BA6: research: Super Sanctum TD

Super Sanctum TD

super sanctum 3-D is a retro-styled arcades tower defence game. Available for download on steam this tower defence game is similar to many other tower defence games with a few twists and turns. Sanctum doesn't have much in the way of a storyline that more or less tells the player to destroy the enemies before they reach a certain point because they are bad and that's pretty much.

In terms of gameplay sanctum varies from traditional tower defence game is in a way that the path that the enemies use in sanctum cans early on where players will place their towers. Also as well the powers and special abilities to the player are used in a kind of infant terry system which the player is only allowed to bring a certain number of towers and special abilities with them into the level.

Enemy pathing

when the player enters the game there are greeted with a map view overlooking the area where the game will be played. on this map will be a half showing the enemy's path from their base to yours this will be shut represented by a dotted line moving constantly between your base and there is. To increase the length of the enemy's journey you can block off parts of the path the enemy is going to take so they have to do find a mother path round which is often longer this is used to slow down the enemy and allow your towers to have more time to attack them and whittle them down. The aim of building towers to prevent this path is to increase the enemy is time that they have to take to beat the end and is a clever gameplay mechanic as it allows players to sign out where they were on the enemy to go in order to build their defences in a tactical approach.

Upgrades perks

perks allow  players to upgrade that I was outside of the main game itself be able to do this with the use of perks in a perk tree. the pair treat yourself into five different tiers of upgrades the first is physical Towers this will both towers that use physical damage to destroy enemies giving them various upgrades permanently when the player enters a game making them more efficient. The second tier of upgrades is  energy Towers this is towers that will use energy attacks to defeat enemies will give certain buffs the amount their product to battery this as well is permanent. The third tier tree is a economy this will help with the source collection and also make your towers more efficient at collecting resources from former enemies.  the fourth skilled trade is skills these are the abilities of the player can use themselves to gain an advantage over the enemy this will increase their efficiency and also cooldown times so that can be used more often. the last to upgrade it affects these will affect any of the towers that use different effects on enemies for example a tower has a chance to store that is in effect this will both these effects and make them last longer or even reduce their cool downs or maybe even give them extra damage in various cases.

This perk selection is a way of allowing players to advance through the game by letting them upgrade the towers permanently. This allows players to build up a profile with a aim all their rewards and keep them forever which means the more a player plays the game the better they will become an more grateful Mark is a very powerful mechanic and keep people interested in the game and having long play sessions.

Tower selector

the Tower select that is a menu that appears before every mission in the game what this does is allows players to select from an inventory of towers and allows them to bring in  up to 4 towers of their choosing this is a way of limiting players to be more tactical about their choices as players maybe am not able to unlock up to 15 towers they may only bring in a set number to that of certain arenas.  this is to encourage tactical play from players instead of giving the players all the towers to choose from and allowing them to put them down the player must be tactical in their thinking and shoes the towers that will greatly help them in the current level as well this adds another layer of player progression as they will see through the more they play the game the more towers there will be able to unlock.

special skill selector

Similar to the Tower select the main menu that special skill select the menu allows players to choose from a multitude of different special skills and bring four of them into the level of the these special skills can be timed explosions which will affect enemies in a certain radius which then have a cooldown or they could be global explosions which will wipe the map of all enemies but with a bigger cooldown others include teleportation in which players can place down a teleporter which resumes enemies straight back to the beginning in order to stop them from reaching the players base. this menu is virtually identical to the Tower menu  in layouts and also the way where this is well offers players a way of seeing  what they have asked what  they have on marked and also how they progressed. This is well is another tactical choice but the developers to give more complex play to their game at that players have to do carefully plan out what abilities to use which will be useful for that level instead of giving the player all of the abilities to use one this adds  another layer of difficulty to the levels as players have to be tackled with a choice of abilities to pick.

