| 27 April 09 | Pro Version Released!. A totally new way to play DTD. Sandbox mode, Sprints, Multiplayer - its all there =) Scores will be integrated soon. |
| 13 October 08 | Version 1.9 announced! I am working on an updated version DTD which will include multiplayer, extra modes and extra creeps. It will be released in the next few weeks so stay tuned! If you would like to keep up to date with the new games I am working on then please visit my new blog. |
| 1 July 08 | DTD has been nominated for Best Casual Game of 2008! If you would like to vote please go here. DTD is in two categories towards the end, so stick with it :o) |
| 13 Mar 08 | DTD is one year old! If you would like to read about how DTD came to be and how many plays it has had please go here. |
| 15 Feb 08 | DTD has been nominated for an award at the Game Developers Conference! In other news, I have reset all the Challenge Scoreboards - it was time to let the old guard go. |
| 16 Jan 08 | DTD won the Jay is Games Best Strategy Game of 2007 Award with 45% of the vote! W00t. |
| 07 Jan 08 | DTD has been nominated for a Jay is Games Best of 2007 Award! You can vote for DTD here. |
| 27 Dec 07 | Unfortunately it looks like someone managed to hack the score database and reset everyone's group names. Every score submitted before 3AM GMT on the 26th of December has had its group name deleted. As hacks go, it could have been much worse. I will try to plug the exploit. |
| 28 July 07 | DTD has made it into Wikipedia :) Read about it here. I have been testing Multiplayer DTD this week and it is coming along great. Should be ready for public consumption very shortly along with a new site to host it on. Read about it in our blog |
| 27 July 07 | The short list of 10th Tower ideas has been created and is ready for voting. |
| 16 July 07 | If you would like a say in what the 10th and final Tower will be, you can vote in the forums here. |
| 14 July 07 | Lack of updates has been because I have been working on the multiplayer DTD which you can read about here. I have also been working on the Deluxe version of DTD which will include multiple map sizes, new tower graphics, map load/save and a custom mode designer. |
| 22 June 07 | 1.5 is finally released! Enjoy :o) |
| 18 June 07 | Well, many thanks to all those that voted for DTD in the Webware 100. We made it in! \\o o// \o/ Linky here |
| 16 June 07 | Version 1.5 is nearly complete and will be released next week. All the beta testers are having fun testing it, and so am I :) Coming up on the 2 millionth score... |
| 6 June 07 | I have graduated from Amatuer to Pro. As of Monday I quit my job and became an independant games developer. I'm writing about my experience in this blog. First task, completing the MSN version of DTD :) |
| 30 May 07 | The site has got a bit hectic again, at least that is what my logs show, with a few high profile blog posts on DTD making their way round the blogosphere. |
| 23 May 07 | If you want to vote for DTD as a fine example of an entertainment site then please Vote Here. Or not. No pressure. Vote now! |
| 20 May 07 | Beta testing continues. I have finished adding the code to localize the interface, horrible work but someone has to do it! Hopefully I will be able to get 4-5 languages put in. I do like the new Ink Tower tho :P Oh DTD has been nominated for an award for an entertainment based Web 2.0 site (go figure), I will post up the link so you can vote (if you want to) in a few days. |
| 17 May 07 | Beta testing for 1.5 has begun. It contains new graphics, new creeps, new towers, new modes and even faster code. It should also be translated into a few other languages. If you would like to help out with the translating or graphics please contact me using the link at the bottom of the page. |
| 9 May 07 | For second time in a week my PC has died due to a bust motherboard. Luckily nothing was lost. Meh. |
| 4 May 07 | Passed the 1 Millionth score in the database yesterday. I should really find out who it was and send them a prize lol. |
| 2 May 07 | DTD has become the highest rated game on Kongregate out of 600 games. DTD was played 9 Million times during April which works out at over 3 games a second wow. I've been talking a lot of interested parties which has really eaten into my coding time. Hopefully I can get 1.5 done in a week or so if I can lock myself away for long enough. |
| 25 Apr 07 | Recreated the database according to Insta's master plan ;) Added game versioning to the Group Scoreboards. |
| 24 Apr 07 | Sorry for the lack of news, I have been testing a multiplayer engine for DTD and other games. But I have returned some stats to the News page \o/. |
| 16 Apr 07 | 1.21 has been released. Includes several new challenge modes and a 10K gold fun mode. Tweaks to the 48/49 end bosses as well as a rebalance of the Spawns fun mode. Plus a reset prompt! ('R' for reset btw) |
| 12 Apr 07 | You can now get 1.02 here. No score submit yet. |
| 12 Apr 07 | Just spent 3 hours totally restructuring the score database and the result has been worth it. Dropping from 90% peak load to <5%. The side effect has been the loss of global postions as the database is too fragmented to be queried as a whole, but I will try to get global positions back at some later date. On a side note, the global scores will most likely be reset once 1.21 is out as it will be more secure. |
| 10 Apr 07 | Group Scores can now show the highest score per player, as well as switch groups more easily. A cool '100 Challenge' attempt video. According to Alexa, HandDrawnGames peaked 2 days ago at a global site position of ~3800! Which, as stats go, is both impressive and unimpressive at the same time lol. Now that DTD has dropped off both Digg and I-am-bored, the server is back under a 'normal' load of ~10K games per hour. Phew. |
| 9 Apr 07 | Had a break from the site to write a best man's speech (harder than you think) but now I'm back... with stats \o/.
