Gridlock TD Elements - Recreation

[X-maul]

Introduction
Gridlock TD is a tower defense set in a map where there is both a building grid, and a running grid. Your summoner will have to summon towers in the building grid, and in the start of each round, your runner will spawn. You will have to use your runner to lure the enemy spawns to your towers, so they can be killed.
If your runner should get killed, fear not, it will be respawned next round. Though should all runners on the team get killed, you will lose the game.

Map Layout
The Green part is where your summoner can summon buildings.
The Grey part is where the runner can run.
The Black part is unpathable by both the runner and the attackers.

Spoiler

(The grids you can see is to indicate the size of the map, each tower takes up a 2x2 square)

On the northern, southern, eastern and western side of the map, there is a pathway (where the building path is split) where the runner and attackers is spawned.

Races
The map contains 4 races;

Fire Elemental​

Fight the forces of Anti-Matter with the power of the fire realm!Fire elements use raw power to destroy their enemies and melt their flesh and bones to ashes!​

Wind Elemental​

Fight the forces of Anti-Matter with the power of the wind realm!Wind elements are the fastest elements around, and fight with speed and cunning to defeat their enemies.​

Earth Elemental​

Fight the forces of Anti-Matter with the power of the earth realm!Earth elements fight with brute force and throws giant boulders at their enemies; they can even hit a foe so hard that it will eventually get stunned.​

Water Elemental​

Fight the forces of Anti-Matter with the power of the water realm!Water elements attacks with chilling breaths and drowning floods to defeat their​

enemies!​

​

Runners
Each race has 3 unique runner types, each with a special ability, to either damage or slow the enemy or help the runner survive by healing or increasing the survivability.

Round Types
There are many different types of rounds; each round will start with the game spawning your runner, followed by a pack of attacking units or a boss from each world corner.
If the round is not a normal round, it will be announced at the start of the round, so you can prepare yourself. There are at the moment 8 different types of rounds;

Normal Round​

This will spawn units normally.​

Ice Round​

An Ice Round will randomly spawn blocks of ice all over the map, blocking the path for runners as well as for attackers. A warning will appear where the next ice block will appear, so watch out that you do not lock yourself in.​

Darkness Round​

A Darkness Round will spawn invisible units, so make sure that you’ve build yourself a Sacred Brazier.​

Fire Round​

A Fire Round will spawn fire traps all over the map. If a Runner walks over a fire trap it will take damage.​

Wind Round​

When a Wind Round starts, the wind will slow down all Runners by 20%, so make sure you have upgraded your Runners movement speed.​

Quake Round​

A Quake Round will spawn fissures, just like an Ice Round. A fissure greatly slows down runners if they run over it.​

Greed Round​

When a Greed Round starts there will be spawned mineral s all over the map, for the Runners to collect, but beware that your greed does not become your end.​

Boss Round​

A Boss Round will spawn 1 boss unit in each spawn location, and spawn some minerals scattered around the map. A boss will have a lot of health and will also have some dangerous abilties to use against your Runner. Besides spawning a boss, a Boss Round can be combined with all the other types of rounds, for instance there could be a Boss Round combined with a Quake Round, making a boss even more deadly.​

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Armor and Attack Types
All enemy units have armor, and armor can be of different types. So make sure that you have towers with different types of attack, to make sure you can handle all kinds of enemy units.
This grid shows how the attack damage scales on the different types of armor:

Screenshots
Finally I want to show you how the game looks. Here are some screenshots from the editor and from within the gameplay.

Spoiler

Map overview (Had to disable doodads sinse the lightning was messing up when zoomed out too far)

The selection screen

Ingame Screenshot

Spawn for both the Runners and the Force of Anti-Matter

 

[Siretu]

Hey, that looks pretty neat. I like the terrain! I look forward to seeing the end result

 

[X-maul]

Thank you I am not very good with the data editor so it will probably take some time.

