December 2023 Update: Rare Towers, Resizable UI, Improved performance

This is a special birthday devlog! One year ago, we made the first commit to this project's repository. Since then, we've come a long way in developing a standalone version of our favorite tower defense WC3 map. Our small team of two has been continuously working on this game in our spare time and we're excited to share these updates to showcase our progres. We also appreciate the support and feedback from you all. Thank you to everyone who has played You TD 2 and for all the contributions you've made so far!

This month, we've implemented ALL the rare towers, that's 55 rare towers, complete with a total of 146 upgrades! We're continuously revising the interface based on feedback from playtests. Based on one of the suggestions, we've added a setting to adjust the size of the user interface. Additionally, we've unified theme styles, providing more flexibility to change the visual style more rapidly with each release. And as always, don't hesitate to report any bugs and suggestions in our discord https://discord.gg/EksA2CfCS9.

Gameplay

Rare Towers

This is the third batch out of four of towers implemented based on the original You TD map. We have added 55 rare towers to the game, with a total of 146 upgrades across all towers. They have far more sophisticated skills compared to the uncommon ones and their visuals are more detailed and unique.

Resizable UI

The new setting enables you to adjust the size of every UI element based on your screen resolution. You have three options: Small, Medium, and Large, with Medium set as the default. Your chosen setting will persist in future sessions, just like other settings.

Performance Improvements

We have worked on optimizing the game so that the game's FPS is now more stable and it uses less VRAM.

Our assets folder has been increasing in size with every new tower added and it is expected to grow substantially once new creep models arrive and towers receive animations. Therefore, we have begun exploring compression techniques, smart preloading and other optimizations for our assets. Despite adding over 80 models and icons to this latest release, the size of the game increased by only 2 MB!

Misc

• Creeps are now colored based on their specials.
• You can now check the effectiveness of different attack types against a wave.

Bug Fixes

Towers

• Fixed incorrect range logic for auras and abilities - range checks for towers are now increased by 64 units as it was in original game
• Fixed crash which happened when a visual effect is added to tower during transformation
• Fixed bug where some tower auras were buffing caster when they shouldn't
• Fixed being able to force an "air only" tower to attack ground creeps, same thing for "ground only" towers

Items

• Fixed bug where the animation for items flying to item stash would sometimes start from incorrect position
• Fixed "Ball Lightning" item always returning to stash even when there are towers with free inventory space
• Fixed being able to put consumable items into tower inventory
• Fixed bug where timers for item abilities would reset when item is removed from tower
• Fixed bug where items would keep trying to cast abilities which use charges when charge count is 0
• Fixed crash sometimes caused by "Fragmentation Round" item
• Fixed "Fragmentation Round" item using ability too often
• Fixed "Holy Hand Grenade" item using ability too often
• Fixed "Currency Converter" using ability twice very fast when first added to tower
• Fixed crash in "Stunner" item
• Fixed "Pendant of Mana Supremacy" item having a too short cooldown
• Fixed bug where "Speed Demon's Reward" would reward too little gold

Creeps

• Fixed creep base armor not rounding down
• Decreased how much creep armor reduces incoming damage - creeps are now slightly weaker which is more accurate to the original game

UI

• Fixed bug where tooltips for items/towers/research would sometimes get stuck
• Fixed mana bars blocking mouse input