135 thoughts on 'Last new version of the year'

1. I’m pretty happy that I haven’t encountered a bug EVER in my time playing 🙂

2. Why don’t you just have an upgrade every other level, so you don’t have to add a lot of superfluous research items?

   1. Oh, they won’t be superfluous 🙂 Well, one or two of them will be, but there are a whole load of things I can think of that will buff this and that. Like “teflon plating” or something to buff armour of all buildings by +1, or “cryogenics” to buff cooling of towers by +1, or “structural engineering” to buff hitpoints by +1, etc.

      1. First of all: awesome, madly addictive game. Thanks for that 🙂

         The fact that research items are buffing things is pretty undercommunicated. To be honest, I got this only after reading your reply here. Or have I missed something that said “+1 defense” or similar things in the research description?

         Another thing that confused me during play is that sometimes it feels like researching this or that was a bad choice for the monsters which came in the next level, or even two levels later. Having to guess whether to invest or keep the money is tough, and virtually impossible to get right on the first play-through.

         I would suggest auto-picking items from the tech tree in the campaign, and leaving buying stuff to the freeplay mode.

         1. I’m inclined to agree with Leonard. As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, I’ve “lost” a campaign because I had absolutely no counter to ghosts (mars).

            > The fact that research items are buffing things is pretty undercommunicated.
            I don’t believe there’s much research at present that does buffing. The alien anatomy research does (+1 armour piercing), but that’s all I’ve seen from the parts of the tree I’ve researched, and it does say that on the blurb when you click it. I think Cas was planning for the future.

            1. The laser research gives +1 range, the xenobiology gives +1 damage and the alien anatomy gives +1 armour piercing. Just those 3 sets you up till the end of the moon. Then you just need either mines or capacitor to deal with gidlets. Then you need lasers to deal with the flying aliens. Once you’ve got those down the rest is pretty much personal preference.

               I think the droid factory is still pretty crap so you can take it or leave it really. 2 shields gives buildings 2 armour which blocks all gidlet damage anyway.

3. I would enjoy a game mode with automated reloading and whatnot. I imagine it would be a lot more relaxing.

   Also, the ability to replay previous levels is pretty cool. Does it apply to endless mode as well?

   1. It should work for endless mode too but I confess I never tested it…

4. “I’m investigating a new gameplay where you don’t have to click on refineries or turrets any more, and it’s all automated.”

   These two features would make this game infinitely better. The gameplay of ROTT is only slowed by having to manually collect money and reload turrets, so removing the need to do so would make gameplay faster, more exciting, and less burdensome.

   “I’m investigating the possibility of making research free, and adding another bunch of things to research. This is a lengthy process as Chaz has to redesign the whole research GUI for this.”

   This would also be awesome – More things to research adds depth to the game, and making research free (so that you can upgrade 1 or 2 things after each level) allows you to focus using all your money in each individual level.

   Can’t wait for more upgrades, and thanks for all the hard work. Have a Merry Christmas!

   1. I just want to chip in saying that I like the current implementation of reloading, collecting, and saving money for research.

      That said I would totally support a different game mode without these things to cater to other people’s taste. Basically please don’t take away the current game but feel free to make new modes as you see fit. I’m not sure if that’s the intention or not from the blog post but here’s my request anyway.

      Also, hooray for Steam activation!

      1. I’d like to +1 Moocher’s post. I think the current implementation is fun and adds an element of planning. Can I afford this research? Do I need something else right now? I don’t know, I like the tension currently created. It also motivates me to beat levels with as few turrets as possible, which I love.

         Playing levels over to do better makes me really, really happy though. I would just restart my whole campaign if I felt I made a big mistake or 2 xD

      2. Im going to agree with moocher as well, the manual loading can be turned off (I use autoloaders most of the time anyway) But the saving money for research is a major thing that makes this game unique. It forces people to make strategic decisions instead of filling the map with light blasters and hoping for the best

      3. Another Moocher’s supporter here. 🙂
         I’d like the chance to add a sort of “Total Arcade Mode”, in which the player has not to be worried about money saving and budget planning, putting in the auto collect/reload feature too.
         Total Arcade: just click-and-smash, for pure and relaxing entertainment. 🙂
         I love this game!

         1. Arcade mode doesn’t half sound like Survival mode to me 😉

            I can’t really have both “automatic reloads & collects” and the old way in the same game very easily as several of the buildings will be dramatically repurposed. So I’m just going to have to try it out and see.

            Making research free won’t impact your decisions nearly as much as you think – you’ll be receiving proportionately less money per level from crystals, and that has the subtle effect of limiting your building activities too… I’ll try this out soon and see how it feels. I have a feeling it’s a lot more fun for more people.

         2. I prefer the actual gamestyle in which one have to decide to invest on research or building in-game. That’s part of the strategy. The only thing is to allow more research in case you decide to expand the tree, with cheaper investments because it’s difficult to save enough money after a battle. Sometimes you obtain a “Pyrrhic victory”.

   2. I personally would prefer to have at least a different gamemode where I don’t have to click on the refineries because I have to watch over the refineries as much as I have to watch over the titans.

      This means I have a lot less investigating the paths which titans are taking, how effective my guns are against them and it simply just makes the gameplay more hectic when you have to jump all over the place all the time.

      I could live with reloading the turrets manually but on large maps when you have to jump over long distances, this as well becomes a burden.

      ———-

      On another note I have two improvement suggestions.

      Get rid of that beeping sound when there’s going to be more titans coming. It’s distracting (especially now when you have to try to listen to those turret reloading and refinery collecting beepings as well), I don’t need to know all the time that there’s now coming a bigger amount of titans and it doesn’t give out any valuable information after its initial beeps.

      Hence I would suggest replacing it with distinctive sound which plays only ones and then the icon keeps flashing, like it does now, but without any sound.

      Other suggestion I would like to say is that when you are placing a building, PLEASE make the building selection menu and the top bar retract automatically so they won’t block your turret or other building placing. (Though keep the money amount indicator visible on the top bar, that’s imporant one.) When the bars retract automatically, placing buildings becomes a lot more fluent and easier when you are in a hurry.

