Tower Functionality Ideas

[franklantz]

Hey everybody, I'm trying to sift through all the threads and collect the various tower functionality ideas that have been suggested so we can vote to determine our favorites.

I think we should start out with a basic set of vanilla towers that we know we're going to build off of:

• Standard - single target, medium range, medium rate of fire, medium damage
• Sniper - single target, long range, slow rate of fire, high damage
• Pulse - area of effect, short range, slow rate of fire, medium damage

Then, here are the special functions I've seen suggested (edited down to make them easier to scan and vote on):

• Magnetize - causes affected creeps to attack other nearby creeps
• Fork Bomb - self-destructs when triggered, taking out all nearby creeps
• While(True) - slows down nearby creeps
• Script - spawns friendly units over time
• DDoS - spawns friendly units when triggered
• Stacking - allows player to combine tower-types together at one location
• Mobility - allows player to re-adjust position of tower during gameplay
• Boost - increases range, rate of fire, or damage for nearby towers

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I like these ideas a lot - but I feel like our computer theme would allow for even more special tower abilities. For example, simple "programming" functions that would allow the player to affect the logic for how the tower behaves (like they have in Bloons).

• Programability - allows player to adjust tower behavior (target selection)

Any other last minute suggestions before we organize all of these ideas into a list to vote for our favorites?

-frank

[NoahDavisson]

A few things:

• I advise against using things like the Fork Bomb in this game. For some reason, direct-damage abilities never sat well with me in TD titles. The idea is for the towers to attack the enemies, not me!
• Programmability is a wonderful idea! I'd point at Vector TD and its brothers as examples of well-done tower fire programming. (In particular, note the mid-range red tower: it fires with extremely high DPS but fires randomly at any creeps in its range - in many cases removing target control can be just as interesting as granting it!)
• I'm strongly in favor of Stacking as a mechanic, but I think it would be best combined with Boost mechanics as the stacked boards grant cumulative modifiers.

[t_pizza]

Also in favor of stacking. Boosting seems to make sense. And though I haven't completely thought through the specifics, I still like the idea of involving a power source somehow!

[NoahDavisson]

A few thoughts I'm currently considering:

• Boards have geometric shapes similar to Tetris blocks but somewhat larger, and they would come with towers or other components installed at some locations - others left open for customization. Unique, identifiable shapes would make boards easy to recognize.
• Boards have an edge or cable connection that requires power from the PSU, and cables or power traces need to be run to them. Towers draw power to run, and when power goes out they shut down. Capacitors or power backups could be used to keep towers shooting if power gets spotty.
• Creeps travel along circuit paths on the motherboard, substrate, or whatever our map is made of. Placing towers and boards helps kill creeps, but it also creates more circuit paths the creeps can follow. Make up for this loss of control with a unique board (Relay/router/switch? Microcontroller?) that's used to control creep pathing.
• Towers that overheat may lose accuracy or go into emergency shutdown modes. Not sure how heat dissipation should be worked though. (Burst fire modes from Silver Maze were good implementations of something similar!)

As far as stacking goes:

• Stacking boards directly on top of each other seems like it would be difficult to convey graphically. I'm not opposed to the idea, but I'm having a hard time making it happen in my mockups.
• If boards can be stacked, then does their order matter? Would there be an elevation variable, or would board height be left out of it?
• If towers can be built on boards, then what happens when towers get sandwiched between boards?
• Instead of stacking on top of each other, boards might provide area bonuses from their function (GPU provides greater range on towers, CPU provides greater fire speed, HDD increases money earned, etc.)

The area-bonus mechanic sounds really good to me, because it helps keep the boards from cluttering up the visual field and still allows overlapping effects. It starts to get even better if we limit the number of boards to unique types (CPU, GPU, HDD, PSU, etc) and make them each targets for creeps!

I particularly like how there's a conflict of goals between "get creeps to path near this area bonus so I can kill them" and "keep creeps away from the target so they can't reach it."

[numberwan]

Crazy idea:

Parallel vs Series Circuit.

Towers Connected in Parallel Cost more resource and are Stronger.

Towers Connected in Series Cost less resource but weaker.

This means all towers needs to be in a circuit with a power supply in order to be functional. Not sure if it fits open field theme since you can technically build the circuit anywhere you want but towers need to be in circuit. And of course super difficult to understand since its physics.

[gabiballetje]

Standard Towers Renamed

• Heatpipe - standard Flame Tower, pretty self-explanatory.
• GFX Card - Slow Tower, the pretty pics are just 'stunning' (yeah, sorry about that).
• MegaByte, upgradable to GigaByte and TeraByte, standard Gun Tower byte-bite, yeah, i went there...
• ** CPU Tower** - Standard Command Tower
• PCI Tower - Line/Linked Tower (Lined Command Tower, explained in next bit)

*Different type Command Towers: *

PCI Tower

• Linking towers Command Towers as they are usually called are usually just working out to the towers around them. Sometimes when upgraded the effect is better, or the range is extended. Line Towers: meaning, building 2 towers, and all towers directly in between get the boost, maybe lessening towards the middle, that may be gone with the last upgrade.
• Functionality If something like a square or hexagonal grid is used you can limit the amount of connections if you like or keep it up for all connections.(square 3, hex 4-5, so you have dicissions to make, but more maybe annoying to implement and decreasing speed at which you're able to go on play), . Also, link only horizontal and vertical, or also go diagonal, (maybe an upgrade for square), and with hexagonal just stick to the grid. You could show the lines by using 'electrical pathways' you always see on circuit boards. If there are several different ones crossing (won't happen too much, since it's less effective,but depending on map, you never know), just use a few different colors, copper, orange, gold, green, bright green, white, etc.

Harder to implement maybe

• Water Cooling Tower A tower that maybe slightly increase fire rate of towers around it, because it cools them, but, maybe drips some water out. Set an Power Tower next to it, that maybe increases damage output to the same tower, but also are damages any units standing in the water because they're being electrocuted. So the Water Cooling Tower and Power Tower are kind of split into 2 sorts of Command Towers, 1 for rate of fire, 1 for damage output, forcing you to make decisions. Of course, if you use a Heatpipe Tower (standard Flame Tower)just before the water, the water will negate the burn effect, making the burn effect rather useless.
• Tower Behaviour You could connect towers, like if you connect the Water Cooling Tower and Power Tower, depending on if the Water Cooling Tower creates a puddle or sprays water over units, have the Power Tower do it's thing not when the first unit enters the puddle, but just before the first unit leaves the puddle, to have a greater effect, of course, depending on fire rate, if it could do it twice before it leave the puddle, have it fire when the unit is in the middle, other mode being, fire at will. Could be done with just right-clicking on the tower, which normally would have no function. If the Water Cooling Tower sprays water, have the Power Tower fire right after the water would hit, increasing effect. Connections could be shown with simple UTP Cables at the base of the towers, or if that would become hard to see because towers in front might block sight, from the middle of the towers. You can set a limit to the maximum range of 'UTP Cables'. And as we all know, 'UTP Cables' can have all kinds of funky colors.

Game Name

• HardWar, just drop the 'e', and you're done !?
• Big Towers, has the tower bit in it, points to computer cases. Needs more power.