The power of feedback and more changes! plus PTD3 Mystery Gift!

Hail!

The power of feedback

So last week I released the first prototype for you to play with and take a look at how my initial ideas for Cosmoids TD have been taking shape. While I didn't get a huge amount of feedback, I did get some key ones that will actually impact and change the game.

The change I'm going to make is that instead of having your Avatar have to go to spots to place the cosmoids. The cosmoids will instead go from the Avatar to their spots. So the speed at which your units will move to and from spots will always be based on your cosmoids speed. This always allows you to quickly place your units on the map, instead of having to wait for your avatar.

However, even though your avatar will no longer be moving to place cosmoids I still plan to have your avatar move for things like healing or buffing your cosmoids.

More changes

Lately I've been focusing on how Cosmoids TD will be different from the PTD series. It's a mix of seeing what worked and what didn't work for PTD in my eyes and trying to change things up to make them more interested or require a little more planning. One of the first changes I thought about was about how your Cosmoids will level up.

Leveling Up

First a small history lesson, in PTD1 your towers would gain experience by battling, very similar to the original Pokemon games. Your tower had to be a part of the battle for it to gain experience. Once they gathered enough experience you could use your PokeDollars to level them up. This was pretty interesting to me because it made you have to make a choice in which tower you wanted to level up first. However as you played the game, the amount of dollars you got was so high that leveling up was no longer a problem and so there was no longer a choice.

So much so that in PTD2 and 3 I no longer had leveling up cost anything. Looking back I think Tower Defense games are very much about choosing what you do with your resources so this is something that I want to bring back for Cosmoids, with a twist.

My current idea is that when you defeat an enemy cosmoid you will earn what I'm calling "Meteor Dust", this dust is essentially your resource to do many things in the game including leveling up.

The change is that your Cosmoids doesn't have to see battle to level up, you can simple "give" it some Meteor Dust to make them level up. So you will still be battling to get dust and then once you have enough to level up your Cosmoids the game will let you know and then you can make your choice whether you want to use it to level up or to purchase an item etc. You can also choose which of your Cosmoids will get the dust. The challenge will be to keep the dust as a somewhat more limited resource compared to PTD1 where money was plentiful after a certain point in the game removing any choice.

Single and Active Attacks

As I'm designing Cosmoids I'm going through all the areas of PTD and seeing what I want to change and what I want to keep the same. So lately I've been looking at Attacks. In PTD your towers have 4 attacks to mirror what exist on the pokemon games. For Cosmoids I may be rethinking this, some of the ideas I have are towards lowering the amount of attack switching that can currently exist in the PTD series and focus more on interactive active attacks similar to Champions! The Last Defense, where you would have a more active role in attacking your waves.

As with everything, the design can change and evolve over time when creating a game so these can be subject to change.

PTD3 Mystery Gift!

For PTD3 while I'm no longer developing new content for it, like new levels etc. I will still be doing mystery gifts as I can do those relatively quickly.

This week's Mystery Gift is... Qwilfish!

I still have plenty of task for the Prototype v2, I've added the change in Tower placement as part of my list. You can play v1 of the Prototype by clicking here.

Prototype v2 Task:

• Design - How will leveling up and experience work? (100% Completed)
• Programming - Scrolling the map (100% Completed)
• Programming - Avatar no longer has to place Cosmoids in their spots (100% Completed)
• Design - Incoming Wave Alert System (100% Completed)
• Design - How much enemy unit information will you have in level? Before the level? (100% Completed)
• Art - Incoming Wave Alert Icon Placeholder Graphic (100% Completed)
• Art - Unit UI Graphics Used for buttons or menus (100% Completed)
• Programming - Incoming Wave Alert Location Tracking (0% Active)
• Programming - Incoming Wave Alert UI Popup and Confirmation (0% Not Started)
• Design - How to view friendly unit information? leveling up? targeting options?

As always let me know what you think in the comments below or email me at sam@sndgames.com or on my twitter!

Thanks for your support, and see you next week!

The path to a new Journey!

Hi everyone,

It's been over a year since my last blog post and I have to admit it feels a little weird, and nerve wracking, but at the same time exciting. So much has happened between then and now that changed and in some way liberated me. So I wanted to share some of that with all of you as well as talk about this new journey that I want to take. So let's get started!

I'm not one to tell a long story so I will cut this pretty short. In the middle of last year I had some medical complications that restricted me from sitting down for long periods of time, and that really impacted the amount of time I could work on games. It was a frustrating period as my full time job is also programming and so that required a lot of sitting. (A standing desk was not an option at the time for my office but has since become an option.)

After trying many solutions that didn't end up working, I ended up getting an out patient surgery that solved my problem. I was relieved and was ready to keep working on games again, but suddenly I got a big news announcement from my wife. We were expecting a baby!

