This game sounds amazing! Looking through the forum posts though it seems no one has gotten it working on a windows 7 machine yet. I tried to get direct x 7, but it said it was incompatible with my version of windows. Has any one had any luck getting it to work for windows 7?

Dark, the game now offers 2 types of path description.  Simply pressing E will play a simple version that just says where the monsters enter, where they exit, and that the exit is where your base is.  If players want more detailed path information, pressing SHIFT and E brings up the older description that includes each turn of the path.  Let me know what you think of it.

I've actually changed level 4 and 5 around to make things easier.  I've also been getting stuck at the bugs so hopefully this will fix that.    If all goes as planned, you should find level 4 to be slightly easier and you'll earn 10 more gold total.  That will, ideally, give you a few more options for starting level 5 in terms of towers or upgrades... because I tended to be just slightly too poor to do what I'd like at that point.  The bugs themselves have had their health reduced so they might not be as hard to mow down.  If this change works as I hope, you'll actually be glad when the bugs show up because it will mean a lot of new gold coming in to prepare you for what lies in the levels ahead.  Lots of bug kills = a lot of gold. 

Pitermach is right about the ogg format.  It will be far easier for me to use wavs even though they are larger in file size.  What I'll end up doing is recording all of the words myself and just posting them.  Anyone who is interested in participating can download the zip and record their own version of each file.  It sounds strange, but I need a handful of different voices saying each thing.  Oh that remind me!  I had a buddy over yesterday (the reason I didn't get much done lol) and he was very excited about the combat game.  *clears throat* I MAY have secretly been working on that game too for the past few days.    Now that I've let that slip, I'm a little tempted to start a thread detailing what works/doesn't work so far in that game too!  Don't worry though guys, my primary focus has been on the tower defense game so we can get this thing finished.

I've got a lot of work still ahead of me today, but I am uploading a new version that fixes a handful of issues.  The existing game link is on the first post now too.

Do you guys have any suggestions for the game's official name?  I'll reserve the final say for myself, but I'd love to hear any suggestions (since I haven't been thinking about it).

Well I think that's all the time I have today.  Work on the game will have to continue tomorrow.  I just posted another update that fixes more problems, adds the difficulty settings, and gives options for saving and loading games.  Now you won't have to start at the beginning each time yay!   The link on the first post is updated.

Microwave towers work great on bugs... just a tip. 

OH!  I almost forgot... besides the tile-skipping problem, please let me know if you guys spot ANY bugs even if you've mentioned them already.  I think I've fixed most (if not all) of them and I'd like to know if some still need more work.  Thanks again for the testing guys... you all ROCK! 

Ivandrago, are you getting the error each time you try to play now?  If so, what exactly does the error say?

There is no uninstall for the game because there isn't currently an "install".  You don't have to worry about it leaving anything on your system... once you delete it, it is completely gone.

Thanks dan
Even though there is a whole ton of other information to share (range, rate of fire, price per upgrade) I'll go over each tower's damage and general characteristics.  As things are being balanced, some of these stats might change.

The Rifle tower starts out at 8 damage.  Upgrades take it to 16, 32, 64, and finally 128 damage.  The Rifle tower is your basic tower that works pretty well in all situations.  It isn't specialized for any specific job.  Don't forget about the trusty old rifle tower after you see the cool features of the other towers... these towers are pretty cheap and they get pretty useful as you upgrade them.

The Cannon tower starts out at 68 damage.  Upgrades take it to 120, 200, 380, and finally 710 damage.  When this tower hits an enemy, the blast also hurts any monsters who are on the same grid.  Some types of monsters group very close together as they run around the path.  Usually this makes them harder, but this is exactly what the cannon tower is made for.

The Sniper tower starts out at 40 damage.  Upgrades take it to 100, 250, 265, and finally 1565 damage.  Some tiles are just way too far from the path for the other towers to reach.  The sniper tower starts with a long range, and each upgrade makes it even longer!  It attacks super slow, but as you can see, upgrades exponentially increase its damage.  When Golems or Dragons attack with thousands of health points... it is nice to have a sniper tower around.

The Micro-wave tower starts out at 1 damage.  Upgrades take it to 1.5, 2.5, 4, and finally 6 damage.  This seems low, but the tower attacks super super fast AND it hurts any monsters within range.  Other towers have to aim at someone, but the Micro wave tower is beaming pain in all directions each time it shoots.  These are great to put at corners so the enemies spend the most time in its range.  If you're having trouble with huge swarms of low-health enemies (Like Bugs and Imps) you'll want to give this tower a try.

The Frost tower doesn't actually do any damage.  Instead, it will cripple an enemy and slow down how fast it can walk.  It starts at 20% speed reduced.  Upgrades take it to 30%, 40%, 50%, and finally 60% speed reduced.  I'd suggest you place Frost towers close to the beginning of the path so it can start crippling enemies right away.  The monsters who escape the frost will march away and face your other towers, but the ones who are crippled will probably not get there until long after their faster brothers are dead.  This gives you an advantage because your normal towers didn't have to fight as many enemies at once.  Usually the crippled monsters can be killed off easily because each of your towers has more time to shoot them.

