Team Space Mango

Combining the tower defense via passive upgrades (turrets) and active gameplay (ship) seems a good idea a bit out of the ordinary concept. One questions that arises me is how the player manages the passive defenses: are their place fixed and is done clicking a button or can the player choose some placement? I guess the player views the action from the ship perspective and the management would be ideally done through a more general 3D/2D view, but then the player cannot drive the ship while placing new turrets. Although I have no experience with how to deal with the swarms, I think that maybe simplifying them to a general object like a line/curve, ellipsoid, sphere, ... that moves around using some trajectories with the small bugs attached to a fixed position via some spring-like system could work. The bugs could rotate with some jittering around the line/sphere center to make it a bit more messy, think of it like a tornado of bugs which moves in more solid way.

When you mentioned boids, I thought about this video which has a repo for Unity you could most likely use:

Coding Adventure: Boids - YouTube

You have a huge amount of good ideas but maybe try to focus on one and polish it as much as possible. To be honest having the space shooter with the swarm sounds the best because in the tower defense you don't really make use of the swarm feature that much appart from the visual aspect.

I think this game looks really fun, but it also seems quite complex to implement within the short time frame of this semester — especially since it's a 3D game. Still, I'll definitely try it out on Demo Day!

What I really liked:

• Swarm enemies using Flock/Mechanics mechanics should look and feel very cool and fun, and I am looking forward to it! I personally have done similar concepts, and it was super fun when it comes to how much flexibility the algorithm gives you for adjustments.
• The idea actually seems doable within the given timeframe.
• Clear ties with "Road to Nowhere".
• Using DOTS when it comes to swarms and a lot of objects is genius. I wanna see how it looks and feels in the end.
• Swarms in Tower Defence game, would be amazing to see, because I don't think anyone has explored that part of the genre.

What I can suggest:

• The report is missing art references. How would the art look? What are you aiming for in UI/UX? Any games that look like this?
• I did not see how flight combat correlated with tower defence. Is it a separate stage? If it is, people who love combat-style games are really not fond of tower defence games, so the mix of the two will be hard. I would definitely cut back on one aspect of the game to make the other part more responsive and playable. This is important as players who start playing the game are juggling between two categories, making it hard to keep. Look at how "Men of War" or "Call to Arms: Gates of Hell" do it.
• The report needs to be more specific; even though everything was mentioned, it needed more details. How much each enemy gives out? What types of enemies are there? 

Conclusion:

I look forward to this game, especially swarms and their behaviours.

I find putting a more managerial tower defence gameplay near action spaceship flying combat really intriguing, but I would like to hear your take on run variability. In the document I haven't seen you mention any RNG elements, and I can see how a player that finds a winning strategy, in subsequent runs can just keep repeating that and always win. Maybe some randomization in horde balancing or adversarial events could be considered.

I like the idea of mixing a space shooter and a tower defense game. In the documentation, you mention a lot of mechanics and I am not sure all of them will be feasible within the given time constraints. That said, it's great to have so many backup ideas in case you have the time to implement them. 

I would suggest focusing on the core mechanics first (defending, shooting and upgrading the turrets). Although I find the idea of having infinite upgrades innovative, I am not entirely convinced by it yet. It might make the game feel too easy in the later stages, unless the enemies scale infinitely as well. Or is that the plan?

I really like the idea of enemy swarm. As long as you balance it right, I think this could turn into a great game.

I liked the swarming enemies idea, it feels like Vampire Survivors in space! I really hope Unity DOTS will be enough for what you want to achieve, because yeah, writing compute shaders and hooking them into Unity’s workflow sounds like a massive time sink for a 2-month project. I’d definitely try to make it work with DOTS and look for workarounds first before diving into custom shaders.

The doc is super detailed, and your input system and aiming approach options all sound solid. I don’t really have a personal preference between them right now, but I assume you’ll try them out and see what works best. Or if you end up keeping all of them, maybe let the player choose at the start with a simple UI and in the options menu as well, that could be a nice touch.

I also liked how you’re merging tower defense with endless space shooting gameplay, it gives the game a lot of potential for replayability and pacing. Overall, I really hope DOTS will carry the weight, and if not, I’d try tweaking the game design or finding some local scene hacks instead of fully going the compute shader route.

Best of luck, and I’m really looking forward to playing your game once it’s done!!!

The swarm enemies sound really cool. I also like that you have different concepts of steering the ship and the shooting. Can't wait too see what works best and to test it.

First thing that came to mind when I saw the presentation was how you're planning to handle a large number of enemies! using Dots or flecs or a similar ECS should be very helpful but also not an easy task so good luck with that!

I like the idea of mixing the space shooter with the tower defense, seems pretty dynamic and unique and will add to player expression and replayabiliy.

Having a large swarms of enemies on the screen is always a visual treat, I hope you plan on having cool vfx for the weapons to go along with that. Fun game concept, looking forward to playing it.

The game idea with the tower defense is great, and I can imagine how much fun and challenge I would be getting out of playing this game. The space shooting sounds fun and I hope the gameplay mechanics are well implemented so it feels natural and smooth to play. 

I would think that the challenging part of developing this game is balancing out between too easy and too hard for the player. I think that really needs to be taken into consideration and making sure that the balancing is just right for the players to enjoy.

Looking forward and wishing the best for the development.

I like the game idea, it seems very well thought out and not too complex to develop in one semester. I also like the fact that you want to add accessibility features.

I really want to see you go all out with the enemy spawn rate it sounds like a very fun game. Randomizing spawn rates and enemy behavior will have a huge impact on the player experience, so keep that in mind.

- Looking forward to epic large scale swarms and me battling them. Very interested on how this turns out especially with the limited time of one semester.
- Topic of Road to Nowhere hit quite well.
- Maybe a little too many aspects with the 3D tower defense, swarm AI and a freely roaming player in my opinion. Might need to reduce and focus on one or two of the aspects at the beginning like cutting out the space shooter mechanic from the functional minimum.

Combining a space shooter with tower defense sounds cool. I want to see some challenges in the likes of Undertale, just dodging stuff left and right.
With constant chaos on the screen, I feel like this will be one of those games that if you manage and make the shaders work right and find a good artstyle, it will be eye candy.

Looking forward to this challenge on the demo day!

A tower defense with 360 degrees of attack sounds really stressful, in a good way. 
I'm really existed to see the swarm ai because as i imagine it it has potential for really nice visuals.
My personal problem with tower defense is that as a player you can often only engage through placing the buildings. With your idea it is nice that it is also possible to guard the building by myself

Swarms are cool, swarms in space are cooler, shooting at swarms in space is the coolest!

However, some sort of concise narrative explanation for why the player is stranded/stationary in such a dangerous region in space would do wonders.

Apart from defensive ships/turrets, mines, and barricades, what is your idea for a resource system? Will the player be gathering scrap off the destroyed enemies to be able to build more things?