As I'm sure most of you are aware, the end of last year was a bit sucky in terms of DF2 updates as I had to spend a lot of time getting things done in DF1, and also had a bunch of crazy stuff going on in my home life which meant I couldn't put it anything like the number of hours I did earlier in the year. I'm however pleased to say that a lot of those issues are calming down and I'm finally back working on DF2 almost full time.
My number #1 priority is to get the level 50 update complete as soon as possible. However I should warn you, this is a big update that really needs to come in one big chunk, and because of that there won't be much obvious happening for a few more months. I will endeavour to post some screenshots and brief updates every now and then, but it will generally be fairly quiet.
The first stage of this update will be adding all the new weapons. Just give you an idea there will be around 40 new weapons in total. I expect this to take me about 2 weeks. Once this stage is complete I will release the new weapons as cosmetics so you guys at least have something new to play with while I work on Stage 2.
The second stage will be adding all the new enemies, which will be hardest part. The Spitter took me two weeks to implement, and I'd want to add 3 new bosses with unique mechanics in a similar fashion. So we'd be looking at 6 weeks. I'd also like to add new versions of the basic zombies, which I expect will take me a further 2 weeks.
Hopefully by this point, all our new clothing cosmetics art will be finished and I can then spend 2 weeks putting all of those into the game. However if they are not quite ready I will probably delay this part for a future update.
I'll then need approximately 2 weeks to add things like Uniques, handle basic code needed for expanding the level cap and do some balancing.
So this looks like 12-14 weeks in total which would bring us up until April. I think this is a pretty good estimate, but as always don't be surprised if it takes a bit longer as estimating big jobs like this can be difficult. Another thing to be aware of is that due to the timing of Easter I may need another couple of weeks to get those events handled in both games. So actually, probably more like May.
NOTE: I've also got people working on adding a proper storyline to DF2 while I tackle level 50. This should be complete well before I finish my update, so there will be another small thing to look forward to in the shorter term.
Once level 50 is complete, my aim will be to spend the remainder of 2021 on:
- Barricading
- World Boss(es)
- Weekly Competitions similar to DF1
- New Area Types
- Newbie Tutorial/Missions
- Proper Friend/Clan System
Thanks for reading! :)