TowerDefense ToolKit 4

@songtan thank you , i got it!

 

Thanks webgovernor, I'll put that in in the next update.

 

How long will it take to see the next update? i like the new skill system

 

Hey again Song,

Adding a Slow to a specific tower via Perk doesn't seem to work, unless I change:

Code (csharp):

1.         float[] perkSlow=PerkManager.GetTowerSlow(specialID);
2.         if(perkSlow.Length==2){
3.             perkSlowDuration=perkSlow[0];
4.             perkSlowFactor=perkSlow[1];
5.            
6.             slow.duration+=perkSlow[0];
7.             slow.slowFactor+=perkSlow[1];
8.         }

To

Code (csharp):

1.         float[] perkSlow=PerkManager.GetTowerSlow(specialID);
2.         if(perkSlow.Length>=2){ # perkSlow.Length is always 3, due to the chance added.
3.             perkSlowDuration=perkSlow[0];
4.             perkSlowFactor=perkSlow[1];
5.            
6.             slow.duration+=perkSlow[0];
7.             slow.slowFactor+=perkSlow[1];
8.         }

(I also changed the _ModifierType to percentage, but I don't think that's necessary for this fix). Just an FYI. This may have been covered already, but a forum search didn't turn up anything useful.

Edit: I've also changed slow.duration and slow.slowFactor to "=" instead of "+="... it appears that the slow effect was stacking otherwise. Granted, this overwrites any existing slow, but the PerkEditor descriptions explains that anyway.

Edit #2: It just occurred to me that maybe the best way to fix this is to remove the third value from the perk editor and update the description... oh well. Your call.

 

@liverolA, I'm working on it. I can honestly say I know when it will be done. Hopefully in 2-3 weeks time top.

@webgovernor, Thanks alot for pointing that out. My apologizes. I must have overlooked it. I'll get it fixed.

 

Hey song, I've found a minor bug with the toolkit which is affecting gameplay if you have mines enabled.

The way the toolkit handles mines is a bit odd. Even though you're able to pass through them, they still have the same build rules as regular towers. The only way to build a mine in a tower maze is to build the mines first, then build the maze around it.. which is really awkward gameplay wise.

I'm wondering if you have a fix for this/will there be one in the future?

Cheers man!

 

You are absolutely right and thanks for pointing that out. I wasnt aware of this but now I have. I'll see what I can about it.

 

Another thing.. I've managed to get creep animation working, however when I add more than one entry to the Move Animation array, only the first animation plays. How does the toolkit handle multiple animations in an array? I assumed they would play randomly, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Cheers!

 

Noted. Possibly a bug. I'll look it up.

Thanks again for pointing that out.

 

Hi there Song,
Do you happen to know how many successfully launched games are powered by this incredible engine of yours?

 

Running into a bug with the camera controller when using iOS, when zooming in and out quicky it has a nasty habit of breaking free of the restrictions and often going through the floor. You can run into this by just zooming in and out over and over on iOS. I have slowed down the zoom speed drastically to keep it in bounds but it still happens sometimes if I zoom to fast.

 

@Jon at Kaio, Unfortunately I dont.

Most of the user kept their project and progress to themselve, and rightly so. While provide modification support, I've seen a few which seems nicely made/polish up to a point where it's close to release. However I've never check if any of them make it to release.


@BeerNuts, I've looked into the camera zooming issue. Please do add following code to line290 in your CameraControl.cs (assuming your are using the latest version), at the bottom of Update():

Code (csharp):

1.         float camZ=Mathf.Clamp(cam.localPosition.z, -maxRadius, -minRadius);
2.         cam.localPosition=new Vector3(cam.localPosition.x, cam.localPosition.y, camZ);

Balancing a strategy or indeed TD game has always been very difficult, as long as there's choices of strategy in your game (where to build, what to build, how to spend resources). On paper, the best you can do is rough guess and projection. If you ask me, I'd say play test and play test and play test again. Yes there are tons of TD game out there, but in my personal experience most of them are either unbalance, or they force you to build/play in a specific manner.

