how i want it to look...

ive been thinking over how i ideally want my game to look, and how other similar games are styled & how the characters are portrayed.

The above 2 pictures are from Orcs Must Die & Sanctum, both the characters are from very similar games to the one i wish to make and are both very colourful & vibrant figures.

The style i wish to go for is borrowing more from the silhouettes/builds of Borderlands & Team Fortress 2, the main character for my game would be of similar build & stature to the soldier from Borderlands, one of a more martial prowess & proud stature, the enemy character would have a build more similar to 'brick' from Borderlands or the heavy from TF2, but would have a more hunched gait.

What i'll have to look into is how to make the silhouette of my character stand out, as any of the TF2 characters can be told apart just from their outline.

I am also having an issue with finsing information for the scripting of placable in-game turrets, and i shall be sending the makers of Sanctum an e-mail asking them how they went about it :P

slightly late update

    I've been looking into more games for inspiration/ideas, one of which being quite a new game out on steam called 'Orcs Must Die'. Where the protagonist is an apprentice to a recently deceased archamage that defends areas called warp gates from hordes of orcs. As the player progresses more spells/units/defenses become available & can be furthere upgraded. the idea is normally to funnel the orcs through one area & then make that area a death trap for all enemy units, however there may be more than one area that the orcs appear from so that approach is not always feasible. One aspect i liked about it was the defenses that can be placed on the wall, ceiling & floor all covering one spot, making it especially deadly.
    The other game i briefly looked into was the Gears of War 2 Horde Mode, but from the videos i couldn't see any deployables/turrets etc, so ill have to get my hands on the game to try it myself.

    Finding data on popularity of tower defense games themselves is proving more difficult, ive found charts and tables but they dont have any solid numerical data t go with them to say how many people play them/search for them in browsers.

Game Inspiration

When i first decided to make a FPS tower defense game i thought it would be the first of its kind..... turns out i was wrong. A friend of mine told me of a game called 'Sanctum', which is precisely the genre i was looking to create & plays very well, though there are still many a thing that i would do differently to change the pace of the game.

For instance with 'Sanctum' thre are 2 distinct phases of gameplay, Build Mode & Combat Mode. During build mode there is no time limit & you have as much time as you like to create the worlds best maze system to deter the enemies - albeit with not that much money, but later on it does help. Then the Combat Phase is exactly that, but it then takes away the ability to build, which in certain situations may come in handy.

Other games i looked at were simplistic flash games for Tower Defense inspiration, there is predominently 3 different types of Tower Defense games, those that have a pre-defined path that you build towers alongside to whittle down the enemy, those that you create the path (much like Sanctum) & those that the enemies spawn at one end of the screen and simply move towards your fortress which you upgrade over time with funds gained from killing enemies. The latter im more interested in, creating a game where you have the main building/exit that needs to be defended and re-inforcing it from letting enemies escape.

Other games worth mentioning that ive looked at would be:
Storm the house
Desktop Tower Defense
Gemcraft Labrynth
Turret Defender
Tower Ddefense
and these are just some of the many i myself have been addicted to, there are many, MANY more out there.

background info

For my final major project i have decided to create a First Person Shooter Tower Defense game. The theme of the game is going to be placed at a prison entrance using escaping prisoners as the enemies that are trying to escape. - below are several videos from You Tube of documentaries based in prisons in the UK & the USA showing prisoner/prison guard uniforms & equipment available for the guards. There is also one detailing the entrance of a British maximum security prisons entrance which sounds like a good layout for the game.

Some of the links include violent images so caution is advised


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YBwu1pd7vU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdcd5bjlgjU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOs_9MtGM2c&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EJFuYjwRys&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jUfK5i_lQs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4jgm-Xxa3I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4jgm-Xxa3I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNNSFkraqbA&feature=related

First Post!

This is a blog ive set up to document the progress of my Final Major Project for university