PARPG

[Monte Carlo]

Good luck with your game, heartily ignore grognards like me!

 

Grognard, huh... what you play?

 

Do a search on forum topics, and you'll see.

Edited March 16, 2009 by Monte Carlo

[mvBarracuda]

Heya and welcome to yet another PARPG news update. This one has been in the pipeline for several weeks and I would like to apologize for the massive delay. The original plan was to bring it to you around the 1st of April but a lot of unforeseen events occured.

 

This time there are a couple of good things to report but we've also encountered setbacks. Our lead programmer icelus decided to step down from his position; therefore the plans for the rather sophisticated story engine / AI system are on ice for the time being. Fortunately a new programmer decided to get involved in the project and is now actively working on PARPG.

 

One of our graphics artists came up with some first concept art and the programmers continued to explore FIFE and took a couple of testing screenshots while doing so. Zenbitz wrote down his ideas about encumbrance, inventory and clothing and I've made a personal promise )

 

You can read about all details at the PARPG development blog: http://blog.parpg.net/2009/04/dont-look-back-into-the-sun

 

Here's a little teaser:

[Humodour]

TheHarlequin, can you point us to those statistics, which you say indicate that the U.S. is the biggest market for games and Europe is relatively insignificant by comparison? I am asking, because my impression was that although the U.S. is the biggest market for games overall, much of this is for console games, and for computer games Europe may well now be a bigger market than the U.S. (in much of Europe, computer gaming still dominantes over console gaming) ... and this is clearly meant to be exclusively a computer game.

 

From this article in the Times newspaper (UK).

 

In defiance of the gloom sweeping other industries, UK sales of video game software and hardware in 2008 were up 23 per cent year on year, breaking through the

[mvBarracuda]

Heya and welcome to yet another PARPG news update! As promised: now delivered weekly again.

 

An important advantage of blog updates on a weekly basis is that the number of topics to cover can be usually kept rather low. This time we

[mvBarracuda]

Heya and welcome to yet another PARPG news update! This week we got a number of interesting topics to cover: an updated roadmap for the programming department, some first guides for the graphics artists, new work in progress 3d models as well as progress in the writing department.

 

You can check out the whole update at the PARPG development blog.

 

And as special feature for this week's update: a mistery teaser ) Want to find out what PARPG has to do with crates? Check out the full update at the blog!

 

[Cl_Flushentityhero]

Well, I won't go out of my way to rag on somebody doing a free game. That said, I seldom expect much either.

[mvBarracuda]

Heya and welcome to yet another weekly PARPG news update! There is a whole bunch of visual material to cover in this update as the graphics department has been quite hardworking. Furthermore the combat system proposal has been overhauled and large parts of the Python code have been refactored. We've played around with possible ingame inventory concepts and our trac system seems to run stable again after spammers invaded it a couple of days ago (

 

While a couple of new graphics artists joined the project lately, there is still a lot of room for additional contributors. We're currently especially searching for talented artists who would like to help us with creating ground tiles for the game.

 

Check out the full news update at the PARPG development blog.

 

And if you want to know what all of this has to do with an upswing, here's a little pointer for you:

[mvBarracuda]

Heya and welcome to yet another PARPG news update. Three full weeks have passed since the last one and I'm truly sorry for the lack of updates lately. I've been really busy with university and although I know a lot more about the reconstruction of the failed state Liberia with the help of the UN now, I rather would have liked to post an update or two in the meantime instead of investing so much time into a presentation I had to give at Friday. Anyways, now that I'm done with it, I got some free time on my hands this week so here's your promised dose of PARPG news. This time it's more a newsflash than anything else. While I've been busy with real life, the others - especially the graphics department - has been hardworking and there's simply too much to report to do so in detail. Feel free to browse the forums to read about all the details.

 

Read the full news update (with lots of pretty images )) at the PARPG development blog.

