Byteality Tower Defense, (Strategy) Competition03 winner Options

[Erik Leppen]

ByteAlity Tower Defense

Overview ByteAlity Tower Defense is a tower defense game with lots of maps and lots of towers, so it has plenty of play time. Find a location to build towers in order to shoot down the enemies that are trying to mow down your buildings. Collect more money by killing enemies and use this to build and upgrade more towers.

Features This game features a whopping 120 maps, but you will have to unlock them for them to become available. Most of the times you unlock a new row of maps, you also unlock new towers that are used in these maps. In total, expect more than 20 types of towers. The game also has a map editor, in which you can design your own maps, using the towers you unlocked in the campaign.

Screenshots
Click on a link to see a screenshot of the game play.
In game screenshot 1
In game screenshot 2
In game screenshot 3
In game screenshot 4

Download
YoYoGames Page
Download ByteAlity Tower Defense (YoYoGames)

This post has been edited by Erik Leppen: Dec 24 2008, 02:49 PM

[Spaceoff]

Nice work!
I like it
except that it seems like it doesnt vary in level difficulty.

This post has been edited by Spaceoff: Aug 23 2008, 07:45 PM

[PurpleFuzzy]

It's nicely made, but the whole tower defense concept is getting really old.

Good luck in the competition.

-PF

This post has been edited by PurpleFuzzy: Aug 23 2008, 07:45 PM

[Spaceoff]

I change my mind, I was playing wrong, this game is awesome =O
Some things to fix is wave counter still ticks after you beat a level but it does nothing so its not a problem.

This post has been edited by Spaceoff: Aug 23 2008, 10:52 PM

[Erik Leppen]

It's nicely made, but the whole tower defense concept is getting really old.

Good luck in the competition.

-PF

Thanks for the comment, but you're right, the concept of the game is not that original. But I just wanted to make a good tower defense game because I like the genre myself, and hence this game was not intended to be original.

I change my mind, I was playing wrong, this game is awesome =O
Some things to fix is wave counter still ticks after you beat a level but it does nothing so its not a problem.

Thanks for the enthousiasm About the wave counter - you're right, but the last one or two weeks I was constantly working on fixing tiny little things like that and the day before the deadline I decided that I just wanted it to be done, so I fixed the most important things, included the last maps and uploaded it. There are probably a few more little things, but I just didn't really have the time for it and I was also becoming kinda bored by constantly working on polish/interface/menus while the actual game engine was already finished for so long.

[Lapixx]

I defenitly like the simple graphics, there are much different types of towers, and you even put time in making a level editor. Seriously, I'm not a big fan of TD games, but this one is really well done, and worth playing, obviously. (don't think you can beat me in the competition though )

[rinkuhero]

Nice game, I noticed that parts seemed definitely inspired by my game Immortal Defense, but still a great game. Needs a story though!

[LongeBane]

hmm, this game looks a lot like one GM game i played here before. I forgot what it was called, immoral defense? something like that.

[IdleGame]

heh heh awsome job

[Dannerz]

I just beat the first 2 levels.
I am noticing how much finer detail was put into this game.


Ok, first 4 campeign missions:
I survived each of them, but only #3 has the green check mark on it.
I tried the levels more than once and the kills score i got never changed because the rate of enemies outputted did not change either. Therefor the highscore feature seems to not work, or those level's highscore things cannot be topped?

This post has been edited by Dannerz: Aug 28 2008, 09:08 AM

[Erik Leppen]

Nice game, I noticed that parts seemed definitely inspired by my game Immortal Defense, but still a great game. Needs a story though!

I think some parts may be inspired by Immortal Defense, but also a few things I thought myself and later I noticed "Immortal Defense also had this". I think the only things inspired by Immortal Defense, are the numbers showing damage (an option in the settings menu) and the marks on the circles of towers to show their upgrade level. The vector-like graphics are chosen independently, and the mouse tower is chosen independently. You might be right that parts look similar, but that may also be the genre. About stories: I'm very bad at thinking of stories and I think a game can better have no story than a weak story. You might be right, I guess, but I made the game for simple tower defense action, not to tell my players some message or immerse them in some "adventurous mission"

hmm, this game looks a lot like one GM game i played here before. I forgot what it was called, immoral defense? something like that.

