Updated on December 17, 2017
Into the Belly of the Beast
Hey all, It’s Halloween time which is a perfect time to do an update!
So what’s been happening the since the last update you ask? *Crickets noise* That’s okay I’ll tell you anyway. 😉 I’ve got our protagonists Dorian and Grub finalised and in the game, took longer than expected to explore them as characters but I’m happy with the result.
I’ve also been tightening the screws on a lot of Defend Yer Booty! tower-defense gameplay, locking down more arsenal weapons and as always slowly creating more levels. In particular, the enemy spawner has been getting the majority of attention and heavy tuning. I’m proud to say I’ve finally got something streamline and versatile. It grabs attributes from a level, attributes from prearranged enemy clusters chosen and then spits out a wave of enemies on timed intervals suitably challenging for the player who has has survived ‘x’ many waves. The result removes the need to manually craft too much of a level, allows a unique outcome per wave and a great potential for refreshing replay-ability and I haven’t even got to special wave occurrences yet!
Unlike a lot of tower-defense games, when you place “units” or “towers” you’re making a long standing strategical choice, where as Defend Yer Booty! will push the focus on short term placements and strategies. This is because enemies don’t spawn down a singular path and at some points will simultaneously come from different directions. This means everything the player will place is somewhat temporarily but also not crucial which allows for turn over and new strategy every wave. More importantly it means the player is still involved in defending against enemies and not just a character placing towers.
Besides balancing, working out how to splice an adventure experience with a tower-defense experience has been the other challenge. Rather than grabbing the best mechanics or features from each, I’ve had to find that sweet spot that plays and transitions as a fun journey that compliments one another as well. The adventure component becomes a series of minor tasks that adds flow to the story and transition between areas. The tower-defense component acts as the battle or a test throughout that journey arc/level.
Strategy/Adventure games like Pokemon and Brutal Legend have split gameplay functionality but do it in different ways. In Pokemon, all the playable conflict takes place in battle and battling is a completely different mode to the exploring and traversing of the world. Even though you carry out story events, it still acts as a service to the turn-based battle gameplay. In brutal legend their real-time strategy element acts as a boss fight between arcs. So through the story you carry out all these missions recruiting people/units for your arming whilst learning how to use them. Then when the time comes for the boss fight, you know how to use the units and it’s a matter of deciding how you want to play. Brutal Legend does have a multiplayer/game mode dedicated to the real-time strategy element of their game but uses it sparsely in comparison to their adventure side. It does a very good job of immersing the player and distracting the player from the distinction and switching between game modes by giving context and not removing them from the player’s current setting.
One of my goals is to have something immersive that could transition into the tower defense game mode on a moderate basis. This includes creating an adventure side that still contributes to strategy elements even outside of the tower-defense gameplay.
Next on my list, I’ll be jumping onto creating some more enemies. Now that I’ve got some basic enemy types, I can explore some uniquer enemies that should hopefully cause some disruption to the flow. These should hopefully pop up in the next post. 😀
That’s all for now mateysss.
Updated on December 17, 2017
Autumn, Adventure and Booty
Update Tidal Wave!
Ahoy! It’s now Autumn, Deadleaf Critter’s favorite month! It’s been a while since I last updated, so for those who don’t know, my current w.i.p title has a name: Defend Yer Booty! If you’ve stumbled upon this website, the game is a 3rd Person Tower Defense. If you do know about it, you should know it’s going well. I’ve been jumping back and forth between creating new levels and tuning gameplay. DYB! will have two juicy modes: Adventure and Plunderama. Adventure is a story mode and Plunderama is an endless wave survival. Each will have different challenges and unlocks. The scope for this game has grown from what I initially set out to do, but I think it’s a favorable outcome. I’ve learned a lot in the process and last thing I want to do is fall short of it’s possible potential, especially when its within grasp.
Above is an early concept of the main protagonist and sidekick. Dorian is essentially a castaway who, after years of searching finds the fabled ghostly seas. His sidekick, Grub is a stubborn Hauntling. In game, combat should involve a blend of both characters. I started making this game with Johnny Fishfists as a defender, so you’ll probably won’t find Dorian and Grub in any screenshots yet. It’s one of the first ideas I’ve come up with where I’ve held back from designing the main character. I had an idea and some iterations of where I wanted to go with it but felt I needed the world and game fleshed out to find out what character I wanted.
