Looks interesting. I like the "work on the outside skins of shapes" aspect versus the regular "flat page" aspect of most tower defense style games. I also like the retro, wire frame style of graphics. Childhood memories of Battlezone, Tempest, and Tron. Wireframe also helps enormously to keep the FPS high and rotation smooth.

What are the system requirements for this thing? My home system is a bit of a dinosaur but runs ok. 2.8GHz Intel Pentium with 2GB RAM, ATI Radeon X1650 (512 MB) Your game looks like it needs more video horsepower than that. If it can run in that then we will see.

That should be plenty fine. It runs on my 2.5 year old iMac (or it did, until the iMac caught some sort of degenerative neurological disease- it will probably run fine on the new one Apple is replacing it with, too), as well as my 2.5 year old MacBook Non-Pro, both of which have half the VRAM you have.

Man... crazy that 2.8 GHz is a dinosaur system now.

Anyway, even if it doesn't run- that's super useful for me to know, since it means I have to reevaluate my minimum requirements (and can't afford to go to a proper testing lab).

I'd be happy to beta test your game, I've got quite a bit of interest in tower defense games.

Well if you think it runs for me I will give it shot. I am an ISTQB Certified Software Test Analyst / Test Manager so I will probably do more than just "play normal" and give you comments. I will actually try to logically break it. I can't promise anything too in depth because I don't have a lot of spare time but I will try some interesting usability, stress, and interface tests. I'll PM you from home tonight with more details.

WhileTrueFork is an awesome name for an indie company

The game looks interesting, and I'd love to check it out, but unfortunately I can't make any time commitments.

I like Tower Defense games much more then I should, PM sent.

Looks very cool! Count me in, if you need another guinea pig.

Also, your company name made my brain-kernel panic. Expect an invoice for repairs.

Whoa- thanks for the interest! I will send out beta keys to everyone just as soon as my computer finishes the seemingly endless task of re-imaging from my previous computer's backup.

First impressions:

More once I get more time. So far this seems like a fantastic game that will cut into my sleep-schedule if I let it.

Just trying to keep potential first impressions fresh. Don't want to create an echo chamber. *shrug*

I dunno if it's a spoiler or not. I don't... seem to be able to use the Spoiler tag, so... don't read this if you want to work out some basic strategies by yourself? It's not like I'm revealing any of the actual secrets or anything.

Compressors do automatically launch the moment something comes in range (though there's a small delay on the damage as the hammer slams down). I could potentially set it up so that they didn't autofire unless there were at least two baddies in range, but that could cause some problems, too, maybe? Alternatively: I can make it a gameplay setting where you specify the automatic cutoff. Any thoughts there?

One thing I definitely need to do is a splash screen the first time you log in to the lobby (and every time thereafter if the controls go idle for 30 seconds) that gives you an overview of the map and what the various icons mean. I'll also turn the lobby off of Debug mode for the next push, which will mean that you "unlock" levels as you beat others- that sort of forces you to go in rough order of difficulty.

If you're seeing 0's for damage, then you're probably fighting the orange nasties, which have a slightly elevated damage resistance. Or you're using very weak HoneyPots or Capacitors/Compressors that haven't had a chance to recharge between shots. Capacitors are great rear-guards because the mob'll be thinner by the time they get hit, and so they'll have more time to charge between shots. On the other hand, it's tempting to spam Compressors with manual activations, except that the damage follows a low inverse exponential relationship with charge- at 50% charge they'll do about 35% of max damage. So spam clicking means you'll just see clouds of 0's. Exception: it is an awesome way to decimate mobs of Refurbs, since they are killed via quantity of hits, not quality.

Awesome that you guys like it, though. I've been poking at it for so long that I can barely *see* the game anymore. Just a to-do list.

There's also an achievement for getting X number of kills against code-injected baddies with compressors. (Also one for honeypots- and they will learn faster from poisoned viruses, since the rate at which they learn is determined by how much damage virus takes while captured, and the poison damage stacks)

I don't know how much this change would muck with your DPS formulas and I haven't done any math on this...
Give the Compressor two states:
Toggled on and toggled off.
The Compressor comes into play toggled off.
When toggled off the compressor can super-charge for full damage (NUKE!) and does not trigger automatically. When the sysadmin toggles it on the compressor drops the first full charge and then continues firing regularly for partial damage. Think the thumpers in Dune. "If you walk without rhythm you won't attract a worm." When the sysadmin toggles it off it will charge up to a full damage shot again and wait to be toggled on again.
I think this solution might help you strike a better balance between people that want to 'set it and forget it' and the people that want/need to micro for max damage.
Ok... now to keep setting up my coffee.

One more nit picky point. The description of the "Artillery Grounds" level says "...save environment". I think you meant "...safe environment". I know, that's the 3rd one of those I have sent you. Sorry, I'm turning into WordSmythe here.

I was having a lot of trouble on the one flat level with memory fragmentation, it finally turned around for me when I started really paying attention to the info at the end of the match, especially the damage per tower information. (As opposed to damage by type of tower.)

As an extension of this another helpful category could be damage per cache. If one type of tower averaged half as much damage as another, but you only spent a third the cost you don't have a way of looking at that at the end of the game.