Hero Tower Defense Tuesday: Day 14 - HTD Release Date! Armor & New HTD Day Too!



Go here to read the Day 13 of Hero Tower Defense Tuesdays.

Today I'd like to officially announce HTD's release date, which some of you may already know about. Then I'll discuss some thoughts on the armor in the game and HTD's day change.

First, I would like to announce that we've decided to shoot for a HTD release date of late December. Keep in mind this will be like version 0.1. In other words, it'll just have some of the core mechanics and other things for you to play around with. We like to release the games when they are very early in development in order to give you guys as many chances as possible to participate in helping us make the game. This also helps us to gather feedback every step of the way. So I hope everyone is looking forward to it as much as we are!


Now onto the armor. I just want to clarify that I'll be talking about armor specifically, not accessories like rings or trinkets or weapons. We'll definitely have those as well but that'll be a different post.

Armor will certainly play a large role in HTD. After all, everyone likes gearing up their characters with new armor, acquiring new loot, and sometimes even just collecting sets. We intend to have a lot of armor in the game of all types. It won't all be available right from the start of course but we'll be trying to add some every update.

As I mentioned before there will be various types of armor but they'll generally fall into light, medium, and heavy categories. However, everyone will be able to wear them, it's just a matter of what stats you end up getting from the armor. Generally the defense values of these armors will correlate to their type, i.e. lighter armors have lower defense and heavier armors have higher defense.

There will certainly be more stats than just defense on armors. Since everyone is able to wear the armors, and your class being dynamic to how you spend your skill points, it means you can have classes like a monk who might wear cloth and a battlemage who might wear plate. So not all cloth will be geared towards casters and not all plate will be geared towards warriors.

Here's a list what we have in mind for the armor pieces the characters will have:
  • Helm
  • Shoulders
  • Chest/Arms
  • Gloves
  • Legs
  • Boots
Most (if not all) of these pieces will change cosmetically on your character as well. We know some people like having the option of disabling the helm graphic but still having it equipped so we'll have that for sure.

Here's a cool sketch from Kevin showing his concept of the Human Male in Cloth Armor:

Human Male in Cloth Armor Concept

You can find more behind-the-scenes HTD art work on Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD, check it out!


Now about the HTD day change. Sam was posting the PTD post later in the week at first but recently has been posting it on Monday because it works out better with his current scheduling of the weekly PTD update. Having the PTD post on Monday then immediately having the HTD post on Tuesday squishes things together. To remedy the problem we're going to change things a bit and have the PTD post on Monday and the HTD post on Thursday to have a better spread on the blog. We already have this HTD post for this week so the next one will be on Thursday of next week.

So on that note I give you, HTD Thursdays! :P

All feedback is welcome and encouraged! You guys are a lot of help so be sure to let us know of any suggestions or ideas you have in the comments and thanks for all your help thus far!

-Dan

Comments

  1. Second maybe? Third? Fourth?...Fifteenth?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Armor's not going to break in this game like in Minecraft or Ghosts and Goblins will it (though the thought of having the male protagonist left with heart boxers is amusing)?

    I suppose I'll see you on Thursdays then!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yey for the set release alpha version of the game =P

    About the gear: do arms refer to wrists and such? No shoulders? =( No belt either? I know belt would be almost unnoticeable (except for belts like WWE champion like LOL), but the independent shoulders could be part of it no? =S (As a side note: I remember my first wow epic shoulders so well ^^)

    The feedback encouragement (at 5:16 AM here) says: if we get aesthetic wrists we need the other 2 =P

    ReplyDelete
  4. The male character is bald and his eyes are lower than where they are supposed to be (1/2 face) ... freaky like an alien. Otherwise it looks pretty good. Keep up the good work!

    ReplyDelete
  5. @Gon - Arms cover shoulders :) so yes cool shoulders will come.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Looks awesome

    Was thinking about enchantments on armor but you haven't reveled how they work or how stats work yet so kinda pointless right now.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Dan, just the guy.

    Any news on Ninja-Ja? I love the game.

    Really hoping a new release will come soon

    Forever your No.1 Fan too :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. you should really make it like when you wear a viking helmet, viking chest and viking sword you get a boost for attack or something to encourage finding same sets of gears

    ReplyDelete
  9. @ Gon - That "arms" should probably be "shoulders", yeah, although in some armor designs right now the "shoulder" armor is more around the bicep (mostly female cloth armor) which I imagine is where Dan was going with this.

