Tower Defense Indie Game Dev Blog #5: New turret and enemy types

Published June 03, 2018
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This week

Hello everyone! This week, as always, I fixed few bugs, did few tweaks and implemented small features. Here's a list of things I've done this week:

  • Tweaked enemy prices and levels.
  • Added object picking
  • Added sounds and music
  • Tweaked audio gains for different sounds and music
  • Added capability of selling towers
  • Added new cursor
  • Implemented support for multiple enemy waves
  • Added new enemy: Tank
  • Added new turret type: Rocket turret

Screenshots:

Screenshot from 2018-06-03 17-29-52tank_meshtank_textured

 

Important decision

Yesterday I came to important realization while making my game. I realized that I need to build a fully working prototype of the game, figure out all the mechanics, implement all the tower and enemy types first and only then continue doing the minor things and polishing things up. I also realized that I should spend less time on music and 3D models. All these things will be done, but not now. I need to make my game fun first, and only then worry about all the assets. I don't want to repeat same mistake which I did with my previous games where I spent too much time on graphics, sounds, performance optimizations and too little time for actual gameplay mechanics.

Problems

There's one problem which I currently face, and it has to do with the "Tesla Coil" tower. As of now it slows down the enemies in its range, but there's a problem with that. The problem arises when you put the tower at the very end of the maze. When you do that, it not only slows down the enemies in its range, but it also slows down any enemies which came before them. This is because of the obstacle avoidance which makes it so that the enemies couldn't go through each other like some sort of ghosts. The only solution which I can think of right now is to remove this type of tower and replace it with something else.

Next week

This coming week I'll start thinking of and implementing all the different tower and enemy types. I might do some very basic 3D models to use as placeholders as well.

 

That's all for now, thanks for reading :)

 

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Website: http://extrabitgames.com

5 likes 7 comments

Comments

Rutin

Great model :) 

June 04, 2018 06:02 AM
Awoken

Looks fantastic!

June 05, 2018 10:52 PM
DexterZ101

Cool low poly tanks you got there bru ^_^y

June 06, 2018 02:25 AM
lawnjelly

Good going Eddie! I have a slow down tower but yes my enemies walk through each other like ghosts lol. Don't know a good solution yet. :)

June 06, 2018 03:43 PM
EddieK
23 minutes ago, lawnjelly said:

Good going Eddie! I have a slow down tower but yes my enemies walk through each other like ghosts lol. Don't know a good solution yet. :)

Thanks! It seems that you are progressing very quickly with your game. Are you using some kind of premade engine, or are you writing it in OpenGL/DirectX? Because most of my time is spent getting through my mess which I call code :D

June 06, 2018 04:06 PM
Darthy

Hi I like your lowpoly models, but I was wondering why do your wheels and other circural shapes (like canon) have so many polygons? Your models are pretty small on screen, and since you are using blender, you could use fewer polys, and when you use soft shading it wont be even noticable with texture. I think it could improve your performance when you instantiate a lot of models (especially tanks).

Keep up the good work! Darthy

June 07, 2018 09:14 AM
lawnjelly
18 hours ago, EddieK said:

Thanks! It seems that you are progressing very quickly with your game. Are you using some kind of premade engine, or are you writing it in OpenGL/DirectX? Because most of my time is spent getting through my mess which I call code :D

Sorry Eddie I took a while to get back, am currently trying to find / buy a new house so have only been able to spend a few days at a time on the Tower Defence, I probably won't get to do too much more before the end day (June 30th I think it was?), maybe implement some more game modes.

Although I am normally an OpenGL / low level guy, I forced myself to learn Unity from scratch for the challenge (and c#). It seems very much for rapid development and to be beginner friendly, and makes certain things a lot easier as long as you keep it very simple. I'll try and do a full review of Unity etc when I do a post mortem. And my code for the game is definitely messy too, I will have to clean it up majorly afterwards so it will make any sense to a reader, especially as it is sprinkled liberally with comments like 'c# sucks monkey b*lls'.

June 07, 2018 11:33 AM
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