Tower Swap - Endless Puzzle - Competition Entry

[Derron]

Seems you changed some stuff

@ Cannon hint bug ?

... not as I thought of. Bullets just do not visualize the now "funnel"-style shooting.
The "funnel" together with the slower shooting rate means, you can miss a single dragon quite easily: the horizontal bullet misses already, the one "above" still misses. Then on next shot, the "previously above bullet" already misses and so on... a bit annoying ;-)
So I had in the 5th of 6 lanes 2 cannons ... and they were not able to hit 2 dragons in lane 6 a single time. Means I lost already 2 lives in (this case..) 4 levels.
 
So for now "cannons" are more feasible in the later levels.


also: bullets have a "range" now - so a cannon in one of the two "right lanes" cannot hit dragons in the first lane. Is this "by intention" ?


@ black borders
seems to be fixed.


bye
Ron

[Pingus]

Ah ah, I ranked 1 (Toto) !

[curtastic]

Fixed the tutorial, and fixed cannons shooting too early. Yesterday I fixed the ballista missiles disappearing when the target dies.

[Derron]

@ misalignment


Maybe after "animation" (collapse, creation...) you should re-align (reposition) tiles. In this case it looks as if only arrow tower lvl1 is borked up.


@ bad start levels
I got collapses leading to 12 "turns" ... and was able to produce a lot of towers - but then all dragons start at a single lane - the one with the cannons.

(screen is of level 1 ... it shows "day 2" when the dragons start to fly).

Such game starts _really_ ... _really_ demotivate. Maybe you should try to avoid "all in one" dragon-setups during the first level. Maybe even try to distribute them in a way that the first level is always solveable (if there exist 2 towers).


bye
Ron

[iWasAdam]

still miss-aligned bg with black borders
cannon balls go right through dragons without killing them.

Slowly this is going downhill 

cannons shooting multiply ways with one cannon is non-sensical. hit detection is getting much MUCH worse

[Derron]

Cannons do no longer switch directions - they only shoot in the direction in which they initially look.


bye
Ron

[iWasAdam]

getting less and less fun!

serious issue:
dragons coming up rows with no possible way of defeating them! Check out Plants vs Zombies for this - it never does this.

This is a no win situation. using this is poor practice/programming. as it gives the impression that the game is deliberately detecting where this can happen and manipulating the results so the player can't win!

Also as with Derron. the cannon no longer shift direction - again this is seen as a 'not fair' situation.

TBH I think I'm done with this. what made me smile and want to go on, now makes me cross and want to turn off - so that's what I am going to do.

Good luck with it though 

[Holzchopf]

You sound a bit harsh. Curtastic is obviously working hard on it (at least he keeps working on his project, so don't let us destroy his motivation) and where dev work is done, decisions have to be made and they can be wrong and even if they're not they can be realised unfortunate. TBH Ron's and Adam's critics are valid and they show exactly where you should put priorities - maybe you already did, in that case: keep going! But please consider removing "bad luck" completely from your game. Distribute dragons more evenly among the lines that can actually be defended (yes, that's a bit like cheating but in the player's favour). It will be more fun in the beginning (important!). Of course it will then get boring after a while if the player doesn't experience any level of difficulty. When you reached that stage, put *some* of the "bad luck" factors back in. Yes, this also means that you might have to make the factor of "game cheating in player's favour" depending on progression. That's balancing and it's super hard. But you can do it! If you chose to ignore it, you risk to lose the players early on out of frustration. And you don't wont that!

[Derron]

You can be almost sure that at level 3 all lanes could "somehow" get secured - so a good "bad luck" modificator is
1 - Max(0, (3 - level)) / 3.0
You can increase that 3  (and 3.0) into something better.
It defines how much you can ignore tower setups.
If the modificator is 0, only place on lanes reachable by weapons - if no weapon was created, use 2 lanes to make it not look "cheated".

The higher the mod becomes, the less fair the game can become. Fairness is calculated like "shooting power per lane" / "hitpoints of all dragons in the lane".
It is not perfect, as towers can shoot in multiple directions, so not all projectiles hit the dragons on this lane - but other items will hit multiple at once ... so things can "average out".


@ changelog
Feel free to add a little changelog when you upload new stuff. So people see what changes and where to put their attention to (when testing / checking the changes).


bye
Ron

[Pingus]

Alghouth it seems unfair and frustrating to have big rows of dragons, I find the challenge very interresting. I sent the game link to few friends and they are all addicted (and they squat the top 5 . Seeing their score I assume that there are strategies that produce efficient defense against dragons and that's what maintain the game interrest to me.
More evenly distributed waves of dragon would make that a game would last much longer and could become boring.

