I've got a new idea for a Tower Defense style of game.  In the interest of collecting ideas all in one place, and updates, I've created this thread.  Feel free to add to it.

What is this game?
Tower Defense games are amazing little time wasters.  The concept is bad guys move from point A to point B and you (the player) set up defenses to stop them from reaching point B.  Simple enough, but a lot of variations on this theme have popped up.
In this variation, the bad guys are Zombies.  Each night, Zombies crawl up out of ground and make their way towards town hungry for living flesh.  Your job is to place fences and "Heroes" armed with various weapons to keep those Zombies from reaching your precious town's population.  The town rewards you with money for every Zombie killed, which you can spend on improving your defenses before the next wave.

Zombies are cool, but what's special about this game?
All the other Tower Defense games that I've seen have single minded enemies which bee-line directly to their goal, and can be herded easily into a killing field.  Plus, the defenders (usually gun towers) are indestructible.
This game has people as the defenders.  Zombies eat people.  Well, if they aren't gunned down ahead of time they do.  So suddenly, you've got a vulnerability in your defense.  And since the Zombies like any living flesh, they'll detour towards your Heroes as a tasty snack on the way to town.
Also, Zombies will attack each other if they've got nothing better to do.  They will hunt the weakest one down as it flees the stronger ones.

Okay, but I could just fence off my Heroes.  Problem solved.
Yeah, I mentioned fences didn't I?  In the initial level(s), fences act as obstacles for the Zombies, so yeah, cost of fencing is your only limitation.  However, Zombies very quickly learn that they can bash fences.  You can get increasingly difficult fences, but ultimately they just slow the Zombies down to varying degrees if they want to get through.

What kinds of Heroes can I buy?
Currently, we've come up with the following types:
Machete Hero - High Damage, Fast hit rate, Extremely short range, very cheap
Machine Gun Hero - Low Damage, Very Fast hit rate, Medium Range, cheap
Shotgun Hero - Very High Damage, Slow hit rate, Short Range, not cheap
Flame thrower Hero - High Constant Damage, Short Range, not cheap
Rocket Launcher Hero - Very High Damage, Very Slow hit rate, Long Range, expensive

Veteran - After xx number of kills, any Hero becomes Veteran and does bonus damage

What kinds of Fence can I buy?
Currently, we've come up with the following types:
Picket Fence - Weak, Cheap
Metal Fence - Strong, Not Cheap
Electric Fence - Weak, Not Cheap, Damages Zombies
Brick Wall - Very Strong, Expensive

Also, damaged fences stay damaged each level unless you spend money to repair them.  Your Heroes at least heal fully each day.

What are the levels?
Although the game itself will announce each level before you start buying defenses, here's a run down of the levels thus far:
1) Zombies!
2) More Zombies!
3) Tougher Zombies!
4) Fearless Zombies! (Kamikaze, no sense of self preservation)
5) Boss Zombie!

Every 5th level will be some sort of "Boss" level.  Beyond that is still up for debate.  Here are some ideas we've thought up:
Exploding Zombies!  (Explode on death)
Re-animating Zombies!  (Rise again after first death)
Zombie Heroes!  (They shoot back!)
Phoenix Zombies!  (Flames heal them!)
Limited Ammo!  (Heroes resort to Machete once out of Ammo)

Of course any combination of any or all of these ideas are applicable as harder levels as well.

How do I win this game?
Ideally, you can't.  The final levels should be downright impossible.  It's all about getting the high score.

How is score calculated?
I've seen other Tower Defense games score based on left-over money between waves.  That adds the challenge of being as frugal as possible without dying.  I figure that's probably how it'll be done here too, unless someone suggests a better idea.

Where can I play it?
http://darkshade.homeip.net/zombies will always be updated with the latest work.  Read through this thread to see what's new in development.

I dunno if this over complicates things but I had a suggestion for enhancing the game that involves payment between levels and how you would spend your money.

As you stated before, payment is based on how many zombies you kill, but I think there should be a multiplier, based on surviving population (think of it as survival tax for the populace).  So, for example, in level one you have a population of 100 and you're told you will get $5 per zombie killed.  It is level one so you kill the 10 zombies who attack and that means you earn: $5 x 10 zombies x 100 survivors = $5,000!  

But here is where I think I have an interesting suggestion - every day (the time between levels) that you invest in the town's defenses, makes your town more appealing.  The more appealing your town, the more people WANT to live in it.  If you spend some of your hard earned money on scouring the countryside, you will bring back new residents.  But they won't make it back until the FOLLOWING day.  This way you can spend money to build your population, but do it too soon in the game and you'll only draw in small numbers (if your town's defenses are 3 picket fences and you only have 4 machete heroes, very few people will be interested in moving in.. but after 5 or 6 levels, when you have your first brick walls and numerous heroes with guns, perhaps 10 or 15 people will want to move in.  

And the more people you have living there, the more taxes you can collect and the more heroes and defenses you can build, and the more people you can attract down the road.  The problem is, it takes a day to find these new people and bring them back, so if you're coming up to a hard level, you might want to bring new people how ASAP!

Of course this DOES raise the issue, how do you LOSE population.. is it every zombie who gets through kills one person?  Is it the same regardless of what type of zombie gets through?

I figure money left over will wind up being the ultimate judge of success, since you theoretically continual to play until your town's population is decimated but what about adding another feature to invest in the town.  Which in turn inve

Looks like your post got truncated Shabadu, but it is an interesting idea.  It reminds me of existing games where you can manically buy extra "lives" if a ton of baddies is going to pour through your defenses.

Yes, the idea was a single Zombie kills a single civilian.  Guess their hunger would be sated by that point.  That means if you start with 100 townsfolk, you can only ever let 100 Zombies through before game over.

