It's Not Dead?

I've been playing this a lot lately and got annoyed at all the ancient bugs and balance issues. Since I've got a few weeks off work for the holidays I jumped back into the code and made some massive changes.

This game started my professional career as a game dev so coming back five years later to apply what I've learned has been really fun.

Changelog

General

• Added more robot flavor text.

• Autocastable Active Items now activate when an enemy enters their Tower's Attack Range.

• Fast-forward speed in Singleplayer increased from 3 -> 3.5x.

• Kills by towers on Hard and Serious difficulty now provide experience to nearby towers like they do on Easy and Normal difficulties.

  • Easy -> 35% of the kill XP goes to all nearby towers.

  • Normal -> 25% of the kill XP goes to all nearby towers.

  • Hard -> 25% of the kill XP is divided among nearby towers.

  • Serious -> 20% of the kill XP is divided among nearby towers.

• Experience from kills reduced by 15%.

• Improved Tower Targeting Algorithm:

  • No longer makes sub-optimal choices sometimes in maps like Strikethrough due to odd path shapes.

  • Now takes into account Abilities for certain Towers and not just Auto-Attack range.

    • Star's Active deals more damage than its Auto Attack and is treated as its true "damage range" when Towers are deciding what to attack.

    • Also applied to the Volcano.

    • It's possible to enable this for any Tower but not very many can "carry" so I didn't find the experience pleasant when this was applied to Towers that deal a bit of long-range damage but don't murder everything in sight.

  • Towers that cannot deal Auto-Attack damage (Life Guardian, Alchemical Lab, Support Structure) are treated as having no "damage range."

  • Fixed these algorithms for Mazing levels as well.

• Fixed bug with Mana Motor that could lead to its buff no longer applying.

• Fixed Items teleporting back to their slots if a HUD update is triggered while dragging it.

• Fixed enemy gibs often not simulating their physics correctly.

• Fixed being able to break the game by selling a Tower with a Soul Harvester in its 7th Item Slot when using the Stockpile Specialty.

• Fixed the Vacuum noise playing forever if you sell it while it's mid-suck.

• Fixed a bug where enemies dying while under the effects of the Cardboard Box Tranquilizer debuff could lead to later enemies having super speed.

• Fixed a bug where disconnecting with a Hybrid Artillery Mine on the map could break buffs when you started another match.

• Fixed Mana Motor Overdrive always providing 500 Attack Speed.

• Fixed enemies/towers/presents failing to highlight when hovered sometimes.

• Mazing algorithms for path calculation/targeting sped up significantly.

• Massive CPU performance optimizations.

  • Should see much higher framerates and better frame timings (less stutters) unless you're GPU bound or framerate capped.

• Highlighting algorithms optimized for less CPU/GPU usage. Should give a bit of a framerate boost since this effect was quite heavy.

Towers

• Added a limit to Kill Bounty Bonus at 50%.

• Black Hole Reduction enemy health percentage from 7 -> 4%.

• Black Hole Insatiable Mass mana cost from 8 -> 10.

• Corpse Flower Damage to DoT from 20 -> 10%.

• Guardian Damage to Mana from 1 -> 0.5%.

• Guardian Do No Harm no longer considers its own tower when abilities are cast or mana is distributed.

• Opportunist Overkill chance from 15 -> 20%.

• Prism Tower pathing algorithm fixed so that targeting no longer breaks.

  • Previously you could get the targeting into a state where it would attack the wrong enemies, ones completely out of range, and create odd paths through towers.

• Prism Focus Orb Stun Time Per Tower from 0.5 -> 0.35s.

• Prism Network XP Per Bounce from 8 -> 6.

• Prism Network Damage Per Bounce from 12+5%/Lvl -> 10+4%/Lvl.

• Mana Motor High Compression mana cost from 4 -> 6% per tick.

• Moss Engulf Damage Per Second from 140 -> 100.

• Oven Sizzle Armor to Damage Multiplier from 0.8 -> 1.

• Star Sunbeam now deals 15% Splash Damage in a 200 unit radius.

• Star Sunbeam Damage from 125+10/Lvl -> 100+7/Lvl.

Items

• Ash of the Scholar autocast now works and will cast itself on the last chosen Tower if it's still in range.

• Bonus Fee Kill Bounty Bonus from 14 -> 8%.

• Rack Em Up Bounty Bonus from 17 -> 12%.

• Deregulator Burst Chance from 15 -> 20%.

• Invigorator Buff Chance from 25 -> 40%.

• Inhibitor Duration from 8 -> 11s.

• Mystic 8-Ball Mana from 3.5 -> 4.5.

• Pipe of Clarity Mana Cost from 50 -> 35.

• Pipe of Clarity Cooldown from 45 -> 30s.

• Pollaxe Armor Reduction Chance from 15 -> 20%.

• Combat Syllabus Damage to XP from 1.6 -> 2%.

• Tome of Knowledge Bonus XP from 36 -> 32%.

• Soul Harvester now gives Mana for kills that occur in its range OR kills by its owner even if they are out of its range.

Specialties

• Enraged Attack Speed Bonus from 85 -> 200.

• Wizard Mana Bonus from 50 -> 125.

• Wizard Mana Regen Bonus from 0.4 -> 0.5.

• Hunter changed from 25% Bonus Damage to Bosses to Always Crits Against Bosses.

• Hunter no longer has a Crit Multiplier bonus.

• Hunter damage penalty to mobs from 15 -> 25%.

• Timewinder now also also provides a 0.5s BAT Reduction.

• Equalizer now converts all attack and spell damage to be 50% Will and 50% Magic damage.

I left in a bug where you can win and lose at the same time if the very last enemy to leave kills you since I thought it was funny.