FIFE - open source RPG engine with Fallout support

A little screenshot update for the audience :-)

Our team member Skybound just commited a very basic version of the future critters support. The current revision can just display the standard animation frame without any animation support. But we'll try to integrate .frm and .pal-based animations in the next weeks. Fallout 1 .dat support is on our list too so you don't have to unpack the archives to load Fallout 1 maps.

Enjoy:
prototype1_013.jpg
 
Oh. My. God.

I think I've just wet my pants.

This project is coming along NICELY.
 
Indeed,it's coming along quite nicely (and fast :) ) .Great Work guys!

One question.What's wrong with that barrel (Next to the hooker at the shark club entrance).Why is the fire white?
 
As explained earlier, palette animations (the neat "glowing" effect that can be seen in many 1990s games, in particularily noticable because it doesn't freeze when all other animation is frozen per script) are not yet included in the engine, so the palette entries that would usually be placeholders for the palette animations show up as white.

I'd wager that this effect is used for the terminals as well. Typically the palette animation is used for effects like smouldering or shore waves which are special in that they are 1) idling animations (i.e. the animation will stay in place for a long, undetermined amount of time) and 2) pixel colour variations (i.e. individual pixels will change their colours rather than the whole sprite being replaced).

I guess that technique will eventually die out as the screen resolution used by games will increase further and the additional computing power to animate whole sprites as well as the storage space for additional frames (allowing equally fluent sprite animations) will become less of an issue.
 
Well explained and totally right Ashmo :-)

The real problem with .pal based animations is that their implementation in the Fallout engine is quite poor. The concept is unnecessarily complicated and we think about replacing all .pal-based animations with real frame-based ones.

On the other side the docs that describe the concept are quite good: thx to TeamX! Without their excellent documentation about the Fallout engine internals such a project wouldn't be possible at all. So it shouldn't be much hassle to integrate the .pal code.

Another problem are various opaque objects like: windows, water (New Reno: Bishops pool), force fields, etc. We'll try to create a system where you can specify a transparency value for every kind of object and even critters (just think of the Nightkins from Fallout 1). This way it will be quite flexible and offer the best modding potential :-)
 
Hm... so would it be able to create differently coloured Stealth Boy effects?

Anna's ghost in The Den is based on the same effect as those nightkins IIRC.
 
Everything is possible with FIFE (TM) ;-)

The main problem in this case would be a useful SDL software solution for all the transparency effects. The current version of FIFE just supports alphablending for roof tiles with the hardware accelerated OpenGL renderer.

AFAIK (our gfx programmer told me so) OpenGL makes it quite easy to create different alphablending effects and even applying nice color modifiers on the textures is not much work. The best thing is that it doesn't really cost much performance but on the other side you can only enjoy all the stuff if you got a modern 3d card (not a big problem) and a gfx card driver that supports 3d acceleration (sometimes a problem for linux users because the damn 3d card manufacturers don't really care about linux support).

On the long run all these things are planned, e.g. a cool dawning effect and the night optics should look superior to the Fallout engine too. But we can't say when it will be inplemented into FIFE and if there will be a SDL version for this advanced optics features.
 
And just another short announcement: the FIFE team will release a 3p (read: pre-pre-pre) alpha version of FIFE between Christmas and New Years Eve.

Don't expect too much: basically it's just a good looking Fallout 1 & 2 mapviewer with OpenGL support and choseable resolutions. We don't want to disappoint you: we had to choose between a really feature-poor first release or no release at all.

We think that this first release is at least a little present and a good way to show what we've worked on in the last 3 months since FIFE was founded. At least it's a good way to:
* Test the performance of the current renderer in software and OpenGL mode
* Find and resolve problems and bugs faster (something the users will benefit from in the long run)
* Get feedback from a broader audience

The FIFE team wishes you a merry Christmas and get ready to grab your presents! As soon as the release is out, FIFEngine.de will be updated with the appropriate links.

And you won't get new screens from the Christmas release till it's out: everything I can say is that there is a new feature :-p
 
The FIFE team wishes you a merry Christmas!

We'll release our first test version of FIFE @ Friday, 30th of December, 8PM GMT.

