Brewing Turtle Games
BRIBE THE BRAVE Brewing Turtle Games
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Patch Notes & Updates

Track the continuous evolution of Bribe The Brave. All releases, active playtest patches, balance adjustments, and work-in-progress features are logged directly from development.

v0.4.11-alpha

v0.4.11-alpha
🚀 Features
  • •
    Interactive 2D Comic Intro Cutscene: Added a stylized 2D graphic comic intro sequence (`ComicCutscene.tscn`) that plays seamlessly on startup before the Main Menu, introducing players to the core indirect-control bounty mechanic with dynamic camera acting, synchronized music, and skip controls.
  • •
    Player Unit Roster Expansion & Animation Pipeline: Assembled and rigged 15 player units with complete humanoid skeletal retargeting, standard 7-library animation players (Attacks, Death, Idle, Locomotion, UAL1, UAL2, Victory), AnimationTree state machines, UnitAnimationComponents, basic combat abilities, and UnitData stat profiles: the **Bard**, **Skald**, and **Bladedancer** (swapped from Level 5 placeholders to full 3D models), along with brand-new units **Arcane Archer**, **Assassin**, **Bloodmage**, **Crossbowman**, **Death Knight**, **Hunter**, **Monk**, **Necromancer**, **Ninja**, **Raccoon** (configured with human and shapeshifted forms), **Tactician**, and **Warden**.
  • •
    Level 5 Victory Conditions & Tavern Guild Recruits: Fully configured Level 5 ("Storm the Beach") on a 200x200 map with northern shoreline beachhead landings, 12 human stronghold encampments (Poachers and Hedge Mages), lush tree and grass foliage, a 40-day mission deadline, and a 3-star victory system (Star 1: Destroy 12 Shoreline Strongholds, Star 2: Enlist Tavern Guild by earning 5000G, Star 3: Complete in 30 Days or Less). Added the Tavern elite building (1,000G) and its three specialist recruits (1,000G each, 1-unit cap): the **Skald** at the Barracks, the **Bladedancer** at the Hideout, and the **Bard** at the Coven.
  • •
    Mid-Level Objective-Gated Building Unlocks: Introduced dynamic guild building unlocks through in-level match objectives, allowing structures (starting with the Tavern in Level 5) to display in the Village Plaza with real-time objective prerequisites and become buildable immediately once earned.
  • •
    Mainland Campaign Expansion (Levels 5–9): Created baseline level scenes and data for Level 5 ("Storm the Beach") and Level 6 ("The King's Crossroads"), mapped out the full mainland exploration progression through Level 9 on the world map with connected road networks, and established the foundation for upcoming regional guilds.
⚖️ Balance
  • •
    Level 5 Mission Time Limit Tuning: Extended the Level 5 primary mission deadline to 40 days to clear all strongholds, and increased the bonus star threshold to 30 days or less.
🐛 Bug Fixes
  • •
    Cumulative Gold & Objective Progress Save/Load: Fixed an issue where saving and reloading a game reset the level's accumulated gold earnings and in-level gold objectives back to zero, and ensured that buildings unlocked via mid-level objectives (such as the Tavern) remain unlocked upon reloading.
  • •
    Unit Death Capacity & Hire Lock Release: Resolved an issue where hiring a unit (such as a Paladin) with an active instance limit left the building's hire button permanently disabled at maximum capacity (e.g. 1/1) after the unit died in battle. TechTreeManager now directly listens to unit death events, detects dead units even after corpse cleanup sequences strip components, auto-cleans on scene exit, and immediately releases building hiring limits.
🎨 QoL & Polish
  • •
    Tavern & Tavern Unit Action Portraits: Connected custom PhotoBooth 75x75 transparent icon portraits to the Tavern building action and the Bard, Skald, and Bladedancer recruit actions, replacing previous blank placeholders in building action grids.

v0.4.10-alpha

v0.4.10-alpha
🐛 Bug Fixes
  • •
    Tutorial Pointer Cleanup & Lifetime Hardening: Resolved an issue where tutorial pointer arrows (golden bouncing chevrons) could persist indefinitely on screen after completing tutorial steps or selecting buildings, by tracking and clearing all active pointers, guarding asynchronous UI frame updates against stale step transitions, adding tree-wide group sweeps on tutorial completion, and implementing automatic self-cleanup whenever targets are hidden or the tutorial sequence ends.
  • •
    Bounty Indicator Duplicate Signal Connection Fix: Resolved an engine error when editing existing bounties by guarding against duplicate signal connections on the collection area trigger in BountyIndicator.gd.
  • •
    Level 1 Map Generation & Graveyard Placement: Fixed Level 1 procedural generation failures and duplicate town plazas during retry attempts by properly cleaning up registered entities and updating the primary spawner objective targets.
  • •
    Enemy Combat Standoff & Idle Lock Fix: Resolved an issue where enemies (such as Skeleton Peasants and Archers) could freeze in place without attacking when engaging player units by preventing premature ranged combat stops outside weapon reach and ensuring frontline melee units close the final distance to strike instead of idling in reserve standby slots.
🎨 QoL & Polish
  • •
    Campaign Narrative Overhaul (Levels 1–4 Island Invasion & Evacuation): Reworked the world map level names, descriptions, and Advisor Edmund's in-game dialogue across Levels 1–4 to establish a cohesive campaign narrative—easing players into their role as the Magistrate gathering gold and heroes to defend the island's cities against a spreading undead plague, culminating in a dire Level 4 coastal last stand to protect fleeing refugees evacuating across the channel toward the mainland.
  • •
    Graveyard Spawner Modularization & Full Thematic VFX: Migrated all 8 undead graveyard spawners from the legacy monolithic model to a distributed 50/50 mix of shared mausoleum templates, decorated each with distinct atmospheric mist (Necrotic Green, Fire Embers, Blood Crimson, Frost Chill, Lightning Storm, and Desert Sand), added glowing occult ground sigils for all Skeleton Mages, and placed stylized iron braziers and torches flanking tomb entrances.
  • •
    Level 1 Tutorial Streamlining & Exploration Bounty: Smoothed out the Level 1 tutorial by removing the awkward forced plaza click requirement—now automatically opening the action grid while pointing back to the plaza if deselected—and reworked the bounty tutorial to guide players toward placing an Exploration Bounty into unexplored fog instead of directly revealing the enemy stronghold.
  • •
    Camera Edge Bounds & HUD Sidebar Alignment: Relaxed RTS camera bounds to allow full center-on-edge framing across all map borders, dynamically compensated 3D camera and minimap bounds for the right HUD panel, and fixed the right sidebar base width to 300px to eliminate panel expansion jitter when selecting buildings or plazas with 3 action choices.
  • •
    Debug Output Cleanup Pass: Removed 14 debug print statements across gameplay scripts (stealth toggles, treasure pickups, unit spawns, raid waves, save confirmations, Steam leaderboard uploads), fixed the Steam leaderboard warning spam that generated ~2,200 false-failure warnings per session, resolved the demo mode scene-tree error, re-saved the LevelSelectPlayerToken scene to fix vanished skeleton node warnings, matched the NavMesh cell size to 0.25, and batch-fixed ~65 GDScript static analysis warnings (unused params, missing @tool annotations, shadowed identifiers, narrowing conversions).

v0.4.9-alpha

v0.4.9-alpha
🐛 Bug Fixes
  • •
    Priestess Chain Heal Type Safety: Resolved a script crash (`Trying to assign an array of type "Array" to a variable of type "Array[String]"`) when casting Chain Heal by enforcing explicit typed array initialization for friendly and hostile targeting filters.
  • •
    Paladin Model Scale & Ground Alignment: Corrected the Paladin character model scale from half-size (~0.94m) to full humanoid proportions (~1.83m) and realigned the rig origin so the Paladin's feet rest squarely on the terrain rather than clipping halfway into the ground.
🎨 QoL & Polish
  • •
    Demo Title Screen Layout Optimization: Restored the primary main menu button stack to its classic 5-button layout and relocated the demo Wishlist and Discord buttons into a dedicated bottom-right callout banner, preventing vertical clipping on 720p displays while keeping the main menu stack identical to the retail game.
  • •
    PhotoBooth Action Icons: Linked custom 75x75 transparent render portraits to the Temple build action and the Paladin, Priestess, and Witch Hunter hiring actions.

v0.4.8-alpha

v0.4.8-alpha
🐛 Bug Fixes
  • •
    Windows Demo CI Build & Export Preset Conflict: Resolved an export failure in GitHub Actions Windows builds caused by duplicate export preset sections and aligned the preset naming to `Windows Desktop Demo`. Also corrected duplicate resource UIDs across Level elevation curves.