5. If you want to add extra research elements and make it one research per level, you could make the upgrades (coolant tower, radar, etc..) be per-type upgrades, instead of additional buildings. Increase the cost of the buildings to match their upgrade level, but not have to worry about creating a whole new set of research and trying to figure out a way to bungle it in.

   Worst case, you could make it so the upgrades are per weapon type, so the spreaders get treated the same way, instead of each one individually.

   And for the automatic collect/reload, you could make it an enabled feature, once the technology was researched, instead of building the structure itself.

6. Don’t know if this was corrected in the new version, but in 1.72 for some reason I couldn’t research some items. I don’t remember right one the name of the one I couldn’t access, I can only recall it had to do with something about getting more funding and that it depended on the efficency research.

   Also, maybe a redsign of the buildings panel would be useful. If buttons in the panel were to have the same distribution that they have on the keyboard, maybe the player could change from one building to another one in a shorter time with having to know by heart all of the shortcuts.

   Anyway, thanks for such great game.

   1. That was the Reprocessor you need the extraction tuning to (the one that speeds up extraction) get that research. There is a missing arrow on the tree.

7. I would be in favor of instead of having to research an automated collector, simply research, for example, automated refineries, and then all refineries placed from then on will be automatic at no extra cost.

   Also, can you explain how the secretly force easier difficulty works? Is restarting a level considered failure, or just losing the base? How many times until it takes effect? Does it change the metals you get? How is it made easier?

   1. Taken from email reply:
      “Difficulty is currently composed 40% from research progress and 60% from money & buildings in play. Research difficulty is calculated by working out the total value of all possible research vs the number of levels (50) and then working out how close to the curve you are, and scaling that by 0.4.

      The money difficulty is similar: adds up all the money you have, and the value of all the buildings you’ve got in play, and divides this by an arbitrary difficulty factor which increases over time (say, $10000 for level 1, and then $500 per level). That factor’s then scaled by 0.6. It’s also scaled back and forth a bit according to how badly you’ve been kicked in and how badly the aliens are doing.

      Then we apply a negative offset if the base is central in the level, and another negative offset if there’s a boss.

      THEN we apply a negative offset if you’ve attempted the level 3 times or more. If you keep on restarting the level, the offset gets a bit bigger, until it’s -1.0.

      The final value is clamped to the range [0.0 – 1.0].

      Deep breath… this figure is then used to scale the gidrah’s hitpoints linearly between the minimum value and 3 x minimum value as the maximum. And it is also used to scale the gidrahs’ movement speed from standard down to about 3 x normal speed. And that’s it in a nutshell.”

8. Bought Humble Bundle for this game and am still getting the “Main class not found” error described in your support section, even when using the .exe directly. Any help for windows 7 users? I’d really like to get into this game. Thanks and happy holidays!

   1. Sounds very much to me like you’ve not got the 1.72.1 version installed?

9. Bought the game trough the Humble Bundle and I am glad that I did!

   Secretly forcing easier difficulty after repeated failure sounds worrying. I am not necessarily opposed to dynamic difficulty per se, but I would prefer to have some control or at least transparency regarding it. Otherwise how would I know if I finally succeeded because I found the right tactic or because the game decided to go easy on me?

   An ability to play earlier levels without capping the campaign sounds like a nice feature, but what about the power ups? When you replay the level you might use or gain different ones. Also it would be nice to have the option of starting the campaign again at certain point to change the research route in case you made a mistake during the last couple of levels. Or perhaps this is already possible in this version, I have no time to try it yet.

   1. Don’t worry, you are unlikely to notice the difference. You have to restart a level multiple times before it even begins tweaking the difficulty. Some levels, on account of being randomly generated, genuinely are way too hard and so this mechanism gently adjusts them rather than making you email me and complain like the other 200 odd people who did 🙂

10. I cannot download the 32bit tar.gz package for linux. Broken link?

    1. Grr, content delivery network failure 🙁
       Direct link here: http://www.puppygames.net/downloads/RevengeOfTheTitans-i386.tar.gz

11. Remove ‘Mouse Acceleration’ =( But overall great game!

    1. There is no mouse acceleration! Try twiddling mouse sensitivity in the options screen.

12. It would be really nice if there was some way to manually adjust the difficulty setting. I’m getting frustrated with the game after a few completed a few levels I no longer have any cash available for research; I don’t have enough funds to build new turrets AND progress down the research tree. Aside from the demoralizing difficulty level, the game is pretty fun.

    I don’t mind challenging games, but hitting a wall around the 6th level is pretty harsh. (Part of my problem is that I’m used to playing games on my PC and I’ve only been able to play ROTT on my wife’s macbook so far, and trackpads are inferior to using an actual mouse).

    Also, I switched the research view so I could see the dependency tree, but even though it looks like I had the pre-requisite research completed, the path wanted to research was still grayed out. I’m not sure what i’m missing.

    I’m not sure automating the turrets and refineries is a good idea; tower defense games in general are marked by their lack of interaction once the units are placed and the money is all spent. If you do decide to automate, perhaps you could make the levels longer and the increase the quantity and rate of crystal harvesting, allowing (and requiring) that the player continue to interact with the defenses throughout the level.

    1. Hi Tim, sounds like you’re having difficulty on several levels there.

       Firstly, you should know that if a level’s too hard, you should generate an easier one (ESC menu, or game over screen). You get a less shiny medal but have rather more fun!

       Secondly, 6th level!? Criminy but that’s an easy level. I suspect you’re making some elementary mistakes. The crucial tips I can give you are:

       • Build 4 refineries per crystal
       • The aliens only start coming after you place your first refinery
       • Collect several refineries with a single click-and-drag operation
       • Don’t build turrets too close to the approximate path of the aliens!
       • Don’t build more turrets than you really need to or you’re wasting money
       • Upgrades stack – example: place up to 4 cooling towers next to turrets for super fast fire rate
       • Scanners are the most useful basic upgrade

       Hope that helps!

       If it’s any consolation I developed the entire game on a crappy trackpad 🙂

       There was a bug on the research view graphic before. You need Extraction Tuning to get Reprocessors.

       1. 4 refineries per crystal? But the crystals would get used up really quickly, surely?

          1. If it’s a big crystal, then 4 should give a profit. I usually do 3 on big ones, 2 on medium and 1 or 2 on small

          2. > 4 refineries per crystal? But the crystals would get used up really quickly, surely?