 

[GFreak45]

I love the terrain as well, the lights on the pathways looks awesome and provides a sort of "definitive" built/pathway to use. One word of advice though, the hard lines on the grass can be blended together making that area slightly more realistic looking. This can be done with the smudge tool on medium-high strength, the smudge tool is Terrain Editor->Terrain textures->Smudge Tool, it is very useful for situations like that

 

[Siretu]

Oh, I didn't notice the pathway lights at first. They look great. X-maul, what model did you use for the yellow pathway lights? I guess you could spam out omni light yellow, but that feels like it would take a lot of time.

 

[X-maul]

One word of advice though, the hard lines on the grass can be blended together making that area slightly more realistic looking. This can be done with the smudge tool on medium-high strength, the smudge tool is Terrain Editor->Terrain textures->Smudge Tool, it is very useful for situations like that

I actually did that to copy the layout from the Gridlock TD Right now I like it as it is, but I might smudge it at a later point

X-maul, what model did you use for the yellow pathway lights? I guess you could spam out omni light yellow, but that feels like it would take a lot of time.

I used the "Space Platform Ground Decal" variation 13 with Custom color white and HDR Multiplier: 7

 

[X-maul]

This project have had a major setback.
I lost the map and I cant seem to locate any back ups

I am now done with the terrain, but I have to start over with all systems and data.

 

[Siretu]

Sorry to hear that Keep up the good work though.

 

[X-maul]

Thanks I am done with the most of the systems, now I just need to set all the points (like 200 into variable arrays). Other than that it's just the data that's missing.

The time I spent on creating the map the first time was mostly figuring out how to solve my problems, now as I'm doing it the second time, I know how to do it, and it takes 1/50 of the time it took before.

 

[X-maul]

Will most likely soon be posting a pretty huge update on this project, I'm close to 40% with the data for all units, and got all stats written down. All systems are done, and tested.

I got 15 levels of enemies done, and 1 race fully functional
I'll most likely be spending some time shooting a video of the map in the following week.

 

[Funce]

I really look forward to it

Sounds really, really good

I'm Stoked

 

[X-maul]

I really look forward to it

Sounds really, really good

I'm Stoked

Thanks I'll most likely have a testable version up in the following 2 weeks.

 

[X-maul]

I have completely reworked the thread, added a lot of new info and some additional screenshots
I'm currently working on an ingame video.

 

[X-maul]

The map is now released for testing
Please take the time and test it, and review the map when you are done

NOTE: The map is only released on the European server.

 

[Funce]

OMFG I GONNA BE FIRST!

 

[Camu]

I played the map today. It's a really great idea and a new kind of TD.
Sadly there's an annoying bug: When the runner of one of the players die, the UI is gone and no one can build or upgrade anything.

 

[X-maul]

Oh, I will patch that right away. Thanks for the feedback

EDIT: I just patched it, and fixed the bug

If you have ideas for improvement, please tell me
(I got 3 more races planned out, and they are under construction, but besides more races, what would improve the quality of the map?)

 

[Siretu]

Nice to see that it's coming along. I will try out the map later today.

 

[X-maul]

Released v1.22
- Added a Captain to each round. A Captain has increased health and a special ability.
- Increased the amount of units spawned each round, depending on the amount of players playing.
- Added upgrades for the Sacred Brazier.
- Fixed a bug that allowed the Runners to run inside the building grid.
- Removed the visual effect for the Pyromancer, which caused a lot of lag.

 

[Siretu]

Okay, I tried it out for a while(although I lost in like wave 5 or something because I thought my runner would go another way so I stopped watching it for a while.

I have a couple suggestions. You should start out the game by pinging where they enemy is going to appear. I had a hard time understanding where the creeps would come from and if I would lose a life or something if they reached the middle. Those things are easily understandable when you're done with the first wave, but I'd prefer to get that information immediately.

I also think you should increase the time before the first wave spawns. There's a lot of information in f12 as well as tower descriptions to read through. I got so stressed out so I made 3 detector towers in the first wave which made me panic when I realized that they weren't doing any damage.

Finally, I'd like to mention a small detail. I would prefer if you don't remove the runner between rounds. It should be okay if you just hide it. The reason for this is so that it stays in a control group. Having to re-bind the runner each wave was slightly irritating.

Other than that, I felt like it was a nice game and it seemed pretty polished for a beta version. I only tried it out in single player but it felt like it could certainly be a fun game to play with other people.