v1.5.21 Update

Starbrew Station v1.5.21 Patch Notes

Hey Station Managers! This update is a major stability pass on the boss fight and shrine systems. Several players (thank you to our Italian community in particular for the detailed videos!) reported crashes when interacting with shrines during boss encounters. We've done a deep audit of every code path in the boss fight, shrine upgrades, boss terminal, and fighter systems to eliminate these issues. This patch also completes localization for all boss fight and shrine UI strings.

Boss Fight Crash Fixes

• Fixed crash when boss chat bubble timer expires after the boss fight ends (use-after-free on freed node)

• Fixed crash when HP milestone effects fire after the boss is defeated mid-animation

• Fixed crash when shockwave ring spawns continue after the boss fight scene is removed

• Fixed crash caused by runtime loading of the boss fight scene - now preloaded to eliminate GPU driver timeouts on Windows

• Fixed crash from runtime shader compilation during boss telegraph warnings - all 4 shaders now preloaded at startup

• Fixed rare crash when boss entrance animation completes on a freed inspector node

• Fixed boss fight state not resetting after prestige, causing an invisible "ghost boss" that blocked re-summoning

Shrine Interaction Stability

• Fixed crash when clicking Shrine of Fury (or any shrine) during boss knockback attacks - shrine fighter updates now defer to the next frame to avoid collisions

• Fixed crash when upgrading a shrine during prestige reset - upgrade animation tweens now auto-kill when the shrine node is freed

• Fixed shrine tooltip crash when shrine is freed mid-tooltip display (e.g., prestige reset while hovering)

• Fixed shrine fighter update flag getting permanently stuck, silently preventing all future shrine upgrades from applying buffs (added 5-second safety timeout)

• Added 300ms cooldown between shrine upgrades to prevent rapid-click crashes from overlapping async update loops

• Shrine fighter updates now process in chunks of 5 per frame instead of all at once, preventing frame freezes on lower-end systems

Memory Leak & Orphaned Node Fixes

• Fixed shrine tooltip CanvasLayer leaking permanently on prestige reset (added cleanup in _exit_tree)

• Fixed boss terminal tooltip leaking permanently on scene change (added cleanup in _exit_tree)

• Fixed fighter "CRITICAL!" labels added to the scene root never being freed when fighters are removed

• Fixed tween accumulation during rush hour ambient effects causing gradual memory growth

• Fixed dead animation references accumulating in UnitAnimationManager over long sessions

• All boss fight tweens are now tracked and killed on exit to prevent use-after-free callbacks

Performance Improvements

• Boss fight menu visibility checks now run every 100ms instead of every frame (eliminates expensive node lookups)

• Fighter damage is now batched and dealt 4 times per second instead of per-hit, reducing take_damage() calls from ~1000/sec to ~200/sec

• Damage numbers use a pre-allocated label pool (12 labels) instead of creating new labels every hit

• DPS calculation uses a fixed-size circular buffer instead of dynamic array filtering

• Fighter batch processing has an iteration limit to prevent frame freezes when many invalid fighters exist

• Boss knockback attacks are now staggered across frames (3 per frame) instead of applying all at once

• Morale cascade inspiration now processes 10 units per frame instead of all at once

Localization

• Fully translated all boss fight UI strings: intro text, instructions, tips, milestone messages (75%/50%/25%), victory/defeat screens, HP display, DPS meter, and critical hit indicators

• Fully translated all shrine UI strings: shrine names (Power, Fury, Swiftness, Fortune), descriptions, level display, bonus display, upgrade cost, and max level indicator

• Fully translated all boss terminal strings: title, state labels (locked/ready/active/defeated), fighter count display, and all tooltip descriptions

• Added translations for all new strings across all supported languages

• Italian players should no longer encounter English strings in the boss fight or shrine systems

Thank you for playing Starbrew Station! A special thanks to our players who reported these issues with detailed information - it made tracking down the crashes much easier. If you encounter any other issues, please let us know in the discussions or leave a review - it really helps! See you on the station! - HeartCoded, The Lost Rabbit Digital Team