             That’s the idea. You lose nothing by getting rid of the crystals quickly, but if you can do them before the last titan appears (the red count-down bar on the right runs out), you get an “efficiency” medal, which includes $500. That’s for each level!

       2. Thank you for the tips! I just finished the earth campaign.

          I installed ROTT on a PC with 17″ monitor (instead of my wife’s 13″ laptop) and a mouse, and it was much, much better. Also, I finally got the hang of placing turrets a proper distance from the Titan’s path (even though I wasn’t placing them directly on the roads/paths I was still distracting the bigger titans into romping into the turret formation). One final strategy that helped me finish the earth campaign was to stop hoarding the power-ups like a miser; two smart bombs puts a significant dint in that gargantuan titan (whatever its name was).

13. Right everyone, we’re off for a while over xmas, so new posters might have to wait a few days before we get around to approving comments and email support is going to be sketchy.

    Have a great time and if you’ve got any problems please check the support page here and remember that 99% of all the problems I deal with are solved by telling people to try new graphics drivers.

    Happy Christmas and all that, folks!

14. Got a quick question, where might the save files for these reside? I can’t seem to find it for the life of me and I would like to sync my laptop and desktop save files. 😀 Excellent addicting game haha

    1. The save games are stored under:
       %USERPROFILE%\Revenge of the Titans %VER%\slots
       Where %VER% is the version of the game.
       IE: I am using version 1.71 and my save games are under
       C:\users\dave\Revenge of the Titans 1.71\slots
       on windows 7, Vista and
       c:\documents and settings\dave\Revenge of the Titans 1.71\slots
       on windows XP
       If your using Linux or Mac, I can’t help you

    2. C:\Users\(yourname)\Revenge of the Titans 1.72

15. What I think would be nice is some explaining on how money is stored in the save files… and how the save files work(you end up with alot!)

    I’m not saying cheat your way to the end but after i beat a game i like to go through it in full force, $9999999 would be some awesome fire power

    1. Save files! Where are those elusive things? Their most definitely not in the program install folder or the User folder in windows.

       1. The save game files are strangely not in you Documents folder, but in the folder right before that which is the folder named after your PC.

          1. I found them! strangely it only appeared after I installed the humble bundle game a second time. No matter, it works now. cheers!

             1. where are the save games kept?

                1. Dave says: December 22, 2010 at 1:32 pm
                   The save games are stored under:
                   %USERPROFILE%\Revenge of the Titans %VER%\slots
                   Where %VER% is the version of the game.
                   IE: I am using version 1.71 and my save games are under
                   C:\users\dave\Revenge of the Titans 1.71\slots
                   on windows 7, Vista and
                   c:\documents and settings\dave\Revenge of the Titans 1.71\slots
                   on windows XP
                   If your using Linux or Mac, I can’t help you

16. Hello !

    Here is a bug to deal with when you’ll be back from holiday :
    That’s probably a side effect from the fact that we can now replay a scenario without wiping out the campaign : the data from the version 1.71 are still being displayed, but when cliking on a mission, we are sent back to the first mission on earth.

    Also, I noticed that there is a new sound when placing towers and processors (whiiiiiii BUNK). I find it confusing : the “BUNK” would lead to think that befor it was under construction, and then it is working. Whereas the tower or processor is working straight away. I would put the sound the other way around (BUNK whiiiiii)

    1. If you’re using the Linux version, you need to delete the ‘puppygames’ folder in .java/.userPrefs/net/

       1. that removes my config and my savefile, is there a way to keep the savegame from 1.72?

       2. > If you’re using the Linux version, you need to delete the ‘puppygames’ folder in .java/.userPrefs/net/
          True, but it’s still a bug. I had it myself and reported it (Windows – moving from 1.71 to 1.72).

17. Thumb up!

    I think I’ll restart again because I have no money to cope with the Leviathan class at Moon… too much research.

    As a suggestion, it’s fine to let the research tree as is without knowing what’s next because in real world science functions as this: you invest in some research line without knowing a priori which final product you will have.

    1. I think an AWESOME tech tree would be where you don’t see what leads to what until you research it. Like, there isn’t even an icon there until you research. So at the beginning it’s like, 2 icons but as you research the tree gets revealed. Tech tree fog of war. lol

    2. Sorry, but I have to disagree with not knowing what tech’s are coming.
       In my first campaign game along came the ghost titans on mars and I didn’t have the tech to stop them. Worse, I didn’t have a clue where on the tech-tree that tech was. Heck, I /still/ don’t because I only know about 1/3rd of the tree. This was a game-stopper for me and I had to restart because I’d made a few too many “wrong-turns”; I suspect it’s somewhere under the reactor but I’d not even started on that line, so I had loads of invulnerable ghosts running around and only so-many smartbombs.

       Not showing the tech-tree hinders first-time players but has no effect on repeaters. Anyone who’s completed the tech-tree at least once knows where everything is, so hiding the tree from them is fairly pointless.

       1. Does not the eggheads of R&D give you some advice on the research needed for next levels?

          1. Yes and no. They give some advice, like to research robotics and the droid factory when you get to mars, but the advice for dealing with ghosts was vague (“use eletctrical stuff”), and worse, came too late. Assuming it is the capacitor (which I’ve no researched), that’s at least three techs in (fusion -> nukes -> capacitor), none of which I had when the first ghosts appeared.

             1. So…. your complaint is that you weren’t informed well in advance about the tech that was needed to defeat the titan ghosts? On your first campaign? (do you mean playthrough?! of the whole game? or just the Mars level?)
                The boffins do indeed give you some advice a few levels beforehand, I guess you didn’t get the ‘coffee’ reference as it’s a bit cryptic…. but then, you could have just gone back three levels to get the tech. Yeah, that’s a little frustrating – but you live and you learn, you’ll have the tech and be able to defend yourself from those phantoms – problem solved!
                First-times will eventually become veterans, but only after experience is gained…. simple really! 🙂

                1. > So…. your complaint is that you weren’t informed well in advance about the tech that was needed to defeat the titan ghosts? On your first campaign?

                   Yes. And yes, I know I could go back several levels (quite a few actually) to get the “right” picks, but personally I view that as bad game design (sorry Cas). The players shouldn’t be punished to that extent for making the wrong choice when they can’t have known what the consequences would be. Sure, make it more difficult if the player chooses “wrong”, but not a mission-impossible-or-go-back-5-levels impasse.

