Here's a crazy thought I had and I would like to discuss it. This really is a 100% open-ended discussion.
How about merging BattleMaster and Might & Fealty ?
BattleMaster has been dwindling lately, and many of the reasons are in the age of the game. Technology has advanced and player expectations have advanced, and frankly speaking a lot of the code is so ancient you could put it into a museum. Tim has done a great job updating it, but the project is simply huge.
I've taken a different route and instead of trying to update BattleMaster, I re-made it the way I would have made it if I started now. Most of you know about my other game Might & Fealty, of course, so I won't even set a link.
The games are dissimilar in some aspects, but very similar in the core concepts. I believe M&F avoids many of the original mistakes in the BM game design that are only still around because everyone is used to them now. At the same time, it is nowhere near as mature.
So I have this idea in my mind of merging the games. Not forcing people into another game, but really transporting the BM world into the M&F codebase. The continents I can copy pretty well, and you would get travel between them for free. You could play the same or more characters. Realms can be copied. Wiki data can be updated. Character data can be copied over to some extent. As much of the history as possible needs to be preserved.
Some things would get lost. There are no guilds in M&F and no classes, so the adventurer and priest and infiltrator gameplay would disappear. All of this wants to be considered.
Let me know your thoughts. Whether your are totally against it, or like it, or think "maybe, but firstly this, this and that feature which I love so much need to be available in M&F".
At the same time I might consider opening the codebase of M&F to attract more developers. The game relies much less than BM on hidden features and details being unknown. I even has a simple API and I've started work on a 3D client. It is built on a very modern architecture (Symfony/Doctrine, PostGIS, etc.)
So let me know your thoughts, no matter what they are. Even if you're indifferent, I would like to know that, too. No matter what you think, please post it below.
