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.

Play Hero Tower Defense!

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

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.

Play Hero Tower Defense!

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

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.

Play Hero Tower Defense!

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

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.

Play Hero Tower Defense!

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

Hero Tower Defense Thursday: Day 32 - HTD Pre-Alpha v0.012 Release! Inventory and Equipment!

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 31 of Hero Tower Defense Thursday.

Play Hero Tower Defense!

This week we get to implement one of the bigger RPG elements of HTD, the inventory and equipment systems! Well, the start of it anyway, it's rather limited right now but we'll be building on it. Once again the graphics for the menus are temporary for the time being. Kevin will be replacing them with nicer ones soon.

The inventory is a place to store all your items that you gather through your travels. It will hold everything from potions to materials to ingredients to equipment. You can access the inventory and equipment screens from either the Hero Screen or by pressing the Inventory button in the bottom right during battle. The inventory itself is universal for all your heroes, they all share it. However, depending on the hero you have selected will determine which equipment is shown in the hero equipment window.

You can see that there will be quite a few equipment slots. Not all will be visual, smaller items like rings and necklaces most likely won't be visible on your hero. You'll also have a Main Hand and Off Hand weapon slots for both melee and ranged weapons. Your character will automatically switch between melee and ranged based on the enemies distance and the skill the hero is currently using. We'll get more into this later but basically you'll have Physical and Magical based weapons which your hero will choose to use for optimal efficiency for whichever skill they are about to execute.

Right now all that you can do is equip and unequip your armor and Main Hand melee weapon. You can move things around however you like; give each hero a different weapon, take off some of their armor, or take away all of their armor if you want to be mean (those of you that intentionally KO your own heroes will probably do this). Keep in mind that your equipment setup will no save for now, we're still working on that.

Currently none of the items have stats yet so you'll just be affecting visuals for now but those are coming soon! There's a bunch of stuff in the works that are taking some time but we're slowly but surely getting there. Some of you may have noticed the game getting a bit choppy after awhile. We're currently in the process of fixing this and should be able to resolve it soon.


What's New:

-Inventory System

-Equipment System


In the Works:

Design

• 
  
• Story: Intro (100%)
• Story: Intro Scene 1 (0%)
• Class Skills: Tier 1 (100%)

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 Concept (100%)

Audio

• Sound Effects: Light Spell (100%)

Programming

• Multiple Profiles (100%)
• Light Skills (0%)

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

As always feedback is welcome in the comments!


-Dan

Weekly Progress, Pokemon Tower Defense 2 Talents, Creature Universe (ANPO) Battle System!

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!


Hey! Nice to see you again! Like all Mondays it's time for the weekly progress blog here at Sam and Dan Games. If you haven't read last week's blog I suggest you read it. I talked about the ending of PTD 1 and the last update to come to the game among other things.

So keep track of my progress as I finish the game I will be posting updates here on this blog post.

• Viridian Ending (Movie Scene only level, sets up the last chapter of the game, Lickitung NPC trade will happen on this level) (0%)
• Intro (0%)
• Adding the crucial Lickitung NPC trade to the new level (0%) 
• Add Hyper Potion (0%)
• Ending (0%)
•  Power Plant (Zapdos, Electabuzz (Red Only), Magnemite) (0%)
• Intro (0%)
• Layout (0%)
• Waves (0%)
• Ending (0%)
• Seafoam Island (Articuno, Seel) (0%)
• Intro (0%)
• Layout (0%)
• Waves (0%)
• Ending (0%)
• Victory Road (Moltres) (0%)
• Intro (0%)
• Layout (0%)
• Waves (0%)
• Ending (0%)
• 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%)
• Add new moves to Pokemon Center's Move List (100%)
• Add Missing HMs (40%) 
• Fly (40%)
• Strength (40%)
• Surf (90%) 
• Graphics/Programming (100%)
• Adding to Pokemon's HM list (0%)
• 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 (0%)
• Add to Pokemon Center (100%)

As you can see there is a lot to be done! Keep cheering me on as we reach the final miles of this race!

Just like Hero Tower Defense every week I will talk about PTD 2 and Creature Universe (ANPO) leading up to the eventual pre-pre-pre alphas. Then just like PTD 1 and  HTD we will keep updating the games until they are finished. This is just our way of keeping you, the player, involved in the process of game creation as much as possible. So instead of waiting a year and a half to see PTD 2 and longer for ANPO we will talk about them and show you our progress along the way. PTD 1 took a year and a half to make, imagine if PTD 1 just released today?! The game would be totally different I would think, a lot of your feedback was incorporated. Also without you guys I wouldn't have pushed myself so far to get it done as fast. So I really think this method will work for us here, what do you think?

Pokemon Tower Defense 2

So last week I talked about a few new mechanics that I thought would help add some new freshness to the game. Most of you really liked the ideas so I'm very happy with that and will make plans on how to add those in. This week I want to talk about something that some of my favorite Tower Defense games have that PTD 1 didn't have. This "thing" that I'm talking about is Talents!

Introduction "Trainer Specializations"!

 I also love talents systems in games, and I think it will make a great addition to PTD 2. So let me talk a little bit (for those who care lol) about how this idea came to be and my different thoughts on getting to where I am with the talents now. So while looking at some other games and their talent trees I thought it would be amazing to have some sort of talent tree in the game. My first thought was "okay every pokemon will have a talent tree!" Then I was like.... "NO WAY!" having a talent tree on every pokemon, while interesting, would take forever and could prove to have many issues attached to it, including: overwhelming players, making the database even bigger and take longer to save and load! So then I thought how about if the trainer can specialize in a certain type of pokemon, almost like a gym leader! That sounded really cool to me.

