Hero Tower Defense Thursday: Day 18 - Native Skills

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Welcome to Hero Tower Defense Thursday!

HTD Logo WIP

Go here to read Day 17 of Hero Tower Defense Thursday.

Today I want to go over Native Skills (NS). I apologize in advance for all the abbreviations I'm about to use. :)

So what are NS? NS are skills that you start with and require no points. Each character will have one Native Elemental Skill (NES) and one Native Class Skill (NCS). There are 5 different NES, one for each elemental. The NES you end up with is determined by the character's native element. They are kind of like a racial traits but instead of being based on the character's race they are based on the character's native element instead. The NCS on the other hand is the same for every character. You'll see why in a moment.

All NES are ranged direct damage skills, there's no projectile and not based on your weapon, it just instantly hits. They all have a some sort of duration based effect (e.g. DoT, Buff, etc) and are stackable up to 5 times, each time increasing it's effects and renewing the duration. It's also worth noting that these skills can be used on allies as well. Also, NES are unique in that they are able to generate elemental charges around your character. These charges can be used various ways which I'll explain later.

Here's a list of the NES and how they are currently set up:

Fire: Sets your target on fire causing it to take continuous damage and increasing it's Fire Attunement

Water: Douses your target with water causing it to be continuously healed and increasing it's Water Attunement

Nature: Binds your target with nature causing it to be immobile for a moment then continuously healed as well as increasing it's Nature Attunement

Light: Empowers your target with light increasing it's Physical and Magical Power as well as increasing it's Light Attunement

Shadow: Inflicts your target with shadow decreasing it's Physical and Magical Defense as well as increasing it's Shadow Attunement

As a reminder, attunements are a unit's resistance and effectiveness with each elemental's skills.

Now for the charges. For every NES use that character will receive a charge of that elemental type. So since the NES is linked to your native element it means that characater can only produce that type of charge. Every character can hold up to 5 charges each charge increases the characters attunement corresponding to the type of charge. So if it's a fire charge, it'll increase your fire attunement, etc. The charges are consumed by Finisher skills (FS). These skills require at least one charge but will consume whatever charges you currently have stored. Each charge will increase the FS power to varying degrees depending on the type of the FS and the type of the charges consumed. So for example, if you have 5 fire charges and you use a fire FS it's power will be boosted a lot. If you have 5 water charges and you use a fire FS you won't get much of a boost at all because water counters fire.

There's one FS with the exception to this rule and that's the NCS all classes start out with that I mentioned earlier. The NCS is a FS that lets you transfer whatever charges you have available to another unit. So now you can have a character with one native element holding the charges of another element, it just requires some team work. This also means that you can have a mix of charge types on a character since you can hold up to 5 charges.

This brings up one other point. Say you do a charge transfer and the receiving target goes over the limit of charges they can hold, or perhaps they already are full and you transfer for to them, what happens? Well, first it will check to see if there's any charge spots available and fill those then whatever are left will do a type check against the other elemental charges and either replace them or get countered. Here's a couple simple examples:

1. You transfer 5 water charges to a character with 5 fire charges - all the fire charges get replaced by the water charges. So the target ends up with all water charges.

2. You transfer 5 water charges to a character with 2 fire charges and 2 shadow charges - one water charge gets added, the two fire charges are replaced by two water charges while the 2 shadow charges remain because shadow counters water. So the target ends up with 3 water charges and 2 shadow charges.

I sounds more complicated than it actually is but these NS are meant to be important and used strategically and not just as a "Click skill, do damage" type of move. At the very beginning you'll be using them constantly just because you won't have many other moves to choose from but their importance will remain high throughout the game. This also allows for some interesting stuff to do with strategies for general attacks, boss encounters, level objectives, etc so expect to see some fun things going on in the future.


Well that was a bit long but fun to write! On a side note we're all working hard to have as much ready for the upcoming release as possible. However, I've said it before and I'll say it again just to keep everyone on the same page. This release is basically a prototype of what we have physically developed so far. Design and concept is the majority of what we've been doing so far and so we've only just begun to start physically developing the game into something. But we promised to give you guys something as soon as possible and we want to hear your feedback every step of the way so we're showing you what's essentially a just-started, pre-alpha, v0.0001, right-out-of-the-gates release. So just keep that in mind please. :D

Kevin also has a new poll up on his blog, KXN @ HTD for choosing Male Hairstyles so head over there and be sure to cast your vote!

