Daily Dev Update: Readable Fights, Smarter Bots - September 26, 2025
Period: September 26, 2025
Total Commits: 10
Hey, here’s what we’ve been working on today. Focus was on combat readability, minion level clarity, and cleaning up bot decisions so practice matches feel more like real opponents. A few balance nudges landed too.
What’s New
Combat readability pass
We did a pass on visual clarity so it’s easier to parse fights at a glance.
- Range indicators now appear when you select a tower (thin black outline, smooth animation)
- Selection glow is clearer and consistent on both towers and minions
- Attack speed auras have a distinct blue glow and now show up on the units receiving the buff
[screenshot: tower range ring + selection glow at debda68]
[screenshot: attack speed aura glow on receiving towers at f622d6b]
Why: in PvP scrums, you need fast reads—what’s in range, what’s selected, what’s buffed. These changes reduce visual guesswork without adding noise.
Minion progression: clearer and deeper
Minion levels got a functional and UI refresh.
- Max minion level is now 5 across the game
- Each spawn level increases minion speed by about 10%, compounding through level 5
- Spawn points show where your health bonuses are coming from (player level and castles destroyed), plus the total after multipliers
- The info panel now shows resistances for minions, color-coded; only non-zero values display to cut clutter
Gameplay impact: spawn upgrades feel more meaningful thanks to speed scaling, and you can sanity-check effective health and resistances before committing.
[screenshot: minion info panel with resistances and speed at 41e77a0]
Balance touches
Small, targeted changes based on early skirmish data.
- Minions scale tougher with level; this primarily helps late-game waves punch through static defenses
- Flamer’s damage is back to 5
- Tower stat lines were rebalanced to line up better across early/mid/late tiers and pair more cleanly with auras and status effects
Context: the goal is more viable builds, fewer outliers. This is iterative—numbers are settling, not locked.
Smarter bot decisions
Practice matches got better. The bot now:
- Detects and prioritizes undefended front castles and will place towers there first
- Upgrades towers and spawns using actual upgrade costs and stage-aware priorities
- Avoids overusing the same optimal unit repeatedly and shifts choices through mid and late game
You’ll see fewer empty-front blowouts and more reasonable pressure pacing.
[screenshot: bot defending front castles under pressure at 79f75b7]
What Got Fixed
- Aura visuals now appear on units receiving buffs, not the providers
- Selection glow clears reliably when you deselect
- Minion selection uses the actual center point (the offset clickbox is gone)
- Range ring no longer flashes on selection changes
- Status effect text in the info panel is properly right-aligned and readable
- Upgrade buttons hide when you’re actually at max level
- Stars scale and color correctly across minions, towers, and spawns for levels 1–5
- Castle bonus indicators show up on spawn points using the correct team lookup
- Minion info shows the upgraded speed from spawn level, not the base value
UI polish: increased selection highlight visibility in upgrade menus and widened the info panel to prevent wrapping on big health values.
[screenshot: brighter upgrade selection + consistent stars at f4cd2ff]
Under the Hood
- Unified star rendering into a single renderer and batch-draw for better performance
- Replaced magic numbers with configuration constants (including the new level 5 cap)
- Cleaned up tower sorting in unlock menus for more consistent browsing
- Fixed a type error around resistances that was blocking builds; client, server, and bots now compile cleanly
- Internal rename of minion identifiers for clarity across systems
- Visual tech notes: gradient textures are now canvas-based; meshes follow the same orientation rules for stability in the renderer
- Logging standardized so diagnostics are easier to parse when stuff goes sideways
That’s the snapshot for today. If you see aura colors acting weird or the bot ignoring a front castle, let us know—those reports help a lot. Thanks to everyone who flagged the spawn bonus display issue; that one’s sorted now.