                   I thought (and still think) the coffee references were an in-joke. Unless there’s a coffee-maker tech on the tree I’ve not come across yet. 🙂 I just assumed Cas was a caffine addict. 😉

                   > First-times will eventually become veterans, but only after experience is gained…. simple really!
                   I put it to you that people should be able to enjoy their first play-through as much as their nth. At present the game severely punishes people on that first play-through, and because of that I wouldn’t be surprised if many players give up on it in frustration and go play with some of their other HIB games.

                   1. I got the game as part of the Humble Bundle, absolutely loving it – never played another “tower defense” style game before, but I have to believe that this is an outstanding example of its genre.

                      As for the “coffee” references, I assumed that meant that the department in question wasn’t getting enough funding (couldn’t afford to fix the coffeemaker) and more money needed to be spent there.

                      But, like Moriarty, the hints didn’t come early enough into the Mars campaign for me to be able to save it. I ended up going back five or six levels into Earth to retrace my research steps (I had been going toward the decoy tower at the time and am not good enough at the game yet to save lots of money per level.)

                      I think the tension between research and building is good – it pushes you to be more efficient. The hints could come a bit sooner for things that are “must have” items though. On the other hand, I learned a lot from going back and retracing my steps, and ended up starting over again from Earth 1 so that I could revel in my newfound knowledge. The game really does reward the player’s skills rather than the tech development, other than the couple of unfortunate “dead-end” missions.

                      So… I dunno. If it did give the hints sooner I might not have even noticed that you could go back and redo levels just because. And if I hadn’t done that I might have gotten frustrated when I got to Saturn and didn’t have the skill to survive that first gigantic wave. Another thing is that I feel like I’ve learned a bit about how to play better, and… in the end, what good is a game you’ve already beaten? In that regard, I’m glad I haven’t beaten it yet and I welcome opportunities to go back and find stuff out. 🙂

18. Hmm, what about a pure TD game mode with a certain initial cash and initial deployment of defenses, and let’s cross the fingers?
    I know that the best point of the game is the RTS, but always it’s easy to do easier things like this one.

19. Oh sure, make bundles of money (off of the humble indie bundle) and now just leave us to torment in this bug laden version!?!?

    Just kidding 😉

    Merry Xmas!

20. +1 love for steam support.
    Will other games follow suit? 😉

    1. You should ask steam really, they have to actually want the games on steam as well

21. Found two bugs:

    1.When you are collecting crystals from your refineries and you hold your mouse over a refinery after collecting, it stops collecting until you let go. It’s not a big deal at all, but just something I noticed.

    2.When you use Freeze and shoot Titans (I think it was with the shotgun) they loose the frozen-in-ice look and look like normal Titans again.

22. cas I bought the humble bundle today, with the same e-mail as I did buy revenge of the titans on the first time, can you change is it possible to change?

23. Cas are you ever going to offer older versions?
    ive peronally been collecting up to 1.63 but that all I got till the new one.
    I would like to have a colection of all previous versions since your games changes change things o much I like to have old ones 😀

24. campaign level 25: droids running away from the army of big bootied titans filled with baby monsters?!!

25. i think that it would be helpful if you were able to collect money and reload while in ‘build mode’. It would mean that i don’t need to press esc every time i need to do this and reselect the building (number shortcut or clicking). It would make the game a less panicky experience. Not a less difficult one, just a less panicky one. And i don’t really like panicky games as much as other. I feel that the game would be so much better like this 😀

    Also, the ability to go back to old levels to earn more money is much appreciated 😀

    One last thing. I run on a mac and everyone keeps talking about how to save your save files on PC but i was wondering how to do it on mac before i download any new editions. I have the feeling that it is saved to the computer and not the folder but could you please confirm or deny this.

    Thanks so much and great game 😀

    DanWeb

26. As for automatic difficulty, especially without telling the player and providing a way to prevent that – it’s fake difficulty, as in fake orgasm. People like me take pleasure in succeeding against all odds and finding a way to beat a difficult scenario. I frequently restart a couple of times until I get the building placement right. Sometimes a single placement mistake (not enough room) causes me to restart.

    This would be very helpful in the “planning” phase:

    Selling buildings returns 100% of its cost if a refinery or Droid Factory hasn’t been placed yet.

    1. I think you should get 100% money back during planning as well

       1. You do.

          1. Try it again, and wait a few seconds for the free refund period to expire.

             It should be 100% refund up until when the timer starts when you build a refinery.

27. I’ve noticed a mild bug. Each time you go to the next level, in the screen above the techs appears “ALL RESEARCHED” before you place the mouse in some tech. Of course it’s not all researched yet. After this the screen it’s black until you move to display some tech box.

28. I realise difficulty is a little changed now, but the way it is I’m fairly confident you’re (Cas) still going to get lots of complaints because the “default” difficulty is the hardest. Reading your comments above Cas, I know the game self-corrects for difficulty a little now, but that’s only after the player has failed/restarted the level several times which frankly, is frustrating.
    Personally, I think the difficulty should include a more traditional aspect. Namely when a player starts a new campaign (and maybe endless/survival too) they choose a difficulty: i.e. “easy/normal/hard/extreme”. This sets the base difficulty, but beyond that you can keep the self-adjusting difficulty in there too, albeit probably with limits based on the specified difficulty level (a “easy” campaign mission should never be as hard as a “hard” one, no-matter how well the player is doing).
    The problem is, as it stands, to a player who hasn’t spotted the “new level that’s easier” button (and it took me a while), there’s only one difficulty level and that’s “normal”. I’m all for bucking-the-trend with game-design, but some things do make sense the way they traditionally are. 😉

    1. I think Moriarty has a good point. Perhaps it would work well to reverse the situation ? Default would be “Silver” or “Bronze”, and then you would get “Generate a harder map” button. People who like to overanalyze and optimize stuff would likely find it. We pay attention to detail :-).

       The icon would need to be sufficiently evil, some horny or devilish creature.

