Revolutionizing Tower Defense (Part II)

Even though my Frozen Dreams TD project is on hold till i get back home in three weeks i'm still conceptualizing...

I have realized that yet another reason why TDs suck is that theres really not much to do other than build towers. So here is my question: will it still be fun if i make it so you have to micromanage your towers a little (considering i will nullify the lag issue) or will this just make it annoying to play? Also, i am including a bunch of time-wasting abilities that have little to no effect on gameplay (they'll be a bit more developed than just special effects)... what's your opininon on that?

I'm also thinking about having different enemy types... 3 each round (some will repeat so this wont affect the map size too drastically) there will be Runners (enemys that just run to the end) Siege units (enemys that run past assault towers and attack the defense towers) and Frontliners (enemys that attack the first thing they see). The main reason for this is to stop people from just massing basic towers (basic towers will have insanely low HP)

Lastly i'm wroking on ways to randomize the gameplay just a bit, so that there will be at least a few surprises each game... i don't want to randomize enemys and such but computer handicap, sell values of towers (the "advanced" sell system), and the level at which you recieve your helper unit will definiteley be randomized, anything else you think i should randomize?

current status:
{100%}-{Terrain}
{100%}-{Storyline}
{085%}-{Race Outline}
{060%}-{Towers}
{040%}-{Cinematics}
{020%}-{Enemies}
{000%}-{Debugging}

question
1.how do u micro towers it just doesnt seem to work
2.random gameplay isnt great unless it doesnt affect the difficulty
3.add some mini thing like in zoator (do not do the same thing)


and that is it

the zoator thing blew, i didn't do anything with my hero the whole game, as for the randomization it will only slightly affect difficulty and you can micro towers the same way you micro units except they don't have the move ability.

i said something like zoator a side thing maybe a small aos yes this sounds crazy but it would give u gold keep u ocupied and make the game genraly more fun u may not of liked the zoator thing but it changed the game play a lil and made it slighty more interestting

The Zoatar hero thing was alright, it was something funish to do, and another layer of skill to the game (certain hero choices, micro and spell usage would result in higher income).
I was thinking of taking the concept a bit further, adding a sort of hero arena style of play. Eg: Leaked units come through into a hero arena bit, where you can attempt to kill of as many as possible before they kill all your heroes and then "leak" (your heroes come back next round). Maybe gold is for building towers, wood for buying hero items? Anyway better actually finish my td first.....

Personaly, I wouldn't like to micro manage my towers. Second, I like the idea of unit types. Fast units that maybe make a dash for the end, slower stronger units, or units that make attacks against certain lines of defense sounds pretty cool. I also like the idea of making rounds run without waiting for the end of the prior round. So even if units are slowed and only half way through the map, the second round might still start up. But this depends on how your map is set up. Having something else to do shouldn't be an issue. I usually don't need something else to do as long as I'm getting something to do in the first place. That is, I'm actually getting kills. The reason tds are boring to me isn't because I'm just building towers, because that is why I play a td, but because on many of them, if you're left at the end of the line, you get little to no kills. I hate mauls and Zoatars because of this. And don't put heroes into the game. To me, that just ruins it also.
One thing I did like, despite what many might think, is the bonus td map that blizzard made. The reason being is that for one thing, you got a countinued supply of gold. The other being that you got certain towers at certain stages. Perhaps to keep people from saving up or selling all their towers for the ultimate tower, you could set up something like that.
Another cool thing would be to randomize. This might require more work, but if you could some how set it up where each time you play, you'd get a different set of units. So perhaps the first time, the units are runners, but the next time you play the map, they are attackers. Just a bit of variety for reply value. Oh, and don't make an ultimate tower that does 1000-11000 damage and shoots across the screen or whatever.
So far, though, I do like that sound of your td and look forward to seeing what you do end up doing with it.
Edit: I forgot one more thing. Don't make it where someone can just build a few splash towers near the spawn point and kill all or most of the creeps. That sucks ****cough*maul*cough*.:)

i dont think you should have the next round start wen the round b4 didnt finish. because i have seen that in some td's, and it totally sucked it up.

