Design Brief: A Tower Defense (part 2)
So last blog I focused upon 'What is a Tower Defense' and then gave some examples of Towers and their various upgrades. This time I'm going to look at the enemies, the mobs, the creeps, the bad guys. The ones who are trying to get into your base and kill all your d00ds.
As I mentioned last time I could have taken the Towers down and elemental strengths and weaknesses path, you know where Water > Fire but Lightning > Water and Earth > Lightning etc.
Common, frequently done, very non-intuitive. We want players to be able to, within reason, build the towers they want and not be forced to memorize a chart of strengths and weaknesses and build their towers to cover every possibility. That makes the game generic, repetitive and not fun. The goal is to have some towers better than others because of emergent behaviour, not because of a narrow elemental weakness chart.
So for creep design, elemental resistances are out. We need to find something more interesting. Something that you can tell from looking at them. Here goes:
The Creeps
Average Joe: Every Tower Defense needs the 'normal' guy, this is him. He moves at normal speed, has normal health and does absolutely nothing funky. The first few waves will probably just be normal guys and then they'll be added in every so often. Really the Generic guy is here to act as a normal base, something to compare all other mobs too. When we talk about 'normal' health or speed, we're talking about this guy. Average Joe.
Soldier with Shield: The soldier has normal movement speed and health. But he has a shield, which reduces the damage of every shot. Now we could make this a fixed value, but then we have scaling issues, were the fixed value is insanely powerful against fast weaker hitting towers but utterly useless against slow high damage towers. Solution? Damage reduction is a % of the hit. Say 20% reduction. That blast for 10 lost 2 damage, that blast for 100 lost 20. This is also less work in maknig a formula to have it scale with level.
Sprinter: The sprinter sprints! *shock and awe* he will have less health than normal due to the less time he'll be in the maze, but every few seconds he'll get a burst of speed for a few seconds, increasing his speed by say 50%. Otherwise his speed is normal
Purifier: A Cleric or something. He is immune to all negative effects, poison, fire, slow, you name it. Immune. No effect. Otherwise he has normal health and speed. You'll need pure damage to take this guy down.
Paladin: What happens when you give a Purifier a Shield? You get the Paladin. 20% damage reduction and immune to all negative effects. Like ouch man.
The important thing with Purifier and Cleric is that they only come along every now and again. Too many of them and players will ignore slow and poison towers in favour of just pure damage.
Ninja: What's that an arrow? You missed. Lightning bolt? Missed me. Bolt of fire? Ahhh no my skin is burning.. lol jk, you missed. 50% chance to dodge a shot. Normal health and speed.
This guy is one of the most risky to introduce into the game as he's very RNGish. RNG means Random Number Generator, RNGish means heavy reliance on RNG. Due to 50% dodge it's possible that one of these will dodge every single shot and escape the maze unharmed. Completely unfair and out of the players control
Plenty of possibilities to avoid this:
1. He can only dodge every other shot. So he dodges one, next one guaranteed hit.
2. It works like sprint, he dodges everything for a few seconds, then is vulnerable. Triggered when he takes his first hit.
3. Give some towers, like the Fire AOE hit everything tower, the ability to negate dodge. Hey if you're flooding a whole area with lava, being able to dodge an area isn't going to help.
4. The spells I introduce later have 100% accuracy. So include a damage spell to pick them off.
5. Let him only dodge physical attacks. 50% chance to dodge physical and 50% damage reduction on what hits. But full 100% damage from magic.
Troll: Normal speed, normal health, but regenerates. Yep this guy heals over time. Probably based on a % of his health every 2-3 seconds. We want it to be enough healing to pose a threat, but not a threat so large it's insurmountable. I can't give a number here as this would require a lot of playtesting and fine-tuning to get it just right.
Tank: Big bulky heavily armoured. Rather slow movement, but very high health and probably an enhanced Shield which reduces all damage by 30 or 40%. Due to his slow movement we might make him immune to slow as he's that slow already.
