Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 7! Talents, Kevin's Blog and game progress.

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Welcome to Hero Tower Defense Tuesday!

Sketch of logo

Go here to read the Day 6 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays.

Sam again, working hard on the PTD update which is why this came so late.  I will continue talking about the talents and elements in this post plus give you guys an update on where the game is in programming so far.


If you haven't read last week's post then you will probably be really lost so I suggestion you give that a quick look and then come back to read this.


First a lot of you commented on adding more elements to the mix and while that may be possible we want to keep it pretty simple at first and then in the future possibly add more elements as we go. Today when I explain the talents more you will see why we want to keep it at 5 elements for now.


Okay so in HTD the elemental talent system has some pretty unique features.

• Every character gets the same elemental talent tree, regardless of what you pick.
• Regardless of what element you are attuned to, you can pick skills from any element. (If you are attuned to Fire you can still pick up water element skills or shadow element, etc.)
• Skills are separated by Physical and Magic and then by elements. (See picture below)

Mock up of Elemental Talent Trees

• You can get special combination of moves by fulfilling the requirement of that move. Combination moves are special moves that sometimes give you a different version of the original move or a move that will trigger a special effect on a previous move. An example of this is a Tier 2 Magical Fire move that will create Magma Armor for your character, if you get a Tier 2 Water skill then it will unlock the combination move for the Magma Armor which is dousing the Magma Armor cooling it down and turning it into a Magma Stone Armor. The Magma Armor will help against magic while the Magma Stone Armor helps against physical attacks. In the picture below the requirement for Tier 1 Fire is to get any Tier 1 Light Move. You can see that now the combination move for Fire is unlocked. Note: Combination moves are free and don't cost points.

The combination requirement for Tier 1 Fire is Tier 1 Light, the combination move for Fire Tier 1 is unlocked.

• You will get 15 points to work with once you reach the highest level in the game. You can go pure on an Element and it will unlock an Ultime move that you can use your last point in.

Using 7 Points on Fire Physical and 7 Points on Fire Magical will unlock an Ultimate Fire Move (not pictured)

• Putting 3 points into all the elements will unlock all the combination moves for all of them, this will get you more versatility. Doing this will unlock a special move that will be free. But not as powerful as an Ultimate Pure Elemental move.

Putting 3 points into every element will get you the most elemental skills, and will unlock a special move for free (Not pictured on this mock up)

• Other special arrangements like putting 7 points in one element and 7 points in a different element will give you an Ultra move. Also putting 5 points in 3 different elements will unlock a special move.

I know this is a lot to take in and it might be hard to understand without being able to play with it but this is the most we can offer right now.

With this system you can create a character as you see fit, do you want him to shoot fire balls and be able to heal with water? Go for it. Want to be a pure Shadow Master? Go for it. Want to be a pure physical machine? Go full physical fire and shadow. There are so many possibilities to what you can do! But we aren't done yet.

You might be thinking well what about classes? While the Elemental Tree system will let you go wild and create your own special class, there is also a Specialization Tree that you will get access to. The Specialization tree will allow you to pick more specific abilities both passive and active to your character. These will be more restrictive in that they require certain points to get them. When you put a point in the physical side of the Elemental Tree you will get a Physical Specialization Point that you can use in the Physical side of the Specialization Tree, same with magic. The specialization will help you define you character more with categories such as Defense, Stealth, Healing, Damage. Want to be a powerfull mage that can take hits like a tank? Well you can! Gone are the days of picking a class and being tied down to what you can do, we hope you will enjoy this system and help us fine tune it as we move forward.

Let's talk about our great artist, Kevin, for a little bit here. Kevin came to Dan and I requesting that he wanted to make his own blog that focuses on the art for Hero Tower Defense. While at the beginning we had our doubts on the whole idea, we finally decided to try it out and see how it goes. So click here to check out Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD. On top of that we will be posting small summaries each week here about what's going on in his blog so that you don't miss a thing. So go check it out!

The last thing I wanted to talk about is how the programming is going for HTD. A lot of you keep asking when the game is coming out, and while the game is not close to being ready I will update you on where we are now. Each week I will provide an update.

I'm actually re-writing all the code for HTD using PTD as a reference. I have learned a lot from PTD and using all those lessons to make the code in HTD even better. HTD is also more detailed graphically so it requires more detailed code for attack effects. For example in PTD the pokemon will just tackle and hit the target in the middle of it. In HTD your character will move infront of the target and then swing it's swords. These differences make all the difference as far as presentation and code.

Work in Progress Picture, two characters attacking the dragon whelp.

Disclamer on the Picture above: We aren't going to have 10 units at once, only 5. I have 10 there as a previous test.

So that is what we have so far, the characters can be put on their spots and will attack an enemy that is going around the path. We are tweaking attack code and looking at how we can make the action easier to follow.

So which element will you choose?

That's what we have this week for Hero Tower Defense. As always let me know what you think!

Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 2!

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Go here to read the latest Pokemon Tower Defense news and Weekly Progress list.

Welcome to Hero Tower Defense Tuesday!

Sketch of logo

Go here to read the Day 1 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays. For this week we got more great art from Kevin plus we start talking about your character's quest in the game.

We tasked Kevin with making us a full set of Epic Plate armor. Taking a cue from popular games like World of Warcraft a lot of the loot drops will be classified by their rarity and each category will be represented by a color. Epic gear is gear that is really hard to get, it has great stats and looks awesome. Here is an example of epic plate armor that your character will be able to acquire in the game and epic one handed swords.

Full epic plate set with epic one handed swords.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is your character. In PTD you can catch an unlimited of enemies to be your towers. Even in other Tower Defense games you can create as many towers as your resources let you. In HTD things will be a little different. In HTD for some time you will only have one character. You start off by selecting your character picking it's race, gender, some customizations, and finally their class. This will be considered your "Main Character", the single player story will be focused on who you picked as your Main Character. The main story of the game will be the same for everybody but each class will have a different point of view of the story. Along the way you will meet with new characters that you can add to your party, you will be able to level them up and equip them just like your main character. You can even bring any of your characters into multiplayer, so you are not limited to your main character.

So why start a new file if the only difference is a new point of view on the same story? Well every class in the game is in search of something special. They are searching for a powerful secret technique that has been lost for centuries. When you beat the single player portion your Main Character will learn this technique but none of your other characters in that file will be able to learn it. So starting a new file will be so that you can get each class' secret technique.

That's all I have for you this week, Dan will be posting more info later tonight, as always let me know what you think!

Dan: In addition to the main story line there will be a bunch of side quests and other things you can do along the way, as well as after you beat the main story line. We definitely want to have optional uber bosses like most single player RPGs have that are much harder than anything in the main story line. I've always found those very fun and challenging and think it would be great to carry that over to HTD.

We want there to be just as much single player content as multiplayer content because some people just like to do their own thing or don't feel like searching for a party. I've played enough MMORPGs to understand how frustrating it can be when you are either unable or not interested in grouping and want to play solo but you couldn't even kill a mob 30 levels lower than you. We're hoping to remedy this scenario. :)