Fallout Zero press release #0001

Brother None

Brother None

This ghoul has seen it all
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mvBarracuda of FIFE fame sent us this press release:<blockquote>'''Fallout Zero'''

Fallout Zero is a non-commercial product, created by the German Fallout community based on the FIFE 2D engine. Our aim is to create a Fallout-like game that features all important elements and the gameplay of the classic Fallout games but plays on the stage in a post-nuclear Germany.

The team works very close together with the FIFE developers. The Zero teams creates the basic ruleset with a scripting language and designs the graphical user interface to resemble the Fallout GUI.

Although the current status of FIFE does not allow to recreate Fallout in all aspects yet, we have begun to create the first graphics, write ruleset scripts and work out the storyline.

'''Features'''
* Classical Fallout gameplay considering the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. ruleset
* Increased value of formely unpopular skills and perks
* Complete new graphics and sounds to capture the feeling the of a postnuclear Germany
* New weapons and perks
* The decisions of the player character will influence the wasteland and the storyline much more compared to the orginal Fallout games
* Locations and groups you've never seen before in any Fallout game or mod

'''Engine'''
* Fallout:Zero is build on the FIFE 2D RPG engine
* This will allow us to support higher resolutions, 32bit PNG images and quality ogg sounds

'''Work flow and contribution'''
* The team communicates over weekly irc meetings, instant messengers and email
* The heart of the team is a mediawiki that makes the current content, new ideas and raw drafts easily accessable by all team members
* You can contribute as steady member or freelancer
* Everybody who is willing to honestly sacrifice some time is welcome to participate

'''What is imporant to the design team:'''
* Typical Fallout style featuring everything from the pip-boy to the 50's retro look
* A story that stays true to the background of the Fallout RPGs and the Fallout bible
* A German wasteland that will be pretty different compared to the American desert
* To establish Fallout on a new stage and to enhance the Fallout series from the perspective of hardcore Fallout fans

== Graphics ==
* Ingame screenshot, (XML-Map, Zero gfx)] The shown screenshot was created with the current FIFE XML map format and features the first new graphics that were created by the Zero team. It is meant to be a pure test map as the FIFE format is likely to change in the next months.</blockquote><center>
A few graphics were also in the release:


</center>
Link: FIFE engine website
 
Thx for the fast posting Kharn :-)

I hope that this is just the first step and we'll see some new FIFE mods and future Zero press releases in the future.
 
monsharen said:
which skills and/or perks are those anyway?
Click to expand...

Doctor, first aid, gambling, outdoorsman, sneak, traps, thrown weapons and any and all perks involving these skills.
 
Hi @all - and thanks to kharn for posting our news on NMA that fast :)

Here are some background-informations about FO:Zero. Some of you maybe remember it due to past threads / news.

The old team decided to stop the development, and some guys from the german community started a rebirth on the project.

The new team is working for about 2 months, and we are really looking forward to the feedback of the community :-)

greetz,
chewie
 
This reminds me of an idea I had in my mind. Basically because the community (German in this case) took over the engine/game development.

There are numerous fallouty projects out there and more or less they all take a dive due to time and the lack of certain knowledge of some certain things (for example, a bunch of graphical artist MIGHT...not know much about coding).

We are big, why are we still small? How about the COMMUNITY (nma) would take a step forward and create something. It wouldn't be easy, but we have talent, we have people (and even more important, we have people coming and going all the time), and most of all...we have inspiration! (I hope, if not suck my sheepish weenie!). Something like a true opensource project. That is kept together by the community, not by a team (nothing wrong with teams, but when they don't get paid they break up).


The sheep has spoken.
 
frissy said:
There are numerous fallouty projects out there and more or less they all take a dive due to time and the lack of certain knowledge of some certain things (for example, a bunch of graphical artist MIGHT...not know much about coding).
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IMHO the main problem of a lof of Fallout projects is their lack of proper organisation. We had a little crisis with FIFE one month ago and we realized that we need to change certain organisation aspects or otherwhise the project will fail in the long run. I guess the project leaders are to blame in the most cases as they don't seem to make necessary changes because:
a) they don't know about them at all
b) they are not willing to do so because everything seems to work fine ("just some little problems, really we've just got some small problems, I guess everything will work fine, later, maybe")

One major fault is to heavily rely on single persons instead of building up stable structures. If you lose an important team member (like it happened to FIFE) you will have to struggle with serious problems. Building up organisation structures will help you to cope with the situation and find new members which can replace the person who left the team more easily.

