Blitt TD 0.2.0.32 Patch Notes

HIGHLIGHTS

This update features a range of new features and improvements as well as a total balance overhaul. Chief among the new features is the new tower type, the Missile Tower. This tower has very high range and damage, but has to lock onto targets before actually firing a missile, and the missiles have a pretty long travel time (making it less effective against faster units). There are 3 tiers for this new tower type which improve damage and locking time for each tier. There have been a number of updates since the initial release so if you haven't checked in since then, there's even more to discover. Check out the previous Dev Logs for patch notes on previous versions.

The Laser towers have also been improved, and have 3 tiers now to play with as well. The higher tier Laser Towers get improved reload speed, range and damage as you upgrade them. There has been a number of improvements under the hood to make Laser Towers have improved target acquisition (and smooth turret rotation) as well as some pretty heavy optimizations that were holding the frame rate back in previous versions.

Balance has been adjusted to accommodate for the 4 new tower types (Laser 3, Missile 1, Missile 2, Missile 3) as well reducing the time per play session. I received feedback that the game would take too long (especially if you're doing good), so I've tried to balance the game down to around 20-30 rounds. We'll see how the leader boards pan out however, as you guys destroyed my top score on the previous build.

One big focus for this build was to improve overall performance through optimization so that more users may be able to play the WebGL version (and iron out some long standing gremlins as far as bugs). Local builds had improvements of up to 250% in framerate, so I'm hoping some of you will have a smoother experience. You can also expect improved UI, various updates to sprites and UI elements, and an overall pass for polish to make sure the user experience is decent.

This version also introduces PC and Mac builds for those of you that want to play the game full screen with even better performance. To accommodate this there were some significant changes to the way the UI is displayed, so look out for any bugs there and please report them. 

There is a new sound manager in place as well for those of you that may have experienced audio clipping in previous builds. This new system should ensure that duplicate sound effects are never played over each other, rather they have their volumes adjusted instead.

Many of the effects and models have been revised for performance considerations and to make them all look a bit better. You may also notice there's a new shader at play for the shockwave effect on enemy death. Coin notifications over killed enemies and built towers now work off a particle system, which looks better and should perform better than the previous system as well.

NOTE: Leader boards have to be reset since this new version introduces brand new balancing. The old scores aren't being deleted, they are simply not being displayed anymore. I've toyed around with the idea of having separate leader boards for each version (with the ability to see old versions scores), and this is the first step towards that measure.

FEATURES

• add PC and Mac builds
• complete balance overhaul (should be shorter games now)
• improved performance
• add missile tower 1
• add missile tower 2
• add missile tower 3
• add laser tower 3
• make towers rotate their turret smoothly
• new models for laser tower
• new effects for laser bullets
• new coin gain / spend VFX
• add shockwave shader
• change shockwave system to code based instead of animation based (big fps boost)
• updated tower icons
• upgrade button showing upgraded tower stats / image
• introduce sound manager to eliminate audio clipping
• introduce FX manager to use object pooling on various performance heavy effects.
• add hotkeys for upgrade (U), towers (1,2,3), fast forward (z), next round (space)
• new sound effects
• new music
• improved UI layout for various aspect ratios
• add quit button in pause menu to accommodate for desktop builds
• new gold notification system on right UI panel

CHANGES

• increase game difficulty for shorter rounds
• towers use different logic to acquire targets
• tower slots no longer highlight when hovering (for now)
• various sound balance adjustments
• change range visualization to be more accurate
• improved tower camera orientation
• make update button retrieve data dynamically from selected
• selling towers now gives you 80% of total gold spent on tower (was only giving the upgraded tower cost before)

FIXES

• fix wrong orientation on laser bullets
• fix tooltip scaling issues
• resolve stuttering on webGL
• fix bug with overlapping tower bases
• fix null bullet bug on enemy death
• fix UI tower select panel updating every frame
• fix ice tower sometimes firing into the ground- now shoots straight
• fix misaligned enemy spawn
• fix bug with ice tower null particle system
• fix improper range value on visualization on tower place / select
• fix bottom select panel rendering when it shouldn't
• fix tower camera rendering when it shouldn't
• fix bug with laser particle systems dissapearing
• fix bonus text being updated every frame