It is a strategic benefit to be able to encourage more people into your town.  I don't know that it should "naturally" grow as defenses increase, since the whole point of tougher defenses is to counteract the tougher enemies.  But I can understand wanting to essentially "buy" more townsfolk between waves.  I think that's reasonable, and can be explained by diverting money from defenses towards feeding new refugees.

First test, creating little autonomous Zombies.  Unfortunately, the current code is waaay too slow.  Get about 50 Zombies on the screen and it begins to crawl on my mac mini.  I want to be able to have a hundred of these guys, plus heroes and flying bullets.
I'll try again with some high performance sprite routines I've found on the web.
For now, you can see floaty Zombies at the permanent url:http://darkshade.homeip.net/zombies

I noticed definite slowing down once I had spawned 3 zombies, then 7 zombies, then 14 zombies and I stopped counting after that on my work laptop.

22 Zombies on my laptop becomes significantly slower.  At about 10 it becomes noticeable.  Of course, you can detect a slight slowdown with each one you add.

One of the sprite frameworks I'm going to investigate demos over 3000 objects moving around the screen.. on the mac mini!

Zombie Test 2: 100 screaming fast Zombies floating around the screen.  I get a steady 24 frames per second.  Let me know if you get less.

As usual, it's at http://darkshade.homeip.net/zombies

My work laptop tells me it is 24 fps too... they all seem to be boogeying along pretty quickly.. much faster than 14 were on the previous test.

Here's Zombie Test 3.  Now there's a couple soldiers who target the nearest wandering Zombie, and a few crates to just get in the way.  Also everything spins to face the direction it's heading.  See how that runs, as it dramatically effects the number of zombies I can have on the screen at once.

As always: http://darkshade.homeip.net/zombies

Zombie Test #4: Heroes now shoot and kill Zombies.  For each Zombie that gets to the left side of the screen, your population goes down by one.

Zombie Test #4 update: I'm now taking advantage of the health system I incorporated last night.  Instead of a single bullet killing each Zombie, it now just does damage.  If enough damage is done, THEN the Zombie dies.

In this test, that happens to be only 2 shots to kill a Zombie, but it means we can have different strengths of zombie and weapons now.  These zombies have 10 health, and bullets cause 5 damage.

Here's the debug log from one run.  You can see one Zombie gets through and eats a civilian:
Blam!
Blam!
10-Zombie: health = 5
10-Zombie: Dies
Blam!
Blam!
11-Zombie: health = 5
7-Zombie: health = 5
Blam!
7-Zombie: Dies
Blam!
6-Zombie: health = 5
Blam!
6-Zombie: Dies
Blam!
8-Zombie: health = 5
Blam!
8-Zombie: Dies
Blam!
Blam!
Blam!
13-Zombie: health = 5
14-Zombie: health = 5
Blam!
13-Zombie: Dies
14-Zombie: Dies
Blam!
15-Zombie: health = 5
Blam!
15-Zombie: Dies
Blam!
12-Zombie: health = 5
Blam!
Blam!
Blam!
Blam!
Blam!
Blam!
Blam!
Blam!
11-Zombie: Dies
Zombie eats a civilian!
Blam!
9-Zombie: health = 5
Blam!
9-Zombie: Dies

Zombie Test #5: It's playable!  Needs balancing, more levels, more heroes, more zombies, and more barriers.  But it's a start!

Known Bugs:
- In the "Unbelievable" level, Zombies are running backwards.
- Unit placement is off visually.  Note, when the level starts, your units ARE in the exact spot you selected.  it's just the "placeholder" images aren't lined up right.

I notice the zombies get caught up on the walls pretty easily - any way to smooth that out a bit?  But it is looking pretty good otherwise.. will have to test more once I'm not working :P

Noticed a couple more things before I closed off the window...
#1 zombies just run by the heroes without attacking them (I presume heroes and walls don't take damage at this point though but thought I'd point it out)
#2 heroes don't attack the zombies closest to the settlement.. as the wave of zombies PASSED the heroes they turned to attack the ones closer to the right of the screen instead of continuing the attack on the ones that were almost dead but had run past the heroes current location (but were still within their firing circle).
#3 perhaps a conscious decision but you cannot buy on the fly (as in purchase more walls/heroes during the night attack)... I figured you could

1) Yes, in the published version Zombies don't attack the heroes yet.  However, the current development version has them chewing away on heroes.  "Unbelievable" is downright impossible since not only do the Zombies chew the heroes, they actually turn and fight when fired upon!  Not sure if I want to leave it that way or not...  hence, still in development.

2) Yeah, that was my first stab at a firing solution.  It's "good enough" but doesn't necessarily always pick the truly closest zombie to shoot at.  Also, doesn't predict Zombie position well, so often shoots behind as they pass above or below.

3) No buying during the attack.  You have to sit back and watch.  If you're screwed, you'll have to plan better next time.  I *might* allow buying civilians mid-attack, but nothing else.  (Yes, there are technical reasons for this, and I specifically don't want to give any advantage to "fast clickers")

The crates will be going bye-bye once I get some fences that can be smashed.  Not sure if I'll bother with health meters for fencing.  I think with the first hit they appear damaged, then stay that way until utterly destroyed.

Found another bug.  The "mute" setting isn't checked when Zombies devour civilians.  So you'll quietly be playing when all of a sudden a Zombie gets thru your defenses and blood curdling screams start blasting out your speakers.. at work.  :D

Zombie Test #6.  Graphics have been changed to ones that I could find with multiple types of soldier unit.  Unfortunately these ones don't rotate.  All I'll be able to do (which I'm not doing yet) is flip them to face the opposite direction when Zombies get past them.

So now I've included a bunch of different units.  (My fav is the Flame Thrower!)  Bazooka unit still needs work, as he's supposed to have a huge area of damage when those shells explode.  So I wouldn't recommend spending money on him yet.

Barriers currently all behave the same, so don't expect any benefit from buying Brick Wall vs Boxes.

Zombies actually run from fire!  Eventually they'll build up the courage to have another go at it though.

