(Out of Hiatus) - Research and Deconstruction on Tower Defence Maps

Late start to the second academic term, the year started in January yet I've been delayed due to crunch time on my dissertation and the aftermath of it's hand in, but as of now i am of Hiatus and working towards my group project again.

Following up on the project presentation at the end of last term i realised i need to do some research into level design for tower defence levels, not only to further my understanding for the genre, but also James tasked me with concepting additional level design, potentially for other stages that we could add to the game.

Particularly because the intent is to apply for the incubator project (a internal prospect for uni students to offer them facilities to work on a project for a year) so we also need to be thinking of the long term prospects of the project should it keep going.

So first things first I've decided to deconstruct some map design in other tower defence games a bit, just to get a feel for how they work the environment.

For the most part i made use of example maps from kingdom rush (since we've been heavily influence by how it works). 

The first couple of images show 'FieldRunners 2' which interestingly has a more 3D orientated environment, with elements of verticality, which i imagine allows you to stretch out the time from one side of the map to the other, without scaling down the elements on the map. 

it also make use of mirrored map art, which allows for a different start and end to the map, while only needing to develop (essentially) half a map.

The next 3 images are all from kingdom rush, which feature the same flat level design that our group hope to use, but with drastically more complex design. 

The top image there is the most complex, with multiple points for the enemies to enter on screen with the castle as the focus of the goal for the enemies, the castle in particular uses a location as the players focus and the lose condition for the game, so it could be good basis to change the position of our castle to make better use of the screen real estate.

the circular design uses 2 paths that make good use of the screen space for gameplay and drag out the players opportunity to defeat enemies before they reach the end, despite the simplistic nature of it.

the last of the kingdom rush images uses a curved path with multiple entrance points for enemies, the extra path allows for more urgent enemy placements as the level goes on, we could perhaps make use of extra pathways that only become used as the level goes on.

the Kingdom rush origins map has probably the most "map" of the lot, but its simplistic in how it uses that, with lots of entrances and build spots it means players have to maintain alot of awareness on screen to keep track of where concentrations of enemies are and respond to them.

But despite the entrances they are funneled into only one looping pathway, which allows there to be relevance to the structures already established. This can also result in tension by seeing all the enemies bunched up.

at any rate looking at the manipulation of entrances, routes and buildable spots i'd say this gives me a lot of food for thought on where to take some of the map direction