Weekly Update: Shiny Chimchar out now! Bringing the towns to life!

Want to get the Shiny Starters? Shiny Zorua? Shiny legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!

Click here to hunt for the Shiny Oshawott code for PTD 2

Ho ho ho! Santa Sam here bring you the gifts this holiday season! Today I released v1.28 of PTD2 and it includes the much anticipated Shiny Chimchar Mystery Gift!

Holidays
As many of you know the holidays can be extremely busy for everybody. I think one of the biggest challenges a person can deal with when making games is the balance of work and life. For a lot of developers work is their life but this can be a dangerous thing. For me personally I value loved ones a lot and I always try to give them priority when it comes to my time but the reality is that it is you guys that really make paying the bills possible so I value you too. Without you guys I wouldn't be able to do what I love as a living and for that you guys will always have my thanks.

This Week's Mystery Gift
I'll be bringing the same poll as last week back to decide the type of the next mystery gift, and then I will do a poll as to which specific pokemon from that type it will be. Go ahead and vote to decide the next mystery gift.

Bringing the towns to life!
This week I want to focus on the towns and cities of the game. I want to add violet city along with the bellsprout/onix trade and a harder rematch with Falkner that will be optional. Also Cherrygrove City will finally be restored and the people will be back in their houses. Maybe even a flower shop!

Creature Universe TD
Creature Universe is progressing nicely in the concept stage. As far as the game itself I'm still prototyping things so it's far from a release but I hope early next year we can start releasing something. These past weeks we have been trying to finalize names for the creatures we have revealed along with finalizing their colors. I'm also designing the first few levels of the game. The game will have at least 100 different creatures and over 40 different levels to play.

Alpha v1.29.1 is now released! 

• Mystery Gift  - Mystery Gift will be out on by Monday!
• Server Code
• Game Graphic
• Game Link
• Blog Links
• New Pokemon  Oshawott!
• New Ability
• Shell Armor
• New Attacks
• Water Sport
• Graphics
• Stats
• Move List
• Evolution Info
• Evolutions (2)
• Breeding Center
• Trading Center
• Fixed Mud Sport to lower Electric damage by 67% instead of 33%
• Item Store
• PokeCenter Page
• First Badge is now properly given out
• Violet City - Why are all the cities empty?! 
• Map Graphic
• City Music
• Onix Trade
• Falkner Rematch
• New Pokemon - Onix
• Added to Breeding Center
• Added to Trading Center

Everything below is postponed for future updates! Not enough time this week.

• Story Level (0%)
• Cherrygrove City (0%)
• Flower Shop (0%)
• Change the Zapdos Fight to be a more appropriate difficulty (0%)
• Day of the Week Spooky Event (0%)- For Tuesdays
• Add a graphic for removing a pokemon from the field (0%) - To better tell what is going on when fighting and NPC trainer.
• Added which pokemon you will be battling in the next battle in 1v1 mode (0%) 
• Make pressing Enter to trigger a lot of the menu buttons (0%) Pressing enter to log in instead of clicking on it.
• Top Searchers/Top Request/Latest Trades (0%) 
• Harden Sound Still plays while Sound FX set to 0 (0%)

 That's all I have for you guys this week, as always let me know what you think on the comments below. Happy Holidays!

SnD Weekly 11/13: Creature Universe Back to the basics, Webcomic, limited and more valuable Mystery Gift

Want to get the Shiny Starters? Shiny Zorua? Shiny legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!

Hello everyone,  pretty interesting week we had last week. By interesting I mean lacking in any updates. I must admit that I've had a rough last couple of weeks and the whole security update really took a lot out of me. After a few days of clearing my head and relaxing I'm ready to get back on the horse. In my days off I really had a chance to think about a couple of things.

Creature Universe TD - Back to the basics
Do people ever tell you something that triggers something else in your mind? This happens to me quite often. Many times your feedback and suggestions are triggers to other thoughts that help the game grow and evolve over time. In this case Joel, my brother, commented on PTD2 and how complex the game had gotten when compared to PTD1. PTD1 had the element of pick up and play just getting into the action. PTD2 appeals to me because I like to explore and walk around but this comes at a price of having a game that you sit down and play when you have more time. I felt that if I really want to bring CUTD to the mobile market and to save time in development that it would be best to remove the walking around part of the game and stick to a structure similar to PTD1. The focus will then be on making the levels, creatures, attacks, and abilities more interesting to play. Since we already have a Mystery Gift figured out this week the poll will be about which of the two different structures did you like best. PTD1 or PTD2?

Joel & Sam Make Comics
I mentioned Joel just a bit ago, he lives only about an hour away from my house so I see him three to four times a week. We talk a lot about projects, games, and movies. Every once in a while we talk about projects that we can work on together but with running Sam and Dan Games, plus school, plus life, my time is very short. With this project I help up with coming up with funny and interesting ideas for comics that cross over famous video games with famous movies. The first crossover is Hunger Games with Fruit Ninja, and Joel came up with Star Wars with Portal. Check them out and comment on the comic blog with what other crossovers you might want to see. http://joelsamcomic.blogspot.com/

More Limited and Valuable Mystery Gifts
Mystery Gifts are meant to reward players who are following along the development of our games. The first few Mystery Gifts have been regular versions of pokemon that won't show up for a while. These have value in that they won't be available for somebody that didn't get the Mystery Gift but they will be able to get them once the game reaches that stage pretty easily even thought it could be years before that happens. To further increase the value of Mystery Gift the next Mystery Gifts will be shiny version instead! The only major complaint that people have with Mystery Gifts is that since you can enter the code so much there is an over abundance of them. To counter this you will only be able to enter the code once for each account. You will get 3 pairs of male and female so if you wish to trade them later on you will have 2 extra pairs. After this the code will no longer work for your account and yes I know you can make more than one account and get more but I hope that the extra work involve will lower the amount that people get and thus reduce how many are out there and increase their rarity in the future.

