Drone is a recently-ish released game by David W Wilson, free of charge.

As Jayisgames.com explained it quite well, I'll just let that part to them:

A hybrid tower defense shooter game, Drone puts you in the role of a little movable machine with a lot of potential. As you move through each level, you must take out waves of foes in real-time using various weapons purchased through the shop. You can also buy stationary machines that will fend off enemy attacks, collect money for you, or spawn helper dudes that will go forth and do your dirty work. An excellent mixing of genres with just the right level of difficulty, and with hi-def visuals, ten weapons, ten buildings, three sets of armor, and 16 enemy types, you'll get several hours of entertainment at minimum.

With a small download of only 10 MB, it's very much worth it. A great timewaster and pretty deep gameplay in one.

Media. (linked due to large images)

http://dwwilson.info/wp-content/uplo...eenshot159.png
"A juggernaut tank shooting at an axebot, base on the right"

http://dwwilson.info/wp-content/uplo...eenshot121.png
"Burning some axebots with a flamethrower, while taking fire from a machinegunner."

View YouTUBE video http://youtube.com/watch?v=-WC5rskBVR0

View YouTUBE video http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ4WU44NRt4

Download and more information.

http://dwwilson.info/?page_id=14

Looks pretty sweet, reminds me of that one game where your in a spaceship and you attach parts from other ships onto yours.

But these games arent exactly super deep, I doubt I could several hours out of this.

Cheers for mentioning my game here man. I appreciate it.

Hey, no problems man. I really think you've got something going here. It's smooth, understandable, balanced and relatively bug-free.

Any plans on updating and expanding the game as well as doing your current work (XNA transfer/art remake etc.)? I also have a few gripes with the AI, enemies and certain structires. I'll detail that later if you want to hear it.

Have fun, and welcome to Facepunch!

Oh my god, what was the name of it? I loved it so much.

Captain Forever I think.

Thank you a million times!

Holy goddamn shit, this game is hard but really rewarding.

I haven't gotten past the ranged enemies level, the railgunners piss me off so badly.

I find that nodes are really useful. Make a wall of them, and they just keep healing each other. I haven't had any issues with just making a small 2x2 cell of turrets surrounded by a wall of nodes, and standing in the middle spamming the spanner.

Edited:

Great game, DWWilson. It was able to hold my attention for the few hours it took to beat, and if I wasn't a cheap bastard I would probably pay for the next version too. Throw in multiplayer and it would definitely warrant a purchase.

The Juggernaut is as fun as a barrel of monkies.

Live monkies.

The Juggernaut combined with the command center is as fun as two barrels of monkeys.

Radioactive monkeys.

On a side note this game is awesome

That doesn't work well against explosive enemies, since the splash damage picks you off rather easily, and their pipe bombs go over the nodes.

Cheers for the feedback guys! The levels used to be more homogenous, but people would just sit there spamming machinegun turrets all over the place. So I made each area more themed.

We're totally adding in multiplayer in the next game, probably just local co-op, but it depends on how we're going for time.

And there is easy mode if you're into that kind of thing. But yeah, it's easy mode.

Vehicles seem to be nearly immune to machine gun damage making the second area a GIGANTIC cakewalk.

Really awesome game. Are you guys going to add more weapons and structures?

I just noticed in the Screenshot: Force-field generator?

What?


Also, I don't really like the way the command center works. Kinda tacky at ordering your desired units to the right spot.

Also, railgunners are really OP. They've got the best AI (dodging like mad), highest health of the ranged enemies, unlimited penetration, good RoF, high damage and perfect accuracy. What were you thinking?

Edited:

I also hope to see improving AI's of both enemy and friendly bots. Right now it's just a game based on numbers. But adding the railgunner dodge thing for example could shake firefights up a bit in the good way.

The screenshot is from an earlier build when the nodes were called force-field generators. I should probably update that.

It is based on numbers, but everything has certain strengths and weaknesses. For example, the railgunners can't shoot through bulletproof barriers (the ones on the front of the light tank or the ones you get if you have heavy armor). They are also weak against your railgun or laser turrets. (also your pipebomb if you know how to use it, you throw the bomb in their general direction, then turn away from them before detonating it)

The boss pistolbot actually has way more health, but isn't as smart (250 hp).

They are particularly good at killing your pistolbots and bases that don't have nodes around them (to prevent machinegun turret spam)

The way the railgunners work is that they dodge 90 degrees to the right or left (determined randomly) whenever the nearest player unit looks at them.