       1. Before this game I have never. EVER. chosen the hardest difficulty on a game. When I got RotT and started playing it, I noticed that it was on the hardest difficulty, and then I started to notice I enjoyed the challenge. So, in pretty much every other game since then I have chosen hardest, which I enjoy throughly. So thanks to this game I now get more fun out of games 🙂

       2. Cas has strong opinions about game difficulty, you’re unlikely to change his mind.

       3. I wonder sometimes if people complain about the difficulty simply because they can’t complete the entire campaign on their first playthrough? I wouldn’t enjoy this game as much if the ‘default’ difficulty was changed.
          Sure, you might be finding it really challenging, but isn’t that part of what makes this game so addictive? Gives you a real sense of achievement? Creates an incentive to change your strategy? or revise your tech decisions, or the placement of your defences? Or screw that, just go back a whole level and start from scratch and try your hardest to make more money second time round? Saaron, I admire your attitude!

          1. Sorry, have to disagree with you there Luke.

             >> I wouldn’t enjoy this game as much if the ‘default’ difficulty was changed.
             As is highlighted elsewhere in these comments by various folks, and indeed in your own comment, everyone likes different difficulty levels; and more importantly everyone has difficult skill levels. I’ve played countless games at their maximum difficulty and still won easily, but they weren’t tower-defence games. What you find challenging and what I find challenging in tower-defence are two very different things.

             >> Sure, you might be finding it really challenging, but isn’t that part of what makes this game so addictive?
             No. At least, not for me. You have to remember different people get different things out of their games. Why do you think there are so many casual gamers out there playing farmville? I’ve never played it but I doubt there’s any “difficulty” at all in that game.
             Personally, this isn’t the sort of game I find challenging, only frustrating. I have little doubt that eventually I can win the campaign on the current difficulty, but it’ll take a long time and too many restarts – that’s not something I find all that fun though.

             1. Moriarty, the difficulty regarding ROTT has been a hotly debated (and sometimes contentious ) subject from the get-go, some previous builds of the game were exceedingly frustrating due to the difficulty being far too high (whilst other versions went the exact opposite way and were far too easy with players breezing through it; although some of this could be attributed to players using exploits)
                Your right about everyone liking different things (one man’s meat is another man’s veg etc) and obviously the developers can’t please everyone; admittedly I fell into the same ‘trap’ as you when I first reached the Titan ghosts, but eventually I figured it out. I’m not a hardcore gamer by any means, in fact I love that with ROTT I can just drop back into it after a number of days (or even weeks) not playing. But one thing you should remember, ROTT is a hybrid of tower-defence and RTS.
                The natural solution that would appeal to the most gamers (and give them some control of the situation) would be for the difficulty to be selectable after selecting either campaign, and then the adaptive difficulty would adjust depending on how well (or badly) the player was doing.
                I know that its a completely different game, but how much would it have changed the experience if SuperMeatBoy was easy? I’m sure I read somewhere that Edmund and Tommy kept getting requests to tone the difficulty down, and they flatly refused, which was the right decision.
                Funny that you mention Farmville, I’ve never played it myself, and quite frankly I have no desire to subject myself to that horror. If others out there gain some enjoyment from it, then good for them…. but I’ll steer well clear! Besides, ROTT isn’t a casual game,so if that puts casual gamers off then honestly, that’s their loss. I don’t believe for a second that a developer should dilute their game just to pander to a larger market, and let’s face it, ROTT isn’t impossible to beat. If you find yourself in a ‘dead-end’ during a level due to not having a bit of tech that’s necessary, then you just have to backtrack, as frustrating as that may be. It just came down to a bad choice that you made.
                Oh, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Cas was a caffeine addict! 😉

    2. I’ve come to pretty much the same conclusion as Moriarty. I quite like the idea of adaptive difficulty and really challenging the player, but leaving the game essentially on “hardest” mode until the player cries uncle kind of leaves the game looking like a fussy little bully or an absurdly hardcore survivalist/martial arts nut. But I think this is less about the actual difficulty than the way it is delivered to the player. If the player were made more conscious that the difficulty is above “normal” (although, admittedly, it can be difficult to make the player conscious of anything other than the possibility that there are enemies he has to shoot) or, ideally, if the player were given opportunities to clearly participate in the difficulty ramp, I think it’d do a lot to reduce stress.

       Personally, I rather like the idea of developing periodic offers to make the game harder, perhaps provided you’ve been doing well thus far. Maybe this could occur at the end of each planet? I imagine giving General Mustache the go-ahead to indulge in a bit of sport (having noted a warning that the going will get harder), and being soon informed at the beginning of the following level (as a sort of reinforcement of the consequence of the player’s decision) that the blighters seem particularly riled up for some reason. Regardless, doing this on a planet by planet basis (and skipping a choice for Earth) could give you a chance to push players into playing better while giving them a chance to appreciate that the difficulty is raising and feel complicit in the challenge.

       Alternatively, perhaps you could voluntarily give up a specific amount of money (to save lunar orphan puppies? —some clearly useless end) to raise difficulty by more obvious means (reducing cash on hand), and the “medals” could be related to whether or not you donated (for each level) and how much you donated in total (for game end). The donations could probably be streamlined into a checkbox (that is checked by default) at the start of the mission, and might provide a tooltip extolling the heroic virtues and medals reserved for donors, or somesuch.

       Of course, I don’t think either of these are perfect answers, but they explore ways to involve the player more, which seems better than broadly reducing the difficulty or falling back to the traditional and somewhat ambiguous “difficulty modes.” Perhaps, if RotT goes open source, it may be possible to experiment with different methods of addressing the difficulty issue?

29. I was just replaying some older levels and realized that the money doesn’t carry over to the later levels, only the next one. This means that in order for me to get more money, i need to go back and play ‘every’ level again in order. Please change this, it is just annoying instead of fun, but keep the ability to go back to older levels 😀

    Thanks and great game,

    DanWeb

30. general rule for both sides, human and titan: if you’re gonna shoot at something, make sure there’s not a friggin mountain in the way.

31. Anyone else noticed that Survival seems to be busted?

    Titan’s are literally sprinting a mile a minute, maybe it’s because I am at level 42 in the campaign. I died almost instantly from a boss that ran almost faster than turrets could register, not to mention the ghosts who can fly straight past all your defenses.

