After a 3rd rewrite of the random map generator, I have finally reached a point where I am satisfied with how it runs. Previous attempts all had minor issues… walls in the middle of nowhere which affected the shading and 3d effect, path finding hiccups, and an inner struggle on whether to go with tilemaps or sprites for building the dungeons. ( I managed to go with a hybrid option using a little bit of both).
LOL. Hi there. Welcome to my first blog post, a first step in sharing with you my story in developing my first game, Kingdom Deep TD. Lots of firsts… Btw, the TD stands for tower defense – please note the lower case when not abbreviated, because APPARENTLY, according to Wikipedia: On June 3, 2008, COM2US Corporation was awarded the trademark for the term “Tower Defense”, filed on June 13, 2007 – serial number 3442002. The corporation is reported to have started enforcing the trademark: in early 2010, developers of games on Apple’s App Store reported receiving messages requiring name changes for their games, citing trademark violation.Adding the phrase “Tower Defense” (in capital letters) to the description of an app submission to iTunesConnect and the app store automatically triggers a warning that the submission is likely to be rejected for use of the term; however, writing the phrase in lower case is still acceptable as “tower defense” is a valid description of a game style. Who knew?
My vision for Kingdom Deep TD is to make a Roguelike game with RPG and Ttower Ddefense elements. The main platform I am targeting is Android, with a release in the Steam Store also planned. The game is not going to be free. I would like to make some money, and I don’t feel that ads or in-game purchases is the way to go. This is MY game, and those things irritate the living bejeesus out of me, so this is the route I’m going. I don’t expect to purchase a Lamborghini from my Kingdom Deep TD (henceforth referred to as KDTD) millions, so I plan to charge between $1 and $1.50 for the game in the Google Play Store. No idea what things cost in the Steam Store, so that price is definitely TBA, awaiting the outcome of some future research.
Apart from no ads and no in-game purchases, I also want the game to be free from social media spamming. No “get 5 friends to help you to advance” nonsense. I know that its suicide to not involve social media, so I plan to at least allow the player to post to his/her social media platform of choice, but merely when an achievement or milestone is reached.
Why am I doing this? I might have mentioned that I love tower defense games. I also like RPG games, but most of all, I love games that have a randomness to them. Random level generation, random monster spawning, casual grinding to find random scarce and unique loot… Compared to the most popular games played on mobile devices, these game-types are pretty niche. Combining them would make the game fall into an even smaller niche. Real specialist taste sort of thing. But my aim is to create something that I really want to play. Something casual, but that will still draw me back to play again and again. RPG with a bit more strategy than normal. As I’m not doing this as a job or purely for income, I have a hobbyist’s freedom to make something the I want, and will hopefully be able to cater for some like-minded souls out there.
For this grand venture, I will be using the Construct 2 game engine. I have purchased the personal license and this allows me to simultaneously develop for many platforms. I have some gripes with Construct 2, but the only big one is the inability to generate the android APK directly from Construct 2. But other than that… It is extremely easy to use, the community is very helpful and the Construct 2 site has multitudes of tutorials to assist. This is important to me, as I am a single person working on this project. Art, development… I will do it all.
Wish me luck!
