Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 14 - HTD Release Date! Armor & New HTD Day Too!

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Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!

Welcome to Hero Tower Defense Tuesday!

HTD Logo WIP

Go here to read the Day 13 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays.

Today I'd like to officially announce HTD's release date, which some of you may already know about. Then I'll discuss some thoughts on the armor in the game and HTD's day change.

First, I would like to announce that we've decided to shoot for a HTD release date of late December. Keep in mind this will be like version 0.1. In other words, it'll just have some of the core mechanics and other things for you to play around with. We like to release the games when they are very early in development in order to give you guys as many chances as possible to participate in helping us make the game. This also helps us to gather feedback every step of the way. So I hope everyone is looking forward to it as much as we are!

Now onto the armor. I just want to clarify that I'll be talking about armor specifically, not accessories like rings or trinkets or weapons. We'll definitely have those as well but that'll be a different post.

Armor will certainly play a large role in HTD. After all, everyone likes gearing up their characters with new armor, acquiring new loot, and sometimes even just collecting sets. We intend to have a lot of armor in the game of all types. It won't all be available right from the start of course but we'll be trying to add some every update.

As I mentioned before there will be various types of armor but they'll generally fall into light, medium, and heavy categories. However, everyone will be able to wear them, it's just a matter of what stats you end up getting from the armor. Generally the defense values of these armors will correlate to their type, i.e. lighter armors have lower defense and heavier armors have higher defense.

There will certainly be more stats than just defense on armors. Since everyone is able to wear the armors, and your class being dynamic to how you spend your skill points, it means you can have classes like a monk who might wear cloth and a battlemage who might wear plate. So not all cloth will be geared towards casters and not all plate will be geared towards warriors.

Here's a list what we have in mind for the armor pieces the characters will have:

• Helm
• Shoulders
• Chest/Arms
• Gloves
• Legs
• Boots

Most (if not all) of these pieces will change cosmetically on your character as well. We know some people like having the option of disabling the helm graphic but still having it equipped so we'll have that for sure.

Here's a cool sketch from Kevin showing his concept of the Human Male in Cloth Armor:

Human Male in Cloth Armor Concept

You can find more behind-the-scenes HTD art work on Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD, check it out!

Now about the HTD day change. Sam was posting the PTD post later in the week at first but recently has been posting it on Monday because it works out better with his current scheduling of the weekly PTD update. Having the PTD post on Monday then immediately having the HTD post on Tuesday squishes things together. To remedy the problem we're going to change things a bit and have the PTD post on Monday and the HTD post on Thursday to have a better spread on the blog. We already have this HTD post for this week so the next one will be on Thursday of next week.

So on that note I give you, HTD Thursdays! :P

All feedback is welcome and encouraged! You guys are a lot of help so be sure to let us know of any suggestions or ideas you have in the comments and thanks for all your help thus far!

-Dan

Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 12 - Pets

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Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!

Welcome to Hero Tower Defense Tuesday!

HTD Logo WIP

Go here to read the Day 11 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays.

For this update I want to discuss pets, specifically pet placement.

Right now having pets is still a concept as far as development goes but we're getting closer to the point where we'll need to have it figured out so it can be ready for programming and such. Since a lot of it is still up in the air it means any ideas and suggestions from you guys are even more helpful. As I mentioned above I'm only going to be talking about pet placement though. Not pets overall, we'll get into those details later. So let me throw out a few ideas to get things started and then see what you guys have to say in the comments.

First, let me clarify that I'm referring to active pets. Ones that attack, level up, have skills, etc. In other words, not the ones that just follow around behind you. We'll have those too most likely but they are much easier to implement for obvious reasons. Another thing is every character can essentially have a pet because it'll be a class skill and as I mentioned in another post your class is dynamic based on the skills you choose. So you could basically put one point into the pet skill and now have the ability to fight with a pet. Granted you'll need to invest a lot of points in the pet skill and probably other pet related skills to make your pet feasible as you level up. In other words, you can easily have a pet but if you don't invest many points in your pet skills it'll be rather lackluster.

Having pets in a TD game is a little tricky. For example, where do they go on the field? If you have them in the same location as your character would probably look a bit strange because they'd practically be on top of eachother. They could be beside you but then what happens if there is no available area around your character? For example you're a ranged character on a small island safe from melee but only enough room for your character, where does your pet go? Having it just show up at the nearest location probably wouldn't work too well and would be a hassle. It could be possible that if there's not enough room for your pet then it just wouldn't be out, which means you'll need to think a bit more about character location. However, this mostly applies to grounded pets. Flying pets can get away with a lot more but we need something that works for both unless we just go with the idea that flying pets are more versatile since they are in the air.

