Defense Task Force - Sci Fi Tower Defense news & patch notes

https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/31813515/cb13a94b9fb7de0cc9c1a68f6b116772246850a0.jpg As a small team at Defense Task Force our development goal has always been to build the game where gamers who invest in the game would play the game not just for a few hours, days or weeks but for months and years. Achieving this goal is a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG). During our last update on 29 June we deployed a balancing update reducing the strength of the missile and tessla towers as both these towers were significantly over powered, unfortunately as a side effect this increased the difficulty levels in the game significantly we thought we had done something usefull, we had kept up the night but its a learning lessons for us as we realise there’s more to not getting enough sleep. It can have an impact on the people who have invested in you. Thanks to the community who provided feedback in the forum we were able to pick this up. This update addresses this issue by rebalancing the game and having difficulty levels such that:

• Easy: This would enable a player who is new to tower defense to give the game a shot
• Medium: For a player who are familiar with tower defense but just want to play the game for a short period prior to getting totally immersed.
• Hard: Reasonable challenge for those commanders who are pro with Tower Defense and need something to challenge them for the day
• Insane: Extremely hard, we think this explains what happens when a player chooses this option

https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/31813515/32bc0677c6e6de8a4e0c6567736253db93f951e7.jpg We want you to have the best experience and to address this we took the day off today from our regular jobs cause this game is our dream and it matters that we provide value. Hopefully, by us sharing the truth which can be taken as a weakness we really do hope we could bring about a dialogue between you and us to build a relationship over time. For us it matters that the gamers who invest in us get value from the work we have provided. We are not competing for being the top game. We are competing to build a game that you will remeber in a good way.

https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/31813515/3339acdcd262b1debfbff89956e14e3dd7b9f7a1.jpg It's always the case we tend to do our best work when we're excited about something. Excitement moves into motivation and then work begins. We love our customers who have invested in our game and that motivates us. We have received constructive criticism and then feedback that can put your morale down from people sitting on the fence with opinions. As an indie team we had a choice to burry our heads into the ground and sulk or take the feedback received and deliver something that would help our current players. So here's what we have been upto recently:

Added Extractor Capacity upgrade in global research options.

We have added another global research option to allow the player to increase the energy income from each mission to a higher value. The default income can now be doubled through this research option. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/31813515/13be2b45fbcf6d50c06a407ba1d99fa2d713e686.jpg When you receive feedback on different aspects of the game, you have a chance to break things up into smaller tasks and get going, you stand a better chance at being motivated :-) with this thought in mind we got a few additional tasks out the way.

Added Damage done by towers statistics system during gameplay:

Deploying a combination of towers is great. But how do you know which ones are performing? asked one of our players :-) hmm that was a valid suggsuggestion. To address this we have added damage counters on all towers. This measures the total damage done to enemy alien units as well as health and shield separately. We also added the ability to reset the damage done counters of all the towers. We hope this will be an invaluable tool when evaluating your strategies. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/31813515/6c8ead1853bb15ccd5923b7e085475aabcb40fc8.jpg

We have significantly reduced the explore costs for regions and sectors:

The high explore costs for regions and sectors ended up contributing to a grinding aspect in the game. In order to remove this we have significantly dropped these explore costs.

Added a 1/4 speed (very slow) mode to the game

Sometimes even a great commander needs a breather, or perhaps you want to analyze your tower strategy in detail. The quarter speed mode allows the player this ability. Watch the trajectory of every missile in slow motion simply take a breather.

Rebalancing of Tesla and Missile towers:

Both Tesla and Missile towers were significantly over powered, this was an accidental oversight which came to light when play testing with the damage counters upgrade. The damage done by both these towers has been reduced by 50% such that they are in line with the other tower types.

Bug Fixes

• Disable weather and weather volume under settings now remembers the chosen values. This was raised by a few players and has been fixed with this update.

That's all for now Commanders. Thank you for supporting the game. It does mean a lot to us.