v0.4.7-alpha

v0.4.7-alpha
🚀 Features
  • •
    Temple Sanctuary & Advanced Guild Recruits: Constructed the Temple building (available starting in Level 4 for 1,000 gold), unlocking elite specialist recruits (1,000 gold each, restricted to 1 active hire at a time): the **Paladin** at the Barracks (plate-clad vanguard dealing +50% innate damage to undead with divine smites, holy aura radiance, and allied healing), the **Priestess** at the Coven (radiant support cleric who can join combat squads as an auxiliary 4th party member, casting 4-bounce chain heals and persistent rejuvenation auras), and the **Witch Hunter** at the Hideout (elite anti-caster control specialist with over 50% complete spell negation and heavy magic mitigation, equipped with 8m Shocking Brands, 3s root traps, 1s stun crossbow bolts, a 6m-diameter 3s Stun Grenade with crackling electrical visual effects, and a 15 HP self-heal elixir).
  • •
    Steam Demo Architecture & In-Game Wishlist Integration: Configured the Steam Alpha Demo pipeline for Levels 1–4, featuring clickable "Wishlist Full Game on Steam" and Discord community CTAs on the title screen and match scorecard, Steam Overlay store routing with browser fallback, a locked Level 5 "Full Release Preview" world map node, seamless forward-compatible demo save migration into retail release directories, and a hardened Windows Demo export preset with physical exclusion filtering for unreleased content.
  • •
    Modular Faction Building Upgrades & Temple Sanctuary: Introduced a modular building add-on system allowing faction buildings (Barracks, Hideout, Coven, and the new Temple) to be upgraded with specialized annexes—such as Training Grounds, Poisoner's Labs, and Reliquaries—that boost durability, defense bounties, and recruitment speeds with distinct visual attachments and seamless pathfinding.
🐛 Bug Fixes
  • •
    Combat Engagement & Swarm Navigation Smoothing: Refined combat standoff distances and movement tracking so units and monsters smoothly engage targets without hesitation or stuttering during large multi-unit battles.
  • •
    Fog of War Save/Load Restoration & Minimap Alignment: Fixed an issue where loading a saved game caused previously explored areas to vanish or appear shifted into a shrunken top-left corner, leaving southern and eastern units stranded in isolated patches of light. Exploration grids now preserve saved dimensions, properly stretch across the GPU history buffer, and prevent level-load lifecycle passes from wiping restored fog data.
  • •
    Enemy Spawner Defender Connection & Double-Spawn Prevention: Fixed a bug where loading a saved game caused active enemy units to lose their connection to their origin spawner, prompting strongholds and graveyards to spawn a full replacement squad and double the normal defending population. Spawners now preserve their active spawn limits, remaining timer countdowns, and defender groups on save/load, with automatic healing for older saves.
🎨 QoL & Polish
  • •
    Aura Decal Mesh Culling: Configured aura ground decals to project exclusively onto the terrain layer (Layer 3), preventing aura emblems and colors from draping across unit models, enemy bodies, tree trunks, and foliage.
  • •
    Mobile Touch Camera Gestures & Edge Bounding: Overhauled touch controls with compound two-finger pinch-and-pan gestures, tactile pinch zoom momentum with smooth friction damping, stationary release protection, and strict frustum boundary clamping that prevents the camera from ever looking outside map borders or clipping into terrain.
  • •
    Mobile Vulkan & Thermal Optimization: Added level-load shader pre-warming to eliminate combat stutter on mobile Vulkan, scalable particle density presets, and adaptive dynamic resolution scaling with FSR 1.0.

v0.4.6-alpha

v0.4.6-alpha
🚀 Features
  • •
    Rogue & Nightblade Stalker Overhaul: Stealthed units now feature true invisibility against enemies without detection capabilities, proactively purge enemy aggro when entering stealth, patiently shadow foes at a safe standoff distance when facing groups alone until allies engage or targets become isolated/vulnerable, deliver devastating backstab burst openers, and execute in-combat tactical disengages to evaluate their next mark.
  • •
    Building Defense Perimeter Patrol: Defending units responding to building bounties now dynamically navigate to and patrol along the structure's outer perimeter ring with angular waypoints and alert sentry stances instead of crowding the building center.
  • •
    Credits & Dedication: Added an in-game Credits dialog on the main menu attributing the Godot Engine and community addons, featuring a heartfelt dedication of the game to the creator's son, Gavin.
  • •
    VFX Quality Settings: Added a VFX Quality slider in the Video options (Low 30%, Medium 60%, High 100%) to optimize particle density across diverse hardware.
🐛 Bug Fixes
  • •
    Defense Combat Oscillation & Target Lock Fix: Resolved an issue where defenders responding to building defense twitched back and forth between defending structures and engaging ranged attackers by preventing defense interrupts from clearing combat targets, eliminating target wiping during generic rethinks, and allowing melee units to commit to closing the distance to ranged foes without dropping aggro.
  • •
    Building Defense Locomotion & Sniper Alert: Fixed an issue where defenders guarding buildings were blind to distant ranged archers and moved in choppy stop-start increments by dynamically broadcasting attackers to defenders' sensory awareness upon structure damage, increasing default unit vision range to 15m, and smoothing perimeter patrol into fluid, continuous movement without waypoint freezes during active attacks.
  • •
    Town Plaza Idling & Defense Sentry Freeze: Resolved an issue where units returning to town became stuck in an idle state around the plaza by replacing throttled frame-delta timers with wall-clock timestamps for defense sentry pauses, reliably scrubbing expired defense and deposit destinations from unit blackboards, and immediately populating travel targets upon selecting player bounties.
  • •
    Match Start Origin VFX Cleanup: Resolved visual artifacts where spell effects or red hazard puddles momentarily flashed at the map origin (0, 0, 0) upon match start by ensuring particles and projectiles are fully positioned in world space prior to node entry, and removed an obsolete debug enemy spawn.
  • •
    Save Slot 1 New Install Fix: Fixed an issue where visiting the Options menu before starting a campaign caused the tutorial toggle to inadvertently initialize and save active progression to Campaign Slot 1.
  • •
    Performance Pill HUD Placement: Repositioned the minimal performance telemetry pill directly below the top-center gold and day timer bar, preventing UI overlap and click interception.
🎨 QoL & Polish
  • •
    Berserker Rage Wave FX: Added a dynamic expanding crimson shockwave aura shader and custom crossed-axe ground decal for the Berserker's Frenzy Cry, visually representing furious rage radiating outward in waves.
  • •
    Aura Bloom & Clutter Reduction: Softened Warrior Commander aura decal emission energy and perimeter ring brightness to eliminate blinding HDR bloom and ensure battlefield readability during dense group skirmishes.
  • •
    Enemy Rot Aura & Fog Sync: Fixed continuous spawner enemy group registration and synchronized Zombie Dog and Mummy rot aura decals with Fog of War visibility, ensuring pestilence runes stay visible during patrol and properly shrouded in the fog.
  • •
    Terrain-Conforming Thematic Auras: Replaced flat circular aura meshes with dynamic terrain-conforming ground decals featuring custom thematic iconography (Warrior heraldic swords and crest, Mummy and Zombie Dog toxic plague runes, Berserker fury) that gently rotate and respect terrain elevation.
  • •
    Particle Shape Variance: Replaced blocky quad particles with soft circular textures across fire, burning patches, meteor storms, and ground dust shockwaves for a smooth visual appearance at high resolutions.
  • •
    Instant Main Menu: Removed the artificial 2-second startup delay on the main menu, allowing the title screen and buttons to appear immediately upon launch.
  • •
    Minimap Camera Framing & Viewport Clipping: Refined the camera view indicator on the minimap with focused viewport margins, horizon flare reduction, HUD sidebar compensation, and strict boundary clipping so off-screen edges cleanly vanish and never protrude outside the minimap.
  • •
    Default Audio Levels: Reduced default Master, Music, and SFX volume levels from 100% to a comfortable 50% for fresh installations.
  • •
    Combat Ping & Notification Pacing Overhaul: Expanded unique combat encounter radius to 30m, slowed repeated skirmish notifications to 12s, anchored Town Defense pings directly to defended buildings, and added combat sound debouncing to prevent audio cacophony during concurrent battles.

v0.4.5-alpha

v0.4.5-alpha
🚀 Features
  • •
    Steam Leaderboards Integration: Added global Steam Leaderboards for **Royal Treasury** (`lb_royal_treasury_gold`) and **Enemies Vanquished** (`lb_enemies_vanquished`), tracking persistent gold stashed and cumulative enemies defeated across all campaign runs with offline fallback caching and automatic save syncing.
🎨 QoL & Polish
  • •
    Steam Alpha Testing Readiness: Linked official Steam App ID across project configuration and build scripts, safely removed development-only App ID files from version control, and primed release pipelines for alpha playtesting.

v0.4.4-alpha

v0.4.4-alpha
General Updates
  • •
    Zero-Stall Fog of War Engine: Replaced synchronous GPU viewport image readbacks with an authoritative discrete CPU bitmask grid, eliminating over 8 seconds of GPU pipeline stalls per minute and reducing CPU process latency by ~38% without altering visual fog rendering.
  • •
    Physics Collider Streamlining: Pruned redundant `HitboxComponent` Area3D nodes and duplicate capsule shapes across all units and enemies, routing detection directly to CharacterBody3D colliders to significantly reduce physics broadphase collision checks in large raids.
  • •
    Directional Shadow Cascade Tuning: Optimized Sun and Moon directional shadow mapping to 2 cascades with a 45m distance cap tailored to RTS camera heights, cutting shadow pass draw calls in half and preventing GPU bandwidth bottlenecks on mobile devices.
  • •
    Mobile Physics Scaling: Added selectable 30 Hz, 40 Hz, and 60 Hz physics simulation presets in the Options menu to provide smooth, battery-friendly gameplay on mobile and Steam Deck hardware.
🐛 Bug Fixes
  • •
    Fixed an issue where units or abilities near map boundaries could erroneously reveal outer border cells, and restored accurate fog preservation when migrating legacy save data.

