Josh Isom, Community Manager (iamisom)
Our New Hero Influence Vote has begun! Which hero will you choose to join the fight -- the Gun Witch, the Lavamancer, or the Barbarian? Earn Influence Points by logging into the game and logging into the official website every day, and then cast those Points to make your voice heard. The hero with the most points at the end of our three-round tournament will be our next hero!
The first round is Gun Witch vs. Lavamancer. Go cast your vote!
Elliot Cannon, Creative Director
Just like last week, we’re in bug fixing mode for the Calling All Heroes release! This has been a tough but fun one. Less people, flooding basements, a new UI, a new Hero, strategy revamp behind the scenes in a separate branch, PS4 meets PC in the face, not to mention tons of creeping death flu junk that’s been going around. Lots of folks have really been cranking to make sure we get things solid. Some dudes have been up to two and three a.m. non-stop for weeks on end and will probably collapse seventeen seconds after this baby goes live. Nevertheless, we’re almost done! Share the word of DD2 on social media, call back your friends, and get ready to play, we’re getting close! A fun influence vote is now live and it’s Gun Witch vs Lavamancer. Get your votes ready. Loving Glitterhelm. Check images below. Every time I see the art progress by the Diaz brothers on that map with its classic three-prong layout, I keep having DAOC’s Darkness Falls flashbacks. Hmm. Now there’s a mean image isn’t it? Abyss Lord dropping Knight of the Abyss + (3) Abyss Stone + Colossus + Direct Command on top of a full warband, lawl.
Daniel Haddad, Design Director (Blacksmith)
For the past few Dev Logs, it feels like I’ve been only saying one thing: “Working On the Abyss Lord!” This is now finally coming to an end and pretty soon he will be in your loving hands. He is ridiculously powerful and hopefully a lot of fun to play. I’ve been working on fixing several bugs with him, some last-minute tweaks and moving on to the next three heroes. I’m currently making some final edits to EV2’s design and working on the first few drafts of the next few heroes starting with the Lavamancer and helping with the Gun Witch.
We are also beginning some early exploration on bringing the first four heroes to the coolness and effectiveness level of the soon to be released Abyss Lord. For all you Squire, Huntress, Monk, and Apprentice fans out there, there may be some changes inline a while after the launch of the Abyss Lord.
Daniel Diaz, World Builder (DanielKaMi)
As you know, we're working on DD1 remake levels and now it's the time for the well-known Glitterhelm! This one is damn huge -- probably the biggest map to date. The direction we have with these remakes is to keep a very similar gameplay layout but with a different visual approach, something new and fresh! So don't expect lava in Glitterhelm -- expect something dark and cold! Here are some work-in-progress shots:
Jesus Diaz, World Builder (N3oDoc)
Working on the biggest level so far...yea, you’re absolutely right, it’s Glitterhelm! It's been a long time since our Heroes had the last battle at Glitterhelm, and like everything, time does not stand still and some things have changed over time, so expect a new looking and fresh Glitterhelm cavern!
Tim Shannon, PS4 & Live Producer (TimmyTrashTier)
The PS4 team is finishing everything up. I’m excited to announce that we’re heading into FQA on Sunday, and if everything works out, the Harbinger + Carnival PS4 update will be out next week! In the Americas we’ll be releasing the inventory pack simultaneously with the milestone so you can get your hoard on. Unfortunately, though, it’s going to be a week or two till it comes out in Europe due to differences in the requirements the store teams place on releases.
In other good news, I spent some time with the Calling All Heroes PS4 build this week, and it’s looking pretty good already. We don’t have any set timelines yet, but I’m excited for what we might be able to work on this time around now that we’re not inheriting as much merge debt. Hop on the forums and let me know what you think the #1 issue to resolve on PS4 is at the moment (other than “catching up to PC”).
Jason Yu, Associate Producer (urfyness)
I’m incredibly proud of all that we’ve done for this patch, but like all things game dev, we’d still be working on this patch if we could. Last week, I said that wrapping up the patch was one of my favorite times in game dev and that still hold true. There’s something gratifying about seeing the game improve during these periods that gets me every time.
This week, we’re continuing to hammer out the last of the issues. Planning for the next milestone is now in full swing. We’ve got a rough outline to start, and we’re now doing the estimations.
Steven Collins, Lead Level Designer (Esorath)
We were able to give a sneak peek into the tower / enemy overhaul that we are working towards. As you can see, our goal is to provide that strategic layer that our current lineup and tower sets don’t provide -- as well as provide that freedom to experiment with tower strengths and weakness to get a variety of builds per map depending on what’s coming down the lanes.
James Reid, Software Programmer (Driscan)
Been plowing through these UIs. We’ve laid a substantial foundation for future work. These new UIs are really starting to flow nicely. I hope you’ll see the grand vision of where we are going once this thing goes live. There are some kinks still in the system, but we’re ironing them out as fast as we can. DD2 will feel like a completely different game once we get all the UIs switched over to this new vision.
Dan Pingston, Character Artist
Touching up the next few heroes for their big releases.
Chris Flores, QA Lead (likethatwhenigothere)
[Chris wasn’t able to fill out the Dev Log because he must remain constantly vigilant for new bugs. #PoorChris]