Check out rinkuhero's reply directly above yours, and my reply to his post directly above this quote

heh heh awsome job

heh heh thanks

I just beat the first 2 levels.
I am noticing how much finer detail was put into this game.

Ok, first 4 campeign missions:
I survived each of them, but only #3 has the green check mark on it.
I tried the levels more than once and the kills score i got never changed because the rate of enemies outputted did not change either. Therefor the highscore feature seems to not work, or those level's highscore things cannot be topped?

Did you do the whole tutorial? You can use space bar or click the next wave button to call the next wave. (underlined to catch the eye of others) Doing so gives you more kills, but doing so too often will result in too strong enemies that will reach your building(s). I realize this is kinda "hidden" too much in the tutorial, I could have made something to remind you of the fact that you can click next wave in the first level or so, but I didn't think of this: as it was in the tutorial I assumed people would find it out. So you found a little design flaw in my game, thanks for noticing And thanks for the reply.

This post has been edited by Erik Leppen: Aug 28 2008, 03:57 PM

[rinkuhero]

I managed to finish the game today (all 120 levels had checks or those yellow circles). A few more comments:

- the heal tower is a bit overpowered: once you have a few of them at high level, it's impossible to lose your building. perhaps they should be weakened a bit, at least at higher levels.

- the levels get a bit repetitive after awhile, even though the map design is very good, because there's no variation in enemy types: the same enemies you face in the first level, you face in the 120th level. I'd have liked to see new types of enemies occasionally, or bosses with different abilities. My game had 26 types of enemies and I felt that was too few as well.

- most of the levels were too easy, there wasn't really much challenge. Maybe that's because I've played so many TD games though. The only level I had trouble with was the "Hi" level, and even that only took three or four tries. The rest I usually won on the first try.

- an online high score table for the most kills would be nice (most total kills in the game I mean), would make the game more competitive.

- it really needs more variety of music and sound effects! There's like, only one song (which has one or two variations for the stage select screen etc.), and a lot of the towers don't have distinct sound effects or any sound at all.

- sometimes it's not clear what a tower does, a help menu or instructions describing each tower might be useful.

- as for not having a story, a game without a story always feels like it's missing something to me, it's not about message or going on an adventure, it's about knowing *why* you're fighting or why you're doing what you're doing in the game. In this game, I was killing millions of things, but I had no idea why, there was no reason to kill them all. Was I defending buildings? I had no idea who my character was or what his motivations were, or who was attacking those buildings or why, etc., it just lacked motivation. Of course that didn't stop me from finishing all 120 levels, but it might have stopped someone else, because a story usually provides the motivation to keep going and find out what happens next. If you don't like writing stories that's understandable, but I think it adds a lot to a game.

Aside from those complaints, the game is pretty great and I had a lot of fun with it. This is of my favorite GM games.

[Dannerz]

Erik thanks for telling me about space bar.

I could beat the first 4 levels so I assumed I did not need to look at the tutorial.

[weckar]

Hmmmm... I must say I like the flashlight towers. At the same time hate the mouse towers. THe clock ticks way too slow ('bout one tick every three secs?)

[joshivir]

Registered just to ask this

What does the 'time tower' do? I've found it in one or two levels so far, but didn't see any effect when I placed it... I thought it might speed up firing rate of towers in range, but that doesn't seem to be it

[rinkuhero]

Registered just to ask this

What does the 'time tower' do? I've found it in one or two levels so far, but didn't see any effect when I placed it... I thought it might speed up firing rate of towers in range, but that doesn't seem to be it

I asked him that too, and he answered it. It slows down any enemy in range. However, the effect is so small at lower levels that you won't notice the effect until it's around level 5 or above. It's pretty useful, but only at higher levels, so I wouldn't bother placing it until late in a level when you have 10,000 extra "money" (I forgot the currency's name, I think it's just "money").

