FIFE - a cross platform isometric game engine

[Koby]

I'm embarrassed to say I can't do ISO any more, I need camera angles and shit. I don't need glow or HDR or any of that crap, but really I'd be looking for something just a little more than this.

Fuck it, it's 2006, we've done the nineties already. I'm hanging out for Fallout 3 and JA3, and find myself really pissed off with what Chris Sawyer did with Locomotion TEN YEARS after Transport Tycoon!

Tiny steps, not great fucking stupid leaps that challenge our latest and greatest gaming machines, but progress nonetheless.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not dumping on this thing by a long way - there are a boatload of folks who have been hanging out for a tool like this for longer than I can remember. The guys who have been working on JA 1.3 deserve medals (especially because JA3 will probably be ALL graphic glitz with no gameplay, as usual - ditto for Fallout 3, I suspect).

What I fear is being missed is the 'middle ground'. On the one hand we have Total Graphic Whoredom, and on the other, Hardcore ISO retro. I guess the Bioware stuff bridged the gap a bit a long time ago in a way, but that WAS a long time ago!

But I rant. I love the idea of an RPG creation machine that favours gameplay, interraction, consequence, and all the things we all love. But (as I said up front) the graphics just look naff today. IMHO.

And to be quite honest, I'd much rather an antiquated ISO engine with a decent game attached to it than a shiny showpiece with no gameplay. But surely we can have decent gameplay with decent graphics? Please?

Well don't be, embarrassed that is, the 'middle ground' is a good place to be in, and the frightening speed at which it is shrinking is one of the major factors in the decline of crpgs (just like a lot of other things).

I can't praise the 'middle ground' enough, and not just in game developers or the computer games industry context, I'm talking across the board here, ranging from sub 100$ commodities through paid services (like medical insurance), cars and houses and all the way up to big cooperation economy. But one of thing my life experience has taught me is that the 'middle ground' isn't as easy to net as should be, the 'middle ground' seems to be a sneaky little bastard, that keeps moving around when you're not looking.

One of the things that I think my fellow old school RPGers are taking TOO far is their death grip on ISO, if graphic is so low in priority in a good crpg game then why INSIST on ISO?

Yes, I know, every time game developers take the 3D route it (in 9 out of 10 cases) result in a craptastic game, I KNOW, I actually favor 2D art over 3D environment, btw I do insist on a turn-base combat, turn-base combat is a FEATURE, unlike graphics which is purely cosmetic. I don’t mind if developers will get on the 3D bandwagon for the sole purpose of getting their game to a wider audience, AS LONG AS IT DOESN'T COME AT THE EXPENCE OF GAMEPLAY.

Back to the 'middle ground', the problem is whenever the developers choose to go 3D, THEY NEVER STOP THERE, they have to use state of the art technology, pour ridicules amount of man-hours on modeling, textures and animation, and then they have to make it beautiful and immersive. Fuck state of the art technology, fuck animation, fuck beautiful and FUCK IMMERSIVE. Just slap some mediocre 3D graphic together and BE DONE WITH IT.

But NOOO, that’s not enough, current 3d engine are not good enough, they need to build their own 3d engine from scratch because they want to be innovating, what the fuck do graphical innovation has to do with RPG???

<sigh>

lurker

 

[mvBarracuda]

One of the things that I think my fellow old school RPGers are taking TOO far is their death grip on ISO, if graphic is so low in priority in a good crpg game then why INSIST on ISO?

It depends on the concept the devs got on their mind. 1st person or ISO perspective CAN be an important element of gameplay.

E.g. the Oblivion devs seem to have used the 1st person perspective to show us what Oblivion really is: a FPS with a skill system :wink:

And there are games like Fallout where the devs decided to use the ISO perspective though there were quite some 3D RPGs around this time too. They used ISO because they wanted to capture the atmosphere of table top RPGs and that's way easier with ISO than with 1st person. And I think that the perspective automatically changes the gameplay. I don't care wether it's 2D or 3D but I would almost always prefer ISO over 1st or 3rd person.

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

One of the things that I think my fellow old school RPGers are taking TOO far is their death grip on ISO, if graphic is so low in priority in a good crpg game then why INSIST on ISO?

It depends on the concept the devs got on their mind. 1st person or ISO perspective CAN be an important element of gameplay.

E.g. the Oblivion devs seem to have used the 1st person perspective to show us what Oblivion really is: a FPS with a skill system :wink:

And there are games like Fallout where the devs decided to use the ISO perspective though there were quite some 3D RPGs around this time too. They used ISO because they wanted to capture the atmosphere of table top RPGs and that's way easier with ISO than with 1st person. And I think that the perspective automatically changes the gameplay. I don't care wether it's 2D or 3D but I would almost always prefer ISO over 1st or 3rd person.

