Week #027: Meanwhile, at SND Headquarters...

It sure has been a while. Again.

You can more or less prefer to my previous post on why things have been so slow lately. We're still hard at work to catch up to where we were before, but from what I've heard and seen, things are coming along nicely!

I was personally very happy with the vast amount of creative ideas everyone came up with in regards to pets. We haven't even had a chance to start going through to pick our favorites yet, but I can tell they're going to be a ton of fun to work with. But that doesn't mean that we're not still open to more ideas! Just be sure to direct such ideas back to that previous post, or wait for our next big call-out, to ensure that your ideas aren't lost in the shuffle.

Meanwhile, I thought I would take the time to share what the art team (we're a team now!) as a whole has been up to over the last few weeks.

Before Bill took his extended vacation, he was happy to lend his love for creatures to HTD. Sharing in my philosophy in regards to originality, however, he wasn't happy doing anything that might've been done before. This little guy unfortunately comes from before we decided on the change of direction in regards to the game's graphics, but the design will still see some life.

Images represent a game currently in development.

As for me - in between assisting Evan with the development of the new graphics - I've been working on creature designs of my own, including but not limited to the Reanimated Hero here. Most of the other things I've been working on are far too young in the development stages to be shown just yet, including my own "Project Endless", which is a story for another time...

Images represent a game currently in development.

As for the new graphics (can you tell I've been practicing my segue skills?), Evan has been hard at work getting the human males ready for action... again. It should be noted that this is a pretty early work-in-progress that was all I could grab at such short notice. For example, the final in-game graphics are still planned to be cel-shaded, and, you know... textured.

Images represent a game currently in development.

Another testament to my philosophy of originality comes from our newcomer, Josh. Spiders are one of those generic creatures that just makes me want to gouge at my eyes, and not because of arachnophobia. How out of ideas do you have to be? Spiders? You would never see giant flies as enemies (even though that would, by relation, make them an original idea). When Josh had the idea of a half-spider-half-octopus, though, of course I was quick to jump on board.

We hope you enjoyed this sneak peek at some of the ideas we've been working on for HTD! Hopefully once the new graphical system is in place, I'll be able to start bringing you more regular updates once again.

Week #018: Bitmapize!

Around the middle of last week I decided it was time to get around to designing the beginner leather armor set. But I wanted to do something different. Something more than just posting a quick sketch and calling it a week.

Prior to coming on board here at Sam & Dan Games, I had messed around with the process of doing live streams for some of my more extensive sketching sessions. This never struck me as viable for the blog, since it would be hard to contact people when deciding to do one on a whim, and I wasn't keen on doing them on some kind of schedule. Time lapses sounded like a good solution!

I had the filming under control, but had trouble figuring out how to go about editing the footage. Windows Movie Maker just doesn't cut it, and I still haven't found a versatile, free and legal alternative. Eventually, fed up and frustrated, I contacted Gon and he suggest we just film the session from inside a time warp. He's capable of such things, you know.

Direct Link

Big thanks to my friend Cassie for giving me a hand with the leather armor design while I was occupied with the shadow ability graphics and a few other things this past week!

Images represent a game currently under development.

So there you have it. I'm really curious how much interest there is in stuff like this; if there's a lot, I'll be sure to try it again in the near future (although things like equipment and spell creation might not be the most interesting to watch). Be sure to let me know!

Just a reminder that this week's post coming a day earlier is not an error; I've pushed the usual post date from monday to sunday to ease off on the tension of getting a post together on my already-hectic mondays. It already feels much more comfortable to me, although that may be thanks to having this post ready since thursday night...

I'm also hunting for versatile, free and legal video editors for a potential future in "The Making of HTD" videos, if anyone has any experience on that front.

Week #017: Multiple Maximus

Due to some personal problems (I can't catch a break, can I?), we unfortunately had to delay the development of a few things, as you may have noticed in last thursday's update. While I'm not comfortable stating an ETA on anything, I can assure you that I'm prioritizing the completion of human males and shadow abilities (surprise?) for their addition to the game as soon as possible.