    To bad this won’t be fixed for a week or so. 🙁

    1. with this latest version, i’ve only tried survival on planet titan. and get my butt kicked every time – very quickly! and i typically dominate on survival (previous version)

       yeah it’s nuts. but i enjoy the challenge!

32. i take it back, i like the one straggler titan left at the end of the level. it’s adorable – wondering why my level wasn’t ending, i realized i had a titan to find, and caught him, far off in the corner, humping sparkly building waste. he didn’t want to fight.

    but… i had to go to the next level >:)

33. Watching people play this game blind on youtube is so painful. Especially when they treat it like a straight up TD game, and start fussing when the titans go off the road to attack!

34. I’ m buying the humble bundle for linux, awesome games indeed!

35. I found a bug on 1.72.1:

    I was playing 1.71 (mac OS) and reached level 41 on campaign, when i updated
    no mater wich level i selected it was always going to the first level.

    1. Look at previous posts to see how to transfer your saves from previous versions.

    2. i had the same thing and no one will tell me how to transfer the save files for MAC instead of PC or LINUX. Could someone please help me with this? 😀

       Thanks

    3. I haven’t tested this, but it looks like the RotT folders are located in Users/Username/Library/Application Support/ (where “Username” is just a stand-in for your full username, of course. The username folder also shows up in “places” in the left side of windows that have the “toolbar” visible—it has a house-shaped icon).

       Once you’ve navigated to the “Application Support” folder, you’ll notice that there seems to be a folder for each version of RotT, and each of these contains a “slots” folder (containing a folder for each profile you’ve made, which contains some .dat files and a .ser file), in addition to some logs. I suspect you may just be able to copy the “slots” folder from the version that had your saves into the latest version to copy all your profiles & progress, but I’ve yet to test this.

       1. Oh, and to avoid any confusion, this is referring to Mac OS X 10.5.

          1. Thanks, that was a heap of help. It did work 😀

36. Does anyone know where the soundtrack should be put when installing the game with the HIB .deb?

    I’d really like to hear some music with the game 😉

    1. For Windows the music is placed within a subdirectory called “Music” inside the Revenge of the Titans install directory(i.e. “c:\RotT\Music”. I’d guess it’s the same for *nix, though I’ve always found *nix file-structures confuzzling. 🙂

       1. I find *nix stucture tidy and logical 😉

          The debian package doesn’t create a Music directory, everything is in /opt/revengeofthetitans/ (except for the icon and the .menu file obviously), but there’s no music file there.

          There is some kind of music in the game, but it gets repetitive and I’d rather play the Soundtracks (or better, my own choice of retro music – oldschool MODS would be the perfect choice for this game.)

          1. File structures depend what you’re used to. 🙂

             Anyway – the music (at least with win) isn’t distributed in 1.72 or 1.72.1, it’s a seperate download on your HIB page. But 1.71 (the first HIB release) did include the music and it was in the /Music subdirectory – hence my saying it should probably be there.

             Of course, now that I think about it, I’m not sure the game actually loads the music from the music directory as I don’t think I’ve heard it played (I listened to it seperately so should recognise it) – only the “regular” music. We’ll have to wait on Cas to tell us that.
             You can always just turn off the music in-game and use your preferred media player in the background.

37. The short of it is, research costs too much and there isn’t enough research options for success, in my opinion. I can’t get past level 8.

    I’d like to see more general upgrades like xenobiology (does something but doesn’t add another building I have to worry about), and less towers that upgrade other towers. This game is frustrating to play as it currently is.

    I do love the game and the concept. Would love to see maybe regenerating shields, reinforced armor on all structures, and maybe a few upgrades for efficiency, like cheaper building materials, which makes everything cost say 10% less. This gives variety to success instead of a specific recipe for success. I feel like I’m being tested as to competency by this game and it puts me on edge.

38. I bought the game as part of the Humble Bundle and I’m totally in love with the style and the basic gameplay.

    Alas, the difficulty is completely out of whack for me – I’m on Mars and things are completely outside of my control. Impossible-to-gauge enemy routes, unstoppable spider things, way to much scrolling and ridiculous clickery. Honestly, reloading and collecting should *not* be all manual – at least let the game auto-collect after like 15 seconds or so.

    So yeah, I’ve been playing the game with a huge passion until now, but Mars is ridiculous to an extent that I saw the second stage, lol’d and closed the game forever.

    Pity, really. But I’ll be watching your other games, that’s for sure!
    And thanks for the experience so far!

39. Some issues/suggestions, plus a bug from 1.72.1. Some are minor, but hey, keep you busy Cas… 🙂

    a) On Windows (XP) the user-profile data is stored in “c:\Documents and Settings\$USERNAME\Revenge of the Titans 1.72” – strictly speaking this should probably be within the “Application Data” subdirectory – that’s what it’s for. More likely even, “%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Datas” Wikipedia concurs – https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Special_Folders#File_system_directories

    b) You get medals/achievements for completing missions on certain difficulties (gold/silver/bronze) in the campaign, however there’s no indication (that I can see anyway) on the campaign screens as to which of these medals you’ve achieved for which level. This is problematical because there are also medals for completing everything with gold-medals – so missing medals and coming back for them later becomes an exercise in memory. I’d suggest putting some sort of indicator next to the mission name on the planets page where you select the mission.

    c) Comma’s in very large numbers. i.e. 100,000 not 100000. More readable, but only really necessary for the Endless statistics page (I’d only show them there for numbers above 100k myself).

    d) Pause:
    1) If I pause the game (either “p” or “esc”), the your-base-has-1%HP-left-and-is-about-to-go-boom klaxon keeps sounding while paused. I’d suggest all klaxony alarms/beeps stop when paused. Music and interface sounds are fine.
    2) Most keyboards have a “pause” key. 😉
    3) Game doesn’t say “game paused” on the screen when paused with the “p” key.

    e) A number on the achievements/medals screen showing the total number of achievements/medals won for that campaign/endless would be nice.

