Battlegrounds

[heruca]

First I would like to say I was looking for a virtual board/card game creation tool and I ended up finding "Battlegrounds" Which did some neat stuff, but they charge $40 for the game host and $20 per person that plays with you which is outrageous.

The prices you quoted are for BRPG, an RPG-oriented virtual tabletop program. I am the developer of BRPG, and I would like to talk about the so-called "outrageous" price, because I think that is an unfair statement. The highest-selling RPG VT is Fantasy Grounds, which is priced higher than BRPG, is Windows-only, has no audio or animation support, is poorly documented, and is not easily customizable. BRPG, on the other hand, is cross-platform, supports audio and animation, has very thorough documentation, can be easily customized without and scripting/programming/XML-editing, has a lot of free content available for download, and as an added bonus also lets you play boardgames, wargames, cardgames, and dice games. I contend that BRPG is very competitively priced, and I'm very sorry to hear that you think the price is "outrageous".

In any case, if you were indeed looking for a virtual board/card game creation tool, you should instead have looked at Battlegrounds Gaming Engine (aka BGE), which is $15 for 2 players, $20 for 4 players, $30 for 8 players, and $40 for 16 players (in other words, between $2.50 and $7.50 per player).

[Grimshad]

@Heruca

I'm sorry if I offended you in any way, but what I meant was that compared to ZunTzu being FREE, the cost of BRPG was outrageous for near the same functionality. The only thing I liked more on BRPG was the fact that when you moused over things a large thumbnail poped up so that you could read it instead of having to zoom in on it. Other than that I completely prefer ZunTzu anyway, but this is entirely my opinion and my preference.

On your other note of BGE instead of BRPG: I did try them both and BGE seemed to have very limited functionality and could not do what I wanted to do for a board game (I don't remember any of the specifics). While BRPG had everything I needed.

@Jerome I feel the same way as Bill Barrett on this point. If anything, everything should be optional. I think it is a really bad idea to completely exclude something based on the amount of work it would take to use it. Simply make it optional and then it will be the Designers choice whether they use the feature or not. Remember, choice always wins.

I think it is important to keep extra features and standard ones separate from each other for new comers sake. In other words, you should teach people how to use ZunTzu using the basic features, then have a separate section specifically to teach people how to use Advanced features, because sometimes too much choice can be confusing and overwhelming when you don't already know the basics and makes things very hard to learn.

[heruca]

@Heruca

I'm sorry if I offended you in any way, but what I meant was that compared to ZunTzu being FREE, the cost of BRPG was outrageous for near the same functionality.

Not offended, I just wanted to try to clear up any misinformed or misleading statement/s about my software, which a casual forum reader might take as fact. Such as implying that BRPG and ZunTzu have anywhere near the same features & functionality.