There's also the option of having the pet be manually placed just like a character. It doesn't have to hang around you perhaps but the disadvantage might be that certain pet skills that your character has might have limited range. So if your pet is on the other side of the map your pet buff might not reach it.

Another solution is to only have the pet appear when it's attacking. Almost like how a projectile from your character acts. I don't see this being a popular choice though because peope like seeing their pets around and it would mean the pet doesn't have health, take aggro, or protect one of your sides while fighting side by side with you.

And finally the last idea was to have the pets literally be characters. The first game that comes to mind where they had this is Dragon Age. Basically, the pet would be one of your 5 active characters that you have out on the field. This is a slightly different route than the other solutions. I wouldn't expect them to have armor and weapons really or maybe they'd just have equipment that doesn't display (we don't want to drive Kevin insane). Also they wouldn't be nearly as customizable as the other characters but they would have skills and such, maybe some skill points that can be assigned as they level up, etc. So think of them as just being more specific and less customizable characters. This might sound like they'd be lesser characters overall but I'd expect them to be quite strong, just more limited. You could maybe even have special combo moves that can only occur when you have certain pets together. For example, maybe you have one character and 4 wolf pets. Maybe you'd get a special passive skill called Pack Leader that gives all your units a nice buff. Just something like that perhaps.

Kevin has some new stuff on his blog, KXN @ HTD. He's always looking for comments on his work so be sure to stop by and let him know what you guys think about the HTD art. Here's a cool sketch Kevin did for uhh...something:

Creature Concept Sketch

Leave your feedback in the comments and let me know what option you like best or if you have your own idea be sure to let us know!

-Dan

Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 9 - Character Stats

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Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!

Welcome to Hero Tower Defense Tuesday!

Sketch of logo

Go here to read the Day 8 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays.

Last week we talked a bit about character creation so this week let's talk about character stats.

So since this is part RPG and part TD we of course have to give the characters some attributes that increase and make your character stronger. We decided to go along with the traditional strength, stamina, etc stats because everyone is familiar with them and they work well. However, the actual affect of each stat tends to vary from game to game but they usually follow a general idea. We'll be doing the same in HTD.

Here are what we have as the Primary stats:

• Strength (STR) - Increases Physical Damage
• Stamina (STA) - Increases Health Points
• Agility (AGI) - Increases Speed
• Dexterity (DEX) - Increases Skill
• Intelligence (INT) - Increases Magical Damage

Pretty straight forward however something to keep in mind is that Magical Damage does not refer to elemental damage. Physical Damage covers the Physical side of the elemental skills while Magical Damage covers the Magical side of the elemental skills.

You might be asking, what does Speed and Skill do? For that we have the Secondary stats:

General:

• Health Points (HP) - Your amount of life
• Speed (SPD) - How fast you are at attacking and dodging
• Skill (SKL) - How skilled you are at hitting and recovering

Attack:

• Physical Power (PP) - How strong you are with physical weapons and skills
• Magical Power (MP) - How strong you are with magical weapons and skills

Armor:

• Physical Defense (FD) - How much physical damage you mitigate
• Magical Defense (MD) - How much magical damage you mitigate

Attunements:

• Fire Attunement (FA) - Your ability to control and resist Fire
• Water Attunement (WA) - Your ability to control and resist Water
• Nature Attunement (NA) - Your ability to control and resist Nature
• Light Attunement (LA) - Your ability to control and resist Light
• Shadow Attunement (SA) - Your ability to control and resist Shadow

Speed basically increases how fast you are dashing up to the enemy (if you're meleeing) then attacking and your projectile speed whether it's phyiscal or magical. Speed also increases your chance to dodge physical attacks.

Skill increases your chance to get a critical hit, possibly increases your chance to hit with a physical attack (if we even have missing possible which we are still figuring out), and cooldown rate. If you look at the Skill stat you can see it's pretty awesome, but this is a stat that will be difficult to raise and won't have an abundance of it so don't think you'll be able to make a character with nearly 0 cooldown.. well if you managed to expect something to get nerfed :P

We changed our use of the word attunement, when we first mentioned it we referred to it as the element you initially picked that defined your character's starting point. We'll just call that your Native Element or something instead because the term is better used here. So your attunement stats are dual purpose. They represent both how strong you are with that element and your resistance against it.

