just some musing about a tower/maze defense

[KaiserJ]

lots of people have asked about it... others have worked on it... we have various chicken defenses already, and tons of models, so maybe it's time to look at it again?

the most pertinent point of course would be "why would we want to make this for spring when there are umpteen million other tower defenses?"

- we can take advantage of the true 3d-mappage of spring... hills and LOS blockage can be used tactically, as well as typemaps and umpteen million other things
- spring is massively modability-oriented (lol its a MMO) and i have a feeling that were one easily-customizable tower defense to be made, that there would be many interesting modifications and mutations made...
- we have more than enough models already created, animated and ready to go, as well as a massive array of gadgets and widgets and game modes that seem as if they could be modified to fit the task
- we all like tower defense, right? shits a barrel of monkeys

i was thinking today at work... let me know if this is feasible...

- map similar in shape to chicken roast... the map is a maze sunken into a flat plain with several switchbacks
- for a builder, the player gets an invincible, superfast aircon (no reclaiming the enemies though ^^)
- the con can build only towers, no mobile units
- towers cannot be built within the sunken maze, only on the plain

thoughts on creatures...

- timed spawns like chickens would be great, but not random... possibly with each wave pre-defined in a tdf or something that can easily be accessed and changed
- creatures spawn from a startbox or point of some type (possibly coded into the map?) and run to the "exit" of the maze
- more complicated mazes could be used if the creeps are able to be given waypoints; like "first move to x,y then to x,y then to x,y and then if you get to x,y you die and it counts as a lost life to the player"

thoughts on "lives" and scoring...

- possibly spawn some units in the "end" of the maze, that the chickens are able to see, and run towards, and eventually kill... these units represent "lives" of the player, once all of said units are gone, game over... something like an e-storage with a small but deadly explosion to kill the creature attacking it when it dies (of course i'm sure theres an easier way to do this via lua without something clumsy like e-storages) also this would be fail for multi player i think
- each different creep has a metal value; kill a creep and get instant cash (or reclaim a corpse? hmm)

thoughts on towers and damage

we have a nice array of damage type systems across the board in many different spring mods to pick from, as well as cool weapons like the newton, flamethrower turrets, guardians, EMP, all sorts of random things that could be interestingly mixed together to create something awesome.

we also have morphing and all sorts of nice things like that, for upgrades and "teching" (which we also have a nice array of gadgets for)

anyhow, i'd love to know thoughts of others on the subject, especially from the LUA dudes... i would certainly be open to the idea of a tower defense game project and could contribute art assets but this is most definitely NOT a nouncin mah mod thread

[zwzsg]

Too bad Smoth ragequitted, that thread would have been the perfect ragebait for him.

- timed spawns like chickens would be great, but not random... possibly with each wave pre-defined in a tdf or something that can easily be accessed and changed
- creatures spawn from a startbox or point of some type (possibly coded into the map?) and run to the "exit" of the maze
- more complicated mazes could be used if the creeps are able to be given waypoints; like "first move to x,y then to x,y then to x,y and then if you get to x,y you die and it counts as a lost life to the player"

I can almost do that. Well, all chickens would spawn at the beginning, but I can give them wait time and way points in a TDF-like file.

[KaiserJ]

said person has so much work on his plate that i wouldn't want to bring up said project, thats for damned sure... time spent by said person elsewhere at this point will eventually give us a much more interesting game to play than a tower defense, end of story (at least for me ^^).

hmm... so all the "creeps" from the whole TD would spawn at the start, and then move in predetermined waves across the map? that could certainly work, i'd have to map a large protected area for them to stand in but that wouldn't be a problem

maybe i should make a TD map for a proof of concept (but its early days and castle walls don't texture themselves)

[Jazcash]

Don't let Smoth see this.

[KaiserJ]

damnit haha i don't care if he sees it; if he does, he'll probably have useful suggestions to offer, just like most things

if anything another TD project could deflect the concept enough that people don't worry about rage when a related topic is posted

[Forboding Angel]

As I've said many times throughout the years, smoth isn't the only one capable of making TD.