So the way it works is that you will have a trainer level. You level it up by playing levels in the game. At the end of each level you will get experience points for your trainer. The higher and more difficult the level the more experience points you get. When you level up you will get talent points that you can assign on any of the specialization trees available. There will be a tree for each type of pokemon in the game. Each tree will give you bonuses not only for a particular type of pokemon but for all your pokemon. For example a fire talent might be like "Increase all your towers' damage by 5% if you have a fire pokemon in your party.". Talents will also unlock Special Abilities (I talked about these on the last blog) only accessible from talents.

So now that you read about Trainer Specializations, tell me what you think! Now onto Creature Universe!

Creature Universe (Project ANPO)

Last week I talked about the creatures feeling alive and dynamic. This is something that I want to show up in every facet of the game. This week I will start introducing the battle system. Note that this game is in a very early stage. You are pretty much getting the notes that I'm writing down as I come up with them. Something like a battle system is really hard to explain but I will try my best here to paint the picture in your head. Okay so for a long time I thought it would be very interested to make a game that when you told your "avatar" to do something he wouldn't do it automatically. Essentially your "avatar" would think about it first before doing it. Imagine you have a warrior character but his "courage" stat is low. So if you tell him to attack a dragon, he isn't going to run in there! While this is a good idea in theory... it probably isn't that much fun. Once you character has enough "courage" he might just do everything you tell him to. So what's the point?! It wasn't until I started thinking more about ANPO that I realized "Hey! I might bring this idea back!" but while I can bring part of it back, it needed some heavy tweaking.

Essentially you will control your avatar (your human trainer) and he will issue commands to your creature. Then your creature will try its best to perform your command. So what does it mean to "try its best to perform"? To me this means that creatures have limits! In pokemon a creature has some limits in the form of Attack, Defense, Speed, and PP. These are fairly straight forward, but I want to add some new stats into this game. What if your creature had a "Reaction Time" stat? I want the battles in this game to be in real-time instead of turn-based. So reaction time would be how long it takes from your command going out to the creature performing it. So lets say your creature is going to tackle the enemy but the enemy is about to throw a hyper beam kind of attack straight at you, and you the trainer select the dodge + left command! Depending on your creature and the timing of your command your creature will dodge or get hit by the enemy's attack.

Also a big change from pokemon would be the attacks! The moves in ANPO will be done by chaining a series of commands. The example I used above "dodge + left" is an example of this chaining. While just saying dodge (maybe to save time) will make a creature dodge in a direction that the creature chooses (probably random or based on something else) you can be specific and say "doge+left" or "dodge+front" etc. Each creature will have a set of commands that are standard for all creatures. Things like "dodge", "run", "attack", "jump" are examples of a few of the standard commands. But then bird like creatures will have "fly", "flap wings", "peck". Using a combination of these will result in different attacks! You will also be able to save custom combinations so you don't have to keep selecting them over and over.

So I hope this gives you a small view into what I'm aiming for. You don't have direct control over your creatures but you will be issuing them commands. As you get to know your creature more and more you will learn the timing for when to issue commands to be able to battle effectively. You will also be able to train your creature to increase its speed and reaction time.

I hope you guys have a good week, and as always let me know what you think on the comments below!

Try to keep the comments about this blog post, if you have any account issues check out the forums and our FAQ page for help on solving common issues.

Hero Tower Defense Thursday: Day 31 - HTD Pre-Alpha v0.011 Release! Buff/Debuff Icon System, 5th Hero, 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!

Welcome to Hero Tower Defense Thursday!

HTD Logo

Go here to read Day 30 of Hero Tower Defense Thursday.

Play Hero Tower Defense!

This update introduces a 5th Hero who comes equipped with a 1H Hammer. With him you can now take a full party of 5 into battle! We've also added the Buff/Debuff Icon System, a new cursor, and some minor other tweaks. We're working on the Light Skills next and those should be fun. Then all that's left will be Nature! At least for Tier 1 Elemental Skills, there's still plenty more to come.

For the buff/debuff icons you'll notice they are flashing, this is to warn you that they are about to run out. In this case these will always be flashing because the current skills only last a few seconds since they can be reapplied constantly. This won't be the case for all skills so when a buff/debuff lasts longer it will just stay solid.

We're looking to start on the Inventory, Hero Stats, Leveling, Skill Point System, and Class Skills soon. Those will add a lot of the RPG mechanics we want into the game and then we'll finally have nearly all the core mechanics implemented. The Inventory will be pretty typical although looting will be a little different than usual. I'll go into more detail about that when we implement it. The primary Hero Stats will be the traditional Strength, Stamina, Intelligence, etc but there will also be some secondary stats like Elemental Attunement stats which basically make you both better with a specific type of element overall as well as more resistant to the harmful effects of that type.

So look forward to those coming soon along with other cool stuff. We've also made progress with the development of the overall story (think of it like the main quest line) and will be starting to develop some more maps and such as well. So stay tuned!

On a side note, the HTD wiki folks requested some information so I'll be adding enemy stats and other tidbits to the Play HTD page for viewing till we get in-game versions implemented. Keep in mind the information there is temporary, the names and stats will be changing.


What's New:

-Added Buff/Debuff icons (They flash when under 5 seconds which is currently all the time, there will be longer ones later)

-Added 5th Hero

-Character Names (This was actually already in but you have to do it at the Hero Screen)

-Smaller Character Nameplates

-Added 1H Hammer

-Added New Cursor (It changes when dragging things)


In the Works:

Design

• Hero Stats and Points (100%)
• Story: Intro (20%)
• Story: Intro Scene 1 (0%)
• Class Skills: Tier 1 (75%)

Graphics

• User/Profiles Screen Graphics (100%)
• Inventory Screen Graphics (0%)
• Light Skill: Radiate (Native) (10%)
• Light Skill: Shinning Strike(T1 Physical) (10%)
• Light Skill: Fleeting Light (T1 Magical) (10%)

Audio

• Sound Effects: Light Spell (0%)

Programming

• Inventory System (100%)

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

Any suggestions, ideas, or feedback in general is welcome in the comments. Thanks guys!


