[img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38091654/e4f87469478b923da19a909a4cae3eee90ed8e49.png[/img] The consistent and structured development of CreepWars TD started in January 2020. In 2019 I loosely programmed prototypes for different types of games following several tutorials. During this time I also started to mess around with asset packs from the unity3d asset store. While at the university I really loved playing custom TD maps from Warcraft 3, so the idea of creating my own tower defense arose very fast. Getting deeper into the development, I was not very pleased with the TD templates I found. But since on the other hand my skillset was not yet that advanced, I thought that it would be a good idea to start with a real time strategy (RTS) template, which offers much more functions and then modify it to a TD game. (Which in my mind is a similar approach like creating TD Mods for great titles like Warcraft 3 or Dota 2) This approach seemed to be very programming heavy but it would also give me insights of how to create an actual RTS game. It took some time to develop my first thoughts into a solid concept. So it took till the Christmas holidays in 2019 till I decided to really build a game. I also wanted to release it on Steam in 2020 to push myself and thereby constantly having to improve my gamedev skills (including registering a business and all the other fun stuff). So I set the starting date at January 1st 2020. With this decision being made in the first months I implemented all basic tower defense systems into the RTS-Engine I had chosen. The first target was to implement a modular wave spawner and the waypoint system. Both systems were heavily inspired by the TD-Series from “Brackeys” on Youtube. But as I had the template on hands I surely tried to use as much of it as possible to save time. For example, I created a waypoint system which is based on the already existing pathfinding. With this systems ready, I started to work on a playable demo. I decided to use 3D models from the asset store as a starting point because otherwise the project would have gone beyond my skill level at that time. So I bought a generic TD-Character set and additionally some environmental models and built the first playable demo. The feedback I got from my friends who played the demo was good and I had a lot of suggested improvements to implement. You can check out this first demo here: [url=https://sceptical-orange.itch.io/tiny-td]Tiny TD[/url] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38091654/a7b87b1b201911f2c33a4478f40c68755f29c5f5.png[/img] The style of the game was very cartoony and casual. This artstyle seemed sufficient but while thinking about the corner points of a good TD, I stumbled across the fact that my gameplay loop would consist a lot of observation time. This means the players would just watch the towers fight for probably 80% of the time. So I wanted to create a more immersive “nice to look at” scenery. To get inspiration I looked at my favorite mods and I also purchased some standalone TDs. For me the stylized look of Dota 2 and World of Warcraft appeared to be a good choice between a cartoony and realistic artstyle. So I searched the asset store for coherent 3D models to reskin the game. It took a while and I wasted some money but I finally got a set of assets to build an alpha version. By June 2020 I had it ready and showed it to the same friends as the previous version to get even more feedback. After implementing most of the suggestions and removing a ton of bugs I thought the project had progressed far enough to be considered an Early Access version for Steam. So I set the Early Access date for August 2020. During the preparation phase I worked gravely on removing all bugs and balancing creeps and towers. It went pretty smooth nevertheless I realized that I would need more dev time to get the game out in August. So I took vacation from my day job to be able to implement the scope I announced on Steam for the game. I had everything together in the last week of August but unfortunately I uploaded the wrong build to be checked by steam. It missed one level I had announced and so I did not pass the quality check by Steam. Launching in August was not any longer possible. So the release had to be postponed to September 2nd [previewyoutube=peo-dKYzaDc;full][previewyoutube=peo-dKYzaDc;leftthumb][/previewyoutube][/previewyoutube] Despite the fact that this caused some negative comments the general feedback was very good and the game sold much better than I had expected. Probably the game would have performed even better if it had been more polished but I was very happy with the outcome. Overall I sold over 100 copies of the game during the first two month. The feedback I have gotten helped me to constantly improve the game. In October 2020 I started to replace/modify the bought assets. One big thing I wanted to change was to make the world more alive. So I thought about top down games with a memorable environment. The gorgeous scenery of Dota2 was the first thing that came to my mind so I logged in and played some rounds with my favorite hero. I realized that the trees made up a big portion of the map so I thought about how to recreate the look of the trees and their movement in unity. The outcome was satisfying so I decided to replace all trees. Unfortunately, I did not work properly with prefabs so a lot of the scenes had to be overworked. With this happening I decided to also align the terrain textures and overhaul the general look of the environment. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38091654/a163b1864d585f95f5b36bad705a07af643de960.png[/img] With this overhaul we reach the current state of the game – but surely not the finale one. I will post development updates here frequently.