Project announcement: Zero-Projekt

Two new Screencatpures about animation

Since our static screenshots can only show one part of our progress, we decided to offer 2 new "ingame videos" showing some of our animation tests within FIFE.

You´ll see two different methods of animation in FIFE - map object animations and gui animations:

1. Mapobjects

For now, FIFE only provides the possibility of looping one single object animation. The next relases will improve the animation code and let you select which animation is played - and when. Nevertheless, the current method helps to test animations ingame.

We animated our windmill with a simple rotatio, burning barrels - and skybounds grey wolf runs on the map, too. There isn´t anything optimized, so the performance is very poor. Mainly because of the windmill, which is ATM very huge. So don´t be surprised if the video lacks 2 or more frames on some positions.

2. GUI animations

For now, there is no "official" way to create animations with standard GUI widgets. Skybound did some tests with *.frms, but as Zero won´t use this format, I needed to find another solution. I successfully played around with timers which let me move around objects or replace graphics. I wrote a small demo which you can find in /content/scripts/demos of the current FIFE release.

We used a more complex version of the timer animations to animate our analog HP display. It reacts on the characters amount of HP: Decrease if he looses HP, increases to max_HP if he gains HP. In combination with our combat simulator, we are able to visualize the output of the current combat.

Note: These method is only for testing purposes - official solutions from FIFE should both increase the quality and simplify the creation of gui animations.

Videos:

Here you can download the videos. Video a) shows one ouf our former maps, where we used old tiles. As you can see on our new screenshots, they aren´t used anymore :)


a.) Shows the windmill, the zero coke (^^), burning barrels and the analog HP display
( ca. 20 MB)

b.) Shows a more detailed demo of the analog HP display
( ca. 500 kb)


Cheers,
the Zero-Projekt team
 
It’s been so quiet…

It has been a few months since the last newspost, which has lead some people to believe that Zero had, like so many similar projects, vanished into thin air (we got some mails accordingly).

However, we can happily assure you that this is not the case. Our work on Zero continues. We did have a little low during the summer holidays, but this seems to be finally overcome by now.

Though we were not completely idle during that time, we mainly had to deal with various internal affairs and processes, none of which would have been interesting to you, let alone being worth a newspost.

Cooperation with FIFE

As some of you might already have read, FIFE has been/is being remodeled at the time. This has rendered quite some work by our team obsolete, and made our planned “Techdemo 1” pointless.

FIFE has however asked for a cooperation, both to test new features they are implementing and to give future users a little starting aid. Within this cooperation we are developing a new Techdemo together with FIFE, though it will not deal with the contents or the world of Zero. For that, we have other plans… but we will speak of these later ;)

As you can imagine, we are not acting completely unselfish or because of selfless human kindness – well, they scratch our back and we’ll scratch theirs, and a new Zero Demo is already planned.

New media

Due to the refactoring of FIFE we threw our current gamelogic away and port it to python. The former scripts were written in LUA which isn´t supported in the next few FIFE releases. The map code is also under heavy changes so we have to rebuild our maps with the new syntax when it is stable enough. So we can´t show you new screenshots in the next few weeks but present you our first attempt for the intro movie:

Zero-Projekt: Was vom Morgen blieb [~20MB, mpg]

This version won´t make it into the final game as it was only a test - but one which we are proud of.

Regards,
the Zero-Projekt Team
 
2 years Zero-Projekt - ~90 Screenshots

Since 2 years now, the Zero-Projekt team works on their ambitious cRPG project - "Was vom Morgen blieb". That we are still here and very activ is more then a reason to revel the birthday of the project on the 19th of February 2008.

We created a screenshot gallery which shows an overview on the development of the past two years of both Zero-Projekt and the engine, FIFE. It contains about 84 images and can be found here:

-> Screenshot gallery

pc_character.png

"We were always just around the corner...."