the three units will all come at you at the same time, and waves will cone after one wave has finished. there will be a constant income based on how many players are in the game and what position you are in. the "gray" of my map will be able to travel all over the map and build special towers, most of greys towers will be insane range though. there will not be a tower that does 10000-11000000 damage because im not gay, the most Uber tower will probably do something like 300 damage, very slowly. How did i accomplish this, i used very very complex algorithms to change the smallest attack power of my towers from 1000 to 2... making all my attack values infiniteley smaller. i hate the zoator td hero thing just because its stupid, in fact, i hate zoator TD, the only TDs i ever liked was wintermaul 3 (the original), and cube D and to a small extent Cube D SE. towers will not be able to attack spawned units because they will not be able to see them ala visibility modifier. you will not have to wait to get certain towers but most require placement of previous towers, you will also not be able to build support towers till later waves. I never said i would be doing something seperate because thats just stupid, it's like saying "my map blows and you'll get bored of it soon so ill give you this gay mini-thing to look at while your rooting away in your boredom." I will include several special tower abilities that wont dramatically impact gameplay but will give you something to do. Scince your not constantly massing towers i will add a certain element of micro into it like a tower that as the drunken haze ability (just an example). Uber towers will not be self sufficent and you will need lesser towers to help them out.

I find that micromanaging towers was one of the rewarding and most fun aspects of the Cube Defense. If you were building right, you ended up with several towers that could help you slow your enemies, and if you planned your maze out, you could make units run it several times. Being able to switch between tower unit groups and use hotkeys for cripple, raise dead, etc., made you busy for the entire round, and since the round passed quickly, the game was lotsa fun.

In fact, I like Cube D a lot. I think I'll go play it.
:infth:

yes, i want to find a way to select different buildings in one command group, but have had no luck thus far.... any ideas?

btw, i dont think ill give spells lke criple to towers because jamming "c" while clicking randomly on the screen isn't my idea of micro.

i personally felt that TD micro is never really that much fun, all about hiiting a the same hot key and clicking every unit that came past.

I always liked zoatar because the 5(?) races all had a very distinct
feel to them. Also the Hero bit was kinda ok and if it had been developed furhter coulda proven alot better, im surprised no ones really used it since.

for my micro i was thinking AoE, large cooldown abilities. And some pre-round adjustments that people should make (i.e. some towers need a constant stream of gold to maintain fireing, ala ammo) and i don't believe in distinct races, as the whole game from the beggining would depend on what races players took... i.e if all took races that slowed down enemys and not killed them your dead. The way my races are made is that the distinktness of it is between the Assault Defense and Overlord positions. the inter-races (3 for assault, 3 for D and 2 for over) will have theyre special towers and such, but it will still be possible to complete the game using any assortment of races.

Hehe, the first thing I thought of when I saw 'REVOLUTIONARY TOWER DEFENSE' was 'noob that wanna gets attention'. . . Unless you absolutely do something brand spanking new that no one in this god forsaken world of b.net has done and actually make it stable, worth playing, and has a replayability factor of 100! (out of 100) then why bother at all! Make a campaign or cinematic...

ya i could always take the noob's way out and make a campaign or cinematic, but i wanna work hard on something instead of just pulling it outa my ***.

Only unexperienced map makers still think that making a quality Tower Defense map is easy. It's not. It's even harder than most other map types.

I am currently working on a new (innovative) style of AOS, and even if it will be more advanced than what i have seen so far (doesn't mean i saw everything ^^), it still is laughable in terms of programming difficulty.

I learnt that while making The Cube Defense NE, that i wanted to be the most advanced TD ever made in technical terms. I succeded until FT and the 1.10 patches came out. Lets put it straight : THAT was a hard map to make, with a much more advanced programming level than common maps.

Yes of course, making a builder build 5 different towers and stopping 50 creeps spawning at once is a TD. But i would call that a basic TD, nothing like what is talked about in this thread.

Then it would be nice if some irrelevant comments against new ideas to renew the TD genre would be avoided.

PiRo-piOn -> you have all my support there, your ideas sound really interesting, and i am pleased to see that i haven't though of most of them. Fell free to add as many new features as you like (like advanced special effects , micro-management - hehe the cube was all about that ^^, new kind of towers working differently from what has already been made, etc...). Just ignore the childish comments like "I HATE TDs, I WISH THEY NEVER EXISTED, blahhhhh...", as you won't be able to avoid them all.

I'd even help you out in this project if i wasn't that busy with my project - i even have left Cube NE on hold letting the fans down :'( - but i don't say never. You can still ask for help if you ever need it ;)

I wish a long life to Frozen Dreams TD.

Regards.