Fixed the non-mutable civilian screams.  But Flame Thrower and Bazooka need updated sound effects.

Let me know if you find any other problems.

Your scoring needs work.  As I was at 3 Billion points, then sudden jumped back to 800,000,000!  What a rip off! :).

I've found your men shoot from their mouths not from the end of their guns.

For bazooka I had no problems, but there shouldn't be a delay for the explosion.

Other than that I enjoyed playing it.  At one time during the unbeleivable level I had lost all my heros and suddenly the zombies broke through.  I un-muted as all 100 of my people were eaten... made for quite a stiring symphony.

Shooting from their mouths is visually unappealing, yes.  That can be fixed.

Interesting about the Bazooka:  You don't like the explosion delay, but Shabadu does.

Unless you were going for projectile vomit bullets, yeah out of the gun would be cooler.

Also are you looking to change the size, looks of the zombies.. so that people visually can see that the tougher zombies are coming

The intent is to have multiple different types of enemies, not just the same old Zombie character every round (as satisfying as mowing them down with a line of machine guns is).  It's just the only enemy graphic I've found useful off the web thus far.  Plus, I'm still working on game mechanics, so I'd rather get everything right for the Zombie first.  (Rather than loading up on different enemy types and having to go and adjust every one of them for each change)

I think you're aware already that heroes respawn each night.. but often after they die the zombies do al ittle dance.. eat a little flesh and stay on the spot where your hero was last seen alive, essentially freezing the game because the wave never ends.. most frustrating as the only solution is to restart the whole thing!

Also, I'm thinking you may need to tweak the reward for killing zombies... I felt before you got waaay too much, but now I think you get a little too little.  Or perhaps your cheapest hero should just be cheaper?  

Oh also.. bullets should not be slower than zombies.. too many times my bullets are chasing zombies who have already passed my hero while others chew him to death.. and the bullets cannot catch zombies once they have passed the hero.. it that is the case then heroes shouldn't shoot backwards.. or more aptly their bullets should be able to strike the zombies so their deaths are not COMPLETELY in vain...

Fixed forever Zombie dancing on Hero graves.
Fixed Heroes respawning next level if they die.
Fixed barrier behaviour.  Now only Walls block.  Others slow to various degrees.
A couple other behind the scenes changes (for when we get more enemies than just Zombies)
It also seems a heck of a lot tougher now!

There will be another version on Sunday, I'm sure.  But for tonight, I have a few surprises beyond the "Unbelievable" level.  This may be your best opportunity to see it before I balance the game again and make it harder.
Tomorrows changes will involve performance.  I've recently added animation to all the enemies, however it really drags the FPS down while loading new sprites.  I think I know how to fix that though.  Hence the version coming tomorrow.

As expected, I posted a new version of the Zombie game late Sunday night.  We're at revision 19 now.
It's balanced to make it somewhat easier to make it to the end, but not to get past that.  (I'm sure someone will find a way, but I haven't yet).  The animation doesn't slow down the game any more, and the final characters do shoot back.
If you haven't tried it yet, you should!

Shabadu wanted me to post his screenshot of acheivement.  I'm impressed with how well he did, but the level still has yet to be beat.

You still need to change things so that heros will target enemies closest to them, or are actively gnawing on their necks.

Targeting will be a tougher one to fix, but I agree, it should be done.  Including "predicting" where the Zombie will be by the time the bullet gets there.
Tonight was just a quick change.  A coworker found that a lot of flamethrowers will slow the game to a crawl, so I've fixed that.  I've also added a new unit for you to aspire to acquire.  Basically you'll have to get through the game before you can afford one (which can be done!).
Added some more sounds.  I felt cat deaths really require some kitty squeals.  :)

Only 7 dead and I got a tank! -what can you wee boys do?

That's a good effort... how about 3 tanks and a load of bunny destruction... Oh and only 2 dead.

So if I'm understanding you correctly, you want me to make it harder?

Isn't that our job... to make you continually improve the game?  And isn't it your goal that people will never be able to finish the game?

Yup, just making sure that's what you wanted.  :)

Shabadu came up with a good idea this morning (I know, shocking in itself!) that I may use (if it's not too technically difficult with the framework I've put in place).  I've already been planning a level where all the heroes you lose come back as Zombies (that shoot), but since that could be very few, we can bring back any civilians you lost (from the direction of the town) and anything you let get by you (from the direction of the town)

Thoughts?

UPDATE: A coworker and I talked about this idea, and how sucky a level it would be if you only let 2 enemies through.  However, perhaps as a final level, all your townspeople are turned into zombies (cuz in any zombie movie, the entire town usually does turn) and rush from behind.  Maybe whatever army was guarding the other side of town got overrun and now the waves are coming at you from the other direction?  It would have to be the final level, since you'd have no civilians left.

OK, now I've accomplished the same feat, without losing a single civilian.  But, I accidentally clicked a hero twice and lost 2x the cost from my money stack and only got one hero.  Also, as you can see, it kept the green circle on the screen.

This is called military over kill... not it's against the vermin!

What happened to the rest of your soldiers?

the three dragons killed my first tank.  So then, I let the undead dragons kill the rest of my men by putting my second tank half way down at the furtherst left point of the screen.  BTW the dragons did not kill the three bazooka dudes at the bottom.  In fact they walked right on top of them and never once shot their flames at them... I wanted just tanks!

As for the heroes coming back as zombies.. that would work.  As anytime I've faced the first dragon I always lose some heroes.

What!!! No new versions!!  Diddly I feeling Zombie withdrawal!

I noticed the same thing Hawkeye mentioned about Dragons completely ignoring bazooka tanks.. the only time the bazooka troops seem to get killed is if the dragon's fire attack hits them from an overlap (or sometimes a walk over kills troops but other times a walk over DOESN'T kill troops)... at any rate for reasons I can't completely explain I've noticed that dragons seem to ignore bazooka troopers along either the top OR the bottom indiscriminately....

