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kottke.org posts about Desktop Tower Defense

Tower defense game for the iPhone

If I am to maintain my current levels of productivity and balance in my life, I do not need a tower defense game on my iPhone. But if I *were* to bring such a thing into my life, Fieldrunners looks like a good candidate. I can’t wait until playing video games falls under the rubric of parenting. (Just kidding, Meg.)

Also, after a long period with no activity, Desktop Tower Defense is set to be updated soon (hopefully):

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!

But they have a lot of other games under development so I’m not holding my breath.

Update: DTD 1.9 is available here. (thx, christopher & jason)


Whiteboard Tower Defense

Fans of Desktop Tower Defense, if you’re tired of the same old boards and enemies, check out Whiteboard Tower Defense. Can you feel that? The afternoon slipping away? (via buzzfeed)


For those that don’t like the new

For those that don’t like the new version of Desktop TD, you can go back in time to play version 1.2 and version 1.0.


BREAKING NEWS!!! The newest version of Desktop

BREAKING NEWS!!! The newest version of Desktop Tower Defense is out. My afternoon (and yours) is shot.

Update: New features include new Fun modes (Trickle- 1 creep per second, Random creeps), new Challenge mode (15 towers max). I’m on the scene, more as I have it.

Update: One new tower: ink tower, which has a minimum and maximum range and one new creep, a dark creep which I don’t yet know how to kill (it seems to repel a lot of different attacks). My initial impression is that a lot of the changes make the game more complex but not necessarily more fun to play. Much more research is clearly warranted.

Update: It’s also got in-game advertising…the little “K”s on some of the creeps refer to kongregate.com, a sponsor of the game. Blech. (Or maybe it’s good that you can shoot advertisements?)


Tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal has a story

Tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal has a story about Paul Preece, creator of the mega-addictive Desktop TD. Version 1.5 of the game is launching sometime this week.


The guy behind Desktop TD and the

The guy behind Desktop TD and the guy behind Flash Element TD have quit their jobs and teamed up to form a small games company…here’s the blog they’re writing while they get things together. Includes a sneak peek at the new towers for version 1.5 for DTD.


Last 100 posts, part 7

It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these. Here are some updates on some of the topics, links, ideas, posts, people, etc. that have appeared on kottke.org recently:

Two counterexamples to the assertion that cities != organisms or ecosystems: cancer and coral reefs. (thx, neville and david)

In pointing to the story about Ken Thompson’s C compiler back door, I forgot to note that the backdoor was theoretical, not real. But it could have easily been implemented, which was Thompson’s whole point. A transcript of his original talk is available on the ACM web site. (thx, eric)

ChangeThis has a “manifesto” by Nassim Taleb about his black swan idea. But reader Jean-Paul says that Taleb’s idea is not that new or unique. In particular, he mentions Alain Badiou’s Being and Event, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze. (thx, paul & jean-paul)

When I linked The Onion’s ‘Most E-Mailed’ List Tearing New York Times’ Newsroom Apart, I said “I’d rather read a real article on the effect the most popular lists have on the decisions made by the editorial staff at the Times, the New Yorker, and other such publications”. American Journalism Review published one such story last summer, as did the Chicago Tribune’s Hypertext blog and the LA Times (abstract only). (thx, gene & adam)

Related to Kate Spicer’s attempt to slim down to a size zero in 6 weeks: Female Body Shape in the 20th Century. (thx, energy fiend)

Got the following query from a reader:

are those twitter updates on your blog updated automatically when you update your twitter? if so, how did you do it?

A couple of weeks ago, I added my Twitter updates and recent music (via last.fm) into the front page flow (they’re not in the RSS feed, for now). Check out the front page and scroll down a bit if you want to check them out. The Twitter post is updated three times a week (MWF) and includes my previous four Twitter posts. I use cron to grab the RSS file from Twitter, some PHP to get the recent posts, and some more PHP to stick it into the flow. The last.fm post works much the same way, although it’s only updated once a week and needs a splash of something to liven it up a bit.

The guy who played Spaulding in Caddyshack is a real estate broker in the Boston area. (thx, ivan)

Two reading recommendations regarding the Jonestown documentary: a story by Tim Cahill in A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg and Seductive Poison by former People’s Temple member Deborah Layton. (thx, garret and andrea)

In case someone in the back didn’t hear it, this map is not from Dungeons and Dragons but from Zork/Dungeon. (via a surprising amount of people in a short period of time)

When reading about how low NYC’s greenhouse gas emissions are relative to the rest of the US, keep in mind the area surrounding NYC (kottke.org link). “Think of Manhattan as a place which outsources its pollution, simply because land there is so valuable.” (thx, bob)

NPR did a report on the Nickelback potential self-plagiarism. (thx, roman)

After posting about the web site for Miranda July’s new book, several people reminded me that Jeff Bridges’ site has a similar lo-fi, hand-drawn, narrative-driven feel.

In the wake of linking to the IMDB page for Back to the Future trivia, several people reminded me of the Back to the Future timeline, which I linked to back in December. A true Wikipedia gem.

I’m ashamed to say I’m still hooked on DesktopTD. The problem is that the creator of the game keeps updating the damn thing, adding new challenges just as you’ve finally convinced yourself that you’ve wrung all of the stimulation out of the game. As Robin notes, it’s a brilliant strategy, the continual incremental sequel. Version 1.21 introduced a 10K gold fun mode…you get 10,000 gold pieces at the beginning to build a maze. Try building one where you can send all 50 levels at the same time and not lose any lives. Fun, indeed.

Regarding the low wattage color palette, reader Jonathan notes that you should use that palette in conjunction with a print stylesheet that optimizes the colors for printing so that you’re not wasting a lot of ink on those dark background colors. He also sent along an OS X trick I’d never seen before: to invert the colors on your monitor, press ctrl-option-cmd-8. (thx, jonathan)

Dorothea Lange’s iconic Migrant Mother photograph was modified for publication…a thumb was removed from the lower right hand corner of the photo. Joerg Colberg wonders if that case could inform our opinions about more recent cases of photo alteration.

In reviewing all of this, the following seem related in an interesting way: Nickelback’s self-plagiarism, continual incremental sequels, digital photo alteration, Tarantino and Rodriquez’s Grindhouse, and the recent appropriation of SimpleBits’ logo by LogoMaid.