Cube Defense
Notice:
Game development has been halted indefinitely pending changes in the Custom Game system to make it possible for me to update the damn map, and, hopefully, the removal of the popularity system.
So, the map is up for grabs. It's in the Public Domain and you can pick it up, fix it, change it, break it, fork it or whatever.
It you do try to take a stab at taking over, I'm likely available for light consulting in explaining just what the hell is going on in the code.
Best chance of getting hold of me is at rightlyslandom<at>gmail<dot>com
Cube Defense
Remake of the old classic, Cube TD for WC3, by CordialSpam.
Up to 8 players try to keep 30 waves of mobs away from the center, using 5 kinds of towers, 3 of which are upgradeable.
What sets this TD apart, is the fact that mazing is not only possible, it is required in order to complete the game at all. And if you want to stand a chance on the higher difficulty settings, you'd better be ready to understand and abuse the pathing, block the mobs from doing what they want and force them to do your bidding and take the long way around your maze - and preferably run through it two or three times before they get out on the other side.
Defend the Cube either alone, or with an Ally, using the in-game dialog to choose which you prefer. Dynamic team placement allows for any combination of teams of two and solo players in any one single game, meaning you don't have to look for a game with your preferred game mode. Just join up and start defending!
Features:
- 4 Difficulty settings
- 2 Game modes
- Dynamic, in-game Team picking and placement
- Individual difficulty
- Selling of towers
- Working range indicators
- Snaring of flying units
- Anti-blocking feature
- and Awesome awesome gameplay.
Known Bugs:
There is a known, game breaking bug that kicks in for many people around wave 20-25, depending on how many people are in the game. Stuff starts turning invisible and the map becomes very hard to beat indeed. It seems to be caused by a memory leak of sorts, debug tools are non-existant, I am at a loss for what is causing it, and don't intend to remake the game from scratch to try and fix it, at least not until the Custom Game system is "good".
After reading GWHO's walk-thoguh I thought I'd add my own, it is somewhat differnt, but does take advantage of the computer's pathing. and is easily reproducable (tested in v0.4 and v0.5). Much of the build is timing based (getting AA out in time for airwave, not blocking computer before defenses are prepared, etc). With this build, you will be able to stop producing buildings after Wave 26 and end with 700+ minerals (although I am sure the slightlyrandom will probably fix that).
Key Concenpts: Take advantage of computer pathing to get it to walk though your defenses multiple times, this allows you to build fewer buildings and concentrate on air defense (the real threat). The focal point is the "tunnel", you build a tunnel from the computers spawn exit to the entrance of the cube above it (do not upgrade these buldings, they are just to funnel the computer units), always make your Maze 2 spaces wide to accomodate fat units.
Play through, very enjoyable, lots of replay value. I was able to beat it twice so far on Hard, once with brute force, and again by taking advantage of the unit pathing.
Spoilers (?) Plan 1. Minimal mazing, and upgrade units as fast as possible. After a couple of attempts I realized that the upgraded units had a better damage-to-cost ratio than unupgraded units. So to take advantage of that my plan was to use natural terrain, and make the fewest units possible but upgrade them as much as possible. To that end I built a switchback infront of the computers exit funneling him down a walled path. I was able to create the switchback with 6-7 bunkers (upgrading them as fast as possible). This strategy worked well at first, but once units began leaking I noticed that they didn't return near my units on the way to their waypoint (epiphony, discovered waypoint path), to force them back to my units for another volly of fire I build a wall of bunkers/turrent to my units. This ended up working, although towards the end I had to make some mini-mazes (within my units firing range of 8) because they had so much health. In the end I had 17 Imortals (bunkers) all bunched up and 7 Vikings (turrents), and just barely survivied. In fact I had to do a little micro management at the end to make sure my units were focusing on the units heading back.
Seocnd play through I decided to take advantage of the unit pathing, and built an intricate maze that really messed with the computer. I started by building a tunnel from the computer spawn point to 'cube' above it, above that I build my maze, I simply walled off the computers second exit). This forced the computer travel through my detour and through my maze to get to its first waypoint. Then it had to turn around, and walk back through my maze to get to its second waypoint, then turn around and walk back out. So 3 trips through the deadly maze. This one went much easier than the first victory (about 12th attempt)
Feedback: I don't know if its a bug, but If you build units too close to the comptuers spawn area, it ingores the 10 second timer between waves and spawns immediately. Even worse, sometimes it drops two units at once (the unit spacing is off), which really wrecks air defense, that needs that gap.
cannons (ghosts), were not very effective. I tried several times to go heavy ghost, just got oblivated by air units, and ended up needed turrents. Well once you go turrents there is no point in getting ghosts, since the Imortals do almost double damage.
Roach's slow is either ineffective, or barely noticable on some units, I didn't pay close enough attention, to which ones, but some seemed to be really slowed, others appeared to completley ignore the effect.
Hydra. tried to use it, but eventually recycled it you need at least 10 to relace AA weapons, and that is assuming you can kill the units when they are on the ground. Right now air units have so much health that you are forced to get turrents (viking), which have huge range and insane damage. I think lowering the health of air units and damage of turrents might help make ghosts and hydra useful.