Weekly Progress
For PTD2 I'm still working on the items from last week. During my break I remembered the things that I did wrong with PTD1 and the major one was rushing out content to get it out each week. I still like adding things to the game every week (I'm sure you guys wish there was new content every day!) but I want to make sure that what I make lives up to my expectations and a lot of time to get something out in by the deadline I have to cut things down. So what this means is we still get weekly updates but I will make sure that I get things up to the quality that I want to reach instead of rushing things to get them out on time.

Alpha v1.25: Released!

• Mystery Gift
• Graphics
• Stats
• New Attacks
• Charge
• Evolution Information
• Add To Trading Center
• Change In Game Mystery Gift Link
• Change Server Code - To give out the correct mystery gift and limit users that have already used it.
• Update Pokedex when you evolve a pokemon
• Properly align some pokemon when they are following behind you
• Better Map UI - Similar to the Battle UI, it shows time of day and your current money amount.
• Pokedex
• Implemented in-game
• Save and Load Pokedex Data
• Saving Pokemon's party and storage position
• Add a confirmation popup to the back button on story mode
• Check the Forgot Password pages for any errors
• Sponsor Versions of the game
• Daily Activities - The first activity is to trade with 10 different trainers in the PTD2 Trading Center. 
• Letting you buy adoption pokemon from ptd2 with Daily Coins 
• Creating Daily Activity page 
• Creating first daily activity 
• Pokemon Researcher

That's what we have for you this week, we are still working on all the funding prices and all of that so hopefully that will come out next week. We will really need you guys to chip in and help us continue making you great games. As always let me know what you think, I read all the comments posted on here, twitter and all emails. I don't have enough time to answer them all but I do read them.

SnD Games Weekly: Security Measures, Pokemon Researcher, and CUTD Map Abilities!

Want to get the Shiny Starters? Shiny Zorua? Shiny legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!


Hello world! Welcome to another week of Sam and Dan game goodness. Originally we had planned for a big event for this week but we couldn't get all the details sorted out, so it will have to wait until next time. So what is the big event about? Well, basically we will be needing you guys to help us keep developing Ptd2 and Cutd. You can think of it like a kickstarter except it's not really about one project but about the whole company. We are working out some cool prizes for those of you who wish to help us out. Like I said before we won't be starting it this week but I wanted to give you guys the heads up of what is coming.

Security Measures
Many of you have noticed that there are a lot of hacked pokemon flying around in the trading center. This week I will spend a good amount of time beefing up the security among other things. So that one person that keeps spamming my twitter can finally relax for a chance.

Update on Security Measures:
There is a lot of misinformation going around (especially on YouTube videos) about what happened and how it happened. So I'm here to tell you what happened, and how it happened straight from the source.

First I patched up the game so certain hacks would no longer work. Some hackers will complain about this but really they can only blame themselves for this. If they were to hack for their own personal collection and just stay quiet about it then I wouldn't even notice and would leave them alone. But... they decided to start putting up illegal trades and tried to scam other players. That is not acceptable so I had to step in and add more security.

After I did this it was time to remove any illegal pokemon (pokemon that you can't catch in the game yet like Ho-oh for example) from any account that had them. I had a list of all the illegal pokemon and I had the id of who the original owner was (the person who captured/created this pokemon) and who the current owner was (the person who had the pokemon in their account).  Usually for the person who currently had the pokemon I simply removed the pokemon from their account. If the person had multiple illegal pokemon even if he didn't create them I would remove more valuables. You really should know better than to hold multiple illegal pokemon, period.

People who created multiple illegal pokemon also had valuables taken. Creating illegal pokemon is not acceptable either. If you created so many illegals and you tried trading other people for them trying to scam them your account was completely reset.

The next step was removing any pokemon that had illegal shiny values. For example shadow totodile or shiny vanillite. I followed the same rules as illegal. The more you had the more you lost. Most people only owned 1 and all I did was remove it and move along.

The last check was for shiny starters or shiny zorua that the original owner had not paid for.

Okay so that was the process, I went and checked each account by hand. This wasn't an automatic thing where bam a bunch of random accounts were deleted. If you lost a lot of things the things you lost were hacked and I couldn't allow them to stay in the system. If you buy a stolen good and the police finds out about it, they won't put you in jail but they will take away the stolen merchandise. 

As far as how many accounts were affected by this less than 200 accounts were affected by this. This is out of millions of accounts that exist. So less 1% of all account lost something. Don't for a second think that thousands and thousands of account were affected. Trust me I did this by hand and thousands would have taken me weeks to do. Also like i mentioned before most people only lost 1-2 pokemon and less than 20 actually got their account reset.

Well I hope that cleared some things up for you guys. Thanks for understanding, it was actually pretty sad for me when I have to delete pokemon like that... it definitely took a lot of my motivation out from this week.   

Getting it done
So I've been piling up a bunch of new features and things that I've been wanting to add and it is finally time to get them done. This week I will focus on the things that were left behind from last week without adding too much to it.

Pokemon Researcher
While making the behaviors for the different wild pokemon I started to test them and I was having a lot of fun just watching what they did. So I thought that it would be pretty fun to have a mode that you could just spawn some pokemon and watch them interact with each other and with you. You can't capture them or battle. You just get to play around and see if anything fun happens. This mode is really easy to add since all the work for it is pretty much done. Just have to make some menus, which I hate >.<

Mystery Gift
The poll this week will start with asking for what type you want to see this week and then it will move to a list of possible candidates. Let's figure this out together!
 

Weekly Progress

My Status: Working on blog!
Alpha v1.25 Progress List:
Note: The list below is for v1.25 when it is released.

