MechCorp has got a steam page. And trailer!

The steam page for MechCorp is finally up - https://store.steampowered.com/app/838180/MechCorp/. And I've got a trailer to show with it.

This means the game is almost ready. I hope this also explains the fact that I haven't been making any major update or posting for a good few month. I've been concentrating my effort on MechCorp. Spent a great deal of time working on the writing and presentation. Things seem to be coming along nicely. I can almost see the end of the tunnel now.

Also, I've made the trailer above myself! I'm not sure how the public will perceive it but I think it's pretty good for someone who haven't got a clue when it comes to recording and editing. I'm damn proud of it if I'm honest. Please watch it and let me know what you think. I would love to know.

Spec Defense Free!

We all know this is inevitable so here it's, free version of Spec Defense.

 

If you haven't read my previous post, Spec Defense is a little TD game that I've made very recently. It's available for both pc window and android. You can learn more about it in this post. I won't say it's great. But personally I think it's a solid tower defense game. I've had plenty of fun during my play-testing.

Anyway, the free version is pretty much the same game, only that it has got a paywall. The first 6 levels (from a total of 24) are available for free and the player are limited to 8 upgrades. There's no ads, no other in app purchase item except the pay wall alone. It's a demo with option to upgrade to full in a nut-shell. 

Go give it a try if you are reading this. And I hope you have fun playing the game.

Annoucing Spec Defense!

* I have a few android keys for this game to give away. Please pm/email me if you are interested in playing the game. I would love to hear what you think about the game.*

The time has finally come. Ladies and gentleman I'm proud to present you my first solo commercial release. A little tower defense game with a very unimaginative name.

I've been working on this since the completion of TDTK4. The goal is to create a minimalistic but engaging 'classic' tower defense experience. One that allow various tower combination and open level design where the player can complete the level using any mean they see fit. The level design is where the most effort went. And I'm very pleased with how most of the level turn out, as I myself struggle to figure out the optimum way to beat each level during play testing.

As far as other aspect of the game goes, I've tried to keep it as simple as possible so that I wouldn't have to spend ages on this. This is after all just a side project while I get back to working on MechCorp again. I'll probably keep updating for bug-fixes, balance tweak and usability improvement. But depend on the reception I might even add more feature or content.

So this is what the game offer in it's current state. There are 12 towers in total. Each is useful in it's own way but you can only take 6 towers for each level. Completion of each level award stars which is used for upgrading existing tower or unlock new tower (You start with 3). The upgrades and tower unlocking are non-linear so you are free to choose whatever that fit your play style. Rinse and repeat until you beat all the levels (all 24 of them).

The upgrade screen of Grid Defense

Before you ask, yes, all this is based on TDTK4. A slightly modified one of course, to fit various design need. 

So It's currently available for window pc on itch.io and android device on Google play store for a low low price of $3. Check it out!

TowerDefense-ToolKit 4 is released!

Finally, it's now live on AssetStore!

And I can't tell you how exciting and pleased I'm with it. It's probably my best AssetStore work to date I recon. A culmination of the things I learned throughout the years. 

Speaking of years, TDTK is almost 6 years old. It was first released on July2011 (Imagine that!), so it's a month a way from it's 6th anniversary since release. Fitting time for a new version I guess. I like to take this opportunity to give thanks to all those who has supported the framework, either by purchasing and using it, or gave feed-back/ideas. It's those support that drive me this far. I hope the framework will continue to serve you well in the future as I continue to make improvement.

TDTK4 Preview

Not going to lie. I've been spending most of my time working on TDTK4. It's been a great fun and things are coming along really well. Which is why I really feel compelled to temporarily put other stuff on hold and focus on this.

It's almost 'done'. I'm just in the process of testing and getting things ready for AssetStore. So it won't be long before it's submitted to the AssetStore. There may be more addition to come but I think it's more than sufficient in it's current state for first release.  I can't wait to see what people think about it. Here's some sneak peak, taken straight from the demo scene.  :)

Since things has been finalized, I will briefly talk about the major difference between TDTK3 and TDTK4.

