I'm trying to bring this excursus a bit back to topic :-)

FIFE is _NOT_ a library that can be just used in combination with other libraries. It is (or let's better say: should become) a complete game developement framework so you won't need to use any 3rd party libraries for the development of your FIFE-based game at all. But I would be interested what kind of 3rd party libs a software developer would use because the ones features in FIFE wouldn't be sufficent for his / their plans.

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http://www.parpg.net - nuclear winter isometric old school RPG inspired by Fallout, Arcanum & Planescape: Torment

The FIFE team released a slightly updated and fixed source package. I screwed the last release package by compiling it together on win32 but windows line breaks don't go together that well with posix systems :-/

Grab the new source package here:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fife/F ... rc.tar.bz2

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http://www.parpg.net - nuclear winter isometric old school RPG inspired by Fallout, Arcanum & Planescape: Torment

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.

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http://www.parpg.net - nuclear winter isometric old school RPG inspired by Fallout, Arcanum & Planescape: Torment

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

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http://www.parpg.net - nuclear winter isometric old school RPG inspired by Fallout, Arcanum & Planescape: Torment

Phoku revealed the roadmap for the next FIFE releases today and we're planning a GFX contest entitled "Send them in!". You can read about all the details @ our developer blog:
http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/en ... 3/05/08.17

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http://www.parpg.net - nuclear winter isometric old school RPG inspired by Fallout, Arcanum & Planescape: Torment

Just wanted to announce that we've got a new developer on the team who's currently working to get FIFE running on Macintosh again.

If everything works out as planned, we'll already provide universal Mac binaries for the upcoming 2007.1 release :-)

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http://www.parpg.net - nuclear winter isometric old school RPG inspired by Fallout, Arcanum & Planescape: Torment

We're currently working hard to get the 2007.1 release out. Therefore we decided to release a last test build for win32 so users can get an impression what new features are coming with the new release.

Download:
http://members.fifengine.de/bin/FIFE_r988_win32.exe

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http://www.parpg.net - nuclear winter isometric old school RPG inspired by Fallout, Arcanum & Planescape: Torment

Ahh well, the work on the final fixes for 2007.1 is going extremely slow :-/ Seems like we'll need to delay the release till the end of April, if not even further.

So here is at least a new screenshot of the content that will be featured in the official 2007.1 demo map, stay tuned :-)



The graphics have been taken from Reiner's tilesets:
http://reinerstileset.4players.de/

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http://www.parpg.net - nuclear winter isometric old school RPG inspired by Fallout, Arcanum & Planescape: Torment

It's done :-) After over three months of hard work, we've fixed the last issues today and released the 2007.1 milestone of FIFE. The most important improvement is the new custom map format that can be considered as stable. We created a demo map for this release for a number of reasons:
* Show the modders how the FIFE map format and specific concepts like the tilesets, archetypes and prototypes work.
* Set up a starting point for modders so they can get into the world of FIFE more easily.
* Create something that looks totally unFallouty to get away from the "FIFE-is-just-a-Fallout-emulator"-image. Welcome to the Isle of FIFE :-)

Here is a screenshot of our new demo map, using graphics from Reiner's Tilesets:


New features since the 2007.0 release:
* Stable custom XML map format for FIFE including our demo map to show the new features and syntax of it :-)
* FPS limiter (can be set in fife.config) to save important CPU time for future tasks (AI, pathfinding, etc.)
* Tile and object coordinates can be displayed (press "c")
* Color key overriding for Fallout transparency effects (see content/gfx/fallout_overrides.xml)
* Fixed DAT1 decoding code (bug was introduced with the DAT1 rewrite)
* Major map model classes have been exported to Lua and are now accessable via the console
* Map size dependant, configurable geometries
* Colorkeying for the SDL renderer
* Add 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 (Win32 binaries)

Get the win32 package here:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fife/FIFE_2007.1_win32.exe

Get the src package for linux, mac and kind of other POSIX systems here:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fife/FIFE_2007.1_src.tar.bz2

Install guide:
1. Unpack
2. Read README.txt

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http://www.parpg.net - nuclear winter isometric old school RPG inspired by Fallout, Arcanum & Planescape: Torment

The last weeks were quite busy for the majority of the team members so there was we've published no news update since the release of the 2007.1 milestone about 4 weeks ago. Now we've found some time over the weekend to summarize all the events that happened in the last weeks to give you can overview about the current status of the project.