As always, let us hear what you have to say in the comments and thanks!

-Dan

Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 12 - Pets

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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 Tuesday!

HTD Logo WIP

Go here to read the Day 11 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays.

For this update I want to discuss pets, specifically pet placement.

Right now having pets is still a concept as far as development goes but we're getting closer to the point where we'll need to have it figured out so it can be ready for programming and such. Since a lot of it is still up in the air it means any ideas and suggestions from you guys are even more helpful. As I mentioned above I'm only going to be talking about pet placement though. Not pets overall, we'll get into those details later. So let me throw out a few ideas to get things started and then see what you guys have to say in the comments.

First, let me clarify that I'm referring to active pets. Ones that attack, level up, have skills, etc. In other words, not the ones that just follow around behind you. We'll have those too most likely but they are much easier to implement for obvious reasons. Another thing is every character can essentially have a pet because it'll be a class skill and as I mentioned in another post your class is dynamic based on the skills you choose. So you could basically put one point into the pet skill and now have the ability to fight with a pet. Granted you'll need to invest a lot of points in the pet skill and probably other pet related skills to make your pet feasible as you level up. In other words, you can easily have a pet but if you don't invest many points in your pet skills it'll be rather lackluster.

Having pets in a TD game is a little tricky. For example, where do they go on the field? If you have them in the same location as your character would probably look a bit strange because they'd practically be on top of eachother. They could be beside you but then what happens if there is no available area around your character? For example you're a ranged character on a small island safe from melee but only enough room for your character, where does your pet go? Having it just show up at the nearest location probably wouldn't work too well and would be a hassle. It could be possible that if there's not enough room for your pet then it just wouldn't be out, which means you'll need to think a bit more about character location. However, this mostly applies to grounded pets. Flying pets can get away with a lot more but we need something that works for both unless we just go with the idea that flying pets are more versatile since they are in the air.

There's also the option of having the pet be manually placed just like a character. It doesn't have to hang around you perhaps but the disadvantage might be that certain pet skills that your character has might have limited range. So if your pet is on the other side of the map your pet buff might not reach it.

Another solution is to only have the pet appear when it's attacking. Almost like how a projectile from your character acts. I don't see this being a popular choice though because peope like seeing their pets around and it would mean the pet doesn't have health, take aggro, or protect one of your sides while fighting side by side with you.

And finally the last idea was to have the pets literally be characters. The first game that comes to mind where they had this is Dragon Age. Basically, the pet would be one of your 5 active characters that you have out on the field. This is a slightly different route than the other solutions. I wouldn't expect them to have armor and weapons really or maybe they'd just have equipment that doesn't display (we don't want to drive Kevin insane). Also they wouldn't be nearly as customizable as the other characters but they would have skills and such, maybe some skill points that can be assigned as they level up, etc. So think of them as just being more specific and less customizable characters. This might sound like they'd be lesser characters overall but I'd expect them to be quite strong, just more limited. You could maybe even have special combo moves that can only occur when you have certain pets together. For example, maybe you have one character and 4 wolf pets. Maybe you'd get a special passive skill called Pack Leader that gives all your units a nice buff. Just something like that perhaps.

Kevin has some new stuff on his blog, KXN @ HTD. He's always looking for comments on his work so be sure to stop by and let him know what you guys think about the HTD art. Here's a cool sketch Kevin did for uhh...something:

Creature Concept Sketch

Leave your feedback in the comments and let me know what option you like best or if you have your own idea be sure to let us know!

-Dan

Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 11 - Melee & Behaviors

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Welcome to Hero Tower Defense Tuesday!

HTD Logo WIP

Go here to read the Day 10 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays.

Time for another HTD update! This week I want to explain our thoughts on how melee characters might work and how enemy actions may vary.

