Finishing Return of the Forsaken via Crowdfunding

[Greg Campbell]

Greetings, Richard!

While I am aware the newest version of Incursion is open source and that theoretically anyone could modify it, this is still largely your game.  (If I felt confident finishing the project all myself, I would have.)  I would like to experience the full version of this game in Return of the Forsaken since Incursion, to many others and to me, was just that good.  (Since I wanted to win the latest version so much and I realized I was meant to heavily research Incursion's mechanics, I figured I   would play a Druid and publish my findings.  Thus, I bring you Being Nearly Everything: An Incursion Game Guide Focused on Druids!)

Having made many games, maps, and mods myself, I understand that Incursion was and is a major undertaking.  In the 19ish years since its first publication date and the 4ish years since your copyright date on the Incursion title screen, much has changed for you, and for you to return in earnest to working on this project (assuming you were willing and able to return), various crowdfunding means have appeared to continue projects like this.  Obsidian Entertainment's Pillars of Eternity (originally called Project Eternity) was only or primarily made and released due to fans of the company or/and genre pledging lots of money on Kickstarter.  Thus, what say you to using at least one crowdfunding platform to properly finish this wonderful game you started?

If this crowdfunding happened with ample success, I may be available to join this project as a designer - if you are willing and able to have me.  (The crowdfunding would be to release a commercial version such as on Steam or/and GOG.)

Thankee for this wonderful Roguelike D&Dish game that I wanted years before I knew it existed!  The unimplemented features, like acquiring a keep via the Seneschal skill or gathering information about some,  procedurally-generated area then adventuring there, looting it, and having merry adventures along the way, inspired me to want to learn more about this world and do more in this world - silent ASCII graphics and all.  The Return of the Forsaken edition could have a variety of modes, including its single dungeon delve (a la Halls of the Goblin King).

[Richard T]

Hi Greg,

I am not the creator/owner of Incursion.  That is Julian.  I merely updated it for modern Windows, and fixed as many crash/game bugs as possible.  The amount of work required to take this to a full version could keep a programmer in full time work for several years - take a look at the blog of the guy who wrote Cogmind to see all the things that need to be done to get a textual game to a subsistence income level.  There are huge issues, from the reliance on a GPL licensed software, to old dated code that would have to be rewritten, to ... well, I forget the details since I fixed most of the worst bugs that people reported and it was reasonably stable as of many years ago and it's faded.

As I am merely a programmer who updated it, I have none of the rights to make a full game out of this.  And as a professional game developer in the past, I have lost interest in professional game development and prefer something that pays better, and will never be part of any crowdfunding effort ever.  Your best bet is to better your programming skills and update Incursion yourself, and do what is necessary to find others to share the load and contribute.  In theory, it should be possible to make new game modules other than Hall of the Goblin King, in reality the game engine was tailored for the demo and does not support new modules very easily.  But a lot of the groundwork is there.  Also, the  market for text-based games is very limited.  Take a look at Cogmind on Steam, that is both graphical and textual, and the only reason IMO the one developer can kind of stay afloat is because the graphical players subsidise the textual players.

It would probably be easier for a more experienced programmer to throw away the existing code, and to rewrite it from scratch.  Or for any programmer to start from scratch for that matter.  Just use the ideas and game design as a start and work from there.  And in fact at least one person did this, and fizzled out.  The Veins of the Earth or something.

  http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=The_Veins_of_the_Earth

Cheers,

Richard.

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