IS there such a thing as a table-top (as opposed to P&P) RPG?

 

[mvBarracuda]

Sorry, I mixed things up. I was talking about P&P RPGs.

 

[mvBarracuda]

New official FIFE release

OMFG it's done:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fife/F ... _win32.exe

Install guide:
1. Download
2. Execute the self-extracting 7zip archive and uncompress to a folder of your choice
3. Read the readme.txt that can be found within the folder where you uncompressed FIFE

And here are two screenshots of the new version:

 

[LCJr.]

Congratulations!

 

[Higher Game]

Nice, when can we begin to see games for it?

 

[User was nabbed fit]

Yaya!

 

[mvBarracuda]

Nice, when can we begin to see games for it?

Probably "when it's done".

Seriously: we're working as fast as we can and we did find out over the last year that too much pressure just totally kills your real life. The progress rate really depends on the number of developers we can attract or lose in the next months. ATM there are just 2 active programmers who work on the engine. One of the two and me take a break from the project till April / May to get our university stuff sorted out.

So I guess everything depends on if we find somebody who works on FIFE in this time while we can't invest much time into the project. I'll talk to a new interested programmer this evening and if it works out we'll hopefully see some new cool features in the next months. If he decides to not join the project I'm afraid that there won't be much progress till April.

And before you ask: yes we've tried and invested a _lot_ of time into recruiting new members but it's damn hard to find _good_ programmers who work for _free_.

 

[FrancoTAU]

Congrats man. Just to clarify though, a potential RPG maker could use your engine for free if he wanted to charge for his work? Or is it just free to use for freeware games?

 

[mvBarracuda]

Congrats man. Just to clarify though, a potential RPG maker could use your engine for free if he wanted to charge for his work? Or is it just free to use for freeware games?

Nope it's free for all BUT our engine is licensed under GPL 2.0.

That means if you modify our sourcecode you'll need to provide the modified sources. However you still own the copyright on:
* The applied sourcecode changes
* The maps you've created
* The lua scripts you've written
* The sounds, gfx, dialogues, etc. you've created

Because of the nature of the GPL you can't use our engine with non-GPL libraries. But if everything works out, that won't be necessary at all because FIFE will offer you everything that is needed to make a complete 2d ISO RPG with.

 

[Gwendo]

So, this program is just to "paint" 2D isometric maps, like Fallout, or does it have, for example, a combat engine, a dialogue engine, interface, etc?

Let's say I would like to make a small RPG set in the Fallout universe, like a mod.

FIFE is all I need to do it? (Besides art, music and special fx, of course)

 

[mvBarracuda]

So, this program is just to "paint" 2D isometric maps, like Fallout, or does it have, for example, a combat engine, a dialogue engine, interface, etc?

Combat engine: not yet.

Dialogue engine: not yet. Though you can already create dialogues with the current Lua interface. We'll offer an easier dialogue interface later.

Interface: yes. Take a look at the current interface scripts.

Let's say I would like to make a small RPG set in the Fallout universe, like a mod.

FIFE is all I need to do it? (Besides art, music and special fx, of course)

In theory: yes. However you'll do better by using the Fallout 2 engine itself instead of using FIFE if you really just want to create a little Fallout mod. If you would like to create a total conversion based on Fallout e.g. like FanMadeFallout however FIFE would be a good solution IMHO.

 

[The_Nameless_Prick]

So, no combat engine and no dialouge yet?

You said it was done, right?

 

[mvBarracuda]

So, no combat engine and no dialouge yet?

You said it was done, right?

Open source is never done, is it?

This "OMFG it's done" was more meant to say that we finally were able to pull out another public release. The last one was from May 2006.

So to be more correct it should be: OMFG we're done with 2007.0

 

[Higher Game]

I just went flaccid.

 

[mvBarracuda]

I know all the code junkies at RPGcodex couldn't wait for the src package release.

So here we go:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fife/F ... rc.tar.bz2

 

[spacemoose]

I'm looking forward to the Wasteland remake made with this. you know it has to happen.

 

[mvBarracuda]

I'm looking forward to the Wasteland remake made with this. you know it has to happen.

All we can do is to provide you a good engine. The next milestone 2007.1 should become a really important one as we're planning to finalize the FIFE map and animation formats. That means you could start creating maps and gfx for FIFE after that without needing to worry that these files are useless with later FIFE versions.

Besides that: The old src package was broken as I packaged it on win32 and that screwed the line breaks :-(

An updated and fixed packaged was just released by us

Grab it here:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fife/F ... rc.tar.bz2

 

[Ladonna]

If you can make a combat engine as good as Fallout, and a dialogue engine as good too, then it will be sweet.

When you have got a 'finished' (As in what you said above, not need to worry about art, maps being out of date with future releases) please tell us.