I’ve added a ‘Ghostly Power’ ability, which means each character/defender will have some sort of temporary power up move on top of their normal combat. It can be activated once the power has recharged and should make for some tide-turning and fun moments.
The DYB! takes place in a pirate limbo, so there’s different type of undead all about. Not all are bad, not all are good. Ghouls, Hauntlings and Spectres are usually okay. The vast majority of them oppose joining Grimbeard’s fleet.There’s also other otherworldly inhabitants that the player will face against. Zombarnacles, for example are starfish-controlled corpses that will destroy all in their path for rum.
(Above) Zombarnacles are annoying rum-thirsty jerks.
(Above) Trying to take on a horde of enemies without setting up defense is nearly impossible.
(Above) Coconut Blasters and Urchin Infantry defend the booty. No you don’t, you boney scalliwags!
There will be a range of different defense items the player can mix and match in their arsenal. Most can be unlocked by spending loot earned from either mode. Players will be able to earn loot easily but a more substantial amount of loot is rewarded in different ways. One way for example is flawlessly defending for a whole wave.
From the get go I decided to avoid snapping defense items to a grid. I thought it would be cool to organically place units, and although this opens up a realm of slightly problematic scenarios, I think it allows for a lot more creativity, fun and endless possibility. Yeah, players will most likely try to find exploits but I think it’s somewhat part of the fun.
However there is one exception. When I first started, I wanted players to be able to build barricades anywhere. For a number of reasons it just didn’t seem to work effectively, things became increasingly more complex than they needed to be and there were too many problems to justify putting it in at all at that point. While testing barricade placement, I found myself wanting to use barricades to block small gaps or bottlenecks in the level. Although I still spent a great deal of time setting up the barricade in the right angle. Building a well placed object against a timer or a wave of incoming enemies is just something you’re not going to have time to do or waste time doing. It was a cool idea being able to plug up a narrow path, so I made a condition where barricades can only be setup in places marked. On top of this the barricade will snap into place, removing all the hard work out of aligning it flush with the gap.
Still have a lot of work to go, as currently most of my time is spent making levels and content but I’m hoping to push a lot more out in the next 6 months. Stay tuned fish fillets.
Updated on December 17, 2017
Land Ahoy!
New Update Time!
Things are going pretty well for the pirate game, it’s coming along swiftly with minimal obstacles. With that said, I haven’t really talked about DeathSpuds for a while and here’s why. Basically around the start of 2014, we decided that DeathSpuds, is a pretty big game and while it was going along fine, it demanded too much from early on. Three of us working on it in our spare time wasn’t making the strides I hoped for. This would mean Deadleaf’s first game would take a long time. At that point Alex took a short break to focus more on his own stuff at Redefinition Games. This being ‘The Very Organized Thief’ (TVO). I continued working on the game for a few more months before coming to the conclusion, that I would need to explore creating a smaller game on my own. I thought about going back to Gamemaker, but Unity was too damn juicy!
So here we are, a year later with this little Nautical-themed, 3rd Person base defense game. Mind you, in small doses of rare spare time, I’m still planning/drawing/designing/writing for DeathSpuds, it’s just not at the front of the queue in terms of completing a product. DeathSpuds isn’t close to being finished, but it has actually worked out more beneficial in the long run, because when DeathSpuds does go back into full swing, we’ll be attacking it having more knowledge, having better processes down and producing content at a faster rate, all without feeling the need to rush it. So more experience will give the end result a lot better shimmer. 😀
As I’ve dived into a little before, the pirate game is 3rd person action with resourcing and light strategic placement of ‘towers’. You’ll play through levels, defending the point of interest in different ways. Earning booty along the way, you’ll be able to buy new defense items which include: Attackers, Walls, Traps and Buffs. You will be also able to unlock a range of characters with diverse attacks and abilities. Each character has a primary means of attack as well as being able to perform a special ability which can be a passive ability or a secondary attack. Accompanied by a unique perk, characters will also have different attribute ranges in health, speed, attack, attack speed and revival. So players should have fun combining characters with defense items to create the best line of defense that suits them!!!
