ACT [Lynte] Tentacle Tower Defense (RE253657) (RJ253657)

[Lynte]

Animation gallery sample

Hi everyone,

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I'm currently working on a pixel hentai tower defense game:

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Full Version Contents - Released June 7th, 2019

• 30+ Levels of 3 different types (Survival, Control and SuperWeapon)
• 6 Constructible Towers
• 3 Abilities
• 7 Hostile Alien Types
• 12+ Gallery animations
• Japanese and English full translation

Demo Contents

• 10 Levels of 3 different types (Survival, Control and SuperWeapon)
• 3 Constructible Towers
• 2 Abilities
• 5 Hostile Alien Types
• 3 Gallery animations
• Japanese and English full translation

Spoiler: Gameplay Gifs

Spoiler: Gallery Screenshot

Controls and Rules
The in-game tutorial and on-hover windows should carry you through. But I'll put in a list of controls and game rules here just in case:

Gameplay Controls

• Placing Towers: Q, W and E keys select towers to place. Left-click to place them and right-click to deselect. You can also select towers by clicking on the buttons at the bottom-left of the screen.
• Resource: Left-click to gather the purple and black orbs of energy that fall down.
  • The Generator tower can also be used to generate more energy. This is crucial to supplying your defences.
• Level End (Defeat): The level ends in defeat when a single alien passes through.
• Victory Condition (depends on level type):
  • Survival: The level ends in victory when the timer runs out and all aliens are defeated.
  • Control: The level ends in victory when all the control cells have been filled.
  • Super Weapon: the level ends in victory when the SuperWeapon has been upgraded three times.
• Emergency Cannons: The final row of towers have the ability to clear a row each. You can trigger them by clicking the button above the ability buttons.
• Spells: A and D keys trigger spells.
  • A provides an AoE damage spell
  • D creates a stream of lightning that bounces to 3 other nearby targets.

UI Controls

• Time Control: The alpha-numeric keys 1 2 and 3 can be used to scale time (1x 2x and 4x respectively)
• Pausing:
  • Hovering over the Level Info on the top left, the alien cards on the top right or the Tower and Ability Inventories will suspend the game until you leave the area.
    • This can be toggled on and off in the settings menu
  • The pause button on the top right opens the in-game menu. No actions on the map can be taken while the game is paused
• Health Bars: F and G keys can be used to toggle health bars for towers and aliens respectively.
• Control Cell Numerical Displays: The H key toggles numerical displays on control cells on or off.
• Alien Cards: Alien cards are on the top right, and you can hover over them to look at the details of enemies.
  • There are 20 cards, and they represent the likelihood that type of alien is to appear. (1 card = 5%; 1 column/pair = 10%)

Gallery
The gallery has no tutorial but hopefully, it is intuitive. I'll put a list of controls again just in case:

• The gallery is split into four frames. Select a frame then select an alien from the right side of the gallery to view their animation.
• Animation Speed: The - and + buttons control animation speed, up to a maximum and minimum. Animation speed changes the voice-over attached to the animation.
• Visibility Toggles: The next two buttons allow toggling the visibility of tentacles and the cross-section.
• Climax and Reset button: Should be self-explanatory. Only one of these buttons are available at a time depending on the state of the animation in the frame.
• Clear: [X] button removes animation from the frame.
• Stopwatch: You can set a time (in seconds) before climax then hit the stopwatch to start a countdown. The speed of animation ramps up as the timer counts down.

Moving Forward
Planned content is a total of 12 stages and 12 gallery animations. (4-5 towers, 3 spells and 6 alien types)
Edit (August 3): The number of stages is currently unknown... Current Plan: 5-6 Towers, 3 Spells, 5-6 Alien Types
There is a survey in-game in the main menu I'd like you to answer as well. It's available in English and Japanese (based on your in-game settings).

The current plan is 30+ levels of 3 types and 10+ gallery animations.

I'm the only artist working on this project so progress is going to be slow, but I will try my best.
Feedback, bug reports and spreading the word is much appreciated!
I'm also new to this whole H Game development thing, so any advice is good.


Once again:

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[Noble 6]

I wish someone would come along and pick up the lane-based mantle from Impreg Defense. That game's never getting finished.

 

[Serifyn]

Agree, Impreg defense was very promising.