Sometimes projects just even use the wrong development tools. I've been on teams which used forums for the development process and I can honestly say that this is no satisfying solution. Fallout Zero and FIFE use a wiki system and as soon as you got the clue how it works you'll start to love it. This makes contribution and organisation much easier compared to forums. Other tools you'll need for starting such a large scale project include:
* A sourcecode management solution (SVN prefered!)
* A task tracker system (we use trac for FIFE and it works good)
* An irc channel for weekly meetings

Some people will say that you can make a mod without using a wiki-system and certainly they're right. But it will take much longer and lead to more frustration as I've seen no other solution that matches wikis when it comes to project organisation.

frissy said:
Something like a true opensource project. That is kept together by the community, not by a team (nothing wrong with teams, but when they don't get paid they break up).
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I have to disagree. You can recruit members from a community but you will need to build up a team nevertheless. The most simple and important reason is that there needs to be a project leader. These kinds of projects really don't work out if there is no person in charge who's willing to lead the team and guide it into a certain direction.

I'm not talking about dictatorship but a leader needs make decisions. (S)he can and even really should ask the team about their opinions but in the end, (s)he's the one who decides. This is one of the main reasons why so many project fall apart: a lack of real leadership.

So if you want to build up a team, it's a good idea to ask if there are enough people who are willing to to help here @ NMA. If not I would simply join one of the existing FO2 mods e.g. FanMadeFallout or MutansRising, so your creativity is not lost. If you get enough willing people together (I guess you'll need 3-5 at least), you can start to make decisions. You'll need a leader and as you started the idea, I guess you'll be the one :-) If you really intend to found a new NMA based mod: I'm more than willing to give some tips from my experience as FIFE project manager.

I guess there is no reason why other teams should make the same faults that I have made in the past :-)

frissy said:
The sheep has spoken.
Click to expand...
So let's get it on :-)
 
Well it was just a thought (at least for now). I'm more or less up into my neck with work and I'm in a mod/game already...I think. Actually I'm not really sure (proper organisation...ehehhe).

The idea I had, that there would be steps (a lot of them), but due to them being controlled by the community they wouldn't really stop.

for example:

Step one: The idea. Let the community make the idea. The "whole" community working on the same thing for a while. When the idea of ideas shows itself the leader (or team of leaders) would choose the one that will go into the next step.

Step two: Now we have the idea, now we should come up with the next ideal step (I don't know how to design games...). Perhaps concept art. The whole community working on it, and then again the leaders or a poll, would choose the best ones that go along with the idea of step one.

The idea would be that the strenght would lie in pure numbers. Usually you do get the best results with small teams, but not always. Sometimes when someone else has a different idea than the rest of the team...he leaves or really isn't too interested in the way the others are going.

Community. There might be people who think the idea is shite, but there might be thirty others who think it rules! If a member leaves, he wouldn't cripple the team. You might lose talent, but not everything. Because there isn't a "team" there is a community.

Who better to control a community and work as a management team than those that have already been doing that...nma-mods etc.

"The news today" We need gun designs. Go to work community!

We are now just making fan art with our own ideas, how about going for directions from the nma. People might have talent and motivation, but they simply don't have time to make a mod in a team where they are needed 24h. They can make one really really good design a week, but nothing more. That really isn't usefull for a small team, but combining those as a community....then you suddenly have talented busy people making designs, but you still get thirty of them in one week because they are out in numbers.

I'm not a game developer, but I have ideas.
________
Tiger blood
 
frissy said:
Well it was just a thought (at least for now). I'm more or less up into my neck with work and I'm in a mod/game already...I think. Actually I'm not really sure (proper organisation...ehehhe).
Click to expand...
So mind to share a link of the mod / game where you participate? Always interesting to see how other projects are coming along :-)

And if you're not sure about proper project organisation there are just two ways to go:
1. Learning by doing, reading tutorials, talking to other project managers
2. Find someone else who is better suited

It's not important WHO organizes the project but organisation and leadership is needed. So you'll "just" need to find someone who got a clue and wants to do it.

frissy said:
The idea I had, that there would be steps (a lot of them), but due to them being controlled by the community they wouldn't really stop.
Click to expand...
Why would the community contribute? You say that you're currently involved in another game so why are you sure that this does not apply to the majority of the guys here?