Stats for 10 days of 1.2: Games Played: 3.9 Million, Towers Built: 139 Million, Creeps Killed (my favourite stat!): 1.5 Billion, Global Playing Time: 86 Years. |
| 3 Apr 07 | The new server is online and I have started to redirect traffic to it. It will take a day or so for the HandDrawnGames domain to catch up, so you will see the IP address in the address bar for a while. I am restoring the scores that are missing from today over the next few hours. |
| 2 Apr 07 | My Digg button awwww... |
| 2 Apr 07 | Gotta have one stat for the News & Stats page! 684340 games of 1.2 played in the last 48 hours. And 1 seriously slow running server. I kid you not, as I type this into ConText via remote desktop it takes 10 seconds for the letters to appear! :(. |
| 1 Apr 07 | I've had to strip out a quarter of the score database, and remove some tables from the site in order to regain any sort of real-time control over the server. The site has been Dugg again, upping the games played to over 20,000 per hour. Both the cpu and network card are pegged at 100%. Normal service should resume after the site drops off Digg's radar. Although I am having fun watching it on Digg Labs. |
| 1 Apr 07 | One day before my new server comes online, someone links to me that doubles the load on my old server. It is now offically pwned. It must be April Fools day. |
| 30 Mar 07 | Can't talk, fightin fires. |
| 29 Mar 07 | 1.2 finally released! And a new front page, which sucks a little bit less than the old one. The update contains all new quicker pathing, a new creep type, a new tower type, a new creep distribution, more challenge modes, a new fun section and lots of small fixes. The towers have been rebalanced slightly to make way for the bash tower. Older versions will no longer be able to submit scores. I am also in the process of upgrading the server which all your donations have allowed me to afford. Thanks! |
| 28 Mar 07 | 30,000 views on i-am-bored today. And the server is much better now, thanks for asking. |
| 28 Mar 07 | w00t famous at last: http://www.sundayat10.com/index.php?num=262 |
| 28 Mar 07 | After using the interweb for actual work, I found a few good articles on db optimization which I have duly force fed into my SQL server. And the result is: 
What do you mean you can't tell the difference! |
| 27 Mar 07 | This what my server's CPU load currently looks like:
Arg. Must put more coal in :( Peak time game loads have doubled to over 6000 an hour. The server log for one day is now 200megs! 170,000 scores in the database, half of which are group scores - they sure are popular \o/. I am currently working on a two level database structure to speed it all up without losing any scores. I admit it, I'm a datawhore lol. 23 gigabytes went out the door today, in fun packed packages for 100,000 visitors. |
| 25 Mar 07 | Another new video of DTD: DesktopTD video |
| 22 Mar 07 | More stats yay: 2 million page views, 649,000 visitors, 164 gigabytes of bandwidth for the first 3 weeks! The database has had quite a hammering over the last week, as the game has been linked to by a big flash site and over 550 scores an hour have been added. I've tweaked mySQL a lot and it may be able to take another 100K scores but I'm sure it will start choaking again. The choice will be then to prune the scores, or get a new server! |
| 21 Mar 07 | ok the new 1.2 version is nearly ready! It will include: a new tower, a new creep type, a new challenge mode, new creep formations, faster & better creep route finding, a sell penalty, less bugs and exploits, and one less level! Phew. |
| 15 Mar 07 | I've had to strip out 45,000 scores from the database as it was slowing down the website :( Groups have been improved and are going well with 6000 players in groups. The forum is getting busier so why don't you Pop over!. Version 1.2 will be out shortly, honest! |
| 10 Mar 07 | Many thanks to Stephen B, Joe G and Jack H for being the first to donate. May your mazes be long and never leak. |
| v1.02 | Added a new Challenge mode and fixed a few small bugs. New key: 'N' for next level. |
