- Edited
Erich_L I see, though in my mockup the idea was to use the same slide-in base panel for all the button elements. Not necessarily at the same time, all at once. But to minimize the amount of buttons on screen rest of the time.
Drain Defense (playable and open to collaboration)
@Megalomaniak Yes I still have to redo the “choose a tower” menu which I suspect will end up looking quite a bit like your suggestion. In my own testing my thumbs are decently happy with the buttons being placed bottom left and bottom right.
I am almost done with the last “main” part of the “grand design”. I don’t want the player to get too frustrated falling behind or whatnot so I give them control over the sewer gate opening and closing. But when then to add in the stress of a wave of enemies flowing through?
Every other sewer upgrade the city will insist on a flow test. A little ball with a flag will have to through to a drain before the player can continue upgrading the sewer capacity.
During the test, the player will be allowed to dig up terrain but not place it. The player will not be allowed to close off sewers or sell/disable drains. I have big hopes it will be the change to really make this simulation feel like a game.
I've launched the version with the flag which I truly hope someone here can play test a little and either confirm or rebuke my theory that this kind of mechanic (the flag going through the map in order to continue upgrading the sewer to win) is indeed on the right track for this game becoming fun.
- Edited
I think it's time to remove the ring of buttons from selected towers. Instead clicking on the tower should just bring up the slide-in side panel:
Notice how the deletion button can hover over neighboring tower for an example. Trying to select the neighboring tower here would result in selling the current selection instead. Such a situation should ideally not even be possible.
Additional thoughts: The sewer pipe is too small, I think it should be 3 squares wide. And each upgrade to it should increase water flow into the pool(inflow). Basically each upgrade should function like adding a new spigot except this one is all sewage water needing chemical treatment.
The lives/heart should perhaps be changed to a calendar icon and the story could be that "You have been hired by The City™ to build and manage the new water treatment plant, you have X months. Good luck!"
a month later
- Edited
Megalomaniak "I won't post again till I finish at least 4 more new towers" wow that took a lot longer than I thought (about a month) and I've almost got 0.83 ready to upload.
"it's time to remove the ring of buttons from selected towers" -> I see what you mean Megalomaniak but I really don't want to burden my eyes with the combination of buttons and text both if I have already learned what the button does AND I want to respond to game events swiftly. I really value having the tower related buttons appear immediately and nearby. I'm confident the player will be much more careful after their first accidental tower sell. If more people bring this up though I might have to change something.
"Additional thoughts: The sewer pipe is too small" -> You are right, but instead of making it bigger I am just going to have some maps with multiple sewer pipes.
"The lives/heart should perhaps be changed to a calendar icon and the story could be that "You have been hired by The City™ to build and manage the new water treatment plant, you have X months. Good luck!"" -> I hate pixel art but I really enjoy it so far for the UI stuff. You nailed the story- you're indeed hired by the city to help you and the hearts I think are very easy to understand as "chances" or "mess ups" before termination similar to how early TDs had "lives."
My plans for a goofy story:
The recently elected Presidento has replaced all the country's Waste water treatment plant managers with party loyalists! Now as infrastructure crumbles, take contracts to help these wild managers reclaim operations! Going above and beyond on each map - each having a wildly distinct manager - allows the player to unlock (one at a time) three unique towers that the manager thought would be a "good idea."
Nerd Toby
-Tower that counts debris
-Tower that gives access to water statistics
-Water cooler
Former General Tusk
-Artillery
-Gatling guns
-Grenade toss
ect...
I feel this allows me to introduce silly, wacky, and fun towers in a setting where the backbone of the game can still be taken somewhat seriously.
Erich_L "The lives/heart should perhaps be changed to a calendar icon and the story could be that "You have been hired by The City™ to build and manage the new water treatment plant, you have X months. Good luck!"" -> I hate pixel are but I really enjoy it so far for the UI stuff. You nailed the story- you're indeed hired by the city to help you and the hearts I think are very easy to understand as "chances" or "mess ups" before termination similar to how early TDs had "lives."
You make it sound like the hearts should only go down punitively when the player messes up but my experience was that it fairly constantly and consistently ticks down like a timer, hence also why I said I thought the pipe was too small. Seemed obvious that it wasn't big enough so it got stuck. Perhaps flow increase might remedy that, but also I suspect that whether intentional or not but the tick down of the hearts might have stemmed from it and if so, it felt rather buggy.
What I decided to do is add this -Heart effect where the player lost a life or "chance" as a hint. I have it so that if debris stays or enters back into the sewage pipe the debris is deleted and the player loses a life.