 

Is anyone out there trying to reuse things for different levels? I have tried this and so far it seems to work but I'm wondering what others' best practices are. (e.g. using prefabs somehow?) I have one level with GameControl, UI NGUI, and BuildManager, and each level has a SpawnManager, Paths, and Platforms. After I do a LoadLevelAdditive on the level, I set the GameControl.spawnManager to the right SpawnManager. (I actually do this from an external DLL, so I have to use reflection to get the setter for spawnManager.)

 

Interesting, I've never thought to this before. I suppose if you reset the retaining component correctly things should work. Another way of course is using prefab like you suggested yourself. Just pack everything in a level into one prefab and Instantiate the appropriate prefab according to selected level. It's quite a lot faster then loading a new scene. But then you will still have to clean up the all the gameObjects from previous prefab(level) everytime you load a new one.

However imho it might seems to be more easier and intuitive to just do it the standard way. Unless of course the seamless loading is pretty important for your game.

 

Is there a way to prevent 'firing' till the turret is facing the enemy, our beam turrets look kinda funny with their beams being emited at odd angles from their shoot points as the turret is still orientating itself, (I guess there might be a problem then when the turret continues to track the enemy the beam might switch off which wouldn't look so good)

 

There's two thing you can look at, but I'm afraid you will have to dig into the code a bit as there are no readily exposed varaible to configure this. They are The turret rotate speed and the angle threshold from turret to target. The former is valued at 15 and the later is 45. They are both hardcoded and located at Update() in UnitTower.cs.

You can either increase the rotating speed to make the turret turn towards the target faster so it never look so disoriented when shooting. Or you can lower the angle threshold so it wont shoot until it's within the angle allowed. I would suggest you keep the angle at 10 or something not too low. Since the rotation use slerp, the rotation actually gets slower as the turret approach it's target. Anyway, you can experiment with this two. Just make sure there are more than one code chunk(all in Update|()) that control this, make sure you edit the them all, or at least edit the one that is being used by your tower.

 

I don't care about seamless loading right now; I am just wondering if I tweak the UI, or add a tower type, why would I want to have to reapply those changes for every level? Seems unnecessary, and a maintenance nightmare. How about making the UI NGUI object a prefab, or BuildManager?

 

UI NGUI object is indeed a prefab. The only thing that it should be differ from level to level is the load next scene variable. But that can be modified rather easily to fit whatever purpose of your game. The reason of it being difference from each other in the example scene is to showcase the flexibility of it.

For BuildManager however, it has to be of different setting in each level to allow locking of certain tower and assignment of platforms in each individual level. The former is for games with progression of any sort throughout the levels. You probably dont want the more powerful tower to be accesible in earlier level. The later is for obvious reason, unless you have the same level design and platform placement in all you levels. I'm aware that there are some problem with it that the newly added tower in TowerManager wont be available until you load the level and refresh the BuildManager by selecting it. It's a bug. The way it's intended is that when you add a new tower to TowerManager, the new tower instantly become available to all BuildManager. It will be fixed in the next update of course.

By the way the next update is almost done. I'm trying to get the upload done no later by this week.

 

I was interested in buying this toolkit, however as i read the post of "Jon at Kaio"and your answer above I wanted to ask:

- do you plan to add the funcionality, that prevents turrets from firing, if they are still adjusting their alignment to the enemy. I'm not a programmer and don't want to do that coding stuff by myself. e.g. an enemy spawns behind a turret and on a higher level ( in the air), the turret has to rotate itself left or right to the enemy. At the same time, the barrel has to rotate down or in this case up, so that the barrel has a straight line to the enemy. Only then the turret should start firing because projectiles or laser beams always travel in a straight line.

- Related to that is my next question: does the TDTK support multi mesh turrets? E.g. i have 3 separate meshes - a base, a turret body and a barrel. the base is static and does nothing only the turret body is parented to it, the turret body only rotates left and right and the barrel, which is parented to the turret body rotates up and down.
On the preview pics or the webplayers i only see cubes as example turrets, so I wanted to ask if such turrets are supported?

As an example for both my questions I like to point to the Lock n' Shoot Asset here: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/143158-RELEASED-Lock-n-Shoot-Ready-to-use-solution-for-AI-turret

 

Hi msgamedev,

Thanks for your interest in the toolkit. To answer your question.

