Diviner News

[p]Hello. Its been about a month since my last post here on the community hub, and I figured it was about time to gives you guys an update on how things are going.

Progress is going very well, and Diviner is on a steady track to hit 50% content complete in the next few months. Most of this effort has been spent on adding Act 2 to the game, which includes 2 new biomes and a lot of new gear and enemies. I haven't been able to focus 100% of my attention on the new stuff since I am still working very hard on getting the new demo ready, but regardless I am happy with where the project is at.

In some hopefully exciting news for the people on here, I am making a community discord. I'll post a link to the discord at the bottom of this post, but you can find links to it on my other social media as well. I put off making a discord for a while, but as I get closer to the new and improved demo being complete, I would really like to get it into your hands sooner rather than later. If any of you are willing and interested, I'll be doing private steam playtests via the discord a month or two before the demo goes public on Steam, and would really look forward to any feedback you might have.

Its been really enjoyable sharing the game's progress so far. I must admit I was a bit hesitant to announce that I was working on it again since I wasn't 100% sure what the reception would be like since no news had been shared in a year, but so far everyone new or coming back to look at the game have been very kind and excited. It's really helped put some much needed extra pep into my work, and I plan to make these community updates once a month, though if you'd like more frequent updates, I highly recommend joining the discord/following one of my social media accounts that I cross-post on.

You can join the Community Discord here: https://discord.gg/XqAHecRhDs

With that all said, here is some sneak peaks, WIP, and cinematic shots for you to look at from some of the things I have been working on the past month.[/p][p]
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[p][/p][p]Hello! Its been a full year since the demo for Diviner was released. Since its the anniversary, I wanted to share some important news concerning Diviner and its development: [/p][p]I am now working full time on Diviner's development, and Diviner is roughly 30% complete in its current state. [/p][p][/p][p]A little bit of backstory about what has been going on behind the scenes and what led me to start working again on this project, since my last update made it clear I would be dropping the project due to lack of funding/feasibility. [/p][p][/p][p]I've been in the game's industry for roughly 6 years. and I've spent the past 5 years at a great Indie company working full time as a 3D generalist. If you are not familiar with the current state of the industry, things are not going well. Funding options are disappearing, publisher scopes are narrowing and budgets are shrinking, and I unfortunately was laid off back in April along with a lot of my coworkers. After I had released the demo back in August after working part time on the demo for over a year, and spent about a month improving it and taking in feedback, I put together a pitch deck and sent it off to a number of publishers who I thought would be a good fit for the game. The feedback was fairly consistent, it wasn't going to be published, and looking down the barrel of working on this game solo for 4 - 6 years to make it a fully playable product, I instead opted to let it go, and try working on some smaller projects. I'd spent the past 6 months between then and April messing about with a number of small ideas, a card game, a little nightmares clone, some other vague ideas loosely inspired by what was popular at the time. I found myself getting bored of them one after another, and when I suddenly had all the time in the world after losing my job, I realized I wanted to work on Diviner again. But it would have to change if I wanted to make it realistic for me to develop this myself within a few years. [/p][p][/p][p]So that brings me to today. I've been working on Diviner, again, full time, for the past 4 months. I've restarted the game's code base and project from scratch to avoid some of the mistakes I made with the demo, and I've added a considerable amount of content to expand the first area. I've also made some large changes to the exploration and gameplay, some out of necessity for scope, but most to improve and streamline the game while still retaining its core. I've even been tinkering with a very fun system for creating your character's build that feels very dynamic and I am excited to show more of that at a later date. Currently, with all the work I've put in so far, the game is basically 30% complete, with about 4 hours of content to be played through, and more on the way. [/p][p][/p][p]With how much time has passed, I'm aware that the audience for this game has probably shrunken significantly, and I'll need to put more effort into marketing and sharing what I've been working on to get people excited for this game again. For the few of you who are still here, thank you. I wanted to make this post to give you an update, and to share what will be coming. For now, I am delisting the demo as it no longer accurately portrays the game in its current state. I'm considering creating a discord, and if I do, I'll post the old Demo executable there. I have updated the main store page with new screenshots of the new gameplay/exploration that you can browse through if you want an idea of what the game looks like now. I am hoping to have a new teaser trailer by this February, however a playable demo will most likely not be available anytime soon, as I am heads down on producing as much art and content as possible to keep the game moving forward. [/p][p][/p][p]I'm very excited to be working on this game again, and I hope you all are excited too! More to come, I'll be making an effort to post weekly updates on X/Bluesky. Here's a little screenshot of a new combat scenario: [/p][p][/p][p][/p]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I've recorded a devlog that goes over the current status of Diviner and where the game is at. If you are interested, feel free to give it a watch.

Overhauled enemy range conditions when attacking. Enemies can no longer attack the player if there is a significant difference in height.

Fixed Settings Tutorial button sometimes not opening correctly

Added pulsing effect to Use button when dragging flasks to help convey their usage.

Added pulsing effect to weapon swaps to help convey that you need to select a switch first, then a weapon to switch to.

You can now right click items to move them instantly without dragging when the stash or a reward is being interacted with.

Overhauled Enemy stamina system. Enemy Stamina works as follows:
For every 5 stamina, enemies get 1 action. Most enemies will have 5 - 10 stamina, though a few have 10 - 15. When enemies move to get in range of the player, they will spend stamina and may lose actions because of this based on how far they moved. If an enemy moves a large distance and has 0 stamina afterwards, the enemy will still always have a 50% chance to use a single action. Enemy moves are also weighted by how much stamina they have used, so enemies are less likely to use stronger attacks if they have used a large amount of stamina already.

Removed R button for recall for clarification, Recall is now only done using the recall button in your focus menu.

Skill descriptions now show both base cost and modified cost

Added a tooltips toggle in the settings menu

Added a status codex in the settings menu to describe the statuses in the game

Added vsync toggle in settings menu

Fixed Tab button highlighting an invisible box bug

Increased text size for all UI description boxes including tooltips.

Added default weapon when opening Engraver Menu

Fixed a bug where you could repair a weapon with no weapon equipped.

You can no longer unequip a weapon if it is your only weapon equipped.

Fixed a handful of collision bugs