Weekly Progress, our growth and answering fans, what's the deal with shinies and v4.8.1 official release

Want to get the legendary dogs? Shiny Mew? or any other shiny pokemon in the game? Adopt them today using SnD coins! Purchase some SnD coins and get Ninja-ja bonus items free! 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!

What's new in v4.8.1

Pokemon Fan Film Part 2 - Check it out if you haven't! Short by Joel Otero (My brother :D ) - Check out part 2 of the PTD Fan Film!

New Story Level - Route 12 - Relax by the pier, train and catch some water pokemon.
New Pokemon to capture - Lapras!
Level cap up to 64
Added more features to the chat to prevent spamming

• Added names being in a blue color to prevent users from impersonating other people.
• Satoshi users will now have name Satoshi1, Satoshi2... etc.
• It is now possible to ignore somebody by typing in /ignore nickname (Replace nickname with the users nickname)

New TM - Ice Beam

Made the Waterfall attack animation quicker
Made Waterfall attack show the correct attack type (not effective, super effective or normal
Fixed Zap Cannon doing Shadow Ball instead of Zap Cannon
Make Destiny Bond and moves like that only work on pokemon that are at lower level than you
Fixed Onix learning Double-Edge twice and not learning Stone-Edge
Made both Nidorans have a unique name ingame (Nidoran F and Nidoran M)
It is no longer possible to put pokemon in type specific spots if they don't match the type
Added the attack power to the attack description of Snore

Where can I play?

• Play here on the blog by clicking on the "Play PTD!" tab.
• Download the EXE, SWF or APK by clicking on the "Game Downloads Link" tab.
• PlayTowerDefenseGame
• FreeWorldGroup
• Gamerfish
• OneMoreLevel
• NewGrounds
• MiniJuegos

Welcome to another week of Sam and Dan Games! Woooooo! Let's get started, yeahhh! Okay.. enough of that... So I was looking back at the first folder I made to start working on PTD and it's been over a year since I first started coding this game. The year anniversary release of the game is coming up in March and it's just incredible how far we have come in less than a year. I went from being able to answer every single comment, every single email and single twitter to barely being able to do so. I really wish I could but the amount that comes in everyday is just impossible. I'm not complaining I'm ecstatic knowing how big we are and how big we are going to become but I'm also kinda sad that I'm not able to keep up with the closeness that I had before. I'm still really open to all suggestions and I try to answer those that can't my eye or that offer something that hasn't been brought up before. So if you have tried to get in touch with me before and never got a response I'm really sorry about that, if it is really important then send me a new email and I will try to answer it.

Speaking of fan emails, an email I get a lot is "Hey I had like 20 Enteis and 10 Mews but I lost them in a recent patch" then I usually ask did you get it in a trade or did you buy it. Now let's stop for a second and look at why I ask that. The reason I ask that is SCAMMING! Not you getting scammed, but somebody scamming me. There is no possible way I can tell that you actually had that. It's even possible somebody let you borrow it so you could take a screenshot. The only possible way I know that you had it is if you bought it cause I can see the receipt. Most of the time if this happened to you I'm sorry to say that I can't return it to you.

Okay next let's talk about shinies! Taking them out of the game is something that I know everybody will not feel comfortable with. The fact of the matter is that shinies isn't supposed to be something that everybody has. Heck in the original games you barely saw them, I've played a lot of pokemon and have only seen like 2 shinies. You might ask well what about the mystery gift shiny pokemon? Well I try to say this often but I'm really appreciative and thankful for all the fans that visit us week after week, and I always like rewarding you guys for sticking with me. Mystery Gift is a way to reward players that keep coming back. Then you might ask well what about adoption? You just want money! You are being greedy! You only care about paying users! (Now I know most of you don't feel this way but I want to show you the extreme version.) The SnD coins is a way for you to contribute to us to help us make better games for you. But instead of just donating you are getting something in return, something that is not exclusive. But you might say well all the adoption shiny pokemon are exclusive right now! To that I say... well you are right. So my main priority this week is getting the "new" way of getting shinies up and running.

