Games [Released] Brink of Extinction TD

Store page is now up!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/748930/Brink_of_Extinction/

 

I will be uploading the builds to Steam tomorrow, hopefully they will get approved just fine! Keep an eye out for the game on Steam (and GameJolt) the 30th of November!

 

Builds have been uploaded! Ten days to go!

 

I've removed the current GameJolt demo-builds and added in the achievements and scoreboards, meaning everything is ready there also. Game will be available on GameJolt same day as on Steam, November 30th!



Only four days to go! ( :0 )

 

Game releases tomorrow! Would like to thank everyone who participated in this thread with feedback, it's been very valuable.

 

The game has been released on Steam and GameJolt today. Support a Unity developer and purchase it!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/748930/Brink_of_Extinction/
https://gamejolt.com/games/brink-of-extinction/176423

 

I’m in the process of working out some changes to the game and figured I would list the upcoming changes here also. Most of this info has been published on the steam store front for Brink of Extinction as well, but also on IndieDB.

– I will spruce up some of the weapon firing effects.
– Scoreboards were planned for, but never made it into, the initial release, so these will be added also (for the continuous mode levels).
– Some background story. The game does have a bit of a story, but it is currently not conveyed in-game.
– Turret default rotation will be setable with the scroll wheel, and not only by clicking and dragging.
– Tweaking of turret stats.
– Added upgrade info into the turret showroom.
– Camera pan and/or zoom.
– Objectives listed before level starts.
– Two additional endless mode levels, one with Tesla and one without. This also means four more achievements.

The turret nerfs and buffs are as follows (although they may still be subject to change):

Acid turret: Starting HP from 500 to 450, minus 50. Starting Damage from 35 to 25, minus 10. Speed will be equivalent to that of rail (40). HP upgrade will give 125 instead of 100, damage upgrade till give 25 instead of 20. Splash range will go from 1.25 to 1.3.
Bull turret: 10 less starting damage, from 40 to 30. Damage upgrade will give 20 instead of 16. Starting HP up 50.
Plasma: Starting damage 25 instead of 20, and damage upgrade 8 instead of 10. Splash damage radius from 0.9 to 1.
Missile turret: Increased damage upgrade, from 30 to 35.

Overall, the concept is to differentiate the turrets from each other more. So the Acid turret will be stronger and have better range than rail, but is weaker. Bull turret gets a more emphasized role as high HP and strong, but is slower than machinegun turret and double turret. The double turret will remain a sort of all round turret. The plasma turret and acid turret both get splash range improvements, making them suitable for large hordes of enemies. Plasma is weaker but faster than acid. I’ve yet to decide about the cost of upgrades, and some more minor adjustments may still follow after more extensive testing.

Enemies will also get some stat tweaks, but primarily when it comes to their upgrade values, so this won’t affect the campaign, as all enemies are level 0 in the campaign. I have yet to start tweaking enemies, so a post on this will follow once I have done this.

Lastly, the game has been updated from Unity 5.5 to Unity 2017.2, which means some of the assets I use have also been updated. Since the shadow system and SSAA system were fairly new when I developed the game, these have now been updated and optimized, which means the game should run better in general also (although no complains on performance or bugs have been reported).

The two new levels will be displayed here, once I get to work on them this weekend, after rebaking all the light in the current levels

 

Congrats on getting your game out!! It's really great to see a completed project and something that's really hard to do. Also great job on the dev logs, genuinely enjoyable to read. Anyways I'm pretty busy right now and trying to finish up school (1 week left!!) but I added it to my wishlist, so I'll grab a copy over the break and let you know how it plays.

 

Thanks! It's been hard work but it's been very fun and educational also. I hope you enjoy it once you pick it up.
Once the update is done, I'm hoping to get some speed on my other projects and their dev logs, so hope to see you drop a line or two there every now and then as well.

 

Hello!
Wanted to post an update on the full scope of the update, scheduled for release January first.
First off, I've continued rebalancing some of the turrets, mainly buffing the strength of the machinegun turret, nerfing the damage of the drone controller, while increasing the damage of the drone itself. Another balancing change made, affecting only the endless mode, is that yields are now much lower than before. Before, yields would be given by a starting yield + yield * level basis. Now, instead, the additional yield per level is offset by the level. As an example, a level 10 acid mosquito would previously yield 56 credits, now it yields 46. Mites would previously increase credit yield by one per level - with the new calculation they always yield only one credit. Some additional adjustments have been made to the yields of acid spiders, fire ants and blitz roaches (all lowered by 1).

The result of all this is a more balanced difficulty increase. Whereas before, making it past the 10 minute mark usually meant you would have an abundance of credits to spend on mines, bug zapper and airstrikes, now you have to ensure turrets can actually manage most of the killing or risk going broke.

