FIFE question
- Thread starter Mulligun
- Start date
Hi Mulligun 
No, you can´t play FO 1 or FO 2 with the current release of FIFE. The engine was never planned to create a game.
The main goal of FIFE is to create a gameengine which can be used by modders and indypendent game creators to make their own (RPG) games.
To answer your second question: The programmers don´t work on things like FO damage calculation - so they can´t help you with that issue. They only deal with FO file formats - e.g. to import maps, sprites and things like that.
But you probably can check the FO PnP to get an idea of these calculations.
btw - which mod are you working on?
greetz,
chewie
No, you can´t play FO 1 or FO 2 with the current release of FIFE. The engine was never planned to create a game.
The main goal of FIFE is to create a gameengine which can be used by modders and indypendent game creators to make their own (RPG) games.
To answer your second question: The programmers don´t work on things like FO damage calculation - so they can´t help you with that issue. They only deal with FO file formats - e.g. to import maps, sprites and things like that.
But you probably can check the FO PnP to get an idea of these calculations.
btw - which mod are you working on?
greetz,
chewie
Wild_qwerty
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
i know you guys are gonna hate my question, but....
when?
as in when approx will FIFE be able to be used to make a game etc...
when?
as in when approx will FIFE be able to be used to make a game etc...
@Wild_qwerty
To speak for the Zero-Projekt: It is already ready to create a game - as long as you don´t start with things, which aren´t ready in FIFE yet. A 'game' isn´t done over night - and the current features are well enough to implement gfx and scripts. I wrote an article on zero.fifengine.de for what FIFE is ready and for what it is not. I´ll translate it in the next few days to english, so you can make up your mind if the current status of FIFE is enough for you to start. In the meanwhile, I could offer this screencapture, which I also postet here in the modding-forum:
Screencapturing: Zero in one minute (~8 MB | ogg theora)
To speak for the FIFE-Team: The development of the engine could be way faster if people would stop to leave the team after working some weeks for it. (sometimes they also just disappear without a 'good bye') Barra then wouldn´t have to spent 90 % of his time to recruit new members and could concentrate on stuff like organisation etc. Ah yeah - and the motivation would increase, too...
To speak for me: No OSS-Projekt grows and lives without a community, which supports it. Support means: participate as coder, participate as tester, participate as motivator.
Don´t get me wrong if all of this sounds to harsh - but an OSS-project doesn´t grow only because there is a need for it.
For sure, I wrote some lines of LUA only to see that here and there are still features needed. But reporting them to the programmers, I see this as a contribute to FIFE. Even compiling FIFE on different systems helps the programmers to see which problems have to be cleared out - and what has to be changed.
Or another example: Your tile-tutorial helped me to create some nice 80x36-tiles within minutes. And this helped me to play arround with the XML-maps and learn about their current limitations. Giving these knowledge to the FIFE-Team helps improving this code and the whole project.
Regards,
chewie
To speak for the Zero-Projekt: It is already ready to create a game - as long as you don´t start with things, which aren´t ready in FIFE yet. A 'game' isn´t done over night - and the current features are well enough to implement gfx and scripts. I wrote an article on zero.fifengine.de for what FIFE is ready and for what it is not. I´ll translate it in the next few days to english, so you can make up your mind if the current status of FIFE is enough for you to start. In the meanwhile, I could offer this screencapture, which I also postet here in the modding-forum:
Screencapturing: Zero in one minute (~8 MB | ogg theora)
To speak for the FIFE-Team: The development of the engine could be way faster if people would stop to leave the team after working some weeks for it. (sometimes they also just disappear without a 'good bye') Barra then wouldn´t have to spent 90 % of his time to recruit new members and could concentrate on stuff like organisation etc. Ah yeah - and the motivation would increase, too...
To speak for me: No OSS-Projekt grows and lives without a community, which supports it. Support means: participate as coder, participate as tester, participate as motivator.
Don´t get me wrong if all of this sounds to harsh - but an OSS-project doesn´t grow only because there is a need for it.
For sure, I wrote some lines of LUA only to see that here and there are still features needed. But reporting them to the programmers, I see this as a contribute to FIFE. Even compiling FIFE on different systems helps the programmers to see which problems have to be cleared out - and what has to be changed.
Or another example: Your tile-tutorial helped me to create some nice 80x36-tiles within minutes. And this helped me to play arround with the XML-maps and learn about their current limitations. Giving these knowledge to the FIFE-Team helps improving this code and the whole project.
Regards,
chewie
Wild_qwerty
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
unfortunately I'm jsut a lowly Network admin and am a total flush out when it comes to programing, though I can do this in basic:
10 Print "FIFE is cool"
20 goto 10
buts thats a hang over from my commodore 64 days
What I could offer is a very good testing environment for FIFE devs, I could test FIFE on pretty much any system. We use a lot of VMware at work so I'm fiarly up to speed with running virtual machines. In other words you can run multiple virtual computers each running a different OS from one computer, perfect for testing in that regards. It wont test different sorts of hardware though. The VM networking is a little buggy at times but you should be able to play a multiplayer game between different virtual machines on the same PC
Just out of interest how will FIFE handle the scripting, I know its going to be lua or something but what tools will be available to generate it ti make modding easy. You could make a script generator that uses a gui interface kind of like "game maker" where a modder could just select different commands from a menu eg: if this then do this etc....