I recently buffed them, which may have been overkill. I made it so they will run away if player units get close to them (on top of all the other stuff they do). By removing that mechanic, they are highly suseptible to axebots. Yeah, maybe I will remove that again. Actually, a better idea would be to just increase their "hardness value" in the enemy generator.

The command tower thing is hard to get the hang of, you have to guide your units to where you want them to go with it, as if it were a searchlight.

It allows you to be able to kite enemies or dodge bosses with your units as opposed to yourself.

Like if a cannonbot was shooting at your base, your axes would just continuously run at it blowing themselves up, the tower allows you to collect a swarm of them and guide them in to the boss while dodging the incoming fire.

But it's there as an extra, you don't have to use use it just like most of the things in the game, it's about choice.

The easiest way to beat the ranged level would be to go rambo style with no base, just a railgun and pipebombs, or a base surrounded with nodes and a few laser turrets in the middle. Or some shinanigans involving a light tank to guard your base with.

I should make a video explaining how to use some of these things in more detail, it was too much to shove in the tutorial, and the descriptions in game don't do them justice.

Anyway, I should stop talking now, otherwise I'll never shut up lol

Edited:

Ok, so this is awesome. Some people just can't drive the vehicles. End of storey.

Other people can't dodge enemy fire on foot. Other people are awesome at conserving ammo and have good aim. Some people are pro at building bases.

No strategy is any better than any other, there are at least 3 different ways to approaching each situation.

You happened to find one that goes well with the kind of enemies you were facing and your skill set. That's exactly how it should be.

Seriously, there was this guy on the tigsource forums that was convinced the vehicles were useless.

Edited:

That was the idea, just keep adding stuff and try to balance it against the other stuff. It gets harder to do the more things are in the game, but that's kind of what makes it interesting.

Good to hear you have a lot of additions planned for the game. With a bit more polish and features, I can see it being one of the better games in the indie scene. I've yet to try any weapons though, I beat the game using only machines.

I just tried this, and it's awesome.

The railgunners need to be toned way down.

Railgunners are WAY overpowered. A single wave of them destroyed my entire base in less than 20 seconds.

Fight railgunners with railguns duh.

That was great. I was doing the first area using only the axe and light armor. At the last stage of the area I decided to buy a railgun, and sent in all 20 waves at once. I let them crowd me in the center, then used my armor to teleport outside of them. I now had 20 waves worth of enemies in a single line, with a railgun in my hands.

Ok, I changed some stuff:

Nerfed the railgunners a bit. They still do all the same stuff except they now drop $250 instead of $60, they come in smaller numbers (unlike the sand people) and they don't try and dodge walls.

Nerfed the pipebomb guys a bit. They drop $100 now, up from $60.

Made the portal particles purple so they stand out against a white background.

Made the win text less vulgar.

Made the achievements a bit more logical. The spanner doesn't count as a weapon anymore, and you can't get the no structures achievement unless you NEVER build a structure in the area (selling them all before the end won't work anymore).

You can preserve your progress by overriding the "config.ini" in the new version with the "config.ini" from the old version. Checkpoint saves won't copy over though.

And remember, there's always easy mode.

Edited:

What are your plans for the next content update in regards to units, buildings, vehicles, maps and/or weapons?

That's the whole idea behind area 1, to try stuff out and see what works. Splash damage totally dominates that place.

I found that I could get through area 1 with just pipebombs in like 2 minutes. I nearly nerfed the internal cooldown on the pipebombs as a result, but then decided that it's the only time they're ever going to be overpowered and it was actually pretty fun blowing up tons of guys at once.

Edited:

In an attempt to try and actually get some money for making games, my plan was to port what I've got over to xna, and completely re-do all the art, menus, resource system and add local co-op.

I was going to add a few things in the process, like another melee weapon, several more kinds of armor, a gun and a tower that fire laser bolts that rebound off barriers, and possibly flying things.

For the free version, I was going to add a level editor or maybe some sort of online highscore.

Although I hate my job so much I kind of want to spend more time on the xna version. Being a janitor is really bumming me out lol. I've been doing this shit for 2 years already.

Wow, this is awesome. You should add more levels and structures, and then try to get it on STEAM for like $5 or $10. I'd buy it for $10.
I think structures need the ability to be upgraded. For example, to increase a turret's HP/range, and to increase the damage/life/speed of the axe bots. Maybe even some player upgrades.
But still, I really like this. I had about 50 axe bot buildings and had a pretty huge army. Haha.

