
# Delvers Inc : Apparently, I'm Not a Developer Anymore

### Delvers Update

Hello Friends.  I'm back with a Delvers update of sorts.  Mostly I'm back to say out loud what the two people who read this dev blog have already been thinking...that Delvers Inc has stalled out.  It has, I am unsure why.  There is something going on with my motivation and lack thereof to work on Delvers.  I still believe in Delvers, truly I do.  However, every time I sit down to work on it, my brain goes sideways and does everything in its power to distract me or give me something else that "is more important".  
Since my last update announcing that 'Delvers Was Back' I have gotten very little actually accomplished.  I have updated the Unity version and checked to ensure that the game still runs on the new version.  I have fought with Unity (the company) to try and get the third party assets and tools I am using moved over to a new organization under the control of the LLC I formed, and I have partially implemented a change to the Delvers cards that I had worked out with my eldest's input.  Other than that, nada, no movement forward.  No amount of willpower seems to help, or at the very least I apparently lack the level of willpower to overcome the mud I am stuck in.  
I still think Delvers Inc is going to be a fun game, I still want to build it, but I need to get past this problem to make forward progress.

### Remote Work Was Proven Successful

This very concern, and my digging into it trying to work out what the hell is wrong with my brain, has led me down some dark paths of late.  The whole "What is wrong with me" question ties in to other thoughts and concerns but it's all so amorphous that it's hard to put into words as a coherent thought. 
Take for example the current job situation.  I got laid off 21 months ago...21 months.  Let that sink in, that's almost 2 years.  In that time I have submitted hundreds of applications for new positions.  Am I picky about the positions I apply for?  Yes, I am.  I refuse to give in to ridiculous "come in to the office" demands from companies who want me to do a job that I am perfectly capable of doing from my home office.  Invariably you get the flimsiest of bullshit as reasoning.  Usually some variation of "we all work better/more creatively face to face" which is such utter horse shit spouted out by managers who only know how to micromanage their reports not give them the room to work creatively.  I won't compromise on that anymore, so that severely limits the pool of places I can apply to and that is in a pool of jobs that is already severely limited to begin with.  Layoffs are still off the charts both in tech specifically but also just in general.  Today Verizon announced it was laying off another *13,000* people.  
The thing is, no matter how many applications I submit and resumes I send out, being unemployed for any significant length of time is such a massive black mark against you that you end up unable to even get interviews anymore.  After 6 months of unemployment I started to see fewer and fewer callbacks for an interview.  After 8 months of unemployment they stopped altogether.  I haven't had an interview in 13 months despite hundreds of places I have applied to.  I can understand not getting a position because you didn't interview well or aren't what they're looking for, or even screwing up a tech test...but this isn't screwing up the interview process this is literally companies uninterested to even find out if my 30+ years as a software developer could give them what they need.  
It is massively demoralizing and demotivating in ways that I do not have the words to describe.

### Corporate America is a Shithole

Add to that, my personal disinterest in working for 90% of corporations in existance, and you have a recipe for personal disaster.  
I am picky about the remote work scenario, but I also have little desire to work for yet another company that doesn't value the people it employs.  A company and executives that treat their employees as disposable cogs instead of the important part to everyone's success.  Without the employees doing the work, these companies would go under but are they treating their employees as keys to success?  Hell no, they are underpaid, their work/life balance gets routinely abused, they get manipulated by management by putting the fear of losing their job front and center, and if they try to make things better they are removed from the equation.  
It isn't just corporate America sadly, just look at Rockstars recent union busting.  Because how dare employees fight for better conditions and compensation from a company that had $2 billion in quarterly earnings off their employees backs.  
I find it very difficult to want to put my hat back into that cesspool of a ring.  I thought that Delvers Inc was my way out of that mess, I could work for ME and for the players.  If I treated myself badly then I would have no one to blame but myself.  Somewhere along the way my brain opted out of that logic without informing me though.