-Dan

Hero Tower Defense Thursday: Day 30 - HTD Pre-Alpha v0.010 Release! Water Skills, Healing, Buffs, and Changeable Native 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.

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 29 of Hero Tower Defense Thursday.

Play Hero Tower Defense!

Ok, we're back with another HTD release! We ran into a few issues last week which is why there was no update. If things aren't ready then we don't release an update, we'd rather take our time to make them good instead of rushing things out.

So then, we've introduced some Water Skills. Since Water is the more defensive element you'll notice that these act a bit differently. For example the T1 Physical and Magical Water Skills still do damage like the Fire and Shadow skills but also give you a buff that increases either your Physical or Magical Defense respectively.

These buffs only last a few seconds but but they are easy to keep going since it is triggered every time you use the skill which has a lower cooldown than the buff duration. So essentially you can keep them up forever if you only use those skills. You'll only see the buff effect if it is a fresh buff. In other words if you aren't renewing the duration of a prior application of the buff then you won't see the effect. This is to prevent it from spamming.

You'll notice there aren't any buff icons to go with the buff themselves, these will be added soon. They just require another system that we don't have yet but it's high on the list. With the buff icons you'll be able to see which buffs/debuffs you have on each character.

We've made it so you can change the Native Skill of each hero. Go to the Skills Screen and click the Native Skill Icon (The big middle one) to toggle through the current (3) Native Elemental Skills. This is just temporary for testing purposes because in the actual game you won't be able to change this on a whim, you'll have to do something in order to change your Native Element.

The Water Native Skill is the first skill where the primary targets will be your own characters and not the enemies. This is because it is a healing spell which, like the other Natives, stacks up to 5. So since this would mainly be used on your own guys we had to make the heroes and the civilian target-able as well, which they weren't before. Also, we had to make the AI a bit better so as to heal your weakest guys first which helps a lot. The Heroes should also now prioritize their target selection to the lowest HP enemy within range for damage skills.

So now you get to play around with some defensive and utility skills and see how that'll work. As I've said before these Tier 1 skills are very basic because there is no plain generic attack to use. You will always be using a skill of some kind so the first skills had to fulfill that requirement for each elemental type. Light Skills are up next so expect to see those soon!


What's New:

-Added Water Skills

-Added Hair Customization Toggle Graphic

-Made Native Skills temporarily changeable (click the Native Skill icon in the Skills Screen to toggle through the current (3) Native Element Skills)

-Improved Sound Quality

-Added Character Name Plates (Changes to the names themselves still don't work yet though, we'll implement that soon)

-Dragging a character to any side of the screen now scrolls the map

-Added restrictions for how far you can scroll over the map


In the Works:

Design

• Hero Stats and Points (50%)
• Story: Intro (20%)
• Story: Intro Scene 1 (0%)
• Class Skills: Tier 1 (50%)

Graphics

• User/Profiles Screen Graphics (75%)
• Inventory Screen Graphics (0%)
• Light Skill: Radiate (Native) (10%)
• Light Skill: Shinning Strike(T1 Physical) (10%)
• Light Skill: Fleeting Light (T1 Magical) (10%)
• Weapons: Hammer and Swords (100%)

Programming

• Buff/Debuff Icon System (100%)
• Inventory System (0%)
• Saving Character Names (100%)

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

Let us know what you think in the comments and as always any feedback is welcome, thanks!


-Dan

Hero Tower Defense Thursday: Day 29 - The Class System

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 28 of Hero Tower Defense Thursday.

Play Hero Tower Defense!

Unfortunately there's no update this week because we are still working out some things that would have made for a less than stellar update. Things like game crashing bugs and whatnot so we'll be holding off till next week. You can expect this on occasion with HTD because while we shoot for weekly updates sometimes we have to skip a week here or there in order to spend a little more time to fix stuff.

So then, let's talk about classes. If you recall in an earlier post way back when I had mentioned the classes but I don't recall going into significant detail about them. So allow my to explain what out current plan is... it's interesting.

First we want to have it be more along the lines of an open-class system. That basically means everyone starts nearly the same way but customizes their character into a specific class as they level up. In a closed-class system you pretty much just pick a class and that's that. You might be able to branch off into different skill trees within the class but that's about it.

What we are hoping to do is take the open-class system but having it guide you into a class that is determined by what skills you want. So instead of assigning attribute points to increase hero stats you will just be picking skills which will then determine which what attributes are increased. It's important to keep in mind that there is another set of skills called Class Skills (CS)which we haven't implemented yet. These are more character based and mostly passive skills that help shape your hero into the class you want.

So let's go through a few steps on how this would work. Every so often you would get a Elemental Skill Point (ESP), you'll probably only get 10 of these (used to be 15 but lowered it for a few reasons). You would assign this ESP to a skill like Physical Tier 1 Fire, Flame Strike. So now you have this ESP in a Physical Skill (PS). Every level you will be getting Class Skill Points (CSP), there are two types of these, Physical and Magical. Which one you get is determined by what ratio of Physical:Magical ESPs you have signed. So for example if you have 1:0, each level would be giving you all Physical CSPs. If you are 1:4 you'll be getting some Physical CPS but mostly Magical CSPs. The amount of CSPs you get increases by one per level each time you get a new ESP until you are maxed and then every so often after that. So eventually you're getting 10+ per level.

The reason for the Physical and Magical CSPs is to keep you on track with your Elemental Skill (ES) choices. It's never really good to assign all your ESPs to Physical ESs and then increase your Intelligence stat really high. It's a bit of a conflict since the damage of those ESs will be based on other stats like Strength. With this set up you pick the ESs you like and you are given CSPs to help make it better. If you have a mix of Physical and Magical ESs then you get a mix of CSPs, etc.