In Germany there is the saying: "you don't HAVE time for something BUT you need to TAKE your time". I guess there are a lot of people here who could invest some time into this project but nobody wants to take responsibility. Everyone likes the idea of making games but as soon as you realize that you'll need to invest a serious amount of time (and you can trust me: this will lead to problems in your real life) they surrender.

frissy said:
Step one: The idea. Let the community make the idea. The "whole" community working on the same thing for a while. When the idea of ideas shows itself the leader (or team of leaders) would choose the one that will go into the next step.
Click to expand...
Okay here are the problems of this concept:
1. Why do you think the whole community would contribute?
2. Who would be this misterious leader?
3. Games are about secrets. If a whole community works on it, the storyline will be spoiled and that's no good idea. You'll need something to surprise the people so this won't work out.

frissy said:
Step two: Now we have the idea, now we should come up with the next ideal step (I don't know how to design games...). Perhaps concept art. The whole community working on it, and then again the leaders or a poll, would choose the best ones that go along with the idea of step one.
Click to expand...
Concept art is good. So the leader would need to find some artists. If you just look at the user art section here at NMA you'll see that you got good chances to pick up some talented guys. So now there just needs to be somebody who asks them.

frissy said:
The idea would be that the strenght would lie in pure numbers. Usually you do get the best results with small teams, but not always. Sometimes when someone else has a different idea than the rest of the team...he leaves or really isn't too interested in the way the others are going.
Click to expand...
Having a lot of people on the team is good IMO. But this will lead to additional problems if the project leader can't cope with this situation. More people mean:
1. More output
2. But that also means more "useless" output; there needs to be somebody who judges what's good and gets into the game and what not
3. As soon as you accept one idea, the people which liked the other ideas will start to flame you; plan to invest some serious time into community discussions

frissy said:
Community. There might be people who think the idea is shite, but there might be thirty others who think it rules! If a member leaves, he wouldn't cripple the team. You might lose talent, but not everything. Because there isn't a "team" there is a community.
Click to expand...
So just let me know where this kind of concept worked. I seriously doubt that it will work at all. Community based projects are no replacement for proper organisation; the opposite is the case. With many people involved, you'll even need a way better organisation and project planning.

frissy said:
Who better to control a community and work as a management team than those that have already been doing that...nma-mods etc.
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You must be joking, don't you? I can hardly imagine what incredible amount of time it takes to administer and moderate such a large scale website. So they already invest some serious time into the Fallout community. How about you applying for one of the project management positions? I guess you wouldn't need to do it alone but you would need to make the first step and search for more people.

frissy said:
"The news today" We need gun designs. Go to work community!
Click to expand...
You can't simply say that you need guns. What kind of guns you want to have, depends on the setting of the mod. You can have some 1337 H&K weapons but they might not match the real Fallout setting. You'll need to find a storywriter who decides about these aspects.

frissy said:
We are now just making fan art with our own ideas, how about going for directions from the nma. People might have talent and motivation, but they simply don't have time to make a mod in a team where they are needed 24h. They can make one really really good design a week, but nothing more. That really isn't usefull for a small team, but combining those as a community....then you suddenly have talented busy people making designs, but you still get thirty of them in one week because they are out in numbers.
Click to expand...
This concept might work out with a really good organized project management. You simply disburden the content creators by burdening the management. The management would be responsible to decide about what snippets (story, art, sounds, etc.) are used.

As soon as you have decided for a good story idea, this concept will fail if you don't change to a real team organisation. A good story needs to be monolithic; an incredible collection of snippets won't really help here.

frissy said:
I'm not a game developer, but I have ideas.
Click to expand...
Okay that's great :-) But I guess everybody got ideas, right? So how about making a serious plan how this thingy could work out? I'm still willing to help if you plan to build up a team.

I guess the first phase of the project could be even based on your community concept :-)

Just apply to be the provisional project manager for the first 1-2 months and try to collect as many snippets as possible. After that you can judge which guys are talented and recruit them for the team.

At least that's what I would do.

Good luck with the project :-)
 
As I said, this was just an idea.

Of course I know I have to give more information to the "designers" when I ask "we need guns", but I didn't it was needed when talking about a vague idea that has no real-life form yet (if ever).

I personally have no big interest in doing a project, but seeing how many games/mods have taken a dive due to members leaving I wanted to post this idea.

Yes, I understand that most of the problems might be due to structure, but I also think there are more reason than that.

1) Structure (no doubt)
2) COMMUNICATION
3) All those above lead to loss of motivation and then you go down the drain.

Motivated people will work. Why do I think the community would do anything? Because they are ALREADY doing things. Some work in mods, some just do it for the fun. Me? I personally don't know if in or not, but I still do it for fun. Would I like to do more than just create 3D's of laser rifles for fun? Yes, but do I have time to be in a project that would need my attention all the time? No. Simply impossible.

This was mostly an idea to get the community to work on something worthwhile (those who don't have time to work on badly organized mod-groups).

I for one don't think this is possible ONLY in concept art. I believe it's possible to create textures, sounds, concepts and such. Perhaps even pieces of code. Use the community, then have a core-team that would combine the stuff.