v0.4.3-alpha

v0.4.3-alpha
🚀 Features
  • •
    Added scalable performance presets (Low, Medium, High) in a dedicated Options menu tab alongside an enemy spawn queueing system, dynamically regulating AI ticking and physics simulation while trickling excess raid units in at a smooth 0.4s cadence so total mission enemy challenge remains identical on any device without frame rate drops.
  • •
    Added an in-game hardware benchmarking and live performance tracking suite with a 60-second automated combat stress test, 1% low stutter analysis, touch-friendly mobile HUD overlay (toggleable via 3-finger tap or F3), and exportable performance scorecards to help players and testers verify hardware viability.

v0.4.1-alpha

v0.4.1-alpha
🚀 Features
  • •
    Steam & Cross-Platform Integration: Added official Steam support via GodotSteam GDExtension, backed by an extensible Platform Provider architecture that guarantees seamless future publishing to Android (Google Play Games) with zero mobile overhead.
  • •
    Steam Achievements & Progression Stats: Tied campaign victories, 3-star ratings, cumulative stars, persistent gold stashes, bounty placements, and tutorials directly to Steam achievements and stats.
  • •
    Demo-to-Full Cross-Progression & Achievement Sync: Enhanced Demo and Full game persistence so all campaign level progress, star ratings, and gold stashes carry over seamlessly, while past achievements earned during the Demo automatically unlock the moment the full game is launched.
  • •
    Cloud Saves & NVIDIA GeForce NOW: Established Steam Auto-Cloud save persistence and GeForce NOW cloud play readiness across Windows and Steam Deck.
  • •
    Steam Deck & Rich Presence: Added automatic Steam Deck hardware detection with 60 FPS battery presets and touch inspect adaptations, along with dynamic Steam Rich Presence displaying current mission status and in-game day to friends.
🐛 Bug Fixes
  • •
    Fixed an issue in the Photo Booth studio where the Psychic unit's psionic shield dome rendered as an unshaded solid white circle by preserving component shader materials during staging and exposing dedicated toggles for the shield and hand flames.
  • •
    Fixed an issue in the Photo Booth studio where enemy units, buildings, and spawners rendered invisibly by neutralizing Fog of War visibility masking and clearing dormant construction discard shaders during staging.
🎨 QoL & Polish
  • •
    Added a mobile-only floating action button (👁️) above the combat log to toggle in-world unit and enemy hover inspect icons on or off, allowing players to instantly switch between a clean cinematic view and detailed unit stats.
  • •
    Upgraded the Photo Booth studio with dynamic asset auto-discovery (50+ units, buildings, enemies, and spawners), WYSIWYG framing guides, stealth and visual addon toggles, and frame-accurate animation posing, alongside an in-engine cinematic capture suite with clean HUD toggles, slow-motion filming, and 60 FPS Movie Maker recording.

v0.4.0-alpha

v0.4.0-alpha
🚀 Features
  • •
    Added 4 new animal-like enemy units—Forest Spider, Mossback Bear, Mossback Wolf, and Zombie Dog—with baked animation sets, custom ability suites (bites, mauls, pounces, snarls, and roars), a compact 4.5m 1.0 dmg/s Rot Aura on the Zombie Dog, and poison mechanics including instant secondary poison damage and multi-second poison damage over time.
  • •
    Overhauled match victory and star progression to a standardized 3-Star paradigm (Star 1 Primary, Stars 2 & 3 Bonuses, Plaza Survival as a mandatory 0-star game requirement), refreshed Level 1–4 bonus challenges, and redesigned the Objectives Panel with logical row grouping and clear category badges.
🐛 Bug Fixes
  • •
    Doubled the sizes of the Zombie Dog and Forest Spider, adjusted their collision, hitbox, and health bar positions, and fixed an AnimationTree state machine transition issue that caused dogs and spiders to freeze in a static pose or skip their attack animations.
  • •
    Fixed Berserker Whirlwind Cleave dealing 0 damage at preferred combat range by correcting planar surface-distance calculations, eliminated the coward retreat loop by setting the Berserker to fight to the death with zero retreat threshold, and enabled dynamic attack speed scaling across combat animations.
🎨 QoL & Polish
  • •
    Revamped the main menu with an asymmetric left-docked layout and burnished gold styling so title buttons no longer cover character artwork, updated the background to feature the royal kingdom castle, and established a standardized marketing asset suite across all Steam store capsule formats.
  • •
    Upgraded the official game icon and desktop shortcut suite with a high-fidelity 3D Pixar-stylized golden knight gauntlet placing a bounty coin, eliminating legacy transparency artifacts and providing high-resolution Steam app icons (184x184) and multi-resolution Windows icons (.ico).
  • •
    Added an integrated audio architecture featuring background music for main menu and in-game exploration, continuous environmental forest day ambience, town under attack alarm bells, combat skirmish clash sounds, soldier death audio, and tactile gold coin feedback on bounty placement.
  • •
    Improved Objectives Panel vertical auto-fit so it collapses dynamically to its content height, removing excess blank space at the bottom without scrollbars.
  • •
    Added a comprehensive mission objectives scorecard to the match completion screen with a sleek two-column presentation, auto-collapsing the in-game objectives panel and detailing individual objective progress counters alongside checkmark/cross status indicators so players know exactly why stars were awarded or missed.

v0.3.21-alpha

v0.3.21-alpha
🚀 Features
  • •
    Completely overhauled the onboarding tutorial across Levels 1–4 with Advisor Edmund, replacing the legacy 17-step lecture with an interactive, progressive learning journey that teaches core indirect RTS mechanics, cross-unit guild synergies, magic casters, and survival defense.
  • •
    Re-anchored the advisor dialogue system into an ergonomic, responsive banner featuring character portraits, clear objective cues, and per-level tutorial completion tracking that respects global settings.
🐛 Bug Fixes
  • •
    Fixed an issue where mobile touch inspection eye icons would briefly appear over newly spawned enemies in unexplored Fog of War.
  • •
    Fixed a scene parsing issue preventing Level 3 and Level 4 from loading by properly ordering tutorial resource declarations and resolving invalid resource identifiers.
  • •
    Fixed a runtime type error when units arrive at and complete Explore bounties by allowing untyped array arguments in BountyManager and ensuring PursueTargetBountyAction properly types its unit list.
  • •
    Fixed an issue causing sharp square terrain lines and rectilinear foliage cutoffs around base spawns by replacing integer-lattice noise with continuous 2D simplex noise, expanding the Fog of War history accumulation viewport to full resolution, and softening directional shadow cascade splits.
🎨 QoL & Polish
  • •
    Overhauled base spawn terrain leveling to naturally contour to the surrounding landscape, preventing harsh artificial plateaus, preserving sandy beaches on coastal spawns, and smoothing ground slopes for secondary building placement.
  • •
    Updated the martial Barracks building with a unified 3D compound model, adjusted physical and targeting collision boxes to fit the 6x6m footprint, and aligned spawning with the front gate.