Defense Task Force - New Blueprint Available!

https://media.giphy.com/media/878nLj3B5YP0GCy3Ik/giphy.gif We are so thankful for your support! It has been one week since the release of Defense Task Force, and we are super excited to share with you some new content we have been working on. Our newest and most immersive blueprint yet "Pandora" has been included free of charge. We would like to thank all of our supporters and offer reassurance that the team is hard at work improving the quality of the game. If you have not done so already please feel free to give our game a Review, and share your feedback and suggestions on our Forums. We look forward to working with you! Enjoy! -The Defense Task Force Dev Team

These enhancements and updates were made possible largely due to valuable feedback from the amazing community. You have our deepest gratitude.

Update V01.07.22 - 23/Jun/2018:

This update has a number of adjustments to address any "grinding" in the game

• By default all level 1 towers now unlocked
• Energy costs for research significantly reduced in some cases by 90%
• Energy costs unlocking and deploying blueprints slightly reduced
• Starting energy given to a new player profile reduced by 50% as all costs are significantly lower
• VSync enabled to resolve any screen tearing.
• Frame rate capped at monitor refresh rate which is usually 60 fps. This is to avoid wasting GPU usage where not necessary
• Music is now muted when the tutorial window is opened so as not to interfere with the tutorial videos.
• Units and Towers Encyclopedia readability of various stats is improved significantly
• New Blueprint "Pandora" Added. This is a large sized mazing blueprint for very complex custom strategies. https://youtu.be/6nMU3WQIi3E

Defense Task Force is here and available today on Steam. We want to thank you all for supporting us throughout this journey. The hour has finally come where we sit in front of our computers in New Zealand and press that “Go Live” button. After 2 solid years of sweat, tears, and trying times we are finally ready to release our creation to the world. Getting to this moment put a great deal of strain on our lives, financially, emotionally, and educationally. As many of you know this road was not easy, especially after losing the funding from our Kickstarter. But as you can see we are revitalized and stronger than ever. We hope you will share in our bravery and support a game that we loved to build for you. We’d like to thank our family, our friends, our extremely supportive Kickstarter backers who put that initial burst of energy to bring our dreams to reality. We would like to thank our beta testers for providing the feedback to improve the quality of the game. We want to thank every single one of you that engaged with us along this journey, from checking in on our progress to sharing kind and inspirational messages to raise our spirits. We want to thank the entire tower defense community for keeping a timeless genre full of passionate gamers. But most of all we want to thank you… The readers of this message… The defining few that will determine whether we can make a living off of our dreams. Today we launch Defense Task Force! Our dream has come true! At first we were reserved from chasing our dreams, thinking that we would need a flashy office, some fancy computer gear, an elaborate coffee maker, and a large team of highly specialized developers. Though it is expected all of these wonderful things would help, they are not a necessity in bringing your dreams to existence. So always believe in what you can achieve by surrounding yourself with a team that shares your drive for excellence, we believe in you. We know our hard work, dedication, and passion with Defense Task Force will shine in your collection of games. We could not have done this without you, and we are thrilled to support Defense Task Force for you. The journey is only beginning… https://store.steampowered.com/app/720270 Thank You! -Defense Task Force Dev Team

These enhancements and updates were made possible largely due to valuable feedback from the amazing community. You have our deepest gratitude.

Update V01.07.20 - 18/Jun/2018: Tutorial

• New Blueprint "Eukelade" Added. This is a super sized blueprint for very complex strategies.
• Blueprints renamed for future extensibility
• Note: Final Pre-Release Build: Apologies - Any blueprints researched on pre-release builds will be reset to not researched. This is a one time occurence and will not happen again.

Update V01.07.18 - 08/Jun/2018: Tutorial

• Tutorial menu added including 5 tutorial videos
• Cleanup of informational text messages across the UI

Update V01.07.16 - 31/May/2018: UI resolution support

• Game UI extended to support resolutions other than 16:9. Resolutions supported now include 4:3, 16:10 and 16:9. This is the vast majority of resolutions from 1024 x 768 upto to full 4K 3840 x 2160.
• Font size increased wherever possible including all buttons.
• Balancing update. Cost of tower basements now increased by 1 with each basement that is deployed in-game.

Update V01.07.14 - 20/May/2018: Balancing for early game playability

• New blueprint added XM1 - Proteus.
• Cheats menu removed. F11 now only shows FPS stats.
• Research and deployment costs of all blueprints reduced.
• Plasma beam and Proton Pulse towers now unlocked at start in addition to machine gun, cannon and fire.
• Research costs in tech tree reduced for some towers.