 

And to address the ongoing rumours: no, I haven't been struck down with one of these improvised weapons - that our new concept artist zeli created - and have been in coma for the last three weeks. I was simply busy )

 

Edited June 2, 2009 by mvBarracuda

[mvBarracuda]

Heya and welcome to yet another PARPG news update; this time actually delivered on schedule! There are a couple of things to report: the programmers implemented a first version of an ingame settings menu and added visual highlighting of objects as well as floating text descriptions for them. The graphics artists overhauled our ingame GUI plans and compiled an image gallery that features all previously created pieces of concept art.

 

To coordinate our efforts in the following weeks, we furthermore decided to arrange a first official developer meeting at our IRC channel. Of course community participation is appreciated as well )

 

Read the full news update at the PARPG development blog.

 

On a related note: FIFE developer Cheesesucker recently rewrote major parts of the map editor tool that comes with the engine. I've personally tested it over the last couple of days and I'm truly impressed by the improved workflow and new easiness of map creation. To applaud his efforts, we've fired up the editor, loaded our PARPG test map into it and took a screenshot ) Enjoy:

 

[mvBarracuda]

Heya and welcome to yet another weekly PARPG news update! Let's get started right away )

 

This week we're proud to report that the first audio track found its way into the game. New programmer on the team meggie implemented random NPC movement as well as switching between different maps. Maximinus was hardworking again as well, annotated the existing code in place via Epydoc, proposed a list of features for an first official release of the game and created a first simple build interieur map.

 

3d artist Zimble slightly updated the tile creation tutorial for users who would like to use an alternative sampling method and we're still looking for 2d & 3d artists who would like to contribute as the vast majority of our artists is currently rather occupied with real life commitments. Last but not least we finally agreed upon a date for the for the first official PARPG developer meeting: Monday, 22nd of June, 5-7PM GMT.

 

Read the full news update at the PARPG development blog.

 

And here's your visual teaser: I wonder what might be inside this building? You can actually find out by either taking a peek at the news update or simply grab the latest version from our SVN repository and try yourself )

 

[Gorth]

And here's your visual teaser: I wonder what might be inside this building? You can actually find out by either taking a peek at the news update or simply grab the latest version from our SVN repository and try yourself )

Hey look, it's a crate!

 

Just kidding. Nice to see some love for the isometric perspective.

[Humodour]

Heya and welcome to yet another weekly PARPG news update! There is a whole bunch of visual material to cover in this update as the graphics department has been quite hardworking. Furthermore the combat system proposal has been overhauled and large parts of the Python code have been refactored. We've played around with possible ingame inventory concepts and our trac system seems to run stable again after spammers invaded it a couple of days ago (

 

While a couple of new graphics artists joined the project lately, there is still a lot of room for additional contributors. We're currently especially searching for talented artists who would like to help us with creating ground tiles for the game.

 

Check out the full news update at the PARPG development blog.

 

And if you want to know what all of this has to do with an upswing, here's a little pointer for you:

 

That's an awesome Windmill!

 

P.S.: less (bright/light?) colours on the iron shed - it's not a Christmas shed.

 

The art is coming along nicely from those few shots, though.

[mvBarracuda]

We appreciate the feedback Krezack ) All of these buildings are work in progress so don't except to see anything "final" in this early phase of development.

 

The plan is to assemble a team of competent developers over the course of the next months and to agree upon a workflow for each department. The graphics department hasn't fleshed out the style of buildings in PARPG in detail yet, but once they've done so you can expect to see some screenshots that are closer to future versions of the game style-wise. As this is a team of volunteers we're not really in a hurry to rush out things as fast as possible. I personally expect that the "experimental" phase of development will have ended around the end of the year. We should furthermore have a more solid idea about the storyline of the game then as well.

Edited June 16, 2009 by mvBarracuda

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Well now that you've made crates you don't really need any other environmental doodads.

[TheHarlequin]

From your forums from your 'project lead';

 

>We got no static hierarchic team structure, so while it's especially the task of the project management to coordinate the efforts, it doesn't mean that my opinion is more worth than that of any other developer of the project.

 

This is why in the end this will become vaporware.

[Humodour]

From your forums from your 'project lead';

 

>We got no static hierarchic team structure, so while it's especially the task of the project management to coordinate the efforts, it doesn't mean that my opinion is more worth than that of any other developer of the project.

