
# 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


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# 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


Pause Game Screen


# Cinco de Mayo Update + Some Discussion About Scope Creep

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone!  This is one of my favorite times of the year because it's a great excuse to eat Tex-Mex food and my family can't say no because it also happens to be my birthday.  Win / Win!  

## Fun Stuff To Add

It's funny how that can lead you into some serious temptation though.  Yesterday (May the Fourth Be With You btw) I had the "brilliant" idea to add some Cinco de Mayo themed items to Delvers Inc.  The thought being, hey let's add some tacos, some enchiladas, maybe a margarita, that sort of thing to the game as a fun little side item.  Adding items and giving them effects is pretty easy now, I would just need some icon art which I probably had in one of the many collections I draw from.
<img src="/images/Doner.png" alt="Taco" width="150" style={{ display: 'inline-block', marginRight: '10px' }} />
<img src="/images/GlassOfJuice.png" alt="Margarita" width="150" style={{ display: 'inline-block' }} />

This morning I started to really think about it and plan out what needed to happen.  For a start...what effects would they supply?  After all, just having some food items that don't do anything would be kinda pointless.  It didn't take long to hit on taco = +1 heal, enchilada = +2 heal, and margarita = +1 attack but also -1 defense.  So that wasn't too bad but...it felt kinda silly to put them in chest drops.  I would need to sell them somewhere.  Selling them at the merchant seemed equally silly, but we have an Innkeeper, unfortunately the Innkeeper was currently only set up to have a dialogue with the player about getting the location of a new dungeon map.

We could make modifications to the Innkeeper dialogue scripts to have an option to buy each of the items but that isn't very scalable if we add more food-like items.  We could add the ability to open a shop like experience but right now the Merchant is an entirely different UI panel and we don't have a separate shop UI, so then we would have to create a new UI for a pop-up shop.  Suddenly this is looking like a lot of work for something that was supposed to be just a fun little bit of 'frippery' (that's your 0.25 cent word for the day).  

## That's Scope Creep

I ended up dropping it for now, what started like a fun little sounding thing ended up being actual work.  Which really got me thinking about how easy it is to scope creep yourself.  Back in the day when I was working for game studios, it was not uncommon for a designer or product manager to come up with a little idea that sounded great on paper.  That's when one of two things would happen.  Either a) they would ask for an estimate and get dissapointed when it turns out that the simple little thing had actual work attached to it that couldn't be justified, or b) it would get pushed forward anyway as a pet project of someone and suddenly timelines are getting blown and other bigger and more important features are getting delayed.  Invariably engineering would get blamed for it no matter what.  "Engineering is always over-estimating timelines to avoid adding new things, they must hate fun!" or "Why is engineering always slipping and missing their deadlines?  Lazy slackers need to crunch to make up the time!" 

Scope creep being recognized AS scope creep and shelved without acrimony was an incredibly uncommon occurance.  There are, of course, places that are better at it, but for the vast majority scope creep is rampant and the blame game lands squarely on engineering when it happens.  We should be better at communicating about it but for whatever reason, we aren't.  Is it ego?  Is it a facet of everyone having too much to do already that having a discussion about it falls to the wayside?  Is it, in fact, on engineering's inability to properly articulate the technical aspects and costs of a request so that non-technical people can understand the impact?  Probably it's a little of all of those things.  I can't blame a lack of good communication and ego on Delvers Inc's lack of tacos and enchiladas though.  I am a one man shop so I am only having to communicate with myself.  Kinda like my wife having a parent-teacher conference when she was home schooling our kids.

## Delvers Inc. Updates

What's up with Delvers Inc though?  Well since we last spoke Delvers have gained classes.  In the end, I felt that classes just added clarity to what a delver does in ways that a classless system just doesn't.  I love classless systems, one of my favorite old-school MMOs was Asherons Call which was famously classless.  However, classes add a bit of definition to a party management based game.  Special Actions have finally gotten implemented, they are still just called Special Actions for now, but they work!  Delvers can also be upgraded outside of their level.  You can "consume" three other delvers of the same type and rarity level to upgrade another one to the next rarity tier.  
![Upgrade Delver](/images/upgrade-delver.png) <br/>
This also means that our leveling data now has different values for each level AND rarity tier so that having an Epic Varro Duskrun hits harder than a Common Varro Duskrun.  I have been working on some eye candy for the UI to give it a little bit more pop and less of an Excel spreadsheet feel to it, courtesy of the DoTween Pro asset.  Finally I cleaned up a few bugs that had been hanging around for awhile which is always a feel good moment.

## The Plan For This Week

This week I will be focused on getting more of the flash into the UI and into combat (floaty damage numbers anyone), as well as a foray into some sound effects and background music.

Thanks for reading and keeping up with Delvers Inc!  We'll talk again next week and in the meantime, follow us on X and Facebook for updates or sign up for our newsletter so that you don't miss a post!

-Arakiel


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Cinco de Mayo Update + Scope Creep

Welcome to DelverVerse

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Cinco de Mayo Update + Scope Creep

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