Piecing it
Development of a Tower Defense Game
• TowerDefense:
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You build static towers along a path to prevent a constant flow of monsters from reach the end of the path.
• Tower Defense
• Research of other
similar games:
• Fieldrunners
• Bloons Tower Defense
• Kingdom Rush
• Plants vs Zombies
• Castle Creeps
Observations:
• Single-path entry for monsters (Geo Defense) easier to maintain than multiple entry paths (Bloons).
• Limited build spots (Kingdom Rush) versus towers-as-walls (Desktop Defense) allows more even testing of the level and fewer variables.
• There was a matching of towers’ power/weakness to a monster/weakness – and vice-versa (All).
• Each tower/monster had a strength and weakness (All).
• Smaller waves of monsters (PvZ) easier to test versus hordes (Kingdom Rush).
• But the biggest surprise was…..
Tower Defense Games
Are Spreadsheet-Driven
• A huge load of variables that had to work together so that the player felt like there was a well-planned arsenal against well-planned monsters.
• Interview with : “Level designers play their levels 50 times”.
• We had to pinpoint the biggest issues with making this game and prepare for it ahead of time.
• Balance:
• We needed to work out the
data balance first
• We needed a fast turnaround for designers to play their levels, make changes, and play levels again.
• Hardcoded values were not feasible.
• Economy:
• We needed an Economy (reward system)
Solutions:
Balance Solution:
• Read/Watched a few tutorials specific to Tower Defense Game Balance
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFR4EXnAEBA
• https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6400/und
erstanding_balance_in_video_.php?print=1
• Chose Excel for balancing:
• Worked well, we were able to see balancing monsters
and towers power nicely through the use of graphs
• Ubiquitous software
• Gleaned a few default towers with default values from internet. (4 basics).
Design Solution:
• All monster and tower variables were in one excel sheet
• All level designs were in another excel sheet
• When values for either monster, tower, or level were tweaked, the excel sheets automatically exported the values as an XML file and Unity read it in next time it started.
• We made a basic Unity .exe file that ran a super-simple version of the game.
• http://www.scotteasley.com/mediapor tfolio/Projects/EA/EA_page.html
User Inputs
Excel Economy Calculations
Standardized XML Format
Spurpunk Source Code
Economy Solution
• While one team worked on the game loop, our PM worked on the economy.
• Google Drawing with simple flowchart.
• We looked at economies for other games in this genre as a starting point.
Parallel Work:
• Design and Balance could now iterate and tweak on excel sheets without having to interrupt engineering.
Separate Evolution:
• Game Economy could get more complex on the excel side without interruption – the game still only used the same XML data exports.
• The mockups and greyboxes built our game for us, informing us what we needed for the art. It was the last step, grown and informed by a solid internal core of game loop and rewards.
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