Class Skills themselves will increase various stats to different amounts depending on their purpose and the amount of points invested in them. For example there might be a skill that allows you two wield Magical weapons more effectively. This would be a passive Magical skill that increase your Intelligence and perhaps Agility stats as put more points into it. You might also find an active skill such as Taunt in the Physical section which would increase your Strength and Stamina per point.

So the reason for all of this is so that you can pick the skills you like and end up with character stats and CSs that support them. Doing all of this ultimately defines your heroes into certain classes. For this reason, it's more like a dynamic class system that adjusts as your character takes shape. You might start out as a Warrior and end up a Paladin with healing. You could begin as a Healer and end up as an Battle Mage that can also tank. Perhaps you'd start as a Fighter and become a Monk. You can still go the pure route as well and be a full on Archer, however their title will also change as they develop because there will be different "classes" of Archer. For example some higher classes might be Marksman, Bowman, Ranger, Sharpshooter, etc.

The ESs you choose may also affect your class, for example Shadow Knight (Shadow ESs), Holy Paladin (Light ESs), Arch Mage (Wide mix of ESs), etc. For this reason there will be a whole lot of classes that you could end up as. Discovering them will be part of the fun, and yes there will be ways to respec your heroes so you won't have to keep making new characters to experiment.

Now, what I'd like to ask you guys is, what classes would you like to see? Give me a Class Name and what sort of Elemental and Class skills they might have. Be general with the skills, I don't need specifics but more of just an overall idea. Here's an example: Death Dealer - Fire and Shadow Skills with dual wielding melee skills and fast attack speed skills. Now let's here yours in the comments!

I'd also just like to mention once again that there is a HTD wiki page that has been created by our fans! It can be found here: http://herotowerdefense.wikia.com/wiki/Hero_tower_defense_Wiki

Big thanks to everyone who has been contributing! We've also added the wiki to the Fan Links/FAQ tab.


In the Works:

Design

• Mid-Battle Skill Screen (100%) - Different from the current pre-battle screen
• Story: Outline (100%)
• Hero Stats and Points (50%)

Graphics

• User/Profiles Screen Graphics (50%)
• Inventory Screen Graphics (0%)

Programming

• Targeting Heroes With Skills (100%)
• Bug Fixes (100%)

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

I'm looking forward to hearing what classes you guys come up with along with any other feedback and comments you guys have! Thanks again for the support!


-Dan

Weekly Progress List, New Servers, Pokeballs for PTD 2 you decide!

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! 


I apologize for the Mystery Gift, it was going to be a really cool pokemon that I discovered but it ended up glitching and this weird pokemon showed up called MissingNo. So enjoy that ;)

PTD 2 a New Beginning!

We finally made it all the way back to Pallet Town on Pokemon Tower Defense, I'm pretty excited to finish the story levels and to focus more on PTD2. PTD one will not be receiving any drastic changes from it's current form as you guys might have noticed. A lot of the suggestions and ideas that you guys contributed will be pushed to PTD 2 instead. I really want PTD 2 to feel like a big upgrade from PTD 1, almost like how the original gold and silver felt like after red and blue. What this will mean for the game is smaller buttons! What I mean with smaller buttons is that the original game was meant for the Android marketplace and the closest  competition was a Tower Defense game that is still pretty popular on the Android Marketplace that featured a really plain layout in the game. Black background with big buttons. For the sequel the main target for the game won't be mobile devices so you will see menus and interfaces that have the computer in mind. Speaking of the computer! They have keyboards! So expect a lot of hotkeys for things like changing your moves and switching your pokemon. The next possible change that you guys asked about the whole time for PTD 1 is different pokeballs!

Pokeballs

Okay so like I said before you guys always asked about having different pokeballs for PTD 1, and I thought it was a great idea until I looked at how the game worked. Now as we all know once the pokemon is weakened you use the pokeball (which is unlimited in PTD 1) and you catch it. The first thing I thought about for better pokeballs (great ball, ultra ball) was to increase the percentage that a pokemon life would be to be considered weakened. But this would make the game very easy if the ultra ball you only needed to bring a pokemon down to 50% of their life to catch them.

Now in the Nintendo games, pokeballs had a chance to not capture a pokemon this wasn't automatic like it is in PTD 1. is that something you want to see in PTD 2? What I had in mind is that pokeballs don't automatically capture the pokemon but instead it plays out the animation like the game and the pokemon can escape, this makes adding other pokeballs easier since they would improve your chance at capturing a pokemon, also some pokemon can only be captured with different pokeballs. On a side not special pokemon that have red bars (like shinies) would still be instant capture like they are now.

Along with this in PTD 2 you won't have unlimited pokeballs, you will have to buy them when you start the level (if you want to). To go along with that change leveling up will no longer cost money and be automatic. This is something that has been requested for a long time and these changes it will make it happen.

So tell me do you want pokeballs to have a chance at capturing a pokemon and have different pokeballs or just have one type and have it be 100% chance once weakened? Vote on the poll and have a lasting impact on the game.

New Servers

So we all hate when the server is slow and when you get an error page in the trading center (trust me I hate it too!) So using the funds that we get from SnD Coin purchase from amazing users like you ;) and from Ad Revenue we are currently paying for a Virtual Private Server which is the next step for us in improving the speed of our pages. Now the process of moving everything to the new server is going to take some time and there might even be a maintenance period where nobody will be able to play our games, but I'm trying to do the best that I can to make it smooth so you won't lose time or the time will be minimal. Just know that we are doing our best to make thing work better around here, using your contributions (which we are very grateful for and appreciate very much!)

Weekly Progress

For this week we will again have a story level, new TMs, and a new Mystery Gift! Along with more PTD 2 items which I didn't get a chance to do last week. Also around the middle of the week there will be a first look video for PTD 1.