Everybody who is interested in the project and wants to put some question to the developers or just wants to celebrate with us is invited to join our IRC on the 19th of February 2008 at 16 pm (GMT +1)

Zero-Projekt IRC-Birthdayparty
19th of February 2008
16:00 pm (GMT +1)
Channel: #zero-projekt
Server: irc.quakenet.org



New: rendered backgrounds


(active) NPCs conquer the map


Traders and their stores 1


Traider and their stores 2


PC animations 1


PC animations 2


PC animations 3


PC animations 4


GUI - inventory


GUI - character sheet


GUI - audioplayer


Map - Hex Hex :-)


Regards,
the Zero-Projekt team
 
@Dude101

Heh - thanks :) That reminds me that I forgot to add this image:



I like this, too - it's fun to drive it on the map. It also has an idle animation for the neutral gear - the tail pipe is smoking :D
 
Yet another Update - Zero Showreel

With our last news about the birthday of the project, we showed you some of our progress by releasing screenshots. This time we can offer a Showreel about the development of the last weeks which shows some ingame scenes.

We hope to give you a deeper look into Zero and - that could be important for modders - what FIFE is already capable of.

We can't mention that often enough: FIFE is under heavy development and new features are nearly added every day. So we encourage everybody who wants to create an own cRPG (or other type of game) to have a look into FIFE and join the modding community of this engine.

You can grab the video here: Zero Showreel (~40 MB, avi)

Of course this stuff is still WIP - but we'd like to hear your feedback :)

Cheers,
the Zero-Projekt team
 
Could you youtube it as well?

People are more apt to watch a youtube clip than a 40 MB download.
 
Brother None said:
Could you youtube it as well?

People are more apt to watch a youtube clip than a 40 MB download.
Click to expand...

I am uploading it at the moment. Should be up tomorrow (at the latest).
 
Wow, that looks really nice. The scenery is really gorgeous and the music though free, was really good to.

BTW *cough* 25MB connection *cough*
 
@brother none

The team personally don't like it to put videos on youtube. We offer the file via our server which should be enough. If people are to lazy / can't DL the file because of their connection, they can fallback to the screenshots. (Though I know this may sound a bit strict and inapprehensible in times of web 2.0 to some people)

@dude101

Thanks :) The track in the movie is called "Aerial" by microtonner (you can find the releases of this group on this netlabel -> http://laridae.at).
 
Well, it's kind of that we want to decide on how _we_ provide the stuff of our project in which we invested 2 years of our life now.

This - of course - doesn't mean that we don't allow putting our stuff there. But we won't do it for now. Call it marketing strategy if you like..
 
You can do whatever you want, it's your game, but...
chewie said:
Call it marketing strategy if you like..
Click to expand...
That's more of a non-strategy.

Putting something on Youtube means a hundred times the exposure you get from a 40 MB file. Literally, more than a hundred times. So the only reason not to do so would be....if you want less people to see it?

BTW *cough* 25MB connection *cough*
Click to expand...

A lot of people have good connections now. But if I casually browse around and see a Youtube link on a game, I click it. If I casually browse around and see a 40 meg download, I ignore it. It's not about not being able to download it, it's just about the treshhold for casual curiosity being lower on Youtube.
 
Brother None said:
You can do whatever you want, it's your game, but...
chewie said:
Call it marketing strategy if you like..
Click to expand...
That's more of a non-strategy.
Click to expand...

Heh.. and I'd call that a buzz word.. ;-)

Brother None said:
Putting something on Youtube means a hundred times the exposure you get from a 40 MB file. Literally, more than a hundred times. So the only reason not to do so would be....if you want less people to see it?
Click to expand...

No - there are always more possibilities then 0 / 1 - we aren't machines. :wink:

Well, like I said - I understand that most of you won't get it why we decided so. Perhaps you understand it better if I tell you that we don't want to spread our WIP stuff _that_ wide.

We want to show the closest communities what we are planning to come up with - and we decided that it isn't time yet to spread the word all over the world.

That's why we don´t digg it, post it on every linux board (which would be my personal target audience), youtube etc.. But I know - it's hard to understand. We had that discussion already with several people :-D.

