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More about Defender


This 'tower' defence game is a very nice one, since it includes a map-editor and has very good psychics.

What is the difference between Specialization and Generalization?
Specializing your defender will increase his special attack power as well as giving him a slight boost in power. Generalizing will forgo the special attack power, but will increase his attack power much more. In addition after 5 generalization levels an eligible defender will receive a range boost. Upon 7 he will also also receive a slight speed boost. These levels are specific, so taking 4 specialist and 1 generalist levels will not result in a range boost.

How is score calculated?
You will receive 1 point per gold spent, 1 point per experience worth of each monster killed and 1 point per gold held in your bank at the end of each wave. You also recieve 250 points per life at the end of the game, and 5 per at the end of each wave. Upgrading a tower to Grandmaster status will net you a 250 point reward, and going all the way to Legendary will get you a whopping 2500. Essentially in order to maximize your score you need to attempt to save your gold and spend it only when necessary, as for every wave you keep it you will receive additional score.

Sometimes the map tiles are off the side of the screen! can you fix that?
Nope, but you can. The play area may be moved using the arrow keys.

This map is too hard!! Why is that?
Almost every map requires a different tactical build to the others in order to win, though I do agree that the overall difficulty of the game is slightly too high, rather than going back and reducing the difficulty overall however I feel a better idea is to include more, easier maps. Initially I had planned a tutorial level for this, but I hit several constraints near the end of development that prevented this. Before moving onto my next project, I will be making an editor for Defender so that players can create and share their own levels as well as a way to have them considered for adding to the main list. This will probably solve the problem for me.

Wow some people are really good at this game, how will I get a high score?
The popularity of Defender is far higher than I anticipated, I am aware that this is going to become an issue and am considering steps I can take to alleviate it. It's most likely that I will improve the scoring system and set a routine score wipe, but I'm concerned about annoying those people who earned their bragging rights so will likely create a score archive system to view the top scores before each wipe.

Why is there a limit on waves per level and not endless waves?
This was an intentional design decision, this question usually comes from those who played tower defence type games before which almost exclusively use this type of system. When I set out to make Defender I wasn't making a tower defence game, it's just the genre most people identify it with. Creating a simple strength increase calculation for each wave would have been far easier, but I felt that this kind of system lacks a certain personal touch. Manually scripted and balanced levels I feel are far superior, even if they are far more time consuming to create. Although I do feel that the game would benefit from a single level designed in this way, implementing it would take a hefty investment of time, which I feel is better spent on a second version that doesn't have the core technical restraints this one does.

Why can't I sell / delete a defender?
Again, this was intentional not simply left out. One of the key tactical decisions the player has is where to place their little guys, those decisions need to come back to haunt them at a later time in order for them to slowly develop the neccasary tactic through trial and error. The star room map is a key example of this design, where almost every placement has to be strategically planned into a long term build in order to ensure victory.
Created by: Noxin


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