PTD First Look Video by GraphicForce:

PTD 1 Progress:

Story Level (0%)

• Intro (0%)
• Layout (0%)
• Waves (0%)
• Ending (0%)

New TMs (100%) - (Giga Impact, thunderpunch, ice punch, fire punch, focus punch)
Trade my pokemon in the trading center (100%)
Put new pokemon up for trade (100%) - My account is samO
New Mystery Gifts (50%) - This is for Monday!

• Implement in Saving (0%) 
• Implement code in Game (0%)
• Pokemon Stats (100%)
• Pokemon Everything Else (100%)

Bug Fixes (100%)

• Fixed a typo in the description for the attack psyshock (100%)

PTD 2 Progress:

Temporary Title Screen (0%) - The final one will be from the contest winner, but I will make a placeholder one for now.
Options Menu (0%) - Adding some more options here, like a logout, and more.

HTD Progress:
Click here to see my HTD progress for this week.

That is all I have for today so let me know what you think! If you have any questions about PTD 1 make sure to check out the forums and chat rooms to find answers before you post them below it helps you get a faster answer and it helps me be able to take care of the less common comments/suggestions/questions.

Thanks again! and guess who got first comment... again! ;)

Hero Tower Defense Thursday: Day 28 - HTD Pre-Alpha v0.009 Release! User Profiles!

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 27 of Hero Tower Defense Thursday.

Play Hero Tower Defense!

This week is a small but useful update. We've added user profiles which will save your character set ups. No longer will you have to customize your characters every time you log in! It also uses the same profile as PTD so you can just log in with that. It's more like a S&D Games profile at this point and any other games will most likely use it as well.

Currently it saves everything except your party set up which eventually will be saved as well. As the game develops it will of course save everything else as well, such as your inventory, character progression, story progression, etc.

So that's it for this update. If you've been watching the progress list you'll notice there's a bunch of stuff done that didn't make it into this release because the user profiles take awhile to set up. That's ok though because originally we were just going to have temporary local profiles which are more limiting but faster to implement. Sam decided to go above and beyond and made them hook right up with the PTD profiles, so cheers to Sam!

For the next release you guys can look forward to seeing the first of Bill's work, new graphics, additional sounds, and more! Thanks again guys!

I'd also just like to mention again that there is a HTD wiki page that has been created by our fans! It can be found here: http://herotowerdefense.wikia.com/wiki/Hero_tower_defense_Wiki

Big thanks to everyone who has been contributing! We've also added the wiki to the Fan Links/FAQ tab.


What's New:

-Added User Profiles


In the Works:

Design

• Mid-Battle Inventory Screen (100%) - Different from the current pre-battle screen which has already been designed
• Mid-Battle Skill Screen (20%) - Different from the current pre-battle screen

Graphics

• Water Skill: Soak (Native) (100%)
• Water Skill: Aqua Strike (T1 Physical) (100%)
• Water Skill: Water Pistol (T1 Magical) (100%)

Programming

• Water Skills (100%)
• Bug Fixes (0%)

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

Let us know what you think in the comments! Any ideas, suggestions or any other feedback is always welcome! Thanks guys!


-Dan

Weekly Progress, Day and Night system for PTD 2, PTD 2 Title Screen CONTEST!

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! 


Hey guys and gals. Another week of Sam and Dan Games has begun! v6.1.1 of Pokemon Tower Defense is now out! You can get your very own Shadow Lickitung by finding the Mystery Gift Code at the link above. (Yes I know he doesn't know Shadow Rush, but you can relearn them move if you want :) )

 We are working hard to get you guys some entertainment and at the same time thinking about what the next steps are for us. As an small independent game studio (we aren't even an official company yet, but will be this year) the best thing we can do is create new and exciting games. Pokemon Tower Defense is an exciting game but we really can only do so much with it because we didn't create Pokemon. Which is why you will see us focus on Hero Tower Defense once PTD 1 is over. But I realize that most of you here are fans of PTD and I have created over 400 moves which I plan to maximize. So I will also be working on PTD 2 on the side.

Last week I put up a poll about the Day/Night System for PTD 2 (which I explained last blog) and it looks like the winner is a Dynamic Day/Night System! Because that is the winner I wanted to include more details about it.

The Day/Night System will work similar to how it works in the game. Some pokemon or events will only happen at certain times in the game's clock. But unlike the game the clock will not be based around 24 hours or around your device's time. It will be based on your play time on levels. Each complete day might like 2-3 hours, when you first play the game will be in day time and as you play the time will be changing. About half way through the day you will enter night time. So as you can see it's not tied to any specific time zone or your computer's clock.

Last week I also finished the preloader for the game, so instead of seeing a white screen you will see a percentage on screen and I made a cool little race so you have something to be entertained by while you wait. The race is Chikorita vs. Totodile vs. Cyndaquil as you load your game they will move closer to the finish line and who knows maybe they will evolve. This is just a small detail that I hope you can appreciate while you wait for the game to load.

Also PTD 2 will have a nice little intro scene that Joel, my brother,  made. Joel will also be helping make the intro and ending cutscenes for all the levels which will help make them more interesting and detailed. It will also help me complete more since I will have my hands busy with HTD.

PTD 2 TITLE SCREEN CONTEST!
Speaking of intro scenes, just like PTD I'm holding a competition for the actual title screen of the game, this time they can't have their own animated intro (since the game will already have an animation to start) but can have animated elements. So no rolling pokeball and pikachu coming out of it but you can have the rollovers or animations in the page itself. For now just put the same elements that the current game has on there. (Start, Options, Feedback, the Mystery Code, Pokemon Tower Defense 2, a Sam Game, and tell us how to make it better) Post these on our forum so other users can comment and give you feedback. The prize will be all 3 SHINY LEGENDARY DOGS! Which won't be available until PTD 2 comes out later this year. Like I said don't email me your entries, post them on the forum. This contest will run for at least a month so you will have time to make them special. Show me what you got!