First up is the path system (obviously). The new system can support branching paths which I've talked about in this post. Then there a more comprehensive perk system, which support the modification of just about every stats available on a unit/ability/buff-effect, both in the form of modifier(+) or multiplier(x). Next, First-person-shooter mode is dropped, at least for the first release. And finally, the no so obvious change, a much better optimized code base. 

Of course, there are tons of little improvement here and there that are simply too many to be mention individually. I'll leave it for you to find out yourself.  :)

Next TDTK?

This may have been coming a long way and I've been asked about TDTK4 a lot. Since I've been casually working on it and made a reasonable amount of progress, I might as well make it official that TDTK4 is currently in development. Here's a glimpse of the new UI.

Of course, it's by no mean complete but as I'm looking at it now, it's going to be better than the previous version in almost every way. There are more options available to get the setting you need. It supports more features. The perk system are much more comprehensive than before. All this, with much less code. That means it's much easier for me to maintain and update it in the future. And also easier for user to mod.

That said, I'm leaving out FPS mode at the moment for a few reasons. First it's not really the main selling point of the framework. Second I don't think too many people are using it. Third and the most important reason, it's kind of tedious to support the touch input for FPS mode. I'll be honest, I'm not a big fan for virtual joystick on touch screen by any mean. When I first started working on FPS mode, it's fun and interesting to play with it using mouse and keyboard. The problem is it hasn't cross my mind that I'll have to add touch control support. So eventually when people are asking for it, it becomes kind of a pain for me. In short, FPS mode is dropped for now. I may add that in a later update but we'll see.

Either way, it's looking rather good for now. I've no idea when it will be ready. To clarify, I'm not working on it full time. Just using it as a way to keep myself from burned out working on MechCorp.

Weekend project - a new path system

Once again I decided to spend the weekend working on something novel. And this week, it's a new path system that may or may not be the back bone of next major TDTK upgrade. I'm not sure where I get the idea from but wouldn't it be great if the creep can choose the shortest between multiple branching path. And following short video demonstrate the the concept in working.

It's still a very flexible system. There is not limit to how many branch a path can take. Branched out paths can rejoin, or not, or branch out to even more path. Either way, the creep will always look for the shortest way to get to one of the potential many end point at every branching point.

The best thing of course, in my opinion, is the code. For what it's, it's cleaner and easier to maintain than the old code in TDTK. That is the one thing I'm most please with.

However I should clarify that this doesn't mean I'll be actively working on TDTK. It's just something I'm casually working/experimenting on weekend atm. Until it's finally released, MechCorp still takes precedent over everything in my schedule.

Simple Rock Formation

Didn't manage to get much done this weekend to be honest. I've very good reasons for that. First I got to deal with some sh**. That took way too long. Then some of the stuff I've been attempting didn't turn out quite as well as I hope. Guess they will never see the light of day, until I improve them of course. What I've been left with, are a set of very minecraft-ish square rocks. I decided to play with them anyway to see how much I can do with them, with other stuff I've done in the past few week naturally. This is what I've end up with, an autumn version of the pine forest, and a volcano/lava-cavern thing?

Autumn Pine Forest

Volcanic Rock Formation

It's surprising that how much you can do with what is essentially a few slightly textured cubes. I especially like the rock formations in the autumn scene. And the autumn color theme looks really nice. Probably better than the originals. Shame I don't have any more time to layout the scene better. I think the placement of the rock is too random as it's now. But it will have to do for now.

So that's it for this week then. I'll carry carry on where I've stopped next weekend... or probably not? I'm contemplating about taking a few days off. We'll see.

Water!!

It's that time of the week again. Without delay, my creation of this week are:

Island

Shallow Water

The theme of the week is of course, water, as the title of this post suggested. It''s quite obvious why that is the case. Not much to say about the scenes really except that I'm quite happy with the way they turn out. I have my doubt about doing anything that involve water when I started making this kind of scene. Glad all those time spent looking for idea and researching pays off.