I can explain it.  :)  Dragons go after whomever shot them.  However, Bazooka missiles are special in that the missile never hits anything.  The resulting explosion does!  And the dragon can't tell who caused the explosion and just moves away from it.

Sorry there was no new version for today.  Was trying to get some City of Heroes time in last night.  For some reason I couldn't really connect with any of the new characters I tried to make (nor any of the old characters I revived).  Guess I wanted something "new", but having tried all the combinations I care to, there wasn't much appeal left.

There'll be a new version for Friday.

Aside from bug fixes, I've added an Exploding Zombies level.

Fixes:
1) Heroes now more reliably target the nearest enemy (but still don't always avoid targeting a more distant one).  This is about as good as it's going to get.  Better calculations will slow down the frame rate too much.
2) Heroes now predict where the enemy will be when shooting.  (Yay Vector math!)  So you shouldn't see a stream of bullets hitting the ground behind the enemies any more.
3) Changed purchasing units so that you don't pay until you place them on the ground.  If you click to buy the unit again before placing, it should undo the purchase action.
4) Found a case where enemies could be immortal.  Fixed.
5) Proper Bazooka/Tank gun shell
6) Cached bullets and shells for better performance
7) General code cleanup (subclassed all enemies off new BasicEnemy class, so I didn't have to rewrite common code, and makes it easier to create new enemy types)

If you aren't going to change the way the bazooka shells pause before exploding (which is fine but TOTALLY unrealistic :)) Then consider having some kind of animal like undead cheetah's which can go really fast and can avoid bazooka.

Dragons still seem to ignore any bazooka dudes at the very bottom of the screen.  Maybe tweeking their attack profile a little might help... ie if fired upon they will fire back, but if not then they attack the closest enemy.

Yes, I haven't changed how Dragons react to explosions.  You want me to?  That will definitely make the Dragon levels significantly harder.

I kind of like the delay in Bazooka explosions, because it makes using the crates and fences more necessary.  Right now, what I do is check if forward momentum has reached zero on the shell before exploding it.  I suppose I could change that so that when forward momentum drops below a certain threshold it explodes.  It's just a much easier calculation to check if it's zero.  (Performance consideration)

Yes I think it would make sense.  Because they attack the heroes firing bullets at them... why would they not attack those firing shells at them.  (ie dragons)

As for the bazooka delay... I'm fine with it, but thought you should get faster enemies because even werewolves can be killed by bazooka.

As per our discussion at lunch with danmick, I think a god-mode would be pretty cool.. you know a mode that allowed you to have essentially an unlimited amount of cash to create slaughter-fests of the undead.  

But to follow up on that idea, I had a few other ideas that might be cool for the god-mode including:
The Truly Endless Night
     -once you hit "start wave" the badies just keep a coming
     -the NEW idea I had was to be able to select the length & power of the wave
     -FOR LENGTH:
           -allow the user to select long the badies continue to pour out (in seconds??)
     -FOR POWER:
           -option1: allow the user to choose a "power level"
               -easy (only zombies)
               -medium (random selection of all badies, but NOT dragon)
               -hard (random selection of all badies including dragon)
               -extreme (only dragons)
           -option2: provide user a list with selectable boxes
                -Allow user to choose which badies do and don't show randomly appear

You Jerks went out for lunch today!  Jerks.  Didn't invite me... Jerks.

Anyway, I was thinking about the walls and fences you have... I think you need to make them take damage from things..  likely not zombies, but certainly damage from exploding ordinance and dragon breath.. would bring a new dimension to the game heretofore unaddressed.

Also.. perhaps a choice for the direction the badies come from?
i.e. "Standard" - all come in from the right and run to the left
      versus
     "Chaos" - all come in from random sides and run to opposite side
The chaos level would be BRUTAL, especially if you had dragons!! :D :D

Too bad there's no chat feature on this thing.

I like Hawkeye's idea of barriers taking damage from ordinance.  I know I originally started off suggesting that barriers would make destructible by enemies, then just went for slows and stops since it was easier.  But if your own bazooka explosions blow up walls...  nasty!

And I can do faster enemies.  Not a problem.  I can do Dragons attacking bazooka's too...  in fact we all agreed at lunch that was the way to go.

God mode will be a tough one.  I think it should be a never-ending night, which can start off easy and just get more and more nasty as time goes on.  2 problems are:
1) How do you know it's over?  It only ends when your guys are all dead?  Not much of a God mode!
2) Frame rate.  The more stuff we put on the screen, the more burden we put on the cpu.  Exploding Zombies level alone can already bring my framerate down below 10fps (if enough explode at once).  That's unacceptable in my opinion.

The reason I suggested a time option for god mode was just to solve that problem.. you can choose an attack that lasts 30 seconds andthen add to your attacks/defences.. or you can choose 5 minutes solid and watch the fun unfold...

As for the walls taking dammage, we talked about that near the beginning Diddly.. I thought perhaps instead of brick, fence and crate walls, you could have just have brick walls in three phases: whole (same as current brick wall), partial (as the name implies the wall is still half intact and slows badies pretty well) and rubble (which makes it hard to walk over fast, thus slowing the bad guys down, but not TOO much)... and you can build a wall in any of these states ($10, $50, $75 still) and as the walls take dammage they degrade from one level to the next.. but nothing less than rubble because it will ALWAYS be there!  Our explosion (bazooka troops, tanks and even mines if they come about) shoudl harm the walls, as well as exploding zombie explosions and the dragon walking over them.. but not until they actually pass over the barrier.. THEN it is destroyed!

But that leads me to my next hope - please create a destroy button so I can change my barriers down the road in stead of being stuck with the set up I first created at the start of the level..