[Dannerz]

what do the wire towers do?

[rinkuhero]

what do the wire towers do?

If you place two of them, the shoot bullets between the two, if they're in range of one another. A lot like the Circuit Point in Immortal Defense

[Dannerz]

thankyou rinkuhero

[Erik Leppen]

- the heal tower is a bit overpowered: once you have a few of them at high level, it's impossible to lose your building. perhaps they should be weakened a bit, at least at higher levels.

I think you're right, however it does make the strategy different, and besides, only some levels have them, so I think I'll leave them like they are. I also noticed this effect, but I thought about it as an "investment in healing" that the player can choose for himself. I think the tower might be too cheap but I think I'll leave it as it is now.

- the levels get a bit repetitive after awhile, even though the map design is very good, because there's no variation in enemy types: the same enemies you face in the first level, you face in the 120th level.

True, I guess. Didn't really think the enemies over, I kinda assumed it was good as it is and people playing a beta version didn't mention anything about it.

- most of the levels were too easy, there wasn't really much challenge. Maybe that's because I've played so many TD games though. The only level I had trouble with was the "Hi" level, and even that only took three or four tries. The rest I usually won on the first try.

You are right about the fact that most levels are pretty easy to "survive". I wanted this myself, as a map that is hard to survive can only be so by making it longer and forcing the player to wait between waves. As I found waiting boring, I decided to make most maps short enough so that you can play them using the next wave button. This makes surviving easy, so the challenge would then lie within getting enough kills to unlock the next row.

The next dilemma was determining the goal score for the maps. On one side, people good at tower defense games should not go through the game too easily, yet people not so good at tower defense games should not get stuck early on. I tried raising the goal scores towards the later levels (I don't even know if all of the goal scores at later levels are possible, but I wanted to make it harder to unlock the new row), but determining the amount by which to raise them was hard, and as you noticed, probably not optimal...

- it really needs more variety of music and sound effects! There's like, only one song (which has one or two variations for the stage select screen etc.), and a lot of the towers don't have distinct sound effects or any sound at all.

You're right, the music was rushed. I didn't have enough time (and composing skills...) to make better music, I too wanted to make more tracks but I spent too much time making stupid programming errors so making the entire menu structure went quite slow, hence took quite some more time than I expected. At you might have noticed, the default setting is music "off", I would have put it default "on" if I'd have liked it better myself About sound... some towers have no sound on purpose, especially most continuously shooting towers (flashlight, fire, toxic, ...) because nearly any sound would get annoying when played continuously. Finding sounds was quite hard also, and that left some towers quiet... and in fact, I didn't think this was that bad myself when playing this... (There might even be some maps without any shooting sound at all. Notice the quietness of the "Flame On" map )

- sometimes it's not clear what a tower does, a help menu or instructions describing each tower might be useful.

Again, you spotted a dilemma I had when making this game. I have had descriptions at first, but when I decided to make a translation option (notice in the settings menu you can switch to Dutch) I didn't want all tower descriptions right there in the translation file because opening the file would ruin the surprise of new towers. Also I didn't want translations to be noncomplete, so I decided to scrap the whole descriptions thing because I thought most of it would be self-explanatory anyway. This does indeed make a few tower's functioning (time, wire, laser) a bit unclear, but I hoped that users would try stuff out themselves to find out what it does (for example, by accidentally placing wire towers within each other's range)

Aside from those complaints, the game is pretty great and I had a lot of fun with it. This is of my favorite GM games.

Thanks, and good luck improving scores ;P And also thanks for the extensive list of suggestions and other points of view.

THe clock ticks way too slow ('bout one tick every three secs?)

I'm never good at optimizing code, I guess the game is lagging on the PC you're playing it on. I took a look into this but there wasn't one single thing that I could accuse of sucking up so much CPU time, everything contributed for a little. This made optimizing very hard, and to be honest, optimizing the code was of a lower priority than making the game work correctly...