    As far as I knew the six listed armor pieces (+ cloaks) were simply the ones with visuals. Belts and such might be included but won't have a visual change (since they would probably be far too small to be worth the development time).

    @ danychriz - Just a concept sketch, I was more focused on the armor itself than the facial features. I only slopped a face on there since if I left it blank people would have questioned that too!

    ReplyDelete
  10. @ danychriz - Oh, and he's bald obviously because we haven't held a poll to decide his hairstyles yet. :D

    @ Sam & Dan - Why am I not a contributor so that my comments go through immediately? :(

    ReplyDelete
  11. @Chris Tan 12:04 AM - Armor durability is pretty annoying and basically just an in-game money sink. HTD probably won't have it because we'd rather you be focused on other things and we can find better/more fun things for you to spend in-game money on.

    @Gon AM - It's more like a pre-alpha really but, yay indeed! :)

    Oops, good call. I was a bit tired when I wrote that but what I meant by arms was shoulders (like Sam and Kevin mentioned). I edited the post to be more clear. Basically the chest includes the arms just as the legs include the waist.

    Also as I noted at the beginning of the post, I'm only talking about "armor" in this post. Smaller things like belts, wrists, rings, trinkets, etc would fall under accessories, so never fear! It is, however, unlikely you will see any accessories cosmetically on your character. They would simply be too small. Cloaks would be exception.

    @danychriz - I believe his head is tilted down a bit, which is why his eyes seem low.

    Thanks!

    @Darvist - Thanks, enchanments are a possibilty but that would probably fall into some kind of profession like.. enchanting lol. I talked a bit about stats back on HTD 9. You can check it out here: http://samdangames.blogspot.com/2011/10/hero-tower-defense-tuesday-day-9.html

    @Richard - I'm working on it I promise. :) This current update I'm doing for it is kind of a large hurdle because it's a lot of set up that I need to do in order to pave the way for more stuff. So that combined with learning programming as I go is just taking awhile.

    @Anon 4:15 AM - Yes, there will definitely be armor sets that you can collect and gain bonuses from when wearing it all at once.

    @Kevin - Because being a contributor gives you access to more things than just immediate comment posts. :P

    ReplyDelete
  12. Sam would HTD be a game for all of us to play? Or we have to buy it like Ninja-ja before?

    ReplyDelete
  13. this is game is looking great guys. i'm almost sure i'm gonna love this more than PTD. you guys are really innovating the tower defense game genre. keep up the great work.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Hey dan,

    Thanks :) Glad you ain't forgot about Ninja-Ja because I actually have it on my HTC desire.
    How? Lol

    I noticed that when it's downloaded onto a pc, it comes in two formats. .EXE and .SWF, and as I have a SWF player on my phone for PTD, i thought "hey, would this work?" and voila. Ninja-Ja goes mobile

    Hehe

    P.S do you have twitter too?

    Forever your No.1 Fan too :)

    ReplyDelete
  15. Is it possible for certain armor to cover more than one area? For example, you just picked up some armor that has a chest plate and shoulder pads...

    ReplyDelete
  16. when exactly is the set release date so I can mark my calendar?

    ReplyDelete
  17. @Kevin - Oh nice, want to see that ;)

    About the contributor special status, you have your own kingdom MUAHAH =P /jk hehe

    @Dan - to be fair I tipped "the alpha version of the alpha version of the game" lol but then I thought it would sound stupid so I cut it into half =P But i was going that way so double yey =P

    Hm... now you got it (with the review of the post) but now Kevin's explanation became confuse. But I believe shoulders are a slot. And wrists are included in the chest slot. right? =P

    Oh yea I spoke about those cause they could be/or not armor =P (i know I was going to say something else but run out of battery so had to hibernate 6ago so can't be asked remembering what I was writting lol)

    ReplyDelete
  18. lol PTD is on Mondy what day is that

    ReplyDelete
  19. Will there be armor for your pets?
    What classes will there be?
    What races will there be?
    Can you put power increcing jewels in wepons and armor?
    Can you craft?

