Starting Note

Happy 7 years of TDTest!

To celebrate the 7th anniversary, I'm releasing a dev log for the next returning tower - Machine Gun! This one is a bit of a pull-back from bizarre experimental mechanics that v0.3 brought about, but is still full of its own tricks!

Base, Up To Tier 2 Upgrades and The Ability

Machine Gun's concept is pretty simple - super fast attack speed over a decently large range, but at a high price!

• Base - $2000

  • Shoots a 2-pierce bullet 15 times per second!

• Laser Cannon (1/x/x) - $1500

  • Bullets swapped with lasers, comes with +1 pierce and +25% projectile speed, but damage type is swapped to Magic.

• Supercharged (2/x/x) - $3500

  • Lasers deal +1 damage and have +1 pierce.

• Super Range (x/1/x) - $850

  • Increases attack range by 25%.

• Infi-Range (x/2/x) - $1150

  • Increases attack range by a further 20%.

• Hollow Radar (x/x/1) - $1150

  • Increases attack range by 10% and grants Hollow detection.

• Minigun (x/x/2) - $2500

  • Reduces attack cooldown by 25%.

• Eradication (2/2/2) - 60s cooldown

  • Unleashes a single 750 damage blast in a massive area around it, damaging up to 100 enemies.

Overall not too different to the original Machine Gun, just with a few notable exceptions:

• 1/x/x and especially 2/x/x has far less pierce

• Overall range is much smaller

• Attack speed is generally faster

• Boss Shredders of x/x/1 and x/x/2 have been moved to x/x/3+

It really didn't need to get changed that much from the original, just weakened a little bit (though not by much), as it's a really, really strong base tower. Especially with Eradication, which has been lowered to a singular high-damage blast instead of 5 spaced-out blasts. While cool, it made it ridiculously strong against longer spaced-out rounds, so that was limited significantly.

Top Path - Laser Precision

Top path focuses on primarily on overall damage and pierce.

• Unstable Prism (3/x/x) - $20000

  • Shoots 3 lasers over a 20 degree spread, reduces attack cooldown by 33%, and increases laser pierce by 1.

• Ray of Doom (4/x/x) - $80000

  • Unleashes a concentrated beam of pure destruction - High damage, high pierce, instant impact.

Unstable Prism serves as an expensive, yet extremely powerful, midgame-to-lategame tower that you can either use as a bridge between Ultimates, or as the primary focus of your strategy.

Due to the high attack speed and triple projectiles, it benefits greatly from attack damage buffs! And, despite the price, it shouldn't be very hard to afford due to how strong the base tower is.

Ray of Doom calls back to the very early versions of Machine Gun - replacing the laser projectile with a single, solid beam that damages everything in its path!

Much like the old version of 1+/x/x Machine Gun, the beam hits instantaneously, so no travel time necessary, and it has a ton of pierce. The damage is also high enough that, on top of wiping out non-bosses, it puts a significant dent in swarms of bosses - even greatly damaging the Extreme Crusher on most maps!

Unlike the original, this path no longer changes the ability, so you're stuck with Eradication - tough luck!

Middle Path - Path of Annihilation

Middle path focuses on stalling for the ability.

• Forceful Impact (x/3/x) - $6000

  • Bullets inflict a 50% knockback to non-bosses and a 15% slow to bosses.

• Annihilator (x/4/x) - $65000

  • Bullets now stop low-tier and medium-tier bosses in place and slow high-tier bosses by 50%.

  • Eradication ability damage quadrupled, pierce tripled, and range increased by 50%.

As the entry to this section states, Forceful Impact just knocks enemies back or slows them down. The main purpose, on top of light support, is to keep enemies in range to get more Eradication activations off.

Annihilator improves upon the previous upgrade - better knockback, stronger ability. There's not really much else to say here, but this path is useful as the "cheaper" of the 3 Ultimates, as it's really good support on top of having a panic button ability for sticky situations - like wiping out the Extreme Crusher insides!

Bottom Path - Calling of the Void

Bottom path focuses on countering bosses.

• Voidtouched (x/x/3) - $8000

  • Bullets deal +5 damage to bosses.

• Eye of the Void (x/x/4) - $150000

  • Shoots twin bullets that each deal +149 damage to bosses

  • Ability replaced with Return to Sender - Places a portal at the end of each path that warps enemies back to the entrance. Has a 2 minute cooldown and can only be used once per round.

Voidtouched basically takes the idea that the original Machine Gun's x/x/1 and x/x/2 upgrades had in mind - just slaps them onto the projectile instead of having separate projectiles do that job.

While this upgrade does seem pretty cheap for what it does - just know that it mainly serves as a cheaper alternative to Unstable Prism. You still get a high-damage counter to bosses, just you don't get the damage or pierce required for non-boss swarms, nor the buffability of 3/x/x.

Eye of the Void serves the same purpose as the original's Boss Shredder - completely destroy bosses, while being almost unable to deal with the mess it creates.

In v0.4, EotV will be complete overkill, as the game does not outscale it whatsoever. It's the perfect Freeplay choice, once that releases!

Return to Sender is just like the original's Deja Vu ability - any enemy that leaks is sent right back to the start of the track. The important difference however is that this ability can now only be used once per round! While the 2 minute cooldown will tick down normally, if it recharges before the round is up, the ability will be unusable until the round is completed.

Also, when the upgrade is purchased, the ability's cooldown is reset, so you have to wait the full 2 minutes AND clear the current round. No sell-rebuy strats!

Ending Note

Originally, I would've included the redesign for Void, the returning Advanced map of the update, at the end here. Unfortunately, it wasn't ready to be shown yet, so you'll have to settle with a more detailed sprite for x/x/4 that got scrapped since, while being similar, I personally thought it didn't really fit the game's style.

The next dev log will likely be the last of the update, going over the reworked Electro-Shock! And, if all goes according to plan, then this update should be out before the month is over!