Since HTD is a RPG/TD mix we want try taking mechanics from both genres when it comes to the placement of units and how they work in battle. Also don't forget that in HTD you'll have maps where you're attacking, defending, and some with a mix of both. We also plan to have set character (tower) placements but a lot of them. So while it won't be an open field you will have a bunch of option for placing your units. There will also likely be maps with more than one enemy path. All of these things play a role when it comes to the topics of this post so I wanted to give you all a quick refresher.

Now onto what we had in mind. In PTD the melee characters are basically just ranged characters but instead of a projectile covering the distance you have the character dashing up instead. For HTD we were thinking of having the melee characters just remain stationary in their spot and attack from there. However, they would most likely have a ranged weapon that they automatically switch to when an enemy is far away and some skills might be ranged themselves.

Since melee characters are strongest when they are in melee range having them in a spot that is off to the side of a path, like traditional tower defense, wouldn't be ideal because you would only cover a small area. Imagine a tower with a small radius on the side of the path, it's crappy unless it's in a nice corner or tight U-turn. So we were thinking of just having some placements directly on the enemy paths themselves. This way the melee characters get to be in the thick of battle where they should be while the ranged characters can be in safer areas.

You might asking yourself, "Wouldn't the enemies just walk right past him?" In Traditional TDs, yes, in HTD, no. You'll have skills like taunt that bring nearby enemies to you and keep them there for a time, you'll have skills that can temporarily immobilize enemies, you may also have a skill that acts like a hook that can pull a single target to within melee range from far away. And as I mentioned before there will be lots of locations for your characters so you can move him around a bit, whether it's to get close to an enemy or get out of trouble.

Another concept we want to try is to have enemies with different behaviours. You might see several enemies of the same type coming down a path but they won't all just be running for your base or whatever. Some might be aggressive and actually go after your characters and attack them, others might be defensive and go straight for you base while ignoring your attacks, and then there's always the option of having some with a mix. Perhaps they might run for your base at first but once they get low on health they start attacking your characters instead, etc.

This idea can be handled a few different ways. You can have all of one type of enemy (they would all look the same) with different behaviours which would take you by surprise. You can have different types of enemies with different behaviours so you can identify how they'll act just by looking at them. For example, a werewolf is an attacking unit that will go after your characters while a goblin might be a defensive unit that runs straight for your base. Another option is to have a mix, for example you have multiple dragon whelps coming that all look the same but some are larger than others or have some other slight distinction. The larger ones could be the ones that are aggressive while the smaller ones are defensive, etc.

For those you who haven't yet be sure to check out Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD to get the latest on HTD art development! The female hair style poll has ended and the results are pleasing because there is nice diversity in the styles that won. Here's a nice update on the female progress with one of the winning hair styles that will be available at release:

Human Female

We'd like to hear what you guys think of these concepts and any ideas of your own that you might have. I've seen a lot of great suggestions from people in the past and all the feedback is very helpful so be sure to let us know what you think!

-Dan

Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 10 - Story

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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 Tuesday!

Sketch of logo

Go here to read the Day 9 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays.

Today let's talk about the story for a bit.

This area of the game is still rather open-ended and undetermined at this point, more so than most other aspects of the game. So I wanted to tell you guys a little bit about what we had in mind for HTD's story and single player and then get your feedback and suggestions on it.

Elements are a key part of the HTD world which I'm sure is rather clear at this point. We have 5 elements (Fire, Water, Nature, Light, and Shadow) each with their own advantages and disadvantages against eachother as well as their own physical and magical skills that specialize in categories like offense, defense, and utility. You also have a native element that gives you a bit more power with that element and you also gain combination elemental attacks when you make certain matches in the elemental trees. With that in mind it's pretty easy to say the elements should tie into the story and world rather heavily.

The game is of course based in a fantasy world so that opens up a lot of paths. That also means there is a lot to consider.. how much technology is there and how advanced is it? Is the current state of things peaceful or chaotic? Is there some major event currently taking place? etc. The same goes for your character and characters you meet in single player.. how old are you? Are you a king's son or a lowly peasant? Is there something unique about you or your family? Do you have some hidden past? etc. I personally don't like things being too cliche but it's a bit difficult to avoid because there's so much out there that people have already seen but, hey, we'll try.