Update V01.07.12 - 18/May/2018:

• 9 additional music tracks added to in game music (Separate from main menu music).
• Added tooltips and changed ui of in game tower upgrade area to make the research and upgrade process clearer
• Display Kraken unit summary text in lower area when unit is selected in game
• Renamed boosts research to Level 3 upgrade: example Level 3 Damage
• Reduced space time tower level 3 range boost upgrade
• Added enable disable and separate volume control for weather system
• Bug Fix: Troll unit movement animation is now syncing with speed when slowed down by space time tower.
• The game UI is built for 16:9 therefore at game launch only the valid 16:9 resolutions are listed.
• Game no longer blacks out second monitor when in full screen mode on a dual monitor setup.
• Missile count display in research menu for the 3 levels fixed to show the correct number of missiles

Update V01.07.10 - 14/May/2018:

• Optimizations to pathfinding code. Boosted game performance and lowered cpu usage by approximately 30%
• Input settings remapping added for camera left,right,up,down and rotate. Also added remapping for deselect currently selected item in game.
• Balancing: To resolve early game grinding. Added initial starting energy depending on difficulty level. Easy=1000, Medium=750, hard=500, insane=250. If is done when a new profile name is created, unfortunately cannot add this to any existing profiles already created.
• Game visual appearance completely redone. This includes, lighting, color grading, tone mapping, shadow processing, ambient occlusion, bloom filters, etc...
• Added weather effects including, rain, snow, wind, and clouded skies.

Update V01.07.8 - 12/May/2018:

• Game storyline intro video completed and added to game launch
• Game balancing completely redone from scratch.
• Alien creep unit strengths and weaknesses versus tower types enabled such that all strategies must utilize a combination of towers.
• All alien creep units balanced for effectiveness (Spawn cost vs HP, Shield and Speed)
• All 3 levels of each tower type balanced for effectiveness (Cost of tower vs damage/sec and range)
• Designated unlocked alien creep units for each sector. harder aliens on higher level sectors.
• Game balancing done for all sectors
• Implemented steam cloud game saves
• Interactive encyclopedia added with units, towers and blueprints
• New blueprint added specifically for mazing strategies. Blueprint HZ1 - Elara
• Sector conquered notification window added to gameplay when sector is conquered.
• Multiple physics calculations performance optimizations. CPU overhead reduced by approximately 30%
• Incoming wave composition display added to game with two display modes. Categorical and sequence.
• visual effects adjusted. example fire effect of fire tower is adjusted so it is not overpowering.
• Tower basements are now color coded depending on the type of tower that is placed on them. Easier to identify which tower type
• Added icon on towers which have boosts applied
• Hovering mouse over tower upgrade button changes the stats display to show the stats of the upgraded version.
• Added radial progress bar on the tower icons. Progress bar fills up as the player gets energy to deploy tower. Also color coded as red while player does not have enough energy and green when 100%
• Added Shift click for placing multiple tower basements or towers
• Added sound effects and visual build effects to tower build sequence
• Level of Detail and mesh model optimization for all alien creep models (GPU performance optimization)
• Visual effect of an aura added for special unit class Healer.
• Visual effect of partial transparency added for units affected by cloaker special units cloaking field
• Background environment biomes for region 4 and region 5
• Added max towers limit to game for performance reasons. CPU physics computations of the game on an I3 CPU can support upto approximately 80 towers.
• Added "Reset to Defaults" button and functionality on keyboard shortcuts menu
• Multiple Enhancements to main menu background
• Bug Fix: Steam overlay not appearing issues fixed.
• Bug fix: Keyboard shortcuts menu would not provide feedback when keybinding is already assigned.
• Bug Fix: Middle mouse button should not select tower / unit under the cursor.
• Bug fix: play mission would sometimes get confused if you select a region and then close the window instead of selecting a sector / blueprint and then go back again into the play mission window.
• Bug fix: Selling a tower which had boosts applied would not refund the costs of the boosts.
• Bug fix: Cost of a tower boost would show incorrect value when the player did not have enough energy for the boost