Keep up the good work with this one, it seems very interesting.

 

[bobthemanseven]

I wish someone would come along and pick up the lane-based mantle from Impreg Defense. That game's never getting finished.

This. Nearfatal has an extremely bad habit of starting a project, saying he's too busy with work/life/existing to dedicate more time to it, and then starting a new project. I think he's got 3 or 4 projects going on right now and has barely made any progress in any of them.

Edit: Getting this thread back on topic, I like the game. I'm questioning the decision to make things harder by simply throwing thousands of girls at your defense lines, but it's not something that makes it too difficult, it just seems like a rather simple way of raising the challenge.

 

[unkownmyriad]

I always did want to give PvZ a try.

 

[Lynte]

Edit: Getting this thread back on topic, I like the game. I'm questioning the decision to make things harder by simply throwing thousands of girls at your defense lines, but it's not something that makes it too difficult, it just seems like a rather simple way of raising the challenge.

Thanks for staying on track, mate. Though this thread isn't actually that bad since I did get a few survey responses in English.

To your point, honestly speaking, I also think the gameplay is a bit base. The current set-up feels like you're just managing cooldowns and doing damage control. A time/resource management game rather than a tactics game... (Management games can also be fine, though)
Hopefully, I'll find ways to make it a little more interesting with the later 2 towers and the final spell.

 

[The Alpacalypse]

Is it possible to unlock all four girls in the gallery? I've unlocked the first one (somehow), beaten all four stages a few times, and still only have the first one.

EDIT: Oh yeah, the gameplay is fine. Definitely more of a time management/damage control game, but it's not bad.

Personally, I've found that building as many Q as you can in the left two columns (you'll probably only need two columns of Q) until the first enemy shows up, then alternating between Q and dropping defense turrets in the rows the enemies are (1-2 columns of E when available, W the rest of the way) works well enough.

 

[Lynte]

Is it possible to unlock all four girls in the gallery? I've unlocked the first one (somehow), beaten all four stages a few times, and still only have the first one.

They should all be unlockable, unless I messed up badly...
Let me double check.

 

[Lynte]

They should all be unlockable, unless I messed up badly...
Let me double check.

Right, I there's an off by one error. Level 2 unlocks gallery 1, level 3 unlocks gallery 2, etc... And since there is no level 3, 5 and 7 they're broken. I'll try to upload a fix in a bit.

 

[Lynte]

Is it possible to unlock all four girls in the gallery? I've unlocked the first one (somehow), beaten all four stages a few times, and still only have the first one.

EDIT: Oh yeah, the gameplay is fine. Definitely more of a time management/damage control game, but it's not bad.

Personally, I've found that building as many Q as you can in the left two columns (you'll probably only need two columns of Q) until the first enemy shows up, then alternating between Q and dropping defense turrets in the rows the enemies are (1-2 columns of E when available, W the rest of the way) works well enough.

Fixed version should be up now.
Terribly sorry about that!

 

[unkownmyriad]

Is it possible to unlock all four girls in the gallery? I've unlocked the first one (somehow), beaten all four stages a few times, and still only have the first one.

EDIT: Oh yeah, the gameplay is fine. Definitely more of a time management/damage control game, but it's not bad.

Personally, I've found that building as many Q as you can in the left two columns (you'll probably only need two columns of Q) until the first enemy shows up, then alternating between Q and dropping defense turrets in the rows the enemies are (1-2 columns of E when available, W the rest of the way) works well enough.

I honestly don't know how you managed that. I keep getting swarmed.

 

[textbook703]

Though it's a pretty direct clone of PvZ, this game is pretty legitimately fun.

You should definitely add in descriptions for each of the towers. I don't know what they do, so most levels I ended up just pounding towers onto the board on cooldown with zero regard for what individual towers do (except for the flower thing, which obviously just creates energy.)

 

[Lynte]

Though it's a pretty direct clone of PvZ, this game is pretty legitimately fun.

Thanks.

The original idea was actually to make a direct clone except with pixel art and hentai. More difficult to do than I expected. And I kinda missed the point of PvZ. Maybe I'll do a post-mortem on a blog someday.
Still, this seems like it has the best chance to be something decent among the projects I've tried

You should definitely add in descriptions for each of the towers. I don't know what they do, so most levels I ended up just pounding towers onto the board on cooldown with zero regard for what individual towers do (except for the flower thing, which obviously just creates energy.)