We have some ideas in mind but without giving away too much I can say you'll be old enough that you're out on your own doing things like adventuring and exploring and whatnot. During single player you'll meet other characters that may join you, probably some from your past and some new. At least part of the story will be about you seeking out something related to your native element, perhaps how to master it so you can acquire greater skills with that element. During your quest there will probably be trials that test your skill with the elemental system. So there might be like a crazy shadow boss you have to fight or a water cavern you have to get through. While I wouldn't say there's a doomsday character who's out to destroy the world you'll definitely come across characters/creatures that are much stronger than you and are terrorizing that area or blocking your way.

So as you can see there's a lot up in the air story-wise. As I mentioned we have a several things in mind that are more solid but I don't want to give it all away. This is also mainly for single player. The multiplayer will continue the story to an extent but have a wider scope. We're interested in hearing what you guys would like to see though. Do you like the uber, evil, insane guy wanting to take over the world? The mysterious past that you gradually uncover? Perhaps just the idea of going out and discovering the unknown?

There will also be side quests and such as well that will probably be completely unrelated to the main story but that's why they're side quests right? I know we have some writers out there with ideas they'd like to share as well. Let us know what you have on your mind! But try to summarize it. ;)

Also don't forget to check out Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD for all things art related to HTD! You'll find additional concept art, polls to help us decide on certain art aspects (currently which female hairstyles to start with), and he recently added a progress list. Here's a new WIP logo design Kevin made:

WIP HTD Logo

As always let us know what you think and leave your feedback in the comments, thanks!

-Dan

Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 9 - Character Stats

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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 Tuesday!

Sketch of logo

Go here to read the Day 8 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays.

Last week we talked a bit about character creation so this week let's talk about character stats.

So since this is part RPG and part TD we of course have to give the characters some attributes that increase and make your character stronger. We decided to go along with the traditional strength, stamina, etc stats because everyone is familiar with them and they work well. However, the actual affect of each stat tends to vary from game to game but they usually follow a general idea. We'll be doing the same in HTD.

Here are what we have as the Primary stats:

• Strength (STR) - Increases Physical Damage
• Stamina (STA) - Increases Health Points
• Agility (AGI) - Increases Speed
• Dexterity (DEX) - Increases Skill
• Intelligence (INT) - Increases Magical Damage

Pretty straight forward however something to keep in mind is that Magical Damage does not refer to elemental damage. Physical Damage covers the Physical side of the elemental skills while Magical Damage covers the Magical side of the elemental skills.

You might be asking, what does Speed and Skill do? For that we have the Secondary stats:

General:

• Health Points (HP) - Your amount of life
• Speed (SPD) - How fast you are at attacking and dodging
• Skill (SKL) - How skilled you are at hitting and recovering

Attack:

• Physical Power (PP) - How strong you are with physical weapons and skills
• Magical Power (MP) - How strong you are with magical weapons and skills

Armor:

• Physical Defense (FD) - How much physical damage you mitigate
• Magical Defense (MD) - How much magical damage you mitigate

Attunements:

• Fire Attunement (FA) - Your ability to control and resist Fire
• Water Attunement (WA) - Your ability to control and resist Water
• Nature Attunement (NA) - Your ability to control and resist Nature
• Light Attunement (LA) - Your ability to control and resist Light
• Shadow Attunement (SA) - Your ability to control and resist Shadow

Speed basically increases how fast you are dashing up to the enemy (if you're meleeing) then attacking and your projectile speed whether it's phyiscal or magical. Speed also increases your chance to dodge physical attacks.

Skill increases your chance to get a critical hit, possibly increases your chance to hit with a physical attack (if we even have missing possible which we are still figuring out), and cooldown rate. If you look at the Skill stat you can see it's pretty awesome, but this is a stat that will be difficult to raise and won't have an abundance of it so don't think you'll be able to make a character with nearly 0 cooldown.. well if you managed to expect something to get nerfed :P

We changed our use of the word attunement, when we first mentioned it we referred to it as the element you initially picked that defined your character's starting point. We'll just call that your Native Element or something instead because the term is better used here. So your attunement stats are dual purpose. They represent both how strong you are with that element and your resistance against it.

