FIFE - open source RPG engine with Fallout support

Wild_qwerty said:
Barra, There are quite a few new critters floating around here now days. If you ask Siren I think he will let you package them directly into FIFE :)
Click to expand...
I already saw Siren's thread :-) Great work.

However all gfx for the upcoming demo map are already finished and converted. Therefore I won't start trying to get Siren's critters imported into FIFE before 2007.1 gets released.
 
Waht is the new format? Is it a FIFE format or a PNG with a text/ini file to contain the offset information?
 
Wild_qwerty said:
Waht is the new format? Is it a FIFE format or a PNG with a text/ini file to contain the offset information?
Click to expand...
We use XML for our file formats.

The gfx format uses XML to script PNGs, though you can use a lot of other formats instead of PNG too:
BMP, GIF, JPEG, LBM, PCX, PNM, TGA, TIFF, XCF, XPM, XV
 
I intend to send in news about this later today, but just in case something goes wrong with the news announcement: we'll release our next stable version of FIFE at Sunday, 2007/04/22.

I hope to include a new screenshot of the upcoming demo map in the news update too. Stay tuned :-)
 
It's done :-) Here is a screenshot of our new demo map for the release (click on it for the fullscreen version):



New features since the 2007.0 release:
* Stable custom XML map format for FIFE including our demo map to show the new features and syntax of it :-)
* FPS limiter (can be set in fife.config) to save important CPU time for future tasks (AI, pathfinding, etc.)
* Tile and object coordinates can be displayed (press "c")
* Color key overriding for Fallout transparency effects (see content/gfx/fallout_overrides.xml)
* Fixed DAT1 decoding code (bug was introduced with the DAT1 rewrite)
* Major map model classes have been exported to Lua and are now accessable via the console
* Map size dependant, configurable geometries
* Colorkeying for the SDL renderer
* Add custom VFS sources via vfs.addSource (see content/etc/vfs_sources.txt)
* Increased startup speed with FO2 DAT files
* Enhanced camera with support for multiple viewports (see content/scripts/demos/map_control.lua)
* Built against SDL_image 1.2.5 and guichan 0.61 now (Win32 binaries)

Get the win32 package here:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fife/FIFE_2007.1_win32.exe

Get the src package for linux, mac and kind of other POSIX systems here:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fife/FIFE_2007.1_src.tar.bz2

Install guide:
1. Unpack
2. Read README.txt
 
The last weeks were quite busy for the majority of the team members so there was we've published no news update since the release of the 2007.1 milestone about 4 weeks ago. Now we've found some time over the weekend to summarize all the events that happened in the last weeks to give you can overview about the current status of the project.

The full article can be found at the developer blog and covers a bunch of topics including some remarks about the feedback concerning the recent release, news about the upcoming universal binaries for Macintosh systems, an update about the SVN and wiki restructuring process and the reintroduced MSVC 2005 and new KDevelop support for FIFE. Have a nice read :-)
 
Your project is great but I must admit it is hard to understand the FIFE interface. I downloaded it and read some doc but couldn't edit the maps.
 
Thanks. that helped a lot.
Is there an editor for the XML maps or should I just use notepad++ to edit the XML file?
 
Yes, syntax highlighting might be useful ^^

You also should have the ability to "tab" several xml files - one for the map and some others for archetypes, so that you can look for the ids of your mapobjects / tiles.

Search & replace is also your friend - if you´re used to it, you won´t need a map editor anymore. ;)
 
Asimov IV said:
Thanks. that helped a lot.
Is there an editor for the XML maps or should I just use notepad++ to edit the XML file?
Click to expand...
We would really like see an editor for the FIFE maps, however all previous tries to get the development started miserably failed :-/

So for now you'll need to stick to the text editor of your choice. I wrote the demo map with gvim for win32:
http://www.vim.org/download.php#pc
 
Well here's a little something I've been working on :)

I notice that FIFE would prefer a critter to have 8 orientations as opposed to 6

Characters
Create at least one animated character with walk animations for 8 different directions (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW).
Click to expand...

And the critters needs to be in PNG format, how do you want a critter stored? As multiple PNG files or in a sprite sheet?

*EDIT*
Any thing on what scale or size characters need to be? I'm assuming FO scale.

*END EDIT*


This model is a "Thermatron" and is a remake from Crusader No Remorse.

http://rapidshare.com/files/33049120/Thermatron.avi





 
Time for yet another update here :-)

The progress of the last two weeks is quite encouraging. We've decided to give the extend approach for scripting a try in a separate branch but it looks like that this branch will replace our current trunk version quite fast. The work on it isn't finished yet but it seems that the performance drawback of the extend approach should be bearable; some initial tests (although with work in progress code and just on tested a Linux system) did show almost no performance drawbacks at all.

For anyone who's interested to know more about it and is not afraid of playing around with some work in progress code, check out our extend branch in SVN:
branches/active/extend

One major advantage of the extend approach in combination with SWIG is that you'll be able to get FIFE running with bindings for your favourite scripting language quite easily. We do currently play around with Python support and that works quite well. Additionally we'll maintain support for Lua bindings as Lua was our language of choice before we decided to try something different than embedding the scripting language into FIFE. It shouldn't be too hard to create Ruby or OCaml bindings for FIFE either and if we find somebody who maintains these bindings, they'll find their way into our Subversion repository so you won't even need to invest time to generate the bindings yourself (although SWIG makes it rather easy in most cases).

Here is a nice screenshot from one of our recent test sessions. It shows the FIFE console that now can execute Python code e.g. for ingame manipulations or debugging your FIFE-based game:
Ext_branch_teaser_1.jpg


Besides the work on the extend branch we're currently trying to fill our wiki with use cases for some possible FIFE-based games. That's because we intend to tackle the design of our scripting API after the work on the extend branch has finished. There is already a pretty small API in place but as it was written as proof of concept and for doing initial scripting tests it is neither consistent nor feature-complete. So we're trying to collect some real game examples first, analyze them concerning their requirements for a scripting API and plan to come up with a consistent design for our API after that.

If you consider to use FIFE for an own game in the future feel free to lend us a hand by contributing to the use cases. And don't be afraid: there are already a bunch of examples listed there that should make it easy for you to get started. If you would like to contribute but don't understand the concept of the use cases or got other related questions feel free to ask them here or at the talk page of our use case wiki article:
Use cases for the FIFE scripting API

And last but not least we're still searching for interested programmers who would like to collect some experience working on a rather large scale group project :-) And we're usually kind guys and don't bite so if you want to find out more about us before you sign a lifetime contract with us feel free to visit our irc channel :-)
#fife @ quakenet
 
Yet another FIFE update coming to you :-)

The work on the extend branch is coming along quite well lately and our current lead programmer Jasoka decided to summarize the current status from the developer's point of view. He does comment on the new Python support of the engine and raises some points how the modularization of FIFE should work.

For everyone who's interested in reading Jasoka's full text, feel free to check it out at our developer blog:
http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engine/wiki/2007/07/11/18.44
 
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