Village Defense PGD edition

[Traveler]

Hey so how is Village Defense coming along? I'm waiting for that cool multi/random road & layout idea version to be released.

Well to be honest, a new release isn't going to happen any time soon.

As you may have read on my site, I'm not going to continue buliding on the existing code. There are a few reasons for that.
Prime reason: I've come to realize that there are far too many changes to be made and the old 'engine' simply can't handle those changes.
A second reason for a rewrite is that competitions tend to be good motivators, the deadlines however can easily persuade you to choose the easy and often dirty solutions. Let me tell you, there are a lot of those in my code.
The last reason is fairly simple actually. During the development of VD I've made some design choices, which looking back, could have been done differently and probably a lot better too.

A good example, is the fixed path that the orcs are walking.
I've used fixed coordinates for the starting position, each of the corners and the end. At first it seemed like a good and easy to do idea, but it also meant a lot of work when a path changed.
Granted, it was also mainly because my editor was not advanced enough to allow for an easy way to input new coordinates. Perhaps with a proper way to insert the coordinates it might have worked.
But still, now that I've had the option to think a lot about the game, I've come to the point where I think that it would be nicer if enemies were to choose their own way instead of following a fixed path like a bunch of mindless drones.
The ideal situation would be to have a totally random world with possibly more than one path leading from or to the village, have an arbitrary number of spawn points and have the enemies figure out a way to the village, by themselves.

And that's just one of the things I'm currently working on. Well I'm not actually writing that into the game, but I'm giving that, and other stuff a lot of thought.
Stuff like the setting of the game. What is the situation. I mean in this version I had orcs and ogres, but why are they there, why invade villages?
What are the surroundings like. There is currently one map, entirely covered with grass. But the options for more are limitless: rivers, mountains, different trees and rocks, hills etc, etc.

And what about the village itself. What kind of bulidings are there. Are there going to be villagers? Are they going to play a role in the game.
The nummber of questions is currently quite endless.

Apart from thinking out the answers to these questions, I've also been doing some research on how to create better looking graphics. How for example can you make some real looking water, that
1: is animated, and
2: perfectly blends into the rest of the world. (And I dont mean blending as in using glBlendFunc)

Anyway, as you can see, there's lots to be done.
I'll be adding info and images, possibly even video's on my site in due time. So please do keep an eye out.

[WILL]

Wow, looks like you have quite a bit of new things planed indeed. I can't wait to see how it all turns out.

You know I have an idea of something you can try for the 'find their own way' type of pathfinding...

Obviously the most common type of pathfinding is A*, right? Well I thnk that has a lot to do with the fact that you can tweak it so much. My little idea is to have each Orc/Troll/Goblin A* towards the village it's self, but instead of just having common terrain influenced nodes, you have an extra layer taht influences the map at random. ie.. add 0-5 extra points for all the nodes.

You can then have about 5 sets of these and assign them to each attacking enemy independant of what spawning point they come from... This will allow a sense of semi educated tactical movement on their part.

And of course over time they will learn what spots are hard to pass through so you can also then add enemykills score to each node so that they as a whole will seem to be learning the villages weak points.

And if you can just learn the basics of the algo it'll be the easiest thing to add to the game, I assure you. Is A* cool or what?

[Traveler]

In case you are already visiting my site, you may have noticed an increased activity on my part in the development of Village Defense.
In the event you are not, and if you are interested in Village Defense or if you're just curious on how development is going in general: please do visit.

I've recently opened a new screenshot section in which I add new screenshots of the game.
Currently there are only a few images in there, such as the one below, but I'm pretty sure many will follow during the next couple of months, especially when more gamecontent is added and the game itself is progressing to a more playable level.



In case you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask

[Huehnerschaender]

JESUS! That looks great!

Is this rendered in realtime or is the water prerendered? Is it animated?

Anyhow, the technique looks fantastic. Go on with this style!

[HopeDagger]

Finally took VD for a run, and I'm very glad I did! The game plays well, the music good, the sound is fitting (and luckily not too repetitive!), and the graphics are excellent. Wonderful work, especially with the timeframe.

I'll resist the urge to start screaming, "SEQUEL! SEQUEL!". ;)

[WILL]

Very nice Alex.

I've unfortunately not checked out your site in a few weeks. I take it much is quite new, say... within the last couple of weeks? Must make the time to have a look... :scratch:

I'd be quite anxous to see how branching & multiple roads would work in the game. Also perhaps you can set a unit or team of skermishers to be bought and placed like the towers? Diferent things besides just the towers.

OR... you can upgrade or place guards/archers, etc into the towers/gates, etc... While not getting too crazy as to reinvent Stronghold 2. (A fun game though )

VD was one of the entries at PGD Annual that I thought had that strong visually polish and 'attention to detail' quality to it. How much in the way of new graphics or characters will we be seeing in the final version would you say?

[Traveler]

Thanks for the replies guys

@Huehnerschaender:
Like with the competition version of VD everything is prerendered (it is after all still a 2d game). However, the water is animated and, if I may say so myself, looks very nice. The island you see here consists of 16 tiles (4 blocks of 4 tiles) which (eventually) can be modified individually, to allow for different rock formations.

@HopeDagger:
Thanks for trying out VD. I'm glad you like it that much. And don't worry about a sequel, it will take a while but there will be one

@WILL:
Some good ideas there about the skirmishers and teams. I'm not entirely sure yet how gameplay is going to be in this version, but there is definitely going to be more to do for the player than just placing towers and upgrading them. The maps are probably going to be bigger, roads leading to the village longer and more varied.

As for new graphics and characters, there's going to be plenty more to see in the new game. As seen in the screenshot, there's at least going to be water in it, but I'm thinking of hills and possibly mountains too. These could allow for some interesting level designs such as two islands connected by a bridge for example.

About the characters: the orcs and ogres seen in the demo are not returning. I had far too much problems with the models to use them again in this game. However, I have already started to work on new models. I hope to be able to release some more info and screenshots about this soon.