PARPG - nuclear winter RPG in the making

Brother None

Brother None

This ghoul has seen it all
Orderite
A project our forum dwellers may have stumbled upon already is now ready for more public viewing.<blockquote><h3>About PARPG</h3>PARPG - short form for Post-Apocalyptic RPG - is an isometric 2D roleplaying game inspired by classics of the golden age of the genre such as Fallout, Arcanum and Planescape: Torment, while being set in the harsh winter of post-nuclear Scandinavia.

It is the undertaking of an independent development team to create an old school RPG in the spirit of the aforementioned games while offering the game itself and all tools created as free downloads. The complete source code of the game and tools as well as of all assets (maps, graphics, text, music, etc.) are released under open source licenses. PARPG is entirely written in Python and powered by the open source game engine FIFE.<h3>Project and team philosophy</h3>The work on PARPG began in early February 2009 and over the course of the last months a team has assembled to create a single player roleplaying experience. We have decided to use isometric 2d graphics instead of trying to tackle the complexity of an 3d engine. The undertaking is ambitious enough so the team would rather focus on the game play of PARPG than to compete with commercial projects in a battle for the best next gen graphics glitz that you can't win as an indie developer anyway.

PARPG is meant to feature meaninful choices and consequences throughout the course of the game. There will be multiple paths to complete quests including non-violent ways. Combat will be fought in a turnbased manner, inspired by the combat mechanics of the first two Fallout games. Furthermore we are aiming for well-written detailed branching tree dialogs.

What sets PARPG apart from other independent RPGs is both the non-profit nature of the project as well as the open development philosophy behind it. The entire development wiki as well as the forums are public; the same goes for the SVN repository where the sourcecode and all assets are stored. This way interested community members can always grab the latest version of the game and test it themselves.<h3>A first release</h3>While there is still a long way to go before we will see a full featured release of PARPG, we would like to release a tech demo of PARPG as soon as possible. This first release is planned for the end of 2009 and will hopefully already feature a simple inventory / object / looting model, basic branching tree dialog, a first customized version of the FIFE map editor to create PARPG maps as well as load and save functionality.<h3>Looking for additional contributors</h3>Creating a complex roleplaying game is an ambitious undertaking so the team appreciates every helping hand. While there are open positions in all development departments (programming, graphics, audio, game mechanics, writing) we would like to emphasize the we are currently in severe need of additional 3d graphic artists. You can use your modeling tool of choice and while we can offer no monetary compensation due the non-profit nature of the project, getting your models into a release surely makes a good portfolio piece.

If you would like to lend us a hand, don't hesitate and get in contact with us by introducing yourself at our forums. If you want to talk to the developers you can join the IRC channel of the project as well.<h3>Additional information</h3>Now you are curious and would like to know more about the project? Check out the development blog, the project wiki or head over to the gallery for all the eye candy.</blockquote><center>


</center>
 
Cool stuff! Hopefully the extreme openness of the project will help it develop much more quickly and actually get finished.

I like the idea of a winter approach, hopefully you guys get some good snow textures because those seem to be some of the toughest to pull off in video games

On a game play note if you guys don't make it crazy detailed - like requiring you to eat and drink, hopefully such things will at least be available so one could role play it (just an example, i do that in fallout 1/2)
 
That gasoline tank looks nicked from Commandos 2 and the overall graphical style reminds me of FOT.

Too early to judge this, but atm it looks half decent, yeah.
 
Fallout modder continuum created the gas tank.

Concerning your question Goweigus: we plan to add some extra depth to it that you don't see in mainstream RPGs at this point. I personally liked how eating an drinking was implemented in the Realms of Arkania series and I wouldn't mind something like that in PARPG.
 
An awesome game to play Norwegian black-metal too...

If it ever gets finished.
 
Eating and Drinking:

Current plan is that you don't really need to drink. Most months there is plenty of snow.

Food will be important but handled abstractly - if you have "food" in inventory and/or some food source, then you will automatically eat it. You might have to set yourself on short rations though...
 
looks like they are going from scratch for the gfx witch is good so if they add more it won't stick out like in FO. hope to see the tech demo this Christmas or new year.
 
Do you plan to implement effects of extreme temperature, like freezing to death, or losing toes to frost bite for example? Or is everyone assumed to have proper winter gear?
 
Haha always loved oregon trail :P

I imagine that freezing could work similar to radiation, be exposed to too much and bad things start to happen, upgrade outfit, eat, etc to heal (hey a lot like fallout...)

I am most interested in what these deeper elements are that you plan to include like few other RPGS before have done

another great looking project, if you guys open up a paypal donation or something I will contribute *although i am not sure if that would be against your code
 
Something has to be done on the textures because everything looks clean, "rug it down" a whole lot so that it looks dirty and wornout.

The clothes shouldnt shine, for one example.

The walls looked great tho!
 
Yep, it's a working title indeed. We'll stick to that until we have a pretty good idea about the story details. Right now we're focusing on creating a first techdemo that just features two simple quests to get started.
 
Cool concept. I really hope this takes off.

I do not like how clean the characters look at this point though. It's like those new fallout 2 models compared to the old ones. The grittier ones looked best by far.
 
Guy at the left on this concept is looking pretty cool. Sirren should go into this direction with his work. So far all characters are looking like "taken" from nice and shinny world, not something I'd expect in post-apoc settings.

But since they're for techdemo only, I wouldn't worry about final version right now.
 
Just spoke to Sirren: it's unlikely that we'll see more dirty, gritty characters in the first release. There is basically a long list of objects that still need to be modeled for the first release and right now Sirren is the only active 3d artist on the team and we didn't have luck to attract additional contributors at the moment.

So you'll likely have to wait for the time after the first techdemo to see furthermore improved character models.
 
Tell Sirren he shall check his nma pm's! :P (If it's the same Sirren we know from Fallout modding, which I assume right now.)
 
That "crossbow" thingy looks particularly interesting to me, pretty PA.

BTW, I hear too many known names around... Contie, Sirren... Good to hear people are working on something.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top