Weekly Progress, New 1v1 and Story Level! Types for Creature Universe!

Want to get the Shiny 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!

Hi everyone! Last week we had the second level of the story mode released. We got to walk around and talk to the citizens of New Bark Town and go on a little quest to save our starter. This is but the tip of the ice berg for story mode and hopefully you got a taste of what is to come. Did you like it better than the PTD1 style of just watching an intro playing the level and watching an ending? Let me know! Your feedback here in the comments, twitter, emails, facebook and on the forums help shape this game. Like I've said before I spend a good amount of time reading everything you guys write. I might not have enough time to answer them all like I used to but I do the best that I can to answer ones that are crucial or easy enough for a quick answer.

Okay so moving on to this week we will have both a new 1v1 level and a new story level! Lots of new content coming your way.

For both the Story and 1v1 level I will be adding some new technology to the game engine. I've been meaning to add this for a while but haven't had a lot of time. The new technology will be for the trainer you are battling against. Usually they will bring out a pokemon and you defeat that pokemon then they bring out their next one. It's very similar to how the waves work in PTD1 because I'm using the same engine for the trainers that I use in the waves. The new tech will be to allow for the trainers to have a team like you do and to be able to switch out pokemon in battle just like you can. Which will make the fights more interesting and dynamic.

Other than the new tech, 1v1 will now be headed to Route 3, we got some trainers to fight there and also a new pokemon to unlock. Can you guess who it is? All I can say is that it likes to sing a lot.

Speaking of sing, I will be making some changes to how the sleep mechanic works. Previously it would just put you to sleep for a certain amount of time regardless of how much damage you took. Now it will put you to sleep for a longer amount of time but taking damage will most likely cause you to wake up. Making it better for use against somebody that is attack you.

For the Story mode you will be challenged to your first fight. Speaking of this fight I've had reports of people finding an interesting way of leveling up your starter past level 7. This is pretty much my mistake so don't worry if you did it, I will be fixing it in the next version so it should no longer be possible.

Speaking of leveling, I also want to announce a new feature (inspired by my playing of Guild Wars 2)! In PTD1 you could very easily just level up enough so that a level was incredibly easy. In PTD2 there will be a limit as to how high you can be for each level to preserve that level's difficulty (to a point). So for example, lets say your starter is level 12 and you go into Route 29 (The first route in Johto). That means you would massively out level this stage. Most pokemon on this level will be level 2-4. What the game will do is temporarily turn your level 12 pokemon into a level 6 pokemon. Your pokemon will keeps its attacks, evolution, and abilities but it will have stats like it was level 6. Notice that the cap is higher than the highest level in the area but it is still within a certain range. Also since you get to keep your attacks and evolution you will still have an advantage. It just makes it so you can't simply steam roll everything once you get level 100 pokemon. What do you think?

I also plan to bring out the first Mystery Gift! We had a poll a while back and the first Mystery Gift for PTD 2 will be Zorua! Mystery Gift codes will be done a tiny bit different, you will still go to PlayTowerDefenseGames.com and try to figure out the code and you will also enter the code on that site's version of PTD2. Before you could go to any site and enter it but now it is exclusive to their site. Since most people would just find the code on a different site and just use it straight off without visiting our great sponsor.

Lastly I'll also be working on the PTD2 Pokemon Center. It will be very similar to the PTD1 but I still have to do a lot infrastructure changes. I don't think it will be out this week since I have so much to do but I hope to get a good amount done and who knows maybe it will be out too.

Alright so that was quite a bit of info. Let's look at the Weekly Progress list next. Also remember I update this while I'm working so make sure to come back every once in a while to see how I'm doing :)

Weekly Progress:

Alpha v1.18 New Story Mode Battle: Released now!

• Fixed a bug with the Ability Intimidate that was preventing it from being applied to enemies that swapped into the battle
• Fixed a bug that is preventing the Arena Trap Ability and other attacks that trap you from working on Enemie
• Made it so Arena Trap will not work on pokemon that are immune to ground attacks
• New Level Modifier Feature - This only applies for Story mode and not 1v1 mode.
• New Story Level
• New Character
• Quest Intro
• Properly load your pokemon to the profile
• Properly saving Pokemon Information like leveling up, learning new moves and gaining experience
• Get Pokemon Unique ID after saving
• Get and Give Pokemon Position 
• Sending Info
• Receiving Info
• NPC AI for battle
• Battle Layout
• Battle Waves
• Quest Ending
• Implementing a level cap at 10 for Story Mode
• Lowering any pokemon that went over 10 back to 10
• Implementing in the server
• Implementing in the client

Alpha v1.17.1 Critical Bug Fix: Released now! 

•  Fixed a bug that was preventing players from completing the second quest on Story mode 

Alpha v1.17 New 1v1 Level: Released now!  

• Added Sponsor Intro
• Made starters have a chance to be both female and male instead of just male
• Fixed a bug that allowed you to keep leveling up your starter
• Moved the Back button in the story level to a different spot
• Made it so if you aren't facing an NPC then you won't talk to it
• Made it so bumping into an NPC will now make it stop and face you
• Changed the Police officers text for when you are a female character
• Limited the amount of potions you can have on you in 1v1 mode to 15 - This won't be like the rare candy where you can only buy 2. This means that you can only have a max of 15 on you at a time but if you use any of them you can go back to the max for the next level.  
• Made the Sleep status effect last 12 second but any damage taken has a 50% chance to awake up the target
• Increased the cost of Kakuna, Metapod, Beedrill, and Butterfree in 1v1 mode  to 25, 25, 45, and 45 respectively
• Added New Pokemon to the game (3)
• Graphics (100%)
• Shiny Graphics (100%)
• Shadow Graphics (100%)
• Stats (100%)
• Attack list (100%)
• Evolution Information (100%)
• Added New Attacks to the game
• Sing
• Pound
• Disable
• Wrap
• Glare
• Fake Tears
• Fury Swipes
• Added New Abilities to the game
• Cute Charm
• Friend Guard
• Intimidate
• Unnerve
• Illusion
• Added Gym Leader Checkpoints to 1v1 - Once you reach a gym leader you will be able to start playing at that gym leader battle.
• Added New Trainer AI Feature - Very basic trainer AI, when his/her pokemon faints he will take out the next one. Implementing feature into the game engine.
• Increased Coin rewards for any level that gave less than 20 coins to 20 coins - This is help reduce the feeling that you need to grind a lot for coins. This also helps balance the fact that you can only hold a certain number of potions on you in this update. I'll be keeping an eye on the numbers and will tweak as necessary.
• Added New 1v1 Level
• Intro
• Level Layout
• Level Waves
• Previous Level Ending Text
• Added New 1v1 Trainer AI - This is the AI for the trainer in the new level.
• Changed PTD 1 link on the main screen to point to the sponsor's website.