For now, feast your eyes on some new development screenies on my NAUTICAL THEMED 3RD PERSON BASE DEFENSE GAME!!!!!!! N3PBD for short, I also sometimes call it my pirate game, which is much quicker to say. 😀
(Above) Profile Selection screen. You choose a barrel, you save the barrel, you live by the barrel.
(Above) Plunderama is a mode where you play endless waves of enemies until your little fingers can’t take no more.
(Above) Character selection screen. Johnny’s leading the way. Way to go Johnny.
(Above) Arsenal docking bay. This is where you swap, buy and setup your Arsenal. You’ll be doing a lot of plundering for the good stuff matey.
(Above) The Perch is a seagull nesting ground.
(Above) Ah, the soothing ambient screeching of a thousand hungry seagulls.
(Above) It’s a shipwreck. That is all.
(Above) The undead pirates of the Crimson Seas don’t want you to have the booty.
(Above) By attacking and destroying the treasure chest, they’re making it really, really, realllllly hard for you to transport the treasure. Thus impossible to collect the booty. Go on, try…you won’t be able to. I don’t plan on making that feature anyway.
Hope you enjoyed my w.i.p screenies and lame captions. 😀
Come back for more updates soooooooooonnn…
Updated on December 17, 2017
Tharr She Blows!
Start of the new year guys! Expecting a few surprises this year! I’ve been slugging away trying to get this smaller game done, but like all things – it takes time. I can however share some of my progress. 😀
So my smaller project (code name: Pirate Game) is a 3rd Person Base Defense.
Johnny Fishfists, The first working Hero/Defender is a sea creature savvy attacker. Most of his defense is based around enhancing his combat.
Here’s a seagull concept, experimenting with different eyes. 😀
So the first few Undead Pirate enemies are all melee based (As shown in previous post). In which there are 3 classes of the Melee Pirate: Stalker – Stalks the player, Treasure Seeker – Which goes directly for the treasure and the Defense Breaker- Which destroys defense. The Bomber Pirate (Above Left) is a ranged Defense Breaker, which as you can guess throws explosives. The Rotting Captain (Above Right) is a Ranged Stalker, delivering a devastating shot. These pirates have different speeds and health, etc which makes the dynamics of the game a lot more fun once they jump in. Looking forward to showing off some more enemies soon.
A while ago to make enemy traversing more unpredictable and diverse, I created a way-point system which when activated in particular areas will make the enemy pick a possible different path to traverse. So instead of getting a clump of enemies all at once (agent finding the shortest path), I have enemies spreading out making levels more interesting to defend. 😀
Josh
Updated on December 17, 2017
Super Scallywag Mayhem
Alrighty guys! Talking about the pirate game today. It’s coming along nicely! Got the base of the gameplay/game going. As well as a hero in there to fight off the evil undead pirates. 😀 The first hero depicted is a brutish dock worker who uses his catch to assist him in the fight. 
As you can see, the Dock worker will make good use of his fishy fingers. He will be a close range combat hero, also armed with an electric eel whip to stun enemies. 😀
Above is the loading screen in it’s early stages, pretty obvious. The cool thing about this loading screen is that it’s got asynchronous loading, which will allow the player to muck around with the hero while the level is loading. It seems to be all working without a hitch, might even be able to get a mini-game in there, Fingers-crossed. 😀
That’s all for now!
-Josh
Updated on December 17, 2017
Batten Down the Hatches!
I’ve decided to share a little bit of art from the side project and it’s about loot and pirates, well undead pirates! This project has plenty of benefits for me as I’m testing out a few things before doing it on a larger scale with DeathSpuds.
The pictures below are the early concepts of enemies in the game which will stop the player from obtaining glorious loot. Behold!
The game is in a playable state and while I would love to divulge more information and show off some footage, it’s better just to tease you for now. 😉
Cheers Mateys,
Josh
