Tower Offense - Week 1

Because our first game design progress presentation will be held on Friday, I thought it would be helpful to make a list here of the things we have already completed or will (hopefully) by then.

(Mostly) Completed

• A resizable window displaying a canned test simulation
  
• The classes and interfaces composing our program organization
  
• The data structures and methods to fill them
  
• Textures including an empty field, paths in all directions, and one creep 
  
• The ability to draw a static background consisting of a field, a path, and towers
• The ability to draw dynamic elements such as moving creeps
• The AI to test path validity and generate new tower position
• The logic to move the creeps and to instruct the towers where to attack

Probable Upcoming

• Updated textures that will be of higher resolution and contain transparency
• Additional textures such as a tower and tertiary eye candy
• Prototypes for splash or game over screens
  
• Sound effects for menu interaction, game action, and possibly music for before/during/after game
• A prototype for the interactive menu

If I'm missing anything, let me know. Otherwise, I think we've done a solid amount of work for one week and I'm very optimistic about our vision for the final project. We'll try to make a release build every time we update our code, so you can access it directly from the SVN in the Release folder (download everything in the files in the left hierarchy menu) or by accessing our files at the Tower Offense Website. If you do download the game, let us know what you think!

Game Design

Team Members:

• Justin Kern - Viz/Art
  
• Drew Reagan - Programmer
  
• John Laky - Programmer
  
• Brett Hlavinka - Scope Creep

For our first project in the class, we are thinking of doing a reverse modification of Tower Defense. The idea is to have the computer control the placement and type of defenses and the user will draw the path and summon the creeps to hopefully make it to the goal state. The challenging task will be to make it so that there's never one perfect path through the state, but that some will be better than others. Think this or this, only with more defenses and more path options.

I think that once we have a concrete idea as to how this will work, it's going to turn out great. The biggest problem could end up being a lack of interactivity, so we may want to make it so that you can change the current path on-the-fly.