Kamis, 26 April 2012

Hero Tower Defense Thursday: Day 36 - Current Progress! Community Request: Crafting!

Want to get the legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.




Welcome to Hero Tower Defense Thursday!



HTD Logo


Go here to read Day 35 of Hero Tower Defense Thursday.




There won't be a release this week because Sam had some finals to study for but everyone has been working on things that'll be in the next update. Now that we have several artists helping us out we should be able to start adding more content each release. Loot drops, equipment/inventory saving, and character progression are soon to come along with some other things. We've also been researching more ways to improve performance and prepare for other platforms.

Some other changes we may be making is increasing the available unit placements for the heroes. Most unavailable spaces would just be blocked by some sort of environmental obstacle or away from the edges to prevent some other issues. However, there will also be another layer of placements to accommodate non-grounded units like flying pets or a hero with a levitation effect on them. This will allow for more variation and strategy which is always nice.

Another topic of discussion lately has been crafting/trade skills/professions (whatever you want to call them) and how they could work. We plan to have a lot of flexibility when it comes to changing the customization of your heroes. For example, you'll be able to change their hair color and hairstyle by doing something simple such as going to a nearby town. You'll also be able to alter the look and stats of your weapons through blacksmithing (either in town or perhaps through one of your characters). So say you have a sword with good stats and then you find a cooler looking sword later on that you like but it doesn't have very good stats, or vice versa. You could use a blacksmith to change your current sword to look like the other sword. So now you have a sword with the same stats but it has the new look. There may be some limitation to this in that it has to be the same type, e.g. a sword to a sword, not a sword to mace. The same could be used for customizing the way your armor looks.

Of course, you'll also be able to gather materials and create weapons from scratch. This would probably work like your typical RPG and allow you to break down other items to gain materials. Also, you'll likely acquire rare materials from bosses and quests that could lead to more powerful items.

we're throwing around some other ideas for crafting but I'm curious to hear from you guys about what you'd like to see or any ideas you might have. So leave us some of your suggestions in the comments and we'll be sure to check them out, thanks!

In the Works:




  • Design

    • Story: Intro - Scene 1 (10%)
    • Pet System (50%)

  • Graphics

    • Inventory Screen (0%)
    • Skill Selection Screen (0%)
    • Light Skill: Radiate (Native) (10%)
    • Light Skill: Shinning Strike(T1 Physical) (10%)
    • Light Skill: Fleeting Light (T1 Magical) (10%)
    • Unit: Fire Gecko - Movement (75%)
    • Weapon: Edged Boomerang (100%)
    • Weapon: Tall Axe (100%)
    • Weapon: Boomerang (100%)
    • Weapon: Spiked Club (100%)
    • Weapon: Claw Knife (100%)
    • Weapon: Basic Crossbow (50%)
    • Weapon: Flintlock (25%)

  • Programming

    • Saving Inventory and Equipment Setup (0%)


    Check out Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD for HTD art-related concepts, WIPs, polls, and more!

    Let us hear any of your crafting ideas or other suggestions in the comments, all feedback is welcome!


    -Dan

    Kamis, 19 April 2012

    Hero Tower Defense Thursday: Day 35 - HTD Pre-Alpha v0.015 Release! Nature Skills!

    Want to get the legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.




    Welcome to Hero Tower Defense Thursday!



    HTD Logo


    Go here to read Day 34 of Hero Tower Defense Thursday.




    This week we bring you the Native and Tier 1 Nature Skills! We now have skills for each Element! The graphics for Light and Nature are placeholders for now but we'll be filling them in with something nicer soon.

    Nature Skills have a bit more focus on utility rather than damage or defense. It will still have those things but you'll see they are more strategic in nature, no pun intended. For example, the Nature Native Skill heals a little but also immobilizes (roots) the target for 3 seconds. Useful for catching enemies that could be running off or going after certain characters at the expense of healing them slightly. On the other hand you could be using it as stackable heal for a hero that is mostly stationary.

    You might wonder why you would use the Native Skill to heal instead of the Water Nature which heals for more and that can be answered with two reasons. One being Nature has additional utility in that it can also be used on an enemy to root them as mentioned before. And two, is that if an enemy is using a Nature Skill of their own that counters the Water Native then it'll wipe out the Water heal while the Nature heal would be safe.

