DTD Pro Release!

Big news, DTDers. A Pro version of DTD has been released. Check it out at the regular place at handdrawgames.com: (A little odd, since the game is no longer hand-drawn).

Time can only tell--will this be like the switch from Windows XP to Vista? Like the switch from the ancien régime to a constitutional republic? Or is the new version an improvement on the old?

In the words of Anton Ego:

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends.

Well, as for the discovery of the new, I have to credit M with casually mentioning the new version while waiting in line at Charbux. As for defense of the new, I'm not sure I am up to taking on that most difficult of a critics' tasks. Rather, in the spirit of casual gaming, I will casually sum up my thoughts on DTD, the Pro Version.

Before I launch into my first impressions, let me point out that some have panicked about the lack of scoreboards in the Pro version. Here's what the official blog states:

27 April 09Pro Version Released!. A totally new way to play DTD. Sandbox mode, Sprints, Multiplayer - its all there =) Scores will be integrated soon.

So, it sounds like the scoreboards will be back up with the old scores soon enough. I'm not sure if they will be relevant anymore, as the Pro version goes far beyond the old Easy, Medium, Hard levels.

Here are my first impressions.

Graphics: Definitely a sleeker, modernized look. Will miss the handdrawn feel of the game that lent it a real "desktop" (as in top of a desk, not computer) feel. Nice to have three levels of graphics quality, in case the game is running hurky-jerky during an antivirus scan or something.

The new towers icons are a little hard to recognize, so here's a side by side 1.5/Pro comparison:


Levels: There are now several options of levels.

• Scenarios: 24 different scenarios, including a tutorial, which I would have appreciated in my very early DTD days. A nice feature is that you can mouseover a certain scenario, and it will show you your best score in that particular scenario. Still, as an old-style DTDer, I didn't like how the scenarios came with set mazes locked in--most of the fun for me is making my own mazes.
  
• Sandbox: This is where you can get your classic, 1.5 DTD experience, but there is also so much more to explore here. You tinker with different factors to get a unique experience, as you can see below. Notice that in the lower lefthand corner, your customized game has a unique MODE ID, which you can send around to friends to make sure you are all playing the same game (and would be easier than constantly having to enter in your preferences every time you play). One irking issue is that you cannot change the starting amount of gold unless you join the casual collective community. No thanks, DTD. Notable is that you can get rid of juggling by making it impossible to sell towers once the game has started, giving the player a 5% score multiplier. However, this doesn't seem to be enough of a score boost, considering how much juggling can increase one's score--and most other options can lead to at least a 10% increase.

Here's the mode I usually play in, though I will definitely be playing with other options (like Boss only!):

• Sprint Modes: Waves only come once you've killed the last wave entirely. Six different options with different entrances, creeps, etc.
• Multiplayer: Have not been able to connect to the multiplayer server yet, but very excited to try this out. Apparently you have to be invited? Hopefully this will not be the case in the future, but apparently if you PM someone on this thread you can get an invite.
  

Scoring: Scoring is similar, as you still have 20 lives for which bonuses are available and get a certain amount of points for killing creeps depending on the level.

Keyboard Shortcuts: I'm a big fan of keyboard shortcuts, and so I am a little disappointed that the the "n" shortcut for sending the next waves of creeps is not available in the Scenarios modes. Other shortcuts ("u" for upgrading, spacebar for pausing) remain, and all are still available in the Sandbox mode.

Casual Collective options: It is a little irking that you have to join the casual collective community to get certain options. But, I may end up joining; as mentioned above, this will allow you to change the amount of starting gold in the Sandbox mode. You can also save old mazes to be reloaded into Sandbox mode if you join. Has anyone else tried these options?

Other options: If you hit Menu while playing, notice that under Quit and Resume, there is an "Overlay" option, which allows you to toggle the outer walls of the playing space on/off.

Bugs: None so far, of course.

Please do share your thoughts in the comments.

"Fun" Mode

So you've been playing DTD for a while, probably I introduced you to the game if I know you IRL, and you're tired of slogging your way through hard mode. So, you dip into a different menu--Fun modes! But, these modes can be just as hard as the other modes. As I stated in the last post, I do enjoy challenges, even if they can be frustrating at time, because I think that this prepares us DTD players for real life. Not everything is easy, etc. But shouldn't fun modes be easy?



Here are two players, who shared their conversation with me, discussing just this problem:

L: are you playing 10,000 K
L: yeah it's literally impossible
L: like honestly
L: impossible
S: no
S: I will do this!
L: no
L: it's impossible
L: i really think it is Actually impossible

Clearly there are frustrations even at the fun mode. 10K can be quite difficult; at the beginning it's easy, but I think that the glut of gold at the beginning encourages inefficient tower distribution. No internalization of the externalities, if you will. (Of course it would be a whole other story if it was 10,000 K, as in 10,000,000 points, as L stated!)

So, knowing me, I had to figure out what DTD was trying to teach us by this "Fun mode" lesson. As I was thinking about the conundrum--why is the fun mode that is in fact more difficult than the hard mode? It reminded me of a great book, An Artist of the Floating World. In that novel, an artist studies for years with a master of art who paints beautiful scenes of the lovely, night life of Tokyo. In the end, the artist moves on from this mentor, realizing that his beautiful subjects are in fact ephemeral, part of a floating world.

In the same way, perhaps, Fun modes are perhaps supposed to expose to use the floating, ephemeral quality of the "fun" world. Sure, it's beautiful to cover a maze with fully upgraded towers, but the quick success of a 10K maze doesn't often last the first few levels.