v0.3.19-alpha

v0.3.19-alpha
General Updates
  • •
    Reworked the building selection ring to match the sleek visual fidelity of unit auras, replacing the legacy 3D torus mesh with an unshaded additive ground shader featuring the player-favorite emerald green glow, dual orbiting energy crests, fixed cardinal reticle brackets, and a subtle foundation footprint wash.
  • •
    Fixed a crash where Summoner's Meteor Storm raised an invalid type error if the caster was defeated mid-storm, ensuring projectiles and ground hazards safely validate caster lifecycle and maintain their team alignment without friendly-fire.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where ambient firefly particles and pooled spell projectiles (such as meteor storm fragments) cast dark circular shadows on open terrain during day and night cycles by disabling shadow casting on spell meshes/particles and ensuring pooled projectiles cleanly reset flight and visibility.
🚀 Features
  • •
    Expanded the Berserker and Rogue combat kits with multi-strike attacks (Berserker Dual Chop & Brutal Flurry, Rogue Dual Dagger Thrust), a 360-degree Whirlwind Cleave, a Concussive Jab stun, passive on-hit heal procs (Blood Frenzy and Leech Poison), dual-wielded weapons for the Berserker, and updated ability tooltip badges.
  • •
    Converted Level 4 "Hold the Beach" into an in-game day survival mission where players hold the line for 20 days, aligning raids with the Day/Night cycle to trigger at 21:00 Nightfall starting Day 2 and escalating with afternoon (15:00) and dawn (06:00) waves in the late game.
  • •
    Added a universal 1.0-second recovery global cooldown between actions to prevent ability burst dumping and ensure smooth combat cadence.
  • •
    Added Coven faction spells for Spellblade (Meteor with 2+ enemy clustering priority, Cauterize self-heal in/out of combat) and Summoner (Meteor Storm area-denial with residual burning ground, icy Comet), celestial angled sky-descent visual effects and shaders, and enabled Bandit to autonomously throw Healing Vapor Bombs at wounded allies outside of combat.
  • •
    Upgraded the Nightblade with a "Stimulate" self-heal potion that restores 20 HP on a 6-second cooldown (usable in or out of combat without breaking stealth), an "Enchanted Jab" dealing 12 Arcane damage on a 10-second cooldown, and cleaned up legacy abilities.
  • •
    Reworked the Rock Golem into a formidable monstrous enemy with heavy Structure armor, tuned cooldowns, a 25-damage two-handed ground crush, a sweeping 15-damage front cleave with a 1-second stun, and an anti-kite earthen grasp that roots targets for 5 seconds.
  • •
    Refactored LevelManager and LevelLifecycle to dynamically resolve levels and scene paths directly from World Map data and filesystem conventions, seamlessly loading Level 4 and stubbing in Level 5 "Storm the Beach" as under construction on the world map.
  • •
    Introduced Level 4 "Hold the Beach" featuring a 100x100 coastal defense map where players withstand escalating inland raid waves for 20 minutes, backed by 5,000 starting gold and a new secondary objective to keep at least 25 living units alive at victory.
  • •
    Implemented comprehensive procedural level generation controls featuring directional coastline boundaries (North, East, South, Island, Inland), guaranteed 8x8m flat buildable starting base plateaus, inland ponds with base clearances, partial rivers with dry isthmus land corridors, full rivers spanned by procedural walkable bridges, and flexible spawn topologies (Center, Corner-to-Corner, Opposing Edges, Specific Edge) with seed micro-variation.
  • •
    Overhauled squad grouping mechanics with persistent leader recruitment, fast follower scanning, and a strict class diversity rule ensuring squads never contain duplicate unit classes while enabling flexible units to dynamically lead expedition squads.
  • •
    Added a Healing Vapor Bomb explosive to the Bandit that tosses a 6-meter restorative green gas cloud to heal wounded friendly units for 15 HP on a 6-second cooldown, complete with EffectBlocks ground decals and dissipating smoke and sparkle VFX.
  • •
    Overhauled roving packs and spawner raid waves into customizable Easy, Normal, and Difficult difficulty tiers, enabling individual unit counts and spatial distance constraints to scale independently (e.g. solitary Rock Golems vs swarming Skeleton Peasants) while dynamically selecting from active spawner buildings.
  • •
    Overhauled level secondary spawner generation into customizable Easy, Normal, and Difficult difficulty groups with tiered radial distance zoning, per-group active defender caps, threshold defensive bursts, and adaptive fallback placement across variable map sizes.
  • •
    Completed comprehensive enemy combat normalization across all 11 remaining enemy unit types, replacing basic punches with specialized action suites: Poacher Warrior (Cleave, Pommel Strike, Hamstring, and Rallying Shout with an expanding circular pulse wave VFX), Poacher Hunter (Quick Stab, Flank Strike, Crippling Bolas), Poison Beast (Infectious Bite, Venom Claw DoT, Acid Spit, and Violent Thrash AoE), Rock Golem (Heavy Slam, Ground Tremor AoE/Slow, Boulder Hurl, and Harden Armor), and all 7 Hedge/Skeleton Mages with multi-spell elemental repertoires including Combustion Nova, Frost Nova, Thunder Wave, Blood Siphon, and Steal Life.
  • •
    Overhauled Mummy Warrior enemy unit with the full martial action kit (Light Slash, Heavy Slash, Kick, Shield Bash, Shield Slam, and War Cry) and equipped it with a green Rot debuff aura that deals stacking Disease damage over time (1 damage/second) to all nearby player units.
  • •
    Overhauled Level 2 encounters by populating 5 secondary spawner locations with a dynamic mixture of melee and ranged skeleton strongholds (Skeleton Peasant Graveyard, Skeleton Archer Graveyard, Skeleton Crossbowman Graveyard, and Undead Crypt), adding Skeleton Archers and Poacher Archers to the 4 roving packs, tuning raids to trigger every 3 minutes with 1–2 raiders, and upgrading objectives to generic Strongholds (4) and Enemies (25) tracking.
  • •
    Configured a 3-tier ranged archery ability kit for enemy marksmen (Poacher Archer, Skeleton Archer, Skeleton Crossbowman) featuring an 8-damage / 3s cooldown basic Bow Shot, a 12-damage / 8s cooldown Power Shot, and a long-range Snipe dealing 20 piercing damage on a 20s cooldown at 5–8m standoff range, wired to the ArrowProjectile and bow animations.
  • •
    Added and generated all 8 Graveyard enemy spawner buildings (Mummy Warrior, Skeleton Archer, Skeleton Crossbowman, Skeleton Mage Blood/Fire/Frost/Lightning, and Skeleton Peasant) under `res://Scenes/Spawners/Graveyard/` utilizing the SpawnerGenerator tool and updated stronghold victory tracking.
  • •
    Configured Level 3 secondary spawner pool to dynamically spawn from all 8 Graveyard stronghold variants, providing rich thematic spawner variance across the map, while expanding roving packs and raid encounters to include all 17 enemy unit types.
  • •
    Added and configured all 6 Poachers Hovel enemy spawner buildings (Poacher Warrior, Poacher Hunter, Poacher Archer, Fire Hedge Mage, Frost Hedge Mage, Lightning Hedge Mage) utilizing the shared PoachersHovel model, dedicated SpawnerData resources, and automated SpawnerGenerator tooling.
  • •
    Added the Amphibian Hunter Hut enemy spawner building and populated Level 3 with Amphibian Hunters across secondary spawners, roving roaming packs, and raid assault parties, alongside a generic 'Destroy 8 Enemy Strongholds' mission objective.
  • •
    Configured and generated all 15 remaining enemy units and variants (Mummy Warrior, Poacher Archer/Hunter/Warrior, Poison Beast, Rock Golem, Skeleton Archer/Crossbowman, Hedge Mage Fire/Frost/Lightning, and Skeleton Mage Blood/Fire/Frost/Lightning) with full 7-library animation integration, customized combat abilities, and dedicated EnemyData resources.
  • •
    Added a mobile touchscreen unit inspection system featuring touch-friendly floating eye buttons (👁️) above units and enemies to open live stat and objective popups with single-active hover management and dynamic auto-cleanup upon target death, camera culling, or Fog of War occlusion, and restricted building placement confirmation controls strictly to mobile displays.
  • •
    Added a high-priority Shield Slam siege attack for Warriors (10 Siege damage every 5 seconds using their shield) against enemy spawners and structures, and updated anti-structure targeting so both Warriors and Bandits properly target and damage any entity with structure armor.
  • •
    Reworked the Nightblade into an assassin with a stealth-exclusive Shadow Ambush opener (20 Piercing damage with shadow warp motion blur, streaming purple trail, and instant positioning behind the target) and a 1.8s Poison Stiletto attack with a 50% chance to apply stacking independent Poison DoT (5 damage/sec for 3 seconds), equipped with dual hand blades and vibrant purple poison impact and gas burst visual effects.
  • •
    Redesigned the Bandit into a mid-ranged explosives and demolition specialist (6m range) equipped with high-priority Structure Demolition charges (20 SIEGE damage), area-denial Molotov Cocktails (10 impact fire damage + 10s burning ground puddle dealing 3 DPS across 4m), explosive Fire Bombs (8 fire AoE), and Piercing Thrown Daggers (4 damage), with full building-first target prioritization.
  • •
    Expanded the building defense bounty system to all player structures (Village Plaza 200g, Barracks/Coven/Slums 100g) with customizable per-building reward settings in BuildingData resources, ensuring autonomous units rally to protect any attacked building.
  • •
    Added "Next Level" progression button to the Victory screen that returns to the World Map, automatically focuses on the next sequential level, and opens its details panel.
  • •
    Overhauled unit and enemy navigation, obstacle carving, building collision masks, spawn point offsets, squad marching formations, and melee combat standoff distance so units smoothly navigate around buildings and face off ~1.6m apart.
  • •
    Added Psychic's Psionic Restore self-heal ability (20% max HP on 10s cooldown under 90% HP with chest orb absorb and fireworks VFX) and a concentration-dependent 10% damage mitigation barrier dome that collapses on stun and executes a 1.0s explosion upon death.
  • •
    Added the Spellblade unit, completing all 9 basic faction units. Features the Spellblade Greatsword with multi-mode elemental visual shaders (Fire, Lightning, Frost), dynamic ember/lightning/snowflake particle systems, and a freezing air motion trail. Implements smart target resistance evaluation to automatically select the target's weakest element, dealing 10 base damage + Fire DoT, bonus Lightning damage & 2-stack Shock Stun, or Frost move/attack speed slow.
  • •
    Added Nightblade's Shadow Warp signature ability (4s cooldown, 20 damage piercing backstab) featuring a high-speed purple blur slide with trailing ghostly mesh echo shader VFX, alongside a 5-second in-combat stealth re-entry timer.
  • •
    Implemented the Summoner class featuring animated floating magic weapons with 5-second Fire/Ice/Arcane color-cycling shaders, an 8-meter ranged thrust attack, a reactive 2-damage melee shield, and a 30-second 360-degree knockback spell with obstacle collision snare/stun effects.
  • •
    Configured default stats, abilities, scripts, weapon attachments, and mechanics for Berserker (Frenzy Aura & dual weapons), Psychic (unarmed psionic abilities), Bandit (dual swords & ambush stealth), and Nightblade (dual stilettos & permanent action-broken stealth).
🐛 Bug Fixes
  • •
    Fixed a crash in building regeneration zones (such as Hearthstone Plaza or Barracks) where units defeated inside the zone triggered a freed object error upon exit.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where restarting a level or returning to the main menu failed to reset mission objectives and combat timers, ensuring objectives cleanly return to 0 progress, mid-match save states properly restore active targets and unit counts, and all gameplay subsystems completely flush their state between matches.