    As I've said before this will all make more sense as more skills and such get added. Same goes for why you can target your own heroes with direct damage skills that typically one-shot them. There's a reason for this that hasn't been implemented yet and the damage/health ratios are skewed a bit right now so it's imbalanced. We'll be addressing this in due time though.

    One of the next things I'll be figuring out is how pets will work. I talked about pets awhile back in this post and got a bunch of good ideas from you guys so I'll certainly be taking those into consideration. Of course, feel free to offer some in comments for this post as well if you like. We always enjoy hearing ideas and suggestions from our fans!


    What's New:

    -Added Nature Skills (Using placeholder graphics for now)


    In the Works:


  • Design

    • Story: Intro - Scene 1 (10%)
    • Pet System (10%)


  • Graphics

    • Inventory Screen (0%)
    • Skill Selection Screen (0%)
    • Light Skill: Radiate (Native) (10%)
    • Light Skill: Shinning Strike(T1 Physical) (10%)
    • Light Skill: Fleeting Light (T1 Magical) (10%)
    • Unit: Fire Gecko - Movement (20%)


  • Programming

    • Saving Inventory and Equipment Setup (0%)



    Check out Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD for HTD art-related concepts, WIPs, polls, and more!

    Feel free to leave any feedback you might have in the comments, thanks!


    -Dan

    Senin, 16 April 2012

    Weekly Progress, Hacker vs Hacker, the poll, shiny legendary beast (dogs), and more!

    Want to get the legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

    Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!

    Hello hello! Welcome to a brand new week of Sam and Dan games! I'm bringing you the latest news about what is going on with Pokemon Tower Defense 1, PTD 2 and our Creature Game (Project ANPO). Lets get on with it.

    First lets look at the progress for what is left of the game, as you can see three new levels are needed, there won't be an update this week since these will take longer than the simple training levels. But I expect the final update to be out the week after, so look forward to some pretty hard battles and the end of the game!
    • Elite 4 (75%) (Fight the elite 4 using the same team but team is completely healed between fights, potions will reset between fights (thanks for asking Kpwbo), any fainted pokemon will be brought back in full health between fights (thanks for asking Ethan))
      • Intro (100%)
      • Layout (100%)
      • Waves (80%)
        • Lorelei Ice Type Battle (100%)
        • Koga's Poison Type Battle (100%)
        • Bruno's Fighting and Rock Type Battle (100%)
        • Lance's Dragon Type Battle (0%)
        • New Moves for the enemy (100%)
          • Freeze all towers (100%)
          • Slippery Floor (100%)
          • Brain Freeze (100%)
          • "Anti" Poison (100%)
      • Ending (100%)
    • Champion Fight (0%)(Champion and Mewthree)
      • Intro (0%)
      • Layout (0%)
      • Waves (0%)
        • New Moves for the enemy (100%)
          • Tower Teleport (100%)
          • Return to Pokeball (100%)
      • Ending (0%) 
    • Unknown Dungeon (Mewtwo) (0%)
      • Intro (0%)
      • Layout (0%)
      • Waves (0%)
      • Ending (0%) 
    • Adding new pokemon (0%) - Mewtwo
      • Add to Save Code (0%)
    • Change Lorelei's Character Avatar to the right one (100%) 
    • Fix Bruno's Avatar in the level select screen (100%) 
    • Fixed an issue that would erase your avatars when you bought an avatar in the avatar store (100%)
    • Fixed an issue that does not let you end the level if using a move like sunny day (0%)
    • Missing Gym Achievements (0%)
    • Convert all Legendary Beast (Dogs) to their shiny version from regular (0%) 
    • Allow the hacked version of the game to use hacked version pokemon to get hacked version legendary birds (0%) 
    The last two points are of special interest. Converting all Legendary Beast (dogs) to shiny. I never really explained it so I can see why some of you are confused. Well PTD 2 is set on the Johto Region which has Entei, Suicune, Raikou in them. In that game you can expect to catch the regular version without having to pay. So I think people that paid 20 snd coins for them would be very upset that other people can easily get them without paying. Converting them to shiny allows for the regular version to show up in the game while still having the shiny be rare as the beast are now. If you really just want to have them be regular as one person mentioned then you will have to wait until they are available in PTD 2, another possibility is that I convert them but then add the regular ones in the adoption center for a smaller coin price.