Towers

once in the game the playercan just towers and place them on designated areas around the map. The player will have four towers to choose from to place down in the said areas. The player can then select each tower and see different stats and information about the tower. Also when the tower selected it will show a previous marker of how far the tower can fire. Once tower selected there are a small box will appear underneath giving the name of the tower and also the different stats of a power such as fibre rate and damage.

Tower upgrading

Tower Bridge and feature is a relatively simple featureless game as there is a button at the bottom of the screen the players compressed than hover over a tower and will give them a number on how much the tower will cost to upgrade. As well as once that I was selected to upgrade it  will show what the new stats of the ability that will be before purchasing in the stats part of the tower showing that what will chang for the tower when it is upgradede.

Tower upgrades physical changes

one of the towers are upgrade they will receive a physical change on the map from the original model or Sprite they will become something different with subtle changes at the more tower is upgraded the more physical changes will occur to. The example pictures of the top show to towers next whichever of the same type one is upgraded and has small physical changes. The image on the right shows the normal tower next to a fully upgraded tower showing that is completely different with all new physical objects based on this to show the player clearly that this towers upgraded without the player to click on them but also it may convey some of the new upgrades of the tower.

 Synopsis of the game

personally I found the game to be quite enjoyable I definitely enjoyed the Pathfinder mechanic in a way that you could affect it and force the enemy is to go down the same route as I thought that gave a lot more control of the game I also enjoyed the physical changes of the towers as I for it gave the game more depth. The pair copper grade I thought was the best feature as it allowed a kind of advancements are players who kept on playing the game making the player more more powerful and I thought this is a very incredible feature I didn't enjoy so much the Tower selection menu as it felt like I was being limited to any for towers and I feel that the should have been more available to the player. But another one of the best features was the special abilities as this offered the player more interaction and also The player more fixated  on the game instead of getting bored from just watching towers shoot all the time.

Good point about the game

So the good points I found about this game were definitely these physical upgrading features and also the perfect style menu that could be viewed away from levels as I felt these gave more  progression for me as I felt the more I played the better I was going at the game and also I was able to create more more complex towers defend my base with. One of the other great points a fan of the game was the path finding system as I found this to be very unique and a very good way of personally controlling which directions the enemies are going to force them into its vantage points for myself. In summary the point are found to be good about this game where

.Perk tree

.Path finding system

.Player controlled special abilities 

Bad point about the

The bad points that I found about this game where the limited amount of towers and special abilities that could be brought into the game as they were only limited to 4 per level and that you couldn't bring all the towers together in one level. I felt that this was limiting the play experience and also meant that if I wanted to combine towers together I could only use a very limited amounts and it felt very limited into the game play experience. as well I felt that the amount of towers that could be placed on the map was weight limiting and maths this kind of meant that I was meant to play more tactical the towers but also felt like I had no room for error in the missions which dampened my experience a little.In summary the bad points of the scheme were.

.limited abilities to bring towers into levels

.limited abilities to bring special abilities into levels

.Limited tower placement

How this game can help influence mine

In summary this game was very helpful in deciding some features that I was to implement my game I think using a check system of some kind allowing players to progress is a very unique and is an essential experience that I may have to put into my game. As well as plays using special abilities to destroy enemies as this offers another way of interaction to the player and feel it is good to keep them engaged in the game. The limited tower option in this game has also convinced me that I shouldn't put a system like this in my game as it may dampen people experience and is well I'm going to offer large amounts of tower placement to allow for the players to compensate if they make wrong decisions are wrong places in placing towers. the point are going to take away from this game in summary are.
.upgrading system outside of the normal level
.player controlled special ability
.allow players to have a vast amount our towers
.allow players to have a vast amount of place to place towers

BA6: research: Balloons Tower defense 5

Balloons Tower Defense 5

Balloons tower defense is a single player tower defense game. Balloons Tower defence started as a free web game that was very simple in its first instalment. Over time the game developed  and became more complex as a result. with the game has reached the fifth instalment they had four more towers than it had in any of its instalments and also had  micro-transactions on the three web version.  These micro-transactions will allow players to unlock various towers and various different items. Afterwards the creators decided to release a full game variation on steam for digital download. This full version came with all the complete towers and special upgrades that the micro-transaction websites have.

