Blogging about a new project - Pirates of the Spanish Main

[mtgrares]

I just wanted to give everyone a heads up. Talking about Magic was fun but I spent more than 3 years and 100,000 words and I didn't have anything left to say so I'm changing my blog. I'll be talking about creating a Pirates of the Spanish Main videogame where you play against the computer (like Forge). The other big change is that it won't be an open-source project and that I'm going to try to sell it commercially for $10 or 20. (I'll contact the parent company and all that jazz.) I'm not sure that I can create a commercial viable game but we will see. I think we need more trading card game videogames.

You guys have done a great job working on Forge. I'm still very humbled that people wanted to use my code. (Of course there isn't much of my code left. You guys have improved almost all of Forge.) I'll say a special thanks to the 3 people that I have had the most interaction with: Dennis (thanks for leading Forge), Rob (thanks for scripting) and Chris (thanks for the programming, the decks, and everything else).

A bunch of other people have contributed to Forge and I owe them a big "Thank You" also.

I'll still be around and I'll post new versions of Forge every month to my blog.

p.s.
Here is the Wikipedia link which describes Pirates game in more detail.

[lord of 13]

I don't mean to rain on your parade, but apparently Sony Entertainment has a online version of the game already (it's in the Wikipedia article).
Nonetheless, I did enjoy reading about how you wrote the Forge engine and it helped me when I was writing Mind Game's engine.

[ubeefx]

There is a big difference between asking 10 $ or 20 $.
It depends on the project, but people already expect a lot these days for 10 $.
It is important to find a good tradeoff between sales volume and price.
Selling for instance 20000 times for 2 $ is a lot better than 1000 times for 10 $.
Use your blog and other channels to find out about interest in such a game.
Try to find out why Sony stopped their online version of the game.

I wish you all the best with your new project!

[mtgrares]

I don't mean to rain on your parade, but apparently Sony Entertainment has a online version of the game already (it's in the Wikipedia article).

Sony's online Pirates game closed 1/31/2011. (For better or worse.)

Nonetheless, I did enjoy reading about how you wrote the Forge engine and it helped me when I was writing Mind Game's engine.

Thanks, that was my goal. My blogging also spurred the creation of Wagic and Incantus.

It depends on the project, but people already expect a lot these days for 10 $.
It is important to find a good tradeoff between sales volume and price.
Selling for instance 20000 times for 2 $ is a lot better than 1000 times for 10 $.

Yeah economics is hairy. I do understand what you are saying and no, I don't have any real idea what would be a good price. Of course it depends on how good the final product is. I was just looking for something that is "interesting to program" and finally found something. The same company also made the Star Wars Pocketmodel game which looks very nice also. (Here is the wikipedia link.)

[mtgrares]

Ha, forget everything I said about selling Pirates for money. I do picture the user interface as a grid (squares) and each unit moves a certain number of squares. Basically the game will be a pirate version of Advance Wars.

I'm trying to get done with Forge's new user interface, then I plan to work on Pirates.

[Huggybaby]

I have a bunch of Pirates of the Spanish Main ships if you want them.

I was talking to my games shop guy about this game. He told me it was no longer being made, and that it was discontinued because (in his opinion) the rules and some other things needed tweaking but WizKids didn't do it. When they play at his shop they use some altered rules which make the game more fun, but I didn't get specifics.

Let me say that a Pirate (or outer space) version of Advance Wars would be f***ing awesome. Advance Wars is one of the best games ever made.