The new patch is live!
If you are ever unable to place towers again I'd appreciate it if you could send me the browser's console log, but hopefully it is fixed for good.
While DOTS/ECS has crossed my mind, it isn't supported on WebGL, which for now remains our target platform. Even if it was, the big performance improvements in DOTS come from its multi-threaded nature, but WebGL will support only a single thread for the foreseeable future.
Thank you for the endgame mechanic suggestions. We are aware that spending the late game in a static base with no threat around isn't fun and already have a few ideas for new (and reworked) towers and enemies ready for when we'll add new features.
As an example for the performance improvements I am currently working on, the following gif is path-finding for the enemies running on the GPU using custom shaders instead of the CPU. Each color indicates a direction for the enemy to walk in to reach the player (which I think is really nice to look at):
Thanks for the update! I noticed some changes, like the sound effects stopping in the later levels. That is probably a good idea indeed. Maybe keep the most important sounds, like wizards shooting and crowns dropping?
Unfortunately I still had some trouble: in the WebGL version, both times when I reached about Wave 25, it completely crashed now... I didn't see anything special in the browser console log (maybe I didn't look well enough? Also maybe it's my old laptop & browser - I use Firefox btw).
In the download version, the "shop close" bug happened again, each time when I got above Wave 50. The last time was in Wave 55, while quickly placing a whole battery of colons.
About the path finding: GPU path finding and the GIF are really cool, but is that really the bottleneck? If you have 1 player and 1000 enemies, you still need to run the path finding (or "flow map generation") algorithm only once, right?
Anyway, it's great to hear that you're still working on this! I'll be following for further updates.