Period: November 14, 2025 Total Commits: 4

Daily Dev Update: Cleaner HUD, Safer Paths, Smoother Inputs — November 14, 2025

Hey, here’s what we’ve been working on. Today’s build tightens up the HUD, fixes a long-standing pathing validation edge case, and sorts out that annoying “hold a key and the game stutters” behavior. It’s a smaller batch, but it removes a few friction points you’ve been bumping into.

What’s New

HUD: More arena, less chrome

We cleaned up the HUD so the map gets more of your screen without hiding important info.

• Corner indicators
  • Top-left: gold readout with a level-up button that glows when you can upgrade
  • Top-right: wave number, timer, and a stats button
  • Minimal, semi-transparent, scales cleanly at different resolutions
• Hold-to-view stats (Tab or the stats button)
  • Transparent overlay (~70% opacity) with subtle glow and a quick slide-in
  • Teams grouped A vs B, with name, gold, level, income, and unit icons
  • Your row is highlighted so you can find yourself fast
  • Non-blocking: you can keep playing while it’s open
• Bottom bar cleanup
  • Removed heavy gradients and borders
  • Unit icons float without the chunky frame

Net result: roughly 20% more playable space, less visual noise, and you still get the same data when you need it.

[screenshot: multiplayer battle with new UI at 0d2ee8b]
[screenshot: redesigned HUD with corner indicators and transparent stats overlay at 0d2ee8b]

Small balance tweak: Protect the King

• Base income: 3 → 2
• Income growth per tick: 0.05 → 0.1

This leans the map away from early snowballing and toward mid-game decision-making. Early buys are tighter, but scaling ramps faster if you plan ahead.

What Got Fixed

Tower placement now respects temporary blocks during checks

We had a case where a placement could look valid during the preview but end up fully blocking paths once dropped, especially in mazing. The validation now treats the previewed tower as a real obstacle for the check, so if it would cut off all routes, the placement is denied up front.

Player impact:

• No more “it was green, then everything got stuck” moments
• Mazing strategy is still there, but hard blocks that trap minions are correctly flagged

[screenshot: updated tower placement grid blocking validation at 78c9447]

Holding a key no longer stalls the sim

Keyboard repeat was flooding input events and starving networking updates. We swapped to key state tracking and moved camera panning into the frame update loop. This keeps input smooth and the sim responsive even if you hold a movement key.

Player impact:

• Smooth WASD/arrow camera panning
• No more micro-stutters while holding keys
• Server ticks keep flowing as expected

[screenshot: smooth camera panning during match at 804aee6]

If you still see the sim hitch when holding a key, send a note with your OS/browser and steps.

Under the Hood

• Map dimensions are now fully data-driven
  • Removed hardcoded grid sizes; maps provide explicit width/height
  • The grid and spatial hashes reinitialize when the actual dimensions arrive
  • Pathfinders can be updated without rebuilding the whole manager
  • This reduces edge-case bugs between different map sizes and speeds up load consistency
• Faster map deployments
  • New “deploy with maps” target packages code plus .tsm map files
  • Useful when maps change but heavy assets don’t
  • Command: make deploy-client-maps
• DX nicety
  • Added aliases for shared utilities to make imports cleaner

[screenshot: updated tower placement grid with correct path preview at 78c9447]

Notes

• Thanks to everyone who flagged tower placements that “looked fine” and then trapped lanes later. Those reports made this fix straightforward.
• The HUD will keep getting small polish passes, but the layout and interactions above are in and usable now.

That’s it for today. Try the build, and let us know if the camera/input changes feel better or if you spot any odd pathing results on your favorite maps.