Team name:
PARPG development team.

Project name:
PARPG - post-apocalyptic roleplaying game. It's just a working title at the moment and we can reconsider it later.

Brief description:
I had plans for such a project for quite some time but it was more of a vague idea than anything else. In late January 2009 I decided to start writing down my ideas for the project at a wiki. PARPG will be an old school 2d isometric roleplaying game, inspired by genre classics such as Fallout, Arcanum or Planescape: Torment.

As the project is in early concept stage, there are not many decisions set in stone yet but the following key elements have been agreed upon:
* Singleplayer RPG. No plans for multiplayer or coop support.
* Post-apocalyptic setting. Story, setting and game mechanics details get fleshed at the moment.
* Written in Python (2.5x branch). Utilizing the FIFE game engine.
* Isometric 2d perspective instead of going for full 3d engine complexity.
* Open source code and asset licensing.
* Open development philosophy. Public development wiki and forums. Anonymous SVN checkout.
* Meaningful choices and consequences. Multiple paths to complete quests, including non-violent ways.
* Tactical, turnbased combat.
* Emphasis on well-written detailed branching tree dialogue.

More information about agreed upon setting aspects and game mechanics can be found here:
* Game mechanics draft.
* Setting draft.

Target aim:
Open source & non profit. Actual code and content licensing (which open source license to choose) will be discussed among the team.

Compensation:
Although there are no intentions to make monetary profit with the project, there are a bunch of potential reasons for developers to get involved:
* Improving your personal portfolio with the demo version of the game to land a job in the industry. The demo will be a one town / location version of the game. Creating such a demo will be an already quite challenging task and it gives us the chance to test concepts in a smaller scale undertaking first before trying to tackle a full game. A more detailed description of the demo concept can be found at the project wiki.
* Love for old school isometric 2d RPGs.
* Enthusiasm for open source game development.
* Gaining game development experience by working on a team project.

Technology:
Targeted platforms: Linux, Win32. Mac support would be a plus but judging from the project that I worked on in the past, finding a Mac maintainer can be a lot of hassle so supporting Macintosh systems is not a must.

Programming language: Python 2.5x; not all important Python libraries have been ported to Py3k yet so we'll stick to the 2.5 branch for now. Time-critical code can be written in C++. C++ <> Python bindings are supported by FIFE via SWIG.

Engine: FIFE. I was personally involved in the FIFE project for three years and although the engine is not feature-complete and development is currently going slow, it might be the best basis that is available for such a project. I'll elaborate on the whole engine question below.

IDE: No IDE preference from my side. There are a bunch of good free as well as commercial Python IDEs available. I can't see a good reason at the moment to agree on a single IDE that needs to be used by all programmers; so freedom of choice for you.

Talent needed:
Python / C++ programmer
Programmers can work in a bunch of potential fields:
* Game-related development. Implementing game features in Python.
* Tools development. Creating / improving all kind of asset creation tools, e.g. a map editor. An example map editor tool comes with FIFE so this can be used as a basis.
* Engine-related development. Extending / modifying the FIFE engine core for our purposes.

As we've already agreed to go for isometric 2d graphics and agreed to write the game code in Python, the number of potential engines for such a game is rather limited. FIFE looks like the best choice for such a game but I was involved in the development of FIFE for 3 years so I might be simply unintentionally biased. Subsidiarity is one key project philosophy so rather than setting the final engine decision in stone now I would like to get feedback by interested programmers first.

Here's where you come into play :-) I did some research on isometric game engines with Python support in the past and so far only FIFE and GemRB sound like viable options. I'm prefering FIFE at the moment as I know the engine pretty well and I'm quite positive that it will suit our needs for PARPG based on the experience working on a FIFE-based techdemo called "Rio de hola". It's quite likely that we'll end up modifying the engine core code but FIFE should provide at least a good basis for our game.

So the first task for the programming department will be taking a closer look into FIFE to find out what kind of functionality is already well supported by the engine and which kind of features we'll end up implementing on our own. Especially for the engine-related programming C++ experience will be needed.

Engine requirements are still a bit vague at the moment as game mechanics, setting and story have not been fully fleshed out in this early phase of development. However PARPG will resemble other isometric 2d RPGs as Fallout, Arcanum and Planescape: Torment. Therefore we can use these existing games at least to a certain extend to distill the engine requirements for PARPG. I'll compile a list of requirements until the next weekend and update this post with it after that.