Ok.. one last suggestion.. this one for a new enemy: stealth zombie!  These zombies are harder to hit as they are only visible when they are within a certain distance of your heroes (i.e. 15 feet or 1/4 of the screen or something like that).  And to top it off, they could be invisible until they are NOT blocked by a wall, so until they are inside your defences!  If stealth ZOMBIE seem contradicting, it could be a tougher werewolf... or else there could be wolf-shaped werewolves that do less dammage but move in packs very VERY fast?

Food for thought.. ok one more round of zombie nights before bed.. talk to you later.

Hmmm. seems that heroes regenerate after the night ends again??

Fixed respawning Heroes.  Added new level where Zombies spew fire (courtesy of Hawkeye)

UPDATE: Added Splitting Zombies (split into smaller Zombies when killed) (courtesy of Chiquita)

Decreased Dragon health too, to compensate for diminished Bazooka Explosion damage.  *Almost* was able to make it through the 3 dragon level today

UPDATE2: Added Zombie from the Sea.  Major rewrite of all timing routines.. hopefully much more cpu efficient now.

Wow.. I would say you made some MAJOR changes to the game!!  Wow!  Especially in the effectiveness of the flame thrower... ouchie!

I STILL had one sniper who was killed off inthe 3 dragon level respawn the next night...

Make that 2 snipers who respawned EVERY level after the dragons killed them...

Also, I don't like how often the dragons retreat now.. they get within range of my tank (or bazooka dude) and take 1 or two hits and fall back OUT of my range but keep up their long range attack, chewing up my hero health while I can do nothing.  Also, they tend to "disappear" a lot meaning their head or legs or body is not visible on the screen after they retreat (and thus often they are "not there" because my heroes do not attack them, but when they get stomped on by the dragon that is not fully there they still get killed... not sure if that is a bug or not, but it is something I experienced more than just tonight.

I was playing at my parent's place on saturday and found I could not get past the three dragons with 14 bazookas!  I'll try it again today to see how balanced it is.

Also, You need to do something with Dragon targeting.  By that I mean where heroes shoot at the dragon.  The dragon's head gets in their range but they don't shoot until the dragon is practically on top of them.

I need to rebalance the bazookas.  I believe I've made them too weak.

I've done some analysis of the weapon damages and their values.  Here's what I've discovered (which kind of validates my suspicions):

handgun = 5 pts / 480ms = 10 pts/s / $100 =  0.1 damage/dollar
shotgun = 100 pts / 1200ms = 83 pts/s / $250 =  0.332 damage/dollar
machinegun = 10 pts / 192ms = 52 pts/s / $450 =  0.116 damage/dollar
sniper = 250 pts / 2400ms = 104 pts/s / $500 =  0.208 damage/dollar
flamethrower = 8 pts / 72ms = 111 pts/s / $750 =  0.148 damage/dollar
bazooka = 20 pts * 30ms / 7200ms = 117 pts/s / $1000 = 0.117 damage/dollar

If you just look at the damage/dollar figures, you'll see that Sniper is logically the best bang for your buck (pun intended).  Although Shotgun has higher value, its range is soooo limited that I'm willing to overlook it.  I think either Bazooka needs more damage to compensate (making the game easier) or sniper needs to be nerfed (making the game harder).  I like the price points, so I'd rather not adjust the costs.

What say you folk?  Personally, I'm leaning towards making Sniper less powerful.  It's main advantage should be range, which doesn't even factor into this calculation.

I disagree.  If you are just looking at damage per dollar spent it seems sniper should be less... but if you look at the amount of damage I feel it is in keeping with reality.  Sniper rifles are very powerful and are highly accurate.. meaning the hero can pick the plumb spot for the most damage.  You've hand cuffed them by making them take 2.4 seconds between shots.  Perhaps make it 2.7 seconds.

Well, let's adjust for range then:

handgun = 0.1 damage/dollar * 100 px = 10 damage potential
shotgun = 0.332 damage/dollar * 80 px = 26.56 damage potential
machinegun = 0.116 damage/dollar * 150 px = 17.4 damage potential
sniper = 0.208 damage/dollar * 300 px = 62.4 damage potential
flamethrower = 0.148 damage/dollar * 80 px = 11.48 damage potential
bazooka = 0.117 damage/dollar * 200 px = 23.4 damage potential

This isn't a facetious comparison, since the greater range allows for more shots to be taken before the enemy reaches the hero's position.  Note, this calculation already takes into account the time delay between shots, and the price of each unit.

You can see the sniper SMOKES all the other weapons by at least 3x.  I'm okay with flamethrower being so low since it is more useful as a blockade than damage dealer.  But other than that, all these number should be about equal (NOTE: That does not mean all weapons should do the same damage.  This is damage / dollar).

Since Hawkeye recommends snipers stay as powerful as they are, these calculations indicate snipers should cost about $1500 then.  Would you be okay with that?

I also think HandGuns are too underpowered.  I should increase their damage or decrease their cost.  I'm leaning towards increasing their damage, cuz other than a meat shield, they're actually more of a liability than anything at the higher levels.

Wow, yeah if you use all those comparison stats then snipers should be more expensive... but the one stat I am concerned with is actual damage.  When a zombie gets hit by one sniper shot he takes 250 pts damage... when that same zombie gets hit by a bazooka he takes 600 pts damage... Do you really think making the sniper 50% more expensive than a bazooka is warrented?  I don't.
Take for example the lone dragon... 10 bazookas will kill it, but 10 snipers won't.

With these cost comparisons what exactly are you looking for? What is your motive?

Do you want all the heroes to have the same numbers ie same damage per dollar, or same damage per pixel?

If you are concerned with various hero powers, then perhaps have zombies that target specific heroes.  This then would force players to strategize more.

Fantastic idea!  My concern was that people would just buy snipers and obliterate whatever came at them.  That that would become the only strategy... buy snipers and lots of them.

So what can be immune to sniper rifles and not other types of bullets?  I could make zombies that are immune to bullets period (thus, only flame throwers and bazookas can hurt them).  How about a level of about 100 of those?