Well thanks for the great game, i'm going to go play another round.
So nice to see people trying to game the system already!
Currently squashing a few bugs I've found, as well as implementing additional Game Modes (2v2v2v2 and All Together).
To adress a few concerns I've seen here:
Waves 23 and up were bugged in version 0.4 and didn't path the same as the rest. I've fixed that along with some other pathing issues. It seems I wasn't quite thorough enough in setting up the units, but they should be normalized now. They also shouldn't get stuck anymore, unless you do something really fancy I haven't thought of.
Yeah, the mobs are quite generic at the moment. I hope to make them somewhat more exotic come release and some fancier models. As to additional types of mobs (Fast Waves, Boss Waves, Shielded Waves etc.) I am not sure I want to go there. I'm thinking it'll add a complexity layer that makes mazing tons harder than is warranted.
All in all, I am closing in on what I'd call a release candidate. If there is something you'd like to see in there, either let me know about it, or feel free to Fork and add it yourself!
are marines on level 23 supposed to attack you? why do they kill everything and their paths get messed up when it's not even walled?
are marines collision size 2 instead of the normal 1?
ok, marines had a path RIGHT in front of him (he was literally 5 squares away from his destination with a direct open path) and he stopped to shoot.
IF YOU'RE HAVING TROUBLE!
SPOILER ahead:
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. http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/2213/cubedsetuppathsbetter.png
Beaten on hard, air waves got close a couple times but nothing on the ground got more than halfway through (2 passes).
Layout for reference: http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/4885/beatens.jpg
Rough layout in editor so you can see the whole thing: http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/9176/layoutoc.jpg
The problem with units getting stuck seems to be fixed. I still think the map is a bit slow, the 10 second wait between waves is unnecessary.
Cool map, love the freedom with mazing. (Some spoilers here too)
Colossus wave is lame because they cant get through a one space maze so destroy your towers. Apart from that they are really easy because AntiAir tower can hit them.
Mothership wave is lame as well, whats with the flying in circles? I had all my towers on another area of the map so had to sell up and drop towers under them.
Also had pathing break when I got too ambitious with my maze. Then I had this fun minigame trying to prod the idle units into my maze by putting down cheap towers.
Overall a very good game, i appreciated the air wave warnings. Maybe some more creative waves?
Very good map, if you like tower defense games this is definitely one to download. And yes, you can play single player with the beta being down for a month or so. :)
STRATEGY - RELATED SPOILERS BELOW
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That being said, I just can't seem to beat the game on hard (only been playing by myself). Most notably, getting past level 25 (Drones)... Is this even possible by yourself? At this point in the game, I have 11 ground devastators, 7 Air Devastators, and 4 slow towers. So, assuming the motherships take the same route that they do in other difficulties, I have air covered and don't need to invest any more money on air past round 24, and to the best of my knowledge I got by with the bare minimum (actually created one extra level 2 tower the one time I got that far, for 45 minerals of waste)
The baddies run through all devastators 4 times, and 2/4 slow towers 2 times. I have minimized the use of ground towers as much as I can possibly think of (to save money) while maximizing the number of fires all of my big, bad towers will get off, and my total waste is 45 minerals... Yet I still let about 5 drones through with 8000+ HP.
My alignment is as such (Had to recreate this in the map editor afterwards): http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/503/formation.jpg
What am I doing wrong? The only thing I can really think of is MAYBE building some of those air capture towers, but I've spent 630 minerals on dedicated air towers by that point in the game, and 10 capture towers would cost me 400 minerals, for a savings of 230 minerals or 3 immortals. Also, this would require me to heavily modify my formation here, as I'm fairly sure the skinnier air units (PDDs) couldn't be hit by my immortals where they're placed now if brought down.
And assuming that they could be hit by the immortals where they are now (if not, they're running through the maze 3 times instead of 4 times), I'm sure 3 immortals would get me past drones, but it would be incredibly tight getting past templar, waiting for one or two more immortals to build.
Ugh. I've given up at this game. But had a lot of fun, thanks a lot for making it. :)
If you spent that long getting to wave 25, I am guessing you didn't focus much on upgrading towers. I am gonna implement something to allow players to spawn the mobs independantly, if one guy on the team is being silly and building infinite mazes, but I don't want to speed up the game too much.
I can see your point, but I think the problem is that most TD's are too fast paced, not that this one is too slow.
And again, if you don't upgrade your towers and concentrate them in a pack, making the maze funnel units into that area a couple of times over, yes, killing stuff might take a while. That's a function of how you build your maze, though, and something that is entirely in your own hands.
Not bad, a few things
Pathing of the waves breaks if the path through your maze becomes too long/complex. I guess I made my maze too good so units just stood there after the first waypoint because they didn't know the way through. Can provide a screenshot of my maze if needed.
Obviously a bunch of tooltips/features aren't implemented yet.
The game is really slow paced; there's not many units in each wave and the units in each wave are spaced really far apart. It took me around 45 minutes to get to wave 25 and then my maze broke the pathing.
I love it... except for the god damn colossus unit-size 2 stepping right through my maze t_t
good map, btw its not localized as it says :)