The Market Outlook: Controller Support Integrated

The first major pillar of our roadmap is now live. We have completely rebuilt the input handling for Egg-Flation to provide a native, polished experience for gamepad players.

Full Controller & Input Overhaul

Native Gamepad Support: Added comprehensive detection for Xbox and generic controllers with automatic device-switching.
UI Navigation Helpers: Introduced GamepadUIHelper and GamepadFocusCoinOverlay to provide clear visual feedback on which button is currently focused.
Menu Flow: Updated every menu—from the MetaShop and Compendium to the Route Map—with explicit navigation paths and auto-scroll functionality.
Input Buffering: Added staggering and frame-skips to menu transitions to prevent accidental "stale" button presses.

Gameplay & Data Tuning

Weapon Update: The egg_mine has been rebranded as the Toxic Egg Mine with updated visuals and descriptions.
Combat Balancing: Increased projectileSpeed and projectileCount for specific abilities; reduced global hitInvulnerableTime for faster-paced combat.
Enemy Tweaks: Adjusted base health for elite units and refined spawn intervals to replace "Virus Flocks" with "Chicken Swarms."
Movement Logic: Improved the PlayerController to suppress mouse cursor movement while a gamepad is active.

UI Polish & Bug Fixes

Wobble & Scale: Added ButtonWobble and MainMenuButtonFocus effects to all cards and buttons for a more tactile, responsive feel.
Route Map Navigation: Re-engineered the map to handle D-pad panning and Left-Stick edge detection for easier node selection.
Experience Bar: Fixed a legacy bug where the XP bar would loop its fill animation on first restore.
Cursor Management: Improved mouse/keyboard detection to avoid "false positives" on shared axes.

Roadmap Status: With Controller Support finalized, we are turning our attention toward Phase 1's remaining goals: Native macOS/Linux builds and the Multi-Slot Save system.