### Privacy Is Under Assault

One of my many distractions that I use as an excuse *not* to work on Delvers has been a switch to the Linux sphere and out of Windows.  The more I read the news and watch what is happening in tech, the more concerned I get about the privacy invading initiatives I am seeing.  Not just by corporations like Microsoft and Google but from our own governments.  
I live in the USA, my government on BOTH sides of the political aisle, is waging an assault on personal rights and privacy that is unprecedented.  In the UK you have the new age verification law, putting millions of peoples data in very real jeopardy for no good reason.  Or the EU's recent attempted assault on encryption, (which isn't over...they are going to try again) to get a man in the middle attack on any end to end encryption on your devices.  Now we have states trying to do the same here in the USA as well.  
There is always some new fear they throw out there to hide this shit behind.  It used to be 'terrorism' but that hasn't been working as well lately so the current boogeyman to try and make everyone buy in to having their freedoms taken away is "protecting the children".  I got news for you, if you think these politicians give one hot damn about your kids then you are fooling yourself.  They don't care about your kids, they only care about power and control.  There are other ways to protect children that don't involve violating the privacy and rights of everyone else.  Up to and including making the parents actually responsible for parenting their own kids.

### Am I Even a Developer Anymore?

Do you know what prompted this rant?  You're gonna laugh at how ridiculous my brain has become when I tell you because the truth is, this entire blog post was prompted by an article I read this morning that, in a nutshell, said 'real' developers would only use a unix based operating system.  I am not kidding, that was the entire gist of the article.  The author of this ridiculous trash was positing that Windows isn't a platform for "real" developers.  It was an insane read.  
Granted, I **AM** on a unix based OS, but it did get me thinking....am I really a developer though?  I mean, my tech stack knowledge certainly isn't keeping up.  This has been true for years though, once I became a lead engineer my focus was on people/team/project management and not the code.  I left much of the technical decision making to my senior and staff level engineers.  
These days however, it seems that if you don't know the latest javascript framework, latest new language, the latest architecture fad, or the latest "AI", then you can't call yourself a developer.  
This 'logic' is, of course, completely bogus.  If it were true then developers who have devoted their careers to say...COBOL and JCL for keeping large mainframe companies up and running....they couldn't call themselves developers anymore.  The diehard C developers on the Linux kernel couldn't either since many of them refuse to embrace Rust.  The idea that these developers should no longer be considered developers is of course ridiculous, but once again it's the "one true way" elitists who are the loudest voices.  
I **AM** still a developer thank you very much elitists.  Maybe my preferred language is C#, maybe I can't stand using javascript or any of its various frameworks, maybe I refuse to embrace AI as anything other then a mildly helpful tool to nudge someone in the right direction.  No, I haven't started to learn Rust yet (although it's on my todo list), no I don't spend my entire day reading tech rags to keep up to date with the latest fads.  Instead, I use the 30 years of doing this stuff professionally to be able to determine the fad that isn't worth all my time (I'm looking at you Large Language Models).  If that makes me a luddite to the elitest pricks out there, so be it.  You young'uns will learn the hard way, just like all these corporations are learning the hard way, that devaluing experience was a bad idea.

### Rant Over?

OK...got that off my chest.  Phew.  That was a lot, and it was rambling and possibly slightly unhinged.  Putting it onto "paper" though is very cathartic.  
I will do my level best to get some forward movement on Delvers Inc, but I think the idea of a build by EOY is fantasy at this point.  I should probably find a professional to talk to about all this crap but I am trying to keep costs down because ...unemployed...ya know?   So instead, you all get the opportunity to peer into my diseased brain ... lucky you!  
If you are interested in Delvers Inc and want me to get off my ass and get back to work, I would LOVE to hear that from you.  Send me a message using the Contact form on the site, or if you know me personally send a message that way.  Knowing that what I am trying to build is of interest might help get me back into the motivation that I need to make progress again.

-Arakiel

I'm Not a Developer Anymore


# Delvers Inc : Resume Game

Good morning (or whatever it is where you are)!  Just wanted to pop on the devblog and let you all know that Delvers Inc is getting back into the groove again.  The buying/selling & moving interruptions are mostly behind me now.  We still have some stuff to unpack but the important stuff is done and the rest can be done little by little.  I am digging back into the code base to re-familiarize myself with where I left off.  It was 3 months ago!  That's wild to me just how long it takes to do a couple real estate transactions these days.  However, that also means that I have lost track of exactly where I was working and what might have gotten left in an unfinished state.

