Period: August 30, 2025 Total Commits: 4

Daily Dev Update: Hot Rocks and Hotter Flames - August 30, 2025

Hey, here’s what we’ve been working on today. Short version: three new area-control towers, some much-needed projectile plumbing, and a pass on income fairness that should help PvP feel less swingy.

What’s New

• Earth Tower (AOE stun control)

  • Throws boulders that damage and stun on impact.
  • Stun radius scales roughly 1–2.5 tiles, with duration from 1–2.5s based on level.
  • Ground-only. Good for setting up kill zones and buying time for your backline.
  • Gameplay tip: Pair Earth in front with Fire behind to capitalize on clustered, stunned targets.

  [screenshot: boulder impact with stun VFX at 189a80b]

• Fire Tower (Volcano-style AOE burst)

  • Six levels, focused on consistent splash damage to ground units.
  • AOE radius around 1.5 tiles; damage ranges from 260 up to 9400 at top end.
  • Uses a fireball projectile with an explosion VFX on impact.
  • Works best against packed lanes or when Earth is already clumping enemies.

  [screenshot: volcano fireball explosion on clustered minions at 2ecc239]

• Flamethrower Tower (continuous AOE beam)

  • New “single persistent projectile” that sticks to the tower and applies continuous damage in a cone.
  • Includes a 16-frame detonation animation and turns with the tower so it lines up cleanly.
  • Flame stops when there’s no target, so you won’t see random licking fire with nothing in range.
  • Great for area denial on chokepoints and finishing off low-health packs.

  [screenshot: new flamethrower cone with continuous damage at 827a546]

• UI bits

  • Bottom bar now loads towers/minions from config dynamically. Less manual maintenance, more consistency when new content lands.
  • HUD income uses the simulation’s income source directly, so it reflects what you’re actually earning.

  [screenshot: HUD income display using sim core values at 32e6ee8]

What Got Fixed

• Projectile and VFX

  • Standardized projectile speed interpretation (100 = 1 tile/sec) so travel times match minion speeds.
  • Smoother mortar arcs with cached start values; removed that jitter on long throws.
  • Instanced renderer now supports frame-by-frame detonation animations; cleaner VFX timing.
  • Sprite sheet dimensions are now read from config for proper UV mapping.
  • Bullet spawn offset rotates with tower angle; reduced “misaligned muzzle” moments.
  • Coordinate system corrected (0° = West) so directional effects like the flamethrower line up with aim.
  • AOE effects now respect each tower’s movement-type filters.

• Economy and fairness

  • Bots now use fixed-point math for gold to avoid rounding weirdness.
  • Income only counts minions you placed. No more inflated income from ally spawns or edge cases.
  • HUD pulls from the same income source the sim uses, so what you see is what you get.

• Stability and edge cases

  • Fixed a negative block number issue in the client/bot reader that could lead to inconsistent timing.
  • Cleaned up projectile type detection for towers with level-based AOE.

What’s Still Broken

• Balance on the new towers is a first pass. Stun chaining from Earth can feel oppressive on small maps. We’ll tune durations, radii, and cooldowns after we collect more data.
• Continuous-damage visuals on the flamethrower are new. There may be occasional hiccups when a target drops out of range mid-frame; we’re watching for edge cases where damage ticks linger a frame too long.
• VFX timing on slower machines can drift slightly on heavy waves (lots of explosions at once). We’re profiling the animation path and will trim cost where we can.
• Ground-only targeting for Earth/Fire is intentional, but it leans counterplay toward flying units. That’s fine for now, just calling it out so you’re not surprised.

Under the Hood

• Config and systems

  • Fire and Earth tower (and their projectiles) converted from JS to TypeScript for clearer typing and faster iteration.
  • Tower config now supports per-level bullet modifiers like AOE and stun, so scaling is defined in one place.
  • Projectile system gained support for “singleBullet,” “attachedToTower,” and “instantDetonate” to enable continuous-damage effects like the flamethrower.
  • Added “targetsLocation” and “dontDamageTarget” options to handle blasts that pop at a point without double-dipping the primary target.

• Rendering and movement

  • Instanced renderer updated for multi-frame detonation animations.
  • UV mapping reads from sprite sheet dimensions, cutting down on off-by-one artifacts.
  • Mortar/boulder movement uses linear interpolation with cached baselines for smoother arcs.

• UI and bots

  • HUD income now reads from the same function the sim uses, removing drift between display and reality.
  • Bot gold accounting moved to fixed-point; fewer rounding desyncs and cleaner replays.

What’s Next

• A balance pass on Earth stun durations and Fire damage thresholds, tuned around PvP pacing.
• Flamethrower polish: cone width, tick cadence, and turn-speed so it’s strong up close without erasing entire lanes.
• Performance tuning on VFX-heavy moments (pooling, batching, and a couple cheap wins in the animation path).
• More clarity in tooltips and status icons so you can read stun/slow/burn states at a glance.

Thanks for all the feedback. If you find a combo that feels busted (or useless), let us know which towers, levels, and map you used. It helps us tune faster.