Hey guys! V5.8.1 of Pokemon Tower Defense is officially released! Go get your Ponyta and swf, exe, and apk files! I didn't have enough time for the co-op level last week so this week I will see to it. I hope those of you who are far enough enjoyed the Zapdos fight, you can expect similar type of battles for the other birds when we get to them. This week we will continue the story along with some other things.
So to change it up a bit I wanted to talk about what the thought process was for creating the Zapdos fight, and the general process of coming up with a new level for each week.
Step 1: What's going to happen next? - So I have an idea in my head of what the story is going to end like, almost like some bullet points, but the actual details I come up with each week. In this case the gang had just finished spending some time at the Safari Zone, kinda relaxing and just capturing new pokemon. So I thought it was time to make something exciting happen in the story. Your characters had not been to the cycling road so I thought there needed to be a reason to go there. Originally I thought that Gary would show up and tell you that you needed to go to Professor Oak to learn Surf but I didn't want to go to Viridian City again yet since that will be the last gym. I also thought of the possibility of not meeting Gary but another friend on the Cycling Road but I thought I was running out of time and I needed to deal with Gary and the birds in order to move on. Plus I thought the idea of the next level being Gary and the legendary bird would excite the players (you guys). As far as what happens in the level. I always like to make fun of Joey, and just show that our gang still has fun along the way. Also a good reason to travel to the Cycling Road was that they hadn't gone there yet as Joey mentions. Since Gary was running away from the birds I wanted to see him cornered and you show up to save the day! Also making this level with Gary and Zapdos facing off I thought of something interesting for the story and I left some small hints of it in the scene.
Step 2: Level Design - Usually on Monday I will think of the general theme of the next level. Last week was Gary and Zapdos. I knew I wanted to make the fight with the legendary birds.... errr legendary. So I thought okay I want this fight to just be you and Zapdos but Gary is there so he needs something to do. I put that aside for a moment and thought that Zapdos is electric so I want him to be sending out attacks very often and that they should affect your whole group. So since Zapdos will be doing a lot of damage to your party Gary would be perfect to heal your pokemon, similar to Celebi. But I wanted to add more work to the healing, so unlike Celebi you have to actually take your pokemon away from battle to get healed. A player a long time ago suggested an idea to have nurse joy on the side line and you sent your pokemon there to be healed. This was a variation of that idea. Now back to Zapdos. First I thought okay Ground is immune to electric attacks so I would use Drill peck to counter that, which also brought the idea of he being able to target anybody in the field regardless of their position. But I read that flying doesn't do a lot of damage to ground and I didn't want everybody to have to get ground pokemon to beat the level. So I made all damage be a set amount. Also I thought simply removing your units from the field to prevent damage was overplayed and would remove the need to use Gary so I added way for Zapdos to wait for your units to be ready which introduced some bugs (when your party dies the level doesn't end since Zapdos is waiting for a target).
Step 3: Implementation, Balance and Testing (Making it happen!) - This part is the last part to happen, once I have my ideas I set out to animate the scenes make the new characters and create the new moves for the level. In this case most of the characters were done, I just had to make Gary into a Tower and create the new moves for Gary and Zapdos. The new moves can sometimes create technical difficulties. I can spend a good amount of hours bug fixing or just balancing the moves so they do enough damage. Once the bugs are cleared I create a team of pokemon that will be the best to beat the level. In this case I made a team of 6 level 90 Rhydon with Stone edge, I didn't buff them but I thought it would give me a good idea of what kind of damage the players would be able to put out. I played it until it took at least 6 waves to beat him while moving the pokemon around to get healed etc and moving them around to always be attacking Zapdos. After that I tweaked with Zapdos stats a bit to make it just right.
So I hope you guys enjoy seeing what it takes to make the level happen. Now on to the progress list! (Note that Hero Tower Defense Progress will stay in the HTD post from last week)
Weekly PTD progress:
PTD FirstLook!
New Story Level (100%) - Route 19 Training Level
- Intro (100%)
- Layout (100%)
- Waves (100%)
- Ending (100%)
New TM (100%)
- Icy Wind (100%)
- Dive (100%)
- Hail (100%)
- New Moves (100%)
- Icy Wind (100%)
- Dive (100%)
- Hail (100%)
- Add Graphic (100%)
- Add Shiny Graphic (100%)
- Add Shadow Graphic (100%)
- Add Stats to Game (100%)
- Implement TM/Relearn moves (100%)
- Implement in Adoption (Battle Ready and Shiny) (100%)
- Implement Shadow in Game Corner (100%)
- Implement in Trading Center (100%)
- Implement in Save Code (100%)
Choose a new pokemon to trade for next week - my account is samO (100%) - I'm putting up a big number of shiny and shadow pokemon that I have collect during my journeys! Next week I will trade every one of them, if you see something you like send me an offer!
Add new moves to the Pokemon Center's Move List (100%)
Finish implementing design to trading pages (0%) - Forgot some >.<
Bug Fixes (100%)
- Make Route 17 end if your party all faints (100%)
- Only one weather effect can be active at a time (100%)