The Depths of Durangrar: A Dungeon Crawler...in the dark

August Update
about 6 years ago – Tue, Aug 28, 2018 at 05:37:13 PM

The production sample is still in the making. I’ve been following up with the manufacturer on why this is taking much longer than anticipated. It seems to be a mix of the complexity of some of the custom components as well as it being a busy season with other games looking to get pushed out for the Christmas season. They’ve never had to attach anything like the thermal paper to game boards before so they’re taking care in making sure everything will work and testing out how it will be attached and cut to avoid tearing the paper or the paper peeling off after cutting . I’ve gotten some early pictures of the dice and miniature masters. The miniature masters aren’t the miniatures themselves but rather the masters used to make the cast. I had sent some high resolution miniatures from shapeways before but apparently they did not work well for the casting so they ordered some of their own that they have used before successfully.

There’s also been some questions on clarifying what each of the components listed in the schedule are and why the status’ are what they are.    

The camcorder is the replacement for the original night vision goggles after the goggles were discontinued. I’ve already vetted the camcorder for image quality and battery life and the manufacturer can deliver the cameras within 2 weeks of payment. So I’m holding off on ordering these before the production sample is approved as they’d otherwise sit in storage which is a risk in case the storage area has anything such as water and mice. Since this is not a custom item, it has a fairly lead time compared to some of the other components as they can just ship whatever they have on stock. 

PCBs or short for printed circuit boards is the custom circuit board used to light up the game. The PCBs have the longest production lead time of 6 to 8 weeks given that this a custom design and the manufacturer also needs to conduct quality control. The majority of this order has been completed with 6 PCBs having failed (not powering on possibly because of a dead connection or dead LED) but this was planned for and I have about 100 extra of each in the event some of you receive defective boards that somehow passed inspection (perhaps damaged in shipping or die out earlier than expected, sometime before 1 million on-off cycles as rated on the LEDs)   

3D printed parts: these are the parts that were small but simple enough in geometry that I couldn’t justify using injection molding machine such as the enclosures for the clip on lights and miniature bases. The drawback of 3D printed parts is that the surfaces are often rough but since these parts only serve to protect electronics and don’t add much to the aesthetics, it was a fair trade off for me.

3D printed caps: This part is also 3D printed but kept separate from the other parts because I need to make sure these fit the injection molded miniatures while all the other ones either fit with other 3D printed parts, which have been checked for fit already or stand alone and don't need to fit with anything else. While I can specify fairly strictly what the size of the miniature should be, injection molded parts still shrink as they cool in the mold and can vary a tiny bit in size. In early testing, I found a difference of about 0.5 millimeters could be the difference between a good fit and the miniature coming loose midway in game play so I wasn’t comfortable producing the caps early on the chance they don’t fit. So I’m waiting on the final miniature production to confirm the sizes of where the miniature meets the cap.  

Gloves: The hardest thing for me to control is the environment that everyone will play in. In some play tests in a room where there was some ambient light coming from a street light outside or just the angle for one of the players, they could make out the monster player’s hand. So the gloves and C-wand are included to give extra options for concealing the monster's movement so everyone has the best experience possible out of the box.  

Thermal paper: Night vision goggles and camcorders often display images in black and white. In order to see the board pieces from the monster’s point of view, I would need high contrasting colors. But high contrasting colors are more visible in the dark as well. So I needed something that would be high contrast in infrared light but not in visible light. I found thermal paper to be the best material that appears black under visible light but white under infrared light. Thermal paper is found in a lot of applications but not frequently in board game materials so I had to order this from a different place. The thermal paper manufacturer quoted a four week lead time.  

Batteries: This component is pretty straightforward. I wanted the game to work out of the box and that wouldn’t be true if it didn’t include the batteries needed to operate the LEDs. These are common CR1225 watch batteries and the manufacturer I’m working with makes them by the millions and so I’m ordering the batteries off the shelf from their warehouse. These can ship as soon as they are ordered so I’m waiting on production to be ready before I place the order.  

As for schedule, the delivery for the production sample has taken a lot longer than I had planned for. Unfortunately, I was using their usual quoted production times for my estimate and hadn’t accounted that the thermal paper would take on a lot more extra time, then start coinciding with their busy season. The manufacturer hasn’t given me an estimate on the exact date they’re expecting to deliver the production sample but giving them ample time given their last status update, I expect to receive the sample mid-September and following approval, it would take October and November to complete production and then December and January to ship to the US by ocean freight and EU by train freight and about a week to process in the fulfillment centers resulting in orders to start shipping in mid February.

July Update
over 6 years ago – Mon, Jul 30, 2018 at 11:55:22 PM

Hello!

There has been a lot of back and forth between me and the manufacturer this month regarding the artwork. I didn’t expect this much back and forth but I feel that it has been quite productive. It's better to alter the artwork to prevent quality issues than addressing them when they come up. Some of the artwork changes are simple such as adding additional bleed, more than originally included. This is just to give more leeway to the die cutting tool such that if it is off somewhat, the artwork has "bled" over so that everything still looks polished rather than the artwork cuts off early. I also changed the die size and gold tokens as they had previous tooling for both. These changes don’t affect gameplay, just manufacturing and cost. Other than that, the other parts being sourced from 3rd parties vendors are proceeding normally. 

Thank you for your support! 

