Castle Extended Notes

Castle Extended Notes.txt

https://youtu.be/RopuRIehV8s Patashu - [BYOND] Castle - Very Hard, 1 Player - All Clear

Castle, a Tower Defense game created in BYOND by Abra (and later remade and open sourced by Rushnut) can be played here: https://www.byond.com/games/Rushnut/Castle

And its source code is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xysrmcdrvdvwy4n/Castle_src.zip?dl=0

This is *the* tower defense game of my childhood, and being popular in a time before youtube was popular, it seems to have escaped without any video documentation of a completion. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get the original Abra version to install (I couldn't get Gold Guardians or SpaceCastle to run either - if any BYOND experts know if it's possible to play these games in 2022, let me know!). As far as I can tell, the experience I'm getting is faithful, with the following caveats:

* Netting Bosses? - I recall in the Abra version you couldn't net certain large monsters, and it does seem to nullify them as a threat. The Rushnut remake has a flag nettable = 1 which is not unset by anything, so it's like the feature was considered but then never implemented. Anyway, in this run I choose to net everything, because the game is hard enough as is.

* Projectiles? - I don't know if it's a BYOND bug or just left out of the Rushnut remake, but projectiles homing towards enemies (and Grey Demon's projectiles aimed towards your units) don't render. Just use your imagination, sorry.

* Upkeep? - While there's no visible upkeep meter in this version I could find, the game DOES track it. I run into my 60 upkeep limit in wave 30+.

* Runtime Errors? - You can see various runtime errors, but they don't seem to alter the gameplay experience. In particular, an ice sorceress hitting an enemy at the gates (because it tries to make it reset its next move, but there is no 'next move'), clicking on a gorilla (because it tries to divide by zero to render the health bar) (not shown in this run), and maybe some other things.

* Other Bugs? - I noticed a bug where the ice wyrm becomes immune to TNT, and a bug where the giant spider can eat traps. But it's possible it always worked like this. I wish I could check.

Everything else is as (un)fair as I remember it, though there may be other tiny differences.

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Difficulty choice: Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard and Insane multiply damage dealt to enemies by 1.75, 1.25, 0.95, 0.8 and 0.65 respectively. (Some sources, notably poison and TNT, are not effected by this.) In addition, Easy, Medium and Hard end at waves 10, 20 and 30 respectively, so I must play on Very Hard or higher to see all content. An Insane win would be, well, insane, but might be possible somehow?

A rudimentary strategy guide is available here: http://web.archive.org/web/20100129085450/http://www.avalonentertainments.com/Guide It lists what's in each wave, which in practice is useful enough to remind yourself of what you need when.

The macros I set up for this game are:

z - .click netter
x - .click cancel
g - .click go
s - .click sell
q - .click boulder

(To set up macros, right click the orange 'byond' symbol in the top left corner.)

Notes on individual mechanics:

Nets: Trying to net a netted unit does nothing (doesn't waste a net) and if you click on a tile with multiple units, all netted units are ignored. So spam to your hearts content. Also, it *feels* like you have to click on the icon (not the floor behind it) AND where BYOND thinks it is, so precision is important. I select the 2nd netter before starting a wave, then use my 'z' macro to swap to the 1st netter, to make micro easier. Nets refresh to Hunter Level*2 every wave, but only when you click on the netter. I think this implies a 'pre-net' mechanic where you start a wave with a netter selected, use all its nets, then click on it to get the new wave's nets, but I never needed *that* many nets do I didn't test it.

Earthquakes: You can click on an Earth Elemental for an Earthquake. Earthquakes refresh every wave, so you can 'pre-earthquake' while starting the wave to get extra quakes.

Projectile damage: Is slightly randomized. Each run will go slightly different!

Targeting: Allies and enemies aim for the closest unit by king move distance, ties broken by closest to bottom left.

Multi-player: With more players, waves become longer, bosses have more HP, the players get more money and their upkeep is spread out, encouraging different players to upgrade different unit types and multi-task. It's a totally different experience, and I wish I could show it off too.

Wave 5: Surprisingly hard on Very Hard. I misclicked due to nerves and upgraded magic instead of getting my blowgunner/more archers first.

Wave 7: Because targeting prioritizes closest to bottom left, I need an archer on the far right to kill goblin captains at the gates.

Wave 9: Also surprisingly hard. My netting strategy is making sure all units can shoot at all times. There's probably a way to do it with just two netters.

Wave 10: Feed the grey demon two archers when he dies instead of more expensive units.

Wave 12: Scarabs have incredible armour but low hp, so poison them to easily kill them.

Wave 14: The number of harpies that spawn in this wave is random. I got a high roll here for more gold. Harpies shoot at your units if they travel too far, so net them early.

Wave 20: The giant spider jumps over specific parts of the map and eats all units in its way (including traps in this version - might be a bug?), but since I net it aggressively I don't have to memorize where.

Wave 21: Skeleton archers shoot your units like harpies, so make sure they die.

Wave 26: The hardest wave in the game. Necromancers are fast, tanky and will summon undead (including mummy captains and skeleton archers) as they travel, so if you fail to keep them netted everything spirals out of control. They're also magic and TNT immune, so must be killed with dragon slayers. My entire strategy has been optimized to make this wave as likely as possible to succeed.

Wave 30: Each wyrm is weak to just one thing. Interestingly, I run into a bug (I think?) where the ice wyrm gets too low in hp to be killable by tnt. Thankfully, I can finish it off with a catapult. The lightning chimera blows up parts of the map, rendering them unusable, but again I net it so I don't have to memorize where and when.

Wave 31: The Time Wizard's gimmick is that only one unit type can kill it at a time, and each message tells you which one it is. This was my first try so I misremembered some of the hints, but got it in the end.

Loop 2: The game repeats, but it isn't nearly harder by enough to overcome the absurd advantage you get from all your gold. Enjoy a victory lap before going and doing something else.

0:00 Start
0:19 Wave 1
1:27 Wave 2
2:52 Wave 3
3:57 Wave 4
5:24 Wave 5
7:36 Wave 6
8:25 Wave 7
10:42 Wave 8
11:44 Wave 9
14:23 Wave 10
17:02 Wave 11
18:08 Wave 12
19:09 Wave 13
20:58 Wave 14
21:30 Wave 15
22:48 Wave 16
24:03 Wave 17
24:31 Wave 18
25:21 Wave 19
26:24 Wave 20
28:12 Wave 21
29:25 Wave 22
30:56 Wave 23
31:27 Wave 24
35:13 Wave 25
36:38 Wave 26
38:41 Wave 27
39:43 Wave 28
41:34 Wave 29
42:59 Fire Serpent
44:39 Earth Dragon
46:19 Ice Wyrm
47:59 Lightning Chimera
54:35 Time Wizard
1:02:20 Loop 2