We are also talking about our third game which is the Creatures Universe game (Project ANPO), you can read more about it here. As the weeks go by I will be talking more about the ideas I have for it on the blog so look forward to that.

This week in PTD we will have a new Story level, new TMs, a new Mystery Gift, new level cap, along with some other bug fixes. I will also put some of my pokemon up for trade, got any special request for what pokemon I should put up for trade? Let me know in the comments. Also let me know which TMs you would like to see this week in the comments. (TMs with moves that are already in the game will be more likely to be added this week)

PTD First Look for v6.2 by GraphicForce!


PTD 1 Progress:

Story Level (100%) - Pallet Town Training

• Intro (100%)
• Layout (100%)
• Waves (100%)
• Ending (100%)

Mystery Gift Pokemon (100%) - This is for Monday! MissingNo. The Glitch Pokemon!

• Implement in Saving Code (100%)
• Stats (100%)
• Graphics (100%)
• Moves (100%)

Added Toxic to the Pokemon Center's Move List (100%)
New TMs (100%)

• Hydro Pump (100%) - Being available to more pokemon.
• Bulldoze (100%)
• X-Scissor (100%)
• Fury Cutter (100%) 
• Sludge Wave (100%)
• Psyshock (100%)

Level Cap Increase (100%) - Level cap to 95

• Implement in game (100%)
• Implement in Saving Code (100%)
• Implement in Trading Center (100%)

PTD 2 Progress:

Temporary Title Screen (0%) - The final one will be from the contest winner, but I will make a placeholder one for now.
Options Menu (0%) - Adding some more options here, like a logout, and more.

HTD Progress:
Click here to see my HTD progress for this week.

That's all for today! As always let me know what you think! If you have any question about PTD, beating a level or how to get a particular pokemon head to our forums, many people there will be happy to help you. If you have account problems send me an email for everything else leave me a comment below!

Hero Tower Defense Thursday: Day 27 - HTD Pre-Alpha v0.008 Release! Skill Selection Screen! New Artist, Bill!

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 26 of Hero Tower Defense Thursday.

Play Hero Tower Defense!

Alright we're back! For this release the main attraction is the Skills Selection Screen. This screen does just what it's name implies, it lets you select skills for each of your heroes. The graphics for the menus and everything are still just placeholders while Kevin works on the actual graphics and some features of this screen are still missing but are in the works.

The heroes still come with their standard skills but you can customize them however you like. All you have to do is drag and drop skills from the skills menu into the active skill slots at the bottom middle. You can swap active skills by dragging them onto each other and remove them by dragging them out of their active skill slots.

The skills still follow the same rules as before where they will do their skills in order of priority based on the skill slot position they are in, start with the Native skill which you can't move or change yet. So right now your character will always set the highest priority on the Native Skill first (up to 3 stacks on the enemy) and then skill slot 1, then 2, etc. If a higher priority skill is on cooldown they will automatically skip it and check for the next highest priority skill, and so on till there is an available skill to use. In other words, your heroes will keep busy with the skills you've given them.

There have also been some graphic bugs that were fixed along with giving the male some hair and a cloak to wear. You may also notice that each of screens basically look completely different from each other. Don't worry, it will all become more unified as Kevin finishes the graphics for them which he is currently working on.

On that note, we have brought on another artist to help with HTD. So let's welcome Bill to the team! He will be helping us push graphics along a bit faster and is looking forward to designing some creatures and effects especially along with doing animation in general. Kevin will be helping him out so the graphical style stays consistent and everything moves along smoothly.

I'd also just like to mention again that there is a HTD wiki page that has been created by our fans! It can be found here: http://herotowerdefense.wikia.com/wiki/Hero_tower_defense_Wiki

Big thanks to everyone who has been contributing! We've also added the wiki to the Fan Links/FAQ tab.


What's New:

-Added Skill Selection Screen

-Added Human Male Hair: Swagger Shag

-Added Human Male Cloak

-Fixed various graphical bugs


In the Works:

• Design
• Skill Behavior Screen (100%)
• Profiles Screen (100%)
• Inventory Screen (50%)
• Graphics
• Party Selection Screen Graphics (100%)
• Water Skill: Soak (Native) (75%)
• Water Skill: Aqua Strike (T1 Physical) (75%)
• Water Skill: Water Pistol (T1 Magical) (75%)
• Audio
• Sound Effects: Water Spell (100%)
• Sound Effects: Male Hit (100%)
• Sound Effects: Female Hit (100%)
• Sound Effects: Male Death (100%)
• Sound Effects: Female Death (100%)
• Programming
• User Profile (100%) - Being able to save your settings, you can use your same PTD log in

Also check out Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD for HTD concept art, art related works in progress, and more!

Leave any questions, ideas, suggestions, bugs, and any other feedback in the comments! Thanks!


-Dan

Weekly progress, let's talk PTD 2 and ANPO!

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! 


v6.0.1 is out! We are getting close to the end of PTD 1 Story Mode! To put things into perspective here is what is left to do:

• Two more gym then we head to the elite 4 and face off with Mewthree and his mind slaves.
• 8 New moves need to be added for all the pokemon to have their level up moves.
• 6 Pokemon that you can't catch yet in the game: Electabuzz, Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres, Mewtwo and Mew.

In the game right now we have:

• 32 Story Levels - 6 gym badges
• 400+ different moves
• 145 pokemon that you can catch

That is how close we are! Now keep in mind that there are over 600+ moves in all 5 generations combined so there isn't much left to add move wise if I were to make the sequels. Now you might be wondering things like when is the sequel coming out? or is anpo going to be made?, or just what the heck is this anpo thing? Well I've got answers!

