Major Graphics Overhaul

Slot Theory 1.7.0

Clean Containment: a new look for the whole battlefield

The synthwave grid is gone. Every map now draws as a containment facility: a dark plated metal floor, a raised lane with real walls, solid machined towers and shaded enemies, all lit from one direction. It is built entirely from procedural geometry and shaders, so it follows every map's real route, generated maps included.

This is a presentation change only. Paths, slot positions, tower ranges and hit boxes are exactly where they were, so no run plays differently and existing leaderboard scores stand.

The board

• One plated blue-black floor replaces the parallax layers, grid and background props.
• Recessed lamps are set into the lane walls and light the open floor around them. They are placed clear of the lane and of every tower slot.
• Empty slots are machined plinths with corner bolts and a recessed bay, squared to match the tower bases, so a placed tower sits on its plinth.

The lane

• The flat glowing strokes are now a raised channel with shaded walls, a lit route line and a soft contact shadow, and it still draws itself in when a map opens.
• Where lanes cross or run side by side, their walls merge cleanly instead of cutting into each other, and the route line is never hidden under another segment.
• Campaign chapters keep their own path colours: magenta, cyan, cold green and amber.

Towers

• All eleven towers are solid weapon assemblies with painted armour, metal fittings and glass cores, and each keeps a silhouette you can pick out at a glance: the Heavy Cannon's one oversized barrel, the Rocket's nose, the Arc Emitter's three coil pods, the Voltspear's gold lance, and so on.
• Rapid Shooter and Arc Emitter have swapped colours. Rapid Shooter is now royal blue and Arc Emitter is cyan, on the board, in the UI and on their projectiles.
• Tower icons in the draft, codex and HUD use the same art as the board, so they always match.
• Lighting stays put on screen while a tower turns to aim.

Tower evolution you can read

Mods used to add thin line glyphs that were hard to see on a busy board. Now:

• Mods 1 and 2 bolt an armour skirt beneath the tower. Mod 3 closes a containment ring around it in the tower's colour.
• Each mod lights a channel from the tower's core in that mod's colour, with a travelling pulse. A repeated mod gets a wider channel.
• Equipping a mod fills its channel and settles the new armour in.
• The surge meter sits behind the tower at the ring's radius, with a dark track and a bright tip, so armour never covers it.

Enemies and mines

• Enemies are saturated and glossy, with a coloured shadow side, rim lighting and a contact shadow, instead of reading as dark blots on the floor.
• Basic and Armored walkers wear segmented armour plates with glowing seams.
• Rift Sapper mines are armoured cassettes with a glass reactor that lights when armed. Charges show as a row of pips under the mine, with the last charge in amber.

Screen and menus

• The HUD uses recessed metal frames: red on lives, gold on speed, cyan elsewhere. Layout and controls are unchanged.
• Bloom now picks up only real highlights, so the dark metal stays dark and bright effects stand out.
• The retro screen filter no longer darkens the picture. The board and menus were about 20% darker than intended.
• The live game behind the main menu is softer and fades out around the menu card, so the menu reads cleanly.

Also in this update

• Fixed: the end screen claimed one wave too many. A loss now reads the waves you actually cleared.
• DPS reads the same everywhere. Tooltips, draft cards and the end screen used three different formats for the same number. Whole numbers from 100 up, one decimal below.
• Co-op: guests now see the finale and breach events. The wave-20 telegraph, boss bar, finale music and breach callouts only showed on the host. Both machines need 1.7.0.
• Co-op: guests now see modifier proc halos, and the music swells on an operator cast.
• Combat callouts such as BREACH COLOSSUS no longer slide under the HUD strip or off the edge of the screen.
• Leaderboards: the active Local / Global tab is highlighted instead of looking disabled.
• The Profile's Most Used tab showed internal ids instead of names on a fresh launch.

Found a bug?

Steam discussions or Discord. Discord is usually faster.