Defend the Darkness Windows, Mac, Linux, Web game

Kyle here, aka MaterialBlade, to talk about the newest updates to Defend the Darkness. It's been quite some time, approximately 8 months, since the last update, and there are a lot of things to show and talk about.

Starting off are some general updates. The big one being that the game has been upgraded to Unity 5, and therefore has access to all the pro features that were unlocked with that release. The most noticeable being camera effects, and shadows and that kind of thing.

Next we have saving and loading player data, as well as version control for newer updates. Currently if the player has an older save data, the game will delete it. Eventually I'll come up with a different system but for now it works fine.

Loading screens are new and create a smooth transition between scenes. I have plans for more detailed and aesthetically pleasing loading screens but those aren't important right now.

Once you start the game and get past the version check you will land on the Main Menu. This is where you can change your game settings, as well as starting or continuing with the story.

After the main menu is the Hub. Here you choose which mission to play, as well as being able to use upgrade points to unlock tower variations.

Actual progression is a new feature, where beating a level will unlock the next one, as well as upgrade points. All this is saved in the player data.

Once we get in-game you'll see that we have a new starter map. Again.
The starting map will contain a tutorial on how to play the game. Currently there is only a bare bones tutorial but it will be expanded on in the future.

Missions now have win / loss conditions. Those conditions will either be defending a portal from enemies passing through it, defend objectives with health points from being destroyed, or some combination of both.

There is also a new 'effects' system that is in the very early stages of development. This is basically the different hit effects, the fire trails, spells effects, etc.

Audio has finally made its way into the game. Unity released a major overhaul to it's audio engine and I've been working on implementing it. As of right now there is working background music, ui sounds, enemy sounds, and various sound effects.

There are a lot of UI additions and changes in the update. In the ingame options there are now settings for video and audio as well as the game options. Right now for video there is screen resolution selection, Anti-aliasing, bloom, ambient occlusion, and options for shadow and texture quality. Audio has all the standard sliders and a non standard slider called Voice Frequency. Voice Frequency controls how often enemies will 'talk'. Enemies talk when spawning, casting spells, attacking, being hurt, and dying. The slider is essentially a 'percentage' of how often the talk. You can have them talk 0%, 30% of the time, 67% of the time, or 100% of the time.

Visually im working on a coherent design theme for the UI. The main center is my current focus as you can see, and its coming together nicely right now. Tooltip and menus have received a little bit of style but nothing permanent or significant.

Icons are in the works for spells and towers. The spell icons are mostly finished with one left, and the tower icons I've only just started. With the turret designs not 100% locked in yet I'm holding off on those a bit.

A new addition to the UI is the 'Enemies Approaching' notification. It's just a timer that displays at the top of the screen to let you know how much time there is before the next wave of enemies attacks. As with everything else it is very much a work in progress right now.

Some towers have received little design tweaks, the main ones being the Pumpking, Spirit Stone, and Bat Manor towers. Towers have also received radius, effect, range, and damage balances and adjustments.

Enemies have received some big updates. With the addition of objectives that have health points, enemies can now attack. Each enemy will have unique attack speed, attack range, and damage.

Enemies will now also be immune to spells and damage for a certain number of seconds after deploying.

Certain spells will now have cast times. Enemies that are casting cannot move and will have a casting effect around them. They can be silenced while casting to interupt it.

Enemies now have some basic animations as can be seen with the villager.

Like I mentioned earlier with the audio changes, enemies now talk when doing certain actions.

Finally the models for the first 4 basic enemys are completed. They are: the Villager, the Farmer, the Mercenary, and the Blacksmith. The villager has gone through some test rigging and animation, and I hope to get to the others very soon.

Those are the major changes in this update of Defend the Darkness. Some major features I'm hoping to implement soon are notifications for unlocks and upgrades, relics, and victory / defeat screens.

The notifications will let you know when you unlock new base towers after completing a mission, and when you receive upgrades points used to unlock variants.

Relics are items that will be dropped at a random chance by enemies and towers, that will then fill up entries in the 'Archives'. They are just extra flavour where players will be able to read more about the game's universe.

Victory and defeat screens are pretty much what they sound like.

Thanks for reading, and thank you for checking out Defend the Darkness.