The Deck of Dynamic Dungeons | DELVE Part DEUX

The Gemhammer Tries to Ship on Time...
about 1 year ago – Sat, Mar 15, 2025 at 10:13:08 AM

Oh boy, am I tired of writing updates like this one. In a stunning turn of events that should be of no surprise to anyone at this point. Everything that could have gone wrong in the last few months did in a rather spectacular fashion... Let's talk about it! 

See... What Had Happened Was...

Unfortunately the last few months have been plagued with personal issue that got in the way of me updating properly. This includes finding out that my mom has cancer and her subsequent surgery, my own health issues, union related issues at my daytime job, and other equally exciting things that made one of my coworkers just stare at me blankly for a few moments and say "Bro... You have been through the wringer!" (yeah... thanks man...)

I apologize for not posting sooner. I absolutely should have still been updating, that's on me, but with everything going on it just got away from me. I don't really have an excuse, it just slipped away. When I had Gemhammer time it was devoted almost entirely to the "Ravage situation" (more on that in a moment). I haven't even updated social media or anything. 

Now that it's March and we're supposed to be shipping soon where are we at? Certainly not where I want to be!

From Box to Brick

Early in the year I had to redesign the boxes for the cards due to a change in the die that the printer uses. This won't change how the boxes look to all of you, it just changed what the print files needed to be. Due to the significant layout differences, this meant I needed to rebuild them, I couldn't just rearrange the existing file to fit the new template. This was unfortunate, but it shouldn't have been too much of an issue.

However, while fixing the tuck box files I needed a png of one of the cards from the Deck of Dynamic Dungeons II. So I fired up Indesign to do a quick export and then the entire computer bricked... 

And then continued to do so every time I restarted the machine...

(Internal_Screaming.jpg)

Joining the Well of All-Sparks

So remember back in October when I tried to do a card preview and for some reason my computer just wouldn't stop crashing and lagging while using streamlabs? (See Update 17: Preview Technical Delay) Well it turns out, that this was a sign of a much deeper issue with the computer and an mere preview of things to come. Ravage, my Macbook Pro, the mean machine that birthed all of Gemhammer's products for the last 7 years died. After many talks with Apple and Adobe support (because why not? Let's get them in on the action too) I'm still not completely sure if this was a software related issue or a hardware related issue. Ravage, like the good boy that he was, did not go down easy and failed in a spectacularly slow fashion that allowed me to save some files I had not backed up yet, including the new tuckboxes. But also slow enough that, in my hubris, left me thinking I could fix him... 

...I was wrong!

Now all of my files for Gemhammer are backed up on hard drives and I had Time Machine active on a separate hard drive, so the files are safe. However, without another computer that could run the adobe suite, I was unable to access the files, let alone finish them. At least until I could buy a new computer and get things set back up.

Which brings me to today, where I am happy to report that Soundwave, my brand new Mac Studio, is up and running. The last backup of Ravage will soon live in a Device Label Ravage USB. I am finishing up on the tuckboxes and making some minor changes to the print files to prep for printing.

So Now What?

By tomorrow at the latest, I will be sending this off to the printer. I need to touch base with them and make sure of some timing to give specific dates, but based on similar orders I've done with this same company, it should take about 4-6 days to get production samples. It should then take around 10 days to complete production. I'm going to have a few cases of each deck expedited by air to ensure that your orders are able to be fulfilled as soon as possible. I'm thinking the end of next month or early may, provided the universe is done throwing me curveballs. (Conor... why must you tempt fate so...) 

Sorry again for the radio silence. If you have any questions or need anything please let me know. I'll update again once I have specific times from the printer. 

Thanks

-Conor

Backerkit Smoke Test and Stuff and Things
about 1 year ago – Mon, Jan 06, 2025 at 08:04:58 AM

Hey Folks,

Welp, I didn't make this out before the new year, but things changed a little when I had to wait for the Backekit staff to come back to approve something on the back end of the pledge manager. It's all set now and I just sent out a smoke test of surveys, so some of you will be receiving your surveys soon. Let me know if there's any issues. Assuming everything is all set, the rest of you should get surveys in the next couple of days. 

