I’ve achieved many of my milestones with the game but ultimately it still needs a few fundamental systems that would help bring it all together.
The game itself features many different types of towers which can do many different things. As the game systems grew, the towers and what they could do became more sophisticated. As for the core game, the towers continue to change and are always being balanced, modified, or added to. When it comes to towers I want to balance and make each one feel rewarding and fun to play and have an ultimate final upgrade implemented for each base tower (30+ base towers).
The monsters are also being modified and added to. When it comes to monsters I want to add at least one more boss type which I am calling the summoner and I want to also revisit the special types of monsters and find more creative ways of irritating the player. I also need to create more challenging wave spawn groups which will help create uncertainty during a level and will increase the difficulty and strategy required.
There are other systems I have considered implementing as well and I will post a future blog about some of the different ideas that could really improve the game and strategy.
Sounds have been on the back burner the entire time with my focus on developing the engine and systems for playing. I feel the sounds should be simple with the game and should mostly be made-up of ques from the interface and any important game events. I’ve already begun compiling all the different sounds I may require. However, I will also have to search out a artist/composer and figure out costs for such tasks. I estimate this development milestone would take at least a few months.
Textures have also been on the back burner the entire time of development. I hired my first and only texture monster artist at the beginning of February this year and he has recreated much of the base core of monster textures and I hope it will continue. However, towers and other textures such as environmental objects and path/ground tiles need to be ‘recreated’. Much of the textures used are from the very beginning, obtained from free sites or created by myself and was never meant to be permanent. My priority for this would be the towers then the path and ground tiles and finally any misc objects. Currently there are almost 100 different towers (30 base towers with two upgrades each) so there are a lot of different textures required and I think it is important to have each upgrade be visually “improved” meaning it should improve upon the base tower texture by adding something visually to it. The pathing and ground textures will be less demanding as I feel there are only so many different grounds and paths, finding someone who can make them will be the hard part. I estimate this development milestone will take at least six months but it really depends on investment.
The game has the ability to customize many of the aspects of a level, everything from customized Towers to Monsters, Effects and Buffs, and many of the level properties such as what can spawn, the difficulty values, and much more. However, to really utilize it would require spending time creating an editor that is semi-friendly to users but allowing for deep customization. I estimate this would require at least 3 months of work before a well defined prototype could be available.
With an editor implemented, custom levels could be created by any player, and I feel the next logical step would be to allow the player to share this custom content with others. This means implementing a database and interface for downloading/uploading levels and ratings/comments. The game itself would have an user-interface directly accessible from the main menu allowing you to browse all custom uploads and download and play them. Allowing for anyone to upload a level or leave a comment/rating should also be considered which could really help with content growth. I feel this could be implemented in a few months.
So in conclusion the current goals are balancing the game, adding assets such as textures and sounds, and implementing a level editor and a way to share content. I will make future blog posts about progression, thoughts and ideas, and anything else related to the game and its development!
Until next time!