FIFE - a next generation Fallout-like engine

[mvBarracuda]

Actually, I meant do all maps / mods / worlds created with FIFE have to use, say, the same size squares? There's the question of artwork, too, as you can't just take, say, Fallout artwork and use it on square / triangular tilesets.

 

Anyway, this will be on my long-term watchlist.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No need to put it on the long-term waiting list ) As far as I've understood your idea, it's already possible now.

 

The tile geometry is set for each single map. So your FIFE mod CAN use the Fallout 1/2 tile geometry for one map, the one from FO: Tactics for another one and the tile geometry from Planescape Torment for a third one. However you can't support multiple different tile geometries on one single map.

 

Adding support for Infinity Engine formats could even be not so hard as there is already an open source IE emulator out there )

http://gemrb.sourceforge.net/

 

For more information about the FO1/2 tile and object geometry:

http://wiki.fifengine.de/index.php?title=F...7s_map_geometry

[Craigboy2]

Hey mvBarracuda seeing as how you said it's good for all 2D isometric games, can we see some screens of the engine working with IWD, Ps:T and Balduar's Gate?

 

Fifi is a popular poodle name, FIFE is different enough.  Apparently it's the name of a town, a battleship, a lake, an engine, and Barney Fife. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

And a soccer competition.

Edited June 13, 2006 by Craigboy2

[trulez]

That FIFE sure looks promising. I'm hoping to see something that I can play made with it in near future.

 

And a soccer competition.

 

It's football, and the organization is called FIFA.

[mvBarracuda]

Sorry for the long delay guys :lol:/ I've been pretty busy with university lately.

 

Our coders were hardworking last week and we're proud to bring you yet another experimental FIFE release of the new 2006.2 branch.

 

New features:

* Optimized AsyncSM

* New camera mode for smooth scrolling

* Fixed many memory leaks

 

For a complete changelog:

* https://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engine/timeline

 

Grab the win32 binaries here:

* http://members.fifengine.de/bin/FIFE_r673_win32.exe

 

Linux users simply check out our SVN repository and compile the TRUNK/core branch from source )

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

[Craigboy2]

That FIFE sure looks promising. I'm hoping to see something that I can play made with it in near future.

 

And a soccer competition.

 

It's football, and the organization is called FIFA.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It's football to you but it's soccer to us.

[Krookie]

Us Americans couldn't deal with the fact that the word "Football" actually made sense.

[Arkan]

How is this "next gen"?

[mvBarracuda]

How is this "next gen"?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It's next gen even in quote some aspects )

 

At first it's not meant to be a general next gen engine. I guess every next gen engine needs to be a 3D one nowadays. We simply love the old 2D ISO games and believe you can create great games without using fancy 3d gfx. Oblivion is a good example that good gfx don't make good games; it was especially poor in its RPG elements.

 

The old 2D engines like Fallout don't run cross platform, their scripting systems are often quite poor (Fallout's surely is, though there were no real great solutions back in 1996). You can't change hardcoded aspects as you don't have access to the sourcecode. Another aspect is that commercial game engines force all users to buy the game even if they just want to use the engine as modding basis. The plan for FIFE is to make it independent of Fallout in the long run. So we just use the Fallout files as example implementation to show the features of the engine.

 

One of the most important aspects is the lack of good open source 2D engines. While there are good solutions for 3D (Ogre, Irrlicht) there aren't that many flexible 2D open source engines that could be used to create different games with. There are some 2D gfx engines but you would need to add a lot of specific code to make them a real game engine. FIFE will come with everything to make complete games: scripting API, sound support, renderer, scriptable GUI and the map editor.

 

Our unique selling point is the flexibility of the engine IMHO. The plan is to create an engine that is able to run all kind of different 2D ISO games with it. So not only RPGs should be possible but also RTS games. We're currently in contact with a developer who works on an open source port of the Bullfrog classic "Syndicate". We'll try to integrate his current code into FIFE so you can load Syndicate maps into FIFE. So with a lot of luck you'll be able to run Syndicate and Fallout with the same engine )

 

To summarize all these things; FIFE is IMHO next gen because:

- It works cross platform (Win32, Linux, Mac, BSD)

- While being a 2D engine it offers modern features like alphablending for some nice visual effects

- It's planned as a full featured game engine and not only a gfx engine

- It supports easy scripting with LUA (used in several popular modern games like FarCry & WoW)

- There are not many comparable open source 2D engines that offer similar features

- It has Fallout support but can be also used for the creation of all kind of different ISO games

- It's open source and free of charge; interested developers can easily contribute to the engine and user don't need to buy a game just because they want to play a mod that uses the specific engine

[Gorth]

We're currently in contact with a developer who works on an open source port of the Bullfrog classic "Syndicate".

(w00t)

 

Syndicate

[Dagon]

Wil fife support 3d objects?

[mvBarracuda]

Wil fife support 3d objects?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You can render the 3D objects with the rendering programme of your choice (e.g.: Blender) and import them as PNG files into FIFE. However as FIFE is no 3D engine, FIFE won't support 3D objects.

 

One of our coders wanted to use very basic 3D models to create a lighting system for the OpenGL renderbackend. However this idea is almost impossible to realize; at least we didn't really found an easy way.

[mvBarracuda]

OMFG it's done:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fife/FIFE_2007.0_win32.exe

 

Install guide:

1. Download

2. Execute the self-extracting 7zip archive and uncompress to a folder of your choice

3. Read the readme.txt that can be found within the folder where you uncompressed FIFE

 

And here are two screenshots of the new version:

 

[J.E. Sawyer]

I'm unable to download the .exe, mvBarracuda. It just times out. Can you post a list of what's new in this version?