 

This is why in the end this will become vaporware.

 

Actually that's a very successful business model, especially in the open source world, and the only reason it'll become vapourware is if there's no team drive or coordination.

 

But you don't understand his system anyway (it's laughable that you think you can make a judgement about the project's fate by trying to interpret a single sentence): just because project leaders seek consensus where possible (which is a GOOD thing since they often don't know the ins and outs of the thing they oversee, like engine code), doesn't mean they roll over paralysed at the first sign of deadlock in on a decision - they're fully capable of making decisions when they need to. And managing a project by consensus certainly doesn't mean that the leaders lack drive, motivation or vision.

[mvBarracuda]

From your forums from your 'project lead';

 

>We got no static hierarchic team structure, so while it's especially the task of the project management to coordinate the efforts, it doesn't mean that my opinion is more worth than that of any other developer of the project.

 

This is why in the end this will become vaporware.

Obvious trolling? How many open source (read: volunteer) source projects do you know that failed especially due the will of a "project lead" that refused to force his decisions upon the team even in fields where he clearly lacks the expert knowledge?

 

I'm with Krezack here: especially if you're working with volunteers you might want to let them decide about specific aspects how things are handled in their department instead of playing all-knowing dictator. You might have simply misunderstood the concept of subsidiarity: it actually means leaving the main decisions in a certain development department to the developers who understand the field best. You usually don't want to let your musicians decide what design patterns to use programming-wise. You don't want to let the programmers dictate all the gameplay elements. You actually got experts for each field, artists, programmers, musicians, gameplay designers, project managers, story writers. Why not use this expert knowledge and leave the majority of the decisions in each department to them?

 

It doesn't mean that they're unwilling to listen to feedback; quite the contrary! It just means that it's a bad idea in general to let the designer of a car decide how the engine of a car should be constructed while he actually knows far more about design than about how to properly construct an engine. The project manager is responsible that each department properly cooperates with each other and that you get a working car in the end. So far - despite some obvious drawbacks here and there that are pretty much what happens to 95% of all open source projects - we seem to be on a quite good way.

[TheHarlequin]

From your forums from your 'project lead';

 

>We got no static hierarchic team structure, so while it's especially the task of the project management to coordinate the efforts, it doesn't mean that my opinion is more worth than that of any other developer of the project.

 

This is why in the end this will become vaporware.

Obvious trolling? How many open source (read: volunteer) source projects do you know that failed especially due the will of a "project lead" that refused to force his decisions upon the team even in fields where he clearly lacks the expert knowledge?

 

I'm with Krezack here: especially if you're working with volunteers you might want to let them decide about specific aspects how things are handled in their department instead of playing all-knowing dictator. You might have simply misunderstood the concept of subsidiarity: it actually means leaving the main decisions in a certain development department to the developers who understand the field best. You usually don't want to let your musicians decide what design patterns to use programming-wise. You don't want to let the programmers dictate all the gameplay elements. You actually got experts for each field, artists, programmers, musicians, gameplay designers, project managers, story writers. Why not use this expert knowledge and leave the majority of the decisions in each department to them?

 

It doesn't mean that they're unwilling to listen to feedback; quite the contrary! It just means that it's a bad idea in general to let the designer of a car decide how the engine of a car should be constructed while he actually knows far more about design than about how to properly construct an engine. The project manager is responsible that each department properly cooperates with each other and that you get a working car in the end. So far - despite some obvious drawbacks here and there that are pretty much what happens to 95% of all open source projects - we seem to be on a quite good way.

 

Of course I don't jump on the lets pat you on the back bandwagon so I MUST be trolling... can't be I say something out of experience or even project mgt 101 skills.

 

That said, the very reasons you list is why commercial ventures are more times then not vastly more successful (as in get completed) then open source projects. The whole 'let run it as a democracy' (or there abouts) outlook which you apparently have. Sorry that is a poor way to get a job done. You are not trying to run a legislative branch of a govt. You are running a s/w project. Which includes you having vision, goals and as a project lead executing those goals and vision.

