Lessons Learned From Playtesters

Last week I released an alpha version of the game and got some feedback. Even though only one person actually responded, it was still enough for me to see what is wrong with the game. I had few people play my game before the alpha release and their response was pretty similar. I also looked at how people play the game and seen some gameplay mistakes they do. People who are not familiar with tower defense genre seem to be clueless as to where the towers should be placed. Also, number of people told that they would like to zoom out further away from the play field to see more of it.

Things Done This Week

This week I totally revamped the camera system. Since this is what the players wanted, the game now lets the user completely zoom out and see the whole map at once without the need to move the camera. This system also makes sure that the camera doesn't go out of play field's bounds and when the player zooms in, the camera gets closer to the mouse pointer.

Another thing I've implemented is the explosion mark decals on the ground which makes the play field look more like a real battle zone.

Next, I made the tanks shoot at the turrets, but these tanks will be introduced in later levels, since it might be too hard for beginner to keep up with all the action going on.

You can see the new camera view and explosion decals in this screenshot:

Also, just for fun I wanted to do a little flashback into the past and remind you how the game looked like 3 months ago, when it was still programmed in Java/Kotlin + OpenGL

Tower Models

Here is the new level 3 anti-air laser tower model:

And this is the rocket tower which is still in progress of development: