New Online Fallout game

godeatgod

godeatgod

First time out of the vault
Hi everyone,

After seeing what the russian team has done with the fallout online game , i got the ideea of creating another fallout game,

I know contributing to their project is better than starting a new one but unfortunately there's a language barrier that i cannot cross at the moment, and this would make it rather difficult.

The new project will be done using adobe's new air technology which will make it run in just a few seconds from a web page minimal hassle, and a lot of cool features.

Not to mention development of the client will be a breeze.


Some rough features as i've thought them through:


* MMO game based on the fallout universe and associated mechanics


* Server architecture allows adding of content at runtime, so anyone can add their maps to the live server.

So if anyone's interested let's start this.
 
The language barrier isn't that big anymore. We have some english speaking people on board. Not much sure, but there are some.
I don't think, that a new project would make that much sense.

Also you sould show something in the beginning. Some progress or at least a real concept, and so on.
 
godeatgod said:
The new project will be done using adobe's new air technology which will make it run in just a few seconds from a web page minimal hassle, and a lot of cool features.
Click to expand...

Well, does it run on Linux? Can Adobe Air manage several hundred players at once without NSA computers? Is it free? Can you use it to make an engine? Those are just some very basic questions :-)
 
Yes,

It does run on Linux just right,

It has the technology to support more players in the same time than fallout's maps can fit,

The question also begs a response on the server side component of the game which is responsible for the quality of the network play.

Adobe's flex sdk is free software (free as in free speech) or how others like to put it Open source.

There are plenty of engines that run on flash based technology, some of them 3d isometric.

Now at this time i dont have anything to show because i just got the ideea yesterday, and started hacking on it.

What i've done last night was write map / frm parsers which allow us to read the maps and display them.

I will post a version online later today for anyone interested.

Now there are a few things that must be taken into account :

* The game will be free to play
* The game sources and all related tools will be made available under the GPL license (open source)
 
Ok, a bit of a status report,


Although i had time in the weekend, yesterday i was busy with my ussual bill paying game projects.

But i have done this fallout map / frm utility.

Here is a screenshot :

Fallout1.png


If anyone is interested we could turn this into a full featured fallout 2 editor.

[/img]
 
@Wolna :

For now, i'ts just a framework for loading maps from fallout 2,

But there is a wide range of directions and multiple utilities can span from this project :

1. The New Online fallout game (havent figured out a name, but have an ideea, something like "Vault-Tek Collective Simulation Program")
2. Fallout mod editor


I'll put the code online, as for the binary
i'm still not sure if i have the right to publish a software that uses data from fallout 2 files (not a lawyer).

@Karel :
The maps are loaded from the master.dat and critter.dat files from the fallout 2 installation folder using regular file reading routines available in the AS3 platform (its very much like Java).

There still seems to be some problems with the scripts tag in a few maps, and unfortunately i'll only have time to debug it properly in the end of the week.
 
No the language is actionscript, as i said its a bit like java,

And what i'm doing is trying to recruit a team here.

We'd need :

- 1 more developer
- as many graphics people and setting people as we can get.

I'm pondering whether to stick with using the fallout data formats, or to develop our own.

The pro's :

- if we stick with fallout 2's formats we could use all the already existing mods into our online game straight away, because there's a lot of content out there done by great people, and it would be a waste not to be able to include it.

- We'd inevitably have to develop a set of really good tools for creating and modifying content, and this could be a great help to the rest of the modding community.

The con's :

The formats aren't very well known as there are still some bits and pieces that are unaccounted for.
 
yes, you think c++ or python would be better ?

C++ is great but would need something like sdl to make it run on all platforms and would be an executable,

And python is nice as well, but is too much of a drag if you're just using it as an inline scripting engine. Lua is much more apropriate, as it has a smaller memory footprint, and needs less cpu crunches.
 
No ist just that i am looking for some talented coders, but yas i see you are busy with your own stuff ;) whatever, your tool looks great.

I am just working on a programm, too.

An friendly Gui for Mash's RSP and Timeslip's sfall.

but that'S another story ;)
 
Sounds great, but unfortunately i can rarely make time for hobby projects,

I ussually do mobile games for profit, Symbian and J2ME, you might have even played some of mine as i see you're from germany.

I did a lot of games for Coca Cola DE a couple of years back.
(Coke fridge, Coke Mauermeister Fussbal something, and last year Fantarize your world)


I'm sure this project will pickup once i get a live demo that people will be able to play online.
 