Story

The game has very little story and more or less just allows players to decide on what that is. The only real promise of the game is that you're on the monkeys to you and your chance to stop balloons and that's pretty much it. the levels are  set up as a path for the enemies to go upon to reach the young and upon reaching the end will subtract life away from the player. And it's your job to stop the balloons from reaching the end. This can be dawn with multiple types of tower all doing various different to the fax to the enemies.

Enemies

the enemies in the game very some difficulty with the beginning enemies being popped the single hit from any of the towers. Scaling up to the massive enemies that take hundreds if not thousands of hits to destroy as many variation between from balloons that will regenerate over time if they are not part and also balloons can only be popped by certain towers and other balloons that can slip under the radar of your towers unless you have a upgrade on the radar tower to help your book towers see them all of this combined three enjoyable ground-based game having multiple difficulties for different players and allow closed-end mountains and high schools on various different levels.

Environment building

 The game also as well features two different types of terrain in which to build units on for example on grounds of players can instruct most types of Towers books on readers or oceans the players can only construct seaworthy towers such as boats and submarines  both of these towers are considered to be highly valued as they offer their high damage for a low-cost books they can are only be ports often in certain places on the map.

Towers

I'll be running through the different power place in the game and given a little description on how they work within the game.

Dart Monkey

This tower is considered to be the most basic as is the cheapest enemy fires single darts at a time. This means that I'll can only take one balloon at a time but through upgrades this tower can be upgraded to do a lot more damage. It is often the first tower that is put down on the map and is the most basic of all the towers.

Track Shooter

The tracks you are tower is much different than the basic tower as the truck tower will not lock onto a target which you are it will release a wave of spikes that will hit enemies within its perimeter. This is best to be placed on map corners or  where the point of the map make almost a U-turn as to gain maximum effect this is the whole point of the tower that is more to be used in certain choke points to gain advantage over its area effect.

Sniper Monkey

The sniper tower has an unlimited range which means it could be placed on any part of the map I will be able to fire and destroy enemies. The sniper tower other is not really made for high amounts of enemies is more designed to take down the strongest of the enemies its upgrades as it does the most damage to a single target meaning that it is better to only have 2 to 4 of these towers instead of using them as a main defence.

Boomerrang Thrower

The boomerang tower is a cross between the normal dark Tower and the spike for a time as it fires a boomerang which circles round in an arc popping enemies. This is meant to be a cross between both of those towers bringing both of their advantages together as a upgrading can become alot faster and more efficien.

Ninja Monkey

the Ninja tower is similar to the normal dark Tower but I can see Cameron balloons which are invisible to most of towers this makes it a vital tower to place in order to avoid being attacked by Cameron balloons which your towers cannot defend against.

Bomb Tower

The bomb tower is a cannon that  fires explosive shots which can affect multiple balloons in an area they are also one of the only units that can pop lead balloons which cannot be hit by normal towers and have to be broken first by the bomb tower making this a necessity to be placed on the map during a game.

Ice Tower

ice towers have a similar range of fact to the track Tower books they freeze all balloons in a certain area in place and allow them not to move for a certain amount of time this makes them vulnerable to other Tower attacks and is a great way of slowing down the advance of the balloons towards the end of the track these are often placed at the beginning of a track allowing towers more time to attack them and with all the numbers down.

Glue Gunner

The cooling tower is mostly different from all other towers as it will not do damage to the enemies until upgraded. The glue tower slows down the movements of the balloons to almost half the normal rates meaning that this tower is often placed right at the beginning in order to effect the balloons as much to account through upgrading the slow rate and how long the glue last fall can be increased.

Monkey Buccaneer

the ship tower is a more advanced version of the dark Tower firing many darts out a second but has one significant drawback. The biggest drawback of this tower is that it can only be placed on water and often on maps of water is very scarce meaning that not many of these towers can be placed.