Has anyone got a copy of the Wasteland walkthrough? I know one existed, and it would make it easier to make maps with.

 

[mvBarracuda]

If you can make a combat engine as good as Fallout, and a dialogue engine as good too, then it will be sweet.

Why use FIFE if Fallout already offers this? ...

We'll provide a simple example combat ruleset but it will be up to the community to recreate the Fallout or whatever commercial ruleset on FIFE. We can provide example templates but we've got no time to implement and test all the little details. The same goes for dialogues

When you have got a 'finished' (As in what you said above, not need to worry about art, maps being out of date with future releases) please tell us.

The map and animation format is hopefully already finalized in the next milestone 2007.1. That would mean that further changes to the format won't break old maps / animations anymore.

Has anyone got a copy of the Wasteland walkthrough? I know one existed, and it would make it easier to make maps with.

Don't know if you mean that one, but Per from NMA wrote one:
http://user.tninet.se/~jyg699a/wasteland.html

 

[Ladonna]

No, there was a book, with all the maps, I will check Replacement docs and see if theres a copy there to be downloaded.

Now, have you tried using the Fallout modding engine? Its not noob friendly AT ALL. And I do not know if new animations, etc, can be easily introduced to it due to the clunkiness of the interface. It sucks.

In regards to the map and animation format, I will wait a little while until the 'Hopefully' goes away :wink: .

In any case, thanks to you guys for making the efforts, its something to keep an eye on (And hopefully use!).

 

[mvBarracuda]

Now, have you tried using the Fallout modding engine? Its not noob friendly AT ALL. And I do not know if new animations, etc, can be easily introduced to it due to the clunkiness of the interface. It sucks.

I completely agree and yes: I've tried Fallout modding. This was more of a test question as we get similar feedback by people who have never worked with the Fallout engine before.

In regards to the map and animation format, I will wait a little while until the 'Hopefully' goes away :wink:.

Even if the map format is stable, we'll still need to get the editor tool into an useful state. Our old editor coder did leave the team because of private reasons and now we have a hard time finding new interested programmers for the editor coder position.

In any case, thanks to you guys for making the efforts, its something to keep an eye on (And hopefully use!).

Thanks for the kind words Would be great to see a Wasteland remake based on FIFE in the future. I always appreciate it if people actually plan and organize these kind of things instead of just brainstorming and trashing it later because it would be "too much work" or would "cost too much time".

 

[mvBarracuda]

FIFE sends an SOS - A call for help

Welcome to yet another FIFE news update, this time it's a rather important one. You've prolly already noticed that there was not much SVN activity after the last official release last month. Phoku is busy with his exams and jobs and won't have time for FIFE in the next couple of months. As everyone who's still left on the team seems to be incredibly busy too I want to send an SOS to all FIFE fans out there.

There were no major code additions to our Subversion repository since about one month. So if no wonder happens this phase of slowdown will probably last for several months. We know that nobody is eagerly awaiting to join a team that is in a massive slowdown but our aim was to be always honest about the status of the project. If you know any developer who could help out and would be interested to work on FIFE: don't hesitate to send us a message to our mailing list: fife-public@lists.sourceforge.net

We're in the desperate need of experienced C++ coders who are interested in working on the engine or the editor. If we won't be able to attract new contributors we'll make no big steps forward in the development for the next several months. There is a list with tasks to address for interested developers:
https://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engine/report/1

Furthermore you should read our getting started guide for developers to find out about the basics of FIFE:
http://wiki.fifengine.de/index.php?titl ... ng_started

Last but not least there are also some small signs of hope for the FIFE team. We got two new interested developers on team: labrat and shales. Labrat currently works on a general solver interface and wants to integrate the Micropather pathfinding library into FIFE:
http://www.grinninglizard.com/MicroPather/

Shales works on color-keying for the SDL renderer to speed up the transparency effects with software rendering. But both new developers are rather busy with their real life so their enlistment alone won't help to boost our progress significantly. We hope that someone hears this call for help

Last but not least we're planning to restructure our wiki. mvBarracuda already started to overwork the wiki frontpage and planned more important changes for the next weeks. We would like to get some feedback from the community how they like the new wiki structure and what could be improved:
http://wiki.fifengine.de

See you at the next development update and I hope we can bring you better news next time.

 

[mvBarracuda]

A new Win32 SVN snapshot is available

New features:
* First basic color-keying support for the SDL renderer (resulting in improved performance)
* Map size dependent, configurable geometries
* Custom VFS sources via vfs.addSource (see content/etc/vfs_sources.txt)
* Increased startup speed with FO2 DAT files
* Enhanced camera with support for multiple viewports (see content/scripts/demos/map_control.lua)
* Built against SDL_image 1.2.5 and guichan 0.61 now

Grab it here:
http://members.fifengine.de/bin/FIFE_r896_win32.exe