Story writer
Wanted: Evil Minds that Plot Destruction.

We're looking for a talented writer, preferably an English native speaker. Interest in post-apocalyptic fiction is the most important and only real requirement besides that. If you always wanted to get involved in the development of a game that aims to feature a sophisticated story and you like to work with other dedicated people who enjoy non-cliche RPGs, here is your chance :-)

We are also looking for people with experience writing for dialog trees and those familiar with Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and other areas near the Baltic Sea.

Graphics artist
We're trying to find artists who would like to contribute in one of the following possible fields of work:
* 3d modeling: creating either organic or inorganic 3d models e.g. (non) player characters, items, weapons, etc. Blender would be the prefered tool of choice. A first rendering setup has been created and can be found in our SVN repository now.
* Concept art: visualizing characters or GUI concepts as 2d art.

Composer / sound effects engineer
We would like to fill the following audio-related positions as well:
* Composer: creating ambient music for the soundtrack of the game.
* Audio effects engineer: creating various audio effects e.g. weapons, noises as well as sounds that will be used for the graphical user interface.

Team structure:
barra - public relations, developer recruitment, infrastructure maintenance, project management.
eleazzaar - writer; worked on Silvertree and currently also contributes to FreeOrion.
icelus - engine & game programmer; worked on Silvertree in the past.
Lamoot - graphics artists; helps with building up the graphics department of the project (defining guidelines for artists); he contributes to the settings discussion as well.
tie - game programmer; currently refactors the Rio de hola code to better suit our needs of PARPG.
zenbitz - Python programmer; besides his plans to contribute as game programmer, he currently fleshes out the mechanics of PARPG. zenbitz comes from a pen & paper RPG background.

A listing of my prior game development experience, skills and the specific tasks I'll take over in the development of PARPG can be found at my personal user page at the project wiki.

Website:
Blog
Forums
Wiki

Contact:
I prefer contact via email: martin DOT vohland AT googlemail DOT com
In case you can't get in contact with me via mail for whatever reason there may be, you can PM me here as well. However personal message notification via email does not seem to work so it could take a day or two until I spot your PM.

Previous Work by Team:
I was one of the founders of the game engine project FIFE and worked on it for three full years from 2005-2008. My main tasks were recruitment of new developers, public relations (posting news at the blog, staying in contact with the community), infrastructure maintenance (wiki, SVN, trac) as well as maintaining the FIFE Win32 compile SDK - an easy to use all-in-one package to build FIFE from source on Windows systems.

More information about FIFE can be obtained from one of the old help wanted postings I posted here at gamedev.net. Furthermore the FIFE wiki is a great starting point as well.

Feedback:
Any kind of feedback is appreciated. We're more than willing to learn from any mistake so shoot, we can take it :-)

Heya and welcome to yet another PARPG news update. In the course of the last week we've agreed on a bunch of setting-related aspects as well as game mechanics: branching tree dialogue, real isometric projection, rivaling factions, crafting use cases and post-game slides that show the consequences of your actions.

We're currently searching for interested Python and C++ programmers who would like to help us with engine evaluation for PARPG. Furthermore we're looking for a writer with passion for post-apocalyptic settings for the story department.

Zenbitz and qubodup started to compile lists of engine requirements and Lamoot collected information how other isometric games implement graphics-related features. Last but not least qubodup overworked the look of our blog, wiki and forums.

If you would like to know more about it, feel free to check out the full news update at the PARPG blog.

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

We're now looking for a talented writer, preferably a native speaker. Interest in post-apocalyptic fiction is the most important and only real requirement besides that. If you always wanted to get involved in the development of a game that aims to feature a sophisticated story and you like to work with other dedicated people who enjoy non-cliche RPGs, here is your chance :-)

We are also looking for people with experience writing for dialog trees and those familiar with Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and other areas near the Baltic Sea.

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

Heya and welcome to yet another weekly PARPG update! This time we’ll cover a bunch of interesting topics: progress in the fields of writing, mechanics and programming, efforts to find a lead writer for the project as well as some general remarks about the future of the technical framework that we’re currently evaluating.

If you would like to know more, check out the full news update at the PARPG development blog.

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

Heya and welcome to your weekly dose of post-apocalyptic development news. Looks like we are picking up quite some speed lately - at least the number of topics to cover in each news update is growing and growing. I'll keep things short this time and you simply click through the various links if you find a topic of interest.

We got covered at the freegamer blog some days ago and agreed upon a first license for the assets we'll create. PARPG got it's own top level domain now and zenbitz was on a game design spree last week again.