Alright now let's talk a bit about Creature Universe TD. Many of you might not know but Dan and I hold team meetings every week. We chat with our artist about Creature Universe, we see what everybody is working on and talk about the design of the game. So for the last few weeks we have been talking about the types that we were going to use for Creature Universe. This hasn't been an easy task. We all had different opinions. Some of us wanted to remove some types. Others wanted to add even more types. In the end we started from the beginning and asked ourselves which types MUST be around. After we figured that out we went ahead and added some new ones, combined some other ones and even removed some. Here is the list of the types that will be in Creature Universe! Granted this list could still be tweaked in the future. But for now this is what we have decided.

Normal/Neutral - Unlike Pokemon this type will actually be Neutral to all other types. It has no weaknesses but also no advantages. This type will also be more limited than I pokemon where a bunch of creatures had this type along with another one.
Fire/Flame - Pretty self explanatory.
Water/Aquatic - See Fire.
Grass/Plant - See Water.
Electric/Lightning - See Grass.
Air - This type is pretty much what flying is in pokemon.
Ice - See Electric.
Ground/Earth - This type combines what pokemon would have as Ground and Rock into one type.
Metal - This is kinda like Steel, but it can be different metals. Basically very strong and sharp.
Toxic - Like Poison type in pokemon but a lot better.
Dark - Like Dark in Pokemon but this is the type you would see ghost show up in.
Light - This type is something completely new. It's the counterpart of Dark. You would see more magical creatures like psychic show up with this type.
Mythical - This is the type for legendary creatures. The plan we have for it is that it is very defensive against all types except for Neutral, Light and Dark. It also has no offensive advantages.

So these are out types! Something old, something new, something combined. It's got a little bit of everything. The only types advantage we have figured out are Mythical and Neutral since those are really different from the rest. We are still working on specific type charts for the rest so stay tuned for that later on. Or what kind of type charts can you guys come up with? I would love to see them with explanations as to why you did what you did.

Also creatures will have almost like secondary "types" we are calling it species. For example your creature can be a type Fire but it can also be a bug species. Being a bug will carry certain advantages or disadvantages. Other species might be like "reptile", "mammal". We are still working on this part but I just wanted to mention it so you guys knew about it.

Well that was a lot of info! I hope you guys have a good week this week and as always, let me know what you think!

Weekly Progress, Pewter Gym Leader Battle and Level 2 for Story Mode

Want to get the Shiny 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 everyone! I hope you had/are having a good labor day weekend (in the states). I will keep this one pretty short and sweet.

Weekly Progress:
This week we will have a 1v1 level (Released now on v1.15), we finally reached the first gym! Fighting against the Pewter City Gym Leader Brock. Something special about gym fights is that you will get an increase reward for beating them. For one, once achievements are out you will get an achievement for beating the gym and it will include a reward for your story mode profile. Also you will get more coins than usual, I haven't decided the exact amount. I was thinking either having a high flat amount, or a flat amount plus refunding whatever you spent, or a flat amount plus another amount or whatever you spent, whichever is lowest. I'm still working out the exact details but just know that beating the gym will boost up your coin amount since it is a pretty good place to reach. Also it will unlock either all the starters or just one I also haven't decided and I might put a pool up to see which starter should be out.

On the story side of things I'm working towards level two which will have you getting your first starter pokemon. (Released now on v1.16) Last week I did a lot of the infrastructure for saving and creating maps and such. The more of that that I do the easier it will be to make new levels. I have redone a lot of the saving code to make it faster more efficient plus in PTD 2 story mode you have a map so I also have to keep track of where you are and things like what quest have you completed and what not. Before I would just keep track of level attempted and level completed. With this game things are more complicated so there is a lot more time spent building these extra things. I believe it will be worth it in the end since both PTD2 and Creature Universe will gain much from this.

So that is what I'm trying to accomplish this week, below is the actual list that I will keep updating by completing and adding new things.

Alpha v1.16 Progress List: Released Now!

• Add interactions with objects in the map (100%) - Interaction with signs, tv, etc. 
• NPC Characters for first level (100%)- Prof and other people that live in New Bark Town
• Level 2 quest
• Chikorita Quest (100%)
• Cyndaquil Quest (100%)
• Totodile Quest (100%) 
• Battle Intro (100%)
• Battle Layout (100%)
• Battle Waves (100%)
• Battle  Ending (100%)
• Add the Town Music (100%)
• Add Saving your pokemon's info (100%)

Alpha v1.15 New 1v1 Level: Released now!

• Pewter City Gym Leader Battle 1v1 Mode
• New Attacks Needed
• Rock Tomb
• Custom Onix Attack - Boulder Throw 
• Leech Seed
• Vine Whip
• Stun Spore
• Pursuit
• Mud-slap
•  New Abilities needed
• Chlorophyll
• Level Intro
• Level Layout
• Level Waves
• Level Ending
• New Item Unlocked
• Implement Item
• Add limits to how many you can buy of this item
• New Pokemon Unlocked
• Add Stats
• Add Moves
• Add Graphics
• Allow for multiple pages in the pokemon/item store pages
• Add the TM/HM screen to allow learning TMs and HMs  - These will no longer cost money.

Guys I just want to thank you again for all the support, if it weren't for you guys going to the trading center, telling your friends about the game and visiting the blog we couldn't be doing any of this. I would be working a job that I would have no interest in and I wouldn't be able to make these games for you guys. Thanks again and as always.. let me know what you think!

Weekly Progress and Anpo Starters

Want to get the Shiny 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! Welcome to another week of Sam and Dan Games. This week we have some sneak peak at the Creature Universe Starters and the weekly progress for what will be new in Pokemon Tower Defense 2 this week. Enjoy!

Creature Universe (aka ANPO) Starters:
Okay so every creature game should start with the trainers getting their first creature. In pokemon you started in one town and you picked from three different starters. In most games in the series you could pick from a grass, fire or water pokemon. My first thoughts in designing ANPO were "okay why not have different types available? Why not have all types available?" I thought it would be great if you wanted a specific type to be your starting type. Why only have 3 choices? Then I said "wouldn't it be cool if each starter had a different starting location?" What if since each city specializes in a certain type why not have a starter on each city and have players decide which city they wanted to start from. That all sounded great! But then I came back to earth and thought about how many different types we might have and about how long it would take to make all those cities right from the start. Okay so I like the idea of different cities for each starter. I like the idea of letting you choose which type you want to start. But to release the game I have to limit how many starters I will release the game with. So let's go back down to 3 and then as the game progresses we will add more. Okay so 3 starter types for 3 cities. The starters will be like that cities mascot. They will be an important part of that city. That is the creature that young trainers from that city receive when they first start training.

