FIFE - open source RPG engine with Fallout support

It looks like picking a winner for the send them in contest will be actually quite easy. At the moment there is not a single participant listed there: http://wiki.fifengine.de/index.php?title=Map_GFX_contest_contributions

The contest will end at 2007/08/01 and if nobody sends in a package that complies to our rules the jury will consider contributions that don't meet the requirements too. E:g. Wulax did already send in some rather nice looking buildings that can be found within our SVN repository now.

So if you intend to take part in the contest, don't miss the deadline :-)
 
Update time :-)

We're currently reworking our XML map format as we found a number of inconsistencies that we failed to foresee when we initially designed the first version of our map format :-/

Fortunately (or unfortunately, that really depends on the perspective) there are just two FIFE-based games in development at the moment so we decided to address these issues as soon as possible to reduce the number of affected projects that will need to slightly adjust their map markup to work with the latest FIFE code.

Updated FIFE map format (draft)

The good news is that the reworking of the map format is a first step and part of our strategy to finally tackle the monster that FIFE developers call the "map editor". So there is actually hope that people who start to explore the world of FIFE with our next planned release 2007.2 won't need to worry about these changes at all (if we manage to finish a first version of our map editor tool until then).

Jasoka and jwt did invest a large amount of time to refactor important parts of the engine, kick out singletons and remove bi-directional dependencies between the different engine modules thus leading to a far cleaner engine structure. The whole refactoring process is still ongoing and everyone who's interested in what we're currently working on should check out our metamodel branch in SVN and take a look at the SVN changelog of the last weeks :-)

Metamodel branch @ SVN
SVN changelog
 
Interestingly enough today I was checking up on the stratagud engine and noted that one of the games being developed for it is on hold while the guy makes a new rpg. So I click the link and he's talking about this guy called mvBarracuda, a little bit further and I read he's using the FIFE engine.

First I've heard about KON, it's good to see some more people looking to use FIFE :)

Anyway now for my usaul question of when will FIFE be playable ;)

I might start making new new graphics again soon, I was thinking of making some turrets up to use for FIFE and MR, since I dont have to make walking animations for turrets. Do the critters for FIFE still need to use hte same Frame names as in FO2 or do you have a different naming scheme?

Also I was thinking in regards to level/mapping would it be possible to use a single large image file for the map and add a blocking mask on top rather than just use tiles? I think this is how Baldurs Gate and Omega Syndrom work.
 
I'm sorry but I don't have the time to answer your questions ATM Qwerty :-/

I've got a _very_ important exam at August, the 20th so I won't post any updates here until the exam is over. But you can count on me: I'll answer your question and update the thread with the latest news of FIFE after the exam.
 
As promised: here comes the delivery:

Welcome to yet another FIFE news update :-)

It was pretty quiet lately, not because we would have been lazy but because I was busy with my exams and had no time to write about our most recent efforts. Nevertheless there was of course a bunch of work going on behind the scenes and I'm happy to have finally found the time to summarize it for you. There are several topics to talk about:
* The send them in! contest is over and we finally have a winner.
* The work on the new metamodel branch is coming along quite well.
* The FIFE team agreed to work on a new techdemo in cooperation with the Zero-Projekt team that explains the features of FIFE.
* The FIFE project turns two rather soon :-) Time for a birthday party.
* fifengine.de has been slightly updated with the help of the new developer Nick.

You can read about all these topics in detail at our most recent FIFE developer blog update. Have fun :-)

I'll prolly send in news to NMA about this one. We'll see.
 
I sent in news concerning this but as I'm not sure if it's important enough to get posted at the frontpage, I post this here as well:

We can't really believe it either but our calendar says that it has been almost two years now since we started to work on this very project. At the 11th of September 2005 a group of naive but enthusiastic individuals agreed to found a development project to create an improved Fallout-like engine for roleplaying games. While the focus shifted to become a more general and flexible 2D engine, while new members joined and old ones left the team, we're still around and the recent progress gives us the hope that there'll be a bunch of birthday parties to celebrate in the next couple of years :-) To celebrate at least our first two years we invite every developer (active, inactive, ex or even simply interested to get involved) and of course every guest to visit our IRC channel at Tuesday, 2007/09/11.

If you always wanted to get to know these crazy FIFE people here is your chance. As the majority of the FIFE developers are set in Europe you will probably need to wait for the evening hours (GMT) to get in touch with project members though. You could even try to obtain an answer to the question when 2007.2 will be released. Though it's likely that we'll answer: ''When it's done''. Not because we're cruel but because we don't know it either :-) Anyway: we hope to see all of you at Tuesday.

Let's get this party started :-)
 
Finally a first screenshot of the upcoming techdemo that is a cooperation of the Zero-Projekt team and the FIFE staff. Looks like they make fun of poor little Barracuda :-(

2007.2.005.jpg
 
Cool, screeny.

Did you guy decide on the best way to manage new critters in FIFE, do you want them as a series of separate png files with an xml file for offsets or is it okay to use a sprite sheet?

Would be a lot easier if we could get a hold of the guy who made Frame Animator and asked him to add FIFE support (save as png file with xml file).
 
PNG + XML, here is an example from the WIP techdemo:
http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fif.../animations/agents/dummy/walk/0/animation.xml

But you can influence the whole system by using Python. So in the end it's up to the game creator how to work with it, but we'll offer a working solution that ships with FIFE for everyone who doesn't want to work out something custom. We use the polar coordinate system for the techdemo and include animations for 6 directions, but in theory you could add a lot more.

