Tower of Guns (now at v1.21 "Wingnut") $

[getter77]

http://www.towerofguns.com/  $15.99

Tower of Guns is a fast paced, nostalgic shooter for the twitch gamer… with a few roguelike elements to keep it fresh with each playthrough. Think of it like FTL or Binding of Isaac mixed with Doom 2.

KEY FEATURES:

    SINGLE SITTING FULL EXPERIENCE: For all of those who have too many games (or too little time) this is a game you can pick up and play again and again, without remembering where you were or what you were up to. If you’re gonna win, you’re gonna do it within an hour or two. That’s a big if though… it won’t be easy.

    ALWAYS A FRESH EXPERIENCE: Random enemies, random powerups, random bosses, tons of unlockable items and weapons…even random-level compositing! You never know what to expect when you sit down in front of Tower of Guns.

    CRAZY POWERUPS: You’ve played first person shooters where you can double jump, but have you played any game where you can centuple-jump? You can in Tower of Guns, with the right items.

    GUN-MODIFYING MADNESS: A gun and its qualities aren’t tied together in Tower of Guns. Do you like rocket launchers? You’ll like them more if you’re lucky enough to stumble upon a “shotgun” modifier. A rocket-launching shotgun is very satisfying.

    OLD-SCHOOL TACTICS: For the fans of the faster shooters, it’s all back: circle strafing, bunny hopping, rocket jumping. Tower of Guns is all about moving fast!

    OLD-SCHOOL LEVEL DESIGN: Hate invisible blocking walls that keep you from exploring a cool vista? I do. They’re outlawed in Tower of Guns. If you can see it, you can get to it…if you have the right items.

Hi All!

The new Tower of Guns build is now LIVE! It's a large update so there are bound to be some wrinkles. As with any technology,  the longer this new stuff is in the build the more kinks I'll have worked out....and there are going to be a lot of kinks.

This update takes the game up to 42% complete.

Major Changes since the last build:

• Persistence is now unlocked and you can move on to either the "Foundry" or the "Gearworks" levels. From there you can move on to the Logistics level. The game ends at that point. Only the Foyer and the Foundry have random levels built so far. The other two only have one string of rooms.
• There's a new 'Endless mode'. The game cycles back to the "Foyer" if you beat "Logistics", but it *should* get harder and harder as you go...I can't it past 7 or 8 stages myself.
• There are a slew of new enemies, a handful of new items and a couple of new gun mods. There are also a few new/revised perks and some new guns you can unlock.
• Lots of mobility tweaks: faster, snappier movement!
• New options: volume, gamma!

Here's some known issues:

• Difficulty is a little all over the place. This should improve as I make new bosses and new shuffling levels/population around a bit.
• New stages don't have shops in them yet. (You can still technically find a shop randomly spawning at a secret though)
• The new purple "Energy turret" doesn't stop firing its last shot after you kill it.
• Explosion SFX volume still gets really really loud in hectic firefights.
• Some of the dialog stubs are a little inaccurate now—referencing 5-room-gauntlet and 'a demo' (this isn't really a demo anymore, after all)
• The collection screen doesn't seem to record when you've picked up certain items. This screen needs a lot of work in general
• There's still no 'win' condition in the game, so any guns/perks reliant on that criteria are still not-unlockable
• Some people are still reporting installation and first-run issues.

If you have NOT pre-ordered, feel free to at www.towerofguns.com. The game still has a lot of development time left to go, but you can get a good taste of where I'm going with it even now.
The next build update is scheduled for: The end of September 2013.

Thanks!

Some seriously impressive looking work on display there, doubly so considering the absolutely tiny team size of 1-2 folks plus the masses of sound fx.    8)

[getter77]

v0.56

Good afternoon all you good-looking Tumblr folks!

A new version of Tower of Guns has been released into the wild.
 
This version takes the game up from v0.42 to v0.56. That means I’m OFFICIALLY over the halfway mark. At this point it just makes more sense to continue on rather than turn back, right?  Yeah, my wife didn’t think that was very funny either.
 
