Harmonics TD [Download link up]

[Zekallinos]

Hmmm...well, for each stage, the first songs tend to be the hardest.

Since you don't start with that much money, you're going to need to buy towers as soon as you have the money. That's why it's a good idea to place your towers nearest to the start of the path (the blue area) as possible. Some creeps will escape your first 2-3 Noise I towers, but you should get money to kill them quickly enough. Try to get the Noise II as soon as possible, and upgrade it as needed. Range upgrades are generally not needed in the beginning. Then, try to get a combo Wave + Slow. Slow is useful not for slowing creeps, but because they slow down when they get in range of the tower, they will accumulate, making slow towers more efficient. Noise III is pretty good against Triplet, if you can get one.

Don't forget you can pause. Also, maybe not in the first level, but at some point you will need to use the ghost bonus to kill all notes on the screen. Don't worry, you still get the money. Careful though, it takes 3 seconds to take effect.

Oh, and don't forget you can set targeting priority. FAR targets the ones that are near the end, it can be useful. All sound suppressors should be set to STRONG, too.

 

[Glitchfinder]

The rock stage lags horrifically on the faster notes. Aside from that, this is turning out to be very fun.

 

[Jason]

Can someone PLEASE tell me how they beat the first stage ?!

I've been playing it for the last 2 hours, I'm VERY lucky to make it past the FIRST SONG with more than 4 lives, and then I can get like, 1/2 into the second song before I die... and that's if I'm lucky !!!

 

[Zekallinos]

...You must be tired of hearing In The End :tongue: . This should help some.

Spoiler: First level walkthrough

At the beginning, I always place 2 Noise I towers. It's not enough to fend off all the creeps, but you should have 500$ to buy a Noise II soon enough, which should be plenty enough to kill the remains. You may want to upgrade it once if there are too many. If you really want to be sure you can set Noise Is to "Weak" so it one-shots the first creeps and gets you money and the Noise II to "Far" so none escape. Don't bother with range upgrades yet.

As you can see, there will be an increasing number of creeps. A Wave I (only 400$) does good area damage for that purpose. It too, will be upgraded (I usually upgrade more than I buy towers, because of the resistances).

Get a Tuner II. Slow I's are only good because they are cheap and slow down some specific notes, buy you'll be needed Tuner II to slow an area of notes. Place it near Wave I, because slowing makes notes tighter together.

Getting the pedal can help a lot, it gives you 50% money. Use a Sound Suppressor if needed (it has a lot of HP and resistance).

If you are doing fine so far, don't buy more upgrades to "kill-more". Let money accumulate you that your cash bonus if bigger. (Notice in this screenshot how there are many notes slowed down in one cramped area).

You can buy a Suppressor when wholes arrive. Oh, and Tuner III is really good. Keep upgrading your Wave I, and sell of the Noise Is as they do nothing anymore.

By then you should have a pretty good defense and you won't need to buy much of anything 'till the end of the level. So keep saving money so that you can get a Noise III for next song, which will be needed against Triplets and fast notes. In later stages this strategy will not be enough and the use of bonuses will be required.

P.S. Please stay in the game window while playing. Leaving it for too long may result in crash. I've yet to find out whether it's because of me or the XNA framework.

 

[Jason]

I think we're playing totally different games here, I mean it was good that I managed to get through the first song with 22 lives left, but had to put almost triple the amount of towers you suggested AND upgrade them, but I STILL couldn't make it past 50% of the next song...

And there's a wierd glitch, when the first song is finished, the notes that are still on carry on going, and the notes from the next song appear, so I'm fighting notes from 2 different songs for the first 10-20 seconds or so, which can get REALLY fustrating...

I'm just gonna' admit defeat and stop playing the game, although it's a shame since I REALLY wanted to finish it...

 

[Zekallinos]

...Sorry about that. Bad design from my part.

But I think you should have upgraded existing towers rather than getting new ones. In general it's better to have quality than quantity because of the resistances of some creeps.

 

[Jason]

WOO

I managed to get past the first set of levels, then the second, and on the Anime one thingy... I died within 15 seconds of the first song, infact maybe it was quicker, not too sure... but seriously, how do we even START to kill those with such little cash ?!

And "The Crusade", I was like "oshit no...", but once I got like a third into the song, I had around 30-40k, and about two thirds in, I had over 100k, so I upgraded everything and was just killing EVERY note (Even those big yellow star/flower thingies) before it got off the straight...

 

[Toams]

downloading at the moment, i'll give this a spin later
also i'd like to mention i really like the logo, or at least the general idea
(shadow could be a bit more transparent, and the gradient on the font is a bit messy)

 

[Zekallinos]

Congrats JBrist!

Now, that one. You have to be really quick to place towers as soon as you get the money. Pause as necessary. Noise I can one-shot the pale-blue semiquavers, so it can be alright to get a third one before Noise II. Just don't forget the dark-blue notes that are coming, so get an area blast, too, before the they are past the second bend, if possible.

