just some musing about a tower/maze defense

[Neddie]

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

Wait, Smoth is gone?

It has been too long.

Just gone from the forums.

[KaiserJ]

If you want suggestions for features, let me know.

hey man, im not committing to anything but making a map; on the other hand i'd like to get the ball rolling and am more that willing to contribute models etc. if others are willing to create some code... lets say this is a brainstorming stage, so of course your ideas are welcome!

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.

so... tower defense, combined with a fps mech-combat hero sort of thing? im certainly not against the idea; what game was this?

Will this be tied to a specific Spring version?

i would hope not... but it raises the point that it would be cool if "tower defense" was something that could be easily adapted to any mod...

[quantum]

The chickens Lua is almost certainly 0% useful for this project. But then the logic probably won't be very complex, most of the work will be adapting it to the game design as it evolves.

Imo the required work is this:

80% balancing/making sure it's fun for more than 3 games
15% GUI Lua
5% game logic Lua

A maze map might be useful if it has lots of choke-points that can be blocked to create a huge amount of possible routes. A map with 1 route would make it a lot harder to make the game replayable.

Units are not really needed since there are plenty of open source ones available.

I could help with a little bit of Lua (but definitely not all of it ).

Btw I agree that the Spring engine is very good for TD, especially because of there lots of ways to use physics for fun :)

[AF]

We already have a maze map

[Google_Frog]

TD might be better in wc3 as Spring's pathfinder does not handle mazes well.

[zwzsg]

That's okay, on previous page aegis just volunteered to rewrite the pathfinder in Lua.

[Guessmyname]

Anyone else think Kernel Panic would be the best mod to use as a base for this?

[zwzsg]

KP would be more suited to DOTA.

[quantum]

Pathfinding should not be a problem since we can use pre-determined waypoints.

[knorke]

he probally means pathfinding as not in following the maze but in some towerdefgames you build your own maze with the towers. (if you block the path completly, the creeps usually start attacking the towers; those are more interessting to play imo)

[KaiserJ]

yeah; i was thinking "tower defense" as opposed to "maze defense"

(tower D being that you build outside of the monsters path, maze D being that you build on the path and physically block the monsters with your towers)

but hey, i enjoy both modes... just figured some clarity might be good here

in fact i would think that maze def would have a longer span of interest, it did for me at least in wc3

[JohannesH]

If you judge by what keeps people interested in wc3, maybe you should do a tower defense of the ancients

[quantum]

oh ic... no problem, we can use this Lua pathfinder

[KDR_11k]

For a tower/maze defense the pathfinding algorithm would be pretty easy to write since there's only one goal all units want to move towards. Basically you'd use the color wars algorithm starting with the goal position but instead of spawning blocks you store markers towards the direction a specific cell got "infected" from, any unit can simply follow these directions and thereby take the shortest path to the goal.

[quantum]

I think I'll give this give this a shot.

Predetermined paths advantages:

• less repetitive (many levels with different paths)
• turrets are reset between levels, gives an opportunity to try new tactics
• allies can respawn between levels
• turrets don't need to be grouped in a wall to be useful

Turrets create the path by blocking the way advantages:

• the player contols the path (but probably there is 1 best path shape anyway)
• easier to make (no need to create and balance lots of levels)

I'm tempted to pick predetermined paths...

[KDR_11k]

I was thinking that instead of walls of turrets you could use terraform to create walls and slopes for the enemies to move along.

[Hobo Joe]

I'd really like to see something WC3 TD-esque, where you use the buildings to create the maze. The problem with this is that in order to make that work all the buildings would have to be resized. Then there can be a metal bounty for all the kills you get, and energy can just be ignored. That way it'd just be a straight TD without econ etc. And units just run through the maze without attacking(unless you block of course ), and you have a set number of lives.

Obviously that's a bit of a deviation but just one of the many possibilities.



Now I feel like playing some WC3 TD game.

[klapmongool]

How is this idea coming along?

Smoth said this yesterday:

Oh, ninja edit:
Smoth, ino no one is supposed to ask you this... but iv been looking forward to that tower defense mod since you started it... any chance its any time soon?

Well, the short answer is quantum took over the reigns and added a bunch of cool features but the new pathfinder screwed it up for him so he stopped for a bit. I will revisit it later tonight and see if it is better again.

[Wombat]

.join #td