FIFE - a next generation Fallout-like engine

[mvBarracuda]

A new Win32 SVN snapshot is available )

 

New features:

* First basic color-keying support for the SDL renderer (resulting in improved performance)

* Map size dependent, configurable geometries

* Custom VFS sources via vfs.addSource (see content/etc/vfs_sources.txt)

* Increased startup speed with FO2 DAT files

* Enhanced camera with support for multiple viewports (see content/scripts/demos/map_control.lua)

* Built against SDL_image 1.2.5 and guichan 0.61 now

 

Grab it here:

http://members.fifengine.de/bin/FIFE_r896_win32.exe

[mvBarracuda]

Hi guys ) Time for yet another FIFE news update.

 

As you might already know our old editor coder went absent without official leaving and we've been searching for new developers who wanted to work on the editor. Despite the fact that some people were interested in helping out with editor development, none of them did stick to the task in the long run. There is still one guy left on the team who's interested to work on the editor but has no time to do so :yes:/

 

So I want to be totally upfront about this: it seems that there will be _NO_ FIFE editor available for the next couple of months. Therefore the editor beta test is on halt. We'll inform you as soon as there is a willing developer around who brought up a serious concept for it and commited some promising code into SVN. I won't announce anything just because we would have found yet another coder interested who silently leaves the project after that. I intend to spare you and myself this drama.

 

Phoku, the driving force behind FIFE coding in the last months, was hard working in the last two weeks and plans to write a detailed developer blog update in the next couple of days. He'll talk about the upcoming 2007.1 release and the roadmap for the next two releases: 2007.2 & 2007.3.

 

There are at least a few promising news in spite of the whole editor nightmare:

1. The work on the 2007.1 milestone is coming along good. That means we plan to have more than two FIFE releases in 2007. There is no release date set but I'll inform you about any details as soon as I know more.

 

2. Phoku finished his map format draft recently. That means the 2007.1 release will feature a somewhat stable map format so you could start creating maps for FIFE (by hand) despite the lack of a map editor:

http://wiki.fifengine.de/index.php?title=Map_Format

 

3. I didn't talk with phoku about all details but I guess that the

roadmap, that will be announced in the next days, will feature these basic ideas:

3.1 Stable map format with the 2007.1 release

3.2 Stable animation format with the 2007.2 release

3.3 More fleshed out script API with the 2007.3 release

 

4. Furthemore we plan to organize a FIFE contest entitled "Send them in!". The idea behind this contest is to encourage the modders to send in their self-created GFX. The FIFE team will have a look at the different contributions and will pick a winner after that. We'll use the winner's gfx for the planned 2007.2 demo map that should show the possibilities of the engine without the need to have one of the two Fallout RPGs installed. There is still a lot of planning to do but it's planned to launch this contest after the release of the 2007.1 milestone.

 

We plan to get news coverage at NMA as soon as phoku's developer blog update is online, we can hopefully announce more details about the "send them in!" contest too.

 

That's all for today, see you at the next update.

[mvBarracuda]

Phoku revealed the roadmap for the next FIFE releases today and we're planning a GFX contest entitled "Send them in!". You can read about all the details @ our developer blog:

http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engin...007/03/05/08.17

[Imbrium]

Phoku revealed the roadmap for the next FIFE releases today and we're planning a GFX contest entitled "Send them in!". You can read about all the details @ our developer blog:

http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engin...007/03/05/08.17

 

This is really cool. I wish I could contribute, but I'm just starting to get a handle on Java (CS major, just entered sophomore year). I'm fiddling with learning how to mod Arcanum as an exercise, but I don't thing I'm anywhere near ready to help with such an intsenive project. I'll be keeping an eye on it, and when I enter my C++ classes (next semester) and if this thing is still going on, I'd be glad to try what I can do to help.

 

untill then, Kudos to you and the team.

[mvBarracuda]

I'll be keeping an eye on it, and when I enter my C++ classes (next semester) and if this thing is still going on, I'd be glad to try what I can do to help.

Although this kind of feedback is really appreciated, it's very doubtful that you're able to help out working on the engine if you'll just start to look into C++. However you might be interested to have a look into our scripting engine so you play around with our lua scripts. The whole scripting API is still proof of concept but we hope to flesh it out more and get it somewhat stable with the upcoming 2007.2 and 2007.3/2008.0 releases.

 

untill then, Kudos to you and the team.

Thanks for the heads up )

[mvBarracuda]

Just wanted to announce that we've got a new developer on the team who's currently working to get FIFE running on Macintosh again.

