As you’ve obviously seen, DSP isn’t out yet and it is past the 1st of May.
Well I admit, I sort of fibbed a bit when I said it was going to be out on the 1st. The 1st was actually the date that DST had to be finished.

DST is Defense Station Touchable, DSP for the iPhone!

Wooooooooo!

On the 1st of May DST was submitted to the App Store and is currently awaiting approval for release 🙂

The PSP version needs some more work before it can be released. The main menu needs updating and the Achievements system needs linking in.
I’m not sure how many of the Maps I’ll bring over to PSP, probably not the 5 that will be released with the iPhone version, but definitely more than the 1 of previous versions.
There will most likely be some memory issues to deal with, but I’ll find out when I have a look at how it runs.
I’ll be testing aga

More detail will come later this week as I work on getting the PSP version up to scratch.

PS: Sorry I didn’t post this earlier, I drafted it and forgot to publish >_<

Seriously late update here….. Anyways >_>

The menu is now mostly implemented, it shows the level name and description as well as the level image.

I’ve fixed up all the issues I’ve encountered related to the new font being slightly wider, text wasn’t fitting on some buttons, tower upgrade menu was a total mess.

Pathfind now looks more natural: enemies will continue travelling in the same direction so long as it is the most efficient path.

Begin work on end game handling (What to do when you win/lose)

I also have a firm final date for the new release… So the next DSP will be out BEFORE 1st of May.

I’ll have some more awesome things to announce over the next while as I get nearer release 🙂

Next weeks todos:

Finish end game handling: high score entering and recording, show high scores on main menu.

During the week I pretty much finished off save/load. Currently pathfind enemies don’t load correctly, I still need to fix it. everything else loads perfectly! 🙂

During the weekend Surreal came over and we integrated most of the new menu:

This required updating the fonts, and as the existing font system was…. unweildy, surreal forced me to rewrite it to use freetype. So now plugging in new sexy fonts is easy as!!!

Surreal provided a new font, so I plugged it in. Then as the new font system takes coordinates to draw at differently, I had to update everywhere text was rendered… zzz….

Anyway, an example:

Next week will be finishing the menu, fixing save/load for pathfind enemies, code cleanup of the new font system, perhaps some minor improvements to the pathfind system, end game handling and more….

Edit: Crossing out items I’ve now done.

An update on time-ish for once!

This week I drafted a  main menu for the mouse UI, then Surreal created something that looks incredibly sexy based on my requirements. I haven’t integrated this yet, hopefully during the next week.

Instead, I implemented Save/Load. So when you have to quickly power off your PSP or quit your game, you can resume right where you left off!

This isn’t yet complete, currently Shots don’t save, but I’m part way through implementing it, so I should finish it tomorrow.

No screenshots this week, as Save/Load doesn’t make for an interesting screenshot…

Got a bit more done on DSP this week, it finally cooled down enough that I could sit in front of my computer comfortably!

The PSP interface is now as functional as the mouse interface. It reuses all of the same interface components with some minor changes. Shown here is the tower upgrade menu. It looks relatively the same, but has the addition of the selector thing to the left to show you how to control it.

What is left on the todo list… hhhmmmm…..

• Level select menu.
• End game handling (What to do when you win or lose)
• Minor balancing of River TD.
• Create a path find level.

I’ve drawn some drafts for the menus, will go through them and create something this week hopefully 🙂

I’m still hopeful of a February release, but it looks like it will probably slip to early March.
When I get the engine complete I’ll release a test level for level developers to pull apart and get cracking on their own levels 🙂 This should be a week or 2 before the release.

Wow, this weeks update is even later than the last!

Anyways, I’ve been updating the PSP interface to look like the mouse one:

The bottom menu disappears when it is not open. I have to still add the popup menu and an indicator for fast forward, will be doing these next.

I’ve got quite a bit done in the short amounts of time I’ve had, hopefully I’ll get more time soon >_<

Sigh, another late update.

Have been working on making the UI components generic enough they can be used for the mouse and gamepad UIs. This has taken longer than I hoped as I haven’t been able to sit down and work on DSP as much as I planned.

Hopefully I’ll have more time next weekend…

Woops, forgot to write an update yesterday!

This week I’ve…. uh….. been playing Diablo 2… lol.

But in actual DSP news, I’ve fixed up the gamepad (PSP) interface so it builds again. I plan to spend the next week bringing its usability in line with the Mouse version.

DSP R312

No visible changes, the laser tower gets the wrong icon… Something else that needs fixing!

Next weeks update will be much more exciting hopefully 🙂

Its that time again!

This last week I spent lots more time balancing River TD, and I’m getting quite happy with it finally.

While doing this (I’ve played River TD so many damn times… so so many times) I found some small rendering issues and cleaned them up.

Here is the list of changes as of Friday night:

• Air enemies render on top of land enemies.
• Health bar renders on top of everything (Before lasers would stop you seeing the health bar).
• Refactor some code so that the [New Game] button works.
• Fix selling laser type towers (Was crashing the game)
• Ability to make enemies loop when they hit the end of their path, so you have to eventually kill them.
• Always give the same amount of points for killing an enemy (Previously it decreased the longer an enemy was alive).

But of course… There is more 😉 I spent all Saturday (and another hour today) adding pathfinding, just like the flash based Desktop Tower Defence.

Maps can now specify pathfinding and enemies will work out their own way around your towers! This leads to all sorts of cool new map ideas, I have one up my sleeve 🙂

Here is a screenshot from the test level showing it off:

DSP R304

The plan for the next week is to catch up on my sleep and maybe add another new feature to the engine before I start work on another level. 🙂