FIFE - open source RPG engine with Fallout support

DarkLegacy said:
So, you quit IanOut - started over, with a new name.

Fantastic. Great work.

At this rate, it will never be released.
Click to expand...
Hmm yeah you got the right to judge about it without knowing any single detail why we stopped working on ianout.

I could tell you but I prefer to invest my time to do something more worthwhile. ;-)

But feel free to help us to speed up development :-)
 
We're currently rewriting the majority of the rendering code. The new renderer will support maps with non-Fallout (== non-hex) map geometry. And we're discussing concepts for our lighting system as well as our new GFX format.

We've planned to use PNG files and script them with XML statements. You can read about the basics here:
http://wiki.fifengine.de/index.php?title=GFX_format_draft

The next release will be based on a totally new core; although there is already an experimental version of it in our SVN repository, it will take some serious time till it is stable. So I assume that you'll see no new FIFE version till end of June / beginning of July. At least we should need 3 months to get all the planned stuff for the next release done.

Last but not least a new screenshot from our editor FIFEdit (WIP!):


It does support stepless zooming now so you can view the whole map very easy without a lot of scrolling :-)
 
We do already use Lua ;-)

The idea is to make the animation format independent of the scripting language used. You can embed all kind of scripts into XML later as we're using SWIG.

But all current scripts are written in lua and there is no real reason to change ATM.
 
After some slowdown in the last weeks, our coders were able to finally combine the GUI code with the mapview:

map_and_gui.jpg
 
I will try it out sometime, I will I will.
By the way, could you make a better huge screenshot-function than the on in the official fo2 mapper?
 
I've just talked to one of our coders and he's currently working on that screenshot feature.

Anything special you would like to see? Save as bmp, jpg, png?
 
I have a request for F.I.F.E.

I would like to see in game colour adjustment for all the critters. The engine could take an existing critter FRM and when it draws the sprite in game and can perform the colour operation. The editor could specify what the colour adjustment for the critters proto is, along with an option to not adjust the shadow or the blood colour, it would just skip the 'grey' and the 'red' used for the shadow and the blood as these are probably the same for most critters.

I have made a basic mock-up of what I am talking about.

 
you can already turn critters red, yellow, etc using the editor. just set it's flags..
although, thet does make them see through..
good for ghosts or nightkin...
set it's light flags and it will give off light too..
 
ColJack said:
you can already turn critters red, yellow, etc using the editor. just set it's flags..
although, thet does make them see through..
good for ghosts or nightkin...
set it's light flags and it will give off light too..
Click to expand...

The image above is a screenshot from the FIFE editor that wild_qwerty manipulated to show an example of how he thinks it should look like.

The editor for FIFE doesn't have any color adjustment features yet. In fact, it is heavy work in progress and not many features are included.

I don't know much about the Fallout 2 editor so in case you were referring to it, then just ignore this.
 
A new lovely XMLmap screenshot:



Major changes will be announced in the next weeks. We're currently reorganizing parts of the engine and let you know as soon the news is ready to get published.
 
Here comes another snippet to keep you up to date.

Looks like he could fill the editor lead coder position. He's digging through our code ATM and it really looks like we found an excellent guy for the job :-) He's currently working on the editor feature list; there should be a first draft after the weekend.

If he decides to stick with us for a long time, we've definately done a step into the right direction. Here is is current feature list for FIFEdit
http://wiki.fifengine.de/index.php?title=Talk:FIFEdit_feature_list

We're currently trying to persuade another developer to join the team; he would work as engine core coder, as we still need support in this field of development. He is pretty experienced and worked on a bunch of projects; e.g. a cross platform 3d engine. He worked alone on these projects and now he wants to join a team, so let's hope he decides to give FIFE a go. Nothing decided yet but I guess I can inform you about his decision after the weekend.

The room mate of our core coder Phoku was really curious what Phoku does the whole day in such a kind of strange "FIFE" project. So he decided to join us too :-) He won't have much time for FIFE till June because of university, but he promised to work on concepts for the map model and script integration.

ATM I've got the feeling that the team feels kind of euphoric after the last hard weeks. Suddenly all the invested time, the channel discussions and the started restructuring process starts to pay off. We should know in a month if FIFE is really making the progress we currently think we're making or if it was just our euphoria that was blinding us. But I'm very optimistic for the next months :-)

We don't plan to release binaries for the next five months; you can download src releaes from sourceforge however. I'm pretty sure that I'll upload some compiled win32 binaries if anyone wants to test them. If everything works out like planned, we should have build a stable basis for FIFE after these five months. After that we can supply you with regular releases and more and more features from release to release. I guess the next official version will also feature a build of FIFEdit.

We've started to create a (still quite small) roadmap for the next releases
https://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engine/roadmap

In 1-2 weeks I'll post a little update what happened to the new (potential) coders.

P.S.: Keeps your eyes open in the next 2 weeks. I guess we should see a nice announcement @ NMA that is related to FIFE. Can't say more ATM because I don't want to spoil the surprise :-p
 
A new experimental SVN build is available for Win32. I guess this will be the last build for the next 2 months as we're currently reworking the engine design and there won't be new useful features for the users (although the whole code structure will change a lot).

New features:
- Taking screenshots (using "p"-key)
- Ingame console (based on guichan; different to the one in 2006.0)
- Transparency for: roof tiles, objects, windows (see Navarro)
- New XML maps
- Scriptable LUA gui (see examples in the content/scripts folder)
- A first experimental version of the FIFEdit tool (not really usable!)
- A bunch of fixes

Get it here:
http://members.fifengine.de/bin/FIFE_r526_win32.exe
 
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