 Okay so you might still be confused, shinies were hard to find, they had a low chance of showing up why take them away just to make a new way of getting them? what's the point? Well this kinda goes into the next thing I want to talk about and that is HACKING! Listen I know some of you out there use speed hacks, money hacks, and previously shiny hacks. I know it's pretty impossible to stop a lot of these but shiny hacks I just won't stand for them. There are players out there supporting me with their hard earned money and I just can't allow players to get the same thing just but running a program that let's them hack. I'm always going to try my best to try to stop this. That is why I had to take shinies out of the wild. Okay I know this is a long post but we haven't had one in a while so let's keep going! I'm going to talk about the new method of getting shinies.

UPDATE: Because of a large amount of the player base (about 40%) didn't really like the Shiny hunt idea I have decided to put it on hold, shiny pokemon will return to the wild but in a more secure way, in the future I will add something like the shiny hunt to give players an additional way of hunting shinies but for now it will have to wait. Thank you all for your feedback and support!

Sam

Okay I'm calling it... *drumroll*... SHINY HUNT!! Okay so now for the explanation. First is location, location, location. The shiny hunt will only take place in one location per week and everybody will be in the same location. For example the first week might be on Route 1, from there I will post a poll with some options on where to go next and we will go where you guys decide. So week by week you guys get to decide where you want the hunt to take place. So obviously the location will dictate who you can hunt. Using Route 1 as an example you will have a chance of getting shiny pidgey or shiny rattata. Right so let's talk about the "hunting" aspect of this. The hunting aspect is similar to something like the daily code. You come in see if you got lucky and receive your prize. But there are major differences. One is I'm adding a new thingy for the pokemon center that will let you pick a "team". You pick 6 pokemon that will be your current team. In the future you will be able to have your first pokemon in the team follow you in the avatar chat. But talking about shinies this team will show up with you when you shiny hunt. Your avatar will also be there. Having certain avatars and certain team combination will raise your chance of getting the shiny for that location. There won't be any clues and once the information is spread on what combination works I will change the combination. So to summarize:

• Everybody has the same shiny hunt location every week.
• There will be  weekly poll about where to go next.
• You pick a team of 6 pokemon that you own to be your designated "team".
• You go to the shiny hunt section of the pokemon center and see if you found a shiny.
• You do this once a day (like the daily code).
• Picking certain combinations can raise your chance at getting the shiny.
• If a shiny shows up it will be placed in your pickup spot on the pokemon center instantly.

Also the dogs will also be available to be found on every location that you can hunt in so keep that in mind.

Okay so that's how it's going to be, no more grinding out your shinies and never getting them now you try different combinations of teams and avatars and see if you strike gold. If you find a combination that works well shhhh don't tell anybody or I will change it ;)

On a side note, not sure if you noticed but I added two new tabs to the blog. One is the HTD Tuesdays! tab and it just contains links to the past blog post about HTD in an easy to find way. The other one is the Labs tab and that one contains any ideas that we come up with but aren't officially working on yet. Let me know what you think of them.

Because this blog isn't long enough yet here are this week's questions!

Weekly Questions from the Forums!

1.matepokemon11: Hey, can you add a music option to change music, because i am getting bored of listening to the same music. And since you've added tons of music to the game, could you please make an option to change the music after each song has finished?
Sam: I wouldn't mind doing this but it really isn't a high priority, there is so much to do still. Good idea though.


2. Ninjaoety: As a game developer, do you work on your games 24/7, or do you have alot of spare time?  You do finish releases for PTD quite fast in my opinion, so you must be working alot on them.
Sam: I don't have a set schedule, but it feels like I'm working all the time, I do take some time off in the weekends after the update is out to relax but during the week I work on the blog, answering twitter, emails, and the update constantly.

3. Robert Conley: Would you consider making a level builder so that anyone, including those w/ little to no coding knowledge, could make custom levels that others can play?
Sam: This would also be cool, but like the sound thing it's not really a high priority yet.