• Security Stuff (100%) 
• Can no longer log into story mode with an illegal pokemon (pokemon that you can't obtain yet) (100%)
• Can no longer save an illegal pokemon (100%)
• Removing current illegal pokemon (100%)
• Removing hacked shiny starters and shiny zorua and their evolutions (100%)
• Add New Pokemon to the Trading Center (100%)  
• Make all Golett's Genderless (100%) - Might have to cut out a few body parts, ouch!
• Properly align some pokemon when they are following behind you (100%) 
• Better Map UI (100%) - Similar to the Battle UI, it shows time of day and your current money amount.
• Pokedex (0%)
• Saving Pokemon's party and storage position (0%)
• Daily Challenges (0%)
• Day of the Week Spooky Event (0%)
• 1v1 Mode Changes (0%) - As described on the previous blog.
• Sponsor Version of the game (0%)
• Add a confirmation popup to the back button on story mode if you haven't saved (0%)
• Release Pokemon (0%) - Note: You can already release them in the Pokemon Center if you don't want to wait for this to be done.
• Pokemon Researcher  (0%)
• Add list in the FAQ page on where to find pokemon and at what time, similar to the PTD1 list (0%) 
• Fixed bug with the attack Uproar not waking up pokemon in battle (0%)
• Add a graphic for removing a pokemon from the field (0%) - To better tell what is going on when fighting and NPC trainer.
• Add new Level Item interface graphics for the ui (0%)  
• Added which pokemon you will be battling in the next battle in 1v1 mode (0%) 
• Make pressing Enter to trigger a lot of the menu buttons (0%) Pressing enter to log in instead of clicking on it.
• Check the Forgot Password pages for any errors (0%) 
• Top Searchers/Top Request/Latest Trades (0%)

Creature Universe: Map Abilities
Ptd2 introduced the concept of the map. Creature Universe TD will take it even farther with map abilities. An example of this is very early in Pillar Island, the grass start zone, you will be given some bug bombs to throw at some bugs to clear them out. I made an awesome concept sketch to illustrate this example.

Bug Bomb takes out bugs, one of the map abilities you will get

 So instead of only walking around you will be able to equip items to do different actions. Your creatures don't get left out on the action. Each family of creatures will have their own ability that they can use in the map for different effects. In this example the Grass Starter which is still unnamed has a tongue ability that lets him eat certain bugs. You will be able to switch place with your creature so that you can control it while your trainer avatar follows it. Here is another amazing concept sketch that I made to illustrate this example.

Grass starter using his map ability on a bug creature

  In CUTD your character will perform more functions than the characters have ever had in ptd and ptd2. That's all I have for you this week, keep checking back to see how we are progressing. As always let me know what you think! Sam out.

SnD Weekly 10/30: Spooky Mystery Gift! Day of the Week Events! Meteor Crisis in Creature Universe!

Want to get the Shiny Starters? Shiny Zorua? Shiny legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!

Hey everyone! I hope all is well for you. Things are running right along here at Sam and Dan Games, and I'm here to bring you the goodies for this week. So let's get started!

Mystery Gift
This being the last week of October it would be a shame not to have a Ghost pokemon be the mystery gift so I put up a bunch of different Ghost to pick from. Let's the best one win! Golett is the winner!

Day Of the Week Events
In some Pokemon games you will get trainer battles, contest or some events that only happen during a certain day of the week. This feature is coming to PTD2 and CUTD. The first of such events will be a Spooky one that will only happen a certain day of the week and only at night! Look forward to it and the reward that it will bring.

New Route 31
I'm also adding a new Route that will come with a few new Pokemon to capture.

Pokedex!
Finally we will get the Pokedex! The Pokedex will keep track of what you have caught, now that we have evolution I need to add the Pokedex that will more accurately keep track of what you have instead of giving you credit for things just because you have the evolution.

Level cap to 100! (Sorta)
This one is sort of a bold move, but with the Effective Level mechanic this can work. So you might ask what about moves and evolutions? Well this is where the sorta part of it works out. Getting all the moves done quickly is out of the questions so what will happen is that you will level up but you won't learn any new moves passed the soft level cap (12). Evolutions on the other hand are pretty easy to put in so you will be able to Evolve! I think it's a good trade off. Instead of playing a lot and not gaining exp you will be able to keep leveling up your creature while you try to get the Daily Challenge or just shiny hunting. With the Effective Level mechanic levels will still provide some challenge without me having to make them extremely hard for anybody who doesn't level up or is just starting to play.

Daily Challenge and Other things..
You can read last week's blog post to find out more about Daily Challenges. I will also be working on these to get them out as soon as I can.

Okay so now that we talked about what I'm working on, let's look at the weekly progress list.

Alpha v1.24.1: Released!

• Golett Mystery Gift should only give out one pokemon and it should be genderless
• Geodude in Swarm battles should not have the attack Take Down
• Fixed a bug with not being able to pick your starter when starting a new game
• Fixed a bug with certain pokemon's TM list
• Bug with Jigglypuff's swarm battle
• Problem with Gastly learning curse

Alpha v1.24:  Released!

• Give Metapod and Kakuna Relearn moves so they can level up
• Fix issue with a Shiny or Shadow Evolving and losing it's shininess if you save after evolving and not before
• Fix issue with the map not scrolling when you walk around while being caught in Spinarak's Web
• Display Force Palm's Damage in the info box
• Level 100 cap
• New Evolutions from Current Pokemon Added to the game (19)
  • Graphics
  • Stats/Info
  • Attack Info
  • Evolution Info
• New Pokemon Added to the game (5)
• Graphics
• Stats/Info
• Attack Info
• Evolution Info
• New Evolutions Added to the game (12)
• Graphics
• Stats/Info
• Attack Info
• Evolution Info
• Route 31
• Map Graphics
• Map Triggers
• Map Spawn Locations
• Map Spawns
• Dark Cave
• Map Graphics
• Map Triggers
• Map Spawn Locations
• Map Spawns
• Route 46
• Map Graphics
• Map Triggers
• Map Spawn Locations
• Map Spawns
• New Map Behaviors (7)
• Zubat
• Bellsprout
• Gastly
• Phanpy
• Geodude
• Spearow
• Jigglypuff
• New Wild Pokemon Battles (7)
• Swarm Style
• 1v1 Style
• New Abilities Added to the game
• Iron Fist
• Klutz
• No Guard
• Pickup
• Levitate
• Gluttony
• New Attacks Added to the game
• Rollout
• Odor Sleuth
• Flail
• Take Down
• Lick
• Spite
• Curse
• Growth
• Mean Look
• Fixed a bug when trying to check your items when you didn't have any in 1v1 mode
• Mystery Gift
• Add Pokemon and Evolutions
• Change Server Code
• Change Client Code and Graphic