Wizard: By their magical nature, they are magically resistant. Maybe the inverse of a ninja? Let him dodge 50% of spells but be vulnerable to physical attacks? I like that idea. 50% chance to dodge a magic attack, takes only 50% of damage from magic but takes full 100% damage from physical attacks.
Scarecrow: Scarecrow is made of straw. He just poddles along at 75% speed with normal health. Hit him with a burning attack, he bursts into flames now he moves at 200% speed in a screaming panic but takes double damage from the burning.
Bosses
Unlike most Tower Defenses I don't want boss monsters to just be bigger versions of their normal forms. I want to add a twist to each of them to make them unique and more worthy of the boss name...
Average John: ...Except for this guy. Average John is Average Joe's big brother. Except when he's reduced to half health, he pulls his clothes off to reveal that he's a super hero with a red cape, moving 25% faster and taking 25% less damage permanently.
Soldier with Shield: Shields up! The Soldier focuses actively on Defense, slowing his movement by 30% but increasing his damage reduction to 50%, lasts a few seconds.
Clumsy Sprinter: Moves 25% faster permanently, then sprints for 75% increased speed, after a few seconds he trips and falls on his face, stunning himself for a second.
Troll Purifier: Immune to magical effects 'and' Regenerates? Skynes you're a cruel cruel man. This takes the place of both Troll and Purifier boss.
Paladin: Immune to magical effects and can raise his shield like the Soldier boss for reduced speed but increased damage reduction.
Mystical Ninja: He has a forcefield. To get rid of it you pound it with physical attacks (the wizard), once the forcefield drops he goes uber-ninja and starts dodging 'all' physical attacks, so pound him with magical ones. Powerful? Yes. Evil? Most definitely.
Tank: He's got more health and more armour but what would make the tank even scarier? Give him the ability to shrug off negative effects every few seconds. Sure you can poison him, but you're not getting the full duration, 3 seconds in he shrugs it off.
Sloth: Think of the tank., slow and heavy. Every so often he'll stop moving and have a nap. This gives him insane troll like regeneration, after a few seconds he'll get up and continue walking along.
Wow this one is gonna end up being a 3 parter. The next part will be the spells the player can cast during the game, as well as possible issues and problems with what I've got here and my brainstorming a bunch of solutions.
As I mentioned last time I could have taken the Towers down and elemental strengths and weaknesses path, you know where Water > Fire but Lightning > Water and Earth > Lightning etc.
Common, frequently done, very non-intuitive. We want players to be able to, within reason, build the towers they want and not be forced to memorize a chart of strengths and weaknesses and build their towers to cover every possibility. That makes the game generic, repetitive and not fun. The goal is to have some towers better than others because of emergent behaviour, not because of a narrow elemental weakness chart.
So for creep design, elemental resistances are out. We need to find something more interesting. Something that you can tell from looking at them. Here goes:
The Creeps
Average Joe: Every Tower Defense needs the 'normal' guy, this is him. He moves at normal speed, has normal health and does absolutely nothing funky. The first few waves will probably just be normal guys and then they'll be added in every so often. Really the Generic guy is here to act as a normal base, something to compare all other mobs too. When we talk about 'normal' health or speed, we're talking about this guy. Average Joe.
Soldier with Shield: The soldier has normal movement speed and health. But he has a shield, which reduces the damage of every shot. Now we could make this a fixed value, but then we have scaling issues, were the fixed value is insanely powerful against fast weaker hitting towers but utterly useless against slow high damage towers. Solution? Damage reduction is a % of the hit. Say 20% reduction. That blast for 10 lost 2 damage, that blast for 100 lost 20. This is also less work in maknig a formula to have it scale with level.
Sprinter: The sprinter sprints! *shock and awe* he will have less health than normal due to the less time he'll be in the maze, but every few seconds he'll get a burst of speed for a few seconds, increasing his speed by say 50%. Otherwise his speed is normal
Purifier: A Cleric or something. He is immune to all negative effects, poison, fire, slow, you name it. Immune. No effect. Otherwise he has normal health and speed. You'll need pure damage to take this guy down.