Now which 3 types should it start with? My first thoughts were to not do fire, grass, and water. Let's make it different! WOOOO! How about flying, ground, electric? Hmm it doesn't quite work out... Flying isn't super effective against ground... Also it's not that intuitive to figure out who beats who... not as nice as fire, grass, and water. So I decided okay I want more than 3 types for starters but if I only have 3 types then they will be fire, grass, and water. So a few weeks back I had my artist, Kevin, Bill, Evan, Josh and Joel, start coming up with concepts for creatures for ANPO. We have over 100 designs already! But I like to present to you the work in progress sketches of the water, fire, and grass starters for ANPO!

Work In Progress ANPO Starters

Weekly Progress:
This week for PTD 2 will we have another 1v1 level, this level should be enough for kakuna and metapod to level up to 10 so I will include the unlocks for those. Also I'll be pushing for saving in the story mode and the second quest where you can actually pick your starter. Plus if I have time during the week I'll add any small fixes or changes that I find.

Alpha v1.14 Added the Girl Avatar for story mode, saving for story mode, Bug Fixes and Changes (9/2/12): Released!

• Fixed a bug that was making attacks that should do at least 1 damage do 0 damage - Like Poison Sting on Geodude
• Fixed a bug that prevented a pokemon from learning an attack when it evolves and you beat a level
• Fixed a bug with attacks with an initial cooldown having a cooldown glitch
• Removed Prof Oak's winning text and added different text in Story Level 1
  
• Added Johto Starter sounds to the Story Level 1 Intro
• Added the correct lost popup to Story Level 1
• Implemented the girl avatar in story mode
• Fixed being able to enter houses through windows and walls in Story mode 
• Lowered the Geodude's level in Level 6 of 1v1 to 10, 11, 12 respectively, also lowered the amount of buffs they do before attacking
• Gave Professor Oak the correct questions to ask the player on Story Level 1 Intro
• Fixed a bug with beating a level while playing at a higher speed
• Added properly deleting profiles when the delete button is pressed  
• Added saving your story profile

Alpha v1.13 New Level, Bug Fixes and Changes (8/28/12): Released!

• 1v1 Level 6
• Intro
• Level Layout
• Waves
• Ending
• Added Butterfree and Beedrill as unlockables
• Lower the effect of speed changes to attack speed
• Update speed changes to attack cooldown in real time instead of only when a new move is going to be done

 That's all I have for you this week, keep checking back to see how I am progressing on the update, and let me know what you think of the starters and the weekly progress in the comments below or on twitter.
Thanks!

Countdown to PTD 2 Story Mode, HTD Status Update, ANPO has evolved!

Want to get the Shiny 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!

Countdown to PTD 2 Story Mode -
The next release of PTD 2 will have the very first quest, below you will find out the progress that I need to accomplish to reach this release. More things will be added and updated as I work on the game. Keep coming back to see my progress.


New Story Level! Pokemon Center update! v1.12 (08/24/12): Released now!

• Added a new title screen made by our artist Kevin!
• Level 1 quest - Dream Training 
• Intro
• Level Layout
• Level Waves
• Ending
• Add story profile screen
•  Walking around feature
• Collision map- Setting the hitboxes on level objects.
• Level Boundaries - Levels won't scroll past their edge.
• Character Boundaries - Your character will stay in the middle of the screen until it hits the edge of a level then it will be able to keep walking to the edge.
• Added Depth Sorting to Level Objects - Depth will now be sorted for all objects in the map.
• Create New Bark Town Map
• Create Forest Spot Map
• Create Lab Map
• Create Your House Map
• Your Room
• Family Room
• Create Other House Maps
• Connect different map together - Allows for entering into a different area. 
• Story Mode Graphics will now be from the GBA games instead of the DS games - The DS graphics are not easily available like the GBA graphics. 

Pokemon Center

• Added a much requested feature to the Pokemon Center! You can now search for trades that must have a request, or not have a request or both! 

New Level, Bug Fixes, New Additions v1.11 (08/17/12)

• Added the pokemon's current attacks to the "Buy Pokemon" screen
• Fixed a bug in level 3 pokemon getting whiter if you keep bringing them in and out
• Added missing attacks to Pikachu (Tail Whip) and Spearow(Leer)
• Removed Butterfree and Beedrill unlockables until you can earn enough experience to reach level 10
• Added a small global cooldown (0.6 sec) when a pokemon is placed on the field, this will prevent pokemon from attacking instantly upon their arrival, it also gives the opponent a possible free hit when you are swapping pokemon
• Fixed a stacking graphical bug on the party screen

HTD Status Update - 
Essentially Hero Tower Defense has been put on indefinite hold. We still love the idea and would love to start it up again but a number of things didn't work out for this project. We went for a high quality of hand drawn graphics that we thought we could achieve in a short time but the reality is that these graphics will take years in man hours to create and we don't have the resources to complete them. This is why we switched to 3D graphics but with our limited resources this was still an issue. If HTD comes back it will have a very simplistic style similar to the mobile game BattleHeart. Another big issue is that I'm the only programmer and my time is split between PTD and HTD. With PTD 1 being over my deal with Dan was to move to HTD more full time and only do PTD2 part time. But because of the graphic issues and the slow speed of development I didn't really have a choice but to move to PTD 2 at full force. (Also you guys wanted PTD2 more!) It is really hard to code two different engines at the same time. Even if they are the same genre (tower defense). Like I said I do hope this game will come back at some point in some shape or another.

ANPO has evolved! -
ANPO or Creatures Universe has evolved! I left a secret label in the blog post but nobody seemed to notice, and if they did they didn't mention it. "nadpto" if you change it around becomes "anpotd"! If you read the HTD update you will note that I said building two engines is hard work. Work that I don't have the time or resources to do right now. So I had this grand idea to expand PTD2 and have an overworld and seeing pokemon in the wild. Those are ideas from ANPO. So why not use the same engine that PTD 2 will use and have our designers come up with new creatures, new stories, new attacks, new abilities, and new graphics for all of these to make a new game? This is the idea of ANPO TD (Creatures Universe TD). What this means is I get to focus fully on PTD2's engine and I get 2 different games out of it. For you it means you get to have PTD2 faster than if we worked on a different full game at the same time and you get a whole new game a long with it! The games will have many differences so don't think this is just a quick re-skin. We plan to have a Kickstarter for it to help us out with paying the designers and being able to keep you entertained. What do you think?

Thanks guys for the continued support, we have great things coming your way that I hope you will be excited for, I know you are all looking forward to the story mode (look at that poll!) so I'm doing my best to get it to you while still providing you with updates.

As always let me know what you think!

PTD 2 1v1 Level 1 Released and PTD2's Name Change!

Want to get the Shiny 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!


You can play by going to the "Play PTD2" tab. 


Pokemon Center Progress List:

• Add de-leveling feature (0%) - For Casino Coins or SnD Coins (Similar to removing hacked version) you can lower the level of your pokemon. The purpose of this feature was to allow you to use your pokemon from ptd1 earlier in ptd2 but my faithful fans from the forum do not agree this is a good features. They argue that this will make the game too easy. (They are right! Level 10 Mewtwo still pwnes you!) So I will listen to them and not add it. I'm listening guys/gals!