You might want to search the thread "Ask a Janitor anything!" In General Discussion. Some... inspiration might be obtained there (hillarity is a guarantee )

What about getting money for calling waves in earlier?

Yeah, I found money to be a kind of big issue in the game. I never really had more than $4500 at once, so this would probably be a nice feature.

I think we need more upgrades in general.

I really like this game, it's very addictive and a co-op mode would be brilliant.

I agree with the above comment.
Arena 3 is really hard.

Indeed, the money income seems so... lackluster. Especially if you lose any building you're basically set back 3 waves to even get to the point before you lost it.

Edited:

Also: Building suggestion.

Building: FORCE-field.
Cost: TBD for balancing.
Health: ~400-500
Description: When fully charged, sends out a wave that pushes all enemies backwards greatly. Does no damage. Ability is free to use, has a long CD of ~1-1.5 waves in time. Larger enemies are less affected by it. Activate using a button on HUD or where ever it's most convienient.
Special conditions: One allowed per game, though if destroyed can be rebuilt.

Explosives level is amazingly easy on...well...easy.


Just plop down a minigun turret at the beginning, and get a pistol.

Just sit back, shooting the enemies that get too close while the turret is preoccupied with other targets. Put an axe factory near it, the axes will rush the pipebombers and cause them to backpedal while they try to hit the axes, giving you some extra breathing room.

I agree.
What I usually do to not get the buildings destroyed, I sell it when it has around 50 health, you get like 90% of the full price you bought it for.
But there's still not enough money.

An XNA version would be perfect. Would you be porting it to the Xbox 360, or just using XNA? Since if you are considering local co-op, an Xbox version would guarantee sales.

If you're playing the one with waves of melee or explosive bots and you're a lazy bastard then just spam up pipebombs then hit all 20 waves at once. Works even better when you grab the light armour, which shouldn't take too long.

Anyway, I like the gameplay. It's a lot of fun but a bit more control over what your bots do and make them a little smarter would be great. The money mites for example are rather frustrating, you'll have all of them end up going after the same money most of the time. This is most frustrating on levels with objects that create money, as they will all go for one and forget about the other half the time.

As far as money goes, it's tied to how many enemies you kill which is tied to what wave you're on, so at the start you're getting like $100 per wave, and by the end you're getting near $1000 per wave.

If you build a pro base and don't loose any money, you can end up with $40k total by the end. But if you loose a few buildings near the start, you get in this position where it's hard to recover and you're always loosing buildings. Kind of like how real capitalism works, the more money you have, the easier it is to retain that money.

It's an inherent flaw in the resource system. Which is why I'm splitting it in two in the next game. Gonna have experience and energy. Experience comes from killing things (which you use to buy the plans for buildings or weapons) and energy (fixed regeneration) which you use when you put down a structure or fire a gun.

I could just buff how much money you get from killing things, but I'm worried it would be too easy. You get this 20% "subsidy" on all the money you collect in easy mode. In hard mode, its a 20% "tax". Have a play with the difficulty settings if you want to see what I mean.

As far as that building goes, I'm planning on putting in a kind of armor that does that sort of thing. I think armor would be better for it because of the cooldown mechanics already built into how armor works. Hopefully it's not too hard to do, I know it would be a motherfucker to try and code in game maker, but in XNA it should be easier.

Edited:

Hopefully Windows and XBLIG, we have versions for both, but I have no idea what the laws are like surrounding releasing on both platforms.

Edited:


Yeah it's a hard thing to figure out. Such is the nature of trying to combine two genres I guess. You can *somewhat* control the bots with the command tower, but the controls are hard to get a grasp of. Just building the factories near where you want them to lurk also works to an extent.

I thought that perhaps being able to set way points for your buildings might be good, but I'm not sure how you'd convey that in-game. Like would you stand on the factories to set the points? or would standing in the command tower allow you to set points? Would you have to select them with the mouse pointer first?

It's all very confusing. I don't want to make the buidings too over the top in fear of turning the game into pure tower defense.

Edited:

I've read about 1/2 of the thread so far, I'm going to have to go back and read the rest later. Man, that guy has it worse than me lol. Epic thread though.

I work in a bank so it doesn't really get that dirty.

Multiplayer co-op? Fuck yes! When is this version expected to be finished?