Period: January 9, 2026 Total Commits: 13

Daily Dev Update: Accurate Auras, Cleaner UI, Tougher Waves — January 9, 2026

Hey, here’s what we’ve been working on. Today is mostly consistency and quality-of-life: aura ranges behave the way the circle shows, the wave timer UI is finally consistent across modes, 1v1 onboarding is less punishing, and minions scale up more cleanly. A bunch of fixes and backend hardening landed too.

What’s New

• Aura visuals and gameplay now match

  • The radius you see is the radius you get. We corrected the range math so towers inside an aura’s circle actually benefit. This stabilizes synergy builds and reduces edge-case “just outside” moments.
  • Impact: more reliable buffs on clustered setups and fewer surprise gaps.

• Consistent wave timer across online and offline

  • Introduced a shared wave display and aligned its placement so it lives in the same spot across modes. Less UI whiplash when swapping between practice and PvP.
  • It shows both the wave number and the timer, using the same underlying timer logic everywhere.

• Gentler 1v1 onboarding

  • Bots in the 1v1 onboarding path now keep things simple and won’t escalate with upgrades. The goal is to teach core flow without punishing tech spikes.
  • We also simplified the end-of-match flow in multiplayer so getting back to the main menu is straightforward.

• Tutorial guardrails

  • The tutorial now locks a few actions to keep the learning path clean: no castle switching, no destroying spawns, and income is set to zero for that scenario. It also exposes step flags to control when tower or minion upgrades are actually on.
  • This reduces early confusion and keeps focus on the current lesson.

• Balance: minion durability

  • Minion health now scales at 2.5x per level so minions are stronger later into the game.

What Got Fixed

• Damage booster levels were corrected

  • Level handling on boosters was off; it should now provide the intended bonuses at each step. This helps aura-based and buff-stacking strategies perform predictably.

• Team switching in full lobbies

  • Players already in a lobby can now change teams even if the lobby is at capacity. This removes a frustrating block during pre-game shuffles.

• Hunter behavior edge cases

  • Cleaned up a fairness issue around hunter targeting/behavior. Fewer odd chases, more reliable pathing priorities.

• UI odds and ends

  • Unified wave timer position (no more left/right flip between modes).
  • Cleaned up an unused corner button and tidied props in that UI area.
  • Adjusted level badge font sizing so numbers don’t spill over.
  • Removed the FPS counter and its toggle. It was cluttering the UI and not very useful for most players.

Under the Hood

• Shared wave timing logic

  • Tutorial now uses the same wave timer as the rest of the game. Fewer duplicate timers means fewer desync ghosts and more consistent countdown behavior.

• Indicator mesh pooling

  • Reworked common indicator visuals (tile adjacency, spawn tiles, hopper zones) to reuse meshes instead of spawning new ones. This reduces allocation churn and helps frame-time stability during heavy preview/placement moments.

• Cleaner render and settings surface

  • Dropped the old performance monitor component and related CSS. Less UI overhead, simpler render path.

• Logging and diagnostics

  • Added targeted debug/error logs where they help (auth rate limit returns, specific request types) and removed the general noise. This should make it easier to trace issues without spamming consoles.

Thanks to everyone who flagged the aura mismatch and the lobby team-switch issue. The reports helped narrow these down quickly. If you see anything off with the new wave display or the tougher minion scaling, let us know where and when it happens—timings, mode, and tower mix help a lot.