New Level, Bug Fixes, New Additions v1.10 (08/16/12): Released now!

• Level 5 1v1 mode
• Intro
• Level Background
• Waves
• Ending
•  Attack Foresight needed a better attack graphic
• Fixed an issue that was showing the wrong HP value in the pokemon check screen after playing a level
• Added a stacking global cooldown to changing attacks on a pokemon - every time you change and attack a small 0.3 second global cooldown will be added to your pokemon. Normal play will not change, but spamming your keyboard changing attacks constantly will result in your pokemon not being able to know what you are asking him to do (a long global cooldown that resets once its done)
• Fixed a problem with a pokemon learning a new move and another pokemon evolving at the same time, or two pokemon evolving at the same time
• Added a confirmation popup when you try to exit 1v1 mode
• Fixed pokemon getting hit when they are removed from the stage
• Fixed Kakuna and Metapod not learning Harden when they evolve
• Added unlockable Metapod, Butterfree, Kakuna and Beedrill when you evolve Caterpie or Weedle
• Increased the cost of potions to 10 - Since buying a potion is pretty much like have a whole new pokemon the price was increased.
• Changed Antidote to be unlocked at level 2
• Added new item Parlyz Heal unlocked at level 3
• Add a multiplayer map for 1v1 mode (Postponed due to poll results)- Before I get too deep into creating the story mode I have to make sure multiplayer will work with the new setup. So I have to start making/testing it as soon as possible. This will help story mode have multiplayer that actually works.

Bug Fixes, Work in Progress Story mode v1.09 (08/11/12)

•  A work in progress version of Story Mode is in this version, you can only walk around, you can walk over things and you can walk outside the map. These are not bugs, the mode is simply not done yet.
• Add missing description for a pokemon unlocked on level 4
• Made Sand-Attack work on Flying types as it should
•  Test Map New Bark Town for Story Mode - Story mode is totally not ready, what you see is where I am at currently. You can only walk around.
• Main Characters Male and Female - Will use HG/SS character graphics as default.
• Graphics
• Pokemon for first Route of Story Mode - With a level cap at 10
• Graphics
• Regular
• Shiny
• Shadow
• Stats
• Abilities
• Frisk
• Insomnia
• Attacks
• Foresight
• Hypnosis
• Start adding Johto Starters for story mode - With a level cap at 10
• Graphics
• Regular
• Shiny
• Shadow
• Stats
• Abilities
• Overgrow
• Leaf Guard
• Blaze
• Flash Fire
• Torrent
• Sheer Force
• Attacks
• Razor Leaf
• Poison Powder
• SmokeScreen
• Ember
• Water Gun
• Rage
  

New Level (4), Fixes, and Additions on Alpha v1.08 (08/09/12)

• New Level for 1v1 level 4
• Intro
• Level Background
• Waves
• Ending
• Abilities for future levels
• Sand Veil
• Arena Trap
• Sand Force
• Sand Rush
• Rock Head
• Sturdy
• Weak Armor
• Attacks for future levels
• Astonish
• Defense Curl
• Rock Polish
• Mud Sport
• Bind
• Screech
• Rock Throw
• Make Ash's pikachu and caterpie always be male - This matches the anime.
• Added stat totals to the Buy Pokemon screen
• Added a new item "Antidote"unlocked after beating level 3
• Fixed items working on pokemon that don't need them or can't use them  - For example using potion on a pokemon with full health or is fainted, or using antidote on a pokemon that doesn't have a poison.

Bug Fixes and Additions on Alpha v1.07

• Fixed bug with potion going on the wrong pokemon
• Made Nidoran F be female
• Made the enemy pokemon have the proper random gender - This will be based on the actual chance of that pokemon being female or male in the pokemon games.
• Show gender and level in the life bar of pokemon in the field
• Show gender in your party's profile blocks
• Added a delay to having the screen scroll when you first drag a pokemon
• Fixed issue with fainted pokemon receiving experience
• Added keyboard shortcuts for various things
• "P" for pause and play
• 1-6 to select which party member you will command
• Z, X, C, V to switch moves in the currently commanded pokemon
• Changed Ash's Pikachu ability on level 3 of 1v1 to Lightningrod instead of Static

New Level on Alpha v1.06

• New 1v1 Level (3) - Joey goes back in time
  

Changes/Bug Fixes on Alpha v1.05

• Added the buy items screen
• Enabled item use in the levels
• Added a pokeball next to pokemon that you have already bought in 1v1 mode
• When buying a pokemon in 1v1 mode it will now say "You bought a pokemon!"
• Change text during 1v1 tutorial to mention being able to change abilities 
• Fix issue that would crash the game when your pokemon had certain abilities on
  
• New Abilities for level 3 rewards
• Poison Point- For Nidorans
• Rivalry - For Nidorans
• Static - For Pikachu
• Lightningrod - For Pikachu
• New Attacks for level 3 rewards
• Scratch
• Double Kick
• Thundershock
• Thunder Wave

Changes/Bug Fixes on Alpha v1.04

• Enable Ability Change in the Poke Check screen
• Increased experienced earned by trainer owned pokemon by 50% 
  

Changes/Bug Fixes on Alpha v1.03  

• Make pokemon not take poison damage when taken off the field but they won't lose their poison status- Thanks @doofinc!
• Added the missing coin prize after level 2- Thanks @opticALEXpert! Now you can start to pile up your money.
• Let you skip cutscenes after you have beaten a level or seen it in the current play through

New Level ready on Alpha v1.02

• New 1v1 Level 2 - Joey heads to Viridian Forest

Small Bugs fixed on Alpha v1.01

• Music keeps playing after the level is over
• Changing a move in the poke check screen in the level will not update the move on the level itself
• Can't delete the 1v1 profile
• Pokemon say they are level 1 when buying but are actually level 5

PTD 2 1v1 Mode Released!
PTD 2 1v1 mode level one is now released!!!! Wooo hoooo! It took a long time just to get to this point so I want to talk more about the work that I did and about the 1v1 mode itself.

When you play the level you will notice how short it is and might ask yourself, "Why did this take so long?" well the truth is that so much has changed inside of the game that it's unbelievable. You can expact 2-3 new levels next week for 1v1 mode since a lot of the foundation has been completed.

Some major things that didn't make it in were the items. I almost had those done but I really wanted to focus on just getting the level out first. Also the pokemon check menu in the party select screen needs major work still and those things will come in the near future.

For the level itself it was a lot of fun to bring back Joey for this mode. I thought it would be hilarious to see Joey go through this virtual training and I'm looking forward to seeing how he does in there.