https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/31813515/5d00be5f0635b1b7c12f85d5638c2b862cface9d.png https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/31813515/1d1b67f7b74560e2e2c437ebfd02930a0e941197.jpg Today as we post this update one of the life lessons we have had to overcome is to bury the hustle of hustling to get things done. Hustle as we know it is pushing through pain and exhaustion in the chase of achieving the bigger carrots. We got a bit tired of this kind of mindset. By hustling in developing Defense Task Force at the start we ended up tired, burnt out and just churning our wheels getting no where. We asked ourselves why are we doing this? Life is short. After our kickstarter campaign not pulling through we asked ourselves should we launch another campaign or use that same time to finish the game with the little time we have. We decided to scale back and focus on why we started Defense Task Force in the first place. We started the game to play, to achieve, to provide value to other Tower Defense gamers so why hustle? Let's just do what we had started in the first place, let's focus on our strengths. So here's what we have been doing during this period of silence

We blocked out the noise of hustling on twitter posting regularly to feel our presence

We stopped facebook because we needed to focus on getting the game finished rather than learn facebook techniques

We recognised that we should get a good nights sleep to be productive in our day jobs and to do justice to release a quality game

We took time to exercise 40 mins a day

We decided to read books such as the teachings of Jim Collins and Zen

We were upfront to say NO to dumb tasks and engage in fewer but higher activites. We stopped chasing for more twitter followers, facebook likes, retweets, shares instead we started having conversations with people who reached out to support and encourage us. So What have we achieved so far you may ask? Here's what we have been working on

• Cinematic Storyline: We now have a complete cinematic storyline video when you launch the game
• Game Balancing: The game has been balanced for the entire game. Trust us this was hard but it felt good to play the game with all features enabled
• End to End Testing: We made sure every Unit, tower, blueprint is working and doing what its suppose to do
• Interactive Encyclopedia: Built an interactive encyclopedia though it could have been optimised better we have it for those who absolutely need it
• Beta Test Feedback: We requested some of our early twitch and youtube steamers who encouraged us to test the game and built a few enhancements based on their feedback.

We are close to launching, we are hoping to release the game to a closed group of beta testers in the coming week so we receive constructive criticism early. If you do feel you would like to be part of our closed beta group please send us an email to defensetaskforce at chillx dot com so we could send you the beta key soon. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/31813515/9bce25adf0a28a7d26a0c795d027959d9750a7a9.png

http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/31813515/c0e6ee2116d6461e6b7aa9b6cded3c2e96f8f407.jpg See our Kickstarter Campaign Page Here - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1449075056/defense-task-force-pc-tower-defense-game?ref=8be2v7 Defense Task Force is an infinite waves tower defense game for PC. Staged on a lifeless planet, with a breathable atmosphere called Delta Atheni, your role as commander is to defend the platform that's built to harvest energy and power Earth. Key Features include Mazing and Real-time pathfinding, Infinite waves, deep strategy and skills / upgrade tree, dynamic paths, economy and FPS quality visuals.

http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/31813515/c0e6ee2116d6461e6b7aa9b6cded3c2e96f8f407.jpg See our Kickstarter Campaign Page Here - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1449075056/defense-task-force-pc-tower-defense-game?ref=8be2v7 Defense Task Force is an infinite waves tower defense game for PC. Staged on a lifeless planet, with a breathable atmosphere called Delta Atheni, your role as commander is to defend the platform that's built to harvest energy and power Earth. Key Features include Mazing and Real-time pathfinding, Infinite waves, deep strategy and skills / upgrade tree, dynamic paths, economy and FPS quality visuals.

http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/31813515/30a345aca14d2a8ca523d6dc825f6bfe48031239.png Here’s what our core dev team of 2 programmers part-time and 1 do it all member part-time were able to start, complete, and ship to a few Alpha Game Reviewers since we launched on Kickstarter. See our Kickstarter Campaign Page Here - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1449075056/defense-task-force-pc-tower-defense-game?ref=8be2v7 Some awesome happiness tasks we have been able to work on :-) We were fortunate to meet a few Youtube and Twitch Gamers who volunteered to play the Alpha Version of the game and provide live feedback.