Try just buying snipers and see how far you get.  I guarantee not very far.  

You could have armoured zombies as an explanation of their resistance to bullets.

You guarantee do you?  :)

OK... I take back that guarantee.  In fact, if you buy nothing but snipers and the occassional barrier you will defeat everything!  

So, your worst fears are realized.  Four options:

1) reduce the sniper power
2) increase the time between shots
3) have a zombie type that is impervious to bullets
4) some combination of all of the above.

Darn, and I had these wonderful screenshots of my nothing-but-sniper victories prepared.  :)

God mode added!  Well, infinite cash.  Amounts to roughly the same thing.  Also, once you enable infinite money and start the first wave, the game just keeps throwing wave after wave at you until you've gone through them all or your population is dead.

Snipers now take a little longer between shots.  Consider it the time it takes to aim that perfect shot.  They're still just as powerful as before, just slower.

I've also added another enemy.  Floating Zombies with Shields.  Dang these are nasty!

Just noticed on the 1st level with werewolves they and the zombies go through the brick walls as if they weren't there.

I've been noticing that quite a bit actually... they just run right over me every time on that level.

Quoted from Hawkeye

Too bad there's no chat feature on this thing.

Amazingly, the ancient "Chat" button still works.  (I've reverted back from the Flash version to HTML since it was broken)

New Zombies version.  Whole lotta stuff added this time.

New Loading screen
Now displays attack animations (You'll notice it first with the wraith)
New Undead Heroes (yes, every type!  That's what took so long)
New levels

Good luck making it past the last level!

Wow.. I don't check messages for a week and I miss a LOT!
Even if it is too late to pipe in, I thought I'd send my 2 cents worth regarding the sniper costs.  I don't think you need to jack the prices around too much... the sniper shot is a one-kill, whereas the bazooka shot is a group-kill.  But if you wanted to limit the sniper's effectiveness you could do something like adding a minimum range?  He gets looong range and medium range, but not short-range.  That would be less significant with the drones, but pretty important with the dragons!  But you could also minimize the sniper attack on the zombies because "flesh wounds" are less significant to brainless brutes than they are to those with brains and who feel pain.
Something to consider..

20 UNDEAD TANKS!  WTF?  Where the HELL did they come from?

I proudly announce Zombie Slaughter version 1.0!

New Features:

Central High Score service!  The Web Site now keeps track of the 10 top scores.  You can view them here: http://darkshade.homeip.net/zombies/index.html

Limited Ammo!  Once you've finished all the levels and begin to go around the second time through, your Heroes will then experience limited ammunition!  I will be REALLY surprised if anyone makes it through for a third round.

Enjoy!

Zombie Slaughter v1.1 Fixes:
- Score no longer wraps at 8 Billion points
- Undead Bazooka's actually hurt Heroes now
- Dragon in "Worst Combination" level has a decent amount of health
- Clicking the X in the upper right Ends the game and checks your score (in case you find yourself in my position earlier tonight, with a monster high score and a stuck enemy that won't let the level end!)

How do you have the limited ammo figured out in the second round?

I looked up how many shots are typically in a round/clip for each given weapon, then tried to figure out a good balance of clips per Hero.  Starting with Handgun, I decided they'd have 12 shots per clip.  A single handgunner shouldn't have enough ammo to defeat twenty easy zombies, but could stop ten.  Since that takes 2 shots per zombie, I felt 2 clips was reasonable.  24 shots total.
Shotgun was the same reasoning.  So 12 shots total.
Machine Gun is a powerful weapon, which should be able to (ideally) clear 20 easy zombies.  So what would be something a single machine gunner shouldn't finish?  I decided the lone really tough zombie should be too much for one machine gunner.  So although that little guy should be packing 100 shots, 60 seems the best balance.  Otherwise the gunner never seems to run out.
That's the thing.  We WANT these guys to run out of ammo.  That's what makes it tough.  But it still needs to seem somewhat fair and balanced amongst the Heroes.
Next I examined Bazookas.  Since their shells are so cumbersome, they shouldn't be able to carry many.  The power of the explosions is a good trade off.  I thought back to the many First Person Shooter games we've played, and 5 shells seemed right.
Snipers.  Big shells.  Typically 5 or 6 shots per clip.  So I stuck with the 2 clip idea and gave 'em 12 shots total.  (Actually, I just checked, I gave them 15 shots)
Flame Throwers are tougher.  I wanted to think of them more as "how long before they run out" vs "how many shots".  Although it's still calculated in shots (each little puff of flame is a shot), I basically just played over and over again with flame throwers trying out various values till it felt right.  I can't remember the number but it's enough to protect your heroes for a while, but leaves you with the fear of "Oh crap, is he going to run out of flames?"
Finally came the Tank.  Realistically, they'd have tons of ammo (since it's a Tank after all), but then what's the point of a limited ammo round if you have no fear of running out?  Tanks have 10 cannon shells, and 100 mg shells.

Hope that helps your strategics in vainly trying to beat my score from last night.  ;)

Well beating your high score was pretty hard, but because your game locked up before my final tally was tabulated I had to resort to taking this screenshot.  It shows I beat your score by a mere 4 billion points.

Incidentally, perhaps putting commas in the scores would help them to be more readable.

Aw shucks, that's too bad.  I feel your pain... but sadly submitting the score is the only way onto the table.  ;)  (yes, I know how you feel, but it happened to me 3 times before I was able to submit a score topping yours.  I felt a screenshot wasn't official enough)

That's not patronizing.  :)

Anyway, I've beaten your score 'officially'.  

Two things I think need to be addressed:

1) the speed at which tanks fire their main shells should be slowed.

2) No hand held gun should be able to do any damage to the tank.  That means hand gunners, shotgunners, machine gunners, or snipers should not be able to do damage to a tank, it's armour would be too thick.

