Back to Defense Task Force - Sci Fi Tower DefenseCommunity Announcements

Pre Release Game Updates Rollup

May 20, 2018by tcwicks

GamePatchNote Digest

Defense Task Force - Sci Fi Tower Defense Patch Notes — May 20, 2018

Aggregated from Steam, cross-tracked with Battle.net coverage on GamePatchNote.

These enhancements and updates were made possible largely due to valuable feedback from the amazing community. You have our deepest gratitude.

Update V01.07.20 - 18/Jun/2018: Tutorial

New Blueprint "Eukelade" Added. This is a super sized blueprint for very complex strategies.
Blueprints renamed for future extensibility
Note: Final Pre-Release Build: Apologies - Any blueprints researched on pre-release builds will be reset to not researched. This is a one time occurence and will not happen again.

Update V01.07.18 - 08/Jun/2018: Tutorial

Tutorial menu added including 5 tutorial videos
Cleanup of informational text messages across the UI

Update V01.07.16 - 31/May/2018: UI resolution support

Game UI extended to support resolutions other than 16:9. Resolutions supported now include 4:3, 16:10 and 16:9. This is the vast majority of resolutions from 1024 x 768 upto to full 4K 3840 x 2160.
Font size increased wherever possible including all buttons.
Balancing update. Cost of tower basements now increased by 1 with each basement that is deployed in-game.

Update V01.07.14 - 20/May/2018: Balancing for early game playability

New blueprint added XM1 - Proteus.
Cheats menu removed. F11 now only shows FPS stats.
Research and deployment costs of all blueprints reduced.
Plasma beam and Proton Pulse towers now unlocked at start in addition to machine gun, cannon and fire.
Research costs in tech tree reduced for some towers.

Update V01.07.12 - 18/May/2018:

9 additional music tracks added to in game music (Separate from main menu music).
Added tooltips and changed ui of in game tower upgrade area to make the research and upgrade process clearer
Display Kraken unit summary text in lower area when unit is selected in game
Renamed boosts research to Level 3 upgrade: example Level 3 Damage
Reduced space time tower level 3 range boost upgrade
Added enable disable and separate volume control for weather system
Bug Fix: Troll unit movement animation is now syncing with speed when slowed down by space time tower.
The game UI is built for 16:9 therefore at game launch only the valid 16:9 resolutions are listed.
Game no longer blacks out second monitor when in full screen mode on a dual monitor setup.
Missile count display in research menu for the 3 levels fixed to show the correct number of missiles

Update V01.07.10 - 14/May/2018:

Optimizations to pathfinding code. Boosted game performance and lowered cpu usage by approximately 30%
Input settings remapping added for camera left,right,up,down and rotate. Also added remapping for deselect currently selected item in game.
Balancing: To resolve early game grinding. Added initial starting energy depending on difficulty level. Easy=1000, Medium=750, hard=500, insane=250. If is done when a new profile name is created, unfortunately cannot add this to any existing profiles already created.
Game visual appearance completely redone. This includes, lighting, color grading, tone mapping, shadow processing, ambient occlusion, bloom filters, etc...
Added weather effects including, rain, snow, wind, and clouded skies.

Update V01.07.8 - 12/May/2018:

Game storyline intro video completed and added to game launch
Game balancing completely redone from scratch.
Alien creep unit strengths and weaknesses versus tower types enabled such that all strategies must utilize a combination of towers.
All alien creep units balanced for effectiveness (Spawn cost vs HP, Shield and Speed)
All 3 levels of each tower type balanced for effectiveness (Cost of tower vs damage/sec and range)
Designated unlocked alien creep units for each sector. harder aliens on higher level sectors.
Game balancing done for all sectors
Implemented steam cloud game saves
Interactive encyclopedia added with units, towers and blueprints
New blueprint added specifically for mazing strategies. Blueprint HZ1 - Elara
Sector conquered notification window added to gameplay when sector is conquered.
Multiple physics calculations performance optimizations. CPU overhead reduced by approximately 30%
Incoming wave composition display added to game with two display modes. Categorical and sequence.
visual effects adjusted. example fire effect of fire tower is adjusted so it is not overpowering.
Tower basements are now color coded depending on the type of tower that is placed on them. Easier to identify which tower type
Added icon on towers which have boosts applied
Hovering mouse over tower upgrade button changes the stats display to show the stats of the upgraded version.
Added radial progress bar on the tower icons. Progress bar fills up as the player gets energy to deploy tower. Also color coded as red while player does not have enough energy and green when 100%
Added Shift click for placing multiple tower basements or towers
Added sound effects and visual build effects to tower build sequence
Level of Detail and mesh model optimization for all alien creep models (GPU performance optimization)
Visual effect of an aura added for special unit class Healer.
Visual effect of partial transparency added for units affected by cloaker special units cloaking field
Background environment biomes for region 4 and region 5
Added max towers limit to game for performance reasons. CPU physics computations of the game on an I3 CPU can support upto approximately 80 towers.
Added "Reset to Defaults" button and functionality on keyboard shortcuts menu
Multiple Enhancements to main menu background
Bug Fix: Steam overlay not appearing issues fixed.
Bug fix: Keyboard shortcuts menu would not provide feedback when keybinding is already assigned.
Bug Fix: Middle mouse button should not select tower / unit under the cursor.
Bug fix: play mission would sometimes get confused if you select a region and then close the window instead of selecting a sector / blueprint and then go back again into the play mission window.
Bug fix: Selling a tower which had boosts applied would not refund the costs of the boosts.
Bug fix: Cost of a tower boost would show incorrect value when the player did not have enough energy for the boost