Icelus came up with a proposal for a story format and suddenly a lot of writers popped up and filled up the writing board of the forums.

Last but not least we're currently discussing how the game can be challenging while avoiding universal frustration. Feel free to jump into the permadeath thread at the forums right away.

Interested in all the details? Check out the full news update at the PARPG blog (now featuring subdomain candy!).

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

Updated the original posting:
* We're now looking for graphics artists (3d modelers, concept artists) as well as musicians (composers, sound effects engineers).
* Updated the list of team members.

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

Yes! It's Monday again, that means it's time for yet another news update :-) As always: lots of progress over the course of the last week so I'll keep things short and you simply click through the various links if you find a topic of interest.

This time we're looking out for graphics artists and musicians who would like to get their hands dirty by contributing to the project. To give them something to do, the proper infrastructure needs to be in place as well, so our graphics artist Lamoot created a first Blender rendering setup as starting point. Furthermore we decided to set up an asset repository to find out if it offers any advantage for contributors who would like to avoid wrestling with SVN and other VCS solutions that are more geared towards tech-savvy users.

There are some new starting points for interested programmers and some reinforcements have already arrived as well. We're currently working on a playground for the writers to test the story format while trying to retain an overview by maintaining a per milestone ToDo list.

Zenbitz got his hands dirty again as well and elaborates on use and study-based learning and the next (prolly rather short) news update will already arrive at Friday as I'm traveling to The Hague at Saturday.

Interested in all the details? Check out the full news update at the PARPG development blog :-)

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

Heya and welcome to yet another PARPG news update. This one has been in the pipeline for several weeks and I would like to apologize for the massive delay. The original plan was to bring it to you around the 1st of April but a lot of unforeseen events occured.

This time there are a couple of good things to report but we've also encountered setbacks. Our lead programmer icelus decided to step down from his position; therefore the plans for the rather sophisticated story engine / AI system are on ice for the time being. Fortunately a new programmer decided to get involved in the project and is now actively working on PARPG.

One of our graphics artists came up with some first concept art and the programmers continued to explore FIFE and took a couple of testing screenshots while doing so. Zenbitz wrote down his ideas about encumbrance, inventory and clothing and I've made a personal promise :-)

You can read about all details at the PARPG development blog: http://blog.parpg.net/2009/04/dont-look-back-into-the-sun

Here's a little teaser:

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

Heya and welcome to yet another PARPG news update! As promised: now delivered weekly again.

An important advantage of blog updates on a weekly basis is that the number of topics to cover can be usually kept rather low. This time we’ll take a look into the latest map tests and present Zenbitz’s thoughts how combat could work in PARPG. Last but not least we’ll show you how a piece of concept art evolves from a mere black and white sketch to a colorized version of it and finally into an actual (work in progress) 3d model.

You can check out all the details at the PARPG development blog!

And here's a little teaser for you to get you excited. The other visuals can be found at the blog :-)

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

Heya and welcome to yet another PARPG news update! This week we got a number of interesting topics to cover: an updated roadmap for the programming department, some first guides for the graphics artists, new work in progress 3d models as well as progress in the writing department.

You can check out the whole update at the PARPG development blog.

And as special feature for this week's update: a mistery teaser :-) Want to find out what PARPG has to do with crates? Check out the full update at the blog!

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

Heya and welcome to yet another weekly PARPG news update! There is a whole bunch of visual material to cover in this update as the graphics department has been quite hardworking. Furthermore the combat system proposal has been overhauled and large parts of the Python code have been refactored. We've played around with possible ingame inventory concepts and our trac system seems to run stable again after spammers invaded it a couple of days ago :-(

While a couple of new graphics artists joined the project lately, there is still a lot of room for additional contributors. We're currently especially searching for talented artists who would like to help us with creating ground tiles for the game.

Check out the full news update at the PARPG development blog.

And if you want to know what all of this has to do with an upswing, here's a little pointer for you:

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

Heya and welcome to yet another PARPG news update. Three full weeks have passed since the last one and I'm truly sorry for the lack of updates lately. I've been really busy with university and although I know a lot more about the reconstruction of the failed state Liberia with the help of the UN now, I rather would have liked to post an update or two in the meantime instead of investing so much time into a presentation I had to give at Friday. Anyways, now that I'm done with it, I got some free time on my hands this week so here's your promised dose of PARPG news. This time it's more a newsflash than anything else. While I've been busy with real life, the others - especially the graphics department - has been hardworking and there's simply too much to report to do so in detail. Feel free to browse the forums to read about all the details.

