Tower Swap - Endless Puzzle - Competition Entry

[therevills]

Some time ago I noticed that the game was playing faster than before, I thought you had enabled fast forward mode or something for testing... but just noticed in the top left corner there is an FPS counter and one my PC it was 120FPS... so I changed the monitor settings from 120Hz down to 60Hz and the game now plays at normal speed again.

So you need to add some frame limiting code which is not linked to the vsync of the monitor.

I still like playing this game now and again

[Derron]

I suggested some long time ago to split logic from rendering. if you eg. play on a very slow (gpu wise) device like an old smartphone or IGP-intel-laptop from the early 2000's you will have also slower game mechanics. Means you need longer to finish levels.
Separate logic from rendering and you could pretty easily do better collision checks etc.


bye
Ron

[curtastic]

Some time ago I noticed that the game was playing faster than before, I thought you had enabled fast forward mode or something for testing... but just noticed in the top left corner there is an FPS counter and one my PC it was 120FPS... so I changed the monitor settings from 120Hz down to 60Hz and the game now plays at normal speed again.

So you need to add some frame limiting code which is not linked to the vsync of the monitor.

I still like playing this game now and again

Thanks for the bug find. Let me know if it's fixed now. I don't have a faster display myself right now. I just realized there is a 120FPS phone, the new Razer phone. So that would be an issue. It's the only non-60FPS smartphone/tablet.

[curtastic]

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

Okay I made level 3 towers shoot faster now. And I removed the extra knockback from level 2 towers because sometimes they would just stop a whole group of dragons entirely by constantly pushing them back when on a wall.

[curtastic]

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.

Okay for now I increased it from 9 to 12 scores. I'm going to have to ditch the leaderboard at some point because there's no good way of making it not hackable, since I want you to be able to keep playing when your internet is spotty, and I don't want to spend the server resources for my server to be playing everyone's game.

[curtastic]

@ 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.

Right now it's competitive so I don't want to let people pay to win. Since gold is attached to your account not your current game. Everyone gets 1 continue.

I was thinking gold is stored in your castle and that's why dragons are attacking. But it's displayed on the right. And you don't lose your gold when they destroy the castle so idk.

That's a good idea for invisible mobs. I think I played one like that in a Starcraft mod where you had to build turrets to see the wave of cloaked wraiths. I forgot all about that.

Ya maybe it's better to say the mother of dragons is coming next rather than right now.