A lot of people have asked about when Pirates and Traders 2 is coming out. As a general rule, I don’t answer that question, since I know from experience that hitting deadlines outside the day job is pretty much impossible. It’s hard enough hitting those deadlines in the day job.
I would like to have the game in beta by the end of summer. Whether I make that, though, depends on a lot of different factors, though – some of them outside my direct control. There is also the matter of determining the right state to make the game available at; there is no point in releasing it while it still contains obvious, major errors. In addition, there is the matter of feature completion. While I will probably cut some features for the beta (port attacks is a likely example, for instance, as that is completely changed from the original), the game does need to include a reasonable subsection of the functionality from the existing game. I don’t think I will get much useful feedback from the beta if it is from the start a significantly worse game than the original.
At the moment, I think this is still possible to achieve. The core of the game is there – the ports are working, although there still remains a few features to implement for the game to be playable (governor + recruiting crew). Ship combat still needs some work, although it is mostly functional now. Events and encounters need to be implemented. But if those things are in place, the game is going to be very close to playable.
I know, however, from many years experience that these kind of estimates are worthless. If I worked full-time; sure, I could tell probably have given a pretty good estimate of when I’ve done all that. But not with this as a part-time job. So all I can tell you is when I would like to have this ready. By the end of summer. Whether it will be ready? Only Davy Jones knows.