For the mode itself everything you play you will be trying to reach as far as you can go, right now there is only 1 level so it's not very challenging to beat it but eventually there should be at least 100 levels for you to try to reach. If you lose you will start over but will get to retain any coins you gathered. If you go below 10 coins it will automatically reset your coin amount to 10 when you restart. Also any pokemon or items that you have unlocked will stay unlocked so that you can start with a more powerful pokemon the second time around.

I would love to hear more about what you think of this mode so far.

PTD2's Name Change
The big elephant in the room would be the sudden title change for the game. We went from Johto's Shadow to Generations. Today I want to talk more about what this change. It is more than just a name change as you might imagine. PTD 2 will now contain pokemon and locations from all generations of pokemon!

Another big change is how you will play the game.. and this is HUGE change so listen up!

You will now be able to move around with your avatar and partners just like the real game! You will be able to travel from one region to another, truly being able to catch them all in one game.

So what will be happening is that along the way you will encounter different people that need your help or are causing trouble. They will give you quest and you must complete and will unlock the ability to capture different pokemon. When somebody challenges you to a fight or when you run into pokemon in the wild (you will see the pokemon walking around in the map!) it will go into tower defense mode and you will battle in Tower Defense style.

So this game will be what I like to call an "Open World Pokemon Tower Defense Game".

A lot of the quest will be inspired by the anime so you will get to play out some fun events similar to the anime. There will also be quest that will be completely original designed by me!

All of this will be for the story mode which will come at a future date, for now I'm focusing on getting more attacks and pokemon ready for 1v1 mode.

I'm really excited about all of this and I hope you guys are too! As always let me know what you think!

Weekly Progress: PTD 2, E3, small games vs big games!

Want to get the Shiny 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 all! Let's get right to it. If you are very into games then this week was a special treat for you. E3 is going on right now! Giving you a look at all the great new games and systems coming out this year and early next year.

E3
I saw all the conferences from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo and all I have to say that while I wasn't blown away by anything I felt like there was still a lot of solid games shown. What was your favorite thing at e3?

It might be surprising but I actually don't play a lot of video games. I tend to buy the really good ones but I never finish them. I like to get a taste of what the game is like but once I get the taste my drive to finish them goes away. I do find time to finish them eventually but rarely does a game suck me in from start to finish. Some of the games that I recently bought are: Diablo 3, Startcraft 2, Skyrim, Zelda: Skyward Sword, Xenoblade Chronicles. I did finish Zelda, played about 20 hours of Xenoblade and I'm in Act 2 of Diablo 3 (normal difficulty) but Startcraft and Skyrim I have barely played.

Most of my time is dedicated to spending time with the loved ones and making games, blog post, answering emails for you guys! Oh and going to university... So lets talk about what I've been working on!

PTD 2
For PTD2 I wasn't able to get the 1v1 mode finished... :( that's my face! It was actually a bigger task that I had anticipated since there is a lot of changes to the base of the game but I am working on it. I still don't have a solid date for you guys so just hang in there while I put forth my best effort. If I had to guess I would say 2 more weeks. But.. sometimes obstacles are hard to predict so I can't promise you anything.

Some good news is that I've decided that every Mystery Gift pokemon for PTD 2 will be a pokemon that will not be included in PTD or PTD 2 for regular capture. Making the mystery gifts very rare for those of you who are following our progress. So I added a poll for you guys to first decide which generation should the first mystery gift pokemon be from? (Note that future mystery gift can and will be from different generations 3-5) Also in the comments tell me which pokemon and why he should be the first mystery gift!

Small games vs Big games
So besides being the head programmer for HTD, sole developer for PTD and PTD 2, it's also my job to always be thinking about what direction Sam and Dan games should go into. When you think about a path to go into you are also saying that you don't want to follow the paths that you didn't choose. Sometimes choosing to make one game over another game you have to give up or put on hold something else. Life if pretty much about these difficult choices. One of the choices that Dan and I have been thinking about is about the scope of our games. As you know, we are a pretty small team right now. We have about 6 artist but most of them are freelance and they can't put in the same amount of time into working on games. So this impacts the size of our games. So the thought is that instead of thinking of big, huge games that require a lot of human resources (that we can't afford) we would try to think of simple yet deep games that don't require a lot of resources and that our current resources can handle a lot easier. What does this mean for HTD and PTD 2? Nothing! Those game while still pretty big are something that we can manage. Especially PTD 2 since all the graphics are essentially done (since they are taken from the games), HTD will still take its time being made but we have other things in mind that will help us generate resources to make future games for you.

Sadly there is one game that will be put on hold.. Creature Online Universe (aka ANPO) will be put on hold pretty much indefinitely. While this is a game that I very much still want to create, it is currently out of our reach, resource wise. We wish we could drop everything and work on this but we also have bills to pay and food to buy... But there is a bright side!

Because ANPO will be put on hold we will be free to think about smaller projects for you guys to play. Smaller projects means we can get them done sooner which means you get to play them sooner! While working on HTD and PTD 2 we are also working on very small prototypes and pitches for some smaller games. I can't wait to bring them out and show them to you guys soon!

As always let me know what you think! Your opinions and feedback are greatly appreciated and affect the direction that we go in! Thanks again!

Weekly Update: PTD 2 Mode: 1 vs 1, Title Screen Contest, Avatar chat is evolving!

Want to get the Shiny 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! Sam here giving you the weekly update for Sam and Dan Games. I just released a new alpha version of Pokemon Tower Defense 2. This release doesn't give you anything to play but it does reveal the subtitle for the game! Drum-roll please!...... Pokemon Tower Defense 2: Johto's Shadow!

I think this game will be slightly more darker than the previous one. I will still have funny moments and all the colorful stuff but I think the characters will be put into more dangerous situations than the last. But overall it will still be rated E for everyone so you don't have to worry about it.

If you have been following my twitter you might have noticed my dislike of making menus... I really just don't like them.... XD. They take a long time to make even if they are simple. If you look at the new version you can see that there isn't a lot there but all of that took me two days of work to get. I can't tell you how many times I tweaked something because it didn't look right or changed a color or tried something different. Now that I've finally revealed what I want in the title screen it's a good time to talk about the title screen contest!

Title Screen Contest
Okay so I know a lot of you worked on your submissions but you will have to tweak it to include all the buttons and the subtitle from this version. The idea this time around is to have multiple title screens, that either appear randomly or the user can choose his favorite and just keep that one. So that means multiple winners! I haven't determined the prize yet but. since there will be multiple winners the prize will most likely be SnD Coins that you can use on whatever you want. To submit your entry just email me at sotero86@gmail.com with your entry attached and subject "PTD 2 Title Screen Contest". The size should be 800width by 480 height. Make sure to include everything in the title screen currently on PTD 2 and good luck! I will post up the top 10 entries in 3 weeks and let you guys vote for your favorite!

Avatar chat is evolving!