It was highly unrealistic to have my array of tanks 'sniped' rather easily.

Down with unrealistic zombie slaughter!

Quoted from Hawkeye

1) the speed at which tanks fire their main shells should be slowed.

Okay, that's easy enough.  What inspires this change?  Tanks are too powerful?

Quoted from Hawkeye

2) No hand held gun should be able to do any damage to the tank.  That means hand gunners, shotgunners, machine gunners, or snipers should not be able to do damage to a tank, it's armour would be too thick.

That's doable too.  You realise this would make the enemy tanks ALSO impervious to everything but explosions and flame.  Are you asking for this because Tanks are too weak?

:D

If I make such changes, I'll be wiping the high scores since this changes the balance of the game.

Actually, the reason to make the tanks shoot their main guns slower is to prevent wasted shots.  A lot of times they fire twice at the same thing and in the second round and up that takes away one of their shots!  Plus, realistically (as realistic as a zombie game can be -- thats for you danmick!) it would take longer to load and aim and shoot.

As for making enemy tanks impervious to our heroes shots... I don't think I killed a single zombie tank with anything other than my own tank.  My heroes always got blasted to  S H I T  before they could ever fire on a tank.

Third thing I just thought of is I think the tank's main gun would have a longer range than it's machine gun.

Zombie version 1.2 released.

Changed:
- Walls properly stop baddies!
- Barriers now get destroyed by baddies over time (but are repaired each day if they survive).  
- Damaged brick walls crumble at half dead point.
- Tanks are impervious to bullets
- Tank cannon takes longer between shots

Added:
- Friendly Fire in 3rd round!  (We're down to the Reserve Army :) )
- Skeletons on Skateboards level

897 Billion!  Not likely to be beaten!

Quoted from Hawkeye

897 Billion!  Not likely to be beaten!

Not likely, no, but doable.  I've updated the game with some cosmetic changes.

Changes:
- New looking dragon.  Better animated, and cringes from explosions.  Also better detection by your heroes.
- Changed the placement graphics so the circle or square is only green when it's a legal placement (ie, within the bounds of the play area) and is otherwise red.

Quoted Text

897 Billion!  Not likely to be beaten!

I stand corrected.

Quoted from Hawkeye

I stand corrected.

2 Trillion?  Good Gravy!  :o  How many rounds did you play?

Didn't even get past the skeletons on skateboards in the 3rd round.  So, I should have gotten higher.

Do you increase the numbers of attackers with each round in the upper levels?

Nope.  Each round is identical, except for the "Every lost hero" level, which is cumulative across rounds.

Here is the last version of Zombies for a while.

Inspired by this Qwantz comic:http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1011

New:
- Zombie Mosquitoes!  If they bite a Hero, that Hero turns undead!
    Only Explosions and Flames can stop the mosquitoes.
- End Level!  If you make it through all the rounds, you will have to evacuate your remaining population out of the town.  Every civilian that survives earns 1 Trillion Points!

Scores have been reset due to these changes.

Did you change the dragons somehow?  It seems EVERY time I get to the 3 dragon level they destroy me.. I always have troops left over but they run between them and kill off my population... did you make them run faster and in a more forward direction than before?

Nope.  Dragons are the same as before.  Just bad luck I guess?  I made it through them.. except on the limited ammo level I overdid it with Heroes and the game began to crawl.  (I literally had to hit the X and wait twenty minutes for the Enter your NickName window to pop up).

Preview build of Zombie Slaughter v2.0 available here: http://darkshade.homeip.net/zombies2/

Featuring UPGRADES now!  Nearly every unit has multiple upgrades you can buy.  Just click on the unit on your map to check it out.  There may be some balancing issues, so please let me know if there's things you think are way out of whack.

While there's still work to do, what is done is playable.  Enjoy!

HA! 13 trillion is my new high score!

Honestly, it could have been waaay higher too, I frankly didn't think I'd get so far but I got to round 4.. and was unable to save a single citizen because electric fences kill them (and instantly turn them into zombies :(  

So having solved it all the way (except for saving any civies), here is my input:

#1 Tanks are way too powerful.. way WAY WAAAAAAAAAY too powerful once you upgrade them to the third rank.  IF you allow this, there should only be 1 allowed on screen at a time.. and that can be the 5-Star General's Tank or something.  I was able to defeat every enemy tank except 6 (all the ones I lost, 14 in round 1, 20 in round 2 and 3 because rank 3 tanks are just that powerful).

#2 You know already, but tanks respawn.  This also allowed me to get as far as I did.

#3 You need a "destroy wall" function.. there are numerous reasons for this, but the fact that I had tried to defend against the damned skitters by building electric walls completely boxing in my 4 tanks (FYI it doesn't work.. on round three there is NO WAY to defend from the "skitters from all sides" level.. accept that no one will ever survive that round and move on).  So even had I known that electric walls would kill civies, I would have had no way to destroy those walls anyhow...

#4 I think you havea good balance on the dragons.. even with my super tanks, those levels with dragons in them in round 2 and 3 were difficult because of the limited ammo and friendly fire.  Not to refocus on point #1 but on the "save the civilians" level I had 5 dragons ALL fire breathing on one of my super tanks after they had all lost all their ammo and the dragons were unable to kill ONE tank before my wall of electric fences killed them.

#5 The electric fences rock.. I had soo many in place that all 5 dragons on the very last level were killed by them, not by my tanks (the tanks softened them up by ran outta ammo loong before any of them were half dead!).

Thats it for now.. if you remove or reduce super tanks (or at least limit it to one or charge $1,000,000 per upgrade 3 and $15,000 for rank 1 (initial purchase) and $15,000 for rank 2 maybe...) I think the game will be much more level, but until I play it that way I won't know for sure...

