Week of Balancing

Techno Towers

This week I spent the majority of my time completely rebalancing Techno Towers since it had been several months since the game was balanced and many new systems were added in that time. I also spent time tweaking the level design for Techno Towers and creating dynamic HUD opacity as well as fixing various bugs that popped up. For my side project, I started work on a build mode but ran into technical difficulties.

Techno Towers Balancing

When I was balancing the game I was aiming for the player to be highly involved with the defense of their base while also providing a challenge comparable to that of a roguelike. I also wanted each tower to fulfill a different niche and for a variety of towers to be required to beat the level. Since this was the first level I wanted it to be fairly easy to beat on one's 2nd or 3rd try.

I first dramatically scaled up the map so that there would be room for more complicated obstacles that both challenge the player while also feeling less restrictive. This also allowed for towers to vary much more in their size, adding an extra layer of strategy for the player. Because of this increased scale and since the player had already felt too slow I also dramatically increased the player's speed. I also reduced the relative difference in speed between moving on paths and moving on normal terrain. This made the movement feel better because it didn't feel constrained to be off of paths and the increased speed also opened up more frequent and less annoying tower movement.

Next, I reworked the enemies to be much tougher and faster. This was to help solve the issue of lag and overlapping models caused by the high number of enemies previously required to cause a challenge for the player. I wanted the enemies to be tough enough so that no towers could single-handedly kill a wave without being moved or assisted by one or more other towers, but not so tough that it took a long time to kill each enemy. I also increased the movement speed of the enemies so that they would quickly move out of range of towers and the base but slow enough for the player to see the enemies coming and make plans on how to defeat said, enemies.

When reworking the towers I aimed for each tower to fulfill a unique niche but also I wanted every tower to be viable and for no one tower to be dramatically better or worse than any other tower overall. However, this did not mean that all towers would have equal DPS. When creating niches for the towers base them off of the following traits: DPS, number of targets, range, status effects applied, ease of use/reliability. Here are the niches I was aiming for with each tower:

• Basic - A high DPS, single target, medium-range tower that is reliable and easy to use.

• Sniper - A high DPS, single target, very long-range tower that is somewhat unwieldy due to long reloads.

• Machine Gun - A very high DPS, single target, very short range tower that is unwieldy due to its large size and very short range.

• Scatter - A very high DPS, single target, medium-range tower that is very unwieldy due to its tendency to target enemies in a way that dramatically decreases its DPS when left alone.

• Tesla - A very low DPS, multi-target, medium-range tower that applies slow and is extremely easy to use due to its small size and inability to miss.

• Energy - A moderate DPS, multi-target, long-range tower that applies slow and is somewhat unwieldy due to the way it targets enemies.

• Laser - A high DPS, multi-target, medium-range tower that is somewhat unwieldy due to the way it targets enemies.

• Flamethrower - A low DPS, multi-target, medium-range tower that applies fire and is very easy to use.

• Bomb - A moderate DPS, multi-target, long-range tower that applies fire and is somewhat unwieldy due to its large size and long reload.

• Mortar - A high DPS, multi-target, very long-range tower that applies fire but is extremely unwieldy due to its minimum range and extremely long projectile travel times.

• Acid Sprayer - A very low DPS, multi-target medium-range tower that applies acid and is very easy to use.

• Swarm - A very high DPS, long-range, single target tower that is extremely hard to use due to its large size, long projectile travel times, a very unreliable targeting system, and a dramatic loss in damage when moved.

• Cycling - A low to high DPS, short-range, single/multi-target tower that applies a random status effect and is unwieldy due to its short-range and unpredictable damage output.

• Energetic - A short-range tower that buffs nearby towers with dramatically increased range that is unwieldy due to its very large size and short-range.

• Ammo Depot - A medium-range tower that increases the fire rate of nearby towers and is somewhat unwieldy due to its very large size.

• Acid - A extremely long-range tower that sprays acid puddles over the battlefield and is unwieldy due to its extremely large size and the fact that it isn't guaranteed to affect the enemies.