Tower Defense Indie Game Dev Blog #10: Kill 'em Slowly

Published July 13, 2018
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This week

During previous week and this week's first half I was primarily working on visuals. This includes rework of Red Alert inspired slower towers, new models for upgraded towers and more.

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Glowing Towers

One of the visual effects I implemented is glowing towers. This feature is very apparent in slower towers, but some of you might notice that other towers make use of this effect as well (the little lights at the bottom of the towers). The player will now also have a visual cue about the current upgrade level of the tower. If the level is 1, the tower will glow in yellow, if level 2, the tower will grow in blue, if level 3 the tower will glow in red/violet. 

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Normal Maps

I also started implementing normal maps into my game. As of now the most apparent tower which uses them is the slower tower. To generate the maps I used the free online tool which does a pretty good job and I think it will be sufficient for now. This is the result:

normal_map

Next Week

For the next week I should be going through and implementing features in my TODO list which includes functionalities such as CTRL+Z to undo tower placement, fix the issue where towers expand infinitely, add jet fighters which drop bombs on turrets, and more. 

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Comments

Rutin

Nice job on the glow! I really like it.

For normal maps I would strongly recommend using xNormal as a free option http://www.xnormal.net/

I personally bake in Substance. :) 

July 13, 2018 09:38 PM
EddieK
12 hours ago, Rutin said:

Nice job on the glow! I really like it.

For normal maps I would strongly recommend using xNormal as a free option http://www.xnormal.net/

I personally bake in Substance. :) 

Thanks, I'll have a look at it :)

July 14, 2018 10:33 AM
lawnjelly

The glow looks really good I don't know how you did it.. I finally got debugging working today in Unity using VS code, however I foolishly updated my Unity and it has broken my Tower Defence (some problem with TextMesh Pro I think). :( So be careful updating! I've now installed Godot engine for a little try, it looks a lot less bloated so far..

July 14, 2018 06:56 PM
EddieK
On 7/14/2018 at 9:56 PM, lawnjelly said:

The glow looks really good I don't know how you did it.. I finally got debugging working today in Unity using VS code, however I foolishly updated my Unity and it has broken my Tower Defence (some problem with TextMesh Pro I think). :( So be careful updating! I've now installed Godot engine for a little try, it looks a lot less bloated so far..

Sorry for a late reply, for some reason GameDev doesn't show me when new comment come.

Aww... I feel you... That's why I use  version control to keep my files safe and backed up with all the revisions available to me. The glow part was really easy, I just downloaded MK Free glow shader from asset store and followed the instructions. :D 

On 7/14/2018 at 12:38 AM, Rutin said:

Nice job on the glow! I really like it.

For normal maps I would strongly recommend using xNormal as a free option http://www.xnormal.net/

I personally bake in Substance. :) 

So I tried the xNormal, and I have absolutely no idea what's going on there :D 

July 17, 2018 10:03 PM
Rutin
2 minutes ago, EddieK said:

So I tried the xNormal, and I have absolutely no idea what's going on there :D 

Sadly the interface is crap, but it was a very highly used program for baking before Substance came out with its amazing baking and has become an industry standard. :) xNormal is a good free alternative if you can get past the clunky UI and the slow baking, but it puts out very good normal maps, even OA maps!

I used it on another project recently, I cannot remember why but the maps baked perfectly! If Normal Map Online serves your purpose than no need to change. It's just another option if you're looking. :) 

July 17, 2018 10:11 PM
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