  • •
    Fixed an AI standoff bug where Mummy Warriors stalled after casting War Cry instead of closing into melee range, fixed visual overscaling on Summoner's Meteor Storm indicator ring while tripling meteor flurry density to 36, and scaled up Summoner's Comet and Spellblade's Meteor to large 2.25m celestial projectiles (75% of AOE impact diameter) with enhanced particle trails.
  • •
    Resolved debugger errors ('Trying to assign invalid previously freed instance', 'Cannot convert argument from Object to Dictionary') and fixed warrior patrol lockups by decoupling tool scripts from runtime singletons, validating unit component bindings, and safely filtering non-AI nodes in behavior tree composites.
  • •
    Restored sharp, legible 3D floating combat text by upgrading text rendering to anisotropic linear mipmap filtering and increasing the dark outline width, eliminating distance blur and shimmering across damage, heal, and gold indicators.
  • •
    Completely resolved Godot debugger "Lambda capture at index 0 was freed. Passed 'null' instead' errors across the engine by converting all asynchronous combat tweens, particle timers, and hazard closures into safe node-bound callbacks and delayed pool releases, and implemented clean `_exit_tree()` signal unhooking on BeehaveTree nodes during unit and enemy death.
  • •
    Fixed debugger errors where dead entities triggered 'Lambda capture at index 0 was freed. Passed null instead' by replacing timer closures with bound tween callbacks and ObjectPoolManager delayed releases across VFX, combat projectiles, and buffs.
  • •
    Fixed town patrol stalls and enemy spawn pauses where units and monsters froze motionless for minutes after moving to a patrol spot under staggered AI ticking, switching wait actions to real-time engine timestamps so patrol and spawn pauses take their intended 2 to 5 seconds regardless of tick rate, and cleaned up stale combat engagement flags.
  • •
    Fixed Elementalists halting at 8m Firebolt range by enforcing advancement into their 5m preferred combat range to cycle Lightning and Frost bolts, resolved enemy standoff stalls and dune deflections by removing terrain masks from enemy feelers and promoting standby combatants into frontline openings, restored roving pack patrol behavior until player detection, and ensured base-assaulting raid units dynamically divert to engage spotted player buildings like Barracks and defenses en route to the Village Plaza.
  • •
    Fixed Warriors looping in circles around Rock Golems by validating combat standoff on the 2D horizontal plane instead of 3D elevation slopes, and eliminated unit hesitation near Coven by excluding walkable terrain from movement obstacle feelers.
  • •
    Fixed unit and enemy spinning loops caused by 3D terrain elevation stalling NavigationAgent waypoint progression, expanded Coven collision and obstacle boundaries to enclose the Summoner and Spellblade visual addons, and guarded feeler deflections against reversing direction away from combat targets.
  • •
    Fixed issues where Elementalists spawned too close to Coven add-ons, stationary units falsely aborted movement toward combat targets, and post-combat squads danced in tight circles due to rotating march formation vectors.
  • •
    Fixed navigation stalls and post-combat freezes where stationary units false-arrived on distant targets, squad followers rejected locomotion due to unassigned movement destinations, and ranged enemies parked just outside bow attack range.
  • •
    Resolved pathing lockups and combat gridlocks where units and enemies wedged against buildings or clustered into frozen crowds by introducing multi-ring radial combat slotting, proactive 3-tier stuck detection and flanking recovery, and refined corner-sliding through tight corridors while maintaining full physical collision integrity.
  • •
    Fixed squad followers hoarding gold and skipping town life by implementing an automatic peacetime stand-down that allows units to deposit carried gold at the Plaza, patrol for guard gold, and scout, backed by squad proximity banking.
  • •
    Resolved an issue in massive battles where duplicate 'died' and 'tree_exiting' signal errors occurred when dead units or squad dissolutions attempted to reconnect already attached listeners.
  • •
    Fixed a critical memory leak where vision tracking signal connections accumulated silently during combat (units entering/exiting vision ranges stacked duplicate death listeners), and optimized minimap redraw from 60 FPS to 10 FPS, throttled fog-of-war CPU pixel lookups with per-cycle caching, reduced structure proximity polling frequency, and throttled per-unit obstacle avoidance raycasts to every 3rd frame.
  • •
    Fixed debugger errors where dead units caused group leader lookup crashes ('Trying to assign invalid previously freed instance') and poison tick particle timers leaked freed lambda captures, restored 100% native desktop resolution and prevented automated tests from overwriting user settings, and upgraded floating combat text with non-mipmapped linear filtering, tuned outline borders, and FSR spatial reconstruction for razor-sharp legibility.
  • •
    Fixed mobile touch jitter by decoupling camera drag from the 120Hz+ touch polling rate (now frame-synced), throttling building placement ghost updates to ~15 FPS on mobile, and reducing fog-of-war GPU→CPU readback frequency on touchscreen devices.
⚖️ Balance
  • •
    Rebalanced Level 4 raid escalation by removing compounding wave size multipliers to keep pack sizes constant while smoothly accelerating raid wave arrivals from 2 minutes down to 45 seconds.
  • •
    Upgraded raid mechanics with composite multi-tier assault waves, per-tier cluster count controls, wave-number gating, and a 30-second interval floor for high-intensity late-game rushes.
🎨 QoL & Polish
  • •
    Sprint 3 Polish & Mobile performance pass: removed dynamic omni torch lights from units to rely on ambient illumination, stripped heavy AI, navigation, and logic components immediately upon unit death to eliminate corpse node overhead, introduced camera distance culling for held weapons to slash mesh draw calls, and set default resolution scale to 0.75 on mobile and touchscreen devices to significantly reduce 3D GPU fill rate.
  • •
    Sprint 2 AI & CPU performance pass: introduced AITickManager to stagger behavior tree ticks across frames (4 ticks/s in combat, 2/s while idle, 1/s off-screen), throttled off-screen skeletal animation trees, feeler raycasts, and rotation slerps via VisibleOnScreenNotifier3D, throttled redundant vision overlap checks to a 2-second cooldown, and dynamically disabled RVO avoidance simulation on stationary units to drastically improve frame rates during large 100+ unit encounters.
  • •
    Major performance optimization pass: replaced per-unit SubViewport health bars with a lightweight billboard shader (eliminating 100 GPU render targets at 100 units), disabled shadow casting on unit meshes, halved shadow map resolution, added self-disabling HealthComponent processing, introduced a physics tick rate toggle (30/60Hz) in settings, and capped Level 4 raid enemies at 60 to prevent unbounded scaling.
  • •
    Renamed the rogue and scoundrel faction building from Slums to Hideout across all game menus, tech tree actions, minimap indicators, and unit descriptions.
  • •
    Added a dynamic Dust Shock Ring visual effect for the Rock Golem's Ground Tremor ability and building collapses (player structures and enemy spawners), featuring radial dust expansion, scattering debris chunks, and central impact puffs.
  • •
    Upgraded ambient nocturnal firefly clusters with high-visibility bioluminescent orbs, gentle ground-illuminating glow lights, and increased map density (28 clusters on Level 3, 16 on Levels 1 & 2) that remain visible in explored territory throughout the night.
  • •
    Implemented procedural vegetation wind sway across grass and tree canopies on all three levels, added multi-mesh tree scattering (Ancient Oak, Autumn Sentinel, and Red Tree) with 50% rescaled tree heights, root vertical-offsets, tuned density, and building placement clearing.
  • •
    Modernized the Objectives panel with a wider 320px layout, category badges (⚔️ MAIN, ★ BONUS, 🛡️ CRITICAL), and structured quest cards to eliminate awkward text wrapping, and unified the Gold display with the Day/Time clock into a sleek, centered top header bar featuring an anti-aliased transparent coin icon.
  • •
    Upgraded Lightning magic visual effects across Elementalist and enemy Lightning Mages with branching zigzag bolt geometry, dynamic localized arc flash lighting, and multi-layered electrical burst and spark impact VFX on all chained targets.
  • •
    Upgraded Frostbolt projectiles across Elementalist and enemy Frost Mages with glowing crystal prism cores, vaporous frost mist trails, and sparkling ice shards, backed by a dedicated one-shot frost shatter impact VFX, and organized external VFX assets under addons/PolyBlocks.
  • •
    Upgraded Firebolt projectiles across Elementalist, Spellblade, and enemy Fire Mages with multi-layered stylized flame trails, sparkling embers, and dynamic point lighting, backed by a dedicated one-shot fire explosion impact VFX.
  • •
    Added grouping preference descriptions to recruitment tooltips and live squad member tracking (displaying group leaders, followers, and third unit members) to 3D in-world unit hovertext.
  • •
    Enhanced unit hover tooltips to display a compact 2-column grid of available actions and abilities with short names, cooldown timers, and ability type tags for both recruitment buttons and 3D in-world inspection.
  • •
    Added in-game toast notifications when friendly units fall in battle and standardized generic display names across all toasts and hover tooltips, preventing Godot duplicate numbering (e.g., SkeletonPeasant1, Warrior2) and engine masking names (e.g., CharacterBody3D@2140) from appearing in player-visible UI.
  • •
    Updated the World Map level selection screen texture with a cleaner high-resolution parchment map tailored for the war room table.
  • •
    Integrated Fog of War and map perimeter boundary masking across both the water shader and a massive sub-ground seabed floor, eliminating specular sun/moon reflection bleeding in unexplored fog and seamlessly cloaking the world exterior in darkness.
  • •
    Doubled the physical scale, collision bounds, navigation obstacle footprints, and health bar heights for both the Amphibian Hunter Hut and Undead Crypt spawner buildings.
  • •
    Added ethereal burning purple psionic hand flames and glowing ember particles to both hands of the Psychic unit, complete with dynamic localized lighting and smooth fade-outs upon unit defeat.
  • •
    Redesigned the Psychic shield visual effect into a crystal-translucent psionic barrier with a dynamic orbiting energy sweep and delicate hex lattice that smoothly cycles around the bubble, keeping the unit model, facial details, and combat animations fully visible without visual obstruction.
  • •
    Built an in-engine 3D PhotoBooth Studio tool for capturing high-fidelity transparent UI icons, dialogue portraits, and marketing frame sequences/turntables with 3-point studio lighting, animation scrubbing, and batch export, while configuring export presets to exclude developer tools and tests from production builds.
  • •
    Connected all 7 shared animation libraries to the Skeleton Peasant enemy, retaining all native animations while expanding walk, idle, attack, and death pools to over 360 animation clips and fixing walk animation playback.
  • •
    Integrated 5 newly imported Mixamo animation libraries (Attacks, Death, Idle, Locomotion, Victory) across all 9 player units and configured randomized death animation pools to add combat variety upon unit defeat.
  • •
    Imported and converted 94 Mixamo combat, idle, locomotion, victory, and death animations into 5 standardized, lightweight GLB animation libraries in res://Assets/Animations/Mixamo/, stripping redundant meshes, aligning rigs with Godot's Humanoid skeleton standard, and configuring all locomotion and idle clips to seamless linear loops.