 

[Glitchfinder]

So, is there anything that can be done about the lag? I mean, it really should not be lagging on my comp. Especially since I can play RMXP at max framerate with all but the worst of scripts. As for the game itself, it is a lot of fun. I tend to go for quantity, but I'll try upgrading the next time around. (Oh, and in the first stage, I tend to place that green one in the center of the bend, to maximize coverage)

 

[Zekallinos]

You mean, the one that accumulates every stage right? The problem is that I don't know the cause of it. Well, maybe for Wave III (too many big objects), but not in general. My initial theory was that a certain thing, such as a projectile, is not deleting and keeps checking for collisions, but I tested this and the List<Projectile> (or creeps, for that matter) never went beyond normal levels. I also spawned thousands of creeps and projectiles at a time, and it wasn't the cause either.

I've read something somewhere that mentioned swapping textures. Maybe that drawing a noise pellet, then the big wave thingy, then going back to the pellets causes the C/GPU to keep changing texture in memory or something. Then again, it would be a little odd, because in my playing style I never place many towers, yet the lag also piles up (although not to a critical level). Anyway, it's something under the hood or whatever, so I'll try to find the exact cause. May be difficult to fix though, as the code is really messy.

So when does it start lagging, in your case?

 

[Glitchfinder]

So when does it start lagging, in your case?

The first time it started lagging for me was in the rock category, when a bunch of notes spawned at the same time, and I had a bunch of the wave objects out.

Edit: All right. So I left the game up on the screen and walked away from the computer. When I came back, I found the game paused like this. Apparently, my brother decided to have some fun. When I asked him about it, he said that the one that got by did so at the very beginning of the stage. Anyway, take a gander at this:

Spoiler

 

[Zekallinos]

...
:shock:

Great to know other strategies can be used but err...no wonder it lags. 10 Wave III! That can easily create 150 wave animations that checks for collision with every other creep on the screen many many times a second. Next time I'll find a less ressource-hungry alternative :blank: .

 

[Glitchfinder]

...
:shock:

Great to know other strategies can be used but err...no wonder it lags. 10 Wave III! That can easily create 150 wave animations that checks for collision with every other creep on the screen many many times a second. Next time I'll find a less ressource-hungry alternative :blank: .

Actually, I never did that kind of thing, to be honest. But yeah, that was quite laggy.

 

[Sailerius]

I played and beat the first stage, loved it, but now the game crashes whenever I try to run it. I'm running WinXP, by the way.

 

[Zekallinos]

Okay...

I've realized I've been a little last-minute. I just used Visual Studio's publish to make an "installer", saw that it worked, and left it at that. That's creates some odd "Application Reference" files to open the game. Anyway.

Does it crash during startup? The only thing that happens then is that it loads your current progress from the file "State.sav". That file is probably hidden by Windows though, so if you can it'd be great if you can find it. Try searching for "Harmonics" in your C: Drive. I'm not sure where it is exactly in Windows XP but it maybe by something like C:\My Documents (wherever your user account's folders are)\AppData (hidden folder, probably)\Local\Apps\2.0\FD236 (or some weird code)\harm...tion_12001a0 (or something like that).

Spoiler: You should find the following if you open State.sav with notepad

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<int>1</int>

I realize that these aren't very...clear directly. I don't even know myself what exactly my app (the installer) is thinking :blush:

 

[seven]

Running the setup doesn't work for me. D:
The error message suggests that I don't have the specs the game requires, but for something like this I sort of doubt it. What it says;

No suitable graphics card found.
Direct3D hardware acceleration is not available or has been disabled. Verify that a Direct3D graphics device is installed and check the Display properties to make sure hardware acceleration is set to Full.
This program requires pixel shader 1 and vertex shader 1.1.

So, um . . . :blank:
I'd like to be able to play this, but I don't have a very comprehensive idea of the issue; if my hardware really is just insufficient, I can move on, but if it's something I can fix, is it possible to explain more comprehensively than the error message how to fix it, or anything like that? I'd appreciate this, I'm interested in this game.

 

[Zekallinos]

It may be that your graphic card doesn't have it installed. If that's the case, I don't think it can be fixed.

 

[seven]

Okay, so I did some research and that's apparently the case. :crazy:
I might look into getting a better graphics card when I have more time and money; thanks for the help anyway, though.

 

[regi]

Just played through the first stage. Gotta say man, this was a great concept (who knew music plus tower defense could go together? brilliant, creative synergy!) and very nicely done too (fun and challenging): definitely deserving of 1st prize! :thumb:

Here's a few comments, if you'd like to polish it further. For a first stage, I actually thought it was pretty hard, though it was mainly the beginning. It seems like strategizing the start is the most difficult part, esp. since you start out with so little money. Later on, however, it gets extremely easy, as $$ piles up from creeps, and the pedal interest bonus. Of course, I've only gone through the 1st level (it could be better, harder later on), but it seems imbalanced that the beginning is so rough and the end so easy. I would suggest lowering the $$ amount from later critters (if they do give different amounts) or slowing down the beginning just a tad.

Anyway.. on to the next stage. I'll leave more c&c as soon as I'm done rockin' out!