The full article can be found at the developer blog and covers a bunch of topics including some remarks about the feedback concerning the recent release, news about the upcoming universal binaries for Macintosh systems, an update about the SVN and wiki restructuring process and the reintroduced MSVC 2005 and new KDevelop support for FIFE. Have a nice read :-)

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http://www.parpg.net - nuclear winter isometric old school RPG inspired by Fallout, Arcanum & Planescape: Torment

New FIFE win32 test binaries of the upcoming FIFE 2007.2 release are finally available :-)

Download them here:
http://members.fifengine.de/bin/FIFE_r1222_win32.exe

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http://www.parpg.net - nuclear winter isometric old school RPG inspired by Fallout, Arcanum & Planescape: Torment

Looking good mvBarracuda, I haven't looked at your repository for while so was wondering what you went with on the scripting front? Did you create your own module or using something like luabind.
Good luck.

We're (IMO unfortunately) still using lunar.h for our bindings. However not all project members are really satisfied with this solution anymore so they're currently looking into different solutions, e.g. SWIG or tolua++.

If we decide to go for SWIG, it's likely that we'll refactor the engine after the release of the 2007.2 milestone so we could switch from an embed to an extend approach. There is already some proof of concept code in an SVN branch that shows how we could wrap up FIFE into Python:
http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/en ... wig/engine

Jasoka wrote a little guide how to get this code working in his commit message, see:
http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/en ... geset/1185

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http://www.parpg.net - nuclear winter isometric old school RPG inspired by Fallout, Arcanum & Planescape: Torment

Update time :-) Progress was rather slow in the last weeks but there's a bunch of interestings things to report about nevertheless.

So here we go:
http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/en ... 6/25/12.05

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http://www.parpg.net - nuclear winter isometric old school RPG inspired by Fallout, Arcanum & Planescape: Torment

Time for yet another update here :-)

The progress of the last two weeks is quite encouraging. We've decided to give the extend approach for scripting a try in a separate branch but it looks like that this branch will replace our current trunk version quite fast. The work on it isn't finished yet but it seems that the performance drawback of the extend approach should be bearable; some initial tests (although with work in progress code and just on tested a Linux system) did show almost no performance drawbacks at all.

For anyone who's interested to know more about it and is not afraid of playing around with some work in progress code, check out our extend branch in SVN:
branches/active/extend

One major advantage of the extend approach in combination with <a href="http://www.swig.org/">SWIG</a> is that you'll be able to get FIFE running with bindings for your favourite scripting language quite easily. We do currently play around with Python support and that works quite well. Additionally we'll maintain support for Lua bindings as Lua was our language of choice before we decided to try something different than embedding the scripting language into FIFE. It shouldn't be too hard to create Ruby or OCaml bindings for FIFE either and if we find somebody who maintains these bindings, they'll find their way into our Subversion repository so you won't even need to invest time to generate the bindings yourself (although SWIG makes it rather easy in most cases).

Here is a nice screenshot from one of our recent test sessions. It shows the FIFE console that now can execute Python code e.g. for ingame manipulations or debugging your FIFE-based game:


Besides the work on the extend branch we're currently trying to fill our wiki with use cases for some possible FIFE-based games. That's because we intend to tackle the design of our scripting API after the work on the extend branch has finished. There is already a pretty small API in place but as it was written as proof of concept and for doing initial scripting tests it is neither consistent nor feature-complete. So we're trying to collect some real game examples first, analyze them concerning their requirements for a scripting API and plan to come up with a consistent design for our API after that.

If you consider to use FIFE for an own game in the future feel free to lend us a hand by contributing to the use cases. And don't be afraid: there are already a bunch of examples listed there that should make it easy for you to get started. If you would like to contribute but don't understand the concept of the use cases or got other related questions feel free to ask them here or at the talk page of our use case wiki article:
Use cases for the FIFE scripting API

And last but not least we're still searching for interested programmers who would like to collect some experience working on a rather large scale group project :-) And we're usually kind guys and don't bite so if you want to find out more about us before you sign a lifetime contract with us feel free to visit our irc channel :-)
#fife @ quakenet

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http://www.parpg.net - nuclear winter isometric old school RPG inspired by Fallout, Arcanum & Planescape: Torment

Yet another FIFE update coming to you :-)

The work on the extend branch is coming along quite well lately and our current lead programmer Jasoka decided to summarize the current status from the developer's point of view. He does comment on the new Python support of the engine and raises some points how the modularization of FIFE should work.