  • •
    Cleaned up Level Select map environment post-processing settings by removing unused Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) to eliminate editor renderer warnings and optimize mobile/PC compatibility.
  • •
    Migrated all 9 player units and ability resources to the unified Universal Animation Libraries (UAL1 and UAL2), updating AnimationTrees, StateMachines, Move BlendSpaces, and combat actions with clean clip bindings.
  • •
    Reworked the Warrior's Commander Aura visual from an intrusive ground disc into a sleek, transparent outer boundary ring with a continuous orbiting wispy blue highlight wave.
  • •
    Standardized grass foliage scattering across Level 1 and Level 2 to match the lush stylized look and proportional density of Level 3.
  • •
    Overhauled the minimap into a clean tactical radar with class-colored unit pips, distinct building and spawner badges, collision-free Explore/Kill/Defend bounty overlays, strict Fog of War visibility filtering, and 3D mesh, health bar, and torch lighting culling.
  • •
    Equipped the Bandit unit with a stylized stick of dynamite prop in his right hand featuring an active burning fuse complete with sparkling particles, a rising smoke trail, glowing ember tip, and dynamic warm light flicker.
  • •
    Upgraded procedural terrain visuals with multi-biome texture blending (sandy shorelines with wet coastal margins, natural stony clearings and cliff rock, and anti-tiling grass variation) and synchronized foliage scattering so grass stays off beaches and rocky clearings while supporting dedicated prop biomes.
  • •
    Added a seamless watertight cliff skirt and expansive deep seabed floor beneath the map, along with horizon-spanning ocean waters and atmospheric day/night depth fog so the world feels like a cohesive, continuous landscape rather than an island floating in empty space.
  • •
    Dressed up the Level Select screen into an atmospheric commander's war room tabletop with dark-stained wood grain, beveled edge trim, physical parchment borders with brass corner brackets, human-scaled weapon adornments (swords, staves, daggers, maces, shields), 3D gold coin stacks, and warm tactical lighting.
  • •
    Added a dynamic golden camera view frustum reticle on the minimap that tracks the main camera viewport in real-time, and set the camera's zoom floor to start at the default overview height.
  • •
    Overhauled the options menu across Audio, Video, and Gameplay tabs with live numeric readouts, 3D resolution scaling (50%-100%), max framerate caps (30-144 FPS / Uncapped), and an invert zoom toggle.
  • •
    Introduced a data-driven "Under Construction" status for upcoming levels on the World Map (such as Level 4), displaying a 🚧 map badge, custom developer notice, and a disabled play button.
  • •
    Enforced minimum 3.5m spacing corridors between building collision boundaries and expanded the Village Plaza's starting Fog of War vision radius to 38.0m, ensuring ample explored room for town expansion with wide, unobstructed avenues for squad navigation.
  • •
    Added magical atmospheric visual effects to the Slums Nightblade tent addon, featuring pulsing etched purple floor runes, a mystical violet flame hearth with dynamic dancing light flicker, and flowing shadow breeze mist drifting through the entrance.
  • •
    Added magical visual effects to the Barracks Psychic Tower addon, featuring a hovering storm cloud with a Coven mana-purple core, bright green arcing lightning bolts to the spire tip, and orbiting anti-gravity runestones.
  • •
    Transformed Coven addon platforms into hovering arcane islands with pulsing mana rune levitation effects, chaotic floating weapons that drop, dissolve, and respawn on the Summoner platform, and elemental greatsword imbuement surges on the Spellblade platform.
  • •
    Added elemental chimney visual effects (Fire, Ice, Lightning) with dedicated particle systems, lights, and organic animations, plus dynamic interior window spell practice flashes to the Coven building.
  • •
    Overhauled the Spellblade visual effects to feature significantly larger, more vibrant elemental flames, lightning arcs, and frost trails that fully engulf the weapon, and fixed an issue that was preventing the VFX from displaying.
  • •
    Added translucent purple ghostly fist and foot mental projection visual effects for the Psychic unit's punch and kick attacks.
  • •
    Automated the low-poly character rigging pipeline with high-resolution Voxel skinning and specialized non-manifold mesh fallbacks, eliminating weight bleeding and mesh tearing across all 9 base units.
  • •
    Disabled Android Demo builds in release automation to streamline release packaging while retaining configurable support if needed in the future.
  • •
    Implemented an object pooling system for projectiles, floating combat text, and visual effects to reduce memory allocation and prevent performance stuttering during large battles.
⚖️ Balance
  • •
    Tuned Level 4 "Hold the Beach" raid spawn cadence, reducing the attack timer interval and initial delay from 120 seconds to 60 seconds to increase pressure on the player's defenses.
  • •
    Rebalanced player building health numbers (Plaza 1000 HP, Barracks 700 HP, Coven 500 HP, Slums 350 HP) to establish distinct structural tiers and durability profiles, and boosted monstrous enemy health pools (Mummy Warrior to 220 HP, Poison Beast to 400 HP, and Rock Golem to 500 HP).
  • •
    Rebalanced unit squad grouping roles across all 9 classes: Berserkers, Psychics, and Spellblades are now squad Leaders (joining Warriors), Rogues, Bandits, and Nightblades are Followers (joining Elementalists), and Summoners are Flexible.
  • •
    Re-tuned building Fog of War vision radii to 60–65% scale (Village Plaza from 38.0m to 25.0m, default faction buildings from 25.0m to 16.0m, and spawner discovery reveal from 8.0m to 5.5m) to provide balanced, localized settlement vision without over-revealing the map now that FoW clearing is synchronized to full radius.
  • •
    Rebalanced Level 3 enemy spawns by increasing raid party sizes to 4–6 units per spawner, raising regular spawner defending capacity to 6 active units, and scaling defensive threshold bursts to summon 6–8 defenders at 70% and 30% spawner health.
  • •
    Updated unit hiring costs, keeping the 3 faction buildings (Barracks, Slums, Coven at 500g) and basic units (Warrior, Rogue, Elementalist at 300g) unchanged, while setting advanced hybrid unit hire costs (Berserker, Psychic, Bandit, Nightblade, Spellblade, Summoner) to 600g.
  • •
    Adjusted building and spawner passive healing rates to 10 HP every 5 seconds with a 5-second peace requirement, and updated structures to detect combat skirmishes within 4m of their footprint to prevent in-fight healing.
  • •
    Slowed regular enemy spawner intervals to 30 seconds per spawn check (spawning 1 unit if below maximum capacity), and configured defensive threshold bursts at 70% and 20% spawner health to summon 3 defending units.
  • •
    Updated Warrior's Commander Aura to buff ally damage (+20% per aura, stacking additively across multiple warriors), demoralize enemies in range (-15% damage dealt), and exclude the warrior themselves from their own aura.
  • •
    Standardized preferred combat ranges across all units so ranged casters and mid-ranged specialists position comfortably inside their shortest spell reach (Elementalist at 5.0m for full 3-spell cycling, Bandit at 4.5m, Psychic at 3.5m, Summoner at 6.0m) while preserving crisp 2.0m–2.2m engagement ranges for melee classes (Warrior, Berserker, Rogue, Nightblade, Spellblade).
  • •
    Increased Bandit and Berserker bravery stats to 6.0 (maximum fearless tier), ensuring both chaotic, bloodthirsty units aggressively accept combat bounties without hesitation.
  • •
    Updated Level 3 kill objective to 150 enemies, added a ranged Firebolt spell to the Spellblade without altering their preferred melee engagement range, tuned Elementalist spell cooldowns to 6 seconds, and prioritized multi-target Lightning Bolt when multiple enemies are grouped in range.
🐛 Bug Fixes
  • •
    Fixed an issue where units and enemies struggled to ascend small hills or plateaus (such as the raised ground around the Village Plaza), eliminating false sideways wall deflections on walkable floor slopes, increasing traversable slope angles to 60 degrees with constant uphill walking speed, and expanding navmesh slope and climb limits.
  • •
    Fixed units and enemies wedging or freezing against building corners and walls by expanding navmesh obstacle carving to match physical agent radii, eliminating 3D vertical offset squashing on planar navigation directions, preventing deadlocks with full-speed perpendicular wall sliding, and adding proactive stuck recovery for non-combat patrol states.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where units and enemies could freeze in place and refuse to advance toward buildings or combat targets by ensuring standby holding behavior strictly requires physical arrival at an assigned standoff slot, aligning ranged unit slot queries with preferred attack ranges, and guaranteeing queued units advance immediately when frontline combat slots open up.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where Rock Golem's Colossal Crush and Crag Cleave failed to damage player units due to physics area culling, and significantly boosted visual impact with high-visibility dust shockwaves, flying rock debris, and ground cracks.
  • •
    Fixed a runtime crash when player buildings were destroyed by correctly retrieving obstacle footprint dimensions from `nav_obstacle_size` on `BuildingData` rather than `footprint_size`, ensuring smooth collapse animations and dust shock ring effects play properly.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where the Bandit's Healing Vapor Bomb failed to throw when engaging distant enemies by evaluating distance to the wounded ally rather than the enemy combat target, snapped the restorative green gas impact effect and slime decal to ground level across a full 6-meter area, and added live real-time action cooldown countdown timers to the unit inspection tooltip.
  • •
    Fixed missing and uncolored floating combat numbers for DoT (Damage over Time) and HoT (Heal over Time) sources, mapped all 10 damage types (including Disease for Mummy Rot, Fire, Frost, Lightning, Arcane, Poison, and Siege) to vibrant distinct floating text colors, added floating status text indicators (Chilled, Snared, Stunned, Poisoned, Burning, Diseased, Regen), ensured buildings and structures are completely immune to snares/slows/chills/stuns without turning white, and upgraded character status visuals to additive mesh overlays to preserve underlying textures.
  • •
    Fixed an engine error in BountyManager and combat targeting where accessing global positions of destroyed, despawned, or tree-exiting entities triggered `!is_inside_tree()` warnings.
  • •
    Fixed an engine TypedArray validation error in AuraComponent where periodic damage ticking (such as Mummy Rot Aura) attempted to erase previously freed target instances from typed arrays, cleanly purging destroyed units with array filters and guarding object validations across components.
  • •
    Fixed Fog of War visual reveal radius clearing only half of unit perception range (5m vs 10m) due to sprite diameter scaling math, synchronizing visual FoW clearing with sensory vision range, and resolved enemy models remaining concealed or invisible while in combat on vision borders by implementing 5-point perimeter extent sampling in the visibility component.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where Frostbolt slow and snare effects failed to wear off units by migrating status effect slow tracking to deterministic physics frame processing, ensuring accurate modifier removal, and automatically cleansing combat debuffs when units rest and recover at the town plaza. Also resolved Poacher Warriors freezing or stalling without attacking by tuning primary Cleave cooldown to a fluid 1.8s rhythm, standardizing melee ability reach to 2.2m, and prioritizing martial attacks over buff shouts.