Meteor Crisis in Creature Universe!
I always like to end the blog post with a little bit of Creature Universe. A few weeks ago I had a meeting with the crew and we came up with this idea, and this week we developed it some more. When you start playing Creature Universe a big event will happen that will shake the planet and affect everybody that lives there. A great Meteor has crashed into the planet, but didn't destroy it!!! Everybody is overjoyed that they are still alive but in a few days strange events start happening all throughout the world. The grass starter island called "Pillar Island" is now swarming with bugs! Will you help in this hour of need? Check out one of the bugs that you will face on Pillar Island.

Work In Progress Toxic Creature

I hope you guys enjoyed that little preview and that you keep coming back every day to check out my progress on the update. As Always let me know what you think!

SnD Weekly 10/23: Daily Challenges! Creature Universe Electric, Ground, and Mythical Revealed!

Want to get the Shiny Starters? Shiny Zorua? Shiny legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!

Welcome again! Let's get to it! We've got some great things coming out this week, so let's talk about them.

New Mystery Gift
Again we will put it up for vote on the poll. Some of you commented that I shouldn't put such popular pokemon such as Riolu on it since it would obviously win the poll. Note taken! I took one of the commenter's suggestion for the poll this week. Let's see what happens! The options will be Klink, Trubbish, Vanillite, and Foongus. (Thanks Missingno. Master!)

New Story Level
The new level will have the conclusion to the events of the last level and introduce Route 30. Meaning new pokemon to capture!

New Pokemon Center Feature: Daily Challenge!
For PTD1 we had something called the daily code. For a certain amount of pokedollars you could get some nice prizes. This was fine and dandy but we are taking it to the next level in PTD2. Introducing Daily Challenges!

Okay so first of all we will have a new type of coin called "daily coins" that you will get by completing Daily Challenges. These coins will let you purchase shiny pokemon! For people who will complain that it's not fair for those who bought snd coins it is good to note that it won't be easy to collect enough coins to get a rare shiny pokemon. But for everybody who can't or won't want to buy SnD coins there is now a way to slowly build up enough coins to get one.

The first challenge will be to capture 30 of a certain pokemon and give them to the old man in the Daily Challenge section (which will come out this week).

The first time you do this in the current day you will get 10 daily coins. You can actually repeat the quest as much as you want during that day but you will only get 1 daily coin after doing it once. The next day the quest will reset. So basically first time you do it in that day you get 10 then the rest are 1 and so on every day. This is similar to the Daily Quest in World of Warcraft, except you can repeat them.

Some of the prices for the shiny will range from the hundreds to the thousands depending on rarity.

Also the quest will change every so often to offer some variety in what you will be doing. Sometimes it will be to capture a bunch of pokemon, other times to level up a specific pokemon, or complete a certain amount of trades with different people, or bringing him shinies.

I want to hear what you guys think about it!

And Other Items
This one person complained that I had some items in the list for a long time, and while others pretty much explained why this was I wanted to comment on it publicly. Basically I have things in the list that are somewhat high priority but every week I get things that I consider higher in priority so I put them above those other ones. If I ever get a good chance to make them happen then I will but for now they will just keep getting dragged a long as we go. The list helps me a lot to keep track of what I need to be doing so it helps me probably more than it helps you guys.

  Alpha v1.23 is now out! New Route 30! New Pokemon to capture! Find out what happens after Giovanni shows up!

• Give Shadow Hoppip the proper attacks
• Changed the way confusion works - Instead of having a 25% chance of doing damage to the target for a period of time. It will be a 25% chance for the target not to do its attack and instead take damage over a period of time.
• Increased the cooldown on moves that buff or debuff - If a move only buffs or debuffs by one level it was increased to 2.4 seconds. If it buffs or debuffs by two levels then it was increased to 3.6 seconds.
• New Story Level
• Intro Scene
• NPC Dialog Changes
• New Map
• New Spawn Locations
• New Waves
• New Pokemon To Add
• New Behaviors
• Caterpie
• Metapod
• Weedle
• Kakuna
• Ledyba
• Spinarak
• New Abilities
• Early Bird
• Rattled
• Ice Body
• New Attacks
• Supersonic
• Comet Punch
• Constrict
• Scary Face
• Leech Life
• Icicle Spear
• Uproar
• New Graphics
• Add Stats
• Evolution Info
• Attacks Info
• New Mystery Gift
• New Graphics
• Add Stats
• Evolution Info
• Attacks Info
• Setting up Server Code for Mystery Gift
• Updating Mystery Gift on the game
• Updating the Blog Mystery Gift Links
• Add new Pokemon To Trading Center

Creature Universe Starters - Electric, Ground, Mythical Revealed
This week I wanted to show you guys some new creatures that we have made. Please note that while most of Creature Universe will be free. Only the Water, Grass, Fire starters will be available for free. All the other starters will be unlocked with a small fee. I will talk more about this next week. These are the current starter we have for Electric, Ground and Mythical!

WIP Electric Starter line

WIP Ground Starter Line

WIP Mythical Starter Line

Well that is all that I have for this week, as always let me know what you think! Keep checking back to see how I'm doing to release this update.

