Crystal Fortress Defence

Crystal Fortress Defence

(Crystal Fortress Logo , not that for Crystal Fortress Defence)

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The Blurb
Crystal Fortress Defence is a Tower Defence game utilizing various features and gameplay concepts from other genres in order to create a more enriching experience. It is set on a far away planet with a race far more advanced than ours has Accidently created a nanite plague that has mutated several creatures into monsters that require crystals to sustain themselves. Though this excuse plot is in now way final.

We plan for Crystal Fortress Defence to be our flagship app for the coming year, by that I mean it is the one we will be working on the most and the one that will be pushing the most. It will coming to iOS at first but we have plans of porting it over to Android and Windows 8.

The current planned price point is £1.29 / $1.99 but this is subject to change. We will be including various types of in-app purchases including that of buying more unique towers, maps and themes. A number of which we plan to be available on launch.

The Gameplay

The current version of Crystal Fortress Defence is nearly complete engine wise, in that all the core components are there. The player can purchase a variety of towers, these types are outlined below. The different type of damage over time caused by these elemental towers can be chained together to further increase the damage output of the player's towers.

Tower Types

Standard
-   The most basic of the towers. These are balanced all round and tend to upgrade into other types of Towers
Fire
-   An Elemental Tower capable of setting enemies alight and causing good damage over time. Fire Damage Over Time decreases Creeps Explosive Resistance.
Ice
-   An Elemental Tower capable of freezing parts of enemies. This slows them down and causes Ice Damage Over Time. Ice Damage Over Time decreases Creeps Acid Resistance.
Acid
-   An Elemental Tower that utilises the by-products of other Elemental Towers to inflict massive Damage Over Time. Acid Damage Over Time decreases Creeps Fire Resistance.
Static
-   An Elemental Tower that discharges high voltage bursts of electricity causing Static Damage Over Time which can damage other nearby enemies. Static Damage Over Time decreases Creeps Ice Resistance.
Explosive
-   Explosive Towers deal splash damage to any enemy within a small range around the point of impact. Explosions decrease Creeps Static Resistance.
Laser
-   Laser and Laserbeam towers cannot be resisted by creeps but offer little practical upgrades.

Creeps

The Creeps implemented so far have a few basic parameters : Name , Health , Speed , Fire Resistance , Ice Resistance , Acid Resistance , Static Resistance , Explosive Resistance and Type. These basic parameters make it possible to create a number of different enemies by merely tweaking these values a little.

Type is the most interesting Game play wise as it allows us to implement things like speed increases when low on health, Eating other enemies for health and regenerating health. We are debating a "Ghost" type which will be type completely immune (or partially immune) to Standard and Laser damage to try and balance the fact that they are unresistant.

The Graphics

In general the graphics are created by our Graphic Artist Darren Argo. So far very little work graphical has been done for Crystal Fortress Defence. 2 completed trees have been completed.

The particle effects and other general little effects are typically created by me (Alex Arthur) using a particle effect generator or some general maths know how. These effects are a lot more adaptable than the sprite based ones we have considered and allows users to adjust the amount of particles they would like on screen.

The Sound

Unfortunly I have not been able to get round to implementing sound effects or background music at the moment. However there is an engine in place for playing sound effects and background music. We are looking for someone who is proficient in sound effect design who'd either be willing to work for a modest fee or even just give us some tips as neither of us are very talented in that department.

The Code

Crystal Fortress Defence is created with GameMaker-Studio using only it's built in language GML. I have fair bit of experience using GameMaker and the new export options made it a prime choice for this "simple" game.

The next goal for the code is to completely redo the creep spawning system, at the moment it will choose either a Normal Wave which consists of a single type of enemy or a Mixed Wave and spawn a number of enemies from the total list of enemies. This can make early waves next to impossible as enemies can start with ~200 health and Tower do ~ 30 damage per hit at Level 1-2. I plan on restricting certain enemy types to certain Wave ranges.

Other plans include removing any occurrence of magic numbers as in my haste certain effects and systems use quite a few. This should only take an hour or so though it will make the code more adaptable later on if anything needs changed.

The Screenshots