This is Caleb! Our baby boy!

 Now it wasn't a complete surprise as we were trying to have a baby but we just didn't expect it so quickly! A lot of time has passed since then, 6 months to be more exact, and we know that we will have a boy and name him Caleb. Many of you might be a long way from having a child or might not be wanting to have kids (and that's perfectly fine) but for me having a child has actually been a dream of mine, and I'm looking forward to it.

The thing about having a child is that it really makes you think about your future and what kind of legacy you want to leave behind. This brings me to my decision and new path which I want for us to go in.

For a long time I've wanted to do an original game using Cosmoids. Cosmoids are pokemon like creatures that a group of artist and I came up with a while ago. The whole point was to make an original game using these creatures but for some reason or another it never happened. I always felt a responsibility to PTD, and it honestly felt like an obligation. Having a child has reminded me that this is not an obligation but something I do out of passion. Something that I should enjoy doing. I know that it may make some people disappointed or mad but I just can't work on PTD3 any more. The main issue with PTD is that I can't really share it with the world. It has to exist in sort of a shadow and that's not something that I want. I want to make a game and share it with everybody, have it be on different platforms (Flash has been slowly dying for years now, which is sad).

And so I've decided that I want to make a Tower Defense game like PTD but with Cosmoids. I believe that Tower Defense games can still be fresh and fun.

So in closing I want to say "Thank You". Whether you just started playing PTD or you've been around for a while. Thanks! If you are interested in being a part of this new journey I would love to have you, your feedback is invaluable to me and I would love to hear it.

So as always.. let me know what you think!

Sincerely,
Sam

New changes to Elemental Pokemon

Want to get the Shiny Starters? Shiny Zorua? Shiny legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!

Hey everyone, it's been a while since I did a new blog post but I really wanted to talk about the changes I did for Elemental Pokemon for this new update.

Since PTD3 came out there has been a lot of confusion around Elemental Pokemon and how they work. They way they previously worked (prior to version 1.19) is that the pokemon would lose its type and become the type of the elemental. With this new change the pokemon will keep its typing but instead add the new elemental type.

Here you can see a Water elemental Geodudce now has three types instead of just being Water

Elementals will now gain a type instead of replacing them.

A cool addition, and something that was suggested on twitter, is that if a pokemon gains an elemental type that it already has that it should power up that type even more. So it will work that way!

Here we have a Water Elemental Seaking, you will notice its type is Water/Water. What this means is that it will get double Stab power increase on its water type attacks!

Water elemental water pokemon will get double the STAB power up from Water attacks!

Along with this change, an elemental pokemon's attacks will no longer get turned into the elemental type. Instead elemental pokemon will be able to learn/relearn moves related to that type.

Here you can see that this Geodude can relearn a number of Water attacks.

Elemental pokemon can now learn/relearn elemental moves.

As you level your pokemon the number of elemental attacks they can learn increases. All the way up to 100. Also some elemental types, like Normal Type, can relearn more moves in general than other types.

That's all I have for the new elemental changes. As always let me know what you think in the comments below. Happy training!

Pokemon Tower Defense 3 in full swing! Special Birthday Elemental giveaway for the rest of the year!

Want to get the Shiny Starters? Shiny Zorua? Shiny legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!

Pokemon Tower Defense 3 in full swing!
Hey everyone!

Sam here, it's been a long time since I posted something on the blog and I think it's about time we started updating here.

If you haven't already be sure to follow me on twitter as I constantly post my progress and answer questions on there. You can find that on the left top side of this blog.

So PTD3 is out and in full swing. I just recently finished the basic Trading Center section for PTD3 and the reason it took so long is that I did a new layout for it that is mobile friendly. So you are able to access that on your phones a lot easier and it will look great. I don't plan to update the other sections of the trading center to the new layout since I want to focus on PTD3 levels etc.

For PTD3 I do have some cool updates and features on the way. I plan to add different pokeballs and special pokemon (like the Kyogre in level 6) that will be catchable only with the different pokeballs.

I also plan to add secrets to each level that will unlock special pokemon. For example getting Alola Rattata in level one.

Also I will have something similar to the Hall of Fame in PTD2 for PTD3. Instead it will focus on collecting all the different elemental versions or having a set amount of elementals to unlock certain pokemon or items/avatars for your account.

Elemental giveaway for the rest of the year!

So every year I do a special giveaway and this year is no different. Elemental Mew is the first mystery gift for PTD3! Everyday there will be a new elemental type of Mew given away until the end of the year. In January we will have a new mystery gift but I'm not sure if all the elements will be available for it. It may only be some or just one.

So that's all I have for now, thanks for your support as always and I do plan to update the blog more often with cool behind the scenes as well as any other announcements I make.

Cheers!