For everyone who's interested in reading Jasoka's full text, feel free to check it out at our developer blog:
http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engine/wiki/2007/07/11/18.44

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http://www.parpg.net - nuclear winter isometric old school RPG inspired by Fallout, Arcanum & Planescape: Torment

Update time :-)

We're currently reworking our XML map format as we found a number of inconsistencies that we failed to foresee when we initially designed the first version of our map format :-/

Fortunately (or unfortunately, that really depends on the perspective) there are just two FIFE-based games in development at the moment so we decided to address these issues as soon as possible to reduce the number of affected projects that will need to slightly adjust their map markup to work with the latest FIFE code.

Updated FIFE map format (draft)

The good news is that the reworking of the map format is a first step and part of our strategy to finally tackle the monster that FIFE developers call the "map editor". So there is actually hope that people who start to explore the world of FIFE with our next planned release 2007.2 won't need to worry about these changes at all (if we manage to finish a first version of our map editor tool until then).

Jasoka and jwt did invest a large amount of time to refactor important parts of the engine, kick out singletons and remove bi-directional dependencies between the different engine modules thus leading to a far cleaner engine structure. The whole refactoring process is still ongoing and everyone who's interested in what we're currently working on should check out our metamodel branch in SVN and take a look at the SVN changelog of the last weeks :-)

Metamodel branch @ SVN
SVN changelog

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http://www.parpg.net - nuclear winter isometric old school RPG inspired by Fallout, Arcanum & Planescape: Torment

Welcome to yet another FIFE news update :-)

It was pretty quiet lately, not because we would have been lazy but because I was busy with my exams and had no time to write about our most recent efforts. Nevertheless there was of course a bunch of work going on behind the scenes and I'm happy to have finally found the time to summarize it for you. There are several topics to talk about:
* The send them in! contest is over and we finally have a winner.
* The work on the new metamodel branch is coming along quite well.
* The FIFE team agreed to work on a new techdemo in cooperation with the Zero-Projekt team that explains the features of FIFE.
* The FIFE project turns two rather soon :-) Time for a birthday party.
* fifengine.de has been slightly updated with the help of the new developer NickWarner.

You can read about all these topics in detail at our most recent FIFE developer blog update. Have fun :-)

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http://www.parpg.net - nuclear winter isometric old school RPG inspired by Fallout, Arcanum & Planescape: Torment

We can't really believe it either but our calendar says that it has been almost two years now since we started to work on this very project. At the 11th of September 2005 a group of naive but enthusiastic individuals agreed to found a development project to create an improved Fallout-like engine for roleplaying games. Although the focus shifted to become a more general and flexible 2D engine, altough new members joined and old ones left the team, we're still around and the recent progress gives us the hope that there'll be a bunch of birthday parties to celebrate in the next couple of years :-) To celebrate at least our first two years we invite every developer (active, inactive, ex or even simply interested to get involved) and of course every guest to visit our IRC channel at Tuesday, 2007/09/11.

If you always wanted to get to know these crazy FIFE people here is your chance. As the majority of the FIFE developers are set in Europe you will probably need to wait for the evening hours (GMT) to get in touch with project members though. You could even try to obtain an answer to the question when 2007.2 will be released. Though it's likely that we'll answer: ''When it's done''. Not because we're cruel but because we don't know it either :-) Anyway: we hope to see all of you at Tuesday.

Let's get this party started :-)

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http://www.parpg.net - nuclear winter isometric old school RPG inspired by Fallout, Arcanum & Planescape: Torment

Finally a first screenshot of the upcoming techdemo that is a cooperation of the Zero-Projekt team and the FIFE staff. Looks like they make fun of poor little Barracuda :-(

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http://www.parpg.net - nuclear winter isometric old school RPG inspired by Fallout, Arcanum & Planescape: Torment