I plan to create a glossary for towers, spells and enemies in the future. It seems to be the most in-demand feature based on the survey.

Quite a few people found it difficult based on survey results as well. Some simple difficulty settings and cheats will be probably put in.

 

[Jesus]

This is great so far

 

[Lynte]

Just a pulse check so everyone knows development isn't dead.

Things are going alright so far. I've decided to recode and redesign some parts of the game.

At the current pace, full version release is still a long way away (several months). But I hope to release another trial with the new gameplay before then (hentai gallery content will be the same).

Spoiler: Reworked Spear Enemy

Spoiler: New Towers in Testing

 

[dfxtent]

Thanks.

The original idea was actually to make a direct clone except with pixel art and hentai. More difficult to do than I expected. And I kinda missed the point of PvZ. Maybe I'll do a post-mortem on a blog someday.
Still, this seems like it has the best chance to be something decent among the projects I've tried



I plan to create a glossary for towers, spells and enemies in the future. It seems to be the most in-demand feature based on the survey.

Quite a few people found it difficult based on survey results as well. Some simple difficulty settings and cheats will be probably put in.

Played it, enjoyed it, but the last (6th) stage is indeed brutal. It felt to me like I didn't have the right tools (towers) for the job. Once the big waves start, the defensive towers you're given collapse very quickly, even with 'spell' support. The freeze-in-place 'A' spell actually feels like it does more harm than good because the 4th (ranged) girl just destroys everything from a safe distance while the front-runners take all the heat. Enemies need counters, foils, ways to stop or mitigate them. That's one of the things PvZ is good at.

• Girl 3 jumps over everything. PvZ pole-vault zombie was countered by tall walnuts, and/or enough snow peas to slow them down before they breached the lines.
  • Possible counters: 'Tall' tentacle, rooting trap (holds victim in place), tentacle with 'slow' effect.
• Girl 4 range destroys towers before they can retaliate
  • Possible counters: sturdy 'defensive' tentacle (no damage, but loads of HP and/or 'resistance' to range attacks), rooting trap (untargetable by range), make Girl 4 unable to fire while constricted by 'S' spell

Difficulty settings and cheats aren't a bad idea, but the source of the difficulty needs to be accounted for too. If I lose, it should feel like a case of "I didn't plan that out well enough, what can I do different?" Right now, the game just seems to decide "You're doing too well. Time for a curbstomp." /massive wave wipes the board.

EDIT: Also, the 'A' spell really should not be damaging your own units. This prevents you from making good use of the front tiles and can utterly wreck your defenses at the moments when you need them the most.

 

[Lynte]

Played it, enjoyed it

the last (6th) stage is indeed brutal.

This seems to be the general reaction. It's been really hard to get right. I'm the only one working on the game and the game is already as easy as breathing to me. I had like one friend who was willing to show me gameplay footage.

It felt to me like I didn't have the right tools (towers) for the job.

Honestly speaking, you don't have specialized tools for countering. But I never wanted a 'see-enemy-put-tower' game anyway.
I'm considering rewriting the levels such that the player side tools get frontloaded a little more. That is, players unlock more towers and abilities on earlier levels.
I'm also considering 'padding' the levels a bit. Instead of having a gallery unlock each level, maybe just a gallery unlock every 3 or 5 levels.
This is so people have a better chance to get used to stuff while "winning" instead of replaying the levels.

Once the big waves start, the defensive towers you're given collapse very quickly, even with 'spell' support.

Right? Unlike PVZ you actually have to replace more than Wallnuts here.

• Girl 3 jumps over everything.

Yea, what a bitch, huh? I hate them too. Still, there's an answer to them.

Spoiler: Jumping Enemy Counter

You can put E-Towers behind Q-Towers so E-Towers have plenty of time to hose them down with white juices.

• Girl 4 range destroys towers before they can retaliate

I actually love these girls. They can also be answered by clever tactics.

Spoiler: Ranged Enemy Counter

Place the W-Towers in front of them and they'll basically get killed outright. Doing this also splits aggro so towers hold for longer momentarily.
Alternatively, you can wait until the tower the enemy is attacking gets low and place another tower in front of it. This drastically increases the value the tower you saved because it's still contributing to the fight even after soaking up almost a full bar of damage. The ranged enemy easily allows for saving towers like this because it deals damage over an extended period of time.

