All The Way Open!

We have a plan! 

We’re going to finish developing Haunts: The Manse Macabre as an Open Source project. The source code has been open from the beginning, but now we’re going to fully embrace open development model and making the game entirely open source. We’ve had about thirty programmers from a variety of backgrounds, including many proficient in Go, who have stepped forward and offered to help finish the game. We’re still in the process of setting up the infrastructure for issue tracking, source control, documentation wikis, and other tools necessary before we can begin in earnest, but we hope to have that all up and running within the next week or two.

Today I sent out a survey to all the interested programmers who’ve contacted me to get a better idea of what people are interested in working on and how much time they’ll have. We’ll be appointing some interim release managers in the short run and then working together to elect those positions. If you’re interested in being included in the survey now, contact me through Kickstarter. But anyone will be able to help out once we get started, we'll need programmers with a variety of skills and interests, testers and more.

If you'd like to join the crew, just fill this survey out:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dE1CVTVIOWJpSGZOX3plQURfV0ZzOVE6MQ

Blue Mammoth is still interested in the project, but their involvement will come once the game is much closer to finished, and will be to facilitate the retail release, get copies out to our backers, and help promote and distribute the final game. Someone from Blue Mammoth will probably have a finger in helping out on the development side, but getting this game finished will be up to the community of volunteers.

There are still a ton of details to be figured out about the licensing (we may end up adopting a slightly different open license if it needs to be more open), credit, business model, etc. Plus setting up the issues list, organize the priorities for what needs to get done, establishing a public knowledge base, and more. This is just the beginning, but I’m excited about where it’s going and enthusiastic as hell about the support we’re getting.

Art!  

Austin is finishing up the inking on the caricatures and those should be out to backers this week.  

Additionally, based on backer S.D.'s excellent suggestion, he's working up some cool Haunts themed wallpaper images for both desktops and mobile devices, which will be out for Halloween.

In The News

We've gotten a lot of press coverage, most of it in the general vein of, "Look, see, Kickstarter projects can go bad, so be careful!" I think that's a fair and useful point to make. But we're committed to being the follow-up story. You know, the underdog who comes back from the brink of collapse and proves a resounding success! 

Here's one nice piece I wanted to share with you. 

http://caffeineforge.com/2012/10/20/the-manse-macabre-only-mostly-dead/

I've also done a few interviews, including one for a radio show that podcasts their episodes. That should run next week, and I'll share the link with you when I get it.

Comments

[Fred P]

You may want to update the release dates, when you get a chance.

[Azmath]

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