Personally, I prefer the 100 level challenge, one that I have yet to beat much less score highly on! But for the fans, here is S's method of winning the challenge. I admire that after he gives up, he suddenly reaches inspiration:

S: CRAP CRAP CRAP
L: yeah you are going to die
S: WHY ARE YOU SO NEGATIVE
S: but yes
S: I am going to die
...
S: but
S: if you got really good at juggling, you could basically do all swarm towers
S: send EVERYONE in at the same time
S: have the swarm towers take care of all the flyers
S: and just juggle everyone else back and forth through a really long maze for awhile
L: but how would the others get killed by swarm towers?
S: they wouldn't
L: then how would that work
S: ok
S: if you send EVERYONE in
S: it will take a long time for all the other to get through
S: especially if you make a long maze
S: but the flyers will go right through
S: so you would need a ton of swarms to kill them
S: right away
S: you wouldn't need to worry about the others so much
S: cause you could juggle them for a long long time
S: and after all the fliers are down
S: wait
S: I've got it
S: yeah
S: so
S: what I just said
S: except other than swarm towers
S: only build snap towers
S: so the swarms will take care of all the fliers, while you juggle
S: then, you juggle for awhile until you can upgrade all your snap towers
S: and since you sent them all in at once
S: they'll be bunched up in a group
S: then set the snap towers off
S: and it will demolish the big groups
S: you'll also need a TON of plus towers
S: like 2 per swarm tower and snap tower
S: you feel me?
L: that will not work
L: but go ahead and try it

So there it is! Not sure how I feel about it, since I've yet to put my feelings on juggling down, but for now let's just say I have a strong ambivalence about juggling.

P.S. why would all spawns *ever* be a fun level??

Insurmountable Challenges

One of the best things about DTD is that it has a very long learning curve. In fact, this was one of the goals of the creator, Paul Preece, in the design game of the stage. In an insightful interview, he noted that “I also wanted to create as long a learning curve as I could.” He discussed this in terms of balancing the game, making sure that there was a counterpoint for every element of the game. “The most obvious example of this method is that nothing went into the game that didn’t have a counterpoint, for example the Typhoon Tower has easily the highest damage per second in the game but can be undone by ‘Group’ and ‘Spawn’ creeps, while Dart towers lap them up but have serious trouble with Boss levels, etc., etc.”

One of the biggest humps for me in my learning curve is the flying creeps. They just breeze past all of my towers, unencumbered by all of my clever mazes and towers. The worst is the flying boss creeps!

Hard to beat! I’ve managed to tame the flying boss by using a combination of a fully upgraded swarm tower and two snap towers upgraded two or three times. This method usually is successful because the fliers end up stunned long enough for the other towers to take care of them. However, in the 100 level challenge later sets of fliers are almost impossible to kill! But, that’s what life is about—perfect happiness, comfort, success are all impossible goals. Striving for things that we probably won’t achieve is an essential part of the human experience. If everything came easily to us, we would never learn or grow--for example, I would never have tried using the snap towers at all if it weren't for the flying bosses. We must always believe we can achieve more than the generation before us, rather than accepting the societal/economic conditions handed to us by our parents. Instead, we must preserve the hope that our generation can do better--we can make sure a few more people don't fall through the cracks of society, we can eliminate a little more of the racism and misogyny that cripple us, we can create art that is a little more beautiful, or truthful, than that of those who came before us. That’s what the flying creeps represent to me.

So, how do you end up killing the flying bosses??

Thrill of Introducing Someone to DTD

I believe that there are two things that are the best life has to offer--the "pleasure of giving respect" (Tobias Wolff, Bullet in the Brain) and the pleasure of watching someone experience a treasured pastime, to which you've introduced them, for the first time.

I experienced the latter delight today. J's interest in DTD was piqued by this very blog, and spurred by encouragement from E and me, J played it for the very first time! E and I gathered around J's shoulders, explaining the rules and providing tips, and generally enjoying watching someone go through what we had once gone through. "I'll say what C said to me the first time I played," E said. "I've certainly never seen anyone play like that before!"

Of course J is starting out on easy mode. An interesting, V-shaped maze that could turn out to be useful even in the harder modes! And that gets us to the first pleasure listed above--that of giving respect. DTD certainly encourages this in the use of private scoreboards among friends, especially as they picture the mazes used to achieve the impressively high scores. I love looking over in the library to see E at work on a new style of maze and using ideas I had never thought of! Sharing respect and exchanging ideas and new experiences--what more could we want?

So, did you save a screenshot of your very first maze?? If so email it to dtddtdblog@hotmail.com!

Crisis of Conscience

I was reading up on Desktop Tower Defense news as usual, where one can find some interesting statistics, as of April 9th 2007:

Stats for 10 days of 1.2: Games Played: 3.9 Million, Towers Built: 139 Million, Creeps Killed (my favourite stat!): 1.5 Billion, Global Playing Time: 86 Years.

It just got me thinking, what could all of we DTD players have done with that 86 years? We probably could have built a couple of pyramids! There are lots of great volunteer organizations that could probably use my time. Or I could learn a new skill! But instead I play DTD.

So, how do you live with yourselves??

Drawing Inspiration From Our Surroundings

E and I were walking around in Greektown, and she noticed that certain designs in the sidewalk could make a great maze. The Grecian spirals were beautiful, but they also served as inspiration for a new maze. I feel that in DTD it is easy to stick with one type of maze, making small tweaks as you gain experienced with it. But it is also necessary to expand your horizons and move onto a new maze when yours gets old. For instance, my current maze has gotten me past 8000 points on hard, but I can't see to get past that barrier, so it is time to move on. Here's what it looks like:

On 10K gold I can play with other mazes, for instance this Greek spiral inspired maze:
So, where do you get the inspiration for your mazes??