Hi everyone,

Apologies for the delay in this update. This update is a small one which adds the ability to limit the maximum FPS of the game which will hopefully help a few PC's from working harder than they need to for a smooth experience.

Note: You can only set this option in the main menu options not in game (I'll work on this long term).

Patch Notes
Added option to set maximum FPS to 30/60/90/120/240/480.

Small patch today. This one has some quality of life features and a buff to evolved grenade towers.

Patch Notes

Game name is now optional, by default it will create a lobby with your steam name if not specified

Updated graphics recommendation for first time launches in regards to Steam Deck

Added option to reduce UI scale further to help Steam Deck users

Increased grenade evolve tower damage by 10%

Reduced the power at which evolve grenades explode to help prevent them flying out of the map and also make the evolve a more important consideration

We've now updated the graphics for the tower build buttons so that they now have full colour and detail, rather than basic temporary placeholder buttons. They will remain grayscale until you can afford them. Once you can afford them they will fill with colour, letting you know you can now build one.

We've also updated the tower information window to be in a similar graphics style so that it is more consistent.

We have also resolved an issue with Challenge 4 whereby it was unplayable.

Enjoy!

Grenade evolve added to the game
We've completed the last evolve in the game which is for the grenade tower. This evolve makes the tower fire cluster grenades whereby the damage is split between each grenade. The amount of grenades increase as the tower level increases which spreads the damage out further. The downside to this is that the explosion radius is reduced by 50% so be careful of your placement!

We're playing it safe when introducing a new mechanic to the game so we feel it may need a slight buff in the future but we'd love to hear your feedback via the various methods (preferably Discord).

The cost is 40 coins to evolve and remember it is only possible to evolve a tower at level 1.

We look forward to seeing the new strategies this evolve could bring to the game and hearing your feedback.

We've also fixed some bugs introduced with the new network changes in the last patch so if you experienced some bugs then hopefully they are now resolved. We've also made grenades network replicated so that they are consistent for all players.

Enjoy!



Patch notes

* Grenade evolve added to the game

* Grenade evolve cost is 40 coins

* Grenade evolve causes 3/4/5 cluster grenades to spawn

* Enemy animations are now correct for players other than the lobby creator

* Grenades are now network replicated meaning they are consistent for all players

New features - client network replication
We've introduced a new feature that allows you to adjust your network replication speed. We always recommend that the person who creates the lobby has the best internet and PC possible to avoid issues however there is a new option that is the frequency at which you ask the host/lobby creator for updates.

To be clear; it does not matter what setting the host has this set to, it is for clients to specify how often. You will notice quite a difference between the slowest and fastest updates if you want to see the effect of this setting. To confirm, the default value prior to this update was in the middle (balanced).

If you're experiencing disconnects, you may want to lower this setting.



New features - network update rework
In line with the above, we have also adjusted the network packet frequency so that we now only send 1/3 of the packets we used to, albeit the packets are now slightly larger. This should make the network a lot more reliable.

We've also added de-jitter to the network stack so that if any packets are dropped it should provide a much smoother experience!



Bug fixes
In this update we've managed to fix some very old issues whereby towers could be placed inside each other or in the actual lanes themselves. If for any reason these events happen, we've placed in some logic that will refund players with the coins and remove the disallowed tower.

Another fix that we've done is that we've made it so that clients now see the recently added path markers at the start of the game.



Closing thoughts
We've achieved some great things in this update which will hopefully give you more control in regards to your PC's and connections and ultimately make your games more stable. We've had games in this update whereby players couldn't even stream a video online but they still remained in the game, so our testing has been really positive.



There's more updates coming soon, we've got some great ideas!

We've added path markers

In the countdown stage of the game you will now see a visual marker that displays where enemies will run. Each lane has a different colour so that you can see exactly where they will go, even if the lanes cross each other.

Bug fixes and quality of life

As usual, there's some bug fixes and quality of life additions.

* Health protected enemies now hit barriers rather than walking through them

* Shooting wooden boxes now works as expected

Today we have updated the game with a few small fixes which include:

* Buttons no longer retain focus once you have clicked them. This prevents accidental double pressing the button.

* Renamed "EXIT MULTIPLAYER" to "MAIN MENU" on the lobby screen to avoid confusion.

We will continue to improve the game with any small tweaks on the run up to full release.

Summary
We have noticed that for quite a number of years now that the Streamer vs Twitch mode was very rarely ever used by players and yet it added a great overhead on development. 99.9% of our players play the traditional game, rather than challenges or Twitch vs Streamer mode and therefore we have decided to remove it so that we can focus our efforts on improving the base game. Challenges will still remain and are unaffected.

We also have some quality of life additions and a small bug fix.

The road to release
We will monitor feedback over the next couple of months and will aim to release the game later this year. The game is incredibly balanced, we've got 1000's of players, loads of content and it has been incredibly stable (we've not had a crash report for years). It has been in development now for roughly 11 years and we're not planning on stopping soon, however many years of Early Access has brought great improvements through the community to get it to where it is today.

The price will increase slightly when the game is out of Early Access, we still very much want it to be in the cheaper end of the market even though there's 100's of hours of replayability as we'd like lots of new players. Details on the slight price increase will come nearer release.



Patch Notes

Removed Streamer vs Twitch mode

Clicking the Discord link on the Main Menu now opens our AegisM Discord

Added message for Desert 5 to warn players about a one time choice regarding the barriers/lane

In game message window was not displaying for the correct amount of time, this affected the majority of informational messages in the game.

Fixed areas whereby towers could be placed on the floor on Desert 2

You can now shoot and aim properly with Bridges on Desert 3 and Forest 7

Fixed ghost tower collision for bridges on Forest 3

Summary

We've improved the aiming under certain circumstances, along with several backend service improvements. On certain levels, when the cursor was over some trees, it would not allow you to shoot as you wanted and would instead show the selection cursor. We have resolved this issue so that you will always shoot as you would expect.

Secondly; we've made improvements to the games backend services. This will constantly evolve and improve going forward and will enable an improved experience for all players.

Patch notes

* Fixed issue whereby cursor would change to the selection cursor, preventing shooting

* Improved the games backend services