Anyway, this new build features a ton of new stuff including:

    -No new stages! (Sorry, I’ll hopefully get to add more stages next build)
    -New rooms for Logistics, Foyer, and Foundry stages (not Gearworks though)
    -A new “badge system” for stat upgrades: This changes some familiar drops like HealthUP and SpeedUP but also adds a ton of things like LuckUP and DifficultyUP (wait, what, really?). All badges are available as drops AND from shops now.
    -I’ve actually populated all levels with more shop spawn locations—collecting money has a purpose now!
    -There’s magnet-loot now. It’s short range but you don’t have to be-quite- so precise now when running around to pick up loot.
    -There’s a ton of new things: items, mobs, bosses, and loot types.
   - Fall-through-world countermeasures: I’ve plugged up tons of geometry holes, but there are likely some I have not found yet. However, falling out of the map is NO LONGER a game-ender…give yourself a few seconds and you should teleport back to the door you just passed through and back into the action.
    -Customizable keybinds! For all you anti-WASD folks, have at it! I don’t have a controller though, so I have yet to test this with rebinding-controller-buttons. I have hopes that it just ‘works’ though.
    -Champions and special mobs: Tougher, faster, and more colorful than your normal enemies!
    -Mastered audio tracks (with more on the way!)
    -Began work on some optimization—however that means that performance might actually be WORSE, as I haven’t exposed any options yet in the menus…so right now the values of some things are cranked by default. My apologies if framerate is a bit shaky in places.
    -New jump icons, menu cursor, and lots of little art fixes!

Big known issues:

    -Enemies seem to get easily confused/stuck this build.
    -Guys, I totally busted the “Collection” menu’s item display. Sorry about that. Deaths/shots still work right though.
    -The difficulty curve can be…sporadic. Given so many system changes this time around there are certain rooms that are basically just “insta-death rooms”. Personally, I have yet to beat Logistics in this build…so if you manage it either you rolled a really lucky build or you’re better than me. Difficulty will, of course, continue to be refined throughout the entire project.

HOW TO GET THE NEW BUILD:

    Go to www.towerofguns.com and preorder!

If you HAVE pre-ordered, then:

    Go to humblebundle.com/home and log in. You should be able to find Tower of Guns on your library shelf there.
    If you did not create a humble account or for some reason don’t have Tower of Guns tied to it (since it’s possible to buy Tower of Guns without logging in to a Humble account) you’ll need to dig up your original purchase email and click the link in it again. That should get you your build!

And, as always, you can leave feedback at forum.towerofguns.com and feedback.towerofguns.com (which takes you to a fancy 5-minute survey!)

[getter77]

v0.63

Hey all you Good-Looking ToG pre-orderers!
Christmas has come early-the new Tower of Guns build is out and ready for downloading!

Just log into your Humble Accounts, browse to your library, and you should be good!
If you do NOT have a Humble account then you will probably need to find your original purchase receipt--that should have a download link which should still be valid. Have fun!

New in this build:
-All ten "starting" weapons are now unlockable
-"starting weapons"? Yes, that means there are MORE weapons you can find in game at secrets and in shops...though they are rare
-All perks except one are now unlockable (so, ten so far)
-A whole boatload of brother Mike's new music is now in the game
-THREE new levels to play through: The Armory, The Battlements, and The Sanctum.
-More progress on room randomization. You can click on the "Dev Update" tab to see how far along each level is. The new levels only have one set of rooms so far, like usual for new levels.
-new 'Tilt' mechanic (the 'C' button by default): now you can teleport yourself out of bad level design!
-new items, enemies and boss (just one new boss this time).
-lots of other little things!

Also, as much as I'd love for you to tell your friends to go pre-order the game right now--I'd feel pretty bad if they did that the day before a big sale was about the start...

SO:
Starting this SATURDAY Tower of Guns will be featured as the 96 hour deal on IndieGameStand.com. It's a pay-what-you-want offer, meaning you can get the game for super-cheap, but it also has a bunch of bonus stuff for those who "beat the average". It should be pretty fun.

So...feel like picking up a gift copy for a friend? Saturday is the time to do it. Or, at the very least, please plug the heck out of the sale on Saturday via your facebooks, twitter, and the like. Let's break Indie Game Stand with traffic! I think that's a good thing to do, right?

Thanks again for pre-ordering, folks!
-Joe

[getter77]

v0.68.999

Hey all!
The new build is up at both Humble and IndieGameStand.

This interval was only about half the duration of past update intervals--and as a result this is a much smaller build update this time around. It takes the game from 63% complete to 68.999% complete. Unfortunately, a new build means a whole new .exe file to download. The game does NOT auto-update.

