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[2d_Sparrow]

STACKY BLOCKY

Backstory:
Stacky Blocky is an amalgamation of my love for all of the Warcraft III custom tower defense games, Warcraft III hero mechanics, and Starcraft II macro and micro mechanics. I've been playing Blizzard games ever since I had a computer good enough to run them, heck I'm even listening to a podcast on the past, present, and future of Starcraft right now. Enough fanboying, I finally decided to pool all of my Blizzard love into one place and start creating a TD that I would want to play as much as every other Blizzard game.

Goals:
Stacky Blocky will change over time depending on what mechanics turn out to be awesome. To start, the initial iterations are going to be focusing on crafting combinations with different types of towers through stacking blocks as well as using a central tower to micro last hitting minions for extra gold or helping clean up tricky waves.

You can check out what I'm working on next here.
Trello Link: https://trello.com/b/KqkCo6Q0/tower-wars

Technical:
I'm creating the game in Unity, Photoshop, and Blender this will be my first big 3D project although I have done 3D work in the past. In terms of aesthetic, I'm looking to create something low poly like the image below.

Here's some WIP Gifs (cause Gifs)

Ui and Interactions  
  


Combining Tower Types

[2d_Sparrow]

Was working on the monster death animations today as well as scaling the slow of the towers to be more accurate and interesting, here's a gif. Didn't get too much work done today as the new Sc2 game came out and I was itching to play it.

[2d_Sparrow]

Today was focused on pulling apart the central tower concept I had previously and rebuilding it. This meant new interactions, and new abilities. The old central tower design was made to micro against different types of enemies. However since enemy types are no longer needed in the game at this time (due to the block stacking having enough strategy elements) there was no need for the central tower to be type driven. Instead the central tower limits the number of blocks you can stack until it is upgraded. The central tower give you extra gold if you manage to last hit a creep with it, and has combined effects from the other tower types. I've made sure to limit it's effectiveness in terms of AOE and Slow, but we'll see how it goes. Here's a Gif of the central tower.

Next up is to create and balance a level using all of the elements that I've created so far.

[Rani_Sputnik]

Dude looking good! Here's some feedback so far.

- Flippen love the animations and the work you're putting in to make interactions make sense. Also the way the enemies bounce along and explode into little pieces when they die, awesome!

- Central tower should shoot faster, it doesn't feel like you have enough agency. You don't do a lot of damage and limiting how often you attack makes you feel kinda meh. I reckon the main tower should feel overpowered until a big wave comes, that way a player learns how powerful they are, but then the importance of building up other defences as well.

- You should think about a more inspiring back-drop for the game too, the world and environment are just blocks, which is cool, but I think you need to be able to project some personality onto them as a player. Think of Thomas was Alone and how engaging those rectangles were. I love the style so it'd be cool if you can keep the blocks but make them less of an empty canvas.

Also anyone wanting to play this game, it's over on GameJolt http://gamejolt.com/games/stacky-blocky/108178

[Oroboros]

I really dig the minimalist approach here. You consider using any other geometric primitives to help players distinguish between the block types? Seems like that could get a little confusing over time. Other than that any throwback to WC3 modding is awesome, loved the TD games back then.

[2d_Sparrow]

Omg can't believe I missed your guys comments, no email for some reason O.O

Dude looking good! Here's some feedback so far.

- Flippen love the animations and the work you're putting in to make interactions make sense. Also the way the enemies bounce along and explode into little pieces when they die, awesome!

- Central tower should shoot faster, it doesn't feel like you have enough agency. You don't do a lot of damage and limiting how often you attack makes you feel kinda meh. I reckon the main tower should feel overpowered until a big wave comes, that way a player learns how powerful they are, but then the importance of building up other defences as well.

- You should think about a more inspiring back-drop for the game too, the world and environment are just blocks, which is cool, but I think you need to be able to project some personality onto them as a player. Think of Thomas was Alone and how engaging those rectangles were. I love the style so it'd be cool if you can keep the blocks but make them less of an empty canvas.

Also anyone wanting to play this game, it's over on GameJolt http://gamejolt.com/games/stacky-blocky/108178

Tonnes of stuff has changed :] hopefully for the better, I'll definitely add background things to the world to the list, I think that's a must.

I really dig the minimalist approach here. You consider using any other geometric primitives to help players distinguish between the block types? Seems like that could get a little confusing over time. Other than that any throwback to WC3 modding is awesome, loved the TD games back then.

Thanks man, I'm thinking about changing the towers to be rectangles, that way they can noticeably rotate, I agree might get a bit confusing. My WC3 brother!

[2d_Sparrow]

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Just finished up the latest release for Stacky Blocky and pretty excited to show you the changes. Prepare yourselves for an amazing audio experience, a completely revised central tower design, awesome new abilities and much more (Change log below) Hope you enjoy this new version as much as I did making it!

Change Log v0.4:

• New central tower abilities:
      - Snipe - passive: One hit kill a monster.
      - Block magnet - active: Collect all of the blocks on the ground at once.
      - Blockolypse - active: Destroy all monsters and blocks.
  
• Enemies now explode, shooting blocks everywhere, the block size is dependent on their worth.
• Players can hover over blocks on the ground to collect them as currency.
• Changed Tower Blocks names from "Blocks" to "Slabs" to help those that were confused between the blocks currency and the blocks being used for towers.
• Sending a wave early gives extra blocks.
• The number of slabs that can be stacked has been decreased to 6, one for each level of the Central Tower. Hopefully this will help players keep track of how many slabs they can stack much more easily.
• Change the cost or cooldown to be a circle in the top left of every option.
• Introduced Sound Effects and music.
• Tower purchase mechanics have been changed so that whenever you purchase a slab that colour becomes more expensive for future purchases for that specific tower.
• Insufficient funds are now displayed when applicable.
• Central tower abilities are interable via the game UI.
• Tooltips have been changed to have a more clear cost as well as include a different design for the new abilities.

Bugs Fixed v0.4:

• Target icon now disappears on minion death.
• The next wave timer now appears at the correct time, previously it appeared when monsters were still spawning.
• Fixed a few bugs to do with variables not resetting when the players starts a new game.

The new release will be live tomorrow on Christmas day, have fun!

GameJolt Link: http://gamejolt.com/games/stacky-blocky/108178

[2d_Sparrow]

Andd it's up the Stacky Blocky christmas update is live on Game Jolt! It has sounds and everything.

[2d_Sparrow]

Slowly developing the graphical style, I'm going for a soft, low poly look.

I'll have to redo the towers and minions to match but it looks nice in-game.

[2d_Sparrow]

Change the polys to triangles and added a few different kinds of trees. It's looking a little cluttered but a bit nicer for the first iteration.

I've also updated the towers so that they hold rectangles, meaning that they can now visibly spin towards their target monster.