    f) On the select-a-profile mini-screen, it shows what campaign level you’re at plus money, but nothing for what endless mission you’re on. Maybe add that, i.e.:
    “ProfileName
    Campaign: Mars: 25[doesn’t currently show mission number, just name], Tyhel: $12345
    Endless: 24: $18953”

    g) Survival:
    1) Some text on the Survival screen saying you need to complete the campaign planets to open them up in Survival (assuming they’re not all open) would be nice.
    2) Bug, probably related to the “it shows I can continue my previous game but takes me to level 1” bug. I originally played the game in 1.71 and got the laser and reprocessor. But then restarted in 1.72(and .1), by deleting the “slots” directory. Sure enough all of my progress was lost. EXCEPT in survival, which is allowing me to build lasers and reprocessors despite my not having researched either since my very first game restart.
    3) That “threat indicator” bar would be useful on survival. It could be used to give a general indication of time to next wave(s) or something.

    h) A mini-map would be nice. It’d be useful to be able to get a quick overview of the entire battlefield without having to pan over the entire thing.

    i) On the planets campaign screen, when an area is secure it says “Area Secure !” – note the space before the exclamation point. Travesty! 😉

    j) How about a mini-bar thing next to the “zoom to Main base” icon that show’s the main-base’s health? Save me from having the thing unexpectedly blow up as often as it does. Ooops.

    k) The bar at the top of the screen with the current-money in that also shows the current level – on endless it says: “19 level 19” – i.e. repeats the number.

    Don’t take the length of the list as criticism of the game – you’ll note they’re all minor things.

    1. Is that the same Moriarty that used to mod UFO-ET ?

       1. Among other things, yes. Hi. 🙂
          Maybe I should go check how they’re getting on breaking et2…

40. the game quits! after you beat campaign. survival is quitting on me. arrggh!

    1. Same here. The game quits when the timer reaches exactly 5 minutes in a survival match. After the campaign (and on a Mac).

    2. I believe that was a bug in earlier HIB versions but fixed now (see change log above). Download the package again. You should be on 1.72.1

       1. Unfortunately it is already 1.72.1.

       2. This happens in 1.72.1 as well.

       3. i know, i had this problem before, it was fixed, and now i’m having the same problem again. it says 1.72.1 on the title screen, but i’ll try downloading it again.

          1. In my experience the crash in survival mode always occurs at the 5 minute mark. I’ve been calling it “5 minutes to live” mode.

41. Wonderful game! i’m really enjoyed playing it!

    But! Yes, yes, i know, this kind of word can spoil all the plesure of bieng praised, but i cant’ help it.
    After i fiinshed playing campaign game, i decided to try survival mod. Well the game just crashes after 4 or 5 minutes. This happening without following messages. After starting game once more (and once more, and once more) , in suvival mode, it runs perfectly, 4 or 5 minutes. I’m in grief! ^_^

    Anyway thanks for the game!

    Sincerely yours, Quester ^_^

42. Well, all right, while there is time, little suggestions about gameplay.
    Thing to consider. How about giving stunning effect for the mines? i’ve tried to research this branch of technological tree, and yes, damn it, it’s fun, no questions about it. And swarming titans think that this is fun as hell. Maybe that’s why i’m dying two times faster than usual.

    Robot factory almost useless. I’m finished campaign using capacitors to destroy this small annoying titans, and felt no pity about lack of the factories.

    That’s all for now…

43. It would be nice to have a ‘catalog’ thing for known titans and buildings available detailing the stat in mid game. I have really trouble recalling all their stat when there’s a dozens type of building and titans in one game.

    1. I was thinking that too, though my thoughts were more towards a wiki. But I’ve not done it myself because from what I can tell the game changes too frequently, including titan stats.
       But if it’s a built-in catalogue, then it’ll by-definition be able to use the same numbers as the game uses.

       I’d find it most useful to allow me to match up the in-game titan-icon to the picture the general stands in front of.

44. I would like to see another upgrade for the Droid Factory to make it more useful. Maybe Omnicorp upgrades the droids to a new model, tying two of my favorite game worlds together. 🙂

    1. Boost droids, or make them faster or factories a little cheaper. I am in MArs and I don’t see the utility although scientists suggested me strongly to research it.

45. Now, something minor has been bugging me for a while. I love your character art. It’s great. When I first got Revenge of the Titans, however, there was another character present who doesn’t seem to be in the current version. The scientist on mars was really short and had some lights on his giant goggles. I called him “wavy arms guy” after the flail he did when he was talking. If you put in more research, would you consider putting that character back in? I mean, you’re art is awesome so the more the better.

    1. Aw shoot.*”your art”

46. I just wanted to say that I´ve got HIB mostly for this game (and Cortex Command), it´s just an awesome take on Tower defense. About the “free research” and “auto refinery/reload” I just want to say that I find them pretty disappointing if added… One of the things I most love from this game is the BALANCE you must archive when spending cash in defenses, not much so you have more for research but not few so you dont have a hard time =P. I had to restart campaing a lot of times for this, but is one of the features I like the most =D.
    Great work… It´s a really fun game.

    PD: Sorry the English… Argentinian here =P

47. watching the trailer for this game and seeing some of the “set up”s feaured, i think it would be cool to have specialized battles/modes, which demand or maybe even limit the type of technology used. there’s never a need for and army of droids holding off an attack by themselves (mostly cuz droid factories suck as of yet), or a defense made up of just capacitors batteries, reactors, and barricades. i guess what i’m saying is that i saw simple and creative use of technologies and ways of structuring battles that hadn’t come up in my game play. also the enemy seems to follow a single file plan of attack, but in the trailer it looks more crazy, horde-ish, and epic. so for example, i’ve beat the game almost entirely without using barracaides. by titan, they should be swarming all around your base. starship troopers anyone?

    btw, ‘xuse my english. i’m american.

48. *Eagerly awaiting source code*

    I own the game, now I want to change it!

49. After letting my nephew play the game, and watching the struggle that unfolded, I have some suggestions that would (in my mind at least) increase the chances to get less ‘stuck’, and make the game even more enjoyable (and less frustrating for some).
    Firstly, with the difficulty as it is, I think you should definitely ‘reinstate’ the amount of cash that was awarded for each titan defeated; possibly lower it by 50%, so in previous builds you’d get $10 for your bog standard titan, make it so you receive $5, and so on. This would have the effect of aiding players who struggle to have enough money in the bank for research AND for the next onslaught.
    Secondly, I fully agree with all those saying that the droids should be better, possibly through additional research (as someone above previously mentioned) so you’d have two different types; the ones currently are only good for gidlets and mini titans, and useless against anything armoured, so either allow their lasers to penetrate armour, or include some kind of stun capability…. anyone else think this is a good idea?