Many of you wanted to see Maximus geared up in various ways other than full plate armor, so I wanted to be sure to bring that to the blog this week. I've been pleased with the overall reception regarding the new Max so far, and I continue to assure you that if you had something different in mind, that we'll have you covered with the design of future races.

I also wanted to include some development shots of how Maximus' animations are coming along, but thanks to a major speed bump involving the side view, that stuff is a total mess right now and I don't think anyone could make any sense of it. I'll try to get something like that out next week. Unfortunately (I know, I know, this post is kind of a real drag...), that same speed bump will cause the completion of males to be pushed back by at least a week, and that isn't even including the equipment yet. Sorry! I'm doing what I can.

Enough of these downers, let's move on to some fun community impact activities. First of all, I'm sure some of you noticed that I extended the length of CIP#003 to determine the order of the remaining three elements (with shadow obviously being the second). Since I can't edit a poll once it's active, I couldn't modify it to reflect this extension. Just try not to let the title confuse you. Since shadow has already been decided on, feel free to change your votes to help decide on the next three if you wish.

As for our first Community Impact Opportunity (CIO), as I teased last week...

Community Impact Opportunity #001:

Choose Your Own Arsenal #001

What else can we expect to see by the end of the month, you ask? How about some new weapons? What I want to do is get your feedback on what kind of weapons you'd like to see included in HTD. Axes? Maces? Can't get enough of swords? Maybe you have some really wild and unique ideas in mind? As long as it fits the theme of the game, we want to hear it. Here are a few additional guidelines to follow:

• Melee weapons are ideal for this opportunity. Since animations for ranged and casting weapons aren't yet complete, such weapons couldn't be added until a later date. I'll most likely hold a separate CIO when that time comes.
• You do not need to have a visual of your idea. A detailed description is fine (and I cannot stress enough that more detail will increase your chances). Lack of a visual will not hurt your chances, unless your description is just too vague to make sense of.
• While we can't include exact copies of a popular weapon (example: a Buster Sword, the Master Sword, etc.), we can create a reasonable facsimile. Feel free to include such suggestions and we'll see what we can do, but being imaginative and unique could go a long way.
• A poll will not be opened to choose between these weapons. Any weapon that I choose to design will be included in the game!

As always, we're looking forward to seeing what you come up with. While I won't promise to include every idea, I will try to add as many as I can by the time the option of changing your weapons in-game becomes available (no public ETA, you know the drill).

In closing, the last thing I want to mention is I will be moving my weekly blog updates to sunday night. Getting them together for monday nights is just proving to be too difficult for me. This may change again if I find that sundays don't work any better for me, so stay tuned.

Week #016: Maximus Joins the Brawl!

As I mentioned last week, I really want to get back into writing some - at least mildly - more elaborate posts again. What I couldn't fix with the simple solution of getting more work done, I fixed by getting started on writing the post itself well before monday night rolls around.

Monday nights tend to be pretty busy for me even without the blog to worry about, so there's a chance I might bump the post window to later (early tuesday morning) or earlier (sunday night or early monday morning). I realize posting too early in the morning will really skew the First! Comment Scoreboard numbers, so I'll try not to let it come to that.

First, you may have noticed the discrete addition of CIP#003 over the weekend. In case there's any confusion; this is to help us decide on the second element that we'll be adding into HTD. While I plan to get that second element into the game before the end of the month, the poll will remain open until the 26th, two HTD Thursdays away. This of course means that I'll be making a gamble by developing the abilities before the results are final. In the case of a tie, or one of the four making a comeback, I suppose I'll just have to buckle down and add both.

There's a chance that these results will not only decide the second element, but the order in which all of the remaing four are developed and included. I won't make a promise of this though in case something comes up to interfere with that.

Now for the goods. I'll just let the preview explain itself...