PS one last complaint.. one round three I had some serious walls in place.. 3 or 4 bricks walls thick.. and the night with the three super bunnies required me to walk away for 30-40 minutes before they managed to break thru... is there some check that can be done if more than 1 minute has passed and no friendly heroes have fired that the enemies can begin tearing down walls faster (until/unless friendly fire starts up again)???

I'm adding my two cents on Zombies 2...

1) It is not clear that tanks need four spaces around them on the battlefield to be placed and need to be clicked on a intersection of the gridlines compared to the rest of the players which need to be put in boxes.

2) I disagree with Shabs, the dragons are way too easy to kill and I would like to see them tougher...overall the levels need to be tougher, I got to round one level 27 three players and two walls...

3) I would like to see an option for landmines

4) no sure if money is still in a testing mode, I had 500 dollars bought a 50$ fence and it said I had 495$ left.

5) love the upgrades..electric fence and more powerful flame throwers are great

I'll tackle some of these:
1) You don't click on the intersection.  But whatever square you click in becomes the top left corner of the 4 square tank.  I agree it could be clearer.  I'll think about how best to do that.
2) I agree.  The game has gotten too simple.  Still thinking about how best to shift that
3) :)  I guess landmines are a logical (from an effect point of view) upgrade from flaming ammo crates.  ie, will explode at some random point -> will explode when an enemy steps on it
4) I think you checked your leftover money after starting the wave.  $500 - $50 = $450.  Start the wave, earn 10%.  $450*10%=$45.  $450+$45=$495
5) I like them too.  However, I think the flame thrower (any one) is what actually is making the game so simple.  They can typically hold off any strength of foe indefinitely until some other unit manages to kill the foe.  Maybe I need more flame-resistant enemies

100th reply! Yay!... Here's some feedback:

1) I would say that, when you click something to buy, it would show you a "shadow" of the unit/fence, the top-left corner being the top-left corner of your cursor.
2) I still have some difficulties with the dragons, because my flamethrowers pushes them back, then they go forward, passing by my flamethrowers so they get past. I've developed a new strategy, but having a few difficulty levels might help.
3) The upgrade to landmines makes that you have to upgrade twice during the same night to get one. Must be powerful.
4) I've never got any problem with cash.
5) I think the flamethrowers should make the zombies less afraid, so that they don't quit the screen. Make them not wait too long after being attacked.
Also, you should change your link to the game in the Games section of the site, so that it redirects to Zombies 2.0.

You're right.  Version 2 is currently more fun than the old version, even though there's still a few things I want to do with it.  So I've modified the "Play Zombie Slaughter" link in the high score list to load Zombies2.
In response to your individual items:
1) A proper "snap-to-grid" placement which includes the image of the unit being placed would make it really obvious.  It's just been really low on the priority list because it doesn't effect gameplay.
2) Flamethrowers actually heal dragons.  I don't think it was your flamers pushing them back.  :)
3) Another option (suggested by Shabadu) is to have an upgraded brick wall laced with C4.  Thus when an enemy hit it, it explodes.  (Same effect as a landmine)
5) I'm currently leaning towards the creation of some fearless Zombies.  Flames won't scare 'em.  Sprinkle a few of those in random levels.  :D

I propose that, in the upgrade window, you see the comparison between the current and following stats.
Also, seeing the range of a hero when you pass your mouse over it might be nice (so I can know the new range of the upgraded flamethrower...)

The difference between stats is shown in yellow in the upgrade window.  Is that not what you're looking for?
As for new range, yes, something like a hover-over is what it would take to show the unit's actual ranges.

I mean, show the stats of the hero after he has reached his final upgrade.
I also guess you're working on the targeting, huh? Currently, the heroes are quite stupid...

I see what you mean.  Yes, it would be nice to see the stats with the range of placed units.  Don't know how/if I will do it, but I'll keep it in mind.

As for targeting, it's about as good as it's going to get.  The heroes are stupid, you'll just have to account for that in your placements.

I think I have a suggestion for you.  Being able to move your heros around between levels would be nice.

DAMNIT I was SOOOO CLOSE!

There... about freakin' time too!  I got the high score!  Saved 98 civilians!

New Zombies engine test!  I'm trying out a new sprite engine which boasts some serious performance improvements.  In this test, we have zombies roaming across the screen.  Every half second or so we add another zombie.  The "score" field keeps track of how many exist at any time.

On my dell mini I get to about 200 zombies before I notice any stutters, and close to 350 before there's any slow down.  But even at 500 it still moves better than the original game when there's lots of action.

Here's the demo: http://darkshade.homeip.net/zombies3/

How many Zombies do you get?

Oh, and notice none of them get stuck on the boxes!

Another test of the new Zombies engine.  This time I've added a lone handgun hero.  A green crosshair shows when he is targeting a Zombie.  (No shooting yet)

I think you'll agree, this hero is a heck of a lot better at choosing targets than the heroes of the previous version ever were.

Tonight I started playing around with a few HTML5 frameworks for game development.

http://darkshade.homeip.net/zombies4/crafty.html is my first attempt at getting anything working.  I tried a few frameworks, but crafty.js was the most straightforward (and it really wasn't even that, in my opinion).  All I managed to do was get ever more zombies to drunkenly stagger between the crates.  It doesn't approach the kind of performance I achieved with flashPunk (which never got beyond the demo stage either).

2 Reasons why I'm doing this:
1) I want to be able to play Zombie Slaughter on mobile devices
2) I want to be able to make more browser games without Flash, including a Flash-free version of Everwar.  (Zombie Slaughter is just an easier starting point)

I've updated the HTML5 Zombie Slaughter demo.  The zombies aren't drunken like before.. now they flow between the crates nicely.  I've added a lot of crates so you can see how they flow.  Don't worry if they get funnelled into a dead end.  Remember, in the real game everything is destructible so eventually they'd bust through.

See how many Zombies you can get on the screen before the frame rate seems a bit choppy.

http://darkshade.homeip.net/zombies4/

I like how they now can move around.... Can't wait to shoot them dead...er.