 

If everything works out as planned, we'll already provide universal Mac binaries for the upcoming 2007.1 release )

[mvBarracuda]

We're currently working hard to get the 2007.1 release out. Therefore we decided to release a last test build for win32 so users can get an impression what new features are coming with the new release.

 

Download:

http://members.fifengine.de/bin/FIFE_r988_win32.exe

[mvBarracuda]

Ahh well, the work on the final fixes for 2007.1 is going extremely slow :(/ Seems like we'll need to delay the release till the end of April, if not even further.

 

So here is at least a new screenshot of the content that will be featured in the official 2007.1 demo map, stay tuned )

 

 

The graphics have been taken from Reiner's tilesets:

http://reinerstileset.4players.de/

[mvBarracuda]

It's done ) After over three months of hard work, we've fixed the last issues today and released the 2007.1 milestone of FIFE. The most important improvement is the new custom map format that can be considered as stable. We created a demo map for this release for a number of reasons:

* Show the modders how the FIFE map format and specific concepts like the tilesets, archetypes and prototypes work.

* Set up a starting point for modders so they can get into the world of FIFE more easily.

* Create something that looks totally unFallouty to get away from the "FIFE-is-just-a-Fallout-emulator"-image. Welcome to the Isle of FIFE )

 

Here is a screenshot of our new demo map, using graphics from Reiner's Tilesets:

 

New features since the 2007.0 release:

* Stable custom XML map format for FIFE including our demo map to show the new features and syntax of it )

* FPS limiter (can be set in fife.config) to save important CPU time for future tasks (AI, pathfinding, etc.)

* Tile and object coordinates can be displayed (press "c")

* Color key overriding for Fallout transparency effects (see content/gfx/fallout_overrides.xml)

* Fixed DAT1 decoding code (bug was introduced with the DAT1 rewrite)

* Major map model classes have been exported to Lua and are now accessable via the console

* Map size dependant, configurable geometries

* Colorkeying for the SDL renderer

* Add custom VFS sources via vfs.addSource (see content/etc/vfs_sources.txt)

* Increased startup speed with FO2 DAT files

* Enhanced camera with support for multiple viewports (see content/scripts/demos/map_control.lua)

* Built against SDL_image 1.2.5 and guichan 0.61 now (Win32 binaries)

 

Get the win32 package here:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fife/FIFE_2007.1_win32.exe

 

Get the src package for linux, mac and kind of other POSIX systems here:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fife/FIFE...7.1_src.tar.bz2

 

Install guide:

1. Unpack

2. Read README.txt

[mvBarracuda]

The last weeks were quite busy for the majority of the team members so there was we've published no news update since the release of the 2007.1 milestone about 4 weeks ago. Now we've found some time over the weekend to summarize all the events that happened in the last weeks to give you can overview about the current status of the project.

 

The full article can be found at the developer blog and covers a bunch of topics including some remarks about the feedback concerning the recent release, news about the upcoming universal binaries for Macintosh systems, an update about the SVN and wiki restructuring process and the reintroduced MSVC 2005 and new KDevelop support for FIFE. Have a nice read )

 

Btw.: For Obsidian fans it's prolly a bit more interesting as we're quoting J.E. Sawyer in this update )

[mvBarracuda]

 

About FIFE

FIFE is an open source 2D engine that aims to become a whole framework for the creation of cross platform (Linux, Mac, Win32) roleplaying games. Although we are having trouble getting the development started on the editor, we aim to include modding tools in future FIFE releases. The project is in development for almost 21 months now (ohh, we're getting old :ermm:/) and we did release several public milestones of the engine over this time.

 

The latest release, entitled FIFE 2007.1, shipped about one month ago and features our first larger custom map for FIFE. The engine supports some of the assets of the Interplay RPG classics Fallout 1 & Fallout 2. The Fallout assets served as test content for the engine but we've moved away from our Fallout roots over the last year and FIFE is slowly becoming a general purpose 2D RPG engine, suitable for the creation of all kind of roleplaying games.

 

Here is an impression of our demo map that shipped with the 2007.1 release:

 

About the contest

The demo map shown above was created with free graphics from Reiner's tilesets site. We're trying to build a community around FIFE and we're also of course trying to get them involved in the project. A first step into this direction is our upcoming graphics contest, called: Send them in!.

 

The contest will start at the first of June, 2007 and the end of it is scheduled for the first of August, 2007. There are basically four different categories in which you can take part: floor tiles, roof tiles, static & animated objects and animated characters. You can take part in more than one category but there are certain requirements for each category; if you want to win the prize of the contest, you'll need to fulfill them.

