next »

[7Soul]

Outcry

Outcry is a Tower Defense that follows the restrictions of a NES game. You can build 7 types of towers, each one with a different on-hit effect to counter the enemy waves from reaching your HQ.

Features:
+ Create your strategy to counter many different enemies with different weaknesses and status.
+ Position towers and upgrade them to get the best effect combo.
+ Dialogue system enhancing the story mode.
+ Three difficulty modes and secret levels.
+ Research system: get extensive upgrades that carry over levels.
+ Achievements: you also get in-game rewards for getting these.
+ Unique monsters create a need to a variety of strategies

I've started this project 9 months ago with a mockup and slowly started programming it using Construct Classic.

The setting of Outcry is a post-apocalyptic world where mankind struggles to survive the creatures created by the holocaust. With the help of a advanced military robot AI called B.E.T.A. they developed towers capable of dealing with the wild beasts.
Your job is to protect key areas with these towers, and find out a way to return the world to its normal state.

More images, info and a download of an early alpha can be found here:
http://www.indiedb.com/games/outcry

[laxwolf]

Looks really cool, thanks for sharing!

[ZAHZERA]

Everything about this game looks fantastic!

[wuhu]

Woah, i remember seeing this on pixeljoint.
Totally looks like a game I would play.

[Franklin's Ghost]

Great looking game.

[7Soul]

I would like some feedback on some features i'm considering adding

1. Mouse support
All TDs I've played used the mouse. Do you think this is necessary here? As I said, this game follows some NES restrictions, so I'm using only 2 buttons + directions + start.
I was thinking about adding a mouse mode, what's you guys opinion?

2. More buttons?
I believe 2 buttons only could get confusing at some point. 1~7 for tower shortcuts could be a useful addition. Also a button to speed up the game (like Defese Grid, holding F makes the game faster)

[Birdorf]

This looks great. I think a mouse would be better, because you'll have some tough design decisions with a 2-button NES setup, and if you're having extra buttons then you may as well have a mouse. I say get yourself moused-up.

[Scut Fabulous]

This looks really good.  I know it's an NES palette but the theme feels more like a Commodore 64 game which is cool.

I'd like to add one more vote for mouse and more than 2 buttons.  I think it's cool to be able to work within constraints, but unless you are actually going to sell this game in an NES cartridge you shouldn't sacrifice playability for authenticity.

[7Soul]

So, I was messing around with my game and I discovered something terrible. If I had too many towers and enemies, FPS would start dropping fast, and i'm not even talking about a huge amount of objects. A total of 40 objects (between towers and enemies) and FPS dropped from 60 to 45, worse if I was accelerating the game: 17 fps.

I was sure that was some limitation of the engine. I mean, construct is a game maker, and a really buggy one, so what could I expect?
But after some digging through the code, i found out that the built-in turret behavior was causing the fps drop because of its "aim at enemy behavior". I turned it off and created a custom aiming event,that for my surprise worked even better than the built-in option.

Guess what now? Not even by filling the screen with turrets and enemies I can get the FPS to drop under 58. Even when accelerating, the game runs as smooth as possible.

[7Soul]

Mouse is fully implemented for the gameplay, menus are still using only keyboard though

The most recent screen shot:

The new performance also allowed me to increase the "speed up" mode. There is now 1x, 2x and 3x speed options

[Scut Fabulous]

Yeah, mouse support!  Can't wait to try it out!

[7Soul]

Decided to mess around with the "behind the scenes" stuff, and downloaded visual studio to make a better database editor.
Even though I'm a complete noob to VS, I could recreate the database editor that I made on Construct in a few hours.

The creep editor is fully functional, while the level editor is all in place, just waiting for the coding

[oyog]

I don't think I've ever actually wanted to play a tower defense game till now.

[7Soul]

Remade the tech shop when adding the mouse support. Now the icons are more colorful and brighter. Also reorganized them and removed redundant techs

[sublinimal]

I want to eat those graphics.

[7Soul]

Development has been kinda slow this last few days... working on the end-of-level screen
Not entirely sure what to do with the right part yet, i'm thinking give the player medals that slightly increase the final score. Something like "built 10 towers" or "only level 1 towers" and that gives a small score boost to help achieve the high score cap

That reminds me, I need to explain what's the score for. Each level has a score cap, and that means if the player obtain a score equal or greater than that, he gets a tech point bonus, to spend at the shop. So if a level seem too hard, you go back and replay previous levels and try to earn those extra points to get stronger

Level 0?

The alpha version will be soon complete.

[7Soul]

Level selection, finally nearing completion:

And some tools for database editing:

Balancing this game will be lots of fun

[Scut Fabulous]

Looking great.  Still squeezing a lot out of that palette!

The editing tools are looking very cool too.  Will they be open for modding?  Seems like you could make a tower defense construction kit as a spinoff of this.

[7Soul]

I don't see it getting mod support in a long time, would require a lot of extra work, and so far i'm only trying to get the game finished.