Anyway, with this weekly posting schedule, I'm starting to worry at the day when the my production-rate/learning-speed/creativiy-juice can't keep up with my next idea, if I haven't run out of idea. Beside, I could really use the time to really play some game. In fact, I'm desperately in need of that. Well, we'll see how it goes when the next weekend comes.

Bloom!!

Another weekend, and I've been exploring more about what I can do with these low-poly modeling scene creating thingy. I'm really really enjoying doing this. So much so that I'm start to look forward to weekend to work, not for the usual respite.

Anyway the highlight in this week, bloom! Specifically, the 'bloom' image effect. Well, I've never pay too much attention to image effect in the past. Partly because I don't really need them in all my past work, partly because I never put too much emphasis fancy graphics. But I thought I try to play with them a bit, in an attempt to make the my new crystal glow. And this is what I've got:

without glow

with glow (expand the image to really see the difference)

Satisfied with what I've got, I went on and test it on everything I've got. Now I'm convinced that almost everything can be made better with a little bloom effect. For instance:

definitely looks better than before in my opinion.

Anyway, apart from the crystal scene above (yes I made those crystals), I've also made this:

Honestly I'm not entirely sure what I was going for with this one. Something with sharp pointy rocks, in a alien environment? Hasn't turn out as well as I like but I still think it's a good try. Maybe I'll need to do more study about making a decent rock formation.

I'm not sure what I'm going for next. I like to try something that involve water but I don't really have any idea how to do that. Either way, that's it for this week. Looking forward for next.

More Low-Poly Scenes

It has been a blast making the low-poly scene I posted last week. And I've throw myself at it again this weekend. These are what I have for show:

Pine Forest

Desert

Canyon

Jungle

The first scene is very much a remake of what I have last week, using the improved, remake asset. The rest are new obviously new. I've spent a great deal of time working out how to do the rock and cliff. The result speak for themselves! Or so I think. 

Anyway, it's been a tremendous fun working on this. I can barely contain myself with excitement looking at how things turn out. Can't wait for next weekend to see what else I can come up.

Low-Poly Scene

Took the day off to try my hand on something new, just for a change of pace. This is what I manage to come up with:

So yes it's my feeble attempt to create a low poly scene. I create all the asset myself and that took most of my day. Obviously there are still a lot of room for improvement. It's my first attempt after all. But consider the amount of time I've spent, I'm pretty pleased with the end result. Maybe a camp fire would have add a lot more to the scene. The best thing is, I tried adding my modular unit asset to the mixed and they fit in perfectly (imo anyway)!

At any rate, I look forward to spend more time on this and see what else I can come out with. Maybe this will become my weekend project.

Element TD free is out!

I didn't notice that it's been 4 months since I last posted something. So if you have been reading these regularly, no I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I've been working very hard on MechCorp but I will take about it in another post. For this post, as the title suggested, ElementTD free version is out! Apparently we have a video:

The free version is similar to the full version in term of content. But there are features that are locked behind pay wall. But you can still play the full game in it's standard mode anyway. I apologize in advance for the ads but I'm sure you understand the team has to monetize this, somehow.

Anyway following are the links, please download and rate! Your support is much appreciated!

Android - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.SongGameDev.EleTDFree&hl=en

iOS - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/element-td-free/id1158693529?mt=8

Now more screenshots to get you intrigued.

Now released: Element TD!!

I never talk about this publicly but I've been working on this for quite some time. In case you don't know, Element Tower-Defense is one of the custom mod originated from Warcraft-III. It was very popular during the warcraft days and it still is, having being ported to Starcraft-II and Dota-II.

I've been contacted by the game creator some time ago to work on the mobile version on a collaboration basis. Obviously the game only existed as 3rd party mod for other game prior to this, so the prior team have very little experience making a full fledged stand alone game with other engine. And this is where I came in. For a long time I was the sole Unity developer/coder on the small team, which consists of two coder (one came in at a later stage of the project), an artists, two designers/testers. Since we can't use anything in previous version we have to build everything from scratch.