Weekly Progress 10/16: New Mystery Gift, Story Level, Creature Universe: Pick your side! Light vs Dark!

Want to get the Shiny Starters? Shiny Zorua? Shiny legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!

Welcome back guys and gals! Another week to see the evolution of Sam and Dan games has arrived. Sorry about wait for the blog but better late than never. This week I'm pretty excited about what is coming. We will have a new mystery gift, new story level that will actually have a story to it! (Finally! I know right!) I will finish up the 1v1 changes and a few more things. This week I have to meet with the photographer for my wedding and I have class on Wednesday so instead of packing up the week and then not being able to deliver I'm keeping it short but with meaningful content. So let's get into more detail about this update and then talk a little bit about Creature Universe.

New Mystery Gift
For the first Mystery Gift we made a poll to figure out which Pokemon you guys wanted to have and as we all know Zorua won. This week we will have a new poll! The choices will be: Riolu, Axew, Sandile, or Klink. You will have a couple of days to vote so I have enough time to add it to the game.

New Story Level

We will finally head to Cherrygrove City but all is not well. There is a report that the Legendary Birds have been spotted but they are causing havoc! I'm pretty excited about this level since it develops the story a little more.  

Small Level Cap Increase to 12
Increasing the level cap a bit, note that the new level won't require you to be at level 12 to beat the game will be balanced properly for what level you should be at that point. The level will make use of the effective level mechanic that will temporarily delevel your pokemon on that level but they can still earn experience for their actual level and keep their moves and evolutions. 

Saving your pokemon's position in storage and party
Right now when you move people around in your party or storage that information is not saved when you log back in. This update will now save that position information and hopefully fix the bug that will give your pokemon the wrong moves.

Better Map UI
Making the Map UI look more like the Battle UI and having information like the current time of the game.   

Weekly Progress:

Okay so lets look at the list that I have for this week! Keep checking back as I work on these to see my progress and cheer me on.

Alpha v1.22.1: Released! Evolution Bug Fixes

• Fixed showing the wrong graphic if the pokemon that is following you evolves
• Fixed pokemon evolving not getting saved properly

Alpha v1.22: Released! Have questions about Effective Leveling? Check the FAQ.

• New Story Level -  Panic at Cherrygrove City 
• New Map Cherrygrove City
• Rip Sprites
• Create Map Objects and Hitboxes
• Create Map Layout
• New Characters
• Rip Sprites
• Create Character Object
• Intro
• Movie Scene
• NPC Character Dialog Changes
• Level Layout
• Background
• Spots
• Level Waves
• Set up pokemon
• Pokemon Graphics
• Pokemon Attacks
• Arrangements and timing
• Ending
• Movie Scene
• NPC Character Dialog Changes
• Cherrygrove NPCs
• Cherrygrove Interactive Objects
• Add new pokemon to trading search and request
• Level cap to 12
  
• New Mystery Gift
• Pokemon Graphics
• Pokemon Stats
• New Attacks
• Endure
• Counter
• Force Palm
• New Abilities
• Steadfast
• Inner Focus
• Prankster 
• Add to Pokemon Center Trading Search and Request 
• Change Link and Graphic
• Change Server Code  

Creature Universe: Pick your side! Light vs Dark!

A couple of weeks ago in our development team meeting we talked about how your character can make choices. These choices would have a big impact on the world around you. Would you keep thing in order or would you bring things into chaos? We talked about it a lot and many ideas came out of it. So I want to talk a bit about it. In previous blogs we talked about the Neutral, Light and Dark types. These are creature types but they also represent three sides that you can take in the game. There will be two organizations in the game that are after something and they both go about it in two separate ways. If you mostly only help one of them you will join their side. If you help both out pretty equally you will stay Neutral. Which side you join will also determine a few other things. Some creatures when they reach an evolution might evolve in 3 different directions either neutral, light or dark. It totally depends on how your character is aligned. Also some evolution will only happen if you are really deep into Dark or Light. So some creatures will be out of reach if you don't go fully into one alignment. Keep in mind that if you are Light aligned you can still have Dark creatures. There are only a few exceptions.

Another thing that I wanted to mention is that Light or Dark neither of them are evil. They are both after something and they both have evil people inside of their organizations that you will have to stop. So don't think okay Light = good and Dark = evil.

As you progress with that organization you might even make it to the top and become its leader!

So that is all we have for this week. Keep checking back, subscribe to our twitter, leave us a comment. Let me know what you think!

Weekly Progress 10/1: New Features and Critical Bugs!

Want to get the Shiny legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!

Hola! Another week means another update! Last week we brought in Route 29 to story mode, which meant some really exciting things! Seeing wild pokemon in the map, your first party pokemon following you, capturing new pokemon, and hunting for shinies. But with that brought a new set of features that need to be added and a new set of problems and bugs to fix! That is the nature of games. So let's talk about what is coming this week.

Critical Bugs:
We have a number of what I like to call critical bugs. Bugs that really ruin the experience of the players and should have priority in being fixed. For this update we have 3 of such bugs.

• Saving not working (sometimes) - This one is pretty hard to fix because it sometimes works and it sometimes doesn't. You guys have given me some info that will help track it down. A reliable method to making this bug happen would be appreciated if you guys can come up with one. I have to be able to recreate the bug to solve it.
• Not learning moves - Apparently if more than one pokemon has to learn a move or evolve there are some cases when they don't. This is linked to using faster speeds in battle when this happens.
• Hole in the Route 29 map - There seems to be a gap somewhere in the map that lets the user get inside the forest where they shouldn't be going to. I mean to find this hole and do something fun with it.

Features:
After the critical bugs are dealt with (or after I'm tired of trying to fix them) I'll move into new features that I think are necessary before the game can progress much farther. The way I decide which feature should come next depends on what you can do in the game and how much use it is going to get by you guys. It's all about effort vs reward when choosing what to work on next.

