DEFENDERS
Today the “Activating the Goblin Mech Update” went live for Steam Early Access! Alongside it is our release announcement trailer, which if you haven’t seen it yet, click here to check it out! Dungeon Defenders: Awakened releases May 28th on Steam, and noted later in this post are details for the other platforms. With the update coming next month, this is the final major update to Early Access, with the Steam launch having all of our 1.0 content. In this update you’ll be fighting the magically powered Goblin Mech, gain access to the Endless Spires map, and get the first look at our first arted up UIs — let’s get into it!
Activating the Goblin Mech Update
You can smell the exhaust coming from the Goblin Mech’s mechanical monstrosity, but where is the smell coming from? The only way to find out is to hop into Throne Room on Campaign and survive to the end!
The Goblin Mech Plows Through
The second boss that you’ll fight is the destructive Goblin Mech! Piloting the pinnacle of goblin engineering, he bursts into Throne Room (Campaign). You’ll need to stop him from plowing through your defenses and destroying the Crystal Cores in the middle. Find his weakness, drain the power of the mech, and stop him in his tracks!
The Goblin Mech is available for all difficulties on The Throne Room (Campaign).
UI Updates
One of the biggest focuses of this entire project has been to get UIs into a functionally better state compared to previous Dungeon Defenders games. As a lot of the UIs are wrapped up and getting their final touches on the functional side, we’re able to finally start arting them up. In this update, the first UIs to get this treatment are our Map Select UIs. There’s more to come across the entire game, but this is our first real showing at giving the UIs that Dungeon Defenders feel!
New Bonus Map — Endless Spires
Locking away some of Etheria’s most heinous criminals, the Endless Spires is going to be coming back as the bonus map for Act II. A fan favorite, Endless Spires is available to play on Campaign as well as Survival. Conquer the spires — doing so in Survival rewards you an all new pet!
New Pet — The Monkey King
Climbing the Spires and fighting off the hordes of enemies that encroach upon the great prison rewards you with primate royalty, The Monkey King. Using his legendary bo staff, this pet attacks fast, gaining strength with each hit, all from the comfort of his floating cloud.
Delays
One of our goals regarding the development of this project is to be as transparent as possible about this project. We’ve had delays from initial releases and have tried to communicate why, ultimately being that we want Dungeon Defenders: Awakened to be a great game and set the standard when fully released as the first game for Chromatic Games. We sat down, made a road map that was realistic for the work we’re able to provide, and got to work. Everything was going smooth in development land, and then COVID-19 hit. This has been an unprecedented event, and as we’ve previously stated, our first priority was (and still is) making sure everyone of our employees was safe and healthy. This has affected development in multiple ways, and we’re doing our best to be responsive and ensure a quality game. Here’s how it’s affected multiple areas and where we’re at as a studio.
Nintendo Switch
Developing for a Nintendo platform is something new that we were excited to take on. The Nintendo Switch has a lot of awesome tech crammed into their console. Dungeon Defenders: Awakened can be a bit of a resource hog, so it’s important to make sure we do everything we can to make sure it runs smoothly, especially when playing 4 player split screen Wave 25 Survival. What happens on the Switch also sets the precedence for all of the other platforms we release on. There’s a ton of work that goes into making all of this happen.
Working in the studio with our Switch development kits allowed us to be quick with testing. One of the biggest hurdles with a game like ours is making sure that what other players are doing, including host and client connections, provides proper replication to everyone playing. You start local to make sure connections work, and slowly start playing over networks and doing larger network tests. Having to change to an entirely remote setup has caused a bit of trouble doing this. We are currently working through various solutions to emulate the process we planned to follow, but it comes at the cost of time. If we were in the studio, this would be moving along faster and we’d be in a much better position. Unfortunately that’s not where we’re at.
Ultimately this means that we’re going to have to delay our Nintendo Switch release to Q3 of this year. The above is not our only requirement, as there is a certification process that we must go through with Nintendo that takes some time to make sure it will work perfectly across their networks and platform. As a studio we believe you deserve the best experience. If we were to force something through, it would be incredibly rushed, not perform properly, and be a flawed product.