I see you are a made man ;)

I search pople for port fallout to F.I.F.E (engine emulator, cause i think this si the first step to make fo better for modding) not as you think for the pogramm i just code, NO this is no problem.

Here a screensshot, its just a GUI i am not good enouth for programs like you make, cause i cannot c++ :(

Just a newbie in coding ;)

configpw9.png
 
Mr.Wolna said:
I see you are a made man ;)

I search pople for port fallout to F.I.F.E (engine emulator, cause i think this si the first step to make fo better for modding) not as you think for the pogramm i just code, NO this is no problem.

Here a screensshot, its just a GUI i am not good enouth for programs like you make, cause i cannot c++ :(

Just a newbie in coding ;)

configpw9.png
Click to expand...

Hi, mr. wolna. I am learning C++. And it isn't as difficult as you may think. Though i dont know you..

Try this website for learning.
http://www.cplusplus.com/

I am tempted to help you out with your project, but as soon as I learn C++, I am planning on doing my own for fallout tactics. (I plan to add speech trees). Although I also have to learn assembly language in order to do what i want lol. *frick*
 
Prolly better starting point:
http://www.planetpdf.com/developer/article.asp?ContentID=6634

Concerning your C++ comment: I kindly disagree! C++ is one of the hardest languages you can learn today and it has many dark corners (e.g. undefined behaviour). Writing your own Fallout tactics game will take you several years if you're not really comfortable with C++.

And being comfortable means having a few C++ software projects under your belt. Compiling other people's code compared to designing an engine from scratch is something _totally_ different. You'll need knowledge about software engineering, you need to learn the APIs that you'll use.
 
mvBarracuda said:
Concerning your C++ comment: I kindly disagree! C++ is one of the hardest languages you can learn today and it has many dark corners (e.g. undefined behaviour). Writing your own Fallout tactics game will take you several years if you're not really comfortable with C++.

And being comfortable means having a few C++ software projects under your belt. Compiling other people's code compared to designing an engine from scratch is something _totally_ different. You'll need knowledge about software engineering, you need to learn the APIs that you'll use.
Click to expand...
I agree, C++ is hard to be used effectively... But the hardest thing is to plan in advance, or else you end up rewriting most of the code every few months :)


To the planned project - it would be great if you could create a working map editor, modders just love the original 640x480 with hundreds of critters in one row.

I was wondering how you load the map (opening master.dat is easy, it's basically a zip file) - do you use some special code? (I've never really read the map specification, so I'm not sure how hard it is to load and display it).

Also, how about the "speed issue" - Action Script sounds like flash to me, which is usually very slow for any really dynamic content.
 
Thanks guys, but i thin i will first learn Python befor try c++.


for other thinks i do not need help, ist all about cause i dreaming of a new fallout engine(based in FIFE).
 
Karel said:
To the planned project - it would be great if you could create a working map editor, modders just love the original 640x480 with hundreds of critters in one row.
Click to expand...

If you meant it in an ironic manner, layout is not important at this point, this is just something i pulled out in 2 minutes to view the map and some basic information about selected objects.

A real layout would have to be implemented that would be easy to use, and i'd need some modder feedback for that.


Karel said:
I was wondering how you load the map (opening master.dat is easy, it's basically a zip file) - do you use some special code? (I've never really read the map specification, so I'm not sure how hard it is to load and display it).
Click to expand...

The documentation at http://falloutmods.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Fallout_and_Fallout_2_file_formats is pretty comprehensive, the only thing i couldnt find there was how to read the critters.lst file which was a special exception to the lst format, but i understood that from a C++ map editor source code.

I've put everything in an easy to use constant list for all the critter animations and stances, which i can explain to anyone interested. Probably put it on the wikia site when i'll have time.

The loading process is constructed in such a way to allow both packed .dat files or unpacked from the data folder files to be read.

The only difference is that the packed files are read in memory and then processed while the unpacked files are read as a directly from the disk.

Karel said:
Also, how about the "speed issue" - Action Script sounds like flash to me, which is usually very slow for any really dynamic content.
Click to expand...

Actually flash was designed with just that in mind, intense graphic heavy animation, and it does a lot better than its java counterpart at that.

As for file loading or other operations, there's no reason to believe that it would be any slower than any other pcode or interpreted language as Python or Java.

A big complex map will load in about 3 seconds with all the auxiliary information (prototypes, msg's, frame animations).[/url]
 
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