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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsFire with Fire Tower Attack and Defense
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RealityShifter
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« on: March 26, 2014, 08:17:13 PM »

FIRE WITH FIRE TOWER ATTACK AND DEFENSE!

Features player vs player online tower attack and defense battles, an ever expanding library of towers and creeps to choose from and a player leveling system to expand your abilities. Experience vibrantly contrasted visual themes and dynamic music progression on every level. Will be available for iOS, Android, Desktop and OUYA. Created by Skull Skill Studios based in Florida.

Creators

Hello, my name is Theory Georgiou I've been making games since I could read and write(draw) I started using Game maker when I was about 12-13 and still use it today. I'm 25(it's hard to tell sometimes)

I teamed up with Brian Shepard our artist and Stephen D. Gibson our music man about 2 years ago. Together we have been creating the best tower defense game we can imagine!

Detailed Description

It's online player vs player. It's beautifully fire and and forest themed. It's fun and I hope you will agree a rock solid innovation to the genre.

Though I would like to develop a single player campaign to act as the story and tutorial, the game centers around online / local player vs player matches. You and your opponent choose types of creep waves to send to each other each round until the creeps reach their objective, for example burn down your three trees on the map.

A Story Driven Campaign

Re-unite the factions of a dystopian earth to extinguish the flames of war before the planet is thrown past the point of no recovery.

Fire With Fire hopes to inspire environmental conscience in our players through our single player campaign. We're making a game, but why not spread environmental awareness.





Trailer

Please check our trailer on our website.( Just finished this March 26 )
http://firewithfiregame.com/




Demo build

If you enjoyed that, feel free to give feedback on our single player demo. For now only available as an executable for PC. Your feedback is welcome, In-fact highly encouraged since, I'd like to hear others thoughts on what makes a great tower defense.
http://firewithfiregame.com/downloads/firewithfire-feedback-demo.exe

Even more things to say

For those interested in game balancing and player analytics we are going to have some fun in this blog. Making the game fun, but also fair in a highly customizable setting is the challenge. This is an evolving game that we hope to add continuous content to for years to come. That progress bar up there will not exceed 90% since our work is never done.

We are mostly designer types here so I'm looking forward to fleshing out tower and creep mechanic ideas with all of you.
« Last Edit: August 04, 2014, 12:06:56 PM by RealityShifter » Logged

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« Reply #1 on: March 26, 2014, 08:26:44 PM »

Update #1 Blind Picking a Menu
Tonight I'm working on creating the final blind pick menus for online match making. I decided to K.I.S.S it for now. Players will pick towers sets and creep sets to use and the server will match the player with an opponent afterwards. In the future a Draft Mode would be funner for competitive play because alternating picks between opponents becomes a game in and of itself. All towers and creeps are specifically designed to counter strategies.

Sometimes it's as simple as using high damage towers to counter armored creeps (because armor takes a flat amount off damage received). But their are creeps to counter and can be countered by arrangements of towers, such as the Bouncing Embers which jump in the air when hit on the ground, becoming only target-able by air for the duration. Your opponent would have to consider placing anti-air towers close to ground towers to counter these creeps. to put it in context typically you can manage flying by clustering anti air by the entrances where flying spawns.

Update #1.09
Success! the menu is complete! I'm a little worried because when you pick a tower set it is represented by the first tower in the set. But when you pick a creep, right now the creep artwork you see if of the second creep in each set which are generally stronger and have more flare to the visuals. I may need to have the artwork switch between the the creeps in the set while your selecting some how to help avoid confusion or just get artwork of the simpler first creep in the set ready and use that instead. But I'll wait till someone ses something.  

« Last Edit: March 28, 2014, 06:29:16 PM by RealityShifter » Logged

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« Reply #2 on: March 28, 2014, 06:05:24 PM »

Update #2 Server cross-communica-tion.

Tonight (and most of this weekend) I'll be working on the online communication for the game. This is where my web developer background really shows. We use a LAMP Server, the information is transmitted through custom http(eventually https) as an encrypted JSON string.

The server explained.
The server is really just a relay of information, keeps track of metrics. I deal with cheating and packet alterations by comparing the result of each round between the players in a match. If there's a discrepancy I'll end the match with an error and log it on the server. If the servers deems it necessary to interrupt a players match a few times then we know theirs a problem and I can take a closer look at the data coming from that player.

The limitation of using HTTP is speed of course but cost and development time are important trade offs for a bootstrapped small team the game is practically a turned based so even a 5 second delay of data still works well. I think this method could be a standard for most turned based games that want to ensure consistency across platforms. I would like to package and release the server and an API one day but I'm not sure how much interest there is.

Coming up...Something about PAXE?
« Last Edit: March 28, 2014, 06:32:40 PM by RealityShifter » Logged

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« Reply #3 on: March 31, 2014, 02:09:28 AM »

Update #2.5

Should be getting to working on the server side of things tonight, I forgot how much setting up was required before we could even begin testing online communication.

