Question on the new fieldrunners

Endless indeed

As far as I can tell, after level 100 the same wave repeats itself. I left my Ipod running on the bed while I worked out and came back to level 175 or so with the enemies dying at the same spot etc. I was hoping it would give a mix of enemies like it had been doing, but perhaps use a formula to scale their difficulty to an infinite level. But thats just me.

All in all i'm fairly satisfied with the sound effects, though I will agree that there aren't many ways to play the game at the moment (though that didn't stop me from wasting about 3 hours on it last night). The way the enemies come kind of forces only one kind of method to survive. Hopefully the next update will help with this *sorry if i hijacked your thread*

What would be great is if upgrading towers changed their properties. For instance upgrading altered range, rate of fire, or even changed the tower into a slighly different type of weapon. I think this would add a lot more strategy (or at least variability). The "upgrade" doesn't always have to go in a upwards direction either. For instance:

Machine Gun upgrade 1: Increased Damage
Machine Gun upgrade 2: Increased Damage
Machine Gun upgrade 3a: Howitzer with increased damage and rof, but decreased range. OR
Machine Gun upgrade 3b: A rifle with increased range but decreased rof.

I feel if each of the 4 towers had a final branching path it "could" add more stretegy and give some additional leeway. It would be nice if it wasn't such a straight forward progression trying to get lots of lightning towers. Also an option to manually proceed to the next wave, or fast forward would be wonderful in the next patch!

 

I really like Fieldrunners. It is polished, makes fun, the sound is great (yeah, Cannon Fodder!!), but I feel a bit bored after a while. I mean, the runners repeat, the towers are always the same. I like the new map and it will keep me entertained for a while, but I see myself surprisingly often coming back to Besiegement ("surprisingly" means, that I reinstall it once a week ). I really hate the interface and tiny sprites of Besiegement and love Fieldrunners for their perfect presentation, but Besiegement has more content. I really wish, that Fieldrunners gets more maps, towers and versatile upgrade possibilities.

I'd also like to have different weapons for different maps. It now feels that we have a medieval map and a sf map, but only sf weapons. Where is fire, bows and arrows, hot oil etc. on the medieval map? Regarding the graphical quality of this game it would be THE TD game...

Remember what a fantastic feeling it was playing Warcraft 1 or 2 and see hundreds of arrows flying to your opponents? Now think of THAT on your iPhone. Yeah, Besiegment has this, but it's so tiny and ugly, that you just can't see anything.

 

Then maybe iTD would be something for you. I'm not just here to advertise it, I've been considering various TD games myself for a while. I ended up purchasing iTD yesterday exactly for this reason: it has more content than Fieldrunners and nicer graphics than Besiegement.

(Since it's the only TD game I own I can't really compare it to any other TD game out of my own experience, though.)

 

I want "real" graphics, no pseude geometric stuff like Firewall. Only Fieldrunners and Besiegement offer this...

 

I am working on implementing an interesting Survival mode for our unreleased TD game. Its not easy. I been playtesting it every day and I find little things to add to make it interesting.

The key thing about Survival mode is that its all about the score. So with this in mind, I been thinking of adding things that affect the score differently. Thats something to keep in mind.

Its also a requirement to make the Survival mode get progressively harder. But this is really hard to achieve without just increasing the HP of the enemies. Should we reduce the income? Make enemies go faster? Increase number of enemies?

We have different types of enemies, and tower types that specialize in each of these types.

What are some of your suggestions? I can try to incorporate them.

 

Cool! Are you planning to have betatesters from this forum or will you test "in-house"?

Maybe have less time between enemies. You can of course only decrease time up to a certain point (I assume you'll want to leave at least 2 seconds between waves). But if you have towers that slow down enemies and waves follow each other more quickly, you'll likely have the second wave approach a certain spot on the field when the previous (slowed down) wave is still there. This makes it harder because your weapons have to attack more enemies, so they can't handle it all.

Or maybe make your game so that towers only last for 10 waves? After that they've lost their power and you need to remove them and build new towers on that place.

I'm not really experienced with Tower Defence games so I'm not sure if I'd be ready for such variations on the genre, but I imagine that I could be open to it later on. With Sudoku, I now rather play a variation (such as Killer Sudoku) than the original game.

 

The first thing I would suggest is not having one "uber" tower that everyone desires. You should have multiple viable options at the top tier. Also I would consider overlapping waves. The way I would do it is have the game know when a wave has been eliminated, and if the wave is eliminated within a certain time frame, there is an increased chance to have concurrent waves (Is that complicated to code? Don't know, i'm just a suggestion guy).

I would also implement a random resistance (It's already been done, i know). Perhaps give bosses the chance to develop a single resistance to a tower (maybe even immunity) based on the most prominent on the field.

Perhaps allow a boss to even crave a type of tower (chance based on whether or not there are many towers of that type placed). For instance, if electric towers are all over the field, a boss type would have an chance to get healed by the tower instead of taking damage (Or move faster). This would require that the player be able to disable (turn off) towers.

I think for the game to have lasting appeal, you need enemies that can adapt. This would give the game at least some method to do so, causing players to shut off certain towers, or remove a certain type in order to build new types.

If you are going to allow towers to be turned off, I would suggest having the option to turn them off individually, and also double tap the build icon to turn off/on all towers of that type.

Oh, if you do something like this though, I think you'd want to give the player the power to customize what is active in the survival mode. I.E. turning the adaptation on/off etc.

