Period: September 16, 2025 Total Commits: 3

Daily Dev Update: Lobbies That Stick, Auras That Sing

Hey all — quick one today. We tightened up lobby behavior, made the client friendlier when the server is down, and added a new support tower that cranks your fire rate.

What’s New

• Speed Booster tower (support aura)
  • Gives nearby towers an attack speed boost that scales from about 5% up to 30% with upgrades.
  • New visual glow cues to show active buffs:
    • Light blue for attack speed
    • Red for damage
    • Gold for gold gain
  • 36-frame idle animation and a blue electricity shot, so you can spot it in the chaos.
  • Gameplay angle: this helps sustain-DPS lines (Arrow, Tesla, Gatling-style) keep pressure up, and lets burst towers hit their windows more reliably when placed well.

[screenshot: speed booster aura glow affecting nearby towers at 468c61d]

• Join Games list polish
  • Games are now sorted by newest at the top.
  • Each game shows “Created X ago” so you can quickly scan what’s fresh.
  • The list auto-refreshes when you open it.

[screenshot: join games list with newest-first sorting and created-time labels at 6f71da5]

• Easier navigation while server is offline
  • Encyclopedia and How to Play stay available.
  • Real-time connection status in the Encyclopedia.
  • A “Play Now” button appears there as soon as we detect the server is back.

[screenshot: encyclopedia with live server status and Play Now button at 6d3c837]

What Got Fixed

• Lobbies unexpectedly ejecting hosts
  • Navigating between routes was unmounting the Lobby component and firing a cleanup that treated hosts like they left. That cleanup is gone. Hosts don’t auto-kick anymore.
• Team joining on first load
  • Fixed state init so “Join Team” buttons work right away instead of after a second interaction.
• Race condition when opening a lobby from the games list
  • Cleaned up ordering so you land in the correct lobby consistently.
• Navigation quirks
  • Leave Lobby now reliably takes you back to where you expect.
  • The “Tower Storm” title is clickable again to return to the homepage.
• API cleanup
  • Removed a non-existent cancelLobby call; everything goes through leaveLobby to avoid edge-case desyncs.
• Server-down flow
  • If the server is unavailable, the main menu loads immediately. We show a status banner, disable online actions (Create/Join/Matchmaking), and keep the rest of the UI responsive.

[screenshot: server error banner at top of main menu while online features are disabled at 6d3c837]

[screenshot: lobby screen with Join Team buttons responsive on first load at 6f71da5]

What’s Still Broken

• Aura edge cases
  • Boost math is straightforward right now. Stacking rules and diminishing returns are basic and may change as we see more PvP builds.
• Status polling lag
  • The connection check runs every 5 seconds. That means you might see a short delay before the UI notices the server is back.
• Lobby transitions under heavy hopping
  • Rapid back-and-forth between lobbies and the games list is more stable now, but we’re still watching for rare cases where a stale view appears for a moment before refresh.

If you run into any of these (or something we missed), a quick note with steps to reproduce helps a lot.

Under the Hood

• TypeScript conversions
  • Ported Speed Booster tower and its electricity projectile to TypeScript.
• Combat timings
  • Added a getEffectiveFireCooldown method so towers consistently account for aura-modified attack speed. This should prevent oddities where UI shows a buff but the fire rate doesn’t match.
• Lobby state lifecycles
  • Tightened route-change behavior to avoid unintentional unmount cleanups, and made lobby fetching deterministic on navigation.
• Connectivity handling
  • Centralized server status checks (5s cadence), banner state, and UI disable/enable logic so features flip on/off cleanly when the server changes state.

What’s Next

• Aura tuning and clarity
  • Test different stacking rules and tighten numbers so support builds feel strong without invalidating single-tower carries.
• Lobby UX
  • More list filters and subtle latency hints are on the table so you can pick better matches faster.
• Competitive flow
  • Looking at pre-game role selection and clearer team composition cues to make PvP setups faster and less fiddly.

Thanks for the bug reports and screenshots you’ve been sending — they’ve been pointing us right at the rough spots. Keep them coming.