ΔV: Rings of Saturn doesn't use a classic roadmap, where the developer outlines the list of things they think they'll be doing next. We just found that these don't work, as new ideas come in daily and the actual work drifts further and further away from the initial post. This is why we opted to expose our internal working documents - the Kanban boards - so you can see in real-time what we work on.
Kanban boards
Our Kanban boards reflect all the work that needs to be done and the stage it is on. All work is written down in "issues", and each issue travels on the Kanban from left to right. We have multiple Kanban boards that are useful for different ways you can inspect the project, but they are all based on the same data. A good starting point to explore them is the Roadmap Kanban Board.
Development workflow
There are several stages an issue can be at, reflected by the columns on out Kanban:
- Open issue is one that was suggested and recorded, but it was not assigned to any other stage yet. This is our main backlog - the place where we record all the ideas so that we don't lose track of them. New feature ideas, by default, land up here. This is where the player-submitted ideas from our discord end up first.
- 2.0 collects the issues that are considered for the 2.0 release of the game. These are issues I want to work on once we leave Early Access.
- 1.0 collects the issues that should be done before we exit Early Access. Any reported bugs end up here by default. If you want to know if "by full release, will game have xxx?", this is the place to look for.
- ToDo is my immediate task list. Every time this list drains down to zero, I pick ten features from the 1.0 list and put them here. Outside of critical issues and some exceptions noted below these are the things I will do next.
- Doing shows the thing I'm literally doing now. Expect to see it released in the Experimental branch today.
- Closed are the issues already done.
Workflow and exceptions
- An idea can be promoted from Open to 2.0 and to 1.0 if it's advocated enough and I feel it makes sense. I try to not do that much, as this results in extending our release date - but if you feel that there is something that should absolutely be in 1.0, our discord is the place to talk about it.
- I am working on this game 6 days a week, Saturday to Thursday. Friday is my Freeday - meaning that I am either not working on the game and resting, or if I feel like coding, I'll be picking stuff out of the order. On Fridays is when you can hit some surprise features.
- Bugs are fixed before features. This is why the Experimental branch is, on average, more stable than the Stable branch. It already has all the known bugs fixed.
- Critical bugs - the bugs that prevent people from actually playing - are fixed before everything else and hit the ToDo list immediately. We don't have many of these.
- When picking which issues from 1.0 should be moved to the ToDo list, I see the most recent vote results over our discord. Check the #votes channel if you want to participate in this.