Clarification on the affiliation with Hex Defense and Permisson

ZDefense is the free App of the day today on Amazon Appstore. Many people like it and some don't mainly because ZDefense looks similar to Hex Defense and a sketchy Permission.

We don't copy codes/ graphics/ sounds from other games. ZDefense uses a Open Source Android Game Engine - AndEngine. We did some enhancement to that Engine and also send the modification back to Nicolas - the author of AndEngine.

We totally have no affiliation with the creators of hex defense. As I know Hex Defense is created by 3 MIT students. We are a game studio from China.
When people first take a look on ZDefense, they might find it looks similar to Hex Defense. That is just because Hex Defense is well-known but ZDefense is a new comer.
Actually there are many Tower Defense Games that use Hexagon cells including Defensoid / Vector Defense / Hex Defense and ZDefense. Defensoid was released 3-6 months
earlier than Hex Defense. All these games are inspired by the famous iOS game GeoDefense Swarm.

We add lots of unique features that are not found on Hex Defense even GeoDefense Swarm including Space Gate/ Space Tunnel/ Extreme Mode/ Map Editor and Free Maps downloading / Replay and many other small features.

The levels are also more fun than those of Hex Defense. ZDefense has 50+ levels much more than that of Hex Defense. We carefully design every levels, players must think a different strategy to pass different levels. Generally each level would takes 20+ minutes to a few hours to pass it. We have a forum that players can share their success screen's screen shot to help other players to pass that level if they are blocked. Hex Defense's level design is not very good on my opinion. Hex Defense use a very cool background music. So they make creeps come out by a fixed sequence to let it match the rhythm of the music. That hurts the diverse of levels. Players just need to use the same towers sequence to defense. I just spend 2-3 hours to pass all Hex Defense levels. ZDefense also support more towers, more mode, bigger maps. Hex Defense also has its advantage. The bosses on Hex Defense is very cool.

Both ZDefense and Hex Defense are good tower games IMO. Hex Defense is good for the players who don't play Tower Defense a lot and ZDefense is suitable for hardcore TD players who like new challenging.

Now let's talk on permission.
The permission to discover known account is needed by OpenFeint Leader Board.
OpenFeint uses that permission to autofill the email field when users sign up OpenFeint.

I quote the following text from OpenFeint Document.
"To allow OpenFeint to retrieve the logged-in user's email address from Phone SDK version 5 or above so that the user does not have to type the email address in when creating an account, add the following to the AndroidManifest.xml:

_ACCOUNTS" >"

OpenFeint is a very famous mobile game social SDK that providing Leader Board / Achievements and other features on iOS and Android platform. Nearly 7000 games have integrated it and more than 100M users have registered on it. It is definitely NOT a spyware. If you don't feel comfortable about it. you just don't sign up. If you have sign up, you can modify the Email Address if you don't want use the email of your android account.

I am sorry that I don't clarify it on the game's description. OpenFeint was integrated into ZDefense nearly 2 months ago on version 1.2. On both Android Market and Amazon AppStore, nobody complaints about it. So I didn't know it would be a big concern.

We just want to make good games.

Space Gate/OpenFeint/13 new Maps in 1.2 release!

First, we introduce a new special tile - Space Gate to ZDefense. Creeps now can teleport from one Gate to another. One map can have up to 3 group of Space Gate.  Space Gate is a new challenge to players, Creeps have more route to choose, but it is also an oppotuity, because they can design more complicated route without blocking the Creeps.

  Second, we integrate OpenFeint leaderboards to ZDefense. In Normal Mode and Extreme Mode your high score will be submitted to OpenFeint Leaderboards.

  Last, we add 13 new maps. Every maps are very interesting. I include some maps screenshots  below.

Angry Bird!

Super Track. Creeps run on it with 3X speed, could you stop them?

3 Entries 3 Exits. Just 3 tiles away. But it is not impossible mission :)

lots of stars rush out at same time, not easy to build the maze.

So many entries :)

Hope you like it!

ZDefense 1.1.2 is Out!

Changes:
Auto-disable sound effect on Sumsung Galaxy S2 to avoid freezing.
Increase start cash by 50%-100% on many normal level and some hard level maps to reduce the difficulty. Hardcore players should try Extreme Mode, if they find those maps are too easy.
Tune “Landing” map，more interesting.
Better rocket flames visual effect.
make Slow tower lvl1-2 more powerful.
fix minor bugs.
Better Map Editor, add help and sharing.
Bigger font size on tutorial images.

Temporary solution to freezing problem on Galaxy S2 phone

Some Galaxy S2 users report the game freezes after playing for a few minutes. The temporary solution is turning off sound on Options Screen. Sorry for inconvenience.

Guide of Map Editor

On ZDefense 1.1.1, we introduced an experimental Map Editor. It is experimental, just because we still don't tune the UI. Actually it is fully functional. All current maps can be made through this Map Editor.

There is no embedded  guide or help of the map editor currently, next time I'll make it embedded.

Guide:

On editor main screen, you can press phone's menu button to load menu. 

There are 4 items, Load, Save, Create New, Save As. (Note, you can load a map from phone's embed storage or sd cards, but you can only save maps a map to sd card. 

Edit Map: click a cell on cell panel, then you can click the Hex to put the special cell to the field. 

Note: After you put entry/exit, you should link them even there are only an entry and an exit(we'll auto-pair them on this case next version).

Preview Map: click to play the map you design.

Edit Towers: only lvl 1 towers' cost is adjustable now. Other lvl towers' cost will be auto-calculated. You can press menu button to disable some towers.

Edit enemies: You can adjust enemies' base HP and velocity.

Edit waves: you can insert / edit / remove a wave. Press menu button, you can also create waves loops.

Options:  

  Creeps' HP = WaveHealthFactor * BaseHP * waveNo ^ (1+WaveHealthFactor2)

  Creeps' money drop = 1 + WaveWealthFactor * (waveNo - 1)

  Loop EntryExitPair by Wave/Group, if choose Wave, in each wave enemies go out from one entry, if choose groups and a wave contains many groups, next group will choose next entry.

  Delay Mode of GroupEnemy Normal/Same Time, if choose same time, all groups spawn at same time, if choose normal, groups spawn one by one. 

  Total Money of All Enemies, it will help you select a appropriate Wealth Factor.

  You can all see the enemies' HP on first wave last wave and second last wave. that number will help you choose appropriate HP factors.

Map files are saved in SD card's ZDefense/map directory.

ZDefense 1.1.1 is Out!

This version show more loves to generally TD players, like more tower information and Easy Mode. It also make "Hard-core" players happier, because we introduce "Extreme Mode".

Change logs:
Display tower's damage and shot interval on Tower Panel.

Better explosion visual effect. You can disable it by turning off "Intense Graphics" on Options screen if you use a slow phones
Support Easy Mode & Extreme Mode. On Easy Mode, creeps only have 70% HP. On Extreme Mode, you only have one life and can manually reduce start cash to increase the difficulty.
Experimental Map Editor. You can enable it by clicking top-left top-right bottom-right and bottom-left corners on About screen.

game link: https://market.android.com/details?id=mobi.zstudio.avi

ZDefense 1.1 published

If you like Tower Defense games, you must try ZDefense. It is very challenging even for experienced TD users:
* Fight 50 wave enemies that come out in 250 seconds
* Defense an exit in the middle of a empty field against huge amount of enemies from all the directions.
* Win 100 waves of creeps, where the 100th wave is 1000 times stronger than the 1st wave.
In our game, you'll get lots of missions like them, very touch but not impossible.

ZDefense is different from all the other TD games. Unlike Hexdefense, which can be mastered with one strategy, ZDefense has diverse, well-designed maps that need various and creative strategies to conquer. Unlike Robo Defense, which is a long game and needs to be played once and once again to level up, ZDefense is a fast pace game. You can finish playing a map in 5 to 10 mins and defeating 10 to 30 groups of creeps. You spend most of your time on creative and strategic thinking instead of repeating the routine.

 We currently provide 5 tutorial, 10 normal ,and 8 hard maps in full version.  We will release more maps (Generally 2-3 new maps every week). Full version users can directly download them in our app  for free.