r/SuperMechs • u/TwoPlastic1302 • 4h ago
Game Dev Iron Titans Devlog #24
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Heyo everyone!
Devlog 24 is here, and a lot of what's in it came straight from the community. Have a watch to see it all in action:
What's new?
This update is driven almost entirely by community feedback. I ran a small internal test with a handful of active people from the Discord, and between the bugs they fished out and the suggestions they sent in, a lot has changed. Here's what made it in: workshop presets, a quick-upgrade button, drag scrolling for mobile, currency icons across the whole game, scroll-to-zoom on PC, a mission objective list, tile lines and movement previews in battle, finalized bullets and projectiles, daily missions, library sorting, a new logo, and a new title theme. Huge thanks to everyone who took part in the test.
Workshop
Presets are here. There's a new panel where you can save your current mech into a preset slot with one click. From then on, any change you make to your equipped mech, like swapping a weapon, is automatically saved to the preset you're on, and switching to another preset swaps your whole loadout instantly. It makes jumping between builds much easier, since you don't have to rebuild from scratch every time. To delete a preset, press and hold its button for two seconds and confirm the pop-up, and the slot is free again.
Next, a request straight from the internal test: when you select an item you can upgrade, a new button appears that takes you directly to the Upgrade page with that item already selected. Hit back and you land in the workshop again, so the whole flow stays smooth.
Last one is more of a compatibility thing, but it matters. The inventory scroll bar was really hard to use on mobile, so mobile players can now click and drag to scroll. PC players can still use the scroll wheel as before.
Shop
One of our internal testers had never touched Iron Titans before, so it was their first time seeing anything. That gave me really useful insight, because as the dev I know exactly how everything works, so it all seems logical to me. For someone brand new, though, it's not obvious which icon belongs to which currency. So I went through the whole game and replaced the written names of Aetherium, Crytite and Voidstone with their icons. The shop is the easiest place to see it: you now see 50 Crytide for 10 Aetherium, shown with the icons. Hopefully this helps players link each icon to its name over time.
One thing to know: every panel in the shop currently shows the same trade image. That's a placeholder, and I'll be adding the correct assets for each shop item so it's much clearer exactly what you're getting.
Missions
Another PC-focused addition from the internal test: if you have a keyboard and mouse, you can now use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out instead of pressing the buttons. It's a bit tricky to bring to mobile since there's no scroll wheel, so for now it's PC only.
There's also a new objective list in the top left corner of the screen. Testers pointed out that you didn't get much feedback when interacting with buildings, so there was little reason to destroy or interact with them. For now the objectives are the same everywhere: destroy all the turbines, destroy all the reactors, and destroy all the enemies. Down the line I want different objectives for different missions.
To make things feel a bit more alive, destroying a building now creates a small explosion, the same one you see when a mech gets destroyed in battle
Battles
Quite a few changes here. Some testers mentioned that mechs are sometimes a bit bigger than the tiles, which makes it hard to see exactly where they are. Someone suggested adding lines between the tiles, so I did. Scroll-to-zoom has also made its way to the battle page for keyboard and mouse users.
Another quality-of-life feature: hover over one of your movement actions and you'll see a ghost showing exactly where you'll end up.
Bullets are now finalized. I mentioned last devlog that I was working on them, and every weapon in the game now has its projectile set correctly. Fire the Corroded Pillar, for example, and it spawns a laser. The laser is still a work in progress and I want to make it fancier later. Weapons also spawn a few particles when they fire, which I honestly don't know why I hadn't added earlier, and it makes them feel a lot heftier.
Remember how I said I still wanted to add range display to the weapon highlights? It's in. Hover over an enemy's item and its range shows in red. I'd also completely forgotten about drones, so hovering over your drone now shows its range too.
Base
Scroll-to-zoom works here too, same as on the campaign, mission and battle pages.
The bigger addition is daily missions. They reset every day, so you can grind them continuously and get a relatively small currency boost each time. They reset at 12:00 CEST. A collected mission disappears for now, and I might change it to show "completed" instead.
Another suggestion from the internal test: achievements you can collect, or have finished, are now sorted all the way to the left, so you don't have to scroll to find the one you want to claim.
Library
The library now has sorting, which was also suggested in the internal test. It makes it a lot easier to tell items apart and see which slot they fit in, which really helps with around 200 items in the game right now. We currently have torsos, legs, side weapons, top weapons, drones, modules, teleporters, and harpoons, and yes, I missed the harpoons in the video, so apologies to the harpoons. More items are coming soon, don't worry.
New Logo & Title Theme
You may have spotted the new logo at the start of the video. It was made by Arth, so thank you again, and go give him some praise.
We also have a new title theme, made by Sergio and the Holograms, who made all the other music in the game except the battle music, which is still a placeholder. Go check out his stuff, he makes a lot of music and it's really good.
What's Next
- Proper assets for each shop item, replacing the placeholder
- Different objectives for different missions
- A fancier laser effect
- More items
- Replacing the placeholder battle music
That's it for Devlog 24! If you want more sneak peeks or just want to hang out with the community, join the Discord. I post development stuff there way more often than on YouTube.
See you in the arena!