If you purchased the game from the http://www.towerofguns.com Humble widget: Just log into your Humble Accounts, browse to your library, and you should be good! If you do NOT have a Humble Account then you will probably need to find your original purchase receipt—that should have a download link which should still be valid. Alternatively, you could try the Humble AutoKey Resender Utility: http://support.humblebundle.com/custome ... y-resender

If you purchased the game from IndieGameStand.com: Just log into your IndieGameStand Account, browse to your library, and you should see the new download link!

New in this build:

    -Four New Bosses!
    -A couple of new mob types and population wirings
    -An incredibly embarrassing mispelling of the word exercise (already fixed, but it missed the build cutoff)!
    -Some initial optimization work--nothing too major yet
    -A stat menu on death!
    -More progress on room randomization. You can click on the “Dev Update” tab to see how far along each level is. The new levels only have one set of rooms so far, like usual for new levels
    -Lots of other little things!

The next build update after this one is scheduled for late January. Thanks everyone for supporting Tower of Guns!

[getter77]

v0.78

Whew! So, I’ve been doing mostly bugfixing stuff and marketing stuff over the last few days..as well as more work on the Steam side of things. Steam is…pretty expansive.. underneath the simple user experience. I also have done a fair bit of catching up on emails: business and marketing related. It’s good to learn about all this stuff, but I can definitely see the value of having dedicated people on larger teams for it.

Yesterday’s hours: 7 hours and 7 minutes

Today’s hours: 8 hours and 37 minutes

Anyway, the build can be pre ordered from www.towerofguns.com

Here’s whats in the new build:

    -New guns, items, levels, badges, gunmods, and a new boss!
    -Some continued work on Steam Integration (still not complete)
    -More options added—you can now turn off Depth of Field (distance blurring) should you want to!
    -Story! Sort of.
    -Lots of little tweaks and a few surprises!

This build takes the game from 68.999% complete to 78% complete. Unfortunately, a new build means a whole new .exe file to download. The game does NOT auto-update.

If you purchased the game from the www.towerofguns.com Humble widget: Just log into your Humble Accounts, browse to your library, and you should be good! If you do NOT have a Humble Account then you will probably need to find your original purchase receipt—that should have a download link which should still be valid.

Alternatively, you could try the Humble AutoKey Resender Utility: http://support.humblebundle.com/customer/portal/articles/243191-humble-bundle-key-resender

If you purchased the game from IndieGameStand.com: Just log into your IndieGameStand Account, browse to your library, and you should see the new download link!

Now, back to work for me!

[getter77]

Now at v1.0 and available at all manner of places like GoG and Steam as per the game's homepage.     $9.99 for the next week, $14.99 as the standard price thereafter.

Not seen a specific changelog just yet, though there's a rough outline of sorts spread across the last while on the devblog tumblr.

[getter77]

v1.1

Hey Everyone,
I know I've been a bit quiet lately, but I've been plucking away on bugs and more Steam integration, and I'm happy to release Version 1.1 of Tower of Guns.

Thanks a lot for all your support and for helping to make the Tower of Guns community a decent place. Please stop by the Steam Forums if you'd like to discuss the update. You guys are awesome.
-Joe

Here's a probably uncomprehensive list of changes:

    -Steam Achievements
    -Steam Cloud progression saving
    -More rooms, guns, secrets, and more silly surprises
    -A few additional 'silly dialog' stories
    -Gun/boss/mob/item/badge balance tuning
    -Additional controller support: while not complete support, you can now do most of what you need with a gamepad. Changing options and examining your collection still require a mouse/keyboard.
    -Fixed up some hugbot bugs
    -Fixed a major tilting bug
    -Fixed at least one of the on-death-game-freeze issues
    -Fixed a few bugs with the Egg Scrambler
    -Fixed some issues with spawncamps failing
    -Added magneting to HP items IF you're not at full HP
    -Fixed major issue with some bosses not properly triggering mines
    -Fixed issues with champion boss tinting on spawn
    -Added rollover descriptive text to the collection menu
    -Fixed a TON of collision issues, level holes, and art bugs all across the game
    -Fixed an issue with Environment damage not being correctly reported for some mobs
    -Fixed an issue with exit elevators being triggered from a limitless Z distance
    -Increased (very slightly) the gun drop rate
    -Maybe fixed an issue with boss loot vanishing in boss rooms where a floor raises to replace lava
    -Fixed major issue in how the game tallied your completion percent
    -Update to a new version of UDK, which should resolve some of the endless-mode crashes
    -Did a slew of performance tweaks
    -A LOT more bug fixes—both minor and major