I still regret the lack of a 'reset' button to avoid starting the game many times before getting what I think is a good beginning.

[Derron]

We did not suggest to make evenly distributed dragons in all levels ... just the first levels need this kind of "starter help".


bye
Ron

[curtastic]

Okay I changed the cannons back so they shoot the whole row, so you shouldn't get many starts where you can't hit some columns.

There is a quit game in the menu which resets without a page load. I will also speed up page load for if you do refresh for a new game.

I sent the game link to few friends and they are all addicted (and they squat the top 5 . Seeing their score I assume that there are strategies that produce efficient defense against dragons and that's what maintain the game interrest to me.
More evenly distributed waves of dragon would make that a game would last much longer and could become boring.

I still regret the lack of a 'reset' button to avoid starting the game many times before getting what I think is a good beginning.

Thanks for sharing it, ya I should have a changelog so people don't wonder why their scores are gone. I clear the leaderboard every time I make an update that affects difficulty.

- Added boss
- Changed cannons to shoot the whole row.
- Removed cannon splash damage, but not splash knockback (level 2).
- Fixed lightning (level 3) projectiles.
- Added better lightning (level 3) images.
- Added collectible gold.
- Fixed music and sound volume settings.

[Derron]

You also added an "show ad"-continue thingy.


@ coins
What do you plan with it?
Now you can choose to use coins _or_ viewing an ad to be able to continue the game a single time. So you cannot spend coins _and_ watching an ad (to receive 2 continues).
An option would be something like
1st continue 50g
2nd continue 75g
3rd ... 100g
4th ... 150g
and so on


@ mother of all dragons
The first text line is done with a "typewriter effect". The second line is instantly shown.

When you reach second boss, same effect is used - while you already know what happens next (so instantly show both lines?).

Another idea is to "warn" a level before: "WARNING: next level is a boss level".
Boss levels could have a slight red glow at the border of the game (like a warning screen).

Next to boss levels you could have "difficult" levels every 4th wave - which means you have some dragons which need more hits. This also means that level 20 is a "difficult boss level" (4*5 ...).

Tower defences also had "invisible mobs" which needed special towers to get seen. Might be a bit too difficult ("needs level 3 arrow tower on each lane" or so) but just keep the idea in the backyard of your brain.


@ coins
For now you collect the coins "towards the hearts" - maybe animate the collection movement towards the coin indicator.


@ improvements
Good improvements for now.



bye
Ron

[Pingus]

New additions are fun, but I think that you should reset the highscore table more often. There seem to be a treshold that makes any progress impossible (> wave 45-46) and once few people reach it and fill the table (I still dont know how it becomes much less incentive to play.
Or maybe increase the table size to the 20 th first and reset every week.

[Derron]

I think the problem is balancing.

When you reach level 30+ you mostly have level 2 towers. They are pretty powerful. Level 3 towers add special abilities (stun etc.) but are way less powerful than 3 level 2 towers.
So each progressing level you build more and more towers - until you somewhen are enforced to switch to a level 3 tower. You might still be able to survive next rounds without loosing a life but somewhen you will not win ... somewhen you will have a level with some more mobs on one lane so you won't just loose 1 life, but 4+ (aka gameover + continue).
Afterwards you still have the same towers - and the same problem if there are lanes with "oops more units this time". So most of the games I used the continue in levels 30-35 I finally game overed  2-3 levels later (depending on luck-of-lanes).

The games I were able to achieve 40+ (best for now 42) were the ones with pretty good starts (10 moves or so, starting level 1 with 2+ level2 towers already) and the ones where I was able to keep many level 2 towers (and at least one level 3 cannon, so to pretty easily stun the bosses right on the first row).

I think the #1 highscores do it similary: not trying to upgrade towers as fast as possible, but to have as much as possible level 2 towers (as you will not have 10+ level3 towers in that stage). And if that was this way, you have a natural "stop" to not reach any further: somewhen items collapse ("upgrade") and you will suddenly loose lifes.
This gets even worse if you need to pass 2 waves to rearrange items to _not_ collapse. Else you sometimes end in multi-collapses (multiple items connect to 3 or more - so multiple towers get upgraded). Or even worse: it collapses and you suddenly join 5 towers into one lvl+ tower plus some moves. This is your death shot in later stages.


bye
Ron