 

Nothing wrong with getting feedback back and input from your team of course. But in the end of the day you need a strong leader to put his/her foot down and say this is the direction we are going, this is my vision and this is what you need to get done. And if someone isn't on board with that there is the door find someone who is.

 

I lost count how many times I have seen open source teams try this concept of mgt and looking at sourceforge, for example, of the completed projects vs abandoned, unfinished projects I think the numbers speak for themselves.

 

Certainly not wishing your project ill but until I see a working alpha or better I have no hopes this project will make it past the screenshot phase like the million other open source projects who claimed they were reaching for the stars yet never got off the launching pad. I really think your hands off approach of leadership style is not helping you either. A project like this needs a strong leader with focus and ability to delegate direction not someone who lets his team do what they want and turn critical choices and vision into a community vote.

[Humodour]

From your forums from your 'project lead';

 

>We got no static hierarchic team structure, so while it's especially the task of the project management to coordinate the efforts, it doesn't mean that my opinion is more worth than that of any other developer of the project.

 

This is why in the end this will become vaporware.

Obvious trolling? How many open source (read: volunteer) source projects do you know that failed especially due the will of a "project lead" that refused to force his decisions upon the team even in fields where he clearly lacks the expert knowledge?

 

I'm with Krezack here: especially if you're working with volunteers you might want to let them decide about specific aspects how things are handled in their department instead of playing all-knowing dictator. You might have simply misunderstood the concept of subsidiarity: it actually means leaving the main decisions in a certain development department to the developers who understand the field best. You usually don't want to let your musicians decide what design patterns to use programming-wise. You don't want to let the programmers dictate all the gameplay elements. You actually got experts for each field, artists, programmers, musicians, gameplay designers, project managers, story writers. Why not use this expert knowledge and leave the majority of the decisions in each department to them?

 

It doesn't mean that they're unwilling to listen to feedback; quite the contrary! It just means that it's a bad idea in general to let the designer of a car decide how the engine of a car should be constructed while he actually knows far more about design than about how to properly construct an engine. The project manager is responsible that each department properly cooperates with each other and that you get a working car in the end. So far - despite some obvious drawbacks here and there that are pretty much what happens to 95% of all open source projects - we seem to be on a quite good way.

 

Of course I don't jump on the lets pat you on the back bandwagon so I MUST be trolling... can't be I say something out of experience or even project mgt 101 skills.

 

That said, the very reasons you list is why commercial ventures are more times then not vastly more successful (as in get completed) then open source projects. The whole 'let run it as a democracy' (or there abouts) outlook which you apparently have. Sorry that is a poor way to get a job done. You are not trying to run a legislative branch of a govt. You are running a s/w project. Which includes you having vision, goals and as a project lead executing those goals and vision.

 

Nothing wrong with getting feedback back and input from your team of course. But in the end of the day you need a strong leader to put his/her foot down and say this is the direction we are going, this is my vision and this is what you need to get done. And if someone isn't on board with that there is the door find someone who is.

 

I lost count how many times I have seen open source teams try this concept of mgt and looking at sourceforge, for example, of the completed projects vs abandoned, unfinished projects I think the numbers speak for themselves.

 

Certainly not wishing your project ill but until I see a working alpha or better I have no hopes this project will make it past the screenshot phase like the million other open source projects who claimed they were reaching for the stars yet never got off the launching pad. I really think your hands off approach of leadership style is not helping you either. A project like this needs a strong leader with focus and ability to delegate direction not someone who lets his team do what they want and turn critical choices and vision into a community vote.

 

Um, get your facts straight: most open source projects fail because they are either trivial/bad ideas, or not worth the time. Because the barriers to entry are so much lower than commerical ventures (you don't need capital, you don't need to please clients or shareholders, etc), it's completely natural that you'll get a much higher number of people thinking their idea is the next best thing since sliced bread, start the project, then lose interest a month later.

 

If your project is non-trivial, worthwhile, and your team is motivated, you've got a really good shot.