To be honest the sequel hasn't been started yet, starting this week I will post some progress for PTD 2 along with discussions about the changes that I want for the game and also adding polls for you guys to decide some things too. But before I get into that let's talk about what is coming this week for PTD 1.

If you have beaten the Cinnabar Island level you will know that the Gym battle against Blaine is next! Just like other Gym battles you can expect a challenge and some unique twist that will hopefully match the theme of the gym and his pokemon. How this gym will play out is something I will figure out during this week and by the weekend we will have a new story level!

Other than the story level, I will include more TMs that are not yet implemented in the game along with any small bug fixes here and there that I can find.

For PTD 2 I will take a lot of the same code from PTD 1 so it won't take 5 months to build like PTD 1 originally did but I will be making a lot of changes. A good number of them come from request that you guys have made! So the first thing to do in PTD 2 is something that many of you have requested or indirectly requested and that is a PRELOADER! Yes! Finally! I know... PTD 2 progress will be slow and steady but I will share a small list of a few changes and ideas I have for PTD 2:

• Preloader! (No more "all I see is a white square" emails!)
• Faster logging in - The game will only initially load your current party only to speed up logging in. The rest of your pokemon will now be accessed on a different screen and that will load the rest of your pokemon by boxes.
• Box system - Similar to how the game is you will store and load pokemon by boxes and you can sort by box rather than having a long list of pokemon to handle.
• Buff and Debuffs stay on - When you move your pokemon from one spot to another it will no longer lose any of it's buffs or debuffs or statuses.
• Buffs and Debuffs Stack and stay on forever - Just like the game debuffs and buffs will now stack up to 6 times and they will last until removed or the pokemon faints.

• Day and Night levels - I'm not sure exactly how I will handle this, there are two options to pull this off.
• One is having two levels for each area, one during the day and one at night.
• Two is having a global clock for when you play and the levels adjust to that clock.
• While you play a level the time would be changing and it would get darker.
• The time would not be in real time, a whole day might pass in 30 minutes.
• This is not based on time zones but the time that you spend in the game.
I put a poll up so I can see what you guys think about it!

• Genders and Breeding - Pokemon will now have genders and you can breed pokemon using similar rules to the real game. The breeding part will probably be in the pokemon center, but hatching the eggs will most likely be in the game itself. You would put the egg on a spot, some eggs require more time on a spot to hatch than others.
• The Power of Badges - Something that I missed for PTD 1 which is your pokemon will only obey you if you have the proper badge, otherwise they will fall asleep. (This would only apply to traded pokemon)
• Transferring your old Pokemon from PTD 1 to PTD 2 - I'm still not 100% sure at what point in the game I will allow for trading your pokemon, but what I'm thinking is that you need to get to a certain point in the game before this is allowed. Also the "power of the badges" point prevents people from just bringing level 100 pokemon and beating the game easily.
• Holding items - Your pokemon will be able to hold berries and different items that will enable them to use them in levels just like the real game.
• Improved Trading Center - The trading center works right now but a lot of things are very tedious to do. Especially if you are trading a lot of pokemon. The plan is to continue to update the trading center to make it more user friendly and streamlined.
• Improved Multiplayer - Multiplayer right now is slacking, this is something that I want to improve drastically in the sequel.

This is but a small preview of the improvements I have in mind for the sequel. Now let's talk about Creatures Online Universe aka Project ANPO.

As many of you might know the reason I started programming to begin with was so I could make an online creature game. The world of pokemon was something that I thought was great and it really inspired me to learn programming and find ways to create games. 10 years later here we are and I'm getting closer and closer to finally being able to make this game. Now pokemon is a fine game as it is now but there are a lot of things that I think could be improved. I think they focused a lot of the battling and balancing out the different pokemon for battle and that's is great but the real reason I like pokemon is for discovering the pokemon and I loved watching the show because I could see almost how these pokemon lived in their habitats and how they interacted with each other (something that the show got away from in the later seasons) So the game I want to make is more about that. About going out and exploring and finding new creatures. Rather than just focusing everything on battling. I like battling but when a diglett can use Aerial Ace then it ruins the illusion for me. I liked it when each creature had it's own unique move or something to make them stand out. Details like these are the kinds of things I'm aiming for this game. Does this sound like something you would want to play?

Now you might be wondering what about Hero Tower Defense!? Well Hero Tower Defense has really great art and really great art requires time and motivation is part of the artist. We recently got another artist for HTD that will be working part time so that will help a bit. Once PTD 1 is finished I will spend more time working on HTD while working on PTD 2 and some ANPO on the side. I think a lot of you will want me to work less on HTD but HTD is something that will help us grow and since it's original we can take it to the mobile devices and not worry about it getting shut down.

PTD First Look by GraphicForce - Check it out now!

Okay so here is the progress list for this week:

PTD 1

Mystery Gift (100%) - Shadow Lickitung
Picking who to trade my pokemon to (0%)
Putting new pokemon up for trade (0%) - My trade account is samO
Story Level (100%)

• Intro (100%)
• Layout (100%)
• Waves (100%)
• Ending (100%)

New TMs (100%) - Rock Slide, Dragon Pulse, Shadow Ball, Charge Beam and Toxic
Bug Fixes (100%)

• Final Gambit doesn't faint your pokemon after using it (100%) 
• Fixed a bug that was making Final Gambit hit the target for twice the user's total damage (100%)

PTD 2

Preloader (100%)
Title Intro (100%) - Thanks Joel for making this for me!

Setting up the graphics for the preloader

HTD

Skill Selection Screen (100%)
Bug Fixes (100%)

As always let me know what you think! Sam out!

Hero Tower Defense Thursday: Day 26 - HTD Pre-Alpha v0.007 Release! Fan Made HTD Wiki!

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 25 of Hero Tower Defense Thursday.

Play Hero Tower Defense!