It has been implemented actually, that the turrets wont fire until they have align themself to the target. Thy have at least align the barrel to certain direction before the target is considered to be in line of fire and therefore take the shot. You can even edit it so it rotate so slow and it wouldnt be able to keep up with certain target. However these control parameter are current not as accessible as other tower control parameter (I've never see the need to modify that) but I can easily change that.

Again this is exactly the tower model used in TDTK. You will have at least a base, a turret and in some case, a barrel. The example you've seen in the demo are only one particular rotating mode for turret tower, which is to rotate the turret itself in both x and y-axis. You can set it so that the turret only rotate in y-axis (left and right) while the barrel do the x-axis (up and down)

I would suggest you go take a look at this video to get a better understanding of how turret mechanic is done in TDTK. I'm confident that it will have what you are looking for.

 

​

I'm pleased to annouce that the latest version of TDTK, 2.2.1 is now live on AssetStore. (Sorry for the long delay for anyone who has been waiting for it)

Here are the notable addition:

• added player ability system where player can actively use ability with combination of various effect (aoe damage, slow, buff, restore HP, etc..)
• added player ability support in perk system. Ability can be unlocked, upgraded and tied into tech tree.
• waves can now be generated procedurally according to user defined rules.
• SpawnManager now support endless mode (using procedural wave generation)
• some nice art icons.

For full list of changes and bug-fixes please visit the development blog.

Feel free to try out the new updated demo featuring show casing the new features

 

the pie chart is not placed well... here is a pic....

 

Check the buildPanel transform position, make sure it's positioned at (0, 0, 0). Please refer to image below:

 

Hey Songtan,

I'm getting an error after updating TDTK:

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
AbilityEditorWindow.OnGUI () (at Assets/TDTK/Scripts/C#/Editor/AbilityEditorWindow.cs:135)

I also have some missing script warnings too in your example scenes on some of the NGUI objects. I'm using the full version of NGUI which is the latest version.

 

Nevermind the icon for Energy was missing for some reason.

 

Also the upgrade and sell buttons were not working until I removed the tick from "Clip Raycasts" on the UICamera.

 

really interested in this kit, as I'm thinking of doing a TD game, but I really want to try the web player demo out but it just won't work. I follow the link and it tells me to install Unity WebPlayer, despite the fact that I already have version 4.1.2f1 of the webplayer installed (which I believe is the latest version). Is anyone else having problems with the webplayer demo?

 

I'm sorry for the slow respond. For some reasons I havent been able to connect to the forum for the past few hours.

@DreamEnder,
There's possibly some bugs with the current scripts. I'm trying to fix that and upload an update asap. If you can send me an email I could send you an advance copy of the latest script.

Also, if you are importing the full package into an existing project with NGUI, make sure you unchecked the NGUI folder in TDTK which is in fact NGUI free. Or delete it and reimport NGUI full after that. (I'm sorry I'm not sure entirely what's the correct steps to take as myself dont play with NGUI all too often). Otherwise there might be some conflict. You should also know that the NGUI free version used is of older version where there is some deprecated code which will gives you a bunch of warning if you are using Unity4.


@SpookyFishGames,
You could try with another browser to see if that makes a different. Alternatively you could send me your email so I can send the webplayer to you directly.

 

Hi,
I am thinking to buy the TDTK in the 24 Hours Sale, but there is one thing I need to know. Is it possible to build a reverse tower defense Game with it? Like where you control the Guys walking down the path, and not the towers?

Ant the 2nd Question, can you male it realtime, like, not having a build phase, and then a spawn phase? I want to have Money being added after every wave, and be able to build every time I want.

 

I am thinking to buy the TDTK in the 24 Hours Sale too, but I need to know if this works with Unity 3.5.7?

 

Thanks for the reply, I did try with IE as well (usually use Chrome) and it didn't work either, though it's not so big a deal now as I've just purchased the TDK in the 24 hour sale, and I'm very impressed with it. Great work, and it should help me a lot.

However, I am having a small issue. The TDK examples all seem to work fine with the included copy of NGUI free, but when I replace this with my full version of NGUI I get a lot of errors in the debug window. The main one seems to be:

Code (csharp):

1. Scale of 0 is invalid! Zero cannot be divided by, which causes problems. Use a small value instead, such as 0.01
2. (0.0, 0.0, 0.0)
3. UnityEngine.Debug:LogError(Object, Object)
4. UIPanel:UpdateTransforms() (at Assets/NGUI/Scripts/UI/UIPanel.cs:760)
5. UIPanel:LateUpdate() (at Assets/NGUI/Scripts/UI/UIPanel.cs:971)
6.  

