FIFE hits 2008.1

Brother None

This ghoul has seen it all
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Open source RPG engine FIFE has hit its 2008.1 milestone.<blockquote>Download:
Source package (FreeBSD, Linux, Macintosh)
Win32 binaries

For the 2008.1 release we decided to stick to the tropical island concept and called our example game "Rio de hola".

Caution: this release is still lacking a lot of polish, especially the "Rio de hola" game that ships with it. It lacks almost any form of gameplay but there is a reason why we decided to ship the release in its current form nevertheless. We planned to release future FIFE milestones under the LGPL to offer a less "restrictive" license to possible FIFE users (we know that the term "restrictive" is just our personal point of view).

We had to clear up the legal situation first and fortunately the software freedom law center helped us with the transition. The agreement of all developers who contributed code that was still used in FIFE was needed and because over three dozens of people contributed code to the project, this took us a lot of time. We were not able to reach all of them so we decided to either remove or rewrite the code of the contributors who didn't reply to our license switch proposal mails (from scratch).

We were able to replace the last parts of the problematic code today so now FIFE is officially LGPL'ed software. We're glad that we were able to make this step after it took us so long and we think that the new license alone is worth a release. Therefore we're proud to finally present the first FIFE release that is published under LGPL 2.1 or newer (your choice).

Engine and the editor tool made _huge_ steps forward since the last release about 5 months ago. Therefore we decided to release the current status as stable release although it offers not many new aspects on the content side and the content that is in place is very likely to change with the 2008.2 release.

The milestone itself seems to be a very important step into the right direction. You can build your own maps now with the help of the editor tool. Furthermore a basic application structure is in place that should give you an idea how can create your own FIFE-based game; this release is stable enough to start working on your game now :-)

Most important changes since the 2008.0 release:
* License switch from GPL 2.0 to LGPL 2.1 or newer.
* Improved map format & resource loading (datasets branch).
* Vastly improved editor tool; batch object loading.
* New (work in progress) Rio de hola demo: new maps, graphics, sounds (still unfinished!).
* Eye candy: stepless zoom (OpenGL mode only), instance coloring & outlining.
</blockquote>Link: full announcement on the FIFE developer blog.
 
Thanks for posting this Brother_None :-) I thought about sending it in as news but you eased the decision with this step.

Cheers :-)
 
So, are there any Fallout-related mods (or games, I suppose) being worked on using this engine? If not, why?
 
Zero-Projekt is surely the one that comes closest to Fallout ATM:
http://zero-projekt.net/zero-content/include/language.php?l=1

The main reason why there are just few FIFE-based projects in development yet is that FIFE is still under heavy development. Hopefully we'll see some new FIFE-based RPGs rather soon. IMO FIFE is stable enough to start creating games with it now but we still need to convince the users that this is actually the case.

If the next release ships with an example game that provides some real gameplay and we can write some good tutorials how to get started, we'll see more FIFE-based games. Time will tell :-)
 
damn! i had zero-projekt bookmarked, but lost myself (and the bookmarks :crazy: ) in work and leisure time. stupid me! thanks for the reminder, now thqat i have way more time at my hands, i would love to work with these guys.
 
God I love it when developers benchmark their projects, it makes it far less boring to follow.

My interest in FIFE is based purely on its ability to perform stably and without bugs, as long as that goes down smooth I'm game.
 
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