Second look at Tower Defense prototype built with XNA

Here’s a second look at the Tower Defense game that I’ve been working on. It’s still quite early in the development stage, but there’s been some significant additions since the last video. Most notably, although it’s not obvious in the video, is the addition of sound effects. Unfortunately I was unable to get CamStudio to record with audio, so you can’t actually hear it. Bummer.

The user can now click on monsters and towers to select them, which will show some basic information about the selected object. There will be more information available here eventually, like the purchase/selling price of towers, and any special effects that towers may cause or monsters have active. Monsters also always show a health bar above them, so the player can easily see how much health they have left without clicking on it. Right clicking will cause whatever object was selected to be unselected.

Text labels can now have image icons, which the countdown, health and money label now all have. I might stick some icons on the selection information as well, but I haven’t bothered at the moment.

There are also multiple levels now and the player can choose which one to play after starting the game. Right now all of them are playable although only with a few waves on each level. The plan is for all levels to be locked at the start, except for the first one, and the player then unlocks levels as they progress through them.

Some of the fonts have been changed around, but these are still subject to change.

There’s a total of 7 towers in the game now, although some of them still needs some work. Here’s the quick rundown:

1. Gun tower – medium range, low damage, high rate of fire
2. Cannon tower – long range, high damage, low rate of fire
3. Rocket tower – medium range, high damage, low rate of fire, splash damage
4. Ice tower – low range, low damage, high rate of fire, slows down enemies
5. Grenade tower – high damage, low range, low rate of fire, splash damage
6. Fire tower – low damage, low range, extremely high rate of fire, splash damage
7. Shrapnel tower – medium damage, low range, high rate of fire, shoots in 8 directions at one time

There may also be some minor changes here and there, as well as some non-obvious under the hood stuff.