The new year has begun and we were busy to get the new update finished.

Highlights:

For version 0.9.5 we started working on the multiplayer. But as it will take a while to reach a point where we can release something playable we are also working on improvements for the singleplayer/alliances. So, as usual, here are the version hightlights.

Challenge Modifier

For those of you that already founded or joined an alliance that wondered what the alliance chest is for: Well, now you can spend your gold for challenge modifiers. When creating a challenge or accepting one, you can buy a modifier. This modifier will be applied to the game of all enemy alliances in the challenge and make their game even harder. You can e.g. reduce the start live count, increase the HP of the monsters or block some random fields on the map. That's really mean and so it will be a lot of fun!

Balancing

The balancing improvements continue. This time we changed the spawn amounts in Classic and Hero Mode. The monsters now are grouped by strength. Stronger monster types spawn less monsters, but each of them is stronger now, while weaker monsters spawn more, but weaker monsters. Example:
Dragons are strong monsters, so there will be less spawns of them, but each Dragon has more HP. A Giant Rat is a weak monster. When they spawn there will be plenty of them, but each with less HP than the average monster on this wave.

Full changelog:

Enhancements:

• for challenges now modifier can be purchased with the gold in the alliance chest
• items in inventory now can be reordered

Balancing:

• spawn amount of each wave now depends on the kind of monster (Hero and Classic Mode)
• start of Survival Mode is slightly more difficult now
• drastically nerfed Money tower: monsters have to pay their fee just once now instead for every Money tower

Fixes:

• it's not possible anymore to create empty names for users or alliances (also not just using spaces)
• target mode buttons aren't visible anymore in upgrade menu
• target mode now can also be changed in multiselect mode for all selected towers
• fixed long tooltip titles not being shown
• fixed scrolling in help menus
• Gulp should work again properly when there are multiple of it
• after first sacrifice the sacrifice button shouldn't be greyed out anymore
• sacrificing a tower now frees the build slot again
• added tooltip for sacrifice button
• fixed orientation of Death projectile
• after an upgrade tower effects aren't highlighted anymore
• fixed bug with status changes when a savegame was loaded
• fixed bug that caused monsters to become much faster than they were allowed to
• notification to choose region now only comes up when really the profile was opened
• monster element tooltip is context sensitive again and now shows their resistance
• fixed script error when finishing a game
• water for Water of Life quest shouldn't float above the ground anymore
• with multiselect selected towers now are directly highlighted again after upgrade
• spawns display in Survival score slot machine shows correct formatting now
• effect of Shock Wave looks more powerful now
• maybe fixed error that caused tooltips to be not removed
• fixed bug during path generation that caused wall standing on the path in a certain combination
• a restarted game now doesn't break anymore when using an active item
• restarting a level now removes the path preview

What's next?

On the multiplayer side the next goal is to start the game and build the basic architecture to synchronize everything while playing. Also we'll decide what the first game mode(s) will be (I guess we'll start with a coop mode, but let's see).

Besides that we'll continue improving the balancing. If you think any towers are too strong/weak, please let us know.

On the content side we'll add more quests now. We received no feedback whether you like the idea of unlocking items through quests, but I do. And we have so many more cool items!

The last big bullet point is to get back to improving performance. We're going to start to add proper LOD variations for the monster models. For those that don't know what LOD means: LOD = Level of detail. Doing so we'll decerease the amount of triangles used per monster, especially when they're far away from the camera and it doesn't matter if there are additional details or not as you won't be able to see them anyway. This will help to get better performance with many monsters on the map. Besides that we'll profile the game and see what else can be improved.

All these things will be ongoing processes, so each of the next updates will contain stuff for them. If you have any other wishes or ideas, let us know.

We hope you enjoy the new update and are looking forward to get your feedback, either here in the discussions or in our Discord at https://discord.gg/bwnuXq9.