 

So what is the prize? FIFE programmer Phoku offers to code an (useful) ~10 man hours feature into FIFE for the winner. This is probably a good way if you're considering to use FIFE for an own project but one important feature is still currently missing in your opinion. Although there will be no monetary compensation as the whole team works in their free time on the project, we're hoping for a bunch of interested participants nevertheless.

 

We're aiming to use the contributions of all participants of the contest for a new demo map that will hopefully already ship with the upcoming 2007.2 release.

 

More information

You want to know more about FIFE and the Send them in! contest? Our project site and the development wiki are good starting points for you. Our wiki features a separate rather detailed article that is dedicated the contest. All details about the rules of the contest, license-specific issues and the different contest categories can be found there.

 

If you still got questions about this upcoming event, feel free to visit the team at their project irc channel or ask your questions directly at the talk page of the corresponding article. You'll need to register at the wiki to get write access. We were not keen to enforce wiki registration, but the spam attacks of unregistered bots are really getting on our nerves and waste our time that could be invested far more useful.

 

We want to thank every interested graphics artist who takes part to support an work in progress open source project )

[mvBarracuda]

New FIFE win32 test binaries of the upcoming FIFE 2007.2 release are finally available )

 

Download them here:

http://members.fifengine.de/bin/FIFE_r1222_win32.exe

[dunniteowl]

Reading with great interest. A few questions:

 

1) How are resources added to FIFE (btw everyone forgot that a fife is a type of flute, as in Drum and Fife Corps) and what programs would you recommend for creating such assets?

[EDIT]

Checked out Reiner's Tilesets:

All Graphics are made with Caligari

Edited June 4, 2007 by dunniteowl

[mvBarracuda]

Reading with great interest. A few questions:

 

1) How are resources added to FIFE (btw everyone forgot that a fife is a type of flute, as in Drum and Fife Corps) and what programs would you recommend for creating such assets?

Assets are currently added by writing map and archetype XML files with a text editor :teehee:/ We know that this content pipeline can't considered to be next-gen *g*

 

While the work on the engine made good progress in the last months, the work on our planned map editor / content tool never really took off :-/ So for now you'll need to grab your favourite text editor to create the needed content files. Another option would be to creation own simple XML generator tools though we hope to come up with a worthwhile to use modding tool for the 2007.3 release; so creating own content tools would prolly turn out to be wasted time.

 

Anyway, here are some docs about our map and archetype formats:

* http://wiki.fifengine.de/index.php?title=Map_Format

* http://wiki.fifengine.de/index.php?title=Archetypes

 

Taking a look at the content files that ship with the latest SVN build for win32 should give you a good idea how our formats work.

 

[EDIT]

Checked out Reiner's Tilesets:

All Graphics are made with Caligari

Edited June 4, 2007 by mvBarracuda

[dunniteowl]

Thanks for the quick reply and information. I will most definitely stay tuned.

 

DLd what you have so far, and will watch with interest.

 

regards,

dunniteowl

[mvBarracuda]

Update time ) Progress was rather slow in the last weeks but there's a bunch of interestings things to report about nevertheless.

 

So here we go:

http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engin...007/06/25/12.05

[Tale]

!!!

 

I think this thread just answered a question I've been faced with for the past few weeks.

[Pidesco]

Whether you should get a tattoo of a map of the Netherlands on your nether lands?

[Tale]

What am I going to do about Project#2thatwillneverbefinished.

 

Project#1thatwillneverbefinished is just fine for Neverwinter Nights 2. But Project#2thatwillneverbefinished needs an engine that supports guns, swords, AND magic.

[mvBarracuda]

Time for yet another update here )

 

The progress of the last two weeks is quite encouraging. We've decided to give the extend approach for scripting a try in a separate branch but it looks like that this branch will replace our current trunk version quite fast. The work on it isn't finished yet but it seems that the performance drawback of the extend approach should be bearable; some initial tests (although with work in progress code and just on tested a Linux system) did show almost no performance drawbacks at all.

 

For anyone who's interested to know more about it and is not afraid of playing around with some work in progress code, check out our extend branch in SVN:

branches/active/extend

 

One major advantage of the extend approach in combination with <a href="http://www.swig.org/">SWIG</a> is that you'll be able to get FIFE running with bindings for your favourite scripting language quite easily. We do currently play around with Python support and that works quite well. Additionally we'll maintain support for Lua bindings as Lua was our language of choice before we decided to try something different than embedding the scripting language into FIFE. It shouldn't be too hard to create Ruby or OCaml bindings for FIFE either and if we find somebody who maintains these bindings, they'll find their way into our Subversion repository so you won't even need to invest time to generate the bindings yourself (although SWIG makes it rather easy in most cases).