  • •
    Fixed an issue preventing Level 1 from launching by correcting mission objective target identifiers to match Undead Crypt spawners, dynamically scaling base claim exclusion zones on small maps to allow secondary spawner placement, and expanding dry land margins.
  • •
    Fixed a UnitStateMachine FSM error ("Attempted to transition to unknown state: StunnedState") occurring when an enemy unit landed a stun or stagger effect (such as Pommel Strike or Thunder Wave) on a player unit by mounting the StunnedState node under FSM in BaseUnit.tscn.
  • •
    Fixed a runtime GDScript error in StatusEffectComponent when DoT damage ticked after the attacking unit had been freed by safely sanitizing attacker instance references, fixed enemy mages dealing invisible direct damage by instantiating fire, frost, blood, and lightning spell projectile and beam visuals, resolved wounded units twitching or remaining stuck at the town plaza while healing by adding a self-evaluating stationary resting behavior state that automatically exits upon reaching healthy threshold, and added clean transparent backgrounds to objective checkmark and cross UI icons.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where Rogues froze outside melee range while stealthed without attacking by correcting a navigation arrival bug that stopped flanking units in front of enemies, transitioning Rogue stealth management to out of combat, and ensuring pure melee stealthed units physically navigate behind targets on foot before striking. Removed teleportation/warp mechanics from Rogue (strictly preserving Shadow Warp for the Nightblade), and tuned Rogue attacks for fast, low-damage skirmishing with 8.0 damage / 0.6s cooldown Dagger Strikes and a 10.0 damage melee Backstab opener.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where destroying an enemy spawner awarded 2 points toward 'Destroy Strongholds' objectives and 1 point toward 'Kill Enemies' objectives by eliminating a duplicate `entity_died` broadcast in `SpawnerBase.gd`, enforcing strict mutual exclusivity between spawner and unit kill sensors in `EliminateEntitiesTracker.gd`, and adding guards against redundant death triggers.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where yellow treasure markers and dead unit/enemy pips remained frozen on the minimap in inactive fog by enforcing strict active-vision filtering for dynamic drops, immediately removing dead entities from unit and enemy tracking groups upon death, and instantly cleaning up bounties on dead targets.
  • •
    Fixed a rendering engine error (`material_casts_shadows` null material) caused by dynamic material allocations and transient mesh cleanup during combat VFX, stealth toggles, status effect tints, and bounty collections by caching persistent materials and safely detaching material overrides before freeing geometry instances.
  • •
    Tuned Bandit preferred combat range to 4.5m (comfortably inside their 6.0m ability action envelope), aligned ability-readiness range requirements in behavior tree combat conditions, and added line-of-sight target filtering to prevent frontline units from bypassing blocking spawners to chase obstructed enemies.
  • •
    Resolved combat range edge jitter and stutter-stepping for ranged and mid-ranged units (such as Bandits, Elementalists, and Summoners) by positioning standoff formation rings comfortably inside maximum attack ranges, harmonizing range evaluation tolerances across behavior trees and movement components, and validating ability readiness upon reaching navigation destinations.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where melee units (such as Berserkers) could get stuck against enemy spawners while pursuing enemies behind them by adding line-of-strike clearance validation in PackNavigationManager, enforcing strict combat-range arrival requirements, and setting safe spawn offsets outside obstacle carving zones.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where units (such as Bandits depositing gold or attacking structures) could become stuck against building corners and navigation obstacles by calculating true corner bounding radii, validating standoff slots outside carved obstacle areas, and ensuring uninterrupted pathing around structures.
  • •
    Fixed melee unit and enemy tunnel-vision pathing and congestion by adding 3-ray obstacle feeler steering to swing wide around allies and obstacles, dynamic self-defense retaliation upon taking damage, in-movement opportunity switching to engage nearby threats, and automatic unblocked flank slot allocation when obstructed.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where the collapsed Objectives Panel and transparent UI containers in the upper-left of the screen blocked clicks from reaching terrain, buildings, and bounties by setting mouse filters to ignore clicks on non-visible containers.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where clicking on a player-owned building under attack with an active defense bounty opened the modify bounty dialog instead of selecting the building; player buildings now prioritize building selection to hire units and place buildings, and active defense bounties are accessed via direct floating marker clicks or a sleek, non-intrusive defense banner above the action grid.
  • •
    Resolved combat engagement jitter, stutter-stepping, and stalling near buildings for Berserker, Rogue, Bandit, Nightblade, and enemy melee units by eliminating double-offset navigation slot distances, aligning attack range tolerances in the Ability Picker, caching perimeter slot angles across obstacle corners, separating melee and ranged formation slot categories, and ensuring melee units always push past backline casters to close the gap into melee range.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where zooming the camera at minimum or maximum zoom boundaries caused the camera to drift across the map.
  • •
    Fixed a Godot AnimationTree mixer error (`make_animation_instance: Condition "animation.is_null()" is true`) by pre-initializing state machine animation nodes and blend spaces before activating the tree, resolving non-existent animation clips across all unit scenes, and adding self-healing fallback logic to UnitAnimationComponent.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where SFX volume settings had no effect on game notifications, HUD error buzzers, unit gold deposit sounds, or combat impacts by routing all sound effects to the dedicated SFX audio bus.
  • •
    Fixed a performance issue where the colorblind filter performed a full-screen shader copy on every frame even when disabled; the filter is now completely hidden when inactive.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where creating or updating a bounty while a building was selected would draw the bounty UI directly over the actions panel without clearing or hiding the action buttons.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where Rogues and melee units would freeze facing enemies at a distance without approaching into melee range due to utility buff ranges (such as Stealth) corrupting melee attack range checks.
  • •
    Implemented a data-driven preferred combat range system and ability range classification flags, allowing melee units with long-range opening abilities or self-buffs to continue closing the gap to their preferred melee distance (~2.0m).
  • •
    Fixed an issue where units would experience a delay when switching targets upon killing an enemy, walk away toward distant bounties before realizing nearby threats were present, or freeze for 2 seconds due to artificial target loss pauses.
  • •
    Fixed a bug where units traveling toward non-combat destinations would latch onto stale combat targets, causing units (such as the Psychic) to slide across the map while tracking distant enemies and displaying phantom combat status text.
  • •
    Fixed building placement validation where units underneath the placement ghost did not turn the building invalid/red by enabling Area3D detection on character HitboxComponents, adding direct spatial unit checks, and updating ghost validity checks every frame during placement mode.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where units and enemies separated by buildings would stall in standoff positions by validating combat slots with multi-angle radial searches around targets and evaluating physical entity strike range on arrival.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where units could get hung up against building edges by dynamically computing NavigationObstacle3D carving bounds from physical CollisionShape3D extents with safety margins, and implementing direct collision tangent deflection for corner sliding.
  • •
    Fixed a runtime GDScript error in SpawnerBase._ready() by aligning SpawnerData property accesses (max_health, base_armor_type, passive_healing_amount/interval) with HealthComponent.initialize().
  • •
    Fixed an issue where units would freeze in place during combat without attacking nearby enemies due to mismatched melee condition ranges and double standoff distance offsets.
  • •
    Fixed a typed array mismatch runtime error during building placement in Barracks and Slums addon visual components.
  • •
    Fixed a scene parse error in Psychic.tscn by placing newly attached ability and barrier component resource tags in the file header, restoring downstream resource loading for Barracks, Hearthstone Plaza, and level startup.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where procedural level generation would fail to start levels and exhaust re-seed attempts by ensuring player-buildable objectives (such as the Village Plaza) are excluded from at-start spawner pre-validation.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where Nightblade, Bandit, Berserker, and Psychic froze during combat by populating valid animation clip names (e.g. `Thrust_Slash`, `Double_Blade_Spin`) in their ability files and configuring `UnitAnimationComponent` arrays.
  • •
    Fixed a runtime GDScript error in `ShadowWarpVFX.gd` when spawning Nightblade's ghostly echo trail echos by replacing invalid `set_delay` call on `Tween` with `tween_interval`.
  • •
    Fixed an issue where Nightblade got locked in stealth unable to attack or exit stealth by ensuring attack actions immediately break stealth and removing front-attack positioning blocks on stealthed units.
  • •
    Reverted unintended modifications to Rogue (`Rogue.tscn` and `RogueData.tres`), restoring original visual model attachments and unit data properties.
  • •
    Fixed a bug where Warriors would walk inside enemy spawner buildings by dynamically adding the building's radius to their navigation agent's target desired distance. Skeletons also now correctly spawn outside the radius of the spawner building instead of inside its mesh.
  • •
    Fixed a core targeting issue where Warriors would fail to switch targets from spawners to skeletons and sometimes abandon combat. Enemy spawners are now correctly classified as buildings across all AI combat checks, allowing units to properly engage dynamic threats and path without getting stuck.
  • •
    Fixed a console error where the unit information tooltip UI would attempt to attach itself to the scene tree improperly during teardown.
  • •
    Fixed defense bounty markers (cyan) persisting on buildings indefinitely after attackers were killed, and explore bounty markers (gold) sometimes remaining in the world after being claimed by units.
  • •
    Fixed placing a bounty on unexplored fog that happened to overlap a hidden enemy spawner revealing the spawner's position as a red kill bounty instead of treating it as an explore bounty.
  • •
    Fixed save/load system where loading a saved game caused buildings to lose track of their hired unit counts, showing 0/5 instead of the correct numbers. Also fixed units losing carried gold, building production queues failing to restore active training progress, restored units spawning frozen at origin coordinates without active AI, enemy spawners re-triggering burst waves on load, and raid difficulty scaling resetting to Day 1 values.

