coz bugs...)
    - We forgot to add the tower cost to the buttons :( but it does work correctly
    - When you are done placing a tower of a certain type, Right click to deselect it before selecting a new tower (The raycasts go through the UI)

    But yea that's about it, We have Uni tomorrow otherwise this could have been a lot more polished. but meh... Let us know what you think anyway :) thanks everyone for the amazing support :D
  • edited
    @StormGameDev @Fireprufe15 Be sure to delete the "player_win_x86.pdb" and "player_win_x86_s.pdb" files for your final build as it considerably lowers the download size ;)
  • edited
    Thoughts :
    * In your tower build screen, the way the tower looks is kind of arbitrary. I think it would be cool if you combine your special abilities with its appearance. So that you can choose 3 special abilities out of a possible 6. This also means that the UI is a bit less daunting at first. I am thinking about something like what Luftrausers does. I realize this takes away some of the customizability of the towers but I don;t think that is does this to a negative effect. I think it would make it a little more focused.
    * There is a nasty bug which causes me to place a tower when instead I want to change to a other tower by clicking on the buttons.
    * I really struggled. Every wave got through. After loosing about 5 times I gave up.
    * Music is nice and cheerful.
    * Bombs are cute.

    I think you guys did well. 3D is a bitch in a game jam !
  • Thoughts :
    * In your tower build screen, the way the tower looks is kind of arbitrary. I think it would be cool if you combine your special abilities with its appearance. So that you can choose 3 special abilities out of a possible 6. This also means that the UI is a bit less daunting at first. I am thinking about something like what Luftrausers does. I realize this takes away some of the customizability of the towers but I don;t think that is does this to a negative effect. I think it would make it a little more focused.
    * There is a nasty bug which causes me to place a tower when instead I want to change to a other tower by clicking on the buttons.
    * I really struggled. Every wave got through. After loosing about 5 times I gave up.
    * Music is nice and cheerful.
    * Bombs are cute.

    I think you guys did well. 3D is a bitch in a game jam !
    Yeah, we really should've done some balancing and bugfixing if we had a bit more time. Thanks for the comments!

  • edited
    So we balanced it and fixed a bunch of things, especially the things Kobus mentioned, still in time for it to be a 72h entry as well.

    https://fireprufe15.itch.io/layers-of-defence

    Both builds are up here, the 48h one and the 72h one.
  • Thoughts :
    * In your tower build screen, the way the tower looks is kind of arbitrary. I think it would be cool if you combine your special abilities with its appearance. So that you can choose 3 special abilities out of a possible 6. This also means that the UI is a bit less daunting at first. I am thinking about something like what Luftrausers does. I realize this takes away some of the customizability of the towers but I don;t think that is does this to a negative effect. I think it would make it a little more focused.
    * There is a nasty bug which causes me to place a tower when instead I want to change to a other tower by clicking on the buttons.
    * I really struggled. Every wave got through. After loosing about 5 times I gave up.
    * Music is nice and cheerful.
    * Bombs are cute.

    I think you guys did well. 3D is a bitch in a game jam !
    So we fixed the tower placing bug, the color picker doesn't bug out either now. We did a bit of balancing. The game is a lot easier now. You can imagine how hard it is to actually balance something like this, so we just made sure that the player can use all his/her towers and can experience a lot more waves. (rather too easy then to difficult, right?) we added a bit more stuff. But yea I would really like to know what you think about the game, now that it's a bit easier to work with and easier to play. :)

  • edited
    I had some fun with this!

    It took me a while to figure out what the numbers were worth (Damage/Speed/Range), but once I knew that I knew how to optimize. Having a cost effective low-level tower to start off with seemed completely necessary in order to win.

    Here's when I figured out that placing layers of shredders with splash damage annihilates enemies (those towers are mostly shredders):

    image

    I would have liked to add slots as I went, or upgraded existing slots. I felt like I needed at least 3 slots for small/medium/high pure damage towers, and I usually used 4 slots for pure damage, which left only one slot to be creative with.

    Obviously there's a lot more one could do given more time. I'd like more ways to interact with enemies or ways in which towers interacted with each other.
    Thanked by 1StormGameDev
  • I had some fun with this!

    It took me a while to figure out what the numbers were worth (Damage/Speed/Range), but once I knew that I knew how to optimize. Having a cost effective low-level tower to start off with seemed completely necessary in order to win.

    Here's when I figured out that placing layers of shredders with splash damage annihilates enemies (those towers are mostly shredders):

    image

    I would have liked to add slots as I went, or upgraded existing slots. I felt like I needed at least 3 slots for small/medium/high pure damage towers, and I usually used 4 slots for pure damage, which left only one slot to be creative with.

    Obviously there's a lot more one could do given more time. I'd like more ways to interact with enemies or ways in which towers interacted with each other.
    We had so much fun creating this game, and we learned so much!

    Yea I usually only get 2 damage towers, low and high. (low being the one I start with) then I use a slow tower with no stats, and a medium splash tower. Then I can choose any tower as my final tower, but I also enjoy the shed one.

    The slots are a great Idea!
    As for the interaction of towers, that gave me an idea: When towers of the same type are placed against one another the become linked up and gain extra stats. This will allow for more tools to use for balancing.

    Thanks for the helpful feed back, we really really appreciate it! we're going to look into adding more to game in terms or art and mechanics, then balance it and perhaps optimize for mobile so we can release it. I think that would be cool.

  • I'm not sure what you had in mind for a longer single player campaign, but it feels like you could gain more customization options as you go. Of course, making them all meaningful might prove tricky (currently the game is mostly a sandbox where you can try-out any load-out you feel like, but if you receive "Slow" as a reward that'll feel shitty to whichever players don't want to use slow... and forcing players to use slow for certain enemy types isn't going to feel great)
  • Yea we're definitely going to have to figure out some sort or progression system. It's going to be difficult but trail and error. Maybe we could allow the player to pick from 1 of 3 rewards each round. Thus limiting them to rewards but not in choice. Like the player could pick between unlocking slow, shred or a reduced price on all future towers in the campaign. Ok maybe not the best example but it makes my point. We also have to be careful that rewards gained early in the campaign don't feel totally useless later on.
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