A glimpse of the towers

The development process is very challenging to say the least, we are trying to port a game that is originally designed to be played on medium/high-end pc to mobile device. To put things into perspective, the game has 30+ unique tower with unique abilities (some are beyond wacky and have crazy visual). Player could potentially build 50+ towers on the map. Not to mention the packs of fast moving creeps. It's a monumental task alone to make sure the game run smoothly on mobile device, let alone taking consideration of control scheme and UI. Which need to accommodate game usability and all its intricate mechanic. Needless to say, I've personally put a hell lot of effort into this, despite it being a part-time project.

Anyway, it's done. Personally, I think there are still some rough edges and certain lots of room to improve. The team do plan to keep working on this. Adding more polishes, more features and contents, etc. It will be interesting to see where will this takes us.

If you are interested, it's on google play store right now and coming to other platform soon. Feel free to give it a go - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.SongGameDev.EleTD       :)

Edit: iOS version is out - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/element-td/id1130157487?mt=8

You might recognize this. It's the map layout from the original warcraft mod

This is a new map layout though

Pretty Pretty Things! (Tanks and Turret)

So I've teased about making a new turret and unit set in my last post. This is pretty much the follow up post. In short, it's done! Voila!

 

 

 

They looked gorgeous don't you think. Well, maybe it's just me but I'm extremely pleased with what I've come up with. Objectively, there can be no arguing that they are miles better than the current tank and turret set I'm using for TDTK and TBTK.

If you are wandering, they have a very low poly count and works well with Unity's dynamic batching for the most part. You can probably tell from the images that they are modular. Parts are interchangeable so you can create different units to a certain extent. The best thing is, the color are not texture dependent. You can change both the main and secondary color on the fly in Unity. You can even apply some wacky styling by applying a 'mask' texture, with result like the images below:

At this point you may think they are great and ask if there's any chance I will release them? Yes I would. Right from the start, I plan to include the set in TDTK and TBTK as a replacement to the old unit set. In fact, I've already updated TDTK to use the new unit. Hopefully it is live on AssetStore by the time you read this. I've yet to done the same to TBTK but it shouldn't be long until I do. Just need to take care of a few other updates before I commit the update.

Anyway, the set will be available as a stand alone package on AssetStore at some point (Depend on how long the review process take). I plan to add more stuff to the set yet. Feels like there are something missing, drone or transport container for instance.

TopDownShooter-ToolKit

Apparently I've never make any announcement post for my latest release on AssetStore. To make it up, I hereby announce that TDSTK is now live on AssetStore. And so is the subsequent update v1.1. Now I won't go through what TDSTK can do here. You can simply get that from the TDSTK main page.

Truth be told, TDSTK start from something I work for fun over the weekend. I'm quite happy with the way it turns out. It has a very flexible system that allows a lot of synergy between the weapons, effects, ability and collectibles. Any effects (damage, stun, slow, damage over time, etc) can used for any weapon, ability and collectible. Weapon can fire abilities, abilities usage can be set to behave like collectible or weapons, Collectible can grant weapon or ability or modified weapon behaviour and so on. It's not the same thing but it feels so much more free form and powerful then what I've done in both TDTK or TBTK.

The fact that I spent almost as much time playing the demo as I worked on it is a testament of how fun the mechanic is. Or I'm just so deprived of the simple pleasure of playing a simple top down shooter game that I find a simple demo so fun. I guess the new visual direction that I went for helps too. There's a strange satisfaction when every time when I shoot at something and it shatters into pieces. If you are sold based on what I've described so far, try play the demo yourself. You can find the link at the TDSTK main page.

Some of the behind the scene screen shot for the demo

On a more technical side, the implementation is objectively better. Most of this won't be immediately obvious to the user but it will be a lot more easier for me to maintain, update and expand the toolkit in the long run. For a start, the code for the editors are better organized and it support multiple instance editing when it can. Then the UI is done a lot more efficiently, drastically reduce the amount of code required. I'm planning to apply all this new techniques here to both TDTK and TBTK.