The Flow
I shall now explain the flow a typical match, and when server communication is involved.
After both players have chosen creep and tower sets the match begins with an empty field with minor indestructible obstacles and 3 fruit trees. Players start with a given amount of degrees( the building currency for the game ) and can begin to build towers.

Players must take into consideration, creeps will enter simultaneously from the top and the left side of the play field. Creeps from each entrance will move towards the nearest tree until it is destroyed or the maze is changed such that a different tree is closer to either entrance.

After 45 seconds players can begin attacking each other with up to 2 waves per round. Another wave slot becomes available every minute until a maximum of 5 wave slots are open for use.

Players can attack once every 45 seconds. I specifically set the imbalance of 45 second attack frequency and 60 second slot opening frequency because I am curious to see whether players decide to attack as often as possible or wait longer to send more at once.

Players receive degrees for killing creeps and tech points to unlock more towers by building more towers from that set.

creeps gain experience from being used in an attack wave, leveling grants increased health. The second creep type of each set unlocks once the first creep in the set reaches level 5.

An attentive opponent will know when your advanced creeps of which type have unlocked and make preparations. This also goes for tower sets by paying attention to how many of each set type has been built.

This goes back in forth until a player burns their opponent's 3 fruit trees to the ground. The matches cannot reach a stalemate because their is a limited amount of room to place towers on any map and each tower has a maximum level of 3 while creeps will continue to level up until their is a winner.
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« Reply #4 on: April 01, 2014, 05:17:22 AM »

Online matchmaking works like a dream. All that's left is to transmit data for each round. Hopefully somebody shows some interest in this game soon so I can find some testers for the online play here on TIG.
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« Reply #5 on: April 08, 2014, 11:35:36 AM »

So the game is fully playable now. You can join a match and send creep waves at each other till someone wins. We still have a lot of tweaking and some important aesthetic elements like end game splash screens "You win! / lose" kinda thing.

Our Pax Travel crew is coming over tonight for Pax pre party tacos and to play testing. We set up XAMP on my laptop to act as the server during Pax, I literally don't have a moment to spare  getting ready for Boston, but hopefully you guys will help play test when we get back.
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« Reply #6 on: April 21, 2014, 01:13:53 PM »

Update #3 - Quick Pax East Postmortem

We took the game to PAX East, which was awesome. The booth was setup with 2 laptops where players could play against each other in a quick match lasting between 5 - 10 minutes. We placed pins out attached to business cards for our game, which being clearly free, attracted people to the table.

During expo open hours we had a constant flow of people playing the game with minimal effort from my associates and I asking people "Are you familiar with Tower defense?" Over 300 people played our game and countless others crowded around to watch the more heated matches.



Winners of the match or just really anyone who seemed like they enjoyed playing received a poster. We handed out over 900 pins and 200 posters throughout the 3-day event. I would have brought twice as much free stuff if I knew how many people we're interested in our game.

The plushies you see above are hand made and are too expensive to give away, but we sold them for about $7 each. We sold out of the Red and Purple guys really quickly.

On the game main menu we had an option to submit your email address and leave comments. We received about 200 emails(I think we could have got a lot more if we pushed it) and about half of those people left feedback for us.

We just send out our first newsletter to our new email list on Friday letting everyone know that you can pre-register your player name at our website. We already have 20 registrations just through the email.

The next step is to setup some articles and videos with the many friends we made who want to write about us / make a video / invited us to play on their twitch.tv stream. Very excited. Smiley
« Last Edit: April 21, 2014, 01:27:37 PM by RealityShifter » Logged

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« Reply #7 on: May 02, 2014, 12:06:45 AM »

Alright, fixed the game breaking bug when both players attack at the same time, it just disconnects everybody because it's a delicate server and it just can't take getting attacked from both ends at once just leave me alone!
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« Reply #8 on: May 08, 2014, 07:07:21 AM »

Update #4 - I don't know if I told you.


In addition to the core game play we have a player leveling system. As players beat maps and win matches they gain experience and levels. Leveling unlocks new maps, beating maps unlocks creeps and towers. But periodically a level will unlock a fruit.

Genetically Modified Fruit.
Or Fruit Splicing. Players can prepare a mix of fruits to grow on their tree for a match. Up to 3 fruit per tree(typically 1 tree per map) Each fruit adds a small bonus to creeps or towers but can also trigger a unique effect.

Examples:
The Cherry Bomb fruit will jump off the tree to 1 hit kill the next creep that would hit the tree. Providing an awesome defense against strong creeps, but might be wasted against a zerg rush of creeps.

The Data Berry provides an additional Tech Point for the first tower you build in a match.