The two new levels are much larger and more difficult than I had first set out to make them. They feature 12 and 16 spawn points respectively and you will encounter most enemy types on both of the levels. Also, as they are larger, you have to plan your defense more thoroughly from start and rely more on a single turret in any given location to manage until you gain more credits. The balancing changes mentioned above have made the 6 current levels more difficult though, so they should pose more of a challenge now, than before.

While we're talking levels. Here they are!

 

Update goes live tomorrow!

Optimizations:
Game has been upgraded from Unity 5.5 to Unity 2017.2 which means SSAA (Res scaling),
NGSS (shadow system) and post processing effects have been optimized.

Bugs and issues:
Level 5 base object (the truck) has been moved to increase visibility.
Level 5 some hexes have been moved to allow max range turrets to reach the base object.
Fixed issue where base options in the ui would get displaced when switching res.
Increased music fadeout speed when switching scenes.
Adjusted post proc effects in the achievement display area.
Fixed the heatwave effect offsetting.
Fixed sound not playing when clicking next/previous button before last achievement in achievement display area.

New features and rebalancing:
Two new endless mode levels, the Forest and the Overpass.
Objectives for each level have been added to the loading screen.
If there's an object to protect, an indicator shows which one it is.
Zooming has been implemented, mapped to the scroll wheel.
Collectible story notes added to campaign levels.
Story note reading room added in main menu.
Song in reading room.
Five new achievements, Give 'em hell 7+8, Prime example 7+8 and Librarian.
Steam scoreboards implemented for continuous mode levels.
Acid turret, Bull turret, Missile turret, Plasma turret, Rail turret, Double turret and Machinegun turret rebalanced.
Enemy level up stats (including yields) rebalanced in endless mode.
Bug zapper range slightly increased and damage greatly increased.
Turrets can be rotated using the arrow keys.

Minor adjustments:
Plasma turret smoother textures.
Level 5 DoF has been adjusted to avoid the turret at the far right position on the screen blurring.
Level C1 DoF has been adjusted to avoid bottom turret position blurring.
Level C1 Grass was growing through some cars.
Level C1 Lens dirt decreased.
Added more songs to the playlists in the continuous mode.
Spruced up turret firing effects for plasma, sonic pulse.
Added barrel heat on the Double turret.
Text on game over in continuous mode adjusted to not line break.
Increased Missile turret emission.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

 

If you haven't purchased it yet, now is the time.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/748930/Brink_of_Extinction/

 

I've started working on another update for the game. I mainly aim to fix some balancing issues by changing the levelling system for enemies and adding special attacks.

Fixes/features/changes:

Level 14 deathbox fix. Enemies would sometimes miss the deathbox causing the level to not finish.

Continuous mode leveling system overhauled. Instead of all stats leveling up each 5-8 spawn cycles, either of DMG, HP or yield is randomly picked to level up each 2-3 spawn cycles. This should make each game more different and changes the difficulty ramp a bit.

Insect generals added to the continuous mode. Ever fifth cycle, the last enemy spawned from one point will be a general – has 3x of DMG, HP and yield stats. Marked with a red vortex particle underneath.

Difficulty ramp on campaign changed. Earlier levels are now a bit easier, later levels slightly trickier.

Powerup costs will increase per use. For example, the cost of placing mines starts at 600, and by 50 placed the price will have doubled.

Turrets now have a special attack that unlocks when you match a specific stat. The special ability requires a 120s charge time.

Turret upgrade cost offset. Each upgrade costs more than the previous one for the same stat. In the campaign this generally means the special abilities cannot be unlocked on the early levels and pushes players to build in more locations instead of maxing turrets early on.

Turret recoupable credits from sales the same as before, meaning less of investment on upgrades can be recouped from sales.

All enemy and turret stats rebalanced. To allow for more finetuning, DMG and HP has been doubled and then tuned further. This means the repair speed has been changed to accommodate higher HP values for turrets. It also means fully repairing turrets is now more expensive than before.

Some turrets have had some animations and more particles added.

Mac version added.

The game has been translated into Russian, Swedish, Romanian, French and Chinese.

Shadow system has been optimized and settings for it tweaked.

FXAA removed in favor of TAA. This means that the aliasing has been minimized even on low resolution scaling. TAA is costlier than FXAA, but the cost can be offset by allowing lower resolution scales to get the same or better graphical fidelity.

Some adjustments in large scenes to lower the number of objects and their FPS impact.

Button press sound moved, to avoid “false” click sounds.

Explosion effects overhauled.


Unfinished but will be added:

* In game scoreboards when you finish a continuous level.

* Increased the amount of build locations in some of the levels.​

* Hexagon level added.