[aegis]

you don't need to use an invincible aircon, you can handle building/upgrading completely in lua

[zwzsg]

Can conless Lua ask team units to clear the area before laying the nanoframe?

[aegis]

- the con can build only towers, no mobile units

and anyway, you can give move orders away from the location.

I was working on a lua crowd continuum implementation... where units would shy away from specified areas. (I have most of the framework done). if I finished it, I could just mark building zones as undesirable for units.

[knorke]

for someone with some modding skills it wouldnt be too difficult:
-make a map with the usual maze path
-the path could just be water so you can not build there
-or make turrets only buildable on geos and place lots of geos along the path
-take the con plane, give it 99999 health, +5000 e-generation, fast buildpower and remove all buildings but turrets
-use CA chicken AI: ai needs changing to only spawn at start of maze and given waypoints across the maze. make them not attack the towers (not sure how)
-or make all creeps build in one second, place a factory at start of maze and order its ai it to build stuff in ways. factory is given waypoints -> creeps walk through maze
-for ressources, players reclaim the wrecks of killed units with their con plane
-at end of the maze is a castle/whatever that is killed by the creeps if they reach it.
-castle dies: game over

maybe iam too naive but how hard can it be?

[KDR_11k]

If you're going to have a castle anyway why not make that a nanotower and strike the whole air con business? If you want it capable of building multiple things simultaneously you can use the gundam resource system, just replace the regular income sources with a bounty system (if that's what you want).

[Wombat]

i didnt read this whole thread coz of overwhelming number of letters, but my idea of spring TD was - chickens go from point A to point B, using path, mapper would like them to use, while ignoring all player buildings/towers... should be plausible to do :> con could commander from nota with uber range, problem solved, no ?

[zwzsg]

Wombat: I'm sorry I couldn't hear you over the overwhelming number of letters.

aegis: Maybe I should have precised I wasn't thinking of TD with that question, but more about a KP-like mod where minifacs autobuild whenever you've got an unit and no enemy nearby. And no, I'm not interested into rewriting the low level movement AI in Lua. I just want to tell units to bugger off from the build zone so build can start on a cleared zone. Sure, I know that Lua can issue move order, but that'd be an ugly, buggy, hack.

KDR_11k: Which file is Gundam is responsible for the base building system? I looked into /gadgets/ but couldn't find the one about it.

[aegis]

I'm not interested into rewriting the low level movement AI in Lua

I very distinctly said *I* was doing it

[Pxtl]

Can conless Lua ask team units to clear the area before laying the nanoframe?

If not, invisible con with invisible buildbeam.

[KDR_11k]

KDR_11k: Which file is Gundam is responsible for the base building system? I looked into /gadgets/ but couldn't find the one about it.

Was resources.lua when I wrote it but I think Smoth refactored a bit to move the GUI into a separate file so you'll probably need that too.

[CarRepairer]

You guys might want to try my Chicken Tag game as inspiration for ideas. It's not a tower defense game but it's modeled after WC3 Kodo Tag. It's balanced around using your single commander to build defense towers while swarms and swarms of little chickens hurl themselves at you and your towers. The only thing to protect is your commander from taggers. Requires four human players.

http://www.springfiles.com/show_file.php?id=2374

[KaiserJ]

i will make a maze, and we will see what happens.

i sort of want hills and stuff, but knorkes idea of a water-filled path is probably the most painless way to go ATM

[ScarySquirrel]

Too bad Smoth ragequitted, that thread would have been the perfect ragebait for him.

Wait, Smoth is gone?

It has been too long.

[ScarySquirrel]

If you want suggestions for features, let me know. I have seen 3d, fully animated, combined with one player has to fps a tricked out unit and another overhead, PS3 versions of this shit.
Will this be tied to a specific Spring version?