Read the full news update (with lots of pretty images :-)) at the PARPG development blog.

And to address the ongoing rumours: no, I haven't been struck down with one of these improvised weapons - that our new concept artist zeli created - and have been in coma for the last three weeks. I was simply busy :-)

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

Heya and welcome to yet another PARPG news update; this time actually delivered on schedule! There are a couple of things to report: the programmers implemented a first version of an ingame settings menu and added visual highlighting of objects as well as floating text descriptions for them. The graphics artists overhauled our ingame GUI plans and compiled an image gallery that features all previously created pieces of concept art.

To coordinate our efforts in the following weeks, we furthermore decided to arrange a first official developer meeting at our IRC channel. Of course community participation is appreciated as well :-)

Read the full news update at the PARPG development blog.

On a related note: FIFE developer Cheesesucker recently rewrote major parts of the map editor tool that comes with the engine. I've personally tested it over the last couple of days and I'm truly impressed by the improved workflow and new easiness of map creation. To applaud his efforts, we've fired up the editor, loaded our PARPG test map into it and took a screenshot :-) Enjoy:

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

Heya and welcome to yet another weekly PARPG news update! Let's get started right away :-)

This week we're proud to report that the first audio track found its way into the game. New programmer on the team meggie implemented random NPC movement as well as switching between different maps. Maximinus was hardworking again as well, annotated the existing code in place via Epydoc, proposed a list of features for an first official release of the game and created a first simple build interieur map.

3d artist Zimble slightly updated the tile creation tutorial for users who would like to use an alternative sampling method and we're still looking for 2d & 3d artists who would like to contribute as the vast majority of our artists is currently rather occupied with real life commitments. Last but not least we finally agreed upon a date for the for the first official PARPG developer meeting: Monday, 22nd of June, 5-7PM GMT.

Read the full news update at the PARPG development blog.

And here's your visual teaser: I wonder what might be inside this building? You can actually find out by either taking a peek at the news update or simply grab the latest version from our SVN repository and try yourself :-)

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

Heya and welcome to yet another weekly PARPG news update! This time the nature of the update is a bit different to what you're used to get here. The main reason is that we recently had our first official developer meeting at the IRC channel of the project. So this news update contains far more plans for our next steps while the older updates often purely focused on reporting the progress of the last week(s). Such a change comes with certains advantages and potential drawbacks.

One main advantage is that we can give the community an idea where the project is hopefully moving to; on the other side there is the risk of promising but not being able to deliver later. So take the plans outlined today with a grain of salt :-) But enough of the disclaimer stuff, let's get to actual news reporting!

Due the meeting there's are a truckload of things to report. The audio department is currently working on a more Falloutesque remix of the current ingame audio track while the programmers are making their plans for a first public release of PARPG, hopefully at the end of August. Furthermore there is the need to refine the workflow of the department to the forunate recent influx of a couple of new contributors as far as programming is concerned.

Zimble wrote a tutorial how to build your own (tiled) walls of Jericho, we're trying to discover structural problems in the graphics department that hinder their efforts and the separate game mechanics testbed has been scrapped in favour of an ingame testing solution. A first promising looking story draft is in the making and we can finally offer auto-generated code documentation.

Read the full news update at the PARPG development blog.

And what does a really cool RPG need? You're right on the spot: walls, of course! There you go:

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

Heya and welcome to yet another weekly PARPG news update! In case you wondered why the news update is coming so late this time: I took one week off last Monday as I felt a little burned out lately. But now I'm back with recharged batteries to bring you the latest news on the project!

The programming department has been busy discussing the future structure of the code and we're currently thinking about ways to utilize the Trac ticket system to cope with the influx of fresh blood lately. Furthermore we're planning to have a first programming department IRC meeting at Monday, 13th of July, 3-5PM GMT.

The graphics artists have been hardworking again and we're glad that we can show you three different nice pieces of art this time: a 3d weapon render, a death splash screen and a drawing of frozen snowy rooftops :-) Furthermore all 3d renders can be found in our extended gallery now: PARPG concept art & 3d render gallery

We're currently searching for a climatologist (amateur or professional) to find holes in our storyline proposals (how did nuclear winter happen, what kind of climate is somewhat realistic?). The writers started to moved the most important story and NPC-related pieces to the wiki so they can be reviewed there and there's also a first writing department meeting in the pipeline, scheduled for Friday, 10th of July, 4PM GMT.