Monkey Ace

The monkey ace tower  release as a plane into the air which will affect all balloons in a certain area with area affect damage from this plane. the monkey tower uses the airbase as the placement on the grounds meaning that has to be space for this power to be placed and also the plane will only circle a certain area meaning of this tower should mostly be placed in high enemy populated area for maximum effect.

Super Monkey

The super monkey tower is considered to be the highest tier of Tower dealing with massive amounts of damage to balloon units it is similar to a dark Tower but that if I is an immensely faster. The biggest drawback to this tower is how expensive it is to produce and upgrade but is often considered worth it for its three firepower and long-range

Monkey Apperentice

The monkey apprentice tower is a wizards theme tower which fires out magical attacks to balloons in order to damage the his attacks often consist of chain lightning attacks which will affect large number of units at a time and also can be upgraded to abilities were this tower can send balloons back along the track to a certain point giving it great value to certain play styles.

Monkey Village

The monkey Village is different than every single tower within the game because of what it can do to other towers. The monkey tower will both all towers in its range and give them different upgrades whether it be more cash when they destroy an enemy or faster firing rates or even more popping power allowing them to effectively double their effectiveness and this is considered a essential tower to combat high waves and higher difficulties.

Banana Farm

the banana factory is used to create resources to the player other than popping enemy units this will give players resources periodically throughout waves and is often used in any way used to gain money but this offers a trade-off to players  if they purchase to many banana farms and not of defence towers they may lose but also best players do not do enough resources they may not be able to build towers to defend from their enemies.

Mortar Tower

the more tower is a basic tower that launches an explosive shell what it is different in the way that the player must select an area for this tower to constantly attacked meaning that players can tactically position these towers attack points meaning that these can be more versatile to certain players as they will be able to shift  their attack on location around the map to different areas where the balloons are advancing.

Dartling Gun

Darling towers are a high fire rates dark Tower but with a twist. They focus fire on where the players mouse is on the screen meaning placed in a new for high populated enemy areas with this similar to the more Tower. This is often better than some automatic towers as an offers more control and more firepower but requires constant attention for the player to be in control of them.

Spike Factory

Spike factories are a tower that will place down spike traps onto the path points of the enemy preventing them from moving up without going through this track despite only has a small range in which to do this but can be used to create a barricade to stop the advancements of the enemy.

Heli Pilot

heli pilots tower is almost a cross between the darling tower and more tower in a way that the helicopter will follow the player Case and attack in a range around malaria these are often used to attack balloons around the map without having towers with it in those areas in the play control where these helicopters are and use that  to their advantage.

Monkey Engineer

the monkey engineer is similar to the spiked tower and also the dark Tower at the same time. The monkey engineer itself is equipped with a nail gun firing darts straight up balloons like a normal dark Tower. It will also construct many tourists that will be placed around it which also fire the same small dart at Towers as well when upgraded this tower can create patches were balloons get slower as they travel through as well as more high-powered tourists which fire faster and do more damage.

Bloonchipper

The Bloonchiper tower is a tower that uses balloons against themselves.

 The waiver Bloonchiper tower works is that it will shock up surrounding balloons then fired back to cause damage to other balloons this is in a sense is a way to store the enemy wave and use the numbers against them these often poor to write the beginning of the pass and also allows other towers to shoot at them when they are being sucked up and thrown back. Making this a great stalling tower to prevent the way from advance.

Monkey Sub

the monkey sub tower is another water-based tower and can only be placed within water. The monkey tower similar to the normal dark Tower finds star's an increased rate but when upgraded has an infinite range and also has the ability to become support tower similar to the monkey village where the surrounding towers will receive buffs to their speed and damage.  Because this tower is placed within the water  it is faster than most common towers and more cost efficient to produce and as it has a global range can be placed anywhere on the map and often proved very reliable.

Special placed units

Road Spikes

different from towers road spikes are cheap effects that can be placed on the Lane these will pop up to 10 balloons and can be used to catch balloons that have made it through the player's defences they are purposely not cost-effective as there are mainly used as a weight off for the last of balloons that have escaped the players towers.