For more information about the direction system, see:
http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fif.../techdemo/animations/agents/dummy/walk/README
 
To bring up the most important fact at the beginning: the FIFE team will finally release the 2007.2 milestone to the public at Wednesday, the 10th of October, 2007. Over five months have passed since the 2007.1 milestone had been released at the end of April and a lot has changed since then. Now that the most important changes are in place and work we feel that it's time for another release to give the community a sign into which direction the project is heading.

Let's summarize the most important changes for the 2007.2 release and have a (small) look into the future of FIFE as well.

After having utilized Lua5 for the scripting side of FIFE for over 18 months we agreed that it would be worth taking a look at SWIG again. SWIG was promising as it offered a way to use our engine with a number of scripting languages; furthermore we could get rid of the semi-manual lunar.h bindings approach this way as well. We ran into some hurdles while trying to integrate SWIG into FIFE but in the end it worked out quite well. Now we had the ability to wrap up the engine into python instead of the old way of embedding the Lua library into FIFE.

The so-called metamodel branch was an undertaking to seriously redesign major parts of the engine. We decided to go for an MVC (model - view - controller) architecture pattern for FIFE and refactored the engine modules accordingly. Another aim was to remove unneeded bi-directional module dependencies to have a clean module hierarchy:
http://wiki.fifengine.de/index.php?title=Engine_Core

The Zero-Projekt team agreed to work with the FIFE developers on an example game for future releases together. This way we can give game creators a starting point and show what can be done with the engine. Furthermore working with the Zero team directly together brings up a number of advantages for FIFE:
* We won't need to worry about producing content for the example game.
* We're in contact with game creators so we get feedback what works well and what aspects should be improved.
* We can test and adjust the FIFE API while we work on the example game. This wouldn't be possible without building an actual game on top of the engine.

A first snapshot of the example game will come bundled with the 2007.2 release. Don't expect too much: it is a work in progress project and especially the first versions will naturally lack a lot of polish!

After the release of the 2007.2 milestone we plan to finally start working on the editor tools for FIFE again. We tried to do so several times before but everytime something went wrong: editor programmers disappeared and later we did find several engine issues that prevented building an useful editor tool on top of the engine.

Now that the engine is in pretty good shape after the metamodel refactoring, we feel that working on the editor tools will bring up better results this time. Jwt, who also wrote the new python-based maploaders for the 2007.2 release, does currently investigate how we could create python-based mapsavers. This is meant to be the first step for the editor tools.

Anxs & prock are currently redesigning the FIFE audio module in a separate branch. If everything works out as planned we might be able to ship the new improved audio module already with the 2007.3 release. If you want to read some detailed information about the audio module redesign, head over to the wiki:
http://wiki.fifengine.de/index.php?title=Audio_Design_Documentation

Now that we're heading to the finish line we can need every helping hand to test the upcoming release. Furthermore help with packaging would be appreciated as well. Therefore we invite every interested community member to join our project IRC channel to lend us a hand. We hope to see some of you there. If you're too busy, it would be great if you could be around at the release day to celebrate the new milestone with us at least :-)
http://wiki.fifengine.de/index.php?title=IRC

And finally after all the text, some new eye-candy as well. This is a screenshot of the product we're working on together with the Zero-Projekt team. This content won't ship with the upcoming 2007.2 release and is work in progress.
 
We've made it! The 2007.2 release is on the server and we're all happy that it shipped in time.

Download
* Source package (Linux, Macintosh): http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fife/FIFE_2007.2_src.tar.bz2
* Win32 binaries: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fife/FIFE_2007.2_win32.exe

Screenshot


Important changes since the 2007.1 release
* Removed the rather difficult to maintain lunar.h bindings in favour of SWIG (http://www.swig.org).
* Replaced the Lua scripting support with Python. Now the main loop runs in the scripting language. For the 2007.1 release the main loop still ran in the engine side and the Lua library was embedded into the engine. By utilizing SWIG game creators can add Lua support back to the engine again if they have the need for it.
* Metamodel refactoring. This resulted in a better engine structure and a decreased number of dependencies between the engine modules. Furthermore bi-directional dependencies were removed completely.
* Improved engine modularity. Our aim is that you can cherry-pick specific engine modules of FIFE and just use the ones you really need for your game.
* Pathfinding integration. Exchangable backends so you can already replace the currently rather simple linear pather with a more sophisticated system.
* New 3d geometry system. Camera supports now tilt, rotation and zoom. Geometries are affected by camera adjustments, but in addition to that, layers can contain separate scale and rotation.
* New event channel module. Scripts have full access to mouse, keyboard & widget input.
* New MVC architecture pattern. The whole engine has been refactored to follow a model - view - controller pattern. This leads to a cleaner engine module hierarchy compared to the engine design that was used before.
* Improved action-based animation system.
* A techdemo to give game creators a starting point. This is a common undertaking of the Zero-Projekt team (http://www.zero-projekt.net) and FIFE.

Read the full release news update:
http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engine/wiki/2007/10/10/16.23
 
Where do I start to use it? I've downloaded the Win32 Binaries but I don't see a compiled fife.exe file anywhere. How do I run the actual tech demo?
 
arrhhh to much hard work! Though I suspect that FIFE will be a whole lot easier to script for etc... so if may not be all that bad
 
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