With the change of venue I have also decided to bite the bullet and dig into all the necessary but not nearly as fun and enjoyable business aspects of game development.  So some of my time is and has been spent dealing with the drudgery of forming an LLC, tax IDs, bank accounts, and ledgers.  Very unsexy but also very necessary.  Ideally I would have done this months ago, back when development on Delvers Inc first started, but that isn't the fun and sexy parts of game development and I very much wanted to immerse myself in the fun and sexy parts.

Let me take a moment to thank you, dear reader, for keeping a watch out for Delvers Inc updates here and not thinking I had just given up and walked away as so many of these projects end up.  Your continued interest in the game is what makes it all worthwhile at the end of the day and really motivates a person even when they are down.

When last we were working with Delvers, we were trying to bring some of the eye and ear candy to the game.  We have done a fair bit of that, I've got a bit more I can do now and some ideas for the future.  After I tidy things up and get back into a working state I want to get a multilevel dungeon working.  This is not just multiple maps, but will also have to change some existing logic for moving around the game world and will require a checkpointing system to be developed.  Right now, if you enter a dungeon you start at the very beginning of the level but with a multilevel dungeon I want you to have the option to jump back to a spot where you left off.  So for example, if you were on level 3 of a 5 level dungeon and you had to go back to town, I want you to be able to start back on level 3 not all the way back on level 1 again.

Productivity experts will tell you that setting a deadline is key to getting things done, and honestly I don't disagree.  However, I have resisted setting deadlines for Delvers because of the somewhat unique situation that I am in.  Life has continually found ways to creep in and mess with development and there has been a whole lot of learning that has had to happen which always seems to take longer than you think it will.  I have been an engineer for 30+ years and a game engineer for almost 20 at this point, yet still I am learning new things all the time.  Not just about technical art, audio, or business aspects of game development but the engineering pieces as well.  Just as an example, at some point I am going to need to integrate the various store fronts in with the game; Steam, Google Play, and Apple.  This is something I haven't done before and so will be yet another learning process for me despite how long I have been doing this.

So I am still going to resist setting myself deadlines for now.  When I get a comfortable view of the end game I will sit down and work out a proper timeline but for now, the only deadline I am setting is that I want major development done and a build ready "before the end of the year"... which is pretty vague but the most I am willing to lock myself in to right now.

That's all for now.  We'll talk again soon!  In the meantime, follow us on X or Facebook for updates or sign up for our newsletter so that you don't miss a post!

-Arakiel


We're Back!


# Delvers Inc Development Update

Hello friends!  This is a quick update even though it has been almost 2 months since the last update.  Mostly this is just an explanation of why there has been a lack of updates.

In a nutshell, I have had to pause development on the game for a little while.  Development is not stopped, I have not quit, it's just a pause while I deal with the simultaneous tasks of both selling a home and buying a new home...plus all the packing, purging and moving that goes with that.

You see, the tech industry in general and the games industry in particular is in a very bad state right now.  I originally started Delvers Inc because, despite 31 years of experience as a software engineer, I couldn't seem to land even an interview much less a new position somewhere.  Every week, heck every DAY we were hearing about new mass layoffs and studios shutting down.  Frankly we are STILL getting those layoff updates and studio closures.  Just recently Hypixel was shutdown and Hytale was cancelled.  I had interviewed with them last summer and, while I didn't make the cut, the game they were building looked like it was going to be amazing.  Now they are gone as well and everyone there has been let go.  It's a bit apocolypitic to be honest.

Anyway, that was a long winded way of saying that I am going on a year and a half unemployed and my severance ran out 6 months ago.  So my family and I are moving and downsizing to a place more affordable in order to get the time needed for me to finish Delvers Inc (see, I told you it wasn't cancelled, just a pause screen).  

There is a lot to do when buying a home.  Legal paperwork, scheduling movers, packing, purging junk, getting utilities and internet setup, it's seems like a list that never ends.  Selling a home is even worse with all the cleaning, painting, repair jobs that you left too long, getting out of the house for open houses and showings, negotiations, more lawyers... it's another list that never seems to end.  So that has been consuming my time and leaving precious little for Delvers Inc. work.  By the end of July we should have it all behind us and be in the new place where we can leisurely unpack all our belongings and I can get back to work on Delvers again.  

So...not cancelled, haven't given up, just had to pause while I deal with some life stuff and I look forward to giving you more substantial updates with real changes after the dust settles from the move.

Thanks for reading and bearing with me.  Talk to you all soon!

-Arakiel


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