As I've made plenty obvious, I've been devoting this month to the inclusion of human males as playable characters in HTD. This has been a grueling process, mostly because it's not something I was looking forward to working on. It had to be done though; as previously stated, the amount of functionality that was added to the females rendered the males simply incompatible. Looking back now I realize that the two are barely even in the same style.

But is the new "Maximus" too manly for you? Rest assured; we've already decided on designing another race to fill the short, fat and all-around chibi quota.

Tune in next week for another look at the development of the human males, along with another new Community Impact Opportunity ("CIO", not to be confused with a CIP)!

Just for the record, I can't wait for work to be complete on the human males so that statements like this and the last will stop being made for the sole purpose of being taken horribly out of context.

Week #014: Welcome to 2012

Week #011: Sick Stylin'

One day, I will make an HTD boss themed around sinuses just so that I and the rest of the world can have an outlet for our rage. He will do nothing but sit there and take it, just as we are forced to do.

Community Impact Poll #002:

Human Male Hairstyles

Another slow week due to sickness, unfortunately. But I still wanted to get the poll up. CIP#002 will remain active until December 22nd, two weeks after the next post on the main blog. Unfortunately we were only able to decide on seven choices as opposed to the nine the female had, but we felt this was enough.

The poll itself is, of course, found off to your right right here on the blog (votes left via comments will not be counted). You only get one vote, so make it count!

Images represent a game currently in development.

It should be noted that with the first release of HTD now rapidly approaching, that my posts may continue to be on the quieter side for the next few weeks. This doesn't mean that work is done; far from it! We just don't want to spoil absolutely everything about the game before you even get a chance to play it.

I will still continue to bring you these weekly blog posts, and they'll be sure to pick back up once the new year is upon us!

Week #009: Rebirth

Many viewers have questioned the status of the human male player characters, since my focus has been on the females for so long now. There has been a good reason for this, and since my focus is about to shift back onto the males, I thought it was time to talk about it.

When I first started working on HTD, the first assets I worked on was the human male player character. After completing the melee attack assets, I moved on to the creation of the Fortuituous Cave and it's inhabitants, the treasure whelps and the Treasure Lord himself.

Once these were in development, however, I began to feel that the human male assets were rather lackluster. The quality wasn't at all consistent with the work I had done since. Additionally, the human males just simply weren't built for some of the functionality we had planned (as you'll see below, they only had four slots of armor, as opposed to the six that was being planned for).

Insisting that I could do better, but agreeing that it wasn't in the best interest of time to revisit them for revisions just yet, I moved on... to the human female player character.

While still moving forward, I was still able to display just how much room for improvement we had with the player characters. As you can see, the human female is not only much more smooth and polished, but much more complicated than the human male was.

Comparison of the two idle stances, broken down into all of their components.

Now that the females are beyond caught up, as I take a little break with some stage and creature creation, I prepare to gear up to give the human males their deserved rebirth.

Don't you realize what this means!?

Community Impact Poll #002:

Human Male Hairstyles

Oh. Snap. That's right, it's time for CIP number two. Mirroring the first, this will decide on the initially added hairstyles for the human male player characters in HTD. But first, we need some entrants. That's where you come in! Just as before, leave your suggestions and ideas for hairstyles right here in the comments. I'll be accepting entrants for the next two weeks. Here are some things to keep in mind if you plan to leave a design suggestion:

1. These hairstyles should match the character of a human male. More savage designs should be reserved for more savage races, more elegant designs should be reserved for more elegant races, etc.
2. Your suggestions can be in any form, from a vague idea ("What about spikes?") to a specific character ("How about Arthas' hairstyle?") to something you drew yourself! All styles will be redrawn by myself for voting, and source material won't be deliberately held as an advantage or disadvantage.
3. Submissions will be gathered over the next two weeks, leading up to the opening of the polls, on December 5th.
4. The entrants of the poll will be included in Hero Tower Defense, starting with the winner at the initial launch. Second and third place will be quick to follow, and further runner-ups may be included in the near future.
5. Have fun or you're disqualified. :D

Once again, we're looking forward to seeing what kind of ideas the community comes up with!