We have hopefully finally fixed the Trac ticket creation issues for anonymous users and there's news to report concerning our Sourceforge registration. Yes these are actually two neverending stories :-/

Read the full news update at the PARPG development blog.

And now enjoy the snowy rooftops of PARPG!

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

Heya and welcome to yet another weekly PARPG news update! This time addressing all the doubters!

The programming departments' IRC meeting has been postponed but the writing and gameplay department meeting fortunately took place last Friday. We've discussed if you should be allowed to kill children in PARPG and if drugs should play a role in the game. Our artists have been incredibly busy over the course of the last week so can find a couple of new 3d renders as well as concept art drawings in our gallery now!

Proposals concerning the state of the game world as well as the what kind of characters stats should be featured in PARPG have been made. We'll have to decide between two different storyline proposals and mvBarracuda found out that pursuing a degree in modern history is not that useless!

Read the full news update at the PARPG development blog.

And we're glad that Seothen, a new concept artist on the team, took his time to portray the reaction of the common community member when he hears about PARPG for the first time and smiles in excitement and confidence in the project (this is for you, you know who you are):

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

You're my Waterloo ... I'll be your Stanley Park. Heya and welcome to yet another PARPG news update. I know that you're prolly disappointed due the lack of the updates lately and I'm truly sorry about it. The project went through a bunch of problems lately, university-related deadlines are nearing and my procrastination mentality didn't help either. As I'm still rather busy today, here's little newsflash rather than a full featured update. Hope you enjoy it nevertheless.

A bunch of problems popped up in the programming department but we can hopefully cope with all of them in the long run nevertheless. The graphics department has been really hardworking lately and new concept art and renders have found their way into our wiki gallery.

The writing department will flesh out their storyline proposal until the end of August and we'll decide upon one proposal within one week after that. Last but not least PARPG can be finally found at sourceforge now as well: http://sourceforge.net/projects/parpg/

Read the full news update at the PARPG development blog.

If you wonder about the lack of news updates lately: I felt a bit like looked into a really icy cavern. Like that one:

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

It's time for flash, newsflash Gordon! Heya and welcome to yet another PARPG news update. I'm still quite busy with writing papers for university but as I got 1.5 weeks until I need to hand in the next one, there is sufficent time to finally post an update here. Enjoy!

For the ones who wondered: our SVN directory structure recently changed a bit, so if you got problems checking out the latest files, head over the blog and read about the details. The new programmers on the team are making good progress when it comes to cleaning up the code base and we've agreed upon establishing a so called board of programmers. The three members of the board will decide about the future direction of the department and act as mediators in cases where we can't agree upon a certain approach.

In the graphics department there are a bunch of new 3d models and pieces of concept art to take a look at. We've got an animated player character now (idle & walk animations), others have designed Soviet soldiers and improvised crossbows. Furthermore one of the concept artists created a first GUI mockup while another one created a bunch of props that could be pretty useful when it's cold outside.

Zenbitz came up with proposals for levelless character progression, ways how to play the game as well a state of the world setting.

Read the full news update at the PARPG development blog.

So having at least a solid idea of the next steps to tackle, I can only say: forward march!

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

Heya and welcome to yet another PARPG news update. Sorry for the lack of updates lately but I had to take a break from the project to sort out a bunch of problems in real life. Now I'm finally back, reunited to PARPG. Let's get started right away, the vast majority of the news update will covers our plans for the first public release of PARPG that we hope to ship around the end of the year.

We were holding an IRC meeting of the entire development team recently to discuss the plans for our first public release. This update is mainly a rephrased extended version of the meeting notes. If you're interested in all the small details, check out the full meeting log!

One of the new programmers on the team, or1andov, started to work on the dialog engine of PARPG and you can already see some first results of his work in our SVN repository. Caution: beware of his funny dialog humour despite still missing API documentation and general code annotations :-)

Furthermore we'll agreed upon the code-related features that we would like to implement for techdemo 1 as well about the graphics assets that we would like to show. The graphics assets will mainly depend on the writing of the two quests that are planned for this first official PARPG release. If you're interested in the details, check out the threads about these quests at the writing board of the forums!

Read the full news update at the PARPG development blog.

That's all for today. Next news update scheduled for Monday, 19th of October. See you then :-) And now: animation gallore by Sirren.

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