Hey guys! greencouchgames.net was just relaunched with a whole new style, and it’s looking pretty neat, if I do say so myself! Drop Shadows are so fucking Web 3.0! But if you have some kind of weird stockholm syndrome and liked the old design better, do not fear: I am archiving all the styles which were retired at /old/. They obviously don’t work as well anymore, but it’s nice to go back and assume a fetal position out of embarassment for those creations.

Anyways, that’s that. On to Rhythm Tower Story things!If you follow the game’s progress on Facebook (which you really should do), you might have already heard about our plans for bosses in Rhythm Tower Story. I would like to talk a little more about that, so let me give you an example. Obviously, if you want to wait for the release and figure it out yourself, you should stop reading past this picture of the boss:

Are you still here? Great! Let’s talk.
This boss moves his body (bright pink) on his four legs (those are even animated so it looks like he’s actually moving). He’s very slow, but has a ton of HP. (As expected of a boss.) As he moves, he can also drop regular enemies in order to hurt your towers or divert their aim.

Let’s say you just build towers, without any plan. Just some Joy towers there, a bit of Euphoria there. That’s exactly how you should not do it, because the boss is invincible. At least until you discover how to shut down his shield. If you manage to destroy all of his four legs (which is made harder by the fact they regenerate), he will stop, and be vulnerable for a bit. The problem is that your towers are a bunch of idiots.

To help with that, every tower has a bunch of AI modes, which you can use to tell them which enemies to prioritze, and which not to. One possible strategy for this fight uses the modes “strongest first”, which will target the ones with the most HP, and “newest first”, targeting those which were just recently spawned. So, for example, if you build some quick-firing, but weak Euphoria towers, and set them to “newest first”, they will focus on the small enemies the boss spawns. That’s one problem solved!

The next problem would be getting to those legs. If you chose “newest first” the towers would keep attacking the enemies, and if you choose “strongest first” they will try to attack the invincible main body instead. The way to get around this is the reason why we don’t have fixed tower build sites, but instead let you build your towers anywhere on the grid: by building a tower away from the borders of the lane, you can give them enough range to hit the legs, but not the main body. If you do this, they are also out of the range of the attacks of the boss!

Now, the last bit is actually attacking the boss. As soon the legs are taken down, he can be attacked – but the enemies keep spawning, so you’ll have to keep part of your towers focused on those. And, of all the things, the heavy-hitting Joy tower, which would be the best way of taking a huge bite out of the health of the boss, lacks the range to attack the boss. What now? You could just ditch them and use only the other tower types, obviously. But how about building them right in the middle of the lane, taking the risk of being bulldozed by the boss, but dealing close-range damage? Or adding some expensive, but helpful support towers to extend their range?

We are trying to leave these fights open-ended. This is by far not the only strategy, and most likely not even the most effective one. You could experiment with other AI modes, like those based on distance, or just switch over to manual aim. Some will give you higher scores, some not, but as long as you get the job done, it’s alright, I guess.

So, what can you expect in the coming weeks and months from RTS? I’ll definely make a video soon-ish explaining some of the basics of the gameplay, also Mike revisited the music, so maybe he’ll post a teaser for that some time. Also, I set a deadline for myself, where I want to have at least Level 1 done – October 2013. Because that would mark the two-year anniversary of the project, and it has been going on too long because of school and my graduation. It’s about time we get this thing rolling.