Exploding Pineapple

Explaining pineapples are used mainly to destroy large areas of balloons and also lead balloons they do have a time delay meaning that they have to be tired by the player to hit large groups and are similar to road spikes in that they are not cost effective to use permanently but are more or less used to thin out large enemy units to make it easier for the player towers.

Resource generating tower

looking more closely into the resource generating tower banana farm. This is the only type of tower within the game that generates from the sources for the player I found this to be a remarkable idea giving players a risk reward strategy in that this tower doesn't provide any useful defensive benefits for the player but it does offer the sources that the players to construct more elaborate defences.

I think this is an idea that I will definitely consider within my game look to implement as it offers a new strategy for players to take the risk and benefit from a reward is definitely a mechanic I would like to explore in my game prototype.

Tower upgrades

The tower of great botanic I think is one of the most important game mechanics within this game. The reason for this is that it offers players progression with their current towers meaning that plays were not just run into a dead end once they are placed towers that they become invested within the structures constantly upgrading them and seeing them improve to become better. This is mechanic I am almost certainly going to implement within my game as offers players a new level of immersion into the game and keeps them playing to discover what new what grades they can achieve for their towers and also provides a way of reaching more difficult enemies rather than just over populating the map with the same towers this is assured way of extending the playtime of the game and is definitely a necessary mechanic to begin to function.

 Water to terrain/normal terrain

terrein in this game plays an important role in which towers can be use their which towers can't. only water-based towers can be placed in the water and normal towers can only be placed on the land boughtwater is often limited in most maps these water-based towers are often more powerful and faster as there is limited space to put them compared to the normal land towers but as well these water towers do not have certain abilities that normal land towers house such as explosions to rid of lead balloons and also camo detection towers. This offers a trade-off in which that players have to do use both terrains to their advantage in order to the feebly do find this to be an interesting mechanic but it seems to have little effect on actual gameplay when observed.

Synopsis of the game

personally I find this game to be very enjoyable and offers great progression to players I find the game to be quite sure in the sense that it will take at 20 to 3 minutes to complete a level and levels are often not that they read as I was able to play this game for say 2 to 3 hours I found that after that it became very repetitive and with not much difference to. This is an issue of definitely like to address within my game as I would like to keep players playing for as long as they can and keep enjoying in the game high for most of the I understand that through upgrades this game develops a lot of replay ability and I think this is an issue that I'm going to implement in my game to  interest players to carry on playing to discover new upgrades that they can use on towers.

Good point about the game

The good points I think about this game that it has great upgrading systems and a large variety of towers that players can use as well as multiple to rain and many different variations of map which offer greater variety the players and often difficulty for players. The upgrades allow players to advance their towers and see them progress to more powerful states while lacking in progress further and further through challenging waves in summary the point  to be very good where:

.Many different tower traces

.Vast upgrade trees

.Various different maps

.Different to terrian (water/land)

Bad point about the

the bad points I found about this game where that the upgrade is where not challenging enough to achieve. I found that upgrading the tower would not take too long and this would inevitably be mean that upgrading towers in general was not hard which led me to be bored of the games towers relatively quickly I feel that if the towers in the game where harder to upgrade in a sense that certain criteria as have to be met before they could be upgraded this may allow  for more interest to certain towers as players can explore different new towers and have to reach a certain goal is to upgrade them. so in summary the bad points of this game I think where:

. To easily upgraded towers

. Not enough varying grades

How this game can help influence mine

after looking and researching into this game I found a lot of useful information to use for my prototype when I start creating it. I'm definitely going to be using a upgrade system within my game's offers a lot of good playability to the game and keeps players interested but I think differently from this game I'm going to make the upgrade is harder to achieve than just purchasing them as this will  take players longer to unlock higher tier upgrades but also keep them interested as they see the towers upgrading.