Difficulty settings and cheats aren't a bad idea, but the source of the difficulty needs to be accounted for too. If I lose, it should feel like a case of "I didn't plan that out well enough, what can I do different?" Right now, the game just seems to decide "You're doing too well. Time for a curbstomp." /massive wave wipes the board.

Uh, enemies don't spawn based on how well you're doing.

Spoiler: Current Spawning System (rough) Explanation - You probably shouldn't read this unless you really want to know

The enemy force is given a 'resource' over a period of time (not a linear function) and internally decides how to spend it. Different enemies cost a different amount of this 'resource' and have different probabilities of being spawned. At certain timestamps, the enemy force gets a bunch more resources.

Also, the 'A' spell really should not be damaging your own units. T

It doesn't.

 

[dfxtent]

This seems to be the general reaction. It's been really hard to get right. I'm the only one working on the game and the game is already as easy as breathing to me. I had like one friend who was willing to show me gameplay footage.

Not trying to tell you how to make your game, just saying what's in the demo feels insufficient for the 6th stage. I have done all of the tactics described above, I have faced down the latter waves with W-towers three deep and E-towers two-deep behind them, and two full rows of Q-towers fueling it all, and the entire thing gets wiped away in about 30-60 seconds. The cooldowns on the towers do not permit me to reinforce my crumbling defenses faster than they get torn down.
You may very well have ideas better than the suggestions I named, and I'm certainly looking forward to whatever comes next. It's fine that there won't be 'specialized' towers, but if 'Massive Waves' are the default difficulty spike, there need to be better ways of dealing with them.

Uh, enemies don't spawn based on how well you're doing.

I didn't say they did, but I'll try to rephrase: My losses do not feel like there was anything I could learn from them. When my entire field gets wiped by overwhelming firepower and ridiculous numbers, I'm not left with the impression of "I can do this differently/better next time." I retry out of stubbornness, but my impression of the loss is one of futility - no tactic or tower placement or better-timed use of spells would have changed the outcome.

It doesn't.

I'm glad to hear this isn't the intended behavior, but in that case I humbly encourage you to bug-hunt the code for it a bit more. The explosion has been consistently dealing damage to the towers on either side of the lanes where explosion occurs, as well as the tower in front of the targets that was already taking damage.

 

[Tenchi757]

My tactic to beat stage 6 was to use Q energy towers as cheap walls since the cooldown on other towers is too low. I then tried to make a column of Q towers, left room for 2 columns of E towers, and spammed W towers in front of those. If W was on cooldown I used Q as a cheap blocker. If I lost a row I rebuilt as best as I could. It was still really hard, though, and I barely beat stage 6. Lost a ton of towers. Took me at least a dozen tries with one ragequit break in there.

 

[qwerpoiu80]

This seems to be the general reaction. It's been really hard to get right. I'm the only one working on the game and the game is already as easy as breathing to me. I had like one friend who was willing to show me gameplay footage.

Please have mercy on we who have much slower APMs than RTS pros like you! xD

Honestly though, Stage 6 needs a very fine balance to get right and it's not an easy one to figure out. It's a combination of:

• Concentrating solely on economy (Q towers) until the first few enemies show up.
• Concentrate on E towers and plugging the spots where enemies show up, aiming to fill around 3 rows of them.
• While this is happening, continue to build and replace Q towers when they are destroyed, aiming to maintain around 2 rows of them.
• Start building W towers on an ad-hoc basis, as walls to protect the more fragile Q towers, but not at the expense of rebuilding your Q lines if necessary.
• Cast the area-slowing spell on your first big wave, and again on the second. You should be able to get two shots in.

Yes, to some extent it is a strategy in that you need to think it up before you play the stage. And yes, I did feel a great sense of accomplishment after I beat the level. But I'm no great mutitasker (hence the low APM!). So in gameplay where people are struggling to keep up with the pace, such thoughts don't immediately occur to you, not least a numbers game of thinking specifically how many rows etc of each are needed to pass the level.

Also, I wish the A-spell could be freely targeted anywhere on the map, and not stopped by the first enemy on the row it ran in to!