    The second point is that in the hacked games you can't get the legendary birds at all. This change will allow you to get them in the hacked version of the game but they will be branded as hacked version.

    Speaking of hacking... I wanted to clarify the different levels of hacking, what I'm okay with and what I'm not okay with. What I do to stop them and what the hell happened this weekend. So first I want to talk about "Hacked version" pokemon and playing the hacked version on various websites like hacked arcade games. Having pokemon with the "Hacked version" tag (that can be seen on the pokemon center) or playing the hacked version games on those sites, (You can see HACKED VERSION in red letters in the main screen) is not something that I'm against. Which is why I asked you guys if you wanted a way to convert from "hacked version" to normal. Since playing the hacked version is not really hacking at all but more like a cheat code. Any other form of hacking, either using cheat engine or any scripts I do not agree with. Recently we have some drama with hackers attacking other hackers and users were caught in the middle of it. I believe everything is resolved now. So lets move on. (If you want to find out more about the whole incident head to our fan run forum.)

    So looking at the poll I can see that the majority wants to be able to convert hacked pokemon back to normal, but a good chunk (29% as of writing this) don't want it. Some might think that it's not fair since you can level up pokemon much faster in the hacked version. But they also have to spend their precious casino coins on clearing hacked pokemon that you can spend on Shadow pokemon. If anything I'm interested to hear what could be tweaked in the idea that would make it so you would agree with it.

    PTD 2
    I get a lot of emails asking me questions or giving me suggestions about PTD 2. While I can't answer them all (I wouldn't be able to get anything else done if I did) I do read them all since it's easier to read and move on that read and think of a good reply to send back. People talk about different things in these emails but the one thing that people talk about the most is transferring pokemon from PTD 1 to PTD 2. So I want to talk in more detail about my current plans (these can change) on the subject.

    1. Yes, you will be able to transfer your pokemon from PTD 1 to PTD 2.
    2. You won't be able to transfer pokemon from PTD 2 to PTD 1 if they don't exist in PTD 1 or have moves that don't exist in PTD 1. Any other pokemon that exist in PTD 1 and has moves from PTD 1 can be transferred back and forth. (By exist I mean that you can capture in PTD 1)
    3. You won't be the same character in PTD 2 that you are in PTD 1 so your pokemon won't obey you when you trade them over unless you have the proper badge. So transferring a level 100 won't mean that you can beat the game easily since that pokemon won't obey you.
    4. You won't be able to trade pokemon from PTD 1 to PTD 2 until you have 4 badges in PTD 2. After you get 4 badges the ability to trade from PTD1 to PTD 2 will be unlocked. 
    5. When you trade a pokemon over to PTD 2 it won't lose any of its experience or level.
    I hope this explains a lot of the questions.

    Creature Universe (Project ANPO)
    I've been so focused on PTD 1 and HTD that I haven't been able to design more for ANPO. If you haven't read the past post for ANPO I suggest you check them out to get all the juicy details.

    Before I conclude, I wanted to say that there won't be any new Mystery Gifts for PTD 1. Also for PTD 2 I'm going to rethink the Mystery Gift to see if there is a better way of making it happen or if I will keep it the same.

    As always let me know what you think! I read all the comments, so even if I don't reply rest assured that I read it. I have to read them to accept or deny them so even if you post doesn't get published I looked at it. :)

    So have a good week and keep coming back to check out my progress and Thursday for HTD! Enjoy!

    Jumat, 13 April 2012

    Hero Tower Defense Thursday: Day 34 - HTD Pre-Alpha v0.014 Release! Light Skills! New Artist, Evan!

    Want to get the legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

    Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!


    Welcome to Hero Tower Defense Thursday!



    HTD Logo


    Go here to read Day 33 of Hero Tower Defense Thursday.