Youtube and Twitch Gameplay Videos

LForward - who does Youtube + Twitch full time - @_LForward - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXsCH4LCGwY Vermillion Phoenix - @VeePhoenixGames - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3PKQKDrmoI Lokken13 Gaming - @Lokken13 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqXpEyZpc5o Darryl Jones - @splatteredink - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/224907617

Development Nuggets that are scrumptious :-)

• Based on feedback from gamers we have lowered the costs of all the level 1 towers to be not too much higher than the machine gun tower. This is to allow the player greater flexibility with early game strategies
• The game play difficulty balancing is now complete upto wave 50. There will, of course, be further fine tuning and we are working on balancing the game for higher waves.
• Four of the blueprints (path layouts for the creeps) are now fully game playtested and balanced. Because the game supports mazing it was important for the player to be able to see the creep path and how it changes with mazing. We have added a real-time path display to the game with shows the creeps path.
• The feedback we received was that Player XP and Rank progression was not very obvious. To cater for this we have now added a complete player XP and Rank progression widget in the game
• Some of the feedback we received highlighted the need for an incoming wave units display showing what Alien creeps will be spawned next. We have added UI elements to the game which now show the composition of the units that will be spawned in across the next two waves. This UI display currently shows the wave composition grouped by unit type. We will be adding other display modes such as a mode to show the spawn sequence as a stream of units rather than by type of unit.
• The sectors in each region now have their own distinct background environment. We have completed the procedural environment biomes for all 5 regions.
• The game features 3 special classes of Alien Creeps. Healers, Cloakers and Spawners. Feedback we received highlighted that we needed visual effects to distinguish the healer and cloaker classes. Distinct visual effects are now added for Alien unit types within these two classes.

Love, Hugs and Hi-five all the way from New Zealand.

http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/31813515/30a345aca14d2a8ca523d6dc825f6bfe48031239.png Here’s what our core dev team of 2 programmers part-time and 1 do it all member part-time were able to start, complete, and ship to a few Alpha Game Reviewers since we launched on Kickstarter. See our Kickstarter Campaign Page Here - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1449075056/defense-task-force-pc-tower-defense-game?ref=8be2v7 Some awesome happiness tasks we have been able to work on :-) We were fortunate to meet a few Youtube and Twitch Gamers who volunteered to play the Alpha Version of the game and provide live feedback.

Youtube and Twitch Gameplay Videos

LForward - who does Youtube + Twitch full time - @_LForward - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXsCH4LCGwY Vermillion Phoenix - @VeePhoenixGames - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3PKQKDrmoI Lokken13 Gaming - @Lokken13 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqXpEyZpc5o Darryl Jones - @splatteredink - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/224907617

Development Nuggets that are scrumptious :-)

• Based on feedback from gamers we have lowered the costs of all the level 1 towers to be not too much higher than the machine gun tower. This is to allow the player greater flexibility with early game strategies
• The game play difficulty balancing is now complete upto wave 50. There will, of course, be further fine tuning and we are working on balancing the game for higher waves.
• Four of the blueprints (path layouts for the creeps) are now fully game playtested and balanced. Because the game supports mazing it was important for the player to be able to see the creep path and how it changes with mazing. We have added a real-time path display to the game with shows the creeps path.
• The feedback we received was that Player XP and Rank progression was not very obvious. To cater for this we have now added a complete player XP and Rank progression widget in the game
• Some of the feedback we received highlighted the need for an incoming wave units display showing what Alien creeps will be spawned next. We have added UI elements to the game which now show the composition of the units that will be spawned in across the next two waves. This UI display currently shows the wave composition grouped by unit type. We will be adding other display modes such as a mode to show the spawn sequence as a stream of units rather than by type of unit.
• The sectors in each region now have their own distinct background environment. We have completed the procedural environment biomes for all 5 regions.
• The game features 3 special classes of Alien Creeps. Healers, Cloakers and Spawners. Feedback we received highlighted that we needed visual effects to distinguish the healer and cloaker classes. Distinct visual effects are now added for Alien unit types within these two classes.

Love, Hugs and Hi-five all the way from New Zealand.