 As well I would like to create varying different upgrades that are not the same every time the player purchases a tower as they may be offering different variations each time they are upgraded meaning that no two towers will ever be the same as I think this will offer players more replayability. Allowing players to have much more variation in the towers they construct to the points I'm going to be taken away from this game are:

. upgrading system

. many different types of towers

. with varying different upgrades her tower that are never the same compared with the same tower

BA6: Deciding game idea

As I was trying to decide my game is going to be a decided to create a mind map in order to explore different game genre ideas. Uses my map to look at different pros and cons and also what different ideas can be used in saying game genres. This was to just see if I grew fond of any of the different genres so that I could see which one interested me the most but put them all up flat on a page.

Mind map genres:
.real-time strategy
.platform
.first Person shooter/puzzle
.MMO(massively multiplayer online)
.simulator
.racing game
.sandbox
.RPG(role-playing game)
.fighting game
.MOBA (Multiplayer online  Battle Arena)
.third person shooter/action
.3D puzzle
.Tower defence

After looking through the mine that I decided to settle on the game genre of Tower defence. the reasons than I did this is because tower defence game is often use a lot of different mechanics and use a lot different game pounds Inc in order to make their games were. This is an area that in the future I would definitely like to have a job in as an interest me a lot in creating new game mechanics the games. Also I've had experience in creating small tower defence game before and that this be a natural progression to spend more time creating a tower defence game from scratch.

From here I'm going to play a vast array of different tower defence game's to get a grasp of common themes common game mechanics within them but also I will be looking a little bit more closely into RTS games and different types of great systems as this will be a theme I would like to include within my main game and hopefully through research I will find a way of implementing this into the game correctly.

learning agreements

Norwich University of the Arts

Learning Agreement

Course and Unit Number: BA6

Name: Charlie Harrison

Proposal:  What do you intend to do?

What: I will produce a game prototype showing progression from user feedback also I will be creating a games design document to follow alongside this game

Why: I want to explore crafting a game from a genre utilizing different mechanics within a game engine to see interesting new ways how to engage the player within the game as well as using user feedback to improve the mechanics of further.

How: The game be will display these different mechanics and through game play will interact with the player in various different ways this will be shown through the game prototype and also elaborated through the game's design document

Assessment Work:

1 3D game prototype

1 8-13 paged games designed documents

1 Research blog

1 Evaluation



Resource requirements:




Tutor's comments:




Learning agreement agreed and signed by:

Course Leader: .................................................... Date:............................
Unit Leader/Tutor: .................................................... Date:............................
Student: .................................................... Date:............................

BA6: what I will be aiming for

BA6 project

For this project and aim to do similar work to what I did within the BA4 project. this will mean that I will aim to create a prototype game constantly updating it through user feedback and also create games design documents listing key features an element of the game that could be shown to outside audiences so that they could understand different elements and key features within the game. There is a list of the work that I aimed to produce by the end of project.

Prototype game (with different innovations and improvements)

Games design documents (highlighting all the main elements of the game)

Research blog (showing all research I've done into this project)

500 word evaluation of the project

BA6: new project (CS)

BA6: Collaboration, audience and employability (CS)

For this project will be looking into how games can affect different people. Would be looking into various difference types of games for example educational or political to see how they gauge players and teach them information. we'll also be exploring the idea that games can convey a more meaningful method and that how this could change a person's opinion about a particular political issue or even social issue.

for this project I'm feeling a little more sceptical than I  out for. As personally I don't think that one game can have such a massive impact on someone's views upon a certain issue bought it be good to explore through research  if it has affected others and would be an interesting topic to delve into.

BA6: New Project

BA6: Collaboration, audience and employability

For our the brief of BA6 we have been given the opportunity to choose between different areas of work that we have worked than previously. Whether this be concept that are games design or even alternatives.

with this brief I think that I will find it more enjoyable than previous ones as it  allows more freedom within the work. It also allows me to maybe improve upon different aspects of my work. I would definitely like to explore the game design element within this project as when I did my project in BA4 I enjoyed the work.