Nevertheless - thanks for the news coverage. :)
 
Zero-Projekt update

After yet another silly season, the Zero-Projekt proudly presents some new informations about our work and the current status of the development.



loadingscreen


Our new framework...
Our technical division made some very good progress which not only bumped our motivation to the next level but also the project itself. The biggest step was the development of our new framework which allows us now to not have to rely on the FIFE demo client (which has a completely different mission, so this step was important).
With the new framework we can not only develop faster, but also more flexible as it already has the shape of a 'real' game client - and debugging is much easier.

In the meantime, the FIFE project released 2008.1 which allowed us to even improve the framework with the new features of FIFE - like the update to guichan 0.8.1 and the greatly improved version of the editor client.

Here are some of the highlights of our technical development:
* object interaction (PC - NPC; PC - objects like doors / lockers etc.)
* testcode for the new renderers FIFE provide (generic render, cell highlighting or floating text render - which are more flexible to e.g. realize a falloutish cursor highlighting by painting a red hex :) )
* maplogic module to give maps individual interactive objects (NPCs etc.)
* integration of the ruleset module in all necessary areas of the code
* first combat visualizations
* prototype for Drag'n Drop
* FSM-AI (Finite State Machines)



The framework loaded the worldmap, developer IDE in the background


For sure, it's still a lot of work to do - but we created the most solid basement we ever had. We also celebrated commit #500 in our SVN repository - which boosts our motivation even further.



Anniversary: commit # 500


Graphics & animations

In this sector, we mainly polish our current animations and develop new animationsets. Furthermore, we are migration our graphical content to a new render setup for blender, which will improve the lighting and shadows. Last but not least we work on the content we need for the planned demo ;-)



A special request of our story department... ;)


NPCs: blacksmith & villager



combat in Zero
One of the best examples of the capabilities of the new framework is the integration of the combat system. For now not all connections to the ruleset are done, but still - we can fight on the maps. :)


PC vs. NPC


New team members

Not only the main work has developed nicely - the structure of the team did also. We'd like to introduce our new python programmers Giselher and Helios2000, as well as Grayfox - who joined the story department and currently focus on the story for the demo.


additional media



Drag'n Drop


Some blood - and more important - the well known log messages are a must for Zero, too ;)


Exploring a new map


New textures for the EiRi
 
@Blackened

Well, we created an awesome hybrid system called "CATS" which combines RT and RB ....

*scnr*

No, seriously: we took the oldschool way and use both a hexgeometry and TB combat. :)
 
A small huntig party....

By testing some things in terms of AI, we created some funny routines and decided to add them to the testmap.

Now the player really has to hurry to earn some exp, because two allied friends joined him - seeking for zombies and kills, too.

The result was that we had to increase the zombie count on the map - as well as reduce the range of the HK G33, but it is still funny as hell. ;D

Here are some impressions of the fights:


The player tries to separate from the group to earn some exp to gain at least one level-up


We all know it ... the wasteland can be rough sometimes ... 3 vs 1


The scout already battles the enemy - reinforcements are on route.

Regards,
the Zero-Projekt team
 
Progress update

Again, we have some news to report about our crpg project "Zero - Was vom Morgen blieb". Since the last news roundup, we developed quite some things and improved our framework - because of that and because we don't want to stall again in terms of showing you our progress, we'd give you this little summary including a new screencapture.



Zero now supports multiple languages - by using GNU gettext

Latest features:
  • Implementation of a localisation System (GNU gettext)
  • Refactorisation of the Drag'n Drop system ("real" Drag'n Drop is now available)
  • Refactorisation of the inventory system (e. g. slot and ammo organisation)
  • Refactorisation of the map geometry ("nicer" hexfields etc.)
  • Trigger prototypes for ambient sound, hiding / showing roofs and elevations etc.

Zero-Projekt: feature demo (sound, combat, drag'n drop, ruleset, localisation) [*.ogg, ~ 80 MB]
(best viewed with VLC)
 
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