AncientMane TD

Ancienthold* TD Portfolio
*I've decided to make the name Ancienthold, not Ancientmane, TD.

Concepts

- Commanders: Each player has their own "Commander" unit. The game autobalances the rate at which they level up depending on how many players. The Commander is the heart of the player; if he dies, the player loses.
- Commanding: In addition, each player has an immobile "Builder" unit. This unit has no need to move to the desired building location; just point and click, and the building begins immediately
- Seamless: Monsters are constantly being pumped out of their spawning locations, and levels changes instantly; there is no rest for the wicked, they say, and especially not for you.
- True Defending: A now-useful strategem is to block, as enemies will attack any and all towers in their way regardless if they are blocking or not, which truely defines how Tower *Defense* maps should be played.
- Varied Difficulty: There will be four preset difficulties that players vote on before beginning the game: Easy, medium, hard and insane.
- Multiple Levels: There will be 100 levels of enemies that last for 30 seconds each, for a total of 50-minutes of playtime.
- Plethora of Towers: To fight said enemies, 100+ towers are going to be implemented. This also makes for players using their own tower-building strategies, which are best to use for which situation, etc.
- Upgrades: There will be 29 upgrades available to really tip the odds in your favour.
- Abilities: Each commander, though unable to move from a set position, are able to cast a range of abilities at points on the map called "Command Points". Depending on the ability (obviously), various things will happen to the enemies. Also, it is to be debated whether the Builder shall be able to cast defensive spells or not.

Statistics

- Difficulty Settings: The four difficulty create the following settings; Easy - 1 spawn every 15 seonds, Moderate - 1 spawn every 10 seconds, Hard - 1 spawn every 5 seconds, Insane - 2 spawns every 5 seconds.
- Enemy Growth: Enemies grow at a constant rate, providing a difficult challenge all the way through the game.
- Tower Growth: Towers grow at roughly the same rate, to meet out the enemies.
- Tower Destruction - Gold Ratio: Towers that cost a lot of money will garner in more gold than was spent on them before they are destroyed - providing they are used correctly.
- Armour and Weapon Types: Armour and weapon types (light/medium/heavy, or normal, piercing and siege, for example) are heavilly depended on in this. Having only one certain weapon type will mean certain destruction - all towers are eventually made obsolete during certain levels, and makes other towers more appealing.
- Enemy Abilities: Every so-many levels, the enemies cast a powerful spell that severely weakens the players and their units.

Completed

- 12/100 enemy levels. (note: they are currently under revamp to decrease their difficulty slightly, as it is way too hard at the moment)
- Enemy growth rate.
- 14/29 upgrades completed.
- The commander.
- 3/4 commander abilities. (note: one of the abilities isn't functioning right)
- 13/100+ towers completed.
- Spawning system. (note: this is being revamped as well. At first we had the difficulty dependant on the number of players, but now we are installing a pre-game voting method, allowing players to choose their own difficulty and pace)

Problems

- Fortification Lag: The ability, Fortify, creates a castle at the chosen command point. The problem is that it seems to generate tons and tons of lag, that won't even go away after the castle leaves.
- Pyrohelm: Pyrohelm is an ability that creates a wave of flame, damaging all enemies along a specified path to a certain point. The problem is that when it is cast on the Command Point to the left, it strays off the correct path.

Current Phase

- We are currently in the Alpha phase and creating the enemy waves and tweaking their difficulty. Then, towers will be tweaked according to the enemies to provide a constant challenge all the way through.

Project Member

- Vandell: Project leader, concepts and ideas, non-trigger abilities, unit creation (towers, enemies and others), balancing, tweaking and polish, all-around good guy.
- LegolasArcher: Triggers, JASS and triggered abilities, slight skin and icon work, trigger polishing, the guy who whips us to work (even though that's SUPPOSED to be my job).
- SoulReaver: Triggers, trigger polishing, majority of skinning and icons, other media, the guy that no one knows.

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

You made a game, so im gunna critique it!:ggani: actually, im not doing anything, but.....

Creeps dont die when they reach middle

Then how do you lose??? If you dont lose a life or something after they get all the way across, then what? I dont like to play a game with no goal ://// (i like the juk)

Fast paced feel with no actual levels- one wave morphes into another after time

Then there is levels. If there are two different units, and one unit is better then another, it doesnt matter if the change is abrupt of smooth, there are levels.

Contains 4 groups of towers for (as of now):
-Basic
-Advanced
-Hero
-Divine
With most likely 9+ towers per group

Are these going to be built all from one race (so that the guy builds a building that makes a better guy, and so on)? Im thinking so, because if not then a guy like Advanced would have an obvious advantage over someone like basic, and Divine would crush them all. I guess the problem is to balance them so that perhaps you have a slow Divine tower costing 100 and doing 200 damage every 2 seconds, and then a fast Basic tower costing 50 doing 50 damage every second.

notice how it balances out. :foot:



About 100 levels of attackers

meh. 100 levels??? Im telling you that 100 levels is b o r i n g. It gets boring around level 40, as the maul-designer found out. Unless the guys come real fast, i think you should bring this down.


anyway, that was probably my longest post to date..... hope its some constructive critiscism... and the pics look good.

EDIT: not only did my longest post just get longer, but i thought id mention that the attacking creeps is a good idea. Dont make them two powerful, because that just gets annoying

Allow me to answer your questions, johnfn, being the project leader an' all.

I have to say, my partner does suck with explaining things. z.z; Er, regardless.. you win by protecting your commander. When an enemy units reaches the center, it attacks your commander (Commanders are unable to leave the center portion of the map).

You're right, but once again, my partner sucks at explaining things. xD Unit change is seemless and there is no pause inbetween them.

You start off only being able to build Basic towers, research upgrades and make a single Hero tower. However, as you gain more gold, you can research an upgrade that allows to you build Advanced towers (as well as one additional hero tower), and another last upgrade that lets you get one last hero tower as well as allow construction of Divine towers. By the way, my friend was wrong in his information; there will be 11 towers in each group (the max amount of ixons possible, in other words). Or, more specifically, 8 towers and 3 barricades per group. In addition, all towers have the ability to upgrade. :)

Barricades are special, cheaper-costing 'towers'. They don't have any attacks, but some have abilities to deal damage to enemies (such as the Spiked Barricade, which returns 50% of all damage dealt to it to enemies). In this map, it is almost imperative to 'block' attackers, for they do get pumped out very quickly.

Levels last only 30 seconds each with no pause inbetween then, and there is a 20-second initializing phase before enemies are generated. Meaning, there is 50 minutes and 20 seconds of playtime (which is the normal for some or most TD's). Of course, the game gets incredibly hard later on, and only hardcore gamers will be able to completely finish the game (which is what we hope will make this game different from others, it's difficulty). ^_^

Oh, don't worry; I'm going to balance the map out so that the difficulty paces at a normal rate. After level 50, the 'halfway point', enemies begin to get extremely difficult and harder to kill. Also, towers are guaranteed to give you more money than you bought them for IF you use them correctly.

#1 if I wanted to, I could have explained them more in depth, but 98% of the people here say "meh its too long" and never read it. I thought it would be better to give ebrief rundown and allow questions than bore people to death :D

Also, sorry about the mistanke on th enumber of towers per group. I must have zoned out and thought it was 4x4 buttons instead of 3x4 ://// .

Well, it's actually 3x4 with a -1 for the Cancel button.

Very Nice Run into any majore Troubles with trigs you can always Ask me ^_^

The AI glitch is "solved" :D. I just realized it only happens when there are no units in the center- which will never occur without loosing ingame:D .