    Ok, so clearly it's Friday lol. I was away all Thursday so didn't have a chance to write the post and Sam was busy as well so we just put the update off till today. So, we'll just pretend it's still Thursday :P

    Ok then, we've added the Light Skills. Probably the first thing you'll notice is the graphics for the effects and icons are a tad different than the rest.. as in they either aren't there or are very basic. Don't worry though, they're just placeholders while the final versions are being developed. The Native Light Skill increases the Physical and Magical Damage of the target.

    We've also picked up another artist who will be helping us out with HTD graphics (we need a lot of them :D). So without further ado, welcome Evan! He's actually a friend of Bill's and is excited to be working with us on our games. Creating art for a game is very time consuming and tends to require more people than other areas so we're happy to have artists such as Bill and Evan helping Kevin out.

    Nature Skills will be coming up next and with those we'll finally have all the Native and Tier 1 skills available for each element. We've got several other things in the works so don't worry too much if you don't see the %'s in the progress lists below changing much. That's just a list of some of the more major things that are currently in the works. Sometimes we have to do a bunch of smaller things that we don't bother listing there.

    Thanks everyone!


    What's New:

    -Added Light Skills (Using placeholder graphics for now)

    -Made some performance tweaks

    -Fixed female hair toggle showing for males


    In the Works:




  • Design

    • Story: Intro - Scene 1 (10%)
    • Weapon and Armor Stats (100%)
    • Map: Intro - Stage 2 (100%)





  • Graphics

    • Inventory Screen (0%)
    • Skill Selection Screen (0%)
    • Light Skill: Radiate (Native) (10%)
    • Light Skill: Shinning Strike(T1 Physical) (10%)
    • Light Skill: Fleeting Light (T1 Magical) (10%)
    • Unit: Fire Gecko - Movement (50%)





  • Programming

    • Nature Skills (100%)
    • Saving Inventory and Equipment Setup (0%)



    Check out Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD for HTD art-related concepts, WIPs, polls, and more!

    Any suggestions or feedback is welcome in the comments!


    -Dan

    Kamis, 05 April 2012

    Hero Tower Defense Thursday: Day 33 - HTD Pre-Alpha v0.013 Release! Multiple Profiles Screen and a bunch of new graphics!

    Want to get the legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

    Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!


    Welcome to Hero Tower Defense Thursday!



    HTD Logo


    Go here to read Day 32 of Hero Tower Defense Thursday.




    Alrighty, another week another update! This time around we've added a Profiles Screen where you can set up multiple profiles. Having several profiles will have more purpose later on when things are more locked down (they are very open right now for testing purposes) and we add more features like achievements and whatnot. There will be a delete option eventually as well but since they are fully editable there's no need right now.

    We've also added a bunch of new graphics for the menus that Kevin has been working on. Graphics for the some of the other screens are still in the works but you can get an idea of how things will be looking from these new ones. It certainly makes it look a lot more finished, so that's always nice to see.

    The Party Screen has been revamped a bit with the new graphics and now mainly uses drag and drop functionality. It's far less clunky this way and overall easier to use. Some of you have mentioned this in the comments and suggested such things so expect the whole interface to become a bit more intuitive as we continue with development.

    There have also been a few bugs you guys/gals have pointed out and we've fixed several of them. There's still a few we're working on but the biggest ones should be gone now. Thanks for pointing them out!

    Light skills will be coming soon, there were some technical difficulties in the graphics department because the pen to Kevin's tablet bit the dust and he had to wait a few days while a new one shipped in. All is well now though and we'll see about getting them in asap!


    What's New:

    -Login Screen Graphics

    -Profiles Screen (Multiple profiles)

    -Party Screen Graphics

    -Added Drag and Drop functionality to the Party Screen

    -Added a Menu button (little gear next to the Zoom buttons) in the upper right while in battle. It will return you to the Party Screen

    -Fixed a few bugs


    In the Works:



  • Design

    • Story: Intro Scene 1 (10%)




  • Graphics

    • Inventory Screen Graphics (0%)
    • Light Skill: Radiate (Native) (10%)
    • Light Skill: Shinning Strike(T1 Physical) (10%)
    • Light Skill: Fleeting Light (T1 Magical) (10%)
    • Unit: Fire Gecko - Movement (20%)




  • Programming

    • Light Skills (100%)



    Check out Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD for HTD art-related concepts, WIPs, polls, and more!

