The Daily Click ::. Projects ::. CastleForge
 

 Project: CastleForge
Project Started: 27th November, 2011 Last Update: 13th April, 2013
Project Owner: AugustoAD Project Members:
Project Type: Sandbox/Building/Platformer/Castle Defense Project Progress:

To next update...
Posted 13th Dec 11, by AugustoAD  
Ok, so 0.5a will be a HUGE update, it's going to take some time to do - perhaps a whole week. There will be lots of new features. I'm telling you some of the new features right now.

*New block types (metal ones)
*Block placing limitation (I'll explain later)
*Traps (lava bucket and spike trap for now)
* 2~5 New enemies (flying ones included)
*Songs (made by me and by a partner)
*Hardcore and Zen modes
*(obvious enough) bugfixing
*Leaderboards engine

That's it for now. I'll tell you more later.

Posted by HitmanN 13th December, 2011

Traps sound fun, and useful, assuming they can actually deal proper damage to enemies, and can't outlast a full invasion. Having a few traps in front of your front walls might be a good way to deal with things you've missed to defend. I wonder if the traps should have a number of charges or health that drops each time an enemy touches it, or if it's one-use only, but does fair enough damage to one enemy... hmm.
 
Posted by AugustoAD 13th December, 2011

Yes, they won't be that strong. They'll deal little damage to the enemy. And the player will be able to trigger and take damage from traps too.
 
Posted by Sketchy 15th December, 2011

Traps do sound like a very good idea. I think they'd have to do a lot of damage to be any use - there's not much point having them just weaken the enemy, because the player can already kill most enemies with one hit.
 
Posted by AugustoAD 15th December, 2011

@Sketchy yes, monsters will be harder to kill in next version.

Traps will deal damage, but in a really slow rate. The damage will be around 1~3, depending on the trap.

Oh, I'm also accepting suggestions for traps.
 
Posted by HitmanN 15th December, 2011

Hmm, traps don't necessarily need to do damage only. They could do stuff like
- Halve or limit enemy movement speed
- Push enemies back
- Paralyze enemies for a short moment (they can't damage player or environment)
- Paralyzing could also only prevent enemies' attacks, but not affect their movement.
- and so on...

If you design the enemies accordingly, traps could naturally have weaknesses and strengths. For instance, a trap that limits movement speed wouldn't be much use against an enemy that does ranged attacks. A trap that does damage might not be effective enough against tough enemies, so using a trap that pushes an enemy back might give you more time to intercept them. An enemy that has a strong attack might be best dealt with a paralyzing trap, if you have time to chase them down while they're unable to do any damage, and so on.

Just make sure the traps don't all end up being the same thing. If they only deal damage, then at least make some enemies immune to one kind of trap, and others immune to another, so that there's incentive to use more than just the one which does most damage.
 
Posted by Sketchy 16th December, 2011

I'd have said that a trap DOES have to do damage. Paralyzing / limiting speed / pushing back / etc is all just doing basically the same thing - it's slowing down the enemies to buy you more time - which is the same function already served by normal building blocks. There's no way those traps wouldn't all end up feeling the same.

I'd keep it simple, and just have a couple of different traps:
* Fire / Spikes - light damage, and always works.
* Bear Trap - heavy damage, but only works once.
* Flamethrower / Crusher - heavy damage, but slow reload time (so if several enemies approach together, only the first one will be killed - this is how a lot of the traps in Lemmings work).

And maybe some kind of explosive trap that damages everything in a wide area (incl. blocks and the player).
 
Posted by HitmanN 17th December, 2011

True enough, but if the most effective way to prevent enemies from destroying your crystal is always pure damage, it limits gameplay a lot. Enemies should require some tactic to be defeated, not just brute force.

Slowdown and Pushback are certainly similar, but the other keeps the enemy away (but makes it harder for the player to attack them), while the slowdown only slows their advancing (ranged and heavy enemies would still be a threat at close range if only slowed down).

Paralyzing (attack blocker) would be best for heavy hitter type enemies, which you can't kill with damage traps, and which are tough to combat with the player character. If said trap would have limited use, it'd be a waste to use them on just about anything. It's a trap type best used when you know it's needed.

So, it's not only about time, it's about allowing players to control the enemies with the traps, while they can use the already existing equipment to deal damage to them more efficiently. I'm not sure I'd use much traps if they only did damage, because that's something I can already do with the character.
 
Posted by AugustoAD 17th December, 2011

okay, I'll try and make up some new ideas for traps. Would it be nice if each trap was dropped by a different kind of enemy?
 
Posted by [DELETED] 7th January, 2012

Looking forward to it, 0.4a was a good update and I can only assume it's going to continue to get better!
 
Posted by AugustoAD 8th January, 2012

haha, thanks, jthongbai!
It's ALMOST done by now, I just need to implement proper (working) score, add two traps and add Zen and Hardcore Modes. In my next devlog, I'll introduce both game modes and the new update. Thanks for the kind words!
 


 
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