Now I upgraded the NGUI following the instructions from tasharen (create new scene, delete ngui folder, re-import ngui asset package), and it seemed to work fine. But obviously there is something amiss because I'm getting these errors. Is there another way I'm suppose to upgrade the NGUI in TDK? I have had a quick skim through the (very comprehensive) TDK documentation for anything NGUI related, and I can't find anything that points to having to do it differently, but there is a lot of documentation so I could of missed it.

FYI I'm using Unity 4.1.2f1, latest TDK downloaded from asset store today (2.2.1 I think), and latest NGUI (2.5.1).

 

Well, they are called tower offense also...
http://toucharcade.com/2013/01/07/anomaly-korea-review/

 

Sorry for the slow respond. Connection issue has been bugging me here. >.<

@GPSchnyder
I'm well aware of the game anomaly where the mechanic is entirely reversed. Unfortunately TDTK doesnt support that. For your second question, I'm not sure what you mean. Have you tried the demo? TDTK runs in realtime, there are no build/spawn phase so to speak. The game only pause at the start waiting for player initiation. Once the spawn button is pressed, there's no stopping except when paused for game menu, or you use a round-based spawn mode (spawning of every waves needs to be initiated by player). And yes, resource bonus after completion of every wave is supported, it's pretty standard in any TD game. If you are still curious, try the free version. It's relatively outdated and missing a whole bunch of feature from the full version, but it should give you a pretty good idea about the mechanic supported.


@I am da bawss
Yes, unity3.5 is supported. I myself is using unity 3.5.


@SpookyFishGames
I've tried that in the past without any issue. As far as I know I've not done anything out of the ordinary to NGUI free so everything should be in it's default. I'll tried it again myself later today when I got time. I'll get back to you asap. But please note that since I'm having connection issue to unity forum, it might take some time. Can you please send me an email so I can get back to you directly.

 

No I didn't, as the Demo didn't work on my PC. Have that with some of them. Don't know why. I bought the TDTK and tested it and it works exactly like I wanted it to behave, so everything is cool
Now I have to dig through your documentation and come up with something cool theme-vise for my first Game with the TDTK. Expect some Questions from me here in a few days

 

Always happy to take question. Have fun!

To all: please note there are still a few nasty bugs with the editors. I've just uploaded a fix, hopefully that would be it. I've also threw in some asset along with the update. I'm actually in the process of overhauling the toolkit with addition of art asset. So there will be more to come. Hope that will be a good news to some.

 

I couldn't find your email address (though TBH I didn't look very hard ) so I've sent you a PM with my email address instead.

 

So, I'm thinking about possible Games right now, and I have a question that your documentation doesn't give me an answer to. Can I have two or more pathes, where if there are creepers alive in path one they disapear and spawn creepers on path 2 that have power matching the HP of the one that got through path one?

George

 

Awesome! Just bought it myself.
So expect some Questions from me too!

 

@george, For now the framework only support path looping in 1 single path. Means the creep will "teleport" back to the start of the path they assigned to (retaining all their stats) but not the other path. You can mod it of course (I'll gladly help), but unless you keep it in a very rigid manner, it's going to take some effort to make it work.

@I am da bawss, awesome! Thanks for your support.

 

Very nice toolkit Songtan, I couldn't resist the offer although I'm not planning to work on any TD this year. ^^

@Spookyfishgames songtan, I'm having the same issue when switching to ngui pro. Everything is up to date but it looks like the example scenes of tdtk are not up to date with ngui.
2 components are reported missing in 3 panels : UIBaseSlicedSprite (coming from ngui.dll in the free ngui package) and an unknown component in 2 panels both using UISlicedSprite.
I guess you should just recreate those panels. Looks like the origin of the problem if you started from an example scene like me.

 

Ok, figured this out. This specific problem comes from all the TweenScale.Begin in UInGUI.cs when the target scale is Vector3.zero. So in all the functions scaling down buttons, texts and other things to zero you should add instead a target scale vector of at least 0.01 in x,y,z as unity is telling us to do.
Dunno how it relates to the latest ngui pro yet.....