As seen above, I focus primarily on balancing. My goal with the update is to increase player engagement in the game by allowing for more planning (cost increase for turret upgrades, strategic decisions for special abilities) and having to engage the special attacks. I'm also hoping to get the endless mode to be more balanced by changing the levelling system. Lastly I am targeting mine spamming by making power up costs increase over time.

The update will also feature localization. First step Swedish, Russian and French. Hopefully also Chinese.

Currently I am starting testing of the new version and it does seem promising, and it's exciting how it changes up the game in a number of ways.

The update is set to release mid/late March.

(Swedish localization)

 

Great to see you're giving it an overhaul! Changes should help keep endless mode spruced up and interesting

 

Version Blitz Ant is live.
It ended up being more comprehensive than first expected, and I had to cut out some of things I had originally planned. But they'll be in by next update.

- Optimization
Shadow system has been optimized and settings for it tweaked.

FXAA removed in favor of TSAA. This means that the aliasing has been minimized even on low resolution scaling. TSAA is more performance heavy than FXAA, but the added performance cost is offset by allowing lower resolution scales to get the same or better graphical fidelity.

Loading times between levels lowered. Music is compressed into memory in the background instead of on load and SFX uses faster compression.

Improved pooling system and waypoint path generation to allow for pool expansion and drawing from a single pool. This dramatically improves the loading times, in particular it lowers the load of creating many objects on start (noticeable by a lot of stuttering when level is first loaded in).

Optimized UI code.

Some adjustments in large scenes to lower the number of objects and their FPS impact.



- Features and balancing
- General changes
Difficulty ramp on campaign changed. Earlier levels are now a bit easier, later levels slightly trickier.

Powerup costs will increase per use.

Turrets now have a special attack that unlocks when you match a specific stat. The special ability requires a 60/105s (campaign/endless) charge time.

Turret upgrade cost offset. Each upgrade costs more than the previous one for the same stat. In the campaign this generally means the special abilities cannot be unlocked on the early levels and pushes players to build in more locations instead of maxing turrets early on.

Turret recoupable credits from sales the same as before, meaning less of investment on upgrades can now be recouped from sales.

All enemy and turret stats rebalanced. To allow for more finetuning, DMG and HP has been doubled and then tuned further. This means the repair speed has been changed to accommodate higher HP values for turrets. It also means fully repairing turrets is now more expensive than before.

There’s now a 5 % chance turrets will score a lucky chance when enemies fire the killing shot. This sets the turret hp to 1 and stuns enemies for a second, allowing turrets to survive even the most devastating hits. Using the Bull turret’s gentle giant special ability sets the chance to 50 % for a short time.


- Endless mode
Continuous mode leveling system overhauled. Instead of all stats leveling up each 5-8 spawn cycles, either of DMG, HP or yield is randomly picked to level up each 1-2 spawn cycles. This should make each game more different and changes the difficulty ramp a bit – If you are lucky, yields will level up faster than damage and hit point, for instance.

Insect generals added to the continuous mode. Every fifth cycle, the last enemy spawned from one point will be a general – the general is three levels ahead of the wave level for DMG and HP and 5 levels for yield stats. Works as an extra challenge and a way to boost credits. Marked with a red vortex particle underneath.

Wave pause time changed from linear random to normal distribution. Making very long and very short pauses rarer.

Pause time between enemy spawns in wave changed from linear random between -0.1 and 0.2 to normal distribution between -0.1 and 0.4.

Spawn amount per wave in endless mode changed from random between starting value and starting value to cycle, to normally distributed with starting value as mean. This mean shifts up by value one per 5 wave cycles meaning each 5 cycles will increase the number of enemies spawned. Getting very few or very many spawned enemies should thus be rarer in the beginning and more common later in a game.

Yields changed from linear to log normal curve, meaning faster in the beginning and slower later on in the endless mode.


- Graphical changes

Some turrets have had some animations and more particles added.

Explosion effects overhauled.


- Other
The game has been translated into Russian, Swedish, Romanian and French.

Button press sound moved, to avoid “false” click sounds.

First wave starts briefly after placement of first turret to allow planning.

Level 14 deathbox fix. Enemies would sometimes miss the deathbox causing the level to not finish.

Bug where raycasting would bug out when not using SSAA fixed.

Additional hexes on level 5 and 9 and the endless mode highway level.


- Remaining additions for the future
I had intended to have these additions added this update, but due to a lack of time they’ve been cut. Should hopefully see implementation fairly soon.

* Mac version added. Was intended for this update, but due to continuing issues with the Mac build it has been pushed to the future.

* In game scoreboards when you finish a continuous level. Will be implemented in the next update.

* Hexagon level. Was pushed to a later date due to lack of time to balance it properly and give it the required time to test it.

* German, Spanish and Chinese translations.