Period: December 21, 2025 Total Commits: 9

Daily Dev Update: Single‑Board Onboarding & Clean UI — December 21, 2025

Hey, here’s what we’ve been working on today. The focus was smoothing the early experience and cleaning up a few UI edge cases that were getting in the way.

What’s New

• Single‑board onboarding (1v1, 2v2, 3v3)

  • Onboarding skirmishes now run on a single shared board with roads to keep the action readable and the decisions focused.
  • Each team has clear spawn‑side restrictions and placement areas, so early rounds aren’t a guessing game.
  • You can now leave mid‑onboarding via a proper “leave game” flow if you want to jump out.

• Camera zoom that actually frames the map

  • The camera now sizes to the map’s aspect ratio instead of just the largest dimension, so you see more of what matters.
  • Exported limits help keep it consistent: MIN_ZOOM = 15, MAX_ZOOM = 50.

What Got Fixed

• End‑of‑match UI flow is sane now

  • The victory/defeat overlay takes priority, and level‑up or skill tree modals wait until you hit Continue or Main Menu. No more stacking popups right as the match ends.

• Map‑driven unit picks

  • Custom maps that cap selections (e.g., 3 instead of a default 5) are now respected in the lobby and level‑up UI. Picks match the map’s rules instead of a one‑size‑fits‑all value. This makes alternative modes and constraints feel fair and intentional.

• Tutorial clarity

  • The wave timer appears when the defend step starts rather than showing “Waiting…”. It’s easier to track the countdown and plan early builds.
  • The elemental intro got a small bump in approachability: the ice elemental is now level 0 there, which better matches early‑game power levels.

• Tower icon consistency

  • The Volcano tower now uses the correct sprite and icon everywhere

Under the Hood

• Onboarding funnel tracking

  • Added sequential event tracking across the entire onboarding flow so we can see where players drop off and fix those spots first. This helps prioritize design and polish in the right places.

• Event naming cleanup

  • Renamed a batch of onboarding events (e.g., from skirmish labels to more flexible game buckets). This avoids locking analytics to a specific map type and keeps experiments cleaner.

• Match config resilience

  • The client now pulls selection limits from the map config and falls back more gracefully in online games when the chosen map isn’t explicitly set. Less brittle, more honest to the mode.

• Spawn and placement validation

  • Stricter validation on team spawn and placement keeps both sides on their lane, and updated spawn positions reduce unit overlap during early spawns.

• Minor cleanup

  • Trimmed unused map generator code, simplified the playtest page, and documented the onboarding flow for future iteration.

Thanks

Thanks for the reports on UI overlap and the feedback on the tutorial pacing. If you spot the victory screen stacking behavior again, send a clip or screenshot—those edge cases are easier to chase with visuals.