Just to touch base on where everything else is at. I've got an email out the manufacturer to verify some stuff ti make sure I can get this out before Chinese new year and that doesn't affect our estimated ship date. I'm done with the checks on deck 1, but I'm going to see about passing it off to another team to double check in case I somehow missed something. Spelling errors due to my dyslexia is bound to make an appearance otherwise. Deck 2 is just about wrapped up too, biggest things are still the tying it in to the original deck more to make  it feel more impactful when you mix and match the cards. Also I need to adjust the tuck box files. I expect all that to be wrapped up in the next couple days. Then the manufacturer will take them and after a few days of checking files, assuming everything is good to go right out of the gate, then we should be well on track for March. 

Like I said, if you get a survey let me know if there's any issue. Thanks so much!

-Conor

Backer-kit Troubles and Getting Back on Track
about 1 year ago – Fri, Dec 27, 2024 at 10:18:01 AM

Hey Folks, 

I hope you all had a happy holiday. It was great to see some of you at PAX a few weeks back, thank you so much for stopping by. Last I checked in I was working on the Backerkit and I wanted to touch base on what's gone on the last month or so.

Turns out Backer-kit thinks that the campaign is still active since later pledges were enabled. I had no idea this was an issue, so in the weeks leading up to PAX Unplugged, I was struggling to figure out why everyone's info wasn't importing. I didn't figure it out until just before I left for Philly. I apologize for not updating right away, but following PAX Unplugged I went right back to my full time job teaching, resulting in 12 straight working days including the convention. I then got sick and crashed pretty hard. I took the holidays to just get settled and now here we are.

I just ended late pledges and will be getting things sorted on the backer-kit side. We're still on track with everything, and I'm just doing some final checks with the Decks and touching base with the manufacturer. Deck 1 is complete, with a few small tweaks I wanted to make. Deck 2 is nearly complete, I just wanted to add some things to make it interact with the original deck a little more.

Next week I'll be posting before the new year with some info about the stretch goals, I'm revisiting how that will work since I couldn't run backer-kit and kickstarter at the same time, and all my promotion time went to finding out what the issue was/ sleeping off PAX and a respiratory virus. 

 More to come soon, let me know if you folks have any questions. Thanks

-Conor

Late Pledge Stretch Goals
over 1 year ago – Sun, Nov 17, 2024 at 01:58:52 PM

Good Evening Wonderful Internet People!

After talking it over, we've decided to continue finishing stretch goals here as late pledges come in and on backerkit. We're wont be submitting to the printer to at least after PAX Unplugged so we have that time to knock out stretch goals. We don't have an exact timeline yet, but more to come this week as I sort that out. In the meantime, if you know anyone interested, let them know that they can still get on board if they preorder as a later pledge.  If you have any questions, let me know! Thanks!

-Conor

We Did It!!! (Throws Confetti 🎉)
over 1 year ago – Thu, Nov 14, 2024 at 07:12:24 AM

Thank you all so much for helping me bring our little deck of dungeon cards to life! I’m so excited to finally be getting these made and I’ll have plenty more updates for you soon on the progress. 

As I posted in a comment earlier, we have some ideas for the Deck of Dynamic Dungeons 2 and getting it the cards it deserves. More to come soon on that.

If you missed the Kickstarter, we have turned on late pledges. 

Current timeline. Once we handle some back end stuff and the money comes in from Kickstarter, we will be sending the print documents over to the manufacturer. That probably won’t be finalized until after PAX Unplugged in a couple weeks. I’ll have more specifics on dates after that point. We’ll be doing surveys via backerkit and you should see that come through by the end of next week. I’ll be sure to post an update here when that goes out or is anything changes. 

If you have any questions or comments please let me know. I might not respond right away because I’m at work (on break at the moment). More info and other stuff to come soon. 

Thanks again to all of you, I truly appreciate you believing in us and helping us help you with all your dungeon needs. :D

-Conor