Weirdest PR Ever

[Shisoik]

Reading about Incantus in a few places I can't help but wonder: do the authors of Incatus get some kind of perverted joy in keeping people away. Is there a particular reason for all the secrecy around Incantus? And it is not a fantasy or something, coz in many places people asks all the same questions:
1. How does one play Incantus over the net?
2. Why the status of the project is known 'post factum' from different versions scattered over the Inet?
3. Is it a commercial project or an Open Source one?
4. If it is supposed to be Open Source where is the source and how can we help?
5. Why doesn't such promising project have its own homepage with announces, community, manuals and stuff?

[renthgil]

i ask the exact same things =\

Its the best program i've seen so far, and believe me, i've seen many of them. If Incantus were more popular, i bet all cards were already implemented...

[MageKing17]

do the authors of Incatus get some kind of perverted joy in keeping people away. Is there a particular reason for all the secrecy around Incantus?

We don't get a perverted joy from keeping people away, but we do enjoy not being sued or sent cease&desist letters from WotC, and advertising (or, "Public Relations", which is a euphemism if I ever heard one) is counter to that goal. If you want to learn about Incantus, catch us on IRC. I tend to be there whenever I can (which, admittedly, has been less than I'd like (I've been gone a few weeks), but is still a fair amount).

However, I shall still try to answer your questions. Question #1 will not be answered for reasons hinted above (but you are free to ask again on IRC).

2. Why the status of the project is known 'post factum' from different versions scattered over the Inet?

What do you mean? I have no idea what you're asking here.

3. Is it a commercial project or an Open Source one?

I believe the word you meant was "proprietary", since there is no way in hell we could sell Incantus (it being WotC's intellectual property). And the answer is "neither". The source code is given to people who ask nicely on IRC, but we're not putting it online for anyone to look at and modify.

4. If it is supposed to be Open Source where is the source and how can we help?

See above.

5. Why doesn't such promising project have its own homepage with announces, community, manuals and stuff?

Because we haven't made one. The closest thing is our online card database (which has a primitive wiki), but I don't think I'm allowed to give away the address for that here. We spend most of our free time actually working on the project, not promoting it.

[juzamjedi]

From what I have seen Incantus implements the most cards compared to any similar project out there. The core developers seem to prefer quality of releases over quantity of releases (with a good amount of testing in between releases). Seems OK to me.

[frwololo]

I recently realized that a program with rules enforcement and no AI will never get as much attention as the others. Incantus will never handle all cards. And even if it does, whenever a new set is released, people want to play right away with the new cards. Depending on the motivation of the coders, it may take, maybe 1 month to have 90% of the cards?
In the end, when you are looking for an opponent to play in real life, you want to have access to the most recent cards. Incantus can not provide that in the long run. So even if it gets steam at first, as soon as the developers leave, you end up with a game that only allows you to play with "old" cards against other humans. For that, people will prefer MWS which always allows you to play with the latest cards, and/or MTGO if they are looking for rules enforcement.

This is to say that in its current state, the incantus project could die in a matter of months if development was stopped.
(I want to compare this to games such as shandalar/manalink, which are still fun even though they don't have all mechanics coded, because the point is not to play MTG with other human players)

My point being that there is no point for the Incantus devs to "advertise" for their product as it is now: it would bring them the lawyers (because it is a direct competition for MTGO), but not necessarily more users.

I still believe the sources should be publicly available somewhere, for the sake of the project. The only hope of such a project after a while is to rely on "continuity" provided by the open source community. We ALL know that at some point, incantus, MageKing17 and the others will stop working on Incantus for one reason or another (real life, you know...).
I hope you guys release the sources somewhere if you ever stop working on Incantus

[MageKing17]

Depending on the motivation of the coders, it may take, maybe 1 month to have 90% of the cards?

Actually, you underestimate the power of our card format. Most of the time, we have over 90% of a new set implemented the same day we start working on it. What little isn't implemented that day usually requires an engine change to add (and we're in the middle of a damned huge engine change). We didn't wind up with over 6,000 cards in our database because cards were hard to add.

I still believe the sources should be publicly available somewhere, for the sake of the project.

If you want the source, all you have to do is ask.

I hope you guys release the sources somewhere if you ever stop working on Incantus

Absolutely.

[frwololo]

We didn't wind up with over 6,000 cards in our database because cards were hard to add.

Well, cards are extremely difficult to add in MTGForge, yet they have around 2000 cards I believe, sometimes it's only a matter of how much motivation people put in there, but I get your point.
And for the sake of argument, my point here was that if you don't handle 100% of the cards the day they are released, "people" will always go back to MWS. The numbers I used were obviously pulled out of my a##, but the argument stays the same.
And again, I'm not saying this is a bad thing, just that it is a good reason to "not" advertise too much for Incantus, as advertising for it will probably bring you little more users (because it doesn't handle 100% of the cards) but way more trouble (because lawyers will become interested).

I still believe the sources should be publicly available somewhere, for the sake of the project.

If you want the source, all you have to do is ask.

That was not really my point... or actually it was. If you only give the source to a selected list of people, the project will definitely die. If the project is publicly available somewhere (as in: anyone can grab the sources without asking - think sourceforge or google code), it has more chances to survive in the long term. Well at least that's what I think, I might be overly confident in the power of the open source community.

I hope you guys release the sources somewhere if you ever stop working on Incantus

Absolutely.

That's good to know. I haven't tried Incantus in a while, but last time I checked, this project deserves to last

[DennisBergkamp]

Actually, you underestimate the power of our card format. Most of the time, we have over 90% of a new set implemented the same day we start working on it. What little isn't implemented that day usually requires an engine change to add (and we're in the middle of a damned huge engine change). We didn't wind up with over 6,000 cards in our database because cards were hard to add.

Wow, this is awesome.
It usually takes me weeks to implement a ~third of a set in MTGForge

[Marek14]

Actually, you underestimate the power of our card format. Most of the time, we have over 90% of a new set implemented the same day we start working on it. What little isn't implemented that day usually requires an engine change to add (and we're in the middle of a damned huge engine change). We didn't wind up with over 6,000 cards in our database because cards were hard to add.

Wow, this is awesome.
It usually takes me weeks to implement a ~third of a set in MTGForge

Well, ÿou have an AI

[nantuko84]

we have over 90% of a new set implemented the same day we start working on it

how is that?) 200 cards added during one day sounds crazy for me
is it because of scripting?

[frwololo]

No, they have an army of slaves who do it for them

Seriously though, last time I read about it, I think they came up with something that actually parses the oracle text and creates the corresponding code, for most of the cards.

[Incantus]

Seriously though, last time I read about it, I think they came up with something that actually parses the oracle text and creates the corresponding code, for most of the cards.

We're not that quite advanced, but we do have a collaborative online editor:

http://cards.incant.us/

which can take the oracle text of a card and create a template of the card code (and for vanilla/french vanilla cards, add the basic abilities). So far it's been great to avoid repetition and get feedback when creating cards.

[Huggybaby]

Wow, the secret link exposed!

[Incantus]

Oh, i didn't realize it was supposed to be a secret link. Ooops

[Huggybaby]

Hey, it's not supposed to be secret if YOU say it isn't. UDAMAN!