• Trading Center for PTD2 - To me this is a staple of the game and what really supports me to keep developing the game. It will start as a copy of the PTD1 version but I will be improving it over time. You guys have given me a lot of great suggestion to what and how the Trading Center could be improved.
• 1v1 Mode Changes - I'm honestly not sure if this will be a quick change or if it's going to take the whole week. I'll have to make the changes and then rebalance the mode so that it won't be too easy/hard. If you don't know what the changes will be check out last week's blog.
• Mystery Gift - Zorua is ready to go but I have to work things out with the sponsor and make the screen for this to get it out.
• Day and Night - This is an interesting one, adding the Day and Night cycle to story mode. This will mean new pokemon to catch and new npc dialog for different times. I also have to answer some questions like: Will time only move forward in Routes? (Like you can be in a town and time will stand still, when you go in the route it will gradually change to night and back to day again. Then go back into town and it will be what ever time you ended up in but it won't change until you go to the route again.) And the technical aspects of how I will do it. Will I use a tint effect or a movieclip overlay? (Technical speak)
• Held Items - This one is pretty fun too. Probably start with berries. I have this idea that berries can have multiple charges. So they last more than one use with a cooldown between uses. Also leads up to super berries that have unlimited charges.
• Releasing Pokemon - Now that you can capture pokemon you need a way to get rid of them.

I also have some left over items from the last few weeks. So that's what I have this week I hope to cover a lot of it. Keep checking back to see how I'm doing, ask questions, give suggestions, or encourage me. It's up to you!

Weekly Progress:

Alpha v1.19.9: 1v1 Mode Changed! Bug Fixes, Small Changes, Pokemon Center!: Released! 

• Mystery Gift Screen (100%)  - OUT NOW! Get your Zorua!
• PTD 2 Pokemon Center OUT NOW!- Note: Other pages, such as Daily Gift, Inventory, Game Corner will be added/changed later on as the game develops.
• Create Trade Page - You will be able to make up to 3 separate request for your trade. Meaning you can request a Shiny Zorua OR Shiny Rattata OR Shadow Sentret. Also you can specify gender. Each request can have up to 10 pokemon up from 6.
• Your Trade Request Page
• Search Trade - Can now search by Gender and you can view all 3 possible request the other trainer has put up.
• Searching for any gender instead of just Male or Female for both regular search and want search
• 1v1 Mode Changes - Note: The last level might be a little too hard right now, I'll fix it up next week.
•  Defeated target will no longer give out experience
• Evolutions will not be available for unlocking
• Every pokemon will now start at level 5
• You will level up with candies that are given out after beating levels
• When you use a checkpoint you will get the same amount of candies that you would have received if you have beaten all the way up to that point. So you can skip the previous levels and still have a powerful team
• Lowered the cost of some pokemon.
• Made the level with the old Hiker easier.
• Added the Pokemon Center to the Mode Select Screen
• Fixed a bug that is preventing new users from saving their game
• Fixed a percentage problem on Sentret's waves
• Made it so you can play PTD 1 and PTD 2 at the same time

Alpha v1.19.5: Bug Fixes, Small Changes and additions: Released! 

• Fixed a bug that some battles in story mode give you money when they shouldn't 
• Even after you have more than 6 pokemon, the game will put the first 6 on your party in story mode
• Instead of disappearing completely, Sentret that are hiding will now just be faded
• Wave Security
• Prevent users from playing story mode and using the PTD 2 Pokemon Center at the same time to prevent duplication exploits that come when trading is activated.
• Saving Bug - FIXED OMG! It was a stupid server problem, so it should work now!
• Gap in the Route 29 Map - Did something fun with it.
• Added a Police Officer infront of Route 46's entrance
• Randomize the level and distance of the wild pokemon waves to break the uniformity of them
• Pokemon Center  
• Picking which profile to enter - The profile page will now show profile that you have made from PTD 2, including your avatar and version color.
• Side Bar - Integrate PTD 2 info into the side bar.
• Home Page for PTD 2 - Being able to retrieve or release any pokemon to your corresponding profile.
• Adoption Page- This page includes Shiny Starters and Shiny Zorua to start.

Creature Universe TD
Last week's CU meeting that I had with the team was really short. We updated each other on what we were doing and called it a night. The game is progressing but I don't have a lot to share with you guys this week. Next week I hope to bring you guys some new creature designs and info.

That's all we have for you this week. Keep checking back to see how I'm doing, and as always, let me know what you think!

Weekly Progress 9/25: New Stuff! Starting locations for Creature Universe!

Want to get the Shiny legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!

Greetings! Welcome to another amazing week of Sam and Dan games! Last week we almost completed our goal of releasing both a 1v1 level and a story level but we didn't quite make it. I did release it yesterday night which is pretty close I guess. This week again we will attempt to do a Story levels among other things! We love to give you guys content and we love making it. We will also talk a little bit about the starting towns/cities/villages for the first 3 starters in Creature Universe TD. Sound good? Great! Let's get to it.

New Story Level
This week we will finally get out of New Bark Town and into Route 29! You might have noticed that once you defeat a battle you aren't able to repeat this battle over and over like you could on PTD1. Well on Route 29 you will be able to repeat battles, catch new pokemon, hunt for shinys! I'm looking forward to making this and finally be able to see pokemon walking around in the wild instead of just having random battles. You will also get your PokePad which will act as a pokedex, a computer and it will also heal your pokemon between battles. Along with this I'll be working on getting your first party pokemon to walk behind you. If I have time I'll be adding the first Mystery Gift and the Trading Center for PTD2. Lots to do!

Look! 1v1 is evolving!
I've decided to make some big changes to 1v1, remove a lot of the grinding and focus more on strategy and choices. This requires some shifts on how things work. I'm still thinking about it so not everything is finalized yet. But here are some of the things that will change:

• There will be no more experience gained from defeating the enemy.
• You will level up by using rare candies that are given out by beating levels.
• When you use a checkpoint you will get the same amount of candies that you would have received if you have beaten all the way up to that point. So you can skip the previous levels and still have a powerful team.
• Every pokemon will now start at level 5 and evolutions will not be available for unlocking.