    ReplyDelete
  20. Yay something to do between PTD updates in December :D

    ReplyDelete
  21. So we will have 2 htds this Week

    ReplyDelete
  22. @Tam - HTD will be free from the start like PTD.

    @Anon 12:27 PM - Thanks! :)

    @Richard - Noice, I'm glad you're enjoying it!

    I don't have a twitter, no.

    Thanks :D

    @Chris Tan - No, because that would just be split into two different pieces for two different equipment spots. There will be armor sets though if you're looking for matching stuff.

    @Anon 4:38 PM - Uh, not sure what day if that's what you mean. Can't really pin it down that close yet. We're just shooting for late December.

    @Gon - Shoulders are a slot and chest is a slot but the chest graphic would cover the chest/arms/wrists basically. But there will still might be spots for wrist accessories such as bracers or something, you just won't see them visually because they'd be too small.

    Haha no worries! :P

    @Anon 6:31 PM - Fixed! :)

    @Pokeking Trades Co. - Possibly but you probably won't see the armor visually on the pet or it might be generic to cover a whole type. At least for now, could always add more later.

    There will be many classes because the class system is dynamic and your class title changes based on how you build your character by spending the elemental and skill points.

    We hope to have a few classes but making a new race requires a huge amount of work because of how armor is created and fitted to the character. We're starting with Human first and then we'll add more as we go.

    Enchanting and embedding ruins/gems/etc into weapons and armor is possible but not something we've looked at just yet.

    There will be crafting and various professions for it eventually, it's just down the road a bit.

    @Anon 8:27 PM - Indeed!

    @Anon 2:20 AM - No, the next HTD update will be next Thursday, Nov 24th.

    ReplyDelete
  23. I don't know if you guys took my suggestion into this, or just thought of it by yourself, but in one of the PTD posts I posted, saying HTD should be posted on maybe Thursday so there is a better balance. Either you listened to my suggestion, and if you did, then thanks! If you thought of it by yourselves, great minds think alike ;)

    ReplyDelete
  24. Are you adding enchanted armor and weapons?

    ReplyDelete
  25. You guys really need to make an adventure game NOT related to Tower Defense.

    ReplyDelete
  26. @CrazyItalianDetective Are your referring to Minecraft?

    ReplyDelete
  27. @Higuybuy
    No actually I was referring to a Dungeons and Dragons game that I got, it has lots of great ideas, some of which I want to put into this! In minecraft the enchantments increase digging time and such, the enchantments I'm talking about are like flameburst weapons which have additional fire damage, increasing as the level of enchantment increases!

    ReplyDelete
  28. when will be this came out?

    ReplyDelete
  29. yay something to do when waiting for PTD. I tried minecraft can't find any coal for torches wah

    ReplyDelete
  30. Bagon:

    i wonder how playing the game is going to be...

    ReplyDelete
  31. Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes Capes capes

    ReplyDelete
  32. @cfcbesto~ - I think it was a little of both actually. Started to notice it and then people like you started to mention it as well so that pushed it through. :)

    @CrazyItalianDetective - Probably at some point but we haven't gotten looked into that area just yet.

    @Higuyby - I agree but it partly has to do with the idea that PTD could ultimately be shutdown at any time by Nintendo whereas with HTD we wouldn't have to worry about that.

    @Anon 11:58 PM - Late December.

    @Anon 2:49 PM - Bagon? What?

    @Anon 11:20 PM - Yes

    ReplyDelete
  33. It will pe possible to use one/two handed weapon?
    This game sounds to be really cool :]

    ReplyDelete
  34. so for htd i was wandering will fighting a boss be just like ptd where they just walk by you and you attack or will you get to position your character and attack the boss while the boss attacks back because i think this way would be much more entertaining -Dubin

    ReplyDelete
  35. add more to the game and ill play it again

    ReplyDelete
  36. Make it so that you can have a left or right handed character,so one hand can be stronger than the other. That would be great,because most games have the classic "EVERYONE IS RIGHT-HANDED!" idea.
    It would be awesome if it didn't.Also,I think there should be pets in the game :)

    ReplyDelete
  37. add a dragon rider or something and pets thatd be cool

    ReplyDelete
  38. hey for pets how about fly ones can also walk to have diffrent attacks and some pets you can ride on the ground and the sky and on lava and water witch makes them give you special areas. also another thing is how will this be tower defence

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment