Banana Brigade — Primate Patrol

An original optional total conversion: primate defenders throw at colored bananas. Ordinary upright fruit floats with a gentle bob: no eyes, legs or wings. Banana Grove is an original complete landscape: an open grass clearing, a warm dirt trail and a surrounding forest. Its 137 grassy building cells sit beside the Traditional example's fixed 75-cell route. The scene starts on wave one in all three difficulties and replaces the vanilla desert, walls and horizon. Airborne combat roles also follow the authored route (enemies.flyers_follow_route: true); vanilla flyers retain their existing pathing. Cards, the Collector and the factory are disabled, and the grove has no rain or sandstorms (weather.rain_chance and sand_chance 0 in balance.json).

The 1.2.1 art pass adds directional short fur, rooted coat tufts, recessed eyes and eyelids, hand and foot details, woven bands and bark on the timber perches. The fruit keeps its gameplay colours, with waxy peel, irregular freckles and pores; the devourer's open peels are thin curled skins. The forest has individual leaf sprays, veined foliage, bark relief and a quieter grass-and-earth palette. All textures are original and embedded in the GLBs and editable Blender files. The named throw joints, palette mappings, route and gameplay numbers are unchanged. Builders share tools/art/mod_surface_detail.py; rerun them from Blender to regenerate the assets. Matching embedded textures are shared in memory at load. Building costs gold only; all nine attacking families are available from the first round. A run starts with 120 gold, solo and online (11/10): a gameplay mod plays on its own profile, which stays at level 1, so the level rewards' starting gold never comes, and vanilla's 10 lost the run by round 2. Every popped layer pays 1 gold, so the primates cost more than vanilla's towers (11/10): a Capuchin 30, a Gorilla 60, a Japanese macaque 90, a Tamarin, Mandrill or Colobus 150, an Orangutan or Proboscis monkey 180, a Squirrel monkey 220. At vanilla's prices one 50-gold Tamarin cleared the first ten rounds alone; now a single kind of primate falls at the first camouflage, and a mix with a Colobus goes much further. The Tamarin burns 4 a tick and the Capuchin throws every 1.2 s. The longer throw windup is intentional; full-run balance remains a playtest task, not a claim of perfect parity with the original weapons (docs/balance/2026-10-10-mod-samples/README.md).

Rounds, layers and paths

Since 10/10 it plays like the game that inspired it, through the mod TD kit (see the modding guide):

• Fifty hand-written rounds (waves.json) replace the generated waves; after round 50 the run is won. Difficulty scales the bananas' health (x1, x1.45, x2.1).
• Layered bananas. Each colour pops into the one below it where it was hit: red, blue, green, yellow and pink, then pale (frost-proof), dark (blast-proof), purple (immune to flame, frost, bolt, laser and poison), brown lead (darts bounce off: only explosives, elements and the like), striped, spectrum and the orange husk. Blimps and great blimps break into husks. Every layer pays 1 gold, and a leak costs a life for each layer still inside. Camouflaged twins appear from round 22.
• Three upgrade paths per primate replace the three levels: Strength, Speed and a third that fits its role (Canopy for range and camouflage sight, Splatter for the Gorilla and Orangutan, Plantation for the Colobus, whose bananas pay gold every round). One path may reach tier 5, a second tier 2. The highest tier picks the model: tier 2 the level 2 creature, tier 4 the level 3.

tools/mods/build_banana_rounds.py writes the rounds, the paths and the banana colour of each species slot; tune there and rerun it.

Installation

Copy this entire folder into Options → Mods → Open Mods Folder. Enable Banana Brigade - Primate Patrol, restart, then start a new game. Disable other scenario conversions so this route is the selected map. This mod uses the game's separate gameplay-mod save profile. Disable it and restart to return to vanilla.

Sample mod - All resources can remain enabled: its starting money, lives and material grants compose with this mod. Cards and the retired Collector stay off, regardless of the two folders' load order. Extra tuning keys for absent systems are harmless; they do not turn those systems back on. Mods which change the same active numeric setting still follow the documented last-loaded override rule.

This example is provided separately; it does not change the policy that only Traditional path and All resources are bundled into the base game.

Defenders

A Gibbon model for the Collector is also included for authors reusing the assets, although that slot is disabled in this mode. All 30 level models and six fused models are replaced. The 150 enemy model slots use twelve banana palettes and a peeling banana devourer. All ordinary enemies use locomotion: "float" and leave no insect footprints. Existing combat traits, boss scaling, shields and camouflage remain gameplay effects.

Every projectile attack has a windup followed by a release from ThrowHand. The hand position is captured when firing, so a fast arm recovery cannot move the projectile's starting point. No gunpowder flash or spent casing appears at the palm. Fire and liquid casters extend their hand before starting their stream.

Camouflaged bananas

The Colobus (Laser), level 1 or higher, reveals bananas within its normal attack range. Every defender can attack those revealed bananas, provided its own attack can reach them. Bananas become hidden again outside all spotters' ranges. Selling a spotter stops its detection immediately. Other level-3 primates do not become detectors in this mode. The first-encounter explanation and the guide use the mod's localized description.

The opt-in rules live in balance.json:

"cloaked_waves": {
  "detection_towers": {"Laser": 1},
  "shared_detection": true
}

Other mods can use a different roster or minimum level. Without these keys, vanilla keeps level-3 self-only targeting and the existing Adaptive Optics card. Damage is checked too, including projectiles whose target leaves detection range.

Editable source

Source/BananaGrove.blend contains the editable forest and meadow, including 243 trees, grass blades, ferns and wildflowers. Source/BananaGrove.tiles.json records its walkable/buildable cells and ordered route; the GLB carries those permissions as named nodes. The trail is part of the terrain mesh, so it does not flicker against an overlapping ground decal.

Source/BananaBrigade.blend contains the complete original model library with rigid named joints, vertex-color materials and editable geometry. Rebuild it with:

blender --background --python tools/mods/build_banana_brigade.py
python3 tools/mods/build_banana_audio.py
blender --background --python tools/mods/build_banana_grove.py

Run that command from the repository. The exporter also rebuilds models.json. No assets, names, logos or models from Bloons are included. The model files carry no executable code, baked animation tracks or skeletal skins. See the parent TOWER_MODELS.md for the optional throwing rig contract.