Edit: Just noticed you mentioned scoring. If implementing an idea similar to this (In which the player's actions affect the difficulty of the enemies). A score bonus for killing those bosses would give incentive to actually provoke the bosses into developing resistance, or developing a "craving", knowing that it would be more difficult to kill them because you have to then shut those towers off.

The scenario would look something like this:

The boss rolls in, and the field is filled with electric nukem powerblast towers (tm). The boss gets incinerated in 5 seconds. Since the boss was eliminated within a certain time frame AND the field is full of electric nukem powerblast towers (tm). The next boss has a good chance to have either resistance, immunity, or a "craving" for electricity, AND the wave that was supposed to come after him instead accompanies him onto the field as backup.

If the player still manages to eliminate this next boss, he would get a bonus to score depending on whether he was resistance, immune, or craving, and whether or not he had backup. So a player may actually be gunning for that scenario, knowing that he would have a harder time taking them out. I imagine that you would have to let the player know the event he just triggered. I assume ala quake style with a manly voice saying "Craving!". Or something.

Anyways look forward to seeing a good game coming in, if you use any of these ideas, my name looks great in scrolling credits (Pm me )!

Err, sorry for the long post.

 

Interesting suggestions so far.

We don't have an uber tower, but we do have this one tower that can get uber if upgraded enough times. I been trying to reduce its uberness though. What I am aiming for is teamwork within the towers, and less reliance on these uber towers. Adding various creature types and having towers specialize in the creature types has helped.

One thing that I was thinking of adding is bosses that regenerate hp. I have a feeling that this would be really tough (gameplay wise I mean), but very effective. This is similar to your healing tower suggestion.

Enemies that can adapt is a good idea to allow for emerging dynamic gameplay. I might look into that actually. I am not sure how to do it, but any suggestions are welcome. One idea would be if too many slow towers are present, then either more of our immune types (yap we have that), or enemies becoming more resistant to that particular tower. That way, the player has to sell that tower and rebuild it?

I am not sure about turning towers on/off. I think it might be too much micro-management. I will think on it though.

On that note, how would you feel about towers loosing their effectiveness over time? Kinda like armor losing its value and needs to be repaired? But in this case more like rebuilt. Is taht too much micromanagement?

Keep em coming.

 

Yeah, I know that some people would not like the idea of turning towers on and off, but thats why you have a setting that would turn off enemies adapting in that manner. That way people arent forced to turn towers on, or off to play the game, but those that want to be able to manage it, can. I think the loss of effectiveness might be too much, unless it's an option that can be turned off.

I don't think it is good to force people to micromanage, but allow them that option if they want added depth to the game.

Talking about towers working together. You mean like towers that dont cause damage but maybe assist other towers? Like a tower that paints a target to increase damage done to it by other towers in the radius? If you are going to go that in depth, you might as well make it multiplayer with the other person controlling the enemies, or turn it into an rts

 

I like a lot of the suggestions that people have given so far. This sounds like it will be a welcome addition to the app store. If you're looking for beta testers, I'd love to help out. I've just started playing TD games but am really enjoying them. I'll be happy to pick yours up when it's in the store!!

 

I have betatesters playing through and giving me feedback. I don't plan to add any more people for now, and probably till release. I might expand that group for future updates though (and perhaps future games if this succeeds).

 

I think a greater variation of fieldrunners and maps would extend the longevity of the game more than micromanagement ideas like tower depreciation.
As some have mentioned, have some FRs that have immunity to certain weapons (eg. one carried shield to avoid bullets) or move faster (eg. fighter jets), more HP (eg. B52 bombers) or even more advanced stuff (Stealth jets or anti-heat-seeking protection from missiles).
One suggestion from others I'm liking is the specialisation of towers at the top-end. Eg. On the third upgrade, you can customise the machine gun to either a sniper-rifle kind (long range, high power, slow reloading), or complete berserker minigun (low range, high power, fast reload).
Goo gun: Specialise into Firewall (does damage as well as slow down), or icestorm (also damage and slowdown), but later FR's have immunity to one or the other attribute.
Rockets: Specialise into a nuke (mega expensive, low range, one-time shot, destroys itself and also nearby own towers!) or ICBM (longer range, slow reload)
Lightning: Specialise into a power generator, feeding power into a nearby coil boosting that one's power (higher damage, slower reload)
Maps can be designed to have things like mountains or lakes that prevent one from building towers there. As per Red Alert 2, have user-submitted maps kept on your servers for integrating into the game, thus keeping things challenging and fresh.
About the rounds of Fieldrunners:
Have the waves coming at a constant rate rather than waiting for the round to be completed. Like Desktop Tower Defense, there's a timebar to show when the next one will come, and the user can also accelerate the rounds too. That gives more points, but obviously greater difficulty.

Just suggestions of course, please do playtest to ensure the gameplay balance is right.
Am absolutely loving this game!!!

 

Hmm you just reminded me of another TD from Warcraft 3, idk if it would fit in well with Fieldrunners, but maybe have a tower that requires it to be built right next to a power generator (The power generator powers the tower) and the generator can only power x number of towers

 

Random Inconvenience

I was just playing a couple TD games and was thinking that one thing that could make it more difficult (and possibly quite frustrating) would be a kamikaze type enemy that would detonate at a random (or weighted) point on the field thus either downgrading or even destroying whichever tower(s) it was closest to. The later the stage, the more likely it is for this lil bastard to show up and ruin your carefully planned out strategy.

You would have to be careful with the implementation though - don't want too many people throwing their iPhone/touch across the room in anger. Just a thought.