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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zortag" data-source="post: 3287134" data-attributes="member: 17203">First of all, I AM a professional software developer. I've been doing it since the 8-bit world (more than 30 years). I have designed, built, produced, and supported more than 12 "shrink-wrapped" applications over the years. I have watched in horror and amusement for the last 7 years as chargen projects have floundered and failed. Each product bombed or is limping along for one or more of the classic reasons for software project failure.Most of the chargen projects have been sacrificed on the altar of ATTAP - All things to all people. I have watched numerous chargen development teams spend large amounts of resources on marginal features. It should surprise nobody that the vast majority of the target market for a chargen are english-speaking and Windows users. Spending resources to make the app multi-lingual or Mac/LINUX compatible forces the majority of your customer base to pay for features they will never use. Sounds, pretty graphics and animations are nice, but they do not sell the product nearly as much as functionality does.Trying to target more than one operating environment is folly, especially on low-budget projects like a chargen. Multi-platform code is much harder to maintain, especially if you do it the right way and have separate code bases for each platform. If you decide to use a "cross-platform" development approach, you usually end up with a system that does not work quite right on any of the platforms.The other problem the projects have faced is lack of professional design and project management. It does not seem that a serious design document or process has been applied to these projects. It also looks like the lead programmers are in charge of the projects; a recipe for failue. I never run my own projects - most programmers suck at project management.Because there never seems to be a formal description of the project, the dreaded scope creep rears it's ugly head. Adding a lack of strong project management, means that problems cannot be anticipated, resulting in missed milestones and late or never-released projects. So, the project keeps getting bigger, more expensive and later."OK, big shot", I hear you ask, "how would you do it?"Assuming I was getting paid to do it, I'd start with a formal requirements definiton. Anything not in the document would not be in the product's first release. I would collect a team of 1 or 2 good programmers, a DBA, a group to build rules, a project manager, a documentation specialist, and a tester. I would target the product for a Windows XP platform.  Using standard Microsoft languages, building for a .NET environment and using the built-in XP operating system facilities for data storage, printing, and display. This is a rich environment for development, with a well-known user interface. Most importantly, more than 90% of the target market has hardware that could run the app.I'd have to ballpark the development time as 6-8 months from initiation gate. Total cost to develop is around $80-100K. Figuring that this product could be sold for around $30.00 eachabout 25,000 units would have to be sold to break even. Not too bad.Of course, I would not do this without WotC's support. I would expect them to assist in marketing the product, give advanced releases of rules, and grant access to the game developers. To keep Wizards interested in maintaining the product, I would have them implement a subscription service that would allow users to download rule updates and software patches.In short: one good team, using good development tools, with real design and project management could produce the product for about the cost of one printing of a hard-cover book.-*Andy*-</blockquote>

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