I'm big on ideas low on ability to implement them
10 Print "FIFE is cool"
20 goto 10
buts thats a hang over from my commodore 64 days
What I could offer is a very good testing environment for FIFE devs, I could test FIFE on pretty much any system. We use a lot of VMware at work so I'm fiarly up to speed with running virtual machines. In other words you can run multiple virtual computers each running a different OS from one computer, perfect for testing in that regards. It wont test different sorts of hardware though. The VM networking is a little buggy at times but you should be able to play a multiplayer game between different virtual machines on the same PC
Just out of interest how will FIFE handle the scripting, I know its going to be lua or something but what tools will be available to generate it ti make modding easy. You could make a script generator that uses a gui interface kind of like "game maker" where a modder could just select different commands from a menu eg: if this then do this etc....
I'm big on ideas low on ability to implement them
Heh... 2 lines of basic say more than 1000 words..
I´m no programmer, too. Allthough I try to get into C++ a bit to understand the first few lines of some parts of FIFE, I guess I won´t be able to commit even 2 lines of usable code.. *g*
But having some knowledge about PHP, I was able to learn the basics of LUA within some weeks. It is an very easy scripting language, and creating a button with FIFE´s LUAgui is as easy as to say:
[snip]
gui = Container {}
gui:setSize(x,y)
gui:setPosition(x,y)
button1 = Button('Klick me')
button1:setPosition(x,y)
gui:add(button1)
guimanager.add(gui)
[/snip]
I can´t tell if there will be a GUI-driven tool for the whole scripting, but the mapeditor was planned to have some of this features. Unfortunately ATM there isn´t a programmer , who works on the editor.
It´s all about a lack of ressources..
About your offer to test FIFE with VMware - that´d be very cool. Please talk to Razlo.. ehrr.. I mean Barra.. *g*
As I said - learning LUA isn´t a big deal - but if you find someone with some scripting abilities, he should do the trick for you
UPDATE:
I finished the translation of our report about FIFEs modding abilites
I´m no programmer, too. Allthough I try to get into C++ a bit to understand the first few lines of some parts of FIFE, I guess I won´t be able to commit even 2 lines of usable code.. *g*
But having some knowledge about PHP, I was able to learn the basics of LUA within some weeks. It is an very easy scripting language, and creating a button with FIFE´s LUAgui is as easy as to say:
[snip]
gui = Container {}
gui:setSize(x,y)
gui:setPosition(x,y)
button1 = Button('Klick me')
button1:setPosition(x,y)
gui:add(button1)
guimanager.add(gui)
[/snip]
I can´t tell if there will be a GUI-driven tool for the whole scripting, but the mapeditor was planned to have some of this features. Unfortunately ATM there isn´t a programmer , who works on the editor.
It´s all about a lack of ressources..
About your offer to test FIFE with VMware - that´d be very cool.
Please talk to Razlo.. ehrr.. I mean Barra.. *g*I'm big on ideas low on ability to implement them
As I said - learning LUA isn´t a big deal - but if you find someone with some scripting abilities, he should do the trick for you
UPDATE:
I finished the translation of our report about FIFEs modding abilites
Wild_qwerty
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
So is the combat simulator a terminal window that shows what is happening in the combat sequence, so as yet the combat is really working in game as such
mvBarracuda
Vault Dweller
That's like asking when Mutants Rising (I know that you're not around anymore) or FanMadeFallout would be released.Wild_qwerty said:
As you were part of the MR team you surely know that it's almost impossible to give out release dates for voluntary projects simply because you can't really plan the man-hours of work.
But Phoku updated our roadmap some time ago and this should help you to get an idea in which direction we're heading to:
https://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engine/milestone/2007.1
The question is _NOT_ when FIFE will be complete, because open source software is never really finished. The question is when certain features can be considered to be somewhat stable so you could start your first modding steps with FIFE. We hope to provide a stable map and animation API with the 2007.1 release, that means you could start creating own maps and animations after that and use them in later FIFE releases. However there is still no map editor to work with. One option would be to use the official BIS mapper and export these maps with the map editor to the native FIFE format later. But I wouldn't advice to start building maps ATM as I can't guarantee that it wouldn't turn out as a lot of wasted time because something important changes in the future.
You can already create gfx + animations. Although the animation format is not really stable yet, you can already start creating animations and export them to PNG. These single PNGs will be scripted via XML into working animations later.
Wild_qwerty
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
Sounds good Barra, I know its not a question that can really be answered, its more along the lines of when can it be playable.
On a different subject...
How are the critter animation codes handled? Are they hardcoded or controlled by an external *.ini file for example? I've been thinking lately that a good way for fife to handle which attack code is what animation would be through a separate config file. I could throw together an example if you wanted.
Doing it this way would mean that modders could easily add other attack types, such a hand to hand attack for a rifle (bayonet).
It would be really easy to add a grenade launcher attack onto a rifle by enabling the throw suffix, also people could just define new animation types if they wanted to make totaly new weapons eg: a sword or a crossbow
On a different subject...
How are the critter animation codes handled? Are they hardcoded or controlled by an external *.ini file for example? I've been thinking lately that a good way for fife to handle which attack code is what animation would be through a separate config file. I could throw together an example if you wanted.
Doing it this way would mean that modders could easily add other attack types, such a hand to hand attack for a rifle (bayonet).
It would be really easy to add a grenade launcher attack onto a rifle by enabling the throw suffix, also people could just define new animation types if they wanted to make totaly new weapons eg: a sword or a crossbow
It´s something similar - FIFE ues *.xml-files for controlling animations.
Just have a look into content/gfx/critters - there you´ll find them.
Animations then will be organised with something like that:
Just have a look into content/gfx/critters - there you´ll find them.
Animations then will be organised with something like that:
Code:
<action id="0" direction="255">
<animation src="art/critters/nmwarraa.frm"/>
<partial-action number="0">
<frame-range first="0" last="8"/>
<partial-action action="0" number="1" direction="255"/>
</partial-action>
</action>Wild_qwerty
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
okay I just updated my post with how I figured it could be. Looks like you guys have already thought of it though