The Sleepless - A tower defence game

[Xaryl]

So I decided to test out some frameworks and codes by creating a small game. It is more of a "feel free to download a copy and play with it" than an actual project announcement I guess.

I couldn't come up with a name, so it is called The Sleepless, maybe not the best name, but hey, the programmer was certainly sleepless >.<

It's just a simple tower defence game with 9 levels.

A picture says more than 1k words, so here:


A functioning game says more than 1k pictures...
for windows
for linux 32bit

After unzipping, just double click on the file named Sleepless or create a shortcut if you want.
Default camera movement keys are w,e,r,s,d,f; they can be changed in settings.
System requirement should be relatively low; turn off the shader if running with a weak graphic card.

Now I go get some good sleep and then go outside to see the sunlight @.@

[randomMesh]

A picture says more than 1k words, so here:

The next winning entry of the screenshot competition. Well done!

[netpipe]

well done indeed, this game is amazing.

[teto]

Very polished and fun to play. Level design good too.

Is it a choice that we Can't see the remaining life of sleepless or do you plan to add it ?

[Xaryl]

Is it a choice that we Can't see the remaining life of sleepless or do you plan to add it ?

A little bar thing has been added on top of their heads, with the option of turning it off in setting.
It is actually possible to see their details by clicking on them, but I guess that wasn't too well designed, and thanks for letting me know. Next time I will try a pop up bubble instead of reusing the same GUI space.
The old save files would still work; just copy and paste the entire save folder.

Very polished

/me laughs nervously
It was lunch time art.. by a programmer (it doesn't require a licence to claim to be a programmer, right?), but for my next game (if I am making one) I will go seek out some royalty free models.



Finally, I would like to say thank you all and I am glad you guys/girls like it.

[grumpymonkey]

wow it must have taken you quite a while to make just the assets alone(even though they're not high quality or anything it still a lot of stuff)

I was really blown away by the replay feature though, great friggin job.

[XXChester]

I loved your game. The replay feature was neat but it would've been better if you could have jumped in at that point. For example (I believe its the last level) the level with 60 waves, I kept getting under 20 waves and would have to restart, it would've been nice to fast forward to like wave 30 or so and go from there. Unfortunately I wasn't able to beat this level, the closest I got was to wave 2.

I am not sure if you were looking for any "real" feedback but here is some if you want it.
-I found the GUI was in the way at times, it would be nice if it went somi-transparent when the mouse wasn't over it.
-As stated above a way to jump into a replay would've been great or a save feature.
-Full screen would've been nice.
-In game menu access to options would've been nice...I got tired of the music after about 2 hours of playing but I didn't wnat to leave at with < 20 waves remaining out of 60.
-Wave counter was misleading, you started at the end and it counted down to 0, this should be renamed to remaining waves or start at 0/1 and work up to the ending wave.
-The movement speed % was misleading as well, some units said they moved at -40% but they moved really fast, and slower units had positive %'s. Should have been the other way around. Same with the frost towers they said they gave 100% movement at lvl 5....but technically they gave -100% to movement.

Anyway all in all I loved the game, it was a lot of fun and I thought it looked great. I hate shaders and find most dev's go way over board, it was great to not have my eyes hurt by a ton of bloom and other crap. Well done mate, and good luck with your future projects.

P.S. I am determined to beat that damn level tonight!

[Virror]

Game was very good! A bit to easy though : p
Lost one life on lvl 4 i think. Last level was a breeze.
Best tower defence game i played for a long time : D

[Virror]

I loved your game. The replay feature was neat but it would've been better if you could have jumped in at that point. For example (I believe its the last level) the level with 60 waves, I kept getting under 20 waves and would have to restart, it would've been nice to fast forward to like wave 30 or so and go from there. Unfortunately I wasn't able to beat this level, the closest I got was to wave 2.

I am not sure if you were looking for any "real" feedback but here is some if you want it.
-I found the GUI was in the way at times, it would be nice if it went somi-transparent when the mouse wasn't over it.
-As stated above a way to jump into a replay would've been great or a save feature.
-Full screen would've been nice.
-In game menu access to options would've been nice...I got tired of the music after about 2 hours of playing but I didn't wnat to leave at with < 20 waves remaining out of 60.
-Wave counter was misleading, you started at the end and it counted down to 0, this should be renamed to remaining waves or start at 0/1 and work up to the ending wave.
-The movement speed % was misleading as well, some units said they moved at -40% but they moved really fast, and slower units had positive %'s. Should have been the other way around. Same with the frost towers they said they gave 100% movement at lvl 5....but technically they gave -100% to movement.