v0.3.6-alpha

v0.3.6-alpha
🐛 Bug Fixes
  • •
    Overhauled the build pipeline: Android builds now reliably export, sign, and update in-place without requiring uninstall. Demo and Full builds share save data so progress carries over when upgrading.

v0.3.4-alpha (skipped number due to build server configuration issue)

v0.3.4-alpha (skipped number due to build server configuration issue)
🐛 Bug Fixes
  • •
    Resolved Android level loading freezes during scene loading, unified mobile save file storage between Demo and Full builds, and added a BUILD_ANDROID workflow toggle in CI.
  • •
    Fixed friendly melee units (like Warriors) freezing in place in front of enemies during attack cooldowns instead of remaining engaged in combat.
General Updates
🚀 Features
  • •
    Added Elementalist unit stats tuning (150 HP, Cloth Armor), cautious AI positioning, and the initial spellcasting framework featuring Lightning Bolt (arcing up to 2 extra targets), Firebolt (single-target burst + 10 Burning DoT over 2s), and Frostbolt (single-target + 50% Chilled snare).
  • •
    Added periodic combat target re-evaluation and self-defense priority over buildings, preventing units from standing idle while attacked, alongside pursuer-crowded bounty calculations with stochastic bravery checks.
⚖️ Balance
  • •
    Set initial faction bravery stats for testing (Barracks: 5.0, Slums: 4.0, Coven: 3.0).
🎨 QoL & Polish
  • •
    Upgraded GitHub Actions release pipeline to a parallel Job Matrix strategy for faster multi-platform exports and isolated runner VM environments.
🐛 Bug Fixes
  • •
    Fixed floating combat text spawning and displaying over enemy units and spawners under undiscovered or inactive fog of war.
  • •
    Fixed Android release export builds failing on tag push by adding an automated CI safeguard to ensure export presets remain unsigned for external apksigner.

v0.3.1-alpha

v0.3.1-alpha
🚀 Features
  • •
    Added 3D Floating Combat Text displaying damage taken in red and healing in green above battling units, enemies, and buildings, with configurable category filtering hooks.
  • •
    Implemented Level 3 playable map (150x150 flat terrain, 8 Undead Crypt spawners, 2-minute raider attacks) with Coven building support, all 9 unit hires at 300 gold costs, multi-building tech prerequisites, and a 30 enemy kill objective.
  • •
    Implemented Level 1-3 Alpha Demo restrictions with automatic store purchase modal when attempting Level 4+.
  • •
    Added Local Treasure System where units drop carried gold on death, heroes autonomously gather treasures, and maps procedurally spawn hidden gold pouches in unexplored areas (Level 1: 4, Level 2: 6, Level 3: 10).
  • •
    Reworked the World Map Level Selection screen using a high-resolution 8K map viewing surface with smooth camera panning, 3D level markers, animated active route paths, a 3D Warrior player location token, and a dev-only visual marker placement tool.
  • •
    Wounded units now retreat to town to heal when health drops below 50% (staying in town until 75% HP), benefiting from accelerated health regeneration near the Hearthstone Plaza.
  • •
    Added 3D In-World Live Unit & Enemy Status Tooltips displaying real-time HP, armor, and active behavior objectives (bounties, combat targets, and raid intentions) above units in terrain.
  • •
    Expanded Action Panel Tooltips to support Buildings, displaying strategy summaries, strengths, weaknesses, structure armor, and utility features.
🎨 QoL & Polish
  • •
    Redesigned Objectives UI into a mobile-friendly collapsible slide-out panel with progress toasts and initial 0/N counters, and unified all game UI elements to a Burnished Gold & Warm Obsidian fantasy theme.
  • •
    Updated Local Treasure visuals with a 3D gold pouch model, magical golden light pulsing, particle sparkles, ground-level hover animations, and fog-of-war hiding.
  • •
    Enhanced Level Select 3D rendering sharpness with native display resolution scaling, MSAA 4X anti-aliasing, camera-aligned billboard title labels, and 3D metallic gold star models.
  • •
    Unified HUD visual design with glowing blue borders and dark glass panels, suppressed native tooltips in favor of dynamic scroll-free tooltip cards with usability warnings, and relocated the Day/Time display into a collapsible Objectives panel.
  • •
    Implemented zoom-invariant 48px screen-space proximity targeting for 3D unit inspection, preventing building walls from obscuring hovered units.
🐛 Bug Fixes
  • •
    Fixed Windows Demo build crashing on launch by updating export resource filters to bundle all required dependencies.
  • •
    Fixed Fog of War visual bugs including map center fog/foliage clearings on unit hire, zero grass in the center of the map, and offset foliage fog trails on larger levels.
  • •
    Fixed mobile level loading freezes, eliminated un-yielded main-thread procedural generation stalls, and resolved NavigationServer3D thread access errors on `/root/FogManager`.
  • •
    Fixed mobile status cards rendering behind HUD overlays by promoting tooltips to a top-level CanvasLayer, and ensured locked/disabled action buttons still display tooltip cards.
  • •
    Restored 100% unblocked map click handling for bounty placement and targeting in crowded combat areas by isolating 3D unit inspection strictly to mouse hover.
  • •
    Fixed Fog of War leak where moving the mouse over unexplored or grey fog could hover and reveal hidden enemies.

v0.2.6-alpha

v0.2.6-alpha
🎨 QoL & Polish
  • •
    Configured automated logging-patch-notes skill and integrated Google Forms sync.