This was inspired by Fruit Salad Trees which fruit trees from the same family made to grow together to form one tree and yes this actually exists. Lemons and Oranges on one tree, or peaches and plumbs on another. This site is a good source to learn about them. http://www.fruitsaladtrees.com/Fruit-Salad-Tree



I think the genetic exploitation means of leveling between matches furthers our subtheme of a cutified dystopia due to the excess use of emerging technologies. Yup.
« Last Edit: May 08, 2014, 07:12:50 AM by RealityShifter » Logged

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« Reply #9 on: May 13, 2014, 09:29:37 AM »

Creep Spotlight!
I'll be posting creep set spot lights this week, if you ever wondered "what's that creep doing in that bush?" I'd have to say "Depends on the creep."

This is the "Blue Giant" & "Triple Fission" Creep Set.

The Blue Giant is heavily armored but slow, since the armor stat takes a flat amount of damage off of each hit from a tower this creep is a good choice vs high fire rate and splash damage towers who have low damage per hit.

Next we switch it up with the Triple Fission which upon death, splits into 3 weak, mini creeps. This makes the Triple fission horrible against splash, and high fire rate towers, but great against slow, high damage specialty towers which would have to waste at least 4-5 shots to take out 1 Triple Fission.

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« Reply #10 on: May 22, 2014, 10:13:40 AM »

Creep Spotlight!
The "Spitfire" & "Fire Rain" Creep Set.

Spitfire is just your average creep. There's nothing special about him. Decent hp, decent speed, looks decent. Leveling Spitfire is a reliable option vs any strategy.

Fire Rain is unique, instead of spawning at one of the two map entrances and following the path, Massive amounts of Fire Rain fall from the sky landing randomly across the entire map proceeding towards a tree upon landing. Is your enemy's fire power focused near the entrances leaving their trees out in the open? You know what to do.

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« Reply #11 on: May 22, 2014, 12:40:38 PM »

I find it incredibly odd I could reach 1000+ views and nobody has had the urge to reply and leave feedback.
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« Reply #12 on: June 02, 2014, 04:40:59 AM »

Brian our arist is hard at work on a new menu background, Once finished the foreground, middle and background of this image will be split into 3 layers. We use those layers to simulate a shaky camera effect in game, completed with particle effects in between.

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« Reply #13 on: July 01, 2014, 06:43:32 AM »

New Trailer - getting ready for greenlight and kickstarter launching in two weeks.



Kickstarter Will Launch July 14th

So save your pennies to get a plushie! If you backed our original campaign a year ago, things have changed a bit, but for the better I'm sure you will agree. From here on out we're kicking things into high gear.

Beta Launches

Technically along with Kickstarter. I'll give out private access to the latest Fire With Fire online build every few days to all current backers. So all new backers will get beta access during the campaign. I realize some people, will back just to try out the game, then cancel, I really don't mind. kudos to your curiosity and cleverness.

Greenlight

Also launches along with our Kickstarter, hopefully both campaigns synergize well. I've asked other indies about trying this and have heard mixed thoughts. I guess we will see. July 14th is the day.
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« Reply #14 on: July 01, 2014, 10:52:07 AM »

Woah, this is great!  I love the style and music, and the gameplay is pretty fun.  The only problem I had was that, after a while, I had more money than I had spaces to put towers along the path, but if I wanted to upgrade towers I needed to make more towers.  I'm not really sure if this was just a problem with the way I was playing, though.
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« Reply #15 on: July 02, 2014, 08:41:07 AM »

Woah, this is great!  I love the style and music, and the gameplay is pretty fun.  The only problem I had was that, after a while, I had more money than I had spaces to put towers along the path, but if I wanted to upgrade towers I needed to make more towers.  I'm not really sure if this was just a problem with the way I was playing, though.

That's a really old alpha demo, we've balanced the degrees(money) more these days and are playing with ideas like tower levels costing, or creep buffs in multiplayer.

Really appreciate you posting! Thanks for the feedback.
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« Reply #16 on: July 14, 2014, 11:01:06 AM »

Just wanted to let TIGSource know our kickstarter launched today. Lots of new details, and beta will be ongoing during the Kickstarter. We also launched Greenlight and will be giving out beta keys shortly to our backers. This is kinda an experiment. Hopefully blitzing all the campaigns at once will synergize well. Smiley

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/660810230/fire-with-fire-online-tower-attack-and-defense-0

Please vote yes on Steam, we worked 2 and a half years to get to this point. Thank you.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=279128245
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« Reply #17 on: August 05, 2014, 10:22:46 AM »

Hey TIG I've been busy trying to keep this campaign alive, could really use the indie game dev communities help. Will you pull through?

http://kck.st/1sdmo8H

Check out the most recent updates.

Week one update
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/660810230/fire-with-fire-online-tower-attack-and-defense-0/posts/920560

New Stretch Goal & Write Up Round Up #1
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/660810230/fire-with-fire-online-tower-attack-and-defense-0/posts/932204

A balance Update
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/660810230/fire-with-fire-online-tower-attack-and-defense-0/posts/939394
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