Oh my glob, the floodgates have opened! The whole team did the Carlton as we watched our concurrent player records get shattered. And not only are there a bajillion of you playing our game right now, but as of today, you have collectively played more than one million hours of Dungeon Defenders II since our Early Access launch. One million! That’s incredibly humbling.
If you’re one of our newest Defenders and this is your first time reading a Dev Log, welcome! Each week in this little bit of Internet space, we talk about what we’re working on. Some of us like to let down our luscious locks and share a little about ourselves. Our goal is to let you in on who we are as Real Human Beans and to shine a little more light on our development.
Daniel Haddad, Creative Director (Blacksmith)
Working with the level designers on the spooooooooooky encounters that you will all get to experience later this month. Designing the four spooky weapons and helping implement them. Keeping a close eye on our F2P launch and identifying some potential issues our new players may be experiencing. I’ll also be taking a look at iPwr distribution over the different buckets and what we can do to make that better.
For those of you who are just now joining us, for the past couple of weeks I’ve been posting a small riddle/quiz or puzzle for you all to figure out. The winner gets a short imaginary super special surprise from myself later in the week!
So Defenders! For this week’s fun little participation tidbit, I have a hypothetical question I’d like you all to answer…
If the world-famous composer Tchaikovsky were alive today and was a Defender like you and I:
What would his favorite DD2 hero be?
What would his favorite defense be?
and Why?
The Defender that replies correctly first gets another special imaginary surprise! Good luck Defenders and see you all next week...
Jay Twining, Senior Game Designer (TrendyJayT)
Free-to-play! Working on the Ascension 2 update coming at the end of the month. Working on a couple new features on the War Table, some work on the new builds, and prepping for some scary stuff!
James Reid, Software Programmer (Driscan)
For the first half of the week I was focused on hammering out as many bugs as possible. Also, the PS4 team is onsite and I’ve been meeting with them about UI development for PS4 and PC. Namely, how to bridge the gap for UI controller support on PC. The rest of my week will be focused on some spooky related features.
In closing, OMG we’re Free To Play NOW!!!!
Jeffrey Bickel, Technical Level Designer (TE_Jeff)
Free-to-play is here, and spookiness is right around the corner! Truly an exciting and bone-chilling time to be working on DD2.
This week I’m going to be working on the finishing touches for our haunting new maps & event, and continuing work on an exciting gameplay prototype that I can’t share details on quite yet. Just know that I can’t wait to be able to show it to y’all!
Steven Collins, Lead Level Designer (Esorath)
Getting pumped to push out these sick new spooky maps. Can’t wait to show them off in their full spooky glory. Also gathering all the feedback on the latest update. We have some knobs to dial on the campaign as well as Free Play/End game. Other than that, having tons of fun running around on the maps with the Valhalla Knight (light weapons are my favorite) smiting down some “Meaty Skeletons.”
There may or may not be hints about the maps in this passage.
May...or May Not………..
Abraham Abdala, Lead Tech Animator (Broham)
Getting the Skoopy [Ed. Note: 2skoopy5me] patch ready with amazing content and two sweet maps! Also, working on some new rigs, weapons, and of course, Carl… Excited for the F2P release!
Joshua Javaheri, Lead Technical Artist (javahawk)
Getting ready for a big week for DD2. Been working on Dungeon Defenders for over 5 years now... Wow :)
Jason Yu, Associate Producer (urfyness)
This week, we’re working hard to finish our Halloween-related event by the end of the week. At this stage, we try to get functionality in first so that QA can start testing. Next, we’ll start plugging in all the art, and we usually don’t get everything in until the very end. This makes our QA department very, very happy. /sarcasm. The following week, we go into full testing and bug fixing mode, which is never enough time to fix everything, but we try to get the most flagrant ones. And the week after that, all of our awesome fans will get a chance to check out all of our hard work!
Oh, and Open ALPHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!11!!!1111!!!1
Javier Barreto, Lead Software Programmer (javo)
I’ve been monitoring our servers since we went live and … oh my; the activity! Our servers are behaving normally and look pretty healthy .. except for some random rogue ones that we are investigating.
PS: I’ve been working on stabilization for a while now … and still am.
Philip Asher, Marketing Director (pmasher)
Right now, we’re preparing all of our promotion for the Grave Danger Costume Pack over the next two weeks! This is our first limited edition costume pack, and we’re really interested in seeing how well it is received and sold. What do you think of the costumes?
Now that DD2 is finally free, part of our team’s focus is to make sure everyone knows about and is satisfied with our in-game purchases. As part of this effort, we’re going to be tracking the $/DAU for the Grave Danger Costume pack over the next 3 weeks corresponding to various marketing efforts. It will be really interesting to discover how people find out about the costumes and decide to purchase them (or not).
We’re also gearing up for Ascension: Part II promotion. It’s so exciting to finally be releasing these maps, given that we first teased them last Halloween on the Devstream! Speaking of which, this Devstream is going to have an extra special tease. I highly suggest you tune in! Maybe I’ll even let Tim show up ;).
Josh Isom, Community Manager (iamisom)
So. Much. Feedback. Busy running around making sure everyone knows about the current crop of technical and gameplay issues. Also, pretty stoked for the first Trendy Weekly Defense since Open Alpha! The TWD is our weekly game night on Thursdays from 5PM to 7PM EDT. Hopefully I’ll see you there. :)
Also, I’m super happy with the first round of Remote Playtesting Group feedback! It’s great to get another volunteer group up-and-running. That brings our total number of Trendy-supported volunteer groups to five! (Six in the future. I’m working on building a moderation team for the Dungeon Defenders II subreddit.) Interested in volunteering? Here’s how to get involved!
- Remote QA Team: Bug hunters. If it’s broken, they’ll find it! Interested? Contact dani.moore[at]trendyent[dot]com.
- The Casters Guild: Our collective of Twitch streamers! Want to join? Fill out an application!
- The Wardens: Official forum moderators. The backbone of the forum community. If you’re interested, send me or I_PASS_BUTTER a forum PM.
- The Wiki Council: The collectors of knowledge. The main editors and administrators of the Official Wiki. If you’re interested, make contributions to the wiki, and our admins will reach out to the most active members.
- Remote Playtesting Group: Our newest group! The RPG plays our newest content before its release and offers feedback. Email dani.moore[at]trendyent[dot]com if you’re interested!