 

I just noticed you used the sourceforge example. That's unfortunate, since nobody should actually think of that as a serious index of open source project success. I myself have 4 unfinished/abandoned projects on there. Again, barriers to entry mate. Anybody with a web browser can start a sourceforge project. It's even easier to abandon it.

[mvBarracuda]

Of course I don't jump on the lets pat you on the back bandwagon so I MUST be trolling... can't be I say something out of experience or even project mgt 101 skills.

I'm usually somebody who appreciates all kind of constructive and even somewhat unconstructive feedback; as I'm not a native speaker myself it's simply sometimes hard to judge the intention of a posting due different language skills, usual style of expression, etc. However your post did actually struck me as trolling because I failed to spot the constructive element of the feedback.

 

It's usually a waste of time to get into these kind of discussing because it often ends up in discussions about minor nuances of the connotation of words. But as I started anyway: the wording "This is why in the end this will become vaporware." struck me as quite unconstructive. It sounded like because of a), b) will happen; like it's determined to happen.

 

Furthermore the term vaporware is questionable in this regard. Usually vaporware does apply to software that does never get officially released. Can open source software projects that offer anonymous version control checkout be considered vaporware in this regard? I would say no because everyone can legally get access to our resources and could continue the project even if the currently involved developers decide to abandon it for whatever reason there may be. But I'm quite interested in your position on this topic: how would you define a vaporware open source project? What kind of goals would we have to reach as an open source project to be not considered vaporware according to your definition anymore?

 

Nothing wrong with getting feedback back and input from your team of course. But in the end of the day you need a strong leader to put his/her foot down and say this is the direction we are going, this is my vision and this is what you need to get done. And if someone isn't on board with that there is the door find someone who is.

To be honest: I've actually set quite some decisions in stone or nearly in stone when the project was founded, see:

http://wiki.parpg.net/Key_design_elements

http://wiki.parpg.net/Project_philosophy

 

This is the general direction I've set and I'm more than willing to defend it. However there are aspects where I have a personal preference but they're not aspects of my department (project management, that is). E.g. we had a recent discussion how we should implement buildings: rather as separate maps that get loaded once you enter the building or as parts of the outdoor map. Each approach comes with certain pros and cons and while I favoured the 2nd approach, we agreed upon giving the first one a try. IMHO it's part of a healthy project culture to accept these kind of agreements even if your approach wasn't agreed upon because you expect the other contributors to accept all kind of other agreements as well. It could be said that this is a democratic position and maybe it is, but in a very positive sense.

 

I lost count how many times I have seen open source teams try this concept of mgt and looking at sourceforge, for example, of the completed projects vs abandoned, unfinished projects I think the numbers speak for themselves.

Krezack already properly addressed it but let me add one thing. Your logic seems quite flawed in this example. To me your argument sounds like:

- There are open source projects

- They follow flawed project management philosophies, democratic consensus instead of a clear vision enforced by a project leader

- Because of their flawed philosophy they fail

 

As Krezack pointed out: there are a lot of other reasons why open source projects fail and judging from my personal experience lack of time, fading interest and lack of skill of the involved developers seem to be three of the most important ones. Do you know any examples of _open source software projects_ that succeeded (however you define that, what's your definition of success in this regard? see vaporware definition above) and applied your proposed project management philosophy?

 

Certainly not wishing your project ill but until I see a working alpha or better I have no hopes this project will make it past the screenshot phase like the million other open source projects who claimed they were reaching for the stars yet never got off the launching pad. I really think your hands off approach of leadership style is not helping you either. A project like this needs a strong leader with focus and ability to delegate direction not someone who lets his team do what they want and turn critical choices and vision into a community vote.

It's realistic in my opinion to have something playable that you could call "a game" until the end of the year. Open source projects get created in the free time of volunteers so even after this initial release it will take at least about 2-3 years before he can consider to ship anything close to a 1.0 release. We're not magicians: the usual timespan for open source projects to reach this imaginery 1.0 milestone is even longer.

 

But I'm happy to try to prove you wrong by actually succeeding with this project ) Whatever that means.