Paladin: What happens when you give a Purifier a Shield? You get the Paladin. 20% damage reduction and immune to all negative effects. Like ouch man.
The important thing with Purifier and Cleric is that they only come along every now and again. Too many of them and players will ignore slow and poison towers in favour of just pure damage.
Ninja: What's that an arrow? You missed. Lightning bolt? Missed me. Bolt of fire? Ahhh no my skin is burning.. lol jk, you missed. 50% chance to dodge a shot. Normal health and speed.
This guy is one of the most risky to introduce into the game as he's very RNGish. RNG means Random Number Generator, RNGish means heavy reliance on RNG. Due to 50% dodge it's possible that one of these will dodge every single shot and escape the maze unharmed. Completely unfair and out of the players control
Plenty of possibilities to avoid this:
1. He can only dodge every other shot. So he dodges one, next one guaranteed hit.
2. It works like sprint, he dodges everything for a few seconds, then is vulnerable. Triggered when he takes his first hit.
3. Give some towers, like the Fire AOE hit everything tower, the ability to negate dodge. Hey if you're flooding a whole area with lava, being able to dodge an area isn't going to help.
4. The spells I introduce later have 100% accuracy. So include a damage spell to pick them off.
5. Let him only dodge physical attacks. 50% chance to dodge physical and 50% damage reduction on what hits. But full 100% damage from magic.
Troll: Normal speed, normal health, but regenerates. Yep this guy heals over time. Probably based on a % of his health every 2-3 seconds. We want it to be enough healing to pose a threat, but not a threat so large it's insurmountable. I can't give a number here as this would require a lot of playtesting and fine-tuning to get it just right.
Tank: Big bulky heavily armoured. Rather slow movement, but very high health and probably an enhanced Shield which reduces all damage by 30 or 40%. Due to his slow movement we might make him immune to slow as he's that slow already.
Wizard: By their magical nature, they are magically resistant. Maybe the inverse of a ninja? Let him dodge 50% of spells but be vulnerable to physical attacks? I like that idea. 50% chance to dodge a magic attack, takes only 50% of damage from magic but takes full 100% damage from physical attacks.
Scarecrow: Scarecrow is made of straw. He just poddles along at 75% speed with normal health. Hit him with a burning attack, he bursts into flames now he moves at 200% speed in a screaming panic but takes double damage from the burning.
Bosses
Unlike most Tower Defenses I don't want boss monsters to just be bigger versions of their normal forms. I want to add a twist to each of them to make them unique and more worthy of the boss name...
Average John: ...Except for this guy. Average John is Average Joe's big brother. Except when he's reduced to half health, he pulls his clothes off to reveal that he's a super hero with a red cape, moving 25% faster and taking 25% less damage permanently.
Soldier with Shield: Shields up! The Soldier focuses actively on Defense, slowing his movement by 30% but increasing his damage reduction to 50%, lasts a few seconds.
Clumsy Sprinter: Moves 25% faster permanently, then sprints for 75% increased speed, after a few seconds he trips and falls on his face, stunning himself for a second.
Troll Purifier: Immune to magical effects 'and' Regenerates? Skynes you're a cruel cruel man. This takes the place of both Troll and Purifier boss.
Paladin: Immune to magical effects and can raise his shield like the Soldier boss for reduced speed but increased damage reduction.
Mystical Ninja: He has a forcefield. To get rid of it you pound it with physical attacks (the wizard), once the forcefield drops he goes uber-ninja and starts dodging 'all' physical attacks, so pound him with magical ones. Powerful? Yes. Evil? Most definitely.
Tank: He's got more health and more armour but what would make the tank even scarier? Give him the ability to shrug off negative effects every few seconds. Sure you can poison him, but you're not getting the full duration, 3 seconds in he shrugs it off.
Sloth: Think of the tank., slow and heavy. Every so often he'll stop moving and have a nap. This gives him insane troll like regeneration, after a few seconds he'll get up and continue walking along.
Wow this one is gonna end up being a 3 parter. The next part will be the spells the player can cast during the game, as well as possible issues and problems with what I've got here and my brainstorming a bunch of solutions.