Towers:
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Gun towers are the foundation of all defenses strategies. They are cheap to produce, make a great wall and cause slight damage. When fully upgraded they can cause a decent amount of damage. |
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Rocket towers are a powerful destructive force, but suffer from long re-load times. At their highest level they will decimate waves of enemy force. |
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Ping towers cause no damage, but instead slow down enemies. No enemy is safe from its power. |
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Microwave towers cause massive damage, but have a very limited range. |
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Nuke towers are slow, have a limited range and cause the most damage. At the last level it will take down the most powerful enemy quickly. |
User weapons:
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Bombs are the only offensive weapon available to the player. To use a bomb just drag the icon to where destruction is needed. Holding a bomb over a spot will cause it to build up strength and drain money. |
Enemies:
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Name: Pop-up Type: Ground Health: 35 Speed: Slow |
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Name: Spam Mail Type: Ground Health: 55 Speed: Slow |
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Name: Support Type: Ground Health: 100 Speed: Slow |
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Name: Fast Weak Type: Ground Health: 65 Speed: Fast |
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Name: Fast Strong Type: Ground Health: 85 Speed: Fast |
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Name: Runner A Type: Ground Health: 65 Speed: Really Fast |
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Name: Runner B Type: Ground Health: 70 Speed: Really Fast |
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Name: Bot Net Type: Ground Health: 150 Speed: Fast |
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Name: APC Type: Ground Health: 350 Speed: Slow |
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Name: BOSS Type: Ground Health: 1000 Speed: Slow |
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Name: Flying Weak Type: Air Health: 65 Speed: Slow |
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Name: Flying Support Type: Air Health: 80 Speed: Fast |
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Game play strategy:
The basic strategy for Tower defense is to setup turrets to destroy the creep and stop them from leaving the board. The creep will search and alter their course to find the best path to the exit. When placing turrets be wary that the creep may avoid your defenses and go around them if it is determined to be a better path. A good strategy for most maps is to create a maze like structure. The goal of your structure should force the creep to walk the longest path possible and soak up the most damage on their journey. Turret placement is important, guns have a limited range and only target one enemy at a time, but fire quicker. Rocket launchers are nice and extremely powerful when full upgraded, but have a long re-load time. The ping cannon is designed to only slow down targets, and will not inflict any damage.
A common maze setup.
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Quick guide to the user interface
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The game offers 4 different play difficulties, easy, normal, medium and hard. The differences include starting money and enemy strength. Under easy targets are missing 1/4 their health. Medium difficulty increase enemies' life by 1/4. Hard makes enemies' 1/2 times stronger.
Port Defender comes with 12 maps initially, but later updates will increase this amount, but the initial maps each offer a different experience. The maps don't change the scenery, or have fancy hand drawn artwork, but they do offer choice. Normally in a tower defense game you are limited to making a maze or using a provided maze. Port Defender breaks this trend and allows players to play both game types. The maps or layouts have been sorted into three categories, area, path and mixed types. An area map is one where the play has to create a maze for the creep to travel through. A path map is ne where the maze has already been created and the player only has to place towers. A mixed map is one where there are confined maze like sections combined with open areas. These maps offer an advantage to the player, since early in game play having the maze makes building a defense easier, but have the ability to customize the map later comes in handy.
The creeps are randomly generated for each level, but the first few levels will be relatively the same. The first 4 levels are kept simple in order to allow a player to build up defenses, starting with level 5 more advanced groups will present themselves.
The future
Future updates will hopefully include the addition of additional achievements, new floor tiles, online layout/map creation and the ability to download to your device.
Software used
Graphics: Adobe Photoshop CS 4
Tool Development: Eclipse, Ultraedit
Video: Handbrake, Final Cut Express
Libraries:
- AOB file parser / Shape Manager
- TextureManager
- Bitmap Font Rendering
- SQLite