I didn't mention our other game Creature Online Universe (Codename ANPO)  last week because I wanted to keep the focus on PTD 2, but this week I have more news on it. This game is a really long term project that will keep changing and evolving as it goes and in the end who knows what it will be like. It's like a living thing! Essentially this game will revolve around playing with other players online similar to an MMO but yet vastly different at the same time. Because of this, one of the first things that will show up in the game is just players chatting in a location, which sounds exactly like the Avatar Chat! So the avatar chat will be getting new avatars that will essentially be your character in Creature Online Universe.  Right now in the avatar chat you pretty much just have this one rectangle to live in and you can't leave it. So this first step is to have more room to walk around in. Then after that have building that you can go in. Then homes that you can buy, rent or sell. And so on. The Avatar chat will be evolving into what eventually will be Creature Universe! Just as a note: I'm mentioning this now but I don't have a specific date as to when this will actually happen. So just stay tuned every week.

PTD 2 Mode: 1 vs 1
Looking at the poll One vs One is pretty much the winner! So this is what I will focus on first. The idea is that you start with a very basic pokemon and as you battle more you will unlock more pokemon to battle with. Each time trying to get farther and farther earning more rewards to help you come back and try again. As I mentioned in the last blog this mode will be a nice way for me to give you guys something substantial to play while the story mode is worked on. But even this mode won't be made in a couple of days so please be patient. A good thing about this mode is that it rewards your account with some pokemon the farther you get. In the mode the pokemon that you will use will not be available to use in the story mode/pokemon center. But as you get farther and reach certain goals you will get achievements that will give you pokemon as rewards and those you will be able to use in the story mode and will count for your pokedex.

This time around a lot of the rewards that you will get will not revolve around generation 2. My thought right now is that most mystery gifts and achievement rewards will be pokemon from other generations. So look forward to that!

That is all I have for you guys this week, follow me on twitter for constant updates and come back on Thursday for some new Hero Tower Defense news. As always let me know what you think! 

Pokemon Tower Defense's Final Release! A postmortem, and looking forward to the future!

Want to get the Shiny 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!

It has been a long time coming but the end of Pokemon Tower Defense is here! From start to finish it has been a year and a half. Blood, sweat and tears! But the outcome has been more than worth it. We have leveled up, and evolved so much from the beginning. We went from hobbyist to full time game developers. From no fans to thousands of fans. This is only the beginning of our long journey and we want you to come with us!

As you move forward in any stage of your life it's important to look at your successes and your mistakes. There is a lot of valuable information in these things, especially your mistakes. In our case we will examine what I think went right in PTD and what went wrong. These things will help me with the development of PTD 2.

What Went Right

1. Crossing Pokemon with Tower Defense - This was the most critical element to the success of the whole game. Fortunately we got it right. I knew just the name Pokemon Tower Defense would catch many people's attention but the combination of elements will make them stay. From catching pokemon and using them as your towers, to having your towers stay leveled up and evolved between levels. This is something that I plan to continue and expand for the sequel. Adding breeding and pokemon holding items among other things will help the game move to the next level.

2. Community Involvement - Adding the feedback button and asking for help to improve the game, especially in the early stages of the game really helped to build the community. This is something that we will continue to do with all our games. Your feedback from comments, emails, votes on polls heavily influences the direction that our games take. Votes usually affect the games directly.

3. Weekly Updates - Waiting for the game to be completed was something that I couldn't afford to do. Releasing a game is similar to rolling a dice. The odds are mostly against you. The longer you take to roll the dice (release a game) the more risk you take on. Working on a game for some months and releasing it as an Alpha helps me to see if people are into a game and see if its worth spending more time on. Once the game was a success people just wanted more and more. I thought it would be great to have a new release each week almost like a TV series. Fans would be looking forward to the release each week, keeping the interest in the game going while being able to expose the fans to new ideas that I have for future games.

4. Pokemon Center - The Pokemon Center, most specifically the Trading Center was a great success even though it is very basic right now. It gave a chance for you fans to trade each other. I was also be able to add other options like the game corner to add other things to do in the game. The Pokemon Center will get improvements for the sequel that will make transferring and trading a whole lot easier. The ads on the Pokemon Center also help to fund the development of the game.

5. SnD Coins and Adoption - Snd Coins and Adoption really help fund our future games and also gave you the fans a chance to support us more directly while getting something in return. This system will be used for all our future games including PTD 2. In the near future we will add more ways to get the coins.

6. Game Story - Adding the story to the game (most Tower Defense don't have a story) really helped to make the game more compelling and gave a lot of chances to add cameos for characters from the anime and game. Also it added the opportunity to add references to other media that I enjoy. PTD 2 will have a new story that is loosely related to the first game.
 

What Went Wrong

1. Weekly Updates - Yes, I know I put this on the what went right section but it also went wrong in a lot of ways. I really think the quality of the game suffered due to the quick update schedule. While I'm proud of how the game turned out as a whole I know that if I had more time the quality would have risen drastically. Many times I found myself with a lot of interesting ideas but not having the time to implement them in time. The story suffered a lot also do to quick updates. Epic fight scenes were turned into just something mentioned in the dialog instead of me being able to show it. For PTD 2 we plan to take more time to make sure everything is like we want it while still trying to maintain a good schedule. More on that later.

2. The Grind - I felt that while some grinding was acceptable it was impossible to continue playing without having high level pokemon. This resulted in many people using the hacked version or having to grind out their characters while doing something else. I don't think this is fun and I want to reduce the need to grind in the sequel as I don't think it adds anything to the game. Shiny hunting will remain relatively the same but that is something that is optional.

3. Multiplayer - I had many grand ideas for multiplayer but I never got the time to fully realize those ideas. Also the way I set up the attacks in the game didn't lend themselves for multiplayer which affected how synched the levels are (not very). For the sequel I want to rebuild the attacks to work for a multiplayer setup. Also focus more on the multiplayer as it adds re-playability to the game.

4. Updating the game - Another big part that went wrong getting the update to the players. A lot of sites probably have older versions of the game that don't even work. For the sequel I want the game to check for the latest version and update itself so that everybody can get updates instantly as I put them up and I also won't have to be sending out updates to 5 different sites.

What else do you think went right and what else do you think went wrong? Let me know.

Now for the future!

My main focus now will be working on Hero Tower Defense, but that game will not be moving at the same fast pace as PTD so that will allow me some time to work on PTD 2 and our Creature Universe game (Project ANPO). I know some of you just want me to work on PTD 2 but the reality is that I also need to focus on original games that can take Sam and Dan games farther than a pokemon game can. Since we don't own the rights to pokemon I can't put the game on the different app stores and sites like Kongregate. Also PTD can get shut down at any point and I wouldn't be able to do anything about it so putting all my eggs in that basket is not a good idea.

I'm sure Dan will mention on this week's Hero Tower Defense blog but HTD is going to be getting some significant changes in the graphic department that will help speed up the development.

