Good news: We now have a final release date! On July 19th we'll leave Early Access.

Highlights

With update 0.9.14 the multiplayer leaves beta stage, we introduced an alliance challenge for Clash mode and improved performance.

Multiplayer

The multiplayer is officially out of beta now. If you still find bugs we'll of course fix them and also improve things when we find things to improve. We also added our new multiplayer trailer to the Steam page. You can also check a full multiplayer match on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dO6ojzfPqk For this update the multiplayer also got an alliance challenge. This means you can create challenges for the multiplayer and fight against other alliances to increase your alliance rank. With the modifiers you can also affect the multiplayer matches and make it pretty hard for your opponents. Also the remaining icons for the multiplayer skills are in now and they're really awesome!

Performance

On the performance side we could improve some things. In the main menu VSync now is always enabled. That's good to reduce CPU and GPU usage and on Laptops to increase battery service life. Ingame, especially in the endgame (higher waves reached) performance is way better now. There was a bug that caused the gold drop notificators to be updated even though not visible. Also the healthbars above the monsters got updated too often, so that's also no problem anymore. For players using low and medium shader quality I also fixed some materials that still made use of higher quality shaders, so this will slightly improve performance when you're GPU bound and certain monsters are on the map. Another optimization in this update are the reduced loading times. In general the first 20% of the loading bar already are loaded in the main menu now. Additionally, for multiplayer games the second 20% of the loading bar are preloaded in the lobby. Those are for the level you're going to play in the multiplayer match, so that's already known in the lobby.

Full changelog

Enhancements:

• in the main menu now always VSync is enabled to save GPU and CPU power
• improved layout of monster element tooltip
• added alliance challenge for multiplayer
• added remaining icons for the multiplayer skills

Balancing:

• the high ranks in leaderboard (medals) now are easier or at all reachable
• elemental level 4 in Clash mode is stronger now

Fixes:

• fixed error teleporting monster when no teleport effect is available
• fixed game hanging when too many Tornados have been built
• own towers can't be blocked anymore by Block skill in multiplayer
• Cheat 1 skill now respawns elements properly at the beginning of the path after they reached the end portal
• Cheat 1 skill now decreases lives by 3 as normal elementals would do
• Transformer limitation now counts per player in multiplayer
• it's possible now to build more than 5 Transformers without it loosing its ability
• fixed tower highlighting after upgrade
• fixed bug that caused Forest Spirit to produce too many lives in multiplayer
• fixed bug in multiplayer that caused effect not to appear at clients when Forest Spirit produces a bonus life
• added missing label in inventory
• improved hover color of inventory button
• removed condition of a quest that required the tutorial to be finished
• version number in main menu now is always on top of everything else
• improved presentation of learned and learnable skills
• grass at tower position now is removed properly in multiplayer
• Level tower now also gets its bonus in multiplayer
• fixed bug when pressing shortcut for Spawner in singleplayer
• added some missing click sounds
• alliance button now is only enabled when in main menu
• grass and trees now aren't part of minimap anymore because it was kinda ugly
• exiting game with FPS display being active now shouldn't cause display bug anymore
• slightly reduced network traffic
• increased loading speed when starting first game
• reduced CPU usage
• fixed bug when using controller
• fixed bug that caused player to get way too many XP in multiplayer
• connection being closed too early so result isn't synced to everybody
• fixed compatibility issue between Windows and Mac (maybe also Linux) lobby
• lobby list now is properly updated when amount is reduced
• Mud tower now works with bonus speed
• when alliance is closed score now is removed from Leaderboard
• reduced loading time in multiplayer
• fixed bug that could cause the game to hang up for certain tooltips (especially in alliance menu)
• leaving multiplayer doesn't create a savegame anymore
• removed "Restart" button in multiplayer
• fixed display errors in main menu using UHD resolution
• fixed wrong text in score statistics in leaderboard for Hero Mode
• sound of Gulp and Spike aren't played directly when built anymore
• fixed several small errors
• alliance flags now are hidden when switching page in leaderboard
• fixed bug when cancelling spawn in multiplayer
• fixed some monster materials to improve GPU performance on low and medium shader quality
• increased timeout in multiplayer
• Transform tower can't transform monsters with 0 HP anymore

What's next?

We got some new feedback during this milestone and will add some of it with the 0.9.15 release. This contains a damage indicator above monsters. So when a tower hits a monsters you'll see the dealt damage like you see the dropped gold. This feature will be disableable if you don't want to use it. Furthermore the kill count of the towers will be visible in the tower info screen. Besides these feature requests we'll focus on more performance improvements, both for CPU and GPU, and also start testing and fixing controller support. If you have any other ideas, whishes, balancing concerns or bugs, please let us know, either as comment, in the discussions, via the Feedback functionality ingame or on Discord.

[ 2019-05-10 11:51:31 CET ] [ Original post ]