We’re going to keep working as hard as we can and keep you updated on our progress.
Pure Strategy and Challenge Maps
These were originally slated for our Activating the Goblin Mech update, but were pushed off to our release on May 28th. While we’re working on progression throughout the game, we wanted to make sure the additional mode and challenge maps (Act II introduces a brand new challenge map) provided a great experience. A lot of that is related to our Massacre work, so we held onto it for the moment so you don’t receive a lackluster experience that is going to be changed when everything is said and done. With these two changes to our schedule, the goal is consistently to not curb quality in order to meet deadlines.
Balance
Enemies - Spider
- Increased the Spider’s web projectile speed by 50%.
General Changes
Maps
- The Tavern
- The Blacksmith has been added, but currently ignores you because you haven’t slain a dragon yet. He’s got some high standards that we’re looking to nerf in a later update.
- Throne Room
- Updated the carpet in Throne Room to be Blue on one side to help give a sense of which side of the map a player is on.
- Alchemical Labs
- Updated the nameplates on the Electric Generators that activate during the Demon Lord fight.
UI
- Updated the descriptions for game modes and maps on the Map Select UI.
- New Map Select UI with new art assets!
- New Map Cards have been added to Map Select.
- Fire Rate now shows for melee weapons and staves.
Matchmaking
- Players are able to join their friends' private/public games after Wave 3.
- Public games do not show on the Session Browser past Wave 3.
Tower Range Viewer
- Pressing “SHIFT” will turn on Tower Range Viewer, showing the range of towers.
Gear
- Added an accessory drop to every Boss victory chest in Campaign.
- Added set bonuses to the tooltips.
Cinematics
- Added several new storied cinematics in Act II.
Performance Optimizations
- AI behavior / content, as well as map content has been greatly optimized and players should see a noticeable improvement in later stage gameplay.
- More optimizations to come! .
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue that was causing several crashes.
- Fixed an issue where hitting “Escape” was not cancelling inputs.
- Fixed an issue where pets could be upgraded too high.
- Fixed an issue where tower rate stats on older gear was not showing.
- Fixed an issue where free pet upgrades still took gold.
- Fixed an issue where the Huntress’s projectiles would pass through targets when moving too fast.
- Adjusted the chat box so it now scrolls when a new message is sent.
- Fixed an issue with damaged towers not updating properly on the Tac Map when repaired or upgraded.
- Fixed an issue for not being able to upgrade certain stats properly, specifically Fire Rate.
- Fixed an issue when clicking the portrait of your currently selected hero wasn’t confirming the creation for that hero.
- Fixed an issue with upgrade arrows on items in the inventory not updating correctly.
- Fixed an issue where Facemelter was doing 1 damage.
- Fixed an issue where Lightning Aura wasn’t playing it’s VFX when damaging an enemy.
- Fixed an issue where Medium Difficulty completion was unlocking Insane Difficulty.
- Fixed an issue that caused an inconsistency with aura previews and spawn sizes.
- Fixed an issue when enabling FPS Limiter not saving properly.
- Fixed an issue where pets were not able to be dropped from the inventory.
- Fixed an issue where hero footsteps were not playing correctly.
- Fixed an issue where the Summary Screen and Tac Map could overlap and not allow you to properly interact with the Summary Screen.
- Fixed an issue where Primary Bindings showed in the Secondary Binding if there was not a Secondary Binding already set.
- Fixed setup issue with several explosion VFX that were causing a noticeable stutter on lower spec machines..
Known Issues
- Replaying/Restarting Endless Spires causes Wyverns and Sharkens to have pathing issues..
- Maps being randomly locked and not unlocking properly.
- Gear quality not being reflected properly compared to the item power.
What’s Next
There’s a lot of hard work that has gone into this update, and we’re working with all our might to provide an amazing experience at the end of next month when Dungeon Defenders: Awakened FINALLY Releases! Thank you for all your support, there've been a lot of ups and downs, but through it all we’re going to have a game to you that we’re very proud of. We’re almost there!
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For Etheria!
Chromatic Games