Anyway all in all I loved the game, it was a lot of fun and I thought it looked great. I hate shaders and find most dev's go way over board, it was great to not have my eyes hurt by a ton of bloom and other crap. Well done mate, and good luck with your future projects.

P.S. I am determined to beat that damn level tonight!

Begin with one angeltower at both sides and a few blood ones. Then a few angel towers at start to kill the weak mobs, then spam death towers, ofcourse a few slow towers as well : p

[Xaryl]

I am not sure if you were looking for any "real" feedback but here is some if you want it.

I do appreciate feedbacks, although this game is more or less experimental, so I won't actually spend a lot of time fixing it, but I certainly will keep what you say in mind for my future programs or maybe the remake of this game
Nevertheless, I will explain a little about some of the things you mentioned.

Full screen would've been nice.

I removed that from setting because...
1. if the the program crashes in full screen mode, funny things like messed up desktop resolution or desktop lock-up happens (at least in Linux)
2. changing resolution in full screen with the current scheme tends to lock up the screen in Linux, because of some reason I haven't been able to identify.
However, if you are running it on windows and if you really want, you can go to save/setting.txt and manually change 0 to 1 in the following line:

Code: Select all

fullscreen=0

The movement speed % was misleading as well

The % numbers are actually chances of success or resistance; different leveled effects actually have the exact same effect, but I agree, it is not too clear.

As stated above a way to jump into a replay would've been great or a save feature.

That certainly is an awesome idea. Though I wonder how should splitted game play be represented or it should simply just write over the old plays.

All the other suggestions are nice too; I agree the UIs were not super well designed, and I will certainly keep that in mind next time.


and to Virror:

[about how to beat the last level]

Since the other areal towers weren't mentioned, I will take that as angel towers require some nerfing :p

[Virror]

Hehe, angel towers + death towers is the way to go ; )
But i would very much like to ses a sequel or a remake of this game in the feature : D

[serengeor]

Heh, very nice game. These kind of games are really addicting
Still haven't finished playing it, have run!

[hendu]

OP is now god. Proceed.

Really, a rather good game. Any quips and suggestions are minor, you could port it as-is to android and sell

- it maxes one core. Please cap the fps to 60, save power (laptop / mobile users thank you)
- default volume could be much higher
- it could use AA
- the buttons in the settings look buggy:

- I think your two-executable setup is to get the working dir and irrklang. It however erases the user's env, would be preferable to use other solutions, say physfs (zlib) and $ORIGIN (man ld)
- irrklang is the one limiting you to 32-bit, am I correct? For wider linux distribution you'd need 64 too
- would like to have double keybindings (the arrow keys in addition to esdf bound by default)

[Xaryl]

@hendu

Thanks for all the awesome tips; I did something for every single one of them on the list, but I won't list them all one by one.

the buttons in the settings look buggy

I am unable to reproduce it on win32, linux32, or linux64.
Does it glitch like that from the beginning or require something specific to trigger it?
Are the tabs in credit window glitched like that too?

$ORIGIN

works wonders, thanks lots

irrklang is the one limiting you to 32-bit, am I correct?

Actually I didn't even think that far when I made the game, but I guess I will have to solve the issue early or later, so here..
I made a wrapper around <openal soft+freealut+libogg+libvorbis>, and now the game is on linux 64 bit.
It was successfully compiled on windows and linux32 as well, but the wrapper can still use some improvements, so the links in the first posts stay as is for now.

you could port it as-is to android and sell

1. I suppose I can port it to an android on a PC, but I don't have a hand held device to test it on.
2. I am not really familiar with game selling /game selling websites/ distributors.
3. My priority at the moment is to learn the fundamentals (still haven't even finish the irrlicht tutorial #10 >.< )

However, if anyone thinks that it would actually be profitable, and is welling to do the testing and putting it up for sell, please let me know.
If we can come upon an agreement, I am willing to share the codes and go as far as saying 50-50 on the profit.

[hendu]

I am unable to reproduce it on win32, linux32, or linux64.
Does it glitch like that from the beginning or require something specific to trigger it?
Are the tabs in credit window glitched like that too?

It is like that from the start, and it's the same in the credit window too. It's likely a NPOT bug in r300c, not much you could do. POT textures have higher performance even on new hw, but no need to go overboard in trying to only have them.

Unfortunately I have little android/iOS experience as well, otherwise I'd take you up on the offer. You could however consider putting it on the Ubuntu Software Center; that would be practically no effort on your part, other than maybe sending updates and collecting the check.