    Thanks for the support guys! Your suggestions, ideas, and feedback are always welcome and helpful so be sure to stop by the comments and let us know what you think!


    -Dan

    Senin, 02 April 2012

    Final Update Progress, Test, PTD 2 and ANPO news update!

    Want to get the legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

    Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!


    Hello! I hope you enjoyed my little April Fools joke! PTD will not be closing down and I will not get rid of accounts, so don't worry about it! I tried to make it really obvious because I didn't want to worry any of you. :)

    I released v6.5 which contains Shadow Missing No as Mystery Gift and that is the only new thing there. You might noticed that I put the graphics in for the new level in the chapter select and level select, those won't work until the final update is out.

    Speaking of the final update I'm making progress as you can see below. Keep checking back all week while I  make updates :) cheer me on!
    • Viridian Ending (Movie Scene only level, sets up the last chapter of the game, Lickitung NPC trade will happen on this level) (100%)
      • Intro (100%)
      • Adding the crucial Lickitung NPC trade to the new level (100%) 
        • Implement in game (100%)
        • Implement in Save Code (100%)
      • Add Max Potion (100%)
      • Ending (100%)
    •  Power Plant (Zapdos, Electabuzz (Red Only), Magnemite) (100%)
      • Intro (100%)
      • Layout (100%)
      • Waves (100%)
      • Ending (100%)
    • Seafoam Island (Articuno, Seel) (100%)
      • Intro (100%)
      • Layout (100%)
      • Waves (100%)
      • Ending (100%)
    • Victory Road (Moltres) (100%)
      • Intro (100%)
      • Layout (100%)
      • Waves (100%)
      • Ending (100%)
    • Elite 4 (Fight the elite 4 using the same team but team is completely healed between fights)
      • Intro (0%)
      • Layout (0%)
      • Waves (0%)
      • Ending (0%)
    • Champion Fight (Champion and Mewthree)
      • Intro (0%)
      • Layout (0%)
      • Waves (0%)
      • Ending (0%) 
    • Unknown Dungeon (Mewtwo) (0%)
      • Intro (0%)
      • Layout (0%)
      • Waves (0%)
      • Ending (0%)
    • Implement unique catching for legendaries (you can only capture one regular, one shiny and one shadow of each legendary bird, that would equal to 9 different legendary birds that you can catch) (100%)
      • Capturing Shiny and Shadow (100%) 
    • Remove Coming Soon text from Viridian Ending (100%)
    • Set Mystery Gift to Regular Missing No. (100%) - This is the last and permanent Mystery Gift that the game will have for new players to get.
    • Remove Alpha Version Text from the game (100%) 
    • Remove Legendary Dogs from the wild in the game (100%)
    • Convert all Legendary Dogs to their shiny version from regular (0%)
    • Add new moves to Pokemon Center's Move List (100%)
    • Add Missing HMs (100%) 
      • Fly (100%)
        • Graphics/Programming (100%)
        • Adding to Pokemon's HM list (100%)
      • Strength (100%)
        • Graphics/Programming (100%)
        • Adding to Pokemon's HM list (100%)
      • Surf (100%) 
        • Graphics/Programming (100%)
        • Adding to Pokemon's HM list (100%)
    • Add Level Select Graphics (100%)
    • New Moves (100%)
      • Psystrike (100%) - Mewtwo 
    • Adding new pokemon (87.5%) - Mewtwo, Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres, Electabuzz
      • Graphics (100%)
      • Shiny Graphics (100%)
      • Shadow Graphics (100%)
      • Add Stats to game (100%)
      • Relearn Moves (100%)
      • TM/HM List (100%)
      • Add to Save Code (80%)
      • Add to Pokemon Center (100%) 
    I will be talking about PTD 2 and ANPO some more on this blog but I have a test tomorrow (Tuesday) so I have to cut this short for now. I will update it on Tuesday night or Wednesday with some juicy details on PTD 2 and ANPO. I will also post on twitter when that is ready.

    As always! Let me know what you think!