For Project ANPO Dan and I got to talk a lot about how the game will work and we made good progress on that. What I hope to do this month is work on a prototype so that I can start testing out the different mechanics that we have in mind and so that you guys can check it out and give us your feedback.

For PTD 2 the question I get asked the most is "When is it coming out!?" Well to be honest I don't even know when it's coming out. I will keep you guys posted. I did have an idea which is to make a special mode that has a lot of re-playability that will use the generation 1 pokemon (since I have all their stats and graphics already created) and release that first which will give you guys something to do while the game is in development. But even this mode will take a while to build so I don't have any specific dates to give out. Just follow me on Twitter and follow the blog for weekly updates to the game.

Alright guys, I really appreciate all the support for this past year and a half. I hope you enjoyed the game and if you want some more then I will be working hard to keep it coming. Thanks for everything you do!

As always let me know what you think!

Final Update Progress, Test, PTD 2 and ANPO news update!

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!


Hello! I hope you enjoyed my little April Fools joke! PTD will not be closing down and I will not get rid of accounts, so don't worry about it! I tried to make it really obvious because I didn't want to worry any of you. :)

I released v6.5 which contains Shadow Missing No as Mystery Gift and that is the only new thing there. You might noticed that I put the graphics in for the new level in the chapter select and level select, those won't work until the final update is out.

Speaking of the final update I'm making progress as you can see below. Keep checking back all week while I  make updates :) cheer me on!

• Viridian Ending (Movie Scene only level, sets up the last chapter of the game, Lickitung NPC trade will happen on this level) (100%)
• Intro (100%)
• Adding the crucial Lickitung NPC trade to the new level (100%) 
• Implement in game (100%)
• Implement in Save Code (100%)
• Add Max Potion (100%)
• Ending (100%)
•  Power Plant (Zapdos, Electabuzz (Red Only), Magnemite) (100%)
• Intro (100%)
• Layout (100%)
• Waves (100%)
• Ending (100%)
• Seafoam Island (Articuno, Seel) (100%)
• Intro (100%)
• Layout (100%)
• Waves (100%)
• Ending (100%)
• Victory Road (Moltres) (100%)
• Intro (100%)
• Layout (100%)
• Waves (100%)
• Ending (100%)
• 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%)
• Implement unique catching for legendaries (you can only capture one regular, one shiny and one shadow of each legendary bird, that would equal to 9 different legendary birds that you can catch) (100%)
• Capturing Shiny and Shadow (100%) 

• Remove Coming Soon text from Viridian Ending (100%)
• Set Mystery Gift to Regular Missing No. (100%) - This is the last and permanent Mystery Gift that the game will have for new players to get.
• Remove Alpha Version Text from the game (100%) 
• Remove Legendary Dogs from the wild in the game (100%)
• Convert all Legendary Dogs to their shiny version from regular (0%)
• Add new moves to Pokemon Center's Move List (100%)
• Add Missing HMs (100%) 
• Fly (100%)
• Graphics/Programming (100%)
• Adding to Pokemon's HM list (100%)
• Strength (100%)
• Graphics/Programming (100%)
• Adding to Pokemon's HM list (100%)
• Surf (100%) 
• Graphics/Programming (100%)
• Adding to Pokemon's HM list (100%)
• 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 (80%)
• Add to Pokemon Center (100%) 

I will be talking about PTD 2 and ANPO some more on this blog but I have a test tomorrow (Tuesday) so I have to cut this short for now. I will update it on Tuesday night or Wednesday with some juicy details on PTD 2 and ANPO. I will also post on twitter when that is ready.

As always! Let me know what you think!

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.

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! ;)

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!

Pokemon Tower Defense v5.8.1 release! Story level making process, 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! 


Hey guys! V5.8.1 of Pokemon Tower Defense is officially released! Go get your Ponyta and swf, exe, and apk files! I didn't have enough time for the co-op level last week so this week I will see to it. I hope those of you who are far enough enjoyed the Zapdos fight, you can expect similar type of battles for the other birds when we get to them. This week we will continue the story along with some other things.

So to change it up a bit I wanted to talk about what the thought process was for creating the Zapdos fight, and the general process of coming up with a new level for each week.

Step 1: What's going to happen next? - So I have an idea in my head of what the story is going to end like, almost like some bullet points, but the actual details I come up with each week. In this case the gang had just finished spending some time at the Safari Zone, kinda relaxing and just capturing new pokemon. So I thought it was time to make something exciting happen in the story. Your characters had not been to the cycling road so I thought there needed to be a reason to go there. Originally I thought that Gary would show up and tell you that you needed to go to Professor Oak to learn Surf but I didn't want to go to Viridian City again yet since that will be the last gym. I also thought of the possibility of not meeting Gary but another friend on the Cycling Road but I thought I was running out of time and I needed to deal with Gary and the birds in order to move on. Plus I thought the idea of the next level being Gary and the legendary bird would excite the players (you guys). As far as what happens in the level. I always like to make fun of Joey, and just show that our gang still has fun along the way. Also a good reason to travel to the Cycling Road was that they hadn't gone there yet as Joey mentions. Since Gary was running away from the birds I wanted to see him cornered and you show up to save the day! Also making this level with Gary and Zapdos facing off I thought of something interesting for the story and I left some small hints of it in the scene.

Step 2: Level Design - Usually on Monday I will think of the general theme of the next level. Last week was Gary and Zapdos. I knew I wanted to make the fight with the legendary birds.... errr legendary. So I thought okay I want this fight to just be you and Zapdos but Gary is there so he needs something to do. I put that aside for a moment and thought that Zapdos is electric so I want him to be sending out attacks very often and that they should affect your whole group. So since Zapdos will be doing a lot of damage to your party Gary would be perfect to heal your pokemon, similar to Celebi. But I wanted to add more work to the healing, so unlike Celebi you have to actually take your pokemon away from battle to get healed. A player a long time ago suggested an idea to have nurse joy on the side line and you sent your pokemon there to be healed. This was a variation of that idea. Now back to Zapdos. First I thought okay Ground is immune to electric attacks so I would use Drill peck to counter that, which also brought the idea of he being able to target anybody in the field regardless of their position. But I read that flying doesn't do a lot of damage to ground and I didn't want everybody to have to get ground pokemon to beat the level. So I made all damage be a set amount. Also I thought simply removing your units from the field to prevent damage was overplayed and would remove the need to use Gary so I added way for Zapdos to wait for your units to be ready which introduced some bugs (when your party dies the level doesn't end since Zapdos is waiting for a target).