4. Ninja God: Can you make Avatars tradeable? I know some, like the dogs, are easily obtained by everyone, but I would like to be able to trade for both the mystery gift ones and the new Halloween ones that I'm missing.
Sam: Yes, I'm heavily considering this especially since some people have been getting duplicates, it would be cool if you could trade to complete the set.

5. KimmyLube: When are you putting me in PTD? LAWL JK JK SAM <3 But in all seriousness, when HTD comes out, how is armor going to work? Will it be something interchangeable in classes, or just one set outfit?
Sam: Sure send me a some sprites of yourself. We want pretty much everybody to wear everything. If you want to be a mage with plater armor go ahead. You will sacrifice some stats since plate armor will feature more strength but you will be more durable.

6. Ume/MMaester: Could you please stop raising the level?  Why do you want us to be so strong before we even get to the supposedly hard gyms? i figure we will be able to beat the next gym in one try at this rate. thats how easy PokéTower was. You could make it, so you will only be able to level up until a certain level if you haven't gotten a certain badge yet. Like in the games Pokémon would not obey you if you didn't have a certain badge. For example, until you win the Cascade badge, the limit is 30. And until you win the Rainbow badge, the limit is 50, etc.
Sam: The reason I raise the cap is to give you guys something to do, plus some people get stuck in the game and out leveling a level is the easiest way out.

7. Ume: When are you gonna be more active in the forums? We are official...aren't we? >insert puppydogface here<
Sam: I really want to be more active but like I talked about earlier in the blog it's really hard to find time to do that.

8. Ume: Oh, I also want your opinion on this.. Who do you think is the best Pokémon between Rhydon, Scyther, Gengar and Lickitung?
Sam: Gengar > Scyther > Rhydon > Lickitung.

9. JohtoTrainer: Will we eventually get to play mini-games for casino coins?
Sam: It sounds like something that would be pretty cool but it falls into that priority list issue.

10. Link: Do you realistically think HTD will be even a bigger hit than PTD, or do you think that when both are finished, PTD will still be bigger?
Sam: I think HTD has the potential to be bigger just because more websites will be able to talk about it and I will be able to put it on more devices (Ipad, iphone, android etc). So I think it has potential to be bigger but it's up to us to execute the idea properly. PTD is already big so we will see.

If you want your question to show up on next week's blog go to our forum now (look at the fan links tab up top) and submit your question.

Okay so finally let's talk about this week.

Added shinies back in the wild (100%)
Going back and making the game less grindy for new players (100%) -  Each level has bonus exp for pokemon under a certain level. If you pokemon training on that level is under the bonus cap then he will receive twice the experience.
New Story Level (100%) - Arrival at Saffron City

• Level Intro (100%)
• Level Layout (100%)
• Level Waves (100%)
• Level Ending (100%)

New Mystery Gift (100%) - New Avatar - Thanks Kimmy Lube! <3

• Avatar Art (100%)
• Implemented in Game (100%)
• Implemented in Avatar Chat (100%) v1.4 is now out!
• Implement in Pokemon Center (100%)
• Set up Mystery Gift Code (100%) - Coming on Monday!

Added Zoom In and Out (100%) 
You can now choose from the speed options independently instead of having to cycle them (100%) 
Fixed Thunder missing when it's raining (100%)
Fixed Solarbeam graphic when the speed is not x1 (100%)
Fixed Doubleslap not being removed from the target in certain occations (100%)
Added an Opening Song to the game (100%)
Allow players to change their email and/or password in the pokemon center (0%) - You will have to supply your own email and password in order to change them to prevent hackers from changing it.
Adding pokemon attacks to the trading center pokemon (0%) - Thanks Nssvelocity!
Silver Wing is missing buffs (0%)

That's what we have so far, as always let me know what you think, and keep coming back during the week to see how my progress on the update is going. As I work/finish parts I will update the blog.

Have a good week and Hero Tower Defense Tuesday is tomorrow so look forward to that!