Welcome to the TitanBorn Dev Diary, a series dedicated to giving the community a behind-the-scenes look into the process of creating a game from the perspective of the game developers.

In Dev Diary #20, we’ll tell you all about what we’ve been building for the past few weeks:

  • PvP implemented
  • Stats for items and weapons implemented
  • Inventory screen cleanup
  • Character camera position
  • Stats database
  • Optimized all lights in the game scene
  • Tested 2 new weapons – Greatsword and Hammer
  • In-game UI updates
  • Coming up next…

PvP implemented

It’s ready, It’s here, prepare to duke it out in the arena and find out who the real duke is. Duke, duke, duke, duke of Earl…

The heart of the game is finally “translated” into 3D and ready for the next tournament!

A few bugs still remain but we’re fully on it so it will be squeaky clean in no time.

Stats for items and weapons implemented

All the stats that we’ve planned to make a part of TitanBorn have been implemented except for: lifesteal, regeneration, and energy shield.

So, what we have now is: HP, Attack, Critical chance, Critical damage, Defense. Plenty to play around with for now!

We’ll be monitoring the situation in the arena closely to see how balanced everything is. There will probably be some rebalancing before the next tournament launch, so don’t be surprised if some broken item set get changed in the meantime.

Character camera position

Feeling like you are in the arena, right there in the action, dodging attacks and executing epic combos was very important to us from the start.

It turns out we went a little hard on some combos and they ended up being simply too “big”. The player would be missing some of the action. Now we’ve repositioned the camera so that you can enjoy everything that’s going on in the arena!

camera reposition

Just look at it go.

Stats Database

The stats database is now connected to the game. Enjoy.

Optimized all lighting in the game scene

This is just one of those things we have to constantly play with and improve. The capricious gods of indie game dev are tricksters like that.

Oh well, it is what it is. Lighting has been re-optimized and action is once again bathed in just the right amount of neon!

Tested 2 new weapons – greatsword and hammer

Okay it’s not exactly that the weapons are new – it’s about transitioning from a 2D environment into 3D. So we crossed our fingers and hoped all the animations with greatswords and hammers would work.

And what do you know – they did! Good job us?

hammer animation

Go nuts with it, guys.

We’ve also added some effects for greatsword attacks. Specifically fire shaders and a slashing effect.

In-game UI updates

We kept building the game and piling system upon system until UI started hurting. We kind of kept putting it off because game elements > display, right?

Well, now that we have so many new layers, the right way to let the community play with them is through a proper interface, so we went ahead and swallowed the hard pill of work on UI.

Specifically:

  • Matches feature a new UI and animation for when specials are ready to be used.
  • In-game UI now displays hit damage and to help you keep track of it, health is also displayed in numbers in addition to the bar
  • Now all special moves UI ready indicators animation are in sync. Previously each had a separate animation trigger and it tended to look a little too much like Vegas at night. Now it’s less distracting while still clearly notifying the players. Gg.

health bar

Coming up next…

We have plenty more to showcase in our Discord and on social media. In the meantime, keep playing the demo and giving us your feedback. That being said, here is what we plan to work on in the following period:

  • We’ll keep tweaking PvP combat – bug fixing and balancing
  • Menu UI update is next in line – we need to throw out placeholders and popups in preparation for introducing the real thing.

Time to start preparing for season 5 of TitanBorn!

Until then,
Game on, Titans!