Now here's where we add in some S&D flavor and change things up a bit. You won't be getting any actual attribute points to assign to these stats specifically. Instead these stats get raised by items and what we refer to as Class Skill Points (CSP) that you get every time you level up. CSPs are used to get class skills which follow a similar Physical/Magical set up with 5 categories on each side with skills for each. This is how you'll be choosing your class essentially and how you use these points will determine your Class Title (like Warrior, Paladin, Mage, etc). I won't be going into details about this yet but basically what happens is as you level up and build your character by assigning the elemental and class points you have earned your Class Title will change accordingly.

On the art side of things Kevin is working on the female animations and hair which you can find more of at Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD. He also has a poll up on which hairstyle you guys would like to see first, be sure to put in your vote! Here's some sketches:

Human Female Sketches

That's all for now, sorry for the end-of-day post but we were both busy most of the day.

As always let us know what you think and leave your feedback in the comments, thanks!

-Dan

Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 8 - Character Creation

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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 Tuesday!

Go here to read the Day 7 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays.

This week we're going to take a look at Kevin's WIP human female design, talk about character creation, and answer some related questions that are likely to be asked after reading this.

Kevin has started working on the human female character which I know some of you have been waiting for. It's still early in development though and we're making adjustments as we go. Check out Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD for some additional information and concept art he's working on. He'll also be starting on some hair styles and is interested in some suggestions for them from you guys. Here's the latest version of the human female character:

Early render of a human female in full plate armor

You might notice the usual characteristics that distinguish a female from a male are absent in this initial image. We intentionally started out this way because we want to be sure that you can easily tell the difference between the genders just from their contour and shape even when they are fully suited in armor. This is important for being able to glance at things quickly and knowing exactly what it is.

Male characters can also share a lot of the same features that are typically used to identify females, e.g., long hair, light colors, etc so we don't want to be restricted by these things by fixing them to a specific gender for the sole purpose of differentiating them from eachother. Another thing that falls into this category is having all the females showing a lot of skin regardless of how much armor they are wearing. To me that's a cheap way out for making a female identifiable in heavy armor.. or lack thereof. It makes more sense for lighter armor to look that way since it allows you to be more agile.

Another reason we don't want to restrict specific colors, hair styles, etc to genders is because we want there to be as many options available as possible during character creation so you can create the characters you want. We're still figuring out what you'll be able to customize exactly but right now we're thinking race, gender, skin color, hair style, and hair color (remember this is just for your character, not their armor, weapons, effects, etc). We would like to have some facial features as well at some point but it's a lot for a little so it's not a high priority right now.

Now I'll address a few questions that are bound to be asked eventually:

"What about eye color?"

The style Kevin is current going with doesn't really involve significant detail to the eyes so they are generally just black ovals. They will be quite small as well so only a few colors would be really be noticeable and the rest would kind of all look the same as those.

"Can I change the character's height, size, or proprotions?"

This is very unlikely unfortunately because all our graphic assets are sprites and changing any of these attributes, even a little, would cause all kinds of conflicts with the armors and such.

"Will you see the hair when wearing a helmet?"

This is an interesting topic because it's one of those simple things that is actually quite complex to implement. As of right now we are going with no visible hair while wearing a helmet, even if you have long hair. However, we would allow you to turn off the helm graphic without actually unequipping it and thus still taking advantage of it's stat bonuses.

The reason for this because you'd not only need to create the hairstyle itself but you'd also need to customize every hair style for every helmet in every angle and that adds up to a lot of work very quickly for something that isn't really that significant.

Although something that just came to mind is maybe we could have just a generic "long hair" look while wearing a helmet and that would be applied to all long hair styles and their share their color of course. Shorter hair styles would just show no hair while wearing a helmet. A problem you might realize though is that if your character has a ponytail and it switches to this generic "long hair with helm on" look it wouldn't be in a ponytail anymore. A possible solution could be to just have a couple different "long hair with helm on" looks to cover the majority of the hair styles but we'd probably only start with one for now. We'll have to see, I'm rambling now though so I'll stop there :P

As always feel free to leave us feedback, give us suggestions, ask us questions, or just let us know what you think in the comments!

-Dan