Hopefully this helps a bit

So you had the grid voice stop working even though the grid was still turned on?  Hmm, that's a new bug... I'll look in to it.

Haha I still find it hilarious that this forum replaces the word micro-wave (if put together) with the word spam.  I'm going to get so many people asking about the mysterious "Spam" tower lol. 

The stats being incorrectly read isn't your imagination... I've had plenty of people mention it and I've even heard it myself once or twice.  I'm convinced it is a typo somewhere in a certain section of the code, but even narrowing it down I haven't spotted it yet.  I will though!  lol.  When you first go to buy a tower, it is telling you the stats (damage, range, rate of fire) that it will begin with.  If the error is in the section I believe it is in, there is a chance it could have even been reading those stats off incorrectly to you.  This problem is also linked to the fact that it doesn't initialize properly and you still hear upgrades from the previous game.

I started to fix the lingering tile sounds yesterday, but something distracted me... I forget what it was.  I'll keep that one on my immediate to-do list as well, since that one bugs me too!  Related to it, when it glitches and you hear the monsters approaching but NOT leaving that annoys me.  I like knowing when I've hit the end of the enemies so I can feel a little better about my defenses. 

Lukas, I almost forgot to mention I'll look into the problem with the keys.

Keeping people on the map and removing the border Does seem like a good idea, and I think bladestorm (I could be wrong) suggested that once too.  Back when the game was in its early stages of development... what, like 3 days ago? haha... I didn't have the border on the map.  I know everyone would have different skills, but I was having a terrible time trying to move around and keep my bearings.  I suppose it is because I use the mouse rather than the keyboard... when pressing an arrow key you KNOW you're moving 1 tile in that direction, but moving the mouse means you have to hear your way around.  Without the border I kept stopping too soon or too late when I wanted to move to the tiles at the edges.
If we get more people who think I should remove the border, I will gladly do it.    I do have a different idea I could try for how to make the mouse-users more stable around the edges.  I'll leave that up to you guys though... I'm peddling the bike but you guys are stearing!     ... and that's exactly how it should be for game development, in my opinion.

Be careful for the static sound. When I start the game, I always start outside of the map, lol. Usually, many presses of the right and down arrow keys help me to get to charted area.
Aprone, thanks for the reaction. :-)
By the way, I think you really do need to look at saving. The last time I have figured out a wonderful strategy, have successfully completed level 8 with the 3 golems, had 666 gold and 7 lives remaining but I had to save. Some settings apparently are not saved at all or properly, as it then didn't announce any towers, when I pressed r, it just told me some random letters and numbers, and when I moved over to where I knew I had a tower and wanted to upgrade it, it offered to upgrade damage to 0, etc. LOL
So unfortunately I had to forfeit that game but it rocked! I think I finally know how to go about this. :-)
Just a little tip for those still struggling: It's wonderfully efficient to slow the enemies down right at the beginning. AFter that, when you get to higher levels, you'll start earning more and more gold. :-)
Hope this helps,
Lukas

All right, okay and thanks. It really is not that much of a deal to me, I was just surprised how well that particular strategy worked. Smile
About high scores, I personally don't really know, but I still think option #2 would be better anyway. Should eliminate any possibilities of cheating if the game automatically tried to submit the score upon completion, so it would be fair and equal to everyone. :-)
Just my thoughts.
Lukas

That game is pretty cool! I just got a score of 3459 on easy, which I don't think is too bad, and I only used 3 towers. I died though, that level 3 is pretty hard for me. The horse things are hard. I used 2 microwave towers 1 rifle tower. And I upgraded the micro wave towers to do like 160 shots a minute and 2 damage each shot and a range of 2.2 tiles, and put them at a7 and b7 and c7 and beat those monsters down, until the 6th level with the boars.

Hey all,

First let me say this is an amazing effort. I love the idea of this game, as well as the multiplayer combat idea that has been mentioned.
Secondly, i confirm that jim kitchen's winkit indeed enables windows 7 x64 compatibility ... I think.
The game loaded, gave no errors and didn't die in the least when i tried. It could be that some things dont do what they should ...but I dunno what they should be doing so can't quite comment on that.
Thirdly can someone PLEASE make a playthrough of this game? I've tried but usually i get owned at level 4 or so. I own levels 1 and 2, in level 3 i usually lose 15 of my 20 lives and at level 4 i lose the remaining 5. but i totally lose my way once the monsters come .  its pretty much pray your towers get em all usually. Also, I'm not sure if this is a bug or not but when i built a micro-wave tower and checked its menu it said 'upgrade damage to 1 point'  is that right? :S

Balliol

Hi,

I'm willing to test any new versions that come out, for both projects and eventual others you have. I own a windows xp and a windows 7 box, i have dabbled in vinux which is an accessibe linux distribution and I'm about to receive my macbook so i cn test every conceivable OS
Also a walkthrough would be brilliant. As i said i seem to have a bit of trouble

Watching the thread,
Balliol