50. Hi,

    i find refinaries aren’t worth the r+d costs. Below i calculate the NET Bonus money for a SINGLE crystal.
    Example for medium crystal and 3 refinaries: 4000*1.33-4000-1500(250+500+750 for 1st, 2nd and 3rd refinary) = – 180

    Ok, here is the complete table:

    Costs: 1 /13%Bonus = 250 | 2/25%Bonus = 750 | 3/33%Bonus = 1500 | 4/50%Bonus = 2500
    | | |
    small crystal | | |
    2000 +10 (0,5%) | -250 | -840 | -1500
    ———————————————– |———————— |————————– |——————————-
    medium crystal | | |
    4000 +270 (6,75%) | +250 (6,25%) | -180 | -500
    ———————————————– |————————-|————————–|——————————-
    big crystal | | |
    6000 +530 (8,83%) | +750 (12,5%) | +480 (8%) | +500 (8,3%)
    | | |

    I personally got the Reprocessor at the Beginning of mars and it costs too much in my opinion:

    Efficiency 2500
    Extraction Tuning 7500
    Reprocessor 15000
    ——–
    total 25000

    Even 15000 alone is compared to the Bonus u can earn a lot of money (and i am not sure
    if one even needs the “Nuclear Fusion > Reacor > Capacitor” tree).

    So i ask u, what is the money to get to the reprocessor worth for? Doesn’t look like its
    worth to give up anything in favor of this tech.

    WHAT do i miss here?

    1. Holy shit, is this for the new silo???

       I thought it was strange that I couldn’t get it on level three anymore and had to research a whole bunch of stuff to get it…

       …and then it’s not even worth it anymore?

       I’m sorry to say it, but balancing this game has been quite a hit and miss affair. But I guess it’s not an easy job.

       1. > I’m sorry to say it, but balancing this game has been quite a hit and miss affair. But I guess it’s not an easy job.

          That’s why big devs use spreadsheets for everything balancy. God only knows how many Blizzard have for WoW or StarCraft 1/2 for instance. Guessing just doesn’t work well for complex games/interactions.

          /me says that as someone who only ever uses “guessing” when he’s changing balance. 😉

       2. Hi,

          the table regards to the last game version: 1.72.1.

          It gets more complicated mining several crystals far away from each other because for each refinery the costs rise. To get the maximum out of a map u have to think about it a bit in the first place.

          After all, i still cant see the the bonus is worth the costs….at least in 1.72.1.

          Maybe i simply missed something….i hope a developer will say something about it.

          1. OK, first thing i missed is the fact, that one gets some money back, either through selling the buildings manually or at the end af a lvl through reprocessing the buildings.

             But i don’t know how much it is and if the money return flow correlates with the rising building costs.

             1. man, you sure are putting a damper on me making lots of money.

                i always enjoy strategic mining placement.

                i do miss the old silos. you could make a killing with them.

                a lot of the technologies are useless imo. didn’t realize mining was one of them.

                1. They’re actually even more worthless than you think. Hint: Dynamic difficulty. The only reward you get for making lots of money on a level is less crystals on the next level. And personally I can get by just fine without the reprocessors (I’ve not researched them): On one saturn level I made 15k /profit/ without the reprocessors, giving me about 25k-30k in cash. But a few levels later with fewer crystals around my money had diminished again.
                   Titan is problematical though – the damned crystals are miles from my base and the titans go for the refineries.

                   1. since i’m left with little other challenges at this point, i’m trying to get a “didn’t even scratch the paint” metal for every level (can i get some big pay off for that please? (besides that silly bonus)) and titan is proving very difficult for that because of those darn crystals.

                      you can keep some crystals in range of your base protection. other crystals are out of the way of the enemy and don’t prove too much of a mining hassle. the one’s really close to the “line of chewing” ARE really difficult. i’ve been hitting them up with reactors. i’m wondering if shields or some capacitor protection would help as well, but as i write this it’s sounding more and more economically stupid. but whatever. i’m going for that metal and i got 30k to throw around.

                      i’m wondering if waiting to mine the “harder” crystals until a more opportune time later in the level would help (when titans are more occupied with attacking the base/protected crystals.

                      oh and decoys. i haven’t even begun to research that.

                      so this is my main concern/like of this game: you don’t have to research everything to dominate. i like it because you can have your pick of favorite go to weapons/technologies. but my concern is this can undermine the fabric of technologies working together and make many tech’s obsolete (droid factory.)

                      i hate on the droid factory so much.

                      one last point. cas, i think the capacitors are too good, and i don’t think you should change that.

51. Is the 64-Bit version for Linux broken?
    RevengeOfTheTitans-amd64.tar.gz, md5 is 8c575c0087e23e85828fabbda52f6d79 for me.

    tar xfv RevengeOfTheTitans-amd64.tar.gz
    …

    gzip: stdin: decompression OK, trailing garbage ignored
    revengeofthetitans/revenge.sh
    tar: Child returned status 2
    tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

    1. Have you tried tar zxvf instead of xfv? It’s a .tar.gz not a .tar…

       1. yeah, the files unpack just fine with zxvf as well as xfv, but tar always returns 2. This breaks the archlinux build-process, as anything returned other than 0 cancels packaging. I’ll have to manually unpack and package, game works

52. I am finding survival mode too easy. It ends up being that all of the aliens begin to follow a single path as they avoid the blast radius of my turrets. Perhaps you could make the aliens gain more life with time, make some aliens not avoid random turret radii, or make aliens chose paths based on how many have died in a certain area which would keep them constantly on the move.

    1. i think earth survival is too easy. now titan survival, that’s something else. if you can make it to the 5 minute mark where the game quits on you you deserve a high five and a hand massage.

       i can’t wait for this to be fixed! titan survival is so fun!

       1. I have had the same problem up to Saturn, but I have not beat Titan yet. I have refused to lower the difficulty on campaign, but I do not think I will be able to beat Titan on the hardest difficulty taking the tech route that I have.

          1. Eric:

             Out of curiosity, what is your tech path ? Titan looks dreadful if you invest heavily in rocket launchers, but otherwise should be doable even on nothing but lasers (which are easy to get).

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