Desktop Tower Defense is a tower defense game in which your towers not only shoot, but act as walls to your maze. The ability to sell and buy towers to change the maze at will can make it an extremely "micro"-heavy game. I think it makes for a pretty entertaining TAS.
There is a little-known DS port based on version 1.5 of the game. I'm working on a TAS that completes all game modes without leaking any lives. I chose to do no leaks to make is better resemble real time score runs and for entertainment. Due to the nature of the game it's practically impossible to make a TAS that's fully optimised. Luckily there is no shortage of score runs on youtube, and having played the game a lot since release, I think I've been able to come up with strategies that are close to optimal.
I'm currently 5/19 game modes through the TAS. In the 19th game mode, "5 Min", we can end input in seconds due to a glitch (The next wave doesn't appear if there are snap towers around). Below is a video of easy, normal and hard mode. 28101 rerecords for this part.
Link to video
If this is how you're going to introduce yourself, you've done it right. I have passing familiarity with tower defense games, and this definitely looks like ridiculous precision far beyond anything I could humanly do. Lovely, it is.
Please, keep going. There will likely be joy when you finally submit a finished TAS. If it's "practically impossible to make a TAS that's fully optimized," then that gives a lot of room to show just what can be done.
I don't know this game in particular, but about that "5 min" mode... how would it look if it was taken normally? Well, by "normally", I mean TASing through it without the glitch, trying to maximize score or something. And, uh... with the glitch, and input ends early, will it look at all interesting?
I don't know this game in particular, but about that "5 min" mode... how would it look if it was taken normally? Well, by "normally", I mean TASing through it without the glitch, trying to maximize score or something. And, uh... with the glitch, and input ends early, will it look at all interesting?
A TAS of 5 min mode would look like this: https://youtu.be/QgB2BsZ_vaY . I only discovered the glitch while I was TASing. Using the glitch would involve beating the first wave, buying a snap tower, and then doing nothing for 280 seconds. This isn't the most interesting game mode in the first place, but it's a lot less entertaining with the glitch. If I include a 5 Min TAS, I'm worried about the goal choice becoming too arbitrary. Right now this category is "All game modes no leaks". The goal is not aiming for high scores - I could get higher scores on Normal and Hard at the cost of speed. Is there a neat goal that allows a 5 Min TAS? The only idea I have is to end timing when the final game mode is completed, not at final input. TASVideos' timing rules are detrimental here. Therefore I plan to use the glitch.
Huh, so 5 min doesn't allow you to instantly trigger waves. Okay. You made a full demonstration rather than describing it in text. You definitely put in effort.
In general, input ends when it's enough to reach credits or some sort of ending. It would feel less of a closure if it only sits at a level completion screen. The "ending" isn't triggered by gameplay, right? If the credits can be selected from the menu, have that be the last action. If there really isn't any sort of closure you can select, then the best would be that level completion screen, I suppose.
Even a submission isn't precisely set in stone. If it turns out the opinions of the board strongly suggest that you should have done something else to end the run, you can make some change, upload it somewhere, and have a judge replace it. The most questionable mode is that 5 min one, so if you leave that for last, you'll have the least amount of trouble changing it later, as then you wouldn't have to worry about syncing later modes.
In any case, take what I say as mere suggestions, tempered by my opinions, not what the site as a whole expects. I like what I've seen so far, so more of whatever that is, keep it up.
Hello again. I haven't touched this project in over 3 years and basically forgot about it. I am not finishing it. I used desmume 0.9.11 and there are too many syncing issues. I have uploaded everything on YT: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLffHQimLkBvYQHhsmvMeTd_JDAmam2poZ
Tech:
• The DS version has a creep limit.
• Buying/Selling towers creates a lot of lag. It can actually be really beneficial to buy and sell at the right time, since timers will still run while the game is frozen. This is used to manipulate RNG and manipulate tower cycles (this is especially used to deal extra damage to flying creeps with swarm towers).
• Also, you can upgrade towers during buy lag, before your money gets updated. This potentially results in you spending more money than you have. However nothing particularly interesting will happen. You will just have negative money, no underflows, no great uses.[/video]
