Incursion is quite likely shelved

[getter77]

http://www.incursion-roguelike.net/

I have some news that I know is going to disappoint people, but I wanted to be honest about it.

Since just before Christmas 2012, I have been working on a different project unrelated to Incursion in either its tabletop RPG or roguelike game forms. My new project is a post-apocalyptic tabletop game; I don't want to talk about too much yet because I have nothing to show, I'm not sure if I'll be releasing it under my real name and it's not especially relevant to this community. It was supposed to be a brief diversion after which I would return to Incursion, but has grown far more substantial at this point (though it is still far more finite and contained than the elaborate design for Incursion had become).

This is something which kind of grabbed my attention and inspired me, and I have neglected to look at this forum as a result. I saw the discussion here about status when I re- approved Thrydon, and I felt obligated to say something as this has gone on too long.

Incursion is a huge, huge project with a vast amount of labor invested. At the same time, it is not currently in a playable state as either a tabletop RPG or a roguelike computer game, and there's a lot of work before it will get there. I'm not "abandoning" it, and I'm not releasing the sources -- but I also haven't been actively developing it for about four months now, and I wanted to be honest with people about that.

When will new Incursion come? I don't know. At this point, maybe some years in the future -- or maybe never. It's far too much an investment of labor for me to want to throw it away, but it's status for now is "shelved". I know that will disappoint people, and I'm sorry. I'm not really able to work in things in my spare time when other, different things have my interest far more strongly, and that's my situation right now.

It would be best for everyone concerned if people considered Incursion dead at this point. It's not precisely true -- I do plan to get back to it someday -- but I don't feel people should be waiting on news for a game that isn't actively being developed at the moment and has had a huge amount of time since the last release.

I want to offer sincere thanks to everyone who supported the game and showed interest, and I'm sorry I don't have anything more appealing to tell you.

The long and technically amazing rewrite process, alongside the ever shifting sands of life, seemingly brings this sterling endeavor to a conclusion.   

[Vanguard]

That's a real shame.  Incursion had potential like no other.

But it isn't surprising.  Dude bit off more than he or anyone else could chew.

[Darren Grey]

Except for Tarn Adams perhaps...  I wish he didn't go into this refactoring / inventing a new language nonsense.  He had a good enough to base to work from already.  Still, hopefully he's having more fun with his new project.

[Krice]

I wish he didn't go into this refactoring / inventing a new language nonsense.

Yeah, that language stuff is kind of weird. You would think there is enough work in the actual gameplay. But I guess it's a programming thing. I mean, some people use Python, how weird is that.

[guest509]

When people start talking about doing rewrites and refactoring I know i'll never see their game.

[TheCreator]

When people start talking about doing rewrites and refactoring I know i'll never see their game.

Not really. I talk about refactoring all the time and I still release every month (or two). If my code is still maintainable after 13 years of development, this is only due to refactoring. Refactoring is a great thing when it's done right... and when it's done *instead* of rewriting, which is always a disaster to any kind of software.

By the way, Fame has survived inventing of a new language AND a rewrite of that language. What is more, it has undergone a complete rewrite of the whole game in a new language. So rewriting is a bad thing, sure, but there are worse. I don't want to know what was that in this case.

//EDIT:
OK, that was a lie. I actually wanted to know. This little quote says it all:

It's going to be a while before the gameplay is anything resembling the complexity of old-Incursion -- and once it is, it will quickly skyrocket past that, since the whole point of the script language and next-gen engine is to allow a lot of d20 content and gameplay detail to be added rapidly in an easily maintainable manner. Apparently implementing and troubleshooting an entire Java-clone programming language complete with bytecode VM, IDE support, symbolic debugger, garbage collection and various game-specific language extensions takes a substantial amount of time to get working and stable.

[guest509]

Wow. Fame sounds like a very involved hobby project.

[DaBeowulf]

On the game's most-popular-search-engine-groups group a player once started a topic:
"I just want to say that playing Incursion has been the best gaming experience of it's genre for me."
expressing his appreciation.

This is also how I feel about Incursion. It is the one RL that I enjoy the most. Rich and deep.

Therefore reading this newsitem on the game's website disturbed me a little. Something shall rise from its ashes, though.

Julian Mensch, this your game... it's full of win.
Thanks for that!

[guest509]

You know I've never played it.....