[Tale]

I have only one criticism, at the moment; the name.  Please do not call it FIFE.  That is the name of a sissy dog.

 

Other than that this looks interesting.  I'll have to look into it more when I have some time.

This is my criticism, too. But for different reasons. Do not, ever, under any circumstance, name any project anotherproject-like, for the love of god!

 

As for next-gen. Isn't that a buzz phrase meaning "creates an experience, either visually or through gameplay, on next generation consoles that was not possible on previous consoles?"

Edited January 8, 2007 by Tale

[Pop]

I'm sure it'll be a huge-ass help to people who're slaving away at Fallout mods.

 

The implications of this are enormous.!!! VAN BUREN !!! WE CAN DO IT WE CAN DO IT

[mvBarracuda]

I'm unable to download the .exe, mvBarracuda.  It just times out.  Can you post a list of what's new in this version?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Just wait some time or try another mirror. I've reuploaded the package two times as the first time I forgot to update the bindings.lua script for win32 (it was still using the linux print key). The second time I've found out that I forgot to bundle the OpenAL driver patch with the package. Sourceforge needs some time to spread the package to all available mirrors.

 

I've just selected: North America, Seattle, Washington from the Sourceforge mirror selection interface and it works fine from there. If you're set in the States you should try this mirror:

http://superb-west.dl.sourceforge.net/sour...007.0_win32.exe

 

From a programmers perspective you should prolly wait for our src release package so you can dig through the code a bit if you like ) You could use our SVN browser interface too to have a look at the code:

https://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engin...core/src/engine

 

I'm sure it'll be a huge-ass help to people who're slaving away at Fallout mods.

 

The implications of this are enormous.!!! VAN BUREN !!! WE CAN DO IT WE CAN DO IT

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You got it right Pop ) FIFE is our evil plan to bring back 2D isometric RPGs to the place they should have in the gaming industry. If nobody wants to make any old school RPGs because modern 3D adventure pseudo RPGs like Oblivion sell so well, we can provide at least a good toolkit for modders so they can create some good games with.

Edited January 8, 2007 by mvBarracuda

[mvBarracuda]

And finally the src package is up too )

 

Enjoy:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fife/FIFE...7.0_src.tar.bz2

[metadigital]

*has urge to play Fallout*

 

Good work; I especially like the cross-platform compatibility.

[Dark_Raven]

The urge to play Fallout is always there.

 

FIFE looks promising.

[Darque]

Wicked cool.

[Dagon]

Ihave problems with running it, I install OpenAL

copy Master.dat & Critter.dat

and change .bat file

and still there are problems, and the classic window appears with option of sending info 'bout the problems to Microsoft.

What i am doing wrong?

[mvBarracuda]

Ihave problems with running it, I install OpenAL

copy Master.dat & Critter.dat

and change .bat file

and still there are problems, and the classic window appears with option of sending info 'bout the problems to Microsoft.

What i am doing wrong?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Post these things at http://www.pastebin.com, put the links into this thread and we can surely help you:

 

1. Content of your FIFE.bat

2. Content of stdout.txt

3. Content of stderr.txt

[steelfiredragon]

looks pretty good

[mvBarracuda]

An updated and fixed source package of the 2007.0 release is available for download now.

 

The old package refused to compile as it featured win32 line breaks and that doesn't work work together with linux systems :x/ Sorry for the trouble, it was my fault.

 

Grab the new package here:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fife/FIFE...-r1_src.tar.bz2

Edited January 14, 2007 by mvBarracuda

[mvBarracuda]

Welcome to yet another FIFE news update, this time it's a rather important one. You've prolly already noticed that there was not much SVN activity after the last official release last month. Phoku is busy with his exams and jobs and won't have time for FIFE in the next couple of months. As everyone who's still left on the team seems to be incredibly busy too I want to send an SOS to all FIFE fans out there.

 

There were no major code additions to our Subversion repository since about one month. So if no wonder happens this phase of slowdown will probably last for several months. We know that nobody is eagerly awaiting to join a team that is in a massive slowdown but our aim was to be always honest about the status of the project. If you know any developer who could help out and would be interested to work on FIFE: don't hesitate to send us a message to our mailing list: fife-public ATSYMBOL lists DOT sourceforge DOT net

 

We're in the desperate need of experienced C++ coders who are interested in working on the engine or the editor. If we won't be able to attract new contributors we'll make no big steps forward in the development for the next several months. There is a list with tasks to address for interested developers:

https://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engine/report/1

 

Furthermore you should read our getting started guide for developers to find out about the basics of FIFE:

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

 

Last but not least there are also some small signs of hope for the FIFE team. We got two new interested developers on team: labrat and shales. Labrat currently works on a general solver interface and wants to integrate the Micropather pathfinding library into FIFE:

http://www.grinninglizard.com/MicroPather/

 

Shales works on color-keying for the SDL renderer to speed up the transparency effects with software rendering. But both new developers are rather busy with their real life so their enlistment alone won't help to boost our progress significantly. We hope that someone hears this call for help )

 

Last but not least we're planning to restructure our wiki. mvBarracuda already started to overwork the wiki frontpage and planned more important changes for the next weeks. We would like to get some feedback from the community how they like the new wiki structure and what could be improved:

http://wiki.fifengine.de

 

See you at the next development update and I hope we can bring you better news next time.

 

 

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