True, you would get a lot of useless shit, but you can pick. Have shitty graphical artist on the team that makes shit, the whole thing will be on pause. Because you can't pick. Unless you get a new member.

Ok, how about a team that would use the community to work on the project? They order, the community delivers, but the team still puts it together. A bit like qualifying, without actually becoming a member.


sidenote: (idea of the story) I don't mean the community would work on a single story (or file), but they would all come up with a own version. Then the team/or community would choose (vote, wrestle) which is the one to be used. There would probably be a lot of poo, but still material to choose from.

Many projects out there lack diversity. They come up with a good idea, but the rest is crap. They have a good coder, but the graphical artist is useless. They have nice concept art, but the sound is horrible due to poor equipment.

Pick pick pick pick , then combine.
________
Nevada Medical Marijuana Dispensaries
 
mmh... although this is an OT-Discussion, here are my two cents:

One major point in this kind of projects is the motivation. (Because there is no money being paid)

And motivation doesn´t only come from the subject, which you are working on. Every teammember needs the feeling, that his work causes some progress. If you have 6 months without a real progress, you have a problem.

Because of that, the community-idea lacks in some points. Of course - to collect some content, it is perfect. But putting things together, make one thread, there have to be more organization.

The gfx-example: All the gfx depends on the story and the setting. As barra stated it before - H&Ks in Fallout doesn´t make sense because of the 50s style. That is just one issue - and there are hundreds of them.

You have to be aware about all of them - and they dictate somehow the work, you do.

Modelling gfx then increases up to 4 steps (instead of 3)
- Knowledge about the used setting
- Meshes
- Textures
- Lightning

You can´t just throw out an info, which gfx needs to be done (it doesn´t really matter how much you describe the needed assignment). Maybe you get some pictures because of a fluck, but the majority has to be planned, is hard work and must fit in your main concept.

And your artists must know the project, must feel the spirit of the projects subject. (serious) You will win nothing, if there are just some community members, which throw their ideas in. The worst case could be, that you get stuck in progress, because you have to sort out too much content, which doesn´t fit together at all...

You have to have the survey of your project and its activity. The best case would be, all members have that, too.

Due to that facts, we already split the work on zero - in mainstaff and freelancer. Freelancers can stop by and do some (minor) work. But the majority is done by a core team, which is always in contact - sometimes even at night.

Just don´t get tae wrong - I love community work like linux - but there is more behind the scenes, as you are (maybe) considering.
 
Well I was mostly thinking about Linux, but I didn't want to bring that up. Mostly because I'm not a coder and don't really understand how it works (progress).

Maybe perhaps not a game itself, how about a material library. Textures sounds, that might not ne the final product, but at least a base for it. Something like 3DCafe etc.
________
How to roll a blunt
 
The material library is a good example. This library is the core of your gfx. You can have freelancers, which help you by collecting the stuff - but you have to sort it out, take care about resolutions (texture-related), bitrates (sound-related), quality and so on - and you must organise it in a way, your artist can work with that library.

And your freelancer needs to be instructed, which material is needed. And even then, it is possible that the result is equal to zero. Then you have put time into that (talking to the freelancer, instructing him, communicate with him and so on) - for nothing. (thats worst case, but just think about it.) Now just make a projection up to 5 freelancers. The amount of time, you (may) need to spend, is incredible.

And working like this leads to more problems, as you would solve with an organization like that.
 
Hmm I don't think that the whole idea needs to fail. But as chewie said: you'll need a core team which leads the development into a certain direction. Otherwhise this "idea" will go down the drain like a lot of threads before.

If there are a lot of people with ideas but nobody is willing to invest some time into getting something organized the project will fail. You could create a little thread in the modding forums frissy and present your idea there. Not everybody monitors the news comments so I guess some guys will read about it for the first time there.

If nobody is willing to help out, you can easily say: "I would have done it, but nobody followed me". But giving the whole idea up some hours after you had it, doesn't sound good to me.
 
frissy said:
But don't think about ONE project. Think about all the projects under this community. A basic library to raise the project, then they can make the proper ones themselves.
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So take your time to write down the idea and send a news @ the NMA admins. This will help to find out who's interested in participating.

If you think that making a news post is not really appropriate at the moment, please create a thread in the modding section at least. Let's see if we can get something done on NMA :-)
 
It's good to see that the project is finally re-animated officially and in good hands of competent fans. The ingame shot is very promising so far.

And another proof for the insistence of the Fallout community. :)
 
I look forward to a little more information on how a German setting would differ from the American locales. I'm also very happy to see you have a story to go with your engine. Also, do you have a solid storyline already? What about the timeframe in relation to F1 or F2?
 
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