 

Right folks, I just give it upgrading to NGUI full a shot. There are a few issues, mostly missing component, not unsolvable tho.

So here are the gameObject and the component:

• UINGUI/Camera/Anchor/Panel/PerkMenu/ListPanel/UIPanel(Window)/UIPanel(ScrollBar)/Background
• UINGUI/Camera/Anchor/Panel/PerkMenu/ListPanel/UIPanel(Window)/UIPanel(ScrollBar)/Foreground

both missing EventListener. You can add that manually or simply delete the missing component, it seems that NGUI will automatically fix that

• UINGUI/Camera/Anchor/Panel/TowerPanel/TargetControlPriority/TargetPriorityList/BaseSlicedSprite

missing UISlicedSprite. You will need to add it manually.


And then that's the problem ngaliod mentioned. (Thanks for clarifying that!)
To fix that, please do the following in UInGUI.cs:

• change line1472 to TweenScale.Begin(generalButton.spawn, 0.2f, new Vector3(0.01f, 0.01f, 0.01f));
• change line2052 to TweenScale.Begin(obj, 0.5f, new Vector3(0.01f, 0.01f, 0.01f));
• chagne line2061 to TweenScale.Begin(obj, 0.5f, new Vector3(0.01f, 0.01f, 0.01f));

I'll incoporate the code change in the next update/fix which I'm going to upload now.

 

Sorry if I throw questions at you, but I am right now bouncing a lot of Ideas around in my head. Would it be possible to make the Platforms that you build the towers on moveable? I'd like to build a plane where I "mount" the platform on and make it rotateable. This way the position of the Plane would be another gameelement. Don't know if your System could handle that.

 

I dont see too much problem doing that. But there'll be a few restriction to what you want to do. At a quick glance, as far as I recall, the existing system should be robust enough as long as those platform are not walkable by creep. But I cant be sure until I test it. You can do it yourself with relative ease. Just add a simple movement script on those platforms and see how they work. Then, you will need some small modification to tied the tower position to the platform they are build on so they move along. This is as simple as setting the tower transform's parent to the platform transform. by doing this, another more complicated issue you might have is when you have platform of uneven scale, your tower scale might get affected, as a result the tower mesh may get deformed in some manner when they rotate. You can use a super parent with a scale value of (1, 1, 1) for both the towers and platform to solve this. Shouldnt be too difficult.

 

Sounds good. The Platforms wouldn't be walkable in this case, which is no problem. The rest sounds like I planned.

Coming back to my Question about the waves and the possibility to spawn the creeps from one End to the beginning of another path, which you said may be possible with some programming (which is not my greatest strength). I rethought this, and it's okay when they respawn at the beginning. I just need them to trigger the next spawn of another path. Would that be possible? Like instead of lowering the health the trigger the next spawn of another path? I would need three areas where the outcome of area one changes the waves of area 2, and the outcome of area 2 the waves of area 3. The outcome of area three would count against health as normal. Would that be possible?

 

It's hard to say without knowing the specific details. So a creep or an entire wave (which one?) in one area spawn a another creep or an entire new wave (again, which?) in next area when they reach in the of path? Is this repeatable? Or the new wave only spawn once? And how exactly does the outcome of one area affect the next one? And how do you measure the HP in the first place? See my point?

As of now, you can set the lifeCost of creeps in each subWave so that they cost player life or not when they reach the end of path. And you can use wave cleared spawn mode so that a new wave is spawned (in other path no less) when the current wave is cleared.

 

Can I send you an email? Where do I get your adress from. It's a longer concept and I want to write it down for you fully

 

You can find my email in the documentation.

At the very bottom I might add.

 

​

Folks, version2.2.1f2 has just been released and is now live on AssetStore!

I've added a modular turret asset in the new update and replace all the existing tower prefab with new model. See the updated demo for yourself. Or better yet, download your copy!

For more information about the update, please visit the development blog.

 

Hi ya,
Quick question on the subject of beam/mgun type of towers as opposed to artillery/mines.
is there a setting for 'Line Of Sight' so that the tower has to have a clear view of the targets?