Step 3: Implementation, Balance and Testing (Making it happen!) - This part is the last part to happen, once I have my ideas I set out to animate the scenes make the new characters and create the new moves for the level. In this case most of the characters were done, I just had to make Gary into a Tower and create the new moves for Gary and Zapdos. The new moves can sometimes create technical difficulties. I can spend a good amount of hours bug fixing or just balancing the moves so they do enough damage. Once the bugs are cleared I create a team of pokemon that will be the best to beat the level. In this case I made a team of 6 level 90 Rhydon with Stone edge, I didn't buff them but I thought it would give me a good idea of what kind of damage the players would be able to put out. I played it until it took at least 6 waves to beat him while moving the pokemon around to get healed etc and moving them around to always be attacking Zapdos. After that I tweaked with Zapdos stats a bit to make it just right.

So I hope you guys enjoy seeing what it takes to make the level happen. Now on to the progress list! (Note that Hero Tower Defense Progress will stay in the HTD post from last week)

Weekly PTD progress:

PTD FirstLook!

New Story Level (100%) - Route 19 Training Level

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

Zapdos boss battle co-op level (100%) - This will be for Monday! Exclusively on PlayTowerDefenseGames.com
New TM (100%)

•  Icy Wind (100%)
• Dive (100%)
• Hail (100%)

New Mystery Gift Pokemon (100%) - Seel! This will be for Monday!

• New Moves (100%) 
• Icy Wind (100%)
• Dive (100%)
• Hail (100%)
• Add Graphic (100%)
• Add Shiny Graphic (100%)
• Add Shadow Graphic (100%)
• Add Stats to Game (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%)

Decide who will I trade my Shiny Mew (100%) - Congrats to xlawrunes, he caught my eye with his all shiny all psychic team of Psyduck, Jynx, Starmie, Alakazam, Exeggutor, Venomoth! This was a hard choice!
Choose a new pokemon to trade for next week - my account is samO (100%) - I'm putting up a big number of shiny and shadow pokemon that I have collect during my journeys! Next week I will trade every one of them, if you see something you like send me an offer!
Add new moves to the Pokemon Center's Move List (100%)
Finish implementing design to trading pages (0%) - Forgot some >.<
Bug Fixes (100%)

• Make Route 17 end if your party all faints (100%)
• Only one weather effect can be active at a time (100%)

Thanks guys for the continued support, I have a couple of things in the works that I will talk more about next week. I will keep updating this list as the week goes on and....As always let me know what you think!

Weekly Progress: Pokemon Tower Defense v5.6.1 release, Shadow Pokemon, Safari Zone released, finishing the Pokemon Center look and getting rest!

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! 

WOW, what that was a crazy week! So many new pokemon to catch! I think we have all been waiting for the Safari Zone just for the vast amount of new pokemon. Many of you wanted a Rock Tunnel kind of level but in the end of it I felt that it wasn't really needed. I thought the "Joey" mechanic would be enough to make the level feel fresh.Granted it wasn't perfect on the first try... Due to the quick feedback of you guys I was able to tweak how it works and I think it's in a pretty good spot. Some of you think it's too easy now but I still think that it's providing enough challenge without being incredibly frustrating.

So last week we also had a poll about shadow pokemon's experience gain. While the results were clearly in favor of giving shadow pokemon the similar experience boost as shiny, there was a big public outcry about it so I wanted to tell you guys how I felt about the whole thing and what I ended up doing.

Okay so what I ended up doing was that Shadow pokemon will earn the same experience as a Normal pokemon. COMPROMISE! Some will say "Sam I can't believe you did that, the poll was clear! Why did you give in again!" To understand my reasoning we have to look at why I added Shadow pokemon in the first place. Shadow pokemon were added so that people that people had something to trade to people that had hard to catch or adoption only pokemon. Also to add another layer of collection, something to reward the player, and to promote trading. So when doing this I thought what can I do to make them different in a way that they wouldn't be overpowered in battle. The reason I don't want them to be overpowered in battle is that I don't want player to feel like they need to use a shadow pokemon to gain the greatest edge in battle. I want the player to choose which type of pokemon they want to use in battle. So since shiny gain more experience I thought wouldn't it be kinda cool if shadow pokemon earned less. It seemed to fit the whole shadow motif. Unfortunately people viewed shadows in a negative light because of the decrease in experience. So I decided to remove this negative factor in them. I hope that explains what is in my head.

After such a long week of things to do I broke a promise.. and this week I will do it! I will finish the Pokemon Center's new look! Besides that we are going to take it a little easy so that I can finish that darn thing and so I can rest a little bit.

Weekly  Progress for PTD:

Finding a way to make players be able to get 1 Shadow Pokemon per week on their account (100%) - Essentially the new Daily Gift Rare prizes will enable you to get one in at least 7 days or sooner.
Give out my current pokemon that is being traded, Shiny Shellder (100%) - Traded it to "newtothegame"! He traded my Shadow Gyarados, Shiny Starmie, Shiny Goldeen, Shiny Tentacruel, Shiny Gyarados, Shadow Starmie!
Put out a new trading pokemon on my account samO (100%) - I put a Shiny Tauros! Give me your best offers!
Rework Daily Code prizes (100%)- This is coming thanks to all your feedback! I simplified the prizes, to just casino coins and SnD Coins. That way you can use the coins to buy what you want instead of getting something that you already have.

New Pokemon added on v5.6 (100%)

• Implement in Adoption (shiny and battle ready) (100%)
• Implement Shadow in Daily Gift and Casino Corner (100%)

Remove Shadow NPC Trade pokemon from the Daily Gift and Casino Corner (100%) - Meaning the only way to get Shadow Mr. Mime, Shadow Jynx, and so on will be from trading a shadow for it in game. All who have those pokemon already will keep them.
Remove Shadow Pokemon that you can get from achievements from the Daily Gift and Casino Corner (100%)
Pokemon Center new look (85%)
Fix a bug with the move Eruption (0%)
New Mystery Gift (100%) - Pokemon Tangela!

• Add stats to game (100%)
• Add Graphic (100%)
• Add Shiny Graphic (100%)
• Add Shadow Graphic (100%)
• Add New Moves (2) (100%)
• Ingrain (100%)
• Tickle (100%)

• Implement TM/Relearn moves (100%)
• Implement in Adoption (Battle Ready and Shiny) (100%) - Note that you will need to play v5.7 for Tangela to properly work.
• Implement in Shadow in Game Corner (100%) - Note that you will need to play v5.7 for Tangela to properly work.
• Implement in Trading Center (100%)
• Implement in Save Code (100%)

Level Cap Raised To 90 (100%) - JabXIII asked for it!

• New Move: Eruption (100%) - Entei level 85 
• Implement in Game (100%)
• Implement in Save Code (100%)

Implement New Moves in Pokemon Center's list (100%)

Fixed a problem on the Daily Gift, when you win an SnD Coin it would show the wrong message (100%)

Weekly Progress for HTD:
Show move cooldown in the UI (100%)
Have some units have Fire skills and some have Shadow skills, the last one have a random combination of both (100%)
Add new Whelp Behavior (100%)
Implement new graphics for the Shadow Moves and Shadow Icons (100%)


Let's keep this going guys, we are close to the end! As always let me know what you think!