Greetings, Defenders! On the eve of the release of our new patch, we’re excited to bring you our first Dev Log from Foundation: Part 2. Many of the features (matchmaking) or balance changes that feel incomplete in Part 1, you’ll find us hard at work addressing in Part 2! And of course, your feedback on the patch will influence our work. Here’s a sneak peek at what’s coming up:

Daniel Haddad, Creative Director (@Blacksmith)

Worked with Danny to pitch ideas for future events and releases for DD2 going forward. Working on so many bugs and issues. Working on balance. Finishing up Pets design.

Danny Araya, Creative Director (@DannyAraya)

Coming up with super dope map-trilogy-mini-arcs that I may or may not be allowed to talk about.

Jay Twining, Senior Game Designer (@TrendyJayT)

Wrapped up Foundation 1 and moving on to the next latest and greatest! On our plate is future planning for Foundation 2, designing Cosmetics and further Matchmaking improvements.

Chris James, Lead Level Designer (@ceejeh)

We are coordinating new internal playtests! This is where the entire development team plays a new map or gameplay prototype for an hour and then provides feedback about the experience. The main goal is to identify what players find frustrating about a map as early as possible before we go into the polish and optimization phases.

We have two maps that have gone through the world building phase, as well as new layouts to receive feedback on. The Level Design team then takes the feedback and creates action items for the next iteration of the map, which could range from visual changes (e.g. add more distinctive decoration and lighting because the player is easily getting lost) to design tweaks (e.g. platform is too high for our hero jump height, enemies are running into weird collision issues in a lane, mana node is difficult to see and access, etc...).

Javier Barreto, Lead Software Programmer (@javo)

Standups, weekly programmers meeting, gathering missing requirements (or stuff that pops up) and what not. Sharing information about our processes, our ways, with the rest of the team members. Making sure we are all on the same page when it comes to branch handling (content issues always arise: weirdly enough it seems we, the programmers, are the most lazy about properly locking … stuff). And some more feature development while reviewing all systems.

Another week at game development.

Chris Flores, QA Lead (@likethatwhenigothere)

There have been a lot of balance changes and tweaks over the past few days. Each of them required a new build, so we’ve been doing final build checks for about four builds now. The update is still on track, though! Once we’re done with that, we’ll start taking a look at A.I. and evaluate the feedback from the update release.

Abraham Abdala, Lead Technical Animator (@Broham)

Getting our heroes ready to take on embellishments. Started working on some traps and Cores for the windy map.

Eduardo Lev, Engine Programmer (@EdLev)

Helping put together a minor patch for backend adjustments before the incoming major patch.

James Reid, Software Programmer (@Driscan)

Working on Forge UI improvements, got some good stuff cooking.

Adam Stow, Associate Producer (@TE-Stow)

Reinvigorating our pipelines with a new visibility tool. Laughing at the Seahawks’ folly. Trying to stop people from singing Attack on Titan themes every five minutes because a crossover wouldn’t really work.... or would it?

Enrique Rivera, Concept Artist (@3nrique)

Pets! Trying to make each one as unique and appealing as possible. My screen looks like its full of skittles...pet skittles.

Jesus Diaz, World Builder (@N3oDoc)

Doing a collision pass on the spooky level to make sure you guys don't fall through the world.

Daniel Diaz, World Builder (@DanielKaMi)

Been fixing some issues from last review on the windy level, polishing more the background so you guys have a nice vista (be careful at the edges!) and helping out Jesus on the collision pass for our new creepy level.

Philip Asher, Marketing Director (@pmasher)

Working on our release schedule for the next couple of DD2 updates. New maps and pets are still a ways out but… I’m getting super excited about them. Maybe we should start talking about them sooner than later? Hm.

Josh Isom, Community Manager (@iamisom)

Creating a new subforum called Game Feedback that will be ready to go tomorrow. This subforum will have threads created by us to generate more feedback on different elements of the game. Only devs can make threads, but anyone can make a reply. We’ll be gathering up this feedback alongside all of the other feedback sent to us on the forums and elsewhere.

Also, I've been playing the new update with our QA team. Aw yeah.