Year 3: Game update: Towers: Disperser (Ranged tower)

Disperser

The Disperser is the basic defense tower in the game it is meant to be a mid ranged tower with most of it properties being in the mid range level. Its is designed to be one of the most used towers  by the players because of its overall design at being a jack of all trades Tower with its medium staff in most areas as defense and attack.

Research:

The idea for this tower  came from our whole host of our defense games as is one of the most common structures in those games. Ranging from RTS games that are different games feel seem to have a  common structure that has a basic attack. Some example of games that have towers like this are.

Bloons tower defense 5

Ant buster 

Here are just some of the many examples i can give to where this idea came from for this tower.

Blueprints:
The blueprint design for this tower is based on the "Default tower" with all of changes not to the default blueprint but it add a lot more of it own scripts. We first start off with make the towers pivots rotates the face of the enemy units when it fires.

The way this Blueprint work that we start off with a copy of event tick from the "Event tick"meaning that this update will happen every frame. we go straight into a branch which checks if the enemy units is valid this is to make sure that a unit is actually targeted. We then go into another branch which checks to see if the target enemy is within the same distance of the tower range this  means that a target enemy can only be shot at once into the tower range. we then finally set world rotation of the tower pivot by using nodes.  we start off with the two objects " tower pivot" and "target enemy"we then get the locations of both these objects and user node called " find lock at rotation" this gives us rotation variable which then we break and use a two axis Y(pitch) and Z(Yew) we then make the rotation backup.we then add this to a node called "Rinterp to" what this node doors is rotates the tower pivot over time towards this location.it takes in the object it needs to rotate which is the tower pivot rotation. it then takes the rotation from the nodes we have just constructive. And then takes delta the time and finally the interp speed this is the speed the tower pivot will move at.

The tower firing blueprint works with a copy event from the "event tick" there is no need for the lay as this node comes later in the appointment. We go straight into a branch which checks to see towers reloading if false then go to the next branch. This branch checks the distance from the "tower barrel" to the "target enemy" if the distance between these two objects is less than or equal to the tower range it then proceeds to the branch as true. The next branch checks to see if the target enemy is valid meaning that if this variable is set it then proceeds with the branch is true. Once the branches have been meet a line trace is then drawn from the tower barrel variable to the target enemy variable both using these locations imported into the  line traced by channel node. Next  the output variable is broken as to find the object hit by the line trace. we then check to see if this object has the tag of "Enemy" if true it then passes through the branch. we then send an event to the object hit by the lime tree using an interface blueprint. we also send a variable across this event which is the "tower damage per shot" we then set the variable tower reloading to true this then stops the wind trees from being fired repeatedly. we then use a delay which takes the variable "Tower rate of fire PS" as the delay time once this delay is finished it then sets the tower reloading variable to false.

These blueprints are more cosmetic than the others the blueprint is triggered by an event is called " show Tower range" this event is triggered from the user interface it starts off by setting the scale of the tower range object. The scale is worked out by taking the "Tower Range" variable dividing it by 100 then times by two this is how the units of UE4 are worked out in real space. we then set the scale of the tower range object in the X and Y axis.

for a aesthetic choice I chose that the tower range will only be shown once the tower is selected by the player. So not a cause overlap with other towers and thus not confuse the player. The blueprint started to events both coming from the user interface which both triggered when the tower is selected and the selected. Once  the tower is selected the variable tower is selected is change to true then the set hidden in game four tower range object is set to false so that the object appears we then also do a new calculation on the tower range and set this to the range object similar to the events on show tower range this is so that if the tower range has changed between selections it can be updated to reflect that visually. 

for one hour is deselected it is simply reverted with the tower is selected variable  set to falsethen changing the sex hidden in game with the tower range object to true meaning it then hide the subject from the player's site.

Variable balancing:

When it comes to balancing with this tower because I have not made any towels before this and this is the first tower that can shoot. I mostly guess the variables for the tower and in three playtest and later would balance them accordingly.

The tower damage Is set to 10 as best line 

The rate of fire is set to half a second so that the tower looks like if five quite rapidly.

The Tower range even though the value was set quite high this is a medium range for a tower.

The damage type array variable is set to 2 different variable one being " normal" and the other being "Pure"

The combat description variable this attack string that shows the description of the Tower one and a selected this is simply explaining what the tower does and how it works.