Sadly I noticed some phones can't handle all the physics bodies so I'll have to design a bunch of "enemies" that vary in difficulty and nastiness. All go "quality over quantity" to cut down on bodies.
Just gave it a try. Really cool concept and nice execution. A few things were quite confusing though:
- muck. when is it created, what does it do, how to clean it up? from what I've seen, it doesn't really do anything and while the 100$ pods do clean up the sprites, the number on the right doesn't go down. and for the most part I just ignored it.
- heaters. I've tried to set them up, the way the description mentioned, but they didn't seem effective. at least not as effective as standard towers
- does each drain produce money? because each of them displays a yellow
+30, but it didn't feel like I got more money by placing more drains - what is the purpose of traffic cone and the RimWorld guy?
Overall, the game could really use a decent tutorial. Right now you have to buy things and experiment with them in order to know what they do.
But it's pretty fun, once you get the hang of it.
- Edited
Yes! Finally to version 0.83! It took me a long time to think of how to start expanding tower options (after all I can't just do the default arrow, magic, and cannon towers) but after rewatching materials on Waste water treatment plants I sought to recreate what is called the activated sludge tank.
The process starts with flocculant towers which shoots Aluminum sulfate onto debris. Aluminum sulfate helps debris stick together and sink. Once underwater a natural chemical process can take place which is bacteria already in the water eat up the debris. To gamify the process, I negate that natural process without the debris being heated first (in real life of course the water is heated to a comfortable temperature to hasten the process).
In the game, once submerged, underwater debris gets heated, they begin taking damage relative to the algae in that tile. Again to gamify, I simulate the loss of oxygen by killing that precious algae each time damage is dealt unless the water there is being oxygenated.
Therefore, to simulate the process, we first hit the debris with Aluminum sulfate from the Flocculator tower, debris collides and sinks, debris flows over heated areas and gets warmed (if it stays too long it'll get too heated for the process to work) and lastly any algae can go to town eating up the debris. Algae is consumed in the process unless the water is being properly oxygenated.
- Edited
Tomcat Politics every once in a while brings a little chaos, and in chaos even the most unlikely hero can rise up to the task of aiding corrupt managers tend to their ailing waste water treatment plants =P
muck. when is it created, what does it do, how to clean it up?
LoipesMas Thanks so much for the feedback! First of all, yes, the muck, one of my favorite things. I initially introduced Muck to be a counter to the player simply blocking off debris access to the drain. Debris that can't move for too long generates muck and eventually disintegrates. Muck acts as a shield basically for debris floating over it; it removes enzymes and reduces damage. Also, muck generates algae which can lead to water quality going down and the player losing bonus credits.
When those pods remove muck the number definitely needs to go down! Thank you for catching that bug!
I need to reexamine the role of muck because I am satisfied with the newer mechanic to stop the player from just walling off drain access which is the newer Inspection Flag mode that happens every other sewer upgrade.
As for the heaters, I hope the image I provide in the last post can give a working example.
does each drain produce money?
The bonus credits are rewarded for clean water exiting the plant, averaging water quality over all drains in use. I didn't know how to choose which drain should "show" the bonus, so I just made the bonus appear over all drains. I realize this can make it look as though all drains are generating income but they are not- I'm not sure what to do about this.
what is the purpose of traffic cone?
The traffic cone is for storing lovely little inner tubes! I have most of the code in place for the little guy (pressing keys 1-4 or 5) to go find an inner-tube, get in the water, then mount it! What a fun place to ride an inner tube! But you have to build stairs to get into the water.
10 days later
I am embarrassed to say that this new additional tilemap took me over 20 hours to finish but it adds (what I think) is another interesting twist to the tower defense genre, the idea that you can just pull one of your enemies to land at the expense of that land tile.
Version 0.83 live at itch.io to play around with.
Why would the player start off with high tech equipment such as a enzyme sprayer? Here's a pitchfork instead!
- Edited
Erich_L I am embarrassed to say that this new additional tilemap took me over 20 hours to finish
If that is considered to be locked in as 'final' then I don't think that's actually a particularly unreasonable time-frame. Especially in terms of going from conception to final deliverable.
Megalomaniak Thanks that makes me feel a bit better- it was just 20 hours in photoshop dragging little poops around amongst 300 layers drove me to the BRINK.
@xyz I couldn't agree more! This is what the AI gen gave me, and I meticulously placed it accordingly as my tileset required. I would love to be able to just replace my terrain tileset with a few clicks but I don't think AI is quite there yet.
On the other hand, some people have been quite hostile toward me the moment I share that I've been using the AI art gens so I'm not sure how much I should publicize my process.
good progress E!
still sad about u leaving Normord 