Of course, there's plenty of room for improvement and expansion. I can see myself adding support for some sort of character progression system, or inventory system, taking it very close to being an action rpg framework. A very exciting prospect indeed. What I'm trying to say is I will definitely trying to experimenting and adding new interesting feature in the future. Basically Just like what I did with TDTK and TBTK.

Finally, some shameless self-complimenting. The new tank and turret set I've made for the toolkit, quite nice aren't they? 

Demon Rise - A game made using TBTK

I just have to make a post about this. Apparently this beauty, which is built using a modified TBTK, has been released on AppStore and I have missed it until now. I can't comment on the gameplay as I don't have a working iOS device to play this on. The dev says he plans to release it on Android so here's hoping.

Ignore the fact that I've never play it, it looks gorgeous. Look at it.

Being involved in the development (to a certain extent) of something like this does makes me proud. Very proud indeed. If you have an iPhone or iPad, go download it - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/demons-rise/id951205464?ls=1&mt=8

TBTK v2.0b WebPlayer Demo

Took me quite a good while, but I think I'm almost there. So I'm happy to present you the webplayer demo of TurnBasedToolKit:

>> TDTKv3.0b WebPlayer demo <<

Like the old demo, there are self-contained, stand-alone levels, as well as a mini-campaign where you get to choose your unit lineup and upgrade before each battle. The units and upgrades are carried forth to the next battle. Oh, did I say the units level up if they survive? Yes this is very much a  improved feature of the coming update. Well it's there in the current version, but I don't think it's fresh out enough.

Please note that since this is the first build, there might be bugs. In that case please let me know. At any rate I would love to hear some feedback.

Anyway, I might, I mean I'm planning to do a soft release of both TBTK and TDTK to AssetStore very soon. By soft release I mean include the source unity package as part of the current version. So if anyone wants to, they can unpack the package themselves to the latest version of Unity and try things out. Just a plan though, we'll see how it goes over the next few days.

CyborgTD (a TDTK game now on GreenLight)

Once again I'm involved in the production of another TD game, what a surprise(!) Anyway, what important is, it's now on Steam GreenLight. Please go up vote it if you can. It would be pretty cool to be able to say that I've made a game that got on Steam.

About the game, it used a custom modified version of TDTK. I'm responsible for the coding as well as putting all the elements together. Instead of reading my poor attempt at describing the game, Just watch this video. And did I say it's on GreenLight now? Go support it!

Gravity Pong v1.0 (Open Source)

Lately, I feel like I've been overworked myself a bit on updating TDTK and TBTK. So I took a break on the weekend's evening. Instead of playing one of the game from all the backlog I have in my steam library like I should, I had a brain wave. And this is what I've come up with.

>> GravityPong WebPlayer v1.0 <<

- use arrow key to move up and down -

- use space-bar to 'hit' harder -

Sick I know. My idea of a break is still very much working. Anyway, in case you dont know, there's a saying in game development community. When you first started and still learning, you should start small. And by small everyone means Pong, the grand-dad of video games. If you have no idea, just google it.

Now I've never play Pong or try to make it. So here I'm doing just that. I recon I'm a bit better than a total beginner so I figure this should be a bit easier. The goal is to complete it in an evening. I'm pretty pleased I did. I'm pretty happy with the result too. It's been a great fun and a good change of pace for me. There's joy to be have in doing simple things and get it done. 

Since I've never play the original, I improvised on the thing I dont know. So the physics of the ball trajectory may be way off. I've also add in gravity. It feels a bit like playing 2D tennis. Pretty fun I say. I still have many ideas that I want to try but having force myself to complete it in one session of sitting down, you have no idea how hard I have to fight the feature creep. Also I've purposely keep things simple after I decided what to do with it half way through working on it.

My plan is to make the source code available to anyone who is interested, as a learning material. For that reason, many things are kept relatively simple. I've also put in an unsually huge amount of commenting and explaining in the code. Honestly I've almost spent more time working on the comment that the code itself. 

I'll probably put this on Unity AssetStore as a free package, that is if they accept it. For now, here's the download link for the source code (Unity4.3 is required), have fun!

>> GravityPong v1.0 SourceCode <<