What's next for Silversword? - ID: 1311
FORUM: Announcements
This topic was started by cparker94 on 07/09/2014, 20:23:13
Hi Mario --
I was wondering if you don't mind sharing your future plans for Silversword. Are you looking on making an expansion? Are you still working on Silversword to make it even better? What about your Silversword 2 project? Any information would be greatly appreciated! :)
Craig from Texas
Hi Craig,
thanks for asking.
Well, my wife and I bought a house this spring, and the refurbishment is a huge task. We just started rebuilding the roof... and we need to renew the isolation before winter ;-)
Apart from that, I have some minutes to relax every evening. And the "flooded isles" are waiting to be created and filled with monsters, riddles and treasures... but there is not much time for me to think about it. So the game effectively is kind of standby. I listen to all suggestions of course, and there are some things I'd like to implement in the future.
But I can't tell when it will happen, sorry.
As for Silversword 2... I simply can't put any time into it. As I said elsewhere... I wanted to play The Bard's Tale (1-3) on my iPhone - so I had to write it by myself. And this niche is now filled. What niche could Silversword 2 fill? There are some very good games out there... when I finished the first demo for part 2, "Ravensword" just come out. And it was very close to my vision of Silversword 2 ;-) Now do I want to create something that already exists on the market?
Another approach was to rewrite part 1 with Unity3D - with much better graphics and cross-platform availability. But again... do I want to create the same game again? Just thinking of the time I put into part 1 makes me crazy (1500 hours maybe?) :-D
The problem is: I am alone, there is no other coder that would help me - so all I can do is to thank you for playing the game. I am so proud of it (the forums, the players, the walkthroughs, the wikipedia entries, the reviews...) and I bow before you in deep gratitude. If you hold on, you will get some more content for sure - perhaps some rule changes and new abilities for your monk. Perhaps the thief-out-of-the-box magic device that so many people want... just don't expect a fixed date.
I hope this information helps ;-)
Kind regards from Germany
Mario
A lot of good information here Mario! I'm such a huge fan of your work. When I finished Bard's Tale III back in the 1980's I never found a game that could match that same experience. I looked everywhere for a long time and was saddened by the fact that there was nothing out there. I wanted to create my own Bards Tale-like game but I don't know the first thing about coding. However, Silversword then came along, and yours has surpassed my BT experience by far! But now that I've completed your game, I'm sad once again. Yes, I'm selfish and would like nothing more for another big area to open up in your game, a new map to explore, with meaner monsters, tougher challenges, and bigger treasures. I'm glad you say you are not completely finished with making Silversword better. I would love for you to put another 1,500 hours into Silversword to making it bigger and better and I'm sure a bunch of people would agree with me -- but probably not your wife. :)
Once again, thank you so much for giving us Silversword. Recapturing my youth is something that is truly priceless. I've enjoyed every minute of it and plan on restarting the game with a new party soon.
Take care Mario!
Craig from Texas
It's nice hear your plans some, my wife and I are also refurbishing a house so know how that eats your life for a while...
A few other minor thoughts for the future, in the thieves guild some sleeping quarters are labelled "rest rooms" as I recall, I think "rest quarters" or the like sounds better in English since at least here in the US restrooms =bathrooms/toilets.
In the base game the "forest" map (after ridge fault, before savage crossing) seems bare of interesting things, I think a randomly generated roguelike mini game of mines or the like might be interesting for leveling and looting. Maybe making it an iap for deeper than level 3 to earn a bit for ur work - (Touch arcade's recent rpg reload articles gave me that idea).
Fighting pits/arenas in Savage Crossing and Annesharbour where u fight an increasingly difficult mob as u advance also came to mind.
Also slings and sling stones/bullets as an item add.
Dwarves have no spell casters in base game, maybe geomancy option.
Finally a creators toolkit as an add on to the game itself (rather than for Macs) for maps, items, stories etc. by the community with some built in exchange option, even if it only email. I think that may be the best way to possibly add a ton of content without doing it all urself. The best creators then might collab on future expansions without full coding exp. required.
-Just my thoughts.
An interesting idea for #2 would simply be to make an online version with different Maps and different ways to match equal level parties against each other would be very fun and add a uniqueness to the game that is not there already and would be very fun.
