KCMcG Studios

I’ve got a working tower data importer for this game. Upgrades are also working and I managed to fix some bugs. Here’s what the game looks like right now.

My tower data is stored in a csv now. CSV stands for comma-separated values. It’s a simple spreadsheet format that gets stored as a text file, which makes it really easy to read. Writing the code to read the file wasn’t hard at all, though I did have some weird issues with Excel. For some reason, the first time I save a file as a csv, Excel saved it as tab-delimited instead of comma-delimited, so it didn’t work at first. Once I updated the csv manually, it worked perfectly. Here’s a sample of my data csv:

3,levels,bulletType
Standard,4,0
fireRate,damage,range,cost,image
1000,0,0,0,StdTowerSprite
15,10,50,100,StdTowerSprite
12,13,60,200,StdTowerSprite
10,20,70,400,StdTowerSprite

So, to explain how I set it up: The first value is the number of towers available. The second and third were just headers for the data below it so I could keep track. The second line is the name of the first tower, followed by the number of levels and the type of bullet it produces. The next row is just headers again so I could actually read the csv without confusing myself. The next 4 rows are the actual data for each level of tower. I include fire rate, which is actually the cooldown between shots, damage, range and cost. Last is the image to use for that level, so that I can change the tower’s appearance as the tower levels up.

And now the code to read the file:

var rawStatsString:String = new TowerStatsCsv;
var currentRow:int = 0;

var rawStatsArray:Array = rawStatsString.split("n");
var rawHeaderArray:Array = rawStatsArray[0].split(",");

for (i = 0; i < rawHeaderArray[0]; i++) {
    currentRow++;
    currentHeaderArray = rawStatsArray[currentRow].split(",");
    currentRow++;
    towerStats.push(new Array());
    towerStats[i]['bulletType'] = currentHeaderArray[2];
    towerStats[i]['name'] = currentHeaderArray[0];

    for (j = 0; j < currentHeaderArray[1]; j++) {
        currentRow++;
        currentRowArray = rawStatsArray[currentRow].split(",");

        towerStats[i][j] = new Array();
        towerStats[i][j]['damage'] = currentRowArray[damageCol];
        towerStats[i][j]['fireRate'] = currentRowArray[fireRateCol];
        towerStats[i][j]['range'] = currentRowArray[rangeCol];
        towerStats[i][j]['cost'] = currentRowArray[costCol];
        towerStats[i][j]['image'] = currentRowArray[imageCol];
    }
}

Most of this is pretty self-explanatory. First I read the contents of the csv into a string. .split(“n”) splits the string into an array of rows. .split(“,”) gives me an array containing each of the “cell” values of that row.

I’m struggling with what to work on next. I’m definitely thinking I want to get a functional main menu with level select and a save system to track level progress. Definitely thinking about adding some sound back in to the game, but not sure if I want placeholder stuff again, or something that could actually be used for the final game. I’m not sure if I want to add some abilities for the player to use during the game to give the player something else to do. Also considering adding a couple different enemy types and maybe one additional tower type. Any feedback on what I should add next?