Operation Flytrap (Tower Defense)

[KristopherWindsor]

Here's a TD game with a lot of possibilities.

Code:

Operation Flytrap! v1.1
(C) 2009 Kristopher Windsor, kristopherwindsor@gmail.com

Made for the SJSU Game Development Club, Spring 2009 (tied 2nd place!)
Development time: 40 - 80 hours

Instructions:
Select a map and difficulty level at the main menu
In the minimap, red = spawnpoints, gray = checkpoints, black = creep destinations
The difficulty setting only affects the creep HP
Build towers, trees, and checkpoints to route and attack the enemy planes before they reach their destination
Creeps pass through all checkpoints, then the destination (which has a blue door)
Creeps can fly over towers, but not trees
Checkpoints won't be destroyed, but you lose lives if the destination is bombed
Checkpoints can only be added and removed between creep waves
Checkpoints are free but limited
You can't build on the water
Right-click to remove towers, trees, and checkpoints
Most money is returned for towers, but no money is returned for removing trees

Credits:
Dr_D: checkpoint and tower GFX, and coming up with the second best game title ever: "Operation Inundation"... "Flytrap" was more pronouncable
Ari Feldman: font, airplane, explosion, and bomb GFX that I found online
Kristopher Windsor: gameplay, programming, level design, SFX (made with SFXR), and other GFX
Music from modarchive.org

Updates:
v1.1 May 2009 New GFX, Tree-hop bug fixed, 5 more levels, main-menu scrolling added

Download with source:
http://sjsu.kristopherw.us/gamedev/operation-flytrap/download/operation-flytrap.zip
Zapdown (instant play):
http://zapdown.kristopherw.us/operationflytrap/zOperationFlytrap.exe

Join the Flytrap fanpage!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Operation-Flytrap-TD/81144868181?ref=nf

[Lachie Dazdarian]

Interesting game. I'm not familiar with this genre, so I'm not sure how much your features are innovative. The checkpoint thing. Is that your novelty? Cool idea.

I must play it more to get the feel of the gameplay and challenge. I played some 20 waves on easy and didn't get a sense of supense or excitement. Maybe the status screen should be more accesible. Or maybe I need to learn the game interface better.

Will try later more....

[KristopherWindsor]

I'm not familiar with this genre, so I'm not sure how much your features are innovative.

Apparently it's really popular, especially among Flash games.

Interesting game. The checkpoint thing. Is that your novelty? Cool idea.

Yes.

I must play it more to get the feel of the gameplay and challenge. I played some 20 waves on easy and didn't get a sense of suspense or excitement.

Try medium ("vanilla").
The easy mode will be more for hard maps than for new players, because you can make some considerable progress just by guarding each checkpoint.
Some levels allow more advancement than others, but typically on medium you can get to wave 20 or 40.
The first 5+ waves are very easy to destroy with the money you start with, so if you don't need time to destroy some trees or plan a strategy, you can quickly "Warp" past the first 10 waves.
If you can survive long enough to buy a mega tower, you should get to wave 40, but after that the waves start getting harder even faster, so you'll almost never get to wave 50:

Code:

    hp = 4 + graphic Shr 1
    If round > 10 Then hp += (round - 10)
    If round > 40 Then hp += (round - 40) * 10
   
    temp = Rnd()
    If temp < .3 Then temp = .3
    If temp > .7 Then temp = .7
   
    'creeps are either fast or plentiful; this will affect bombers and such
    addTotal = (round Shr 1 + 3) * temp * Iif((round Mod 5) = 2, .25, 1.0)
    speed = (1 + round / 6) * (1 - temp)
    If speed > 5 Then speed = 5

Maybe the status screen should be more accessible. Or maybe I need to learn the game interface better.

Yeah, mainly you want to know how much money you have left. Probably I could show this info on the button at the top-right of the screen, which currently just shows the level title.


BTW, if you want to make some levels for the game, I'll add them to the 16 I made. The level format should be self-explanatory.

[rdc]

Cool. I have been wanting to do a TD game for a while now. Maybe I'll do a RL one.

[Dr_D]

Not bad so far man. For the love of God... why didn't you use rotozoom? We even have an asm version now that's way faster than multiput. :\

[KristopherWindsor]

Not bad so far man. For the love of God... why didn't you use rotozoom? We even have an asm version now that's way faster than multiput. :\

I was about to... I even experimented with a 2x AA modification, but then I concluded that the difference wouldn't be noticeable, and I was running out of time.
I'll use it next time.

[Dr_D]

ahem.. however, i did notice. :p

btw, someone on irc pointed out the fact that you're using additive alpha blending, which rotozoom doesn't have. even the alpha blending version doesn't have additive yet, so i guess multiput may have been your only option here. in any case, it's a good start for a game from a genre with a nice following.

[codezer0]

Pretty nice. Challenging and addictive. I've been playing the blank map with 2 towers for a couple of hours. Can't seem to get past warp 20 even on easy. I think a campaign mode or 'par for the course' would offer more incentive to keep playing.

[KristopherWindsor]

Yeah, a blank map (without a maze of trees) will be hard.

I suppose for a new game mode - if it had you play multiple maps in one game - the first thing I would need to do is rank the maps from easiest to hardest.
But should I set an arbitrary "you need x amount of points to get to the next map" requirement?
I don't know if there is much learning curve to this game, so if I did that, someone would probably beat each map on the first try until they would reach a map they couldn't beat at all.

I haven't yet seen a TD game that used other gameplay modes, but having 16 * 3 * 10 highscore entries is a bit odd. :/
If you can think of some good gameplay mode I might implement it.

[codezer0]

Just got to wave 70 on intro(easy). Yeah I don't really know how you would do it, It'd just be nice to know what the creator thinks is a good wave to get to on each map somehow. Adds to the playability a bit if I have some comparison to see how I'm doing.

How about if you play through all the maps, and then you could make a campaign mode where vanilla is your score, and just add a couple more for hard and a few less on easy. This is for each map within the campaign I'm talking about.

But really it's up to you, I've never played a game like this so I don;t know how they usually work. You're right, I suppose it really depends on how many strategies there are to learn in the game whether it's worth it or not.

[KristopherWindsor]

I was new to this genre when I started making the game, but I looked up Desktop Tower Defense and Bloons.
Really I should just gets some high scores and send them with the game (so you have something to beat).

[Dr_D]

Well... I hope you don't mind, but I added some better gfx and rotozoom. I couldn't resist. :p

http://freefile.kristopherw.us/uploads/dr_d/operation-flytrap.zip

[codezer0]

^^ Nice improvement.

Is it a bug that sometimes warps get skipped, as in no planes come for that warp? Often happens on warp 2, been playing dr_d's version if it's relevent. And it seems to happen more if you press the warp button.

[KristopherWindsor]

Nice GFX Dr_D; I'll put you in the README and set some highscores for this game in about one week (and re-upload it), after finals.
But where is USE_ROTOZOOM defined?

Is it a bug that sometimes warps get skipped, as in no planes come for that warp? Often happens on warp 2, been playing dr_d's version if it's relevent. And it seems to happen more if you press the warp button.

TBH it was not expected, but... I'll argue that it's a feature.
addTotal = (round Shr 1 + 3) * temp * Iif((round Mod 5) = 2, .25, 1.0)
So for round 2 that would be as low as Int(4 * .3 * .25); for round 1 it could be as low as Int(3 * .3 * 1), but the other rounds will have >= 1 creep.

[Dr_D]

Cool... glad you guys like the gfx modifications. I just #defined use_rotozoom in your man module. Mainly I did that because I didn't want to go through all the other files and convert every gfx drawing instance to use one or the other.