Hello,

I’ve now updated the game to version Blitz Ant, which adds a handful of new features and fixes.

• Optimization
  Shadow system has been optimized and settings for it tweaked.
  FXAA removed in favor of TSAA. This means that the aliasing has been minimized even on low resolution scaling. TSAA is more performance heavy than FXAA, but the added performance cost is offset by allowing lower resolution scales to get the same or better graphical fidelity.
  Loading times between levels lowered. Music is compressed into memory in the background instead of on load and SFX uses faster compression.
  Improved pooling system and waypoint path generation to allow for pool expansion and drawing from a single pool. This dramatically improves the loading times, in particular it lowers the load of creating many objects on start (noticeable by a lot of stuttering when level is first loaded in).
  Optimized UI code.
  Some adjustments in large scenes to lower the number of objects and their FPS impact.

• Features and balancing

• General changes
  Difficulty ramp on campaign changed. Earlier levels are now a bit easier, later levels slightly trickier.
  Powerup costs will increase per use.
  Turrets now have a special attack that unlocks when you match a specific stat. The special ability requires a 60/105s (campaign/endless) charge time.
  Turret upgrade cost offset. Each upgrade costs more than the previous one for the same stat. In the campaign this generally means the special abilities cannot be unlocked on the early levels and pushes players to build in more locations instead of maxing turrets early on.
  Turret recoupable credits from sales the same as before, meaning less of investment on upgrades can now be recouped from sales.
  All enemy and turret stats rebalanced. To allow for more finetuning, DMG and HP has been doubled and then tuned further. This means the repair speed has been changed to accommodate higher HP values for turrets. It also means fully repairing turrets is now more expensive than before.
  There’s now a 5 % chance turrets will score a lucky chance when enemies fire the killing shot. This sets the turret hp to 1 and stuns enemies for a second, allowing turrets to survive even the most devastating hits. Using the Bull turret’s gentle giant special ability sets the chance to 50 % for a short time.

• Endless mode
  Continuous mode leveling system overhauled. Instead of all stats leveling up each 5-8 spawn cycles, either of DMG, HP or yield is randomly picked to level up each 1-2 spawn cycles. This should make each game more different and changes the difficulty ramp a bit – If you are lucky, yields will level up faster than damage and hit point, for instance.
  Insect generals added to the continuous mode. Every fifth cycle, the last enemy spawned from one point will be a general – the general is three levels ahead of the wave level for DMG and HP and 5 levels for yield stats. Works as an extra challenge and a way to boost credits. Marked with a red vortex particle underneath.
  Wave pause time changed from linear random to normal distribution. Making very long and very short pauses rarer.
  Pause time between enemy spawns in wave changed from linear random between -0.1 and 0.2 to normal distribution between -0.1 and 0.4.
  Spawn amount per wave in endless mode changed from random between starting value and starting value to cycle, to normally distributed with starting value as mean. This mean shifts up by value one per 5 wave cycles meaning each 5 cycles will increase the number of enemies spawned. Getting very few or very many spawned enemies should thus be rarer in the beginning and more common later in a game.
  Yields changed from linear to log normal curve, meaning faster in the beginning and slower later on in the endless mode.

• Graphical changes
  Some turrets have had some animations and more particles added.
  Explosion effects overhauled.

• Other
  The game has been translated into Russian, Swedish, Romanian and French.
  Button press sound moved, to avoid “false” click sounds.
  First wave starts briefly after placement of first turret to allow planning.
  Level 14 deathbox fix. Enemies would sometimes miss the deathbox causing the level to not finish.
  Bug where raycasting would bug out when not using SSAA fixed.
  Additional hexes on level 5 and 9 and the endless mode highway level.

Unfortunatly There were a things that I had intended for this version, but simply did not have time to implement or finish implementing.

• Remaining additions for the future
  I had intended to have these additions added this update, but due to a lack of time they’ve been cut. Should hopefully see implementation fairly soon.

• Mac version added. Was intended for this update, but due to continuing issues with the Mac build it has been pushed to the future.

• In game scoreboards when you finish a continuous level. Will be implemented in the next update.

• Hexagon level. Was pushed to a later date due to lack of time to balance it properly and give it the required time to test it.

• German, Spanish and Chinese translations.