This release contains mostly bug fixes, some little changes, and small additions. A bunch of these were mentioned by you guys in the comments, so thanks for that!

Melee attacks now hit everything in a small area which includes stacked enemies. The Whelp now has a sound effect when it dies and some other sound effects that have been adjusted. We started implementing the graphics for the Character Customization Screen along with some more features (Note: While the character name field works it doesn't save and you won't actually see it anywhere else in the game so it's a bit pointless right now). You can now also remove characters from your party.

Now on to some other things. The poll Kevin had going on his blog for determining the next graphics to be created for the elemental skills has ended. It looks like the order will be: Water, Light, then Nature. We'll be starting on the water skills soon and then the others will follow in time.

We're working on the skill selection screens and hope to have a rough version of that in for next week's release. As the name implies, this screen will allow you to select skills for your characters so you can set them up how you want. Coming up soon will also be profiles which will be handy since it will allow you to retain all your customizations so you don't have to keep setting things up each time you play.

And last but certainly not least, Eba77 commented in the last post that there is a HTD wiki page that has been created by our fans! It can be found here: http://herotowerdefense.wikia.com/wiki/Hero_tower_defense_Wiki

Big thanks to everyone who has been contributing and to Eba77 for pointing it out!
We've also added the wiki to the Fan Links/FAQ tab.


What's New:

-Melee attacks now hit all enemies in an small area, including enemies that are stacked on top of each other

-Character Customization Screen Graphics

-Added Rotation buttons to the Character Customization Screen

-Added "Invalid Target" notification

-Added a sound effect for in-game errors (such as the notifications for the target being out of range, etc)

-Added Whelp Death sound effect

-Added Leave Party button so that you can remove characters

-Removed the civilian's weapon

-Fixed overlapping cooldown graphic on abilities

-Fixed a problem with some effects not layering correctly over the enemies


In the Works:

• Human Male Hair: Swagger Shag (100%)
• Human Male Cloak (100%)
• Character Customization Screen Graphics (100%)
• Party Selection Screen Graphics (40%)
• Skill Selection Screen (100%)
• Skill Behavior Screen (50%)

Be sure to check out Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD for HTD concept art, art related works in progress, and more!

As always let us know what you guys think about the game and how we're doing. If there's anything you would like to see or any suggestions you might have be sure to mention them in the comments!


-Dan

v5.9.1 is out! Team Rocket strikes! Avoiding Scams! Exclamation Points! oh and Weekly Progress!

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! 


v5.9.1 is finally out! It's been a nuts I ran into some bugs with the multiplayer that made me a little crazy, I found a workaround for now but it means that for the time being you can't see who you are playing with in multiplayer (They will always have the default avatar and be called Satoshi) other than that I hope you guys enjoy it once PlayTowerDefenseGames updates to the latest version.

TEAM ROCKET STRIKES!

Instead of calling those wonderful hackers well hackers, I will now call them Team Rocket! There was new hack that went public today but I sent it blasting off into space. So no worries! What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and with each new hack that gets fixed the security in the game tightens even more. So thanks Team Rocket for doing your part <3

SCAMS!

I get a good amount of email about people getting scammed and there isn't a lot I can do to help the person that got scammed. Mainly cause it is really hard to prove if somebody got scammed or not.

So to help out, here are some great tips to avoid getting scammed!

1. NEVER give out your password, this is very important! I will never ask you for your password, anybody that works for me will NEVER ask for it. If somebody ask for your password, it's a scam! Period.
2. Only do trades that are 6 or less pokemon from each side. Never do trades that require more than one transaction. If one of the transactions you end up giving him really good pokemon for really bad ones than it's a scam.
3. Ask somebody! Also don't ask the scammer's friend, ask on the message board or ask me if the trade sounds good before doing it.

Okay so this week we will take it easy (I have a test on Thursday >.<) we will have a story level with the PTD First look video will have more details on, some new TMs (Dragon Claw for that commentator that keeps asking for it!) In the new level there will be new pokemon to catch! Wooohooo!

Click here to view the PTD First Look Video of v6.0 by GraphicForce!

New Story Level (100%)

• Intro (100%)
• Layout (100%)
• Waves (100%)
• Ending (100%)

New TMs (100%)

• Dragon Claw (100%)
• Sunny Day (100%)

Trade my pokemon from the account samO (100%) - Too many to list >.<
Add new pokemon to trade (0%) - Too many to list, check them out at my account samO.
New Mystery Gift (100%)
New Pokemon to Catch (100%) - Ponyta, Koffing, Grimer, Magmar (Blue version only), Kabuto, Omanyte, Aerodactyl

• New Moves (100%)
• Sunny Day (100%) - Magmar
• Clear Smog (100%) - Koffing
• Sky Drop (100%) - Aerodactyl
• Iron Head (100%) - Aerodactyl
• Rock Slide (100%) Aerodactyl
• Add Stats to Game (100%)
• Graphic (100%)
• Shiny Graphic (100%)
• Shadow Graphic (100%)
• Add Evolutions (100%)
• Add to Pokedex (100%)
• Implement TM/Relearn moves (100%)
• Implement in Adoption (Battle Ready and Shiny) (100%)
• Implement Shadow in Game Corner (100%)
• Implement in Trading Center (100%)
• Implement in Save Code (100%)
• Added New Moves into the Pokemon Center Move List (100%)

Bug Fix (100%)

• Fixed a bug that was causing many water skills to not gain their benefit from Rain Dance (100%) 
• Added security for hackers evolving pokemon that shouldn't evolve (100%)
• Pokemon that you catch on Cinnabar Island will now be the proper level (100%)

We are getting close to the end of PTD 1 which will mean the rise of HTD and PTD 2 and .... something. So keep checking up on my progress this week and leave me some wonderful insightful full of feedback comments that I love to read so much! Thanks everybody!