 

Here is a nice screenshot from one of our recent test sessions. It shows the FIFE console that now can execute Python code e.g. for ingame manipulations or debugging your FIFE-based game:

 

Besides the work on the extend branch we're currently trying to fill our wiki with use cases for some possible FIFE-based games. That's because we intend to tackle the design of our scripting API after the work on the extend branch has finished. There is already a pretty small API in place but as it was written as proof of concept and for doing initial scripting tests it is neither consistent nor feature-complete. So we're trying to collect some real game examples first, analyze them concerning their requirements for a scripting API and plan to come up with a consistent design for our API after that.

 

If you consider to use FIFE for an own game in the future feel free to lend us a hand by contributing to the use cases. And don't be afraid: there are already a bunch of examples listed there that should make it easy for you to get started. If you would like to contribute but don't understand the concept of the use cases or got other related questions feel free to ask them here or at the talk page of our use case wiki article:

Use cases for the FIFE scripting API

 

And last but not least we're still searching for interested programmers who would like to collect some experience working on a rather large scale group project ) And we're usually kind guys and don't bite so if you want to find out more about us before you sign a lifetime contract with us feel free to visit our irc channel )

#fife @ quakenet

[mvBarracuda]

Yet another FIFE update coming to you )

 

The work on the extend branch is coming along quite well lately and our current lead programmer Jasoka decided to summarize the current status from the developer's point of view. He does comment on the new Python support of the engine and raises some points how the modularization of FIFE should work.

 

For everyone who's interested in reading Jasoka's full text, feel free to check it out at our developer blog:

http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engin...007/07/11/18.44

[mvBarracuda]

Update time )

 

We're currently reworking our XML map format as we found a number of inconsistencies that we failed to foresee when we initially designed the first version of our map format :-/

 

Fortunately (or unfortunately, that really depends on the perspective) there are just two FIFE-based games in development at the moment so we decided to address these issues as soon as possible to reduce the number of affected projects that will need to slightly adjust their map markup to work with the latest FIFE code.

 

Updated FIFE map format (draft)

 

The good news is that the reworking of the map format is a first step and part of our strategy to finally tackle the monster that FIFE developers call the "map editor". So there is actually hope that people who start to explore the world of FIFE with our next planned release 2007.2 won't need to worry about these changes at all (if we manage to finish a first version of our map editor tool until then).

 

Jasoka and jwt did invest a large amount of time to refactor important parts of the engine, kick out singletons and remove bi-directional dependencies between the different engine modules thus leading to a far cleaner engine structure. The whole refactoring process is still ongoing and everyone who's interested in what we're currently working on should check out our metamodel branch in SVN and take a look at the SVN changelog of the last weeks )

 

Metamodel branch @ SVN

SVN changelog

[mvBarracuda]

Welcome to yet another FIFE news update )

 

It was pretty quiet lately, not because we would have been lazy but because I was busy with my exams and had no time to write about our most recent efforts. Nevertheless there was of course a bunch of work going on behind the scenes and I'm happy to have finally found the time to summarize it for you. There are several topics to talk about:

* The send them in! contest is over and we finally have a winner.

* The work on the new metamodel branch is coming along quite well.

* The FIFE team agreed to work on a new techdemo in cooperation with the Zero-Projekt team that explains the features of FIFE.

* The FIFE project turns two rather soon ) Time for a birthday party.

* fifengine.de has been slightly updated with the help of the new developer NickWarner.

 

You can read about all these topics in detail at our most recent FIFE developer blog update. Have fun )

[mvBarracuda]

We can't really believe it either but our calendar says that it has been almost two years now since we started to work on this very project. At the 11th of September 2005 a group of naive but enthusiastic individuals agreed to found a development project to create an improved Fallout-like engine for roleplaying games. Although the focus shifted to become a more general and flexible 2D engine, altough new members joined and old ones left the team, we're still around and the recent progress gives us the hope that there'll be a bunch of birthday parties to celebrate in the next couple of years ) To celebrate at least our first two years we invite every developer (active, inactive, ex or even simply interested to get involved) and of course every guest to visit our IRC channel at Tuesday, 2007/09/11.

 

If you always wanted to get to know these crazy FIFE people here is your chance. As the majority of the FIFE developers are set in Europe you will probably need to wait for the evening hours (GMT) to get in touch with project members though. You could even try to obtain an answer to the question when 2007.2 will be released. Though it's likely that we'll answer: ''When it's done''. Not because we're cruel but because we don't know it either ) Anyway: we hope to see all of you at Tuesday.

 

Let's get this party started )

[mvBarracuda]

Finally a first screenshot of the upcoming techdemo that is a cooperation of the Zero-Projekt team and the FIFE staff. Looks like they make fun of poor little Barracuda (