I'm still figuring out what exactly I will do with the coins, but I have a few days to think about it. My main goal is to make it so it doesn't feel like you need to grind for the coins to be able to beat a level. 

So that is a little preview of what we have coming for you this week. Check out the weekly progress below to see how I'm doing during the week. I also added a new "My Status" which will tell you if I'm currently working or not.

Weekly Progress:

Alpha v1.191 - Bug Fix: Released!

• Fixed a bug with the pokeballs not showing up unless you saved and reloaded the profile after receiving them from Prof. Elm (100%)

Alpha v1.19 - Route 29, PokePad, Bug Fixes: Released! Yes, Shiny Pokemon can show up in the actual battles in Route 29 but not in the map itself.

• Fixed some NPC typos
• Slightly Decreased the HP boost on your rival's starter
• Made the pokemon in your first party slot follow you in the map - Fun stuff but you won't be able to talk to it like in the other games.
• Fixed Map Issue in Elm's Lab on Story Mode
• Fixed Issue with Speed resetting between waves in Story Mode
• Made Story level music stop playing when you leave story mode
• New Story Level - Route 29
• Level Intro
• Before you get the PokePad
• After you get the PokePad
• Implement PokePad
• New Map
• Battle Layout
• Swarm Layout - Normal Tower defense fight
• Single Layout - 1v1 style fight
• Battle Waves - Both 1v1 and normal version for each pokemon
• Pidgey
• Rattata
• Sentret
• Pokemon Map Behavior - how the pokemon will behave in the map
• Pidgey
• Rattata
• Sentret
• Level Ending
• Added a Spawning System - This will control how many and where each pokemon spawn in a route. 
• Saving Extra Info for Pokemon
• Show Shiny Popup and slow down speed when a shiny shows up
• After closing a popup window the previous screen will now properly get back focus - When learning a new move or evolving the screen would lose focus when coming back. Not allowing you to use the keyboard shortcuts. This is now fixed.

Creature Universe Starting Locations!
 Like I've mentioned before each starting creature will have it's own starting location instead of have all 3 available in one town. What this means is that we can really do something special for the starting locations. Giving each of them their own unique style and appearance. For Creature Universe we really wanted to do something different. Instead of realistic towns that are... well kinda boring. We really wanted to do something interesting for each town. Below I will show you some sketches that our artist made to create the mood of each starting location. Keep in mind that these are concept sketches they don't represent the final look of the locations. Also some of these are there to strictly show an idea and not intended to look amazing. Keep that in mind!

First is the grass starter zone. The grass starter is the chameleon, they mostly live on trees so why not make the town live on top of trees. Not shown in the concept is the flooding that occurs during the rainy season which is the reason they build higher up and the water that is under the trees.

Work In Progress Concept of the Grass Starting zone

Then we have the fire starter zone. This place is more industrial, more gritty, it's a mining town. The fire starter zone will have a lush reservation area that the creatures live in that will be very contrasting with the rest of the zone. The fire koala family helps with refining the metals and treasures found in the mines. They also help create the steam that gives power to the town. I don't have a picture as the one I had didn't really show off the town it self but a mining cave.

Lastly the water starter zone. This place is more outdoors in a place surrounded by mountains. Not shown in the concept is a zone that is dried up due to recent droughts. This zone will be divided between a rich part and a poor part. The water buffalo need water to use water so even with them around they don't completely solve the drought problem as they can only use water in their supply to defend themselves and keep themselves hydrated while doing work like pushing carts and what not.

Work In Progress Concept of the Water Starter Zone

So there you have it! Three different concepts for the starting locations. Remember these were just for ideas and should give you a little sense of what each location will be like.

That is all we have for you this week. As always let us know what you think!

Weekly Short and Sweet Update

Want to get the Shiny legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!


I'm feeling a bit sick so I will make this short and sweet.

Zorua won the poll!

I'm still working on PTD 2!

Still don't have a date for it to come out yet (good things take time to create)

Next week I will have a non-gaming announcement to make.

Thanks for all the support, let me know what you think!

HTD

I'll just add a small update on HTD here. There's not much to report other than we're continuing to make progress on the graphics front. Sam needed to postpone working on the new graphics system in order to take care of personal matters. I'll be making a more in-depth post for HTD at some point this coming week. Have a good weekend everyone!

-Dan

Weekly Progress: Working, PTD 2 improvements, small games, pick your first Mystery Gift!

Want to get the Shiny legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!


Working
Work, work, work! That is what we are all about right now here at Sam and Dan Games. Let us look at what everybody is working on!

First the artist, since all the graphics in Pokemon Tower Defense are taken from the actual games we don't really need artist for PTD2, I mean admit it you love my attack graphics! So all of them are working on Hero Tower Defense. Kevin, our first artist, made a great blog post about what the artist have been making this past month. Check it out here. Not in the blog is the work that Joel has done. Joel while working on the PTD Fan film and his other projects was able to complete some weapon designs and a weapon model. Dan will also be lending his hand at helping with the 3D models.

Second the programmers. Yes there is more than one! I've been talking to him for a long time now about joining us and now he is finally ready. I would like to welcome Jonathan to the team. He will be helping with the programming starting off with some new game prototypes that I will talk about down below. I'm also a programmer, I'm working on HTD, PTD2, and also some prototypes.

Lastly the designers. Dan as you might know is in charge of designing and managing HTD, with feedback from the team. He is also in charge of the HTD blog post and answering SnD Coin orders. I'm in charge of PTD, PTD 2, and the weekly progress blog. Dan and I work together to figure out what we should focus on and which paths should we take as a company.