Edited June 17, 2009 by mvBarracuda

[mvBarracuda]

Heya and welcome to yet another weekly PARPG news update! This time the nature of the update is a bit different to what you're used to get here. The main reason is that we recently had our first official developer meeting at the IRC channel of the project. So this news update contains far more plans for our next steps while the older updates often purely focused on reporting the progress of the last week(s). Such a change comes with certains advantages and potential drawbacks.

 

One main advantage is that we can give the community an idea where the project is hopefully moving to; on the other side there is the risk of promising but not being able to deliver later. So take the plans outlined today with a grain of salt ) But enough of the disclaimer stuff, let's get to actual news reporting!

 

Due the meeting there's are a truckload of things to report. The audio department is currently working on a more Falloutesque remix of the current ingame audio track while the programmers are making their plans for a first public release of PARPG, hopefully at the end of August. Furthermore there is the need to refine the workflow of the department to the forunate recent influx of a couple of new contributors as far as programming is concerned.

 

Zimble wrote a tutorial how to build your own (tiled) walls of Jericho, we're trying to discover structural problems in the graphics department that hinder their efforts and the separate game mechanics testbed has been scrapped in favour of an ingame testing solution. A first promising looking story draft is in the making and we can finally offer auto-generated code documentation.

 

Read the full news update at the PARPG development blog.

 

And what does a really cool RPG need? You're right on the spot: walls, of course! There you go:

 

Edited June 23, 2009 by mvBarracuda

[entrerix]

if this ever gets off the ground and you need help with legal, you are welcome to contact me. I would consider doing the work for shares instead of cash because I really like the idea of supporting game developers.

 

I'm a business planning attorney in California.

[mvBarracuda]

Shares of what? )

 

This is an open source non-commercial project; so we won't make a buck with the project as it will be a free download. Actually you can already grab what's there from our SVN repository.

[mvBarracuda]

Heya and welcome to yet another weekly PARPG news update! In case you wondered why the news update is coming so late this time: I took one week off last Monday as I felt a little burned out lately. But now I'm back with recharged batteries to bring you the latest news on the project!

 

The programming department has been busy discussing the future structure of the code and we're currently thinking about ways to utilize the Trac ticket system to cope with the influx of fresh blood lately. Furthermore we're planning to have a first programming department IRC meeting at Monday, 13th of July, 3-5PM GMT.

 

The graphics artists have been hardworking again and we're glad that we can show you three different nice pieces of art this time: a 3d weapon render, a death splash screen and a drawing of frozen snowy rooftops ) Furthermore all 3d renders can be found in our extended gallery now: PARPG concept art & 3d render gallery

 

We're currently searching for a climatologist (amateur or professional) to find holes in our storyline proposals (how did nuclear winter happen, what kind of climate is somewhat realistic?). The writers started to moved the most important story and NPC-related pieces to the wiki so they can be reviewed there and there's also a first writing department meeting in the pipeline, scheduled for Friday, 10th of July, 4PM GMT.

 

We have hopefully finally fixed the Trac ticket creation issues for anonymous users and there's news to report concerning our Sourceforge registration. Yes these are actually two neverending stories :-/

 

Read the full news update at the PARPG development blog.

 

And now enjoy the snowy rooftops of PARPG!

 

[mvBarracuda]

Heya and welcome to yet another weekly PARPG news update! This time addressing all the doubters!

 

The programming departments' IRC meeting has been postponed but the writing and gameplay department meeting fortunately took place last Friday. We've discussed if you should be allowed to kill children in PARPG and if drugs should play a role in the game. Our artists have been incredibly busy over the course of the last week so can find a couple of new 3d renders as well as concept art drawings in our gallery now!

 

Proposals concerning the state of the game world as well as the what kind of characters stats should be featured in PARPG have been made. We'll have to decide between two different storyline proposals and mvBarracuda found out that pursuing a degree in modern history is not that useless!

 

Read the full news update at the PARPG development blog.

 

And we're glad that Seothen, a new concept artist on the team, took his time to portray the reaction of the common community member when he hears about PARPG for the first time and smiles in excitement and confidence in the project (this is for you, you know who you are):