    -fixed collision and gap issues in several rooms
    -fixed typos in dialog and perks/loadout text
    -fixed bug in secret-unlocking perk
    -tuned jump height and a few of the guns (very minor tuning)
    -fixed issue where egg scrambler never stops descending if you happen to shoot it with a stun mod gun or LHC gun
    -fixed bug: firemine never unapplies
    -fixed issue with "replay with same loadout"
    -fixed a peelletgun and blueshell bugs
    -fixed issue with jump sound sounds staticy..maybe?
    -sort of fixed bug where the slowcube could get stuck in a state where they never released their icyhold.

[getter77]

v1.18

Hi Tog-players! This new update adds "Dice Roll Mode"...which is entirely unfair and incredibly silly, but just there for kicks. I also did a bunch of bug fixes and tweaks. Here's a long list of things I did:

-Added DiceRoll (Silly) Mode.
-Added a handful of new rooms
-Fixed miswiring of some old rooms
-fixed issue with loading bypassing battlements sometimes
-Cleaned level kismet up a bit in all brain maps
-Fixed the leveling cheat so it can target ANY equipped gun, instead of just starting guns
-Added an official backwards mode cheat - “Tog_Imlame sdrawkcab” for you crazy people out there who play "backwards"
-Potentially fixed (again..sigh..) the issue with mobs being stuck in “not-dead-but-still-unkillable-mode”
-potentially fixed issue with the egg scrambler lowering below playing field ...maybe? This is a tricky one.
-Tuned egg scrambler a little
-Added a bunch of gunstats to Tog_hudstats reporting
-Fixed a bunch of collision holes and gaps and population mistakes.
-Fixed shading complexity issue in lx6
-Added a failsafe to shops to recenter loot on encroachment, which allowed me to flip a collision flag that was causing loot to get stuck sometimes in gears/lava/etc. It might not be a 100% fix, but it’s a significantly lower incidence of failure now.
-Nerfed XPPipe AOE damage slightly to prevent so many self-kills. Those will still totally happen, but if you have a few HP ups it won't still one-shot you
-Adjusted max luck caps, and fixed bugged luck pickups

Please jump into the game and give the new stuff a try!

[getter77]

v1.21

Hi Folks!

I just pushed out another update to ToG--this one has a lot of bugfixes...some major, some minor. Here's the list of fixes:

    Bug Fix: added a unduck check, tilt check, jump prohibit check, physics check, and a speed failsafe to cinematics to combat a major speed wiping bug on an endless mode loop.
    Art fix: added an glowy oblivion plane to L11 in case the player looks backwards in the final tunnel
    Optimization: Lowered cap on number of SFX pickups sounds that can be played at once
    Bug Fix: fixed that dang cartesian lattice bug, which actually ended up being a much more severe bug that I’m surprised hasnt reared its head in uglier places…OR MAYBE IT HAS ORLY
    Art, Pop, and Collision Fixes in l2r2b19, l6r4b, l6r2b2, l3r3b3b5
    Bug Fix: Fixed Stories: For some people (those who bought the game in the last month) random dialog/plots didn't work! For everyone else, you probably never noticed this bug.
    Bug Fix: Adjusted near clip plane, which fixes many near collision issues, but potentially causes zfighting with long-distance views. Not sure if I prefer this way over the other way.
    Bug Fix: Fixed delay on end animatic chain flythrough
    Bug Fix: Adjusted pipeorgan lootspawnoffset to accomodate clobbered loot
    Bug Fix: Fixed door gate mechanism in togodrome
    Console Cheat: Added cheat "Tog_ImLame stupidspeedbug". Those of you who have seen that endless-mode speed=0 loop bug, it *should* be fixed for you now. But just in case, I added this code to increment player speed by 2 with each use, so that way you won't lose a good run to this bug if, for some reason, it still pops up for you. This was a damn tricky bug, and I'm not confident my solutions was infallible.

Most of those are pretty rare bugs, but some of them could be rather unpleasant.