PTD 2 Improvements
Believe it or not I can't just copy and paste all the code from PTD to PTD 2! A lot of it needs to be refined and some critical parts drastically changed. This is why it has taken so long for the 1v1 mode to come out. I'm here to tell you about some of the improvements that I have been able to make to PTD that I hope you will enjoy. So here we go.

1. You can now swap tower positions by dropping a tower in the other tower's spot.
2. Attack's cooldown won't reset if you change the move, return the pokemon or move a tower from its spot.
3. Damage text will now be white and have a dark background behind it to make it easier to read the text. Also all types of damage will have the same color. Super effective damage will be larger, and ineffective damage will be smaller font. Also critical damage will show up as slightly bigger and in a yellow color. So that its easier to see when you get a critical hit or when somebody critically hits you.
4. When you change the size of the map it will now center itself. (See HTD's map)
5. You can't drag the map so that it will be off screen. (See HTD's map)
6. Many other improvements to the level code.

When you play PTD2 you will notice a bunch of small changes to almost every area in the game. I hope you guys will enjoy them when the time comes. (I'm still working on it!)

Small Games
So last week I talked about small games. Not sure if I mentioned it before but Dan and I are about big complex ideas. We like games with a lot of depth. I tend to go for the more easy to pick up and hard to master, and he tend to go for the hardcore from the start games. A good example would be my love for the Super Smash Bros series and Dan's love for the Street Fighter series. The problem is we don't have the money to make the big complex games, and even something of medium size (like HTD) will take us a good long while to make. So it is with this in mind that we want to produce some smaller but fun games for you guys to play. Three prototypes we are looking at are: A beat em up game designed by Kevin. A barrel jumping game (like the original donkey kong) inspired by the a concept from Joel. A simple RPG designed by me inspired by the 3DS RPG Find Mii. These will be fun games that will be connected in an interesting way that I'm not ready to reveal at this time.

Pick your first Mystery Gift!
So the 5th Generation of pokemon won for the first poll and you guys gave a lot of great comment as to who you wanted from different generations. I gathered up all the names and I picked the top 3 plus I added my own suggestion (Sandile) to the poll. Make your pick!

That's all I have for you this week, thanks for the support and as always let me know what you think!

Weekly Progress: PTD 2, E3, small games vs big games!

Want to get the Shiny legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Click here for more info.

Visit the PTD: Pokemon Center - a place to trade pokemon, get your Daily Code, adopt Pokemon, view your items and change your avatar!


Welcome all! Let's get right to it. If you are very into games then this week was a special treat for you. E3 is going on right now! Giving you a look at all the great new games and systems coming out this year and early next year.

E3
I saw all the conferences from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo and all I have to say that while I wasn't blown away by anything I felt like there was still a lot of solid games shown. What was your favorite thing at e3?

It might be surprising but I actually don't play a lot of video games. I tend to buy the really good ones but I never finish them. I like to get a taste of what the game is like but once I get the taste my drive to finish them goes away. I do find time to finish them eventually but rarely does a game suck me in from start to finish. Some of the games that I recently bought are: Diablo 3, Startcraft 2, Skyrim, Zelda: Skyward Sword, Xenoblade Chronicles. I did finish Zelda, played about 20 hours of Xenoblade and I'm in Act 2 of Diablo 3 (normal difficulty) but Startcraft and Skyrim I have barely played.

Most of my time is dedicated to spending time with the loved ones and making games, blog post, answering emails for you guys! Oh and going to university... So lets talk about what I've been working on!

PTD 2
For PTD2 I wasn't able to get the 1v1 mode finished... :( that's my face! It was actually a bigger task that I had anticipated since there is a lot of changes to the base of the game but I am working on it. I still don't have a solid date for you guys so just hang in there while I put forth my best effort. If I had to guess I would say 2 more weeks. But.. sometimes obstacles are hard to predict so I can't promise you anything.

Some good news is that I've decided that every Mystery Gift pokemon for PTD 2 will be a pokemon that will not be included in PTD or PTD 2 for regular capture. Making the mystery gifts very rare for those of you who are following our progress. So I added a poll for you guys to first decide which generation should the first mystery gift pokemon be from? (Note that future mystery gift can and will be from different generations 3-5) Also in the comments tell me which pokemon and why he should be the first mystery gift!

Small games vs Big games
So besides being the head programmer for HTD, sole developer for PTD and PTD 2, it's also my job to always be thinking about what direction Sam and Dan games should go into. When you think about a path to go into you are also saying that you don't want to follow the paths that you didn't choose. Sometimes choosing to make one game over another game you have to give up or put on hold something else. Life if pretty much about these difficult choices. One of the choices that Dan and I have been thinking about is about the scope of our games. As you know, we are a pretty small team right now. We have about 6 artist but most of them are freelance and they can't put in the same amount of time into working on games. So this impacts the size of our games. So the thought is that instead of thinking of big, huge games that require a lot of human resources (that we can't afford) we would try to think of simple yet deep games that don't require a lot of resources and that our current resources can handle a lot easier. What does this mean for HTD and PTD 2? Nothing! Those game while still pretty big are something that we can manage. Especially PTD 2 since all the graphics are essentially done (since they are taken from the games), HTD will still take its time being made but we have other things in mind that will help us generate resources to make future games for you.

Sadly there is one game that will be put on hold.. Creature Online Universe (aka ANPO) will be put on hold pretty much indefinitely. While this is a game that I very much still want to create, it is currently out of our reach, resource wise. We wish we could drop everything and work on this but we also have bills to pay and food to buy... But there is a bright side!

Because ANPO will be put on hold we will be free to think about smaller projects for you guys to play. Smaller projects means we can get them done sooner which means you get to play them sooner! While working on HTD and PTD 2 we are also working on very small prototypes and pitches for some smaller games. I can't wait to bring them out and show them to you guys soon!

As always let me know what you think! Your opinions and feedback are greatly appreciated and affect the direction that we go in! Thanks again!