| 09 Mar 07 | The Group scoreboards seems to be going over well with (more stats yay :) 637 players in groups with the biggest group having 23 scores from 18 players. A record 115,000 pages served yesterday using 10.9 Gigabytes of bandwidth. |
| 08 Mar 07 | Added a new 'group' scoreboard section. You and your friends can have their own scoreboard. It's 3AM and I'm done! |
| 07 Mar 07 | Someone has made a time-lapse video of Desktop TD. It just needs some Benny Hill music :) Link here. And according to Alexa this site has 0.023% of the Internet which is about the size of Switzerland or something. |
| 06 Mar 07 | Computer says: 46,000 visitors, 90,000 pageviews & 14.4 Gigabytes of bandwidth for the last day. |
| v1.01 | Keys 1-5 now select the different towers. Fixed a problem that happened when the player created a blocking maze before the start button was pressed. More tweaks to the website. Shortened the scoreboard roll-over period to 12 hours, and it looks like I'll have to do it again. |
| v1.0c | Fixed a 'Send Level' exploit. |
| 05 Mar 07 | The site has been Stumbled and Dugg. My logs tell me 30,000 visitors, 47,000 pageviews and 9 Gigabytes of bandwidth in one day. Gulp. Also made the site more Firefox compatible as 71% of visitors use it! |
| v1.0b | Fixed an infinite gold bug - many thanks to Jona for pointing it out! |
| 01 Mar 07 | Improvements to the website - added the Challenge scoreboards, so get cracking! You can view a selection of player maps in the Player Map section. I know they look horrible! Be better soon... |
| v1.0 | Added a new level type called 'Group' with a modified group Boss. The grid is now always on unless you toggle it off. Release version w00t. (until I fiddle with it again) |
| v0.99 | OK, the big news is Challenges! For those that need an extra challenge you can play the game with various restrictions on what you can build. The scoreboards for the challenge modes will be added in a few days.
Changed a few of the creep graphics and added some more sounds. Lots of other improvements to increase the framerate of the game and to keep it high. Removed the restriction on how many creeps can be on the screen at one time.
However, the score bonus for sending levels early is only added to your score if you complete the game and finish level 49. The '+' value in the score shows you the level bonus you have gained.
Lastly, to avoid any infinite money exploits, if the game notices that gold has become infinite it will stop and you'll have to reset, sorry!. |
| v0.98 | You may have noticed the change to the background image :) Although not perfect yet, it is a step in the direction I wanted to go to make the game truely a
'Desktop' tower defense. I have also changed the creeps to make them more creepy (groan). Improved the grid overlay to account for the new background.
Fixed a bug with the Frost towers splash slowing immunes. Upped the max creeps to 99.
Added a few more filters to the interface. 'Filters', in case you are wondering are the orange glows around things! Getting close to release now w00t. |
| v0.97 | Towers can be upgraded before the start button is pressed. Reset now goes back to the level menu. Gone a bit crazy with filters on the interface, will probably tone down later.
Various changes to improve the targeting efficiency of the towers (where most of the CPU time is spent), including changing the Pellet Towers to fire more slowly but do more damage.
Added a limit to the number of creeps that can be on the screen to below 60 which directly effects the 'Send Next Level' feature. Frost tower now does not damage immunes.
Added a 'sell' sound. |
| v0.96 | Added 3 modes play: Easy, Normal, Hard. The original mode was only a little harder than Normal so I have set all the existing scores to 'Normal'.
At the moment, you have to reload the game to adjust the difficulty setting. You cannot submit 'Easy' scores, nice try Sencerd! Added the keys 'U' and 'S' for Upgrade and Sell.
Nerfed the Storm tower a little. Re-wrote the website in ASP as ASP.NET was sloooow. And finally, adjusted the order of the special levels. Phew! |
