Earth TD Final

The Chosen: Matthew Perkins, Tomasz Paniak, & Daniel El-hajj

Synopsis:

Earth Tower Defense is a tower defense game where you try to defend the Earth from waves of alien invaders. Tower defense games are a shoot off of the real-time strategy genre where decision making, and strategy decide whether you win or lose. Like most RTS games, the game will be viewed from a top-down perspective. Enemies will follow a path from the top of the screen down to Earth. Towers can be placed in sections by the path but not on to it. For every enemy you kill, you will earn currency to build more towers to defend the Earth from increasingly difficult to kill waves of aliens. This will culminate in one or several boss waves to determine if your strategy was efficient enough for your survival. If an enemy reaches Earth, you will lose one life, and if a boss reaches Earth, you will lose the game. We will try to have a few unique towers to choose from that function differently from each other, such as a sniper and an area of effect tower. If time permits, we will incorporate some type of upgrade system where players will be able to increase the power of already constructed towers through either conjoined building or paying for upgrades.

Process:

Map, Path, and Main Menu:

From the start we had to know what we wanted to display as the main game and where the aliens could walk through to make the game enjoyable and not too hard. Since our idea was space theme and protecting Earth we had to have those two features to the player to view. The background images were open source images from NASA which were photoshopped and edited together. Unlike the the background the path required more time with designing it around the size of the the screen as well as planning where towers can be placed as well as plan for the future of the waves of aliens. The path was made using a notepad and typing a map using different numbers that meant weather it was for the path, placement of the towers, or left alone. Adding the features to the menu screen was picked similarly to many others which included Play, High Scores, Credits and Exit.

Aliens, Towers. Score and Money:

Both were obtained from an open source art website, edited and coded into as specific and varying sized depending on the level of difficulty pertaining to the alien. One of the nicer functions that was added for the towers was a snap function that allows the game and user to precisely place the towers where they wanted to by pixel as to not be able to place towers in between pixel spots to avoid overlap or misplacement. Although there are four spots for the towers there are only three that are accessible and shown. Those three towers had to have different functions and shoot differently, one was set to be a very default style tower, the second was more on the rapid fire shooter and the third being a long range stronger “sniper” tower. deciding the aliens and how many were decided as a group as well as the sizes to fit the health and higher strength they are. The specific health and the towers bullet strength all changed and adjusted as to not make the game too easy or too hard. Setting the money to give the player an appropriate amount as to be able to win without making it simple and boring by playtesting. Each alien destroyed added not just money to the user but a score as well which plays a crucial role in determining if the player was on the High Score screen.

Waves:

Initially set to a small number to make the game function. At first we made three functioning levels, but we had some extra time to make a total of five waves. Each wave showcased a different alien. Each wave was balanced to make the different towers better at beating different waves. The wave’s speed, hit points, and count differ from each other. All the aliens follow a pathway and turn at specific locations.

Skills Obtained:

Python/Pygame: Understanding and using classes and groups to create the character (from the towers to bullets).

Playtest: Constant playing to find the most reasonable power and health for the towers and Aliens; Money gained per kill and cost of the towers.

Photo-editing: Inside Python and other programs to create a good-looking map and path.
Communication: Working on code with multiple people is not easy!!

Bugs and Hurdles:

Creating a High Score board:

Names covering other names up
Names getting doubled
Setting up username input screen

Bullet:

Animations from tower to aliens
Having the bullets disappear
Bullets continuously hit and follow aliens

Towers:

Size and the placement orientation
Strength of the bullets from seperate towers
1. Varying strengths similar to a high roll or double hit
They do not disappear or reset after a match unless python is exited