Till then you should take a look @ the Christmas wallpaper of our new member chewie and wait patiently for the small present :-)

 
Kahgan said:
:shock: Can we have snow??
Click to expand...
If you create snow tiles: yes :wink:

This wallpaper was created with Gimp but we'll think about kind of "footprints"-support for the engine so you can have more realistic desert and snow environments.

Just watch out for the release to see what already works and what is still just in the planning stages. And don't be disappointed: there are only a few things working at all so there is still a long way to go with FIFE.
 
New FIFE bugfix release for Win32:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/fife/FIFE_2006.0-r1_win32.exe?download

Sources:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/fife/FIFE_2006.0-r1_src.tar.bz2?download

Install guide:
http://wiki.fifengine.de/index.php?title=Windows_install_guide

Changes:
* PAL animations added
* ACM sound support
* A bunch of small fixes

Full install, no patch! This will be the last release based on our old renderer. The new one is already in our SVN and will be featured in the next release. We hope to bring out the next version in about 6-8 weeks.
 
Just a little status report:

We're coming good along and implemented some new features. The most challenging one was the renderer rewrite and there is still stuff to do; so the next release will take quite some time.

On the other hand we were able to get the GUI working with FRM files so you can "simulate" the original Fallout GUI with FIFE now (screenshots following in the next days / weeks). Object animations are working now too so the doors are opening and closing and it gives the optics a serious boost.

And finally the animation shifts are fixed so no fucked up anims anymore :-)
 
mvBarracuda said:
Just a little status report:

We're coming good along and implemented some new features. The most challenging one was the renderer rewrite and there is still stuff to do; so the next release will take quite some time.

On the other hand we were able to get the GUI working with FRM files so you can "simulate" the original Fallout GUI with FIFE now (screenshots following in the next days / weeks). Object animations are working now too so the doors are opening and closing and it gives the optics a serious boost.
Click to expand...
Sounds great, can't wait to see the screens!

mvBarracuda said:
And finally the animation shifts are fixed so no fucked up anims anymore :-)
Click to expand...
Does that mean there are others besides the one you posted in the patch thread?
 
killap said:
Does that mean there are others besides the one you posted in the patch thread?
Click to expand...
There are 2 problems:
a) Wrong x / y shift values like described in the patch thread (hardcoded in FRM files)
b) wrong calculated x / y shifts values (failure in our shift formula)

We've fixed now the the 2nd type of problems and hope that there are no wrong FRM files anymore. The animations look cool now esp. the vault door animations *dream*
 
Heya, Barracuda!

It would be nice if I could give FIFE the location of the two dat files for example in an ini file, so I should not need to copy them into FIFE directory...

And now something completely different :) :
I am a member of the Hungarian Fallout translation team, and we followed the progress of the IanOut-project on our website. Some days earlier I put a link to FIFE in our news section.
I have two question:
1. Is there any Hungarian member it the FIFE team? (I know IanOut had some.)
2. Could I put on our site the released and bugfixed version of FIFE to the Download section?
 
Strato said:
Heya, Barracuda!

It would be nice if I could give FIFE the location of the two dat files for example in an ini file, so I should not need to copy them into FIFE directory...
Click to expand...
Hmm that's not as simple as it sounds because FIFE will (hopefully) become a general modding platform for all kinds of RPGs; even non-Fallout ones.

So we're thinking about a general solution for users to add "paths" where the engine searches for files. But it will take some time as we haven't made a concept for this path handling yet.

Strato said:
1. Is there any Hungarian member it the FIFE team? (I know IanOut had some.)
Click to expand...
No. The old ianout project leader SztupY was from Hungary but we decided to found FIFE as he wasn't a team player. AFAIK he's still working on ianout though I seriously doubt that there will be any ianout release in the next months. But SztupY is free to prove me wrong :-)

Strato said:
2. Could I put on our site the released and bugfixed version of FIFE to the Download section?
Click to expand...
As it should help to spread the word of FIFE: give it a go :-)

It will take some serious time till the next release as we're working on rewriting several aspects now:
- Renderer (almost finished)
- GUI code (work started and already some good results)
- Scripting code (only basic work done yet and it's likely that we try "SWIG" for scripting)
- New coordinate system to support non-Fallout maps (there is a basic proof of concept in our SVN)
- Macintosh support (work in progress; already compiles and runs but still some problems to solve)
- Lighting system (just collected some basic ideas; will be worked on as soon as the new coordinate system is stable)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top