Now here's where we add in some S&D flavor and change things up a bit. You won't be getting any actual attribute points to assign to these stats specifically. Instead these stats get raised by items and what we refer to as Class Skill Points (CSP) that you get every time you level up. CSPs are used to get class skills which follow a similar Physical/Magical set up with 5 categories on each side with skills for each. This is how you'll be choosing your class essentially and how you use these points will determine your Class Title (like Warrior, Paladin, Mage, etc). I won't be going into details about this yet but basically what happens is as you level up and build your character by assigning the elemental and class points you have earned your Class Title will change accordingly.

On the art side of things Kevin is working on the female animations and hair which you can find more of at Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD. He also has a poll up on which hairstyle you guys would like to see first, be sure to put in your vote! Here's some sketches:

Human Female Sketches

That's all for now, sorry for the end-of-day post but we were both busy most of the day.

As always let us know what you think and leave your feedback in the comments, thanks!

-Dan

Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 8 - Character Creation

Want to get the legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Purchase some SnD coins and get Ninja-ja bonus items free! Click here for more info.

Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!

Welcome to Hero Tower Defense Tuesday!

Go here to read the Day 7 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays.

This week we're going to take a look at Kevin's WIP human female design, talk about character creation, and answer some related questions that are likely to be asked after reading this.

Kevin has started working on the human female character which I know some of you have been waiting for. It's still early in development though and we're making adjustments as we go. Check out Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD for some additional information and concept art he's working on. He'll also be starting on some hair styles and is interested in some suggestions for them from you guys. Here's the latest version of the human female character:

Early render of a human female in full plate armor

You might notice the usual characteristics that distinguish a female from a male are absent in this initial image. We intentionally started out this way because we want to be sure that you can easily tell the difference between the genders just from their contour and shape even when they are fully suited in armor. This is important for being able to glance at things quickly and knowing exactly what it is.

Male characters can also share a lot of the same features that are typically used to identify females, e.g., long hair, light colors, etc so we don't want to be restricted by these things by fixing them to a specific gender for the sole purpose of differentiating them from eachother. Another thing that falls into this category is having all the females showing a lot of skin regardless of how much armor they are wearing. To me that's a cheap way out for making a female identifiable in heavy armor.. or lack thereof. It makes more sense for lighter armor to look that way since it allows you to be more agile.

Another reason we don't want to restrict specific colors, hair styles, etc to genders is because we want there to be as many options available as possible during character creation so you can create the characters you want. We're still figuring out what you'll be able to customize exactly but right now we're thinking race, gender, skin color, hair style, and hair color (remember this is just for your character, not their armor, weapons, effects, etc). We would like to have some facial features as well at some point but it's a lot for a little so it's not a high priority right now.

Now I'll address a few questions that are bound to be asked eventually:

"What about eye color?"

The style Kevin is current going with doesn't really involve significant detail to the eyes so they are generally just black ovals. They will be quite small as well so only a few colors would be really be noticeable and the rest would kind of all look the same as those.

"Can I change the character's height, size, or proprotions?"

This is very unlikely unfortunately because all our graphic assets are sprites and changing any of these attributes, even a little, would cause all kinds of conflicts with the armors and such.

"Will you see the hair when wearing a helmet?"

This is an interesting topic because it's one of those simple things that is actually quite complex to implement. As of right now we are going with no visible hair while wearing a helmet, even if you have long hair. However, we would allow you to turn off the helm graphic without actually unequipping it and thus still taking advantage of it's stat bonuses.

The reason for this because you'd not only need to create the hairstyle itself but you'd also need to customize every hair style for every helmet in every angle and that adds up to a lot of work very quickly for something that isn't really that significant.

Although something that just came to mind is maybe we could have just a generic "long hair" look while wearing a helmet and that would be applied to all long hair styles and their share their color of course. Shorter hair styles would just show no hair while wearing a helmet. A problem you might realize though is that if your character has a ponytail and it switches to this generic "long hair with helm on" look it wouldn't be in a ponytail anymore. A possible solution could be to just have a couple different "long hair with helm on" looks to cover the majority of the hair styles but we'd probably only start with one for now. We'll have to see, I'm rambling now though so I'll stop there :P

As always feel free to leave us feedback, give us suggestions, ask us questions, or just let us know what you think in the comments!

-Dan