Jack Poon

June Update
over 6 years ago – Fri, Jun 29, 2018 at 06:44:35 PM

Hello, it’s been a busy month still working at the pre-production sample. The sales engineer I’ve been working with for the past couple of years had left earlier this month. The transition has been smooth for the most part. He was able to pass on the prototype game to another sales engineer who I'm working with now. I’ve caught him up on all the details and where I’d like to be heading with the production sample which is currently mid-way through. There were a couple of setbacks where one, it seems that the sample thermal paper I sent them for the pre-production sample has gone missing. I’ve sent them another set though so that should keep things moving forward. Two, it looks like a couple of the miniatures in the prototype I sent them for reference were damaged. Wingo will be sourcing replacements from a service they know well to replace them. I suspect because these were 3D printed on a SLS machine, the miniatures were more brittle than they will be in injection molded plastic but at least it’s something to check for when the miniature samples arrive.  

Other than that, the manufacturer requested a few minor changes to the artwork just to fit better. Given the busy season at work, I haven’t had a chance to make them just yet but hope to this weekend. While that’s happening, the PCBs will soon begin production so that they’ll be finished around the time the game production will begin, assuming the quality check passes. If not, the PCBs will be stored aside until production begins.

May Update and Schedule
over 6 years ago – Mon, May 28, 2018 at 01:05:59 AM

Hello!  

Quite a few people have asked me to post a schedule of what’s to come next and when you can expect to receive the games. I’m aiming to have most of the pledges delivered by the end of this year. For EU backers, unfortunately, right now it looks like it might be early January. This is because the full set of games is first going through Quartermaster Logistics in the US and then shipped to the EU by ocean freight after being processed in the US. Given the amount of games to the EU, it's more economical to ship them by ocean freight than individually by air and I expect the end of the year holiday season may create some delays. I’m working with the OTX Logistics and Quartermaster Logistics to see if there’s any way we can expedite things or change shipping lines to save some time and have it to you earlier. I am expecting the sample to be complete and arrive to me by the beginning of July. I am expecting production to begin in mid-July. Production will complete at the beginning of September and ship to the US to QuarterMaster Logistics for fulfillment worldwide starting in early November and wrapping up in Mid December.

A more detailed view is available here: 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1sPWcNrvloE1DwERYUB11uM-1FyiJ4jE7pA8ttqaY2NE 

 Also, given the requests to be updated on what I’m working on, I’m posting a status chart that I’ll update weekly so you can see what I’m working on. I’ll still continue to post detailed monthly updates. This status chart is available here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1S6AyZtwn_qN3Qr01MjBxNwU71dKYzQaZQbK-XpgiKqo

Looking back, it was foolish of me to give up keeping a schedule after the initial delay back in May 2017. I thought rather than spending time constantly tweaking the schedule based on what new things came up given the things that came up that I didn’t anticipate, I figured I best just focus on delivery and forget about planning. I think even though it would require constant tweaking, at least I could have released a schedule earlier and the status chart but also to keep track of things and if anything was falling behind or being neglected.

This month has mostly been waiting for the pre-production board game samples to arrive from Wingo. These samples will be all the components of the game for a final quality check. If everything looks good, I’ll approve for full production. Wingo has informed me that all the paper components are expected to finish by mid-June but given the complexity of the miniatures, they’ll need until the end of June to complete the metal master molds and produce the first run of plastic miniatures. I’ll then have the pre-production sample expedited to me so I can check the quality as well as update the design of the caps that connect the miniatures to the light up base to make sure they fit perfectly. While the caps are being produced, I’ll have the production begin on the games and ideally, the 3D printed caps will arrive as the production of the games is wrapping up and preparing for final packaging. 

Other than that, I’ve been running lifetime testing on the batteries I’ll be including with the game. The CR1225 batteries that power the LEDs were able to run about 136 hours before the LEDs were fairly dim that it would affect gameplay negatively. They ran about 40 more hours before they died completely.

April Update Part 2
over 6 years ago – Fri, May 04, 2018 at 12:53:13 AM

Hi everyone! Thank you all for the outpouring of responses and votes on how to move forward with shipping the game without night vision goggles. While having received quite a few responses were for shipping without a night vision goggles, I can't say for sure if that's true for everyone. I also wanted the game to work out of the box. Otherwise it’s very much like having a game or toy where the batteries are not included so even when you have the game, it’s not immediately playable.

Since the last update, I’ve found a night vision camcorder that is lightweight and can last an hour and a half with the screen and IR beam is on the whole time. The resolution is higher than the original night vision goggles for about $4 more which I’ll cover so no ones’ pledges need to be raised or expect to put in more. The camcorder will also fit into the current box just fine without any changes. It’s just lacking the green tint common in most night vision goggles. Below is an image of the image quality on the camcorder.

I’m still waiting on one more camera to come in to test but most likely it will have a limited battery lfiespan. I was hoping it would have arrived already but it appears it's being held up in customs. This other wireless camera I tested had limited resolution and a very limited life span of about 15 minutes. I suppose this could be worked around with an external battery charger like those for phones but I felt this may be too tedious to be fumbling around with a phone, the camera and an external battery all while also playing the game.

Lastly, ThomasDN recommended testing out an infrared light source with smart phone cameras. My own phone (LG V20) can see infrared but barely such that my phone needs to be very close to the game to pick up the infrared. I suspect that the camera may be filtering out some of the infrared light. I've also read that Iphones come with a physical infrared filter and cannot pick up any infrared. As such, I'd like to avoid just providing an infrared flashlight as it might not work for everyone's phones.

I’ve learned the manufacturer is installing a new machine and production line so they have been busy with that. I’ve been told they’ll be finishing soon so they will be able to begin on producing the sample soon. Once the sample is complete, I’ll have it sent rushed to me and I can check if there are any quality issues. If there are none, I can move forward with full production.