FIFE - a cross platform isometric game engine

[mvBarracuda]

And after that? Some big company hires you and then its bye bye FIFE? I've seen it before too many times!!

I seriously doubt that this will happen. I don't contribute to the code; I'm just working in the project management field for FIFE.

Furthermore FIFE is open source so in case the current team falls apart for whatever reason there may be, everyone can take our code and continue development.

After FIFE has reached 1.0 status I already have a new project on my mind. I can't go into detail at the moment but I can say that the project is related to Fallout, will be FIFE-based and the current code name is: "project spirit". So far I'm still thinking about the idea but as soon as I feel ready to elaborate on it, I'll let you know

Seriously I think it is a big minus that you are at university. I hope not all in the team are.

Why? University gives me the time to work on such a project. The majority of the people who are already working fulltime couldn't spend the time that I'm spending on FIFE.

Concerning your second question: half the team is still in university, the other half is working full-time (often as programmer or in related fields).

I hope you understand why I had to say that.

No. Please elaborate

 

[Burning Bridges]

I hope you understand why I had to say that.

No. Please elaborate

When I was talking about critical mass I meant that a project must become big enough before any serious developer can entrust his future on it.

For instance, working with Ogre gives me the feeling that there are thousands of others who are using it, and I must not fear that it will die from one day to the other.

The so called semester break project doesn't have such a good rep. Either the students get tired of their idea quickly, or, if they are really bright, a big company will hire them, and prevent them to continue work in the opensource field.

Please don't see this as negativity, your project looks sound, and I don't have a crystal ball or something. But I would prefer if you were all frustrated, middle aged IT professionals doing this besides your (boring) jobs.

 

[mvBarracuda]

Howdy and welcome to yet another FIFE news update

This time we cover our ongoing efforts to release the next FIFE milestone under a less restrictive license compared to the current GPL licensing. This topic seems to be especially interesting for independent developers who consider to use FIFE for a game project but are afraid of the current licensing policy.

You can read the whole news update at the developer blog:
License mumbo jumbo at the FIFE blog

 

[Burning Bridges]

Thanks. I didn't know it was GPL up til now.

 

[mvBarracuda]

Hello and welcome to yet another FIFE update

Unfortunately this one contains somewhat bad news as the majority of our key developers have been quite busy lately. Now I'm facing some serious university issues so I'll need to take a temporaty break from the project as well.

We appreciate all kind of help by new interested developers. We know that there are more tempting tasks than applying for a development team that is currently going through a drying time. But we wanted to be always up front about the status of the project so that's we think it's our duty to inform the community about lack of progress and issues as well.

You can read the whole update at the FIFE developer blog:
Temporary drying time for the FIFE project

 

[Burning Bridges]

You make me sound like a like a prophet now.

Good luck with the future - hopefully you will get back on track. But experience tells me otherwise. There is the danger that FIFE will be left at 80% finished like so many other students projects before.

Which is really a pity because I was just getting more interested in FIFE. Guess for now it is better idea to develop my backend directly in Ogre3D.

I hope you prove me wrong. And thanks for informing us about the situation right away!

 

[DefJam101]

Just one thing, Half-Life wasn't that revolucionary, it used the quake engine and the quake tools for modders. Besides that all the power to them.

I still don't get the John Carmack hatred that circles the web; he makes some badass game engines..

 

[mvBarracuda]

There are two important things to talk about so we decided to post a little developer blog update to keep the community up to date about the current status of the project.

FIFE is still progressing rather slow because of the lack of active developers who can invest time into the project. If you think you could help, please don't don't hesitate to grab the latest code from SVN to have a look into it and get in contact with us after that.

We recently released an upgraded compile SDK for win32 systems. You can read about all of this in detail at the FIFE developer blog:
http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/en ... 5/29/18.38

Enjoy the good weather outside and remember that you don't need a weathermen to know which way the wind blows.

 

[rei1974]

Hope the project will still be running, it was very interesting for me as game developer unfortunately right now have very little time, so can't help with the further development... best of luck in your efforts!

 

[mvBarracuda]

Thanks

Just to show you that the project gained some momentum again, here's a _early_ work in progress screenshot from the stone shrine map that we're currently working on. It looks better in action as stepless zoom as well as 90 rotation steps are fully supported now, I can hopefully make a little video with the editor features in action sooner or later.

 

[mvBarracuda]

Welcome to yet another FIFE update!

This one covers a whole bunch of aspects. Finally the end of the license switch process from GPL to LGPL is in sight. Furthermore we're currently replacing our unittests, consider to upgrade to the latest guichan release and plan to release a new win32 compile SDK soon. FIFE recently gained some new developers and the datasets branch will hopefully get merged into trunk rather soon. You got curious?

Check out the full news update at the FIFE developer blog:
http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engine/wiki/2008/06/18/03.41

Still not really convinced? Maybe these work in progress screenshot of maps of the upcoming release help:

 

[Burning Bridges]

Screens look nice. LGPL is a good decision if you want to go commercial one day you won't use GPL. Good to see you're back in business.

 

[Mareus]

I was just wondering, how much harder it is to learn, than let's say RPG Maker XP, VX? Those two softwares allow you to do pretty much anything and you can learn most stuff in a few weeks. How much scripting is there in FIFE and how long does it take for an averege person to learn the scripting language? Are we talking weeks, months?

 

[mvBarracuda]

I was just wondering, how much harder it is to learn, than let's say RPG Maker XP, VX? Those two softwares allow you to do pretty much anything and you can learn most stuff in a few weeks. How much scripting is there in FIFE and how long does it take for an averege person to learn the scripting language? Are we talking weeks, months?

AFAIK RPGMaker uses Ruby as scripting language. I never took a look into Ruby nor do I know the RPGMaker API but I can say a couple of things:
1. Learning Python shouldn't be harder than learning Ruby considering that they're both modern and popular programming languages nowadays.
2. RPGMaker is far more popular than FIFE and I guess they received far more feedback concerning their API. So FIFE's API does still lack a lot of polish and refinement simply because it is a work in progress project.

In the end our plan is that a game creator should be able to basically change the most important aspects of his game in Python so he doesn't need to get his hands dirty on the C++ part of the engine (at least if he doesn't like).

It's really hard to estimate how long it would take for an "average person" but if you're familiar with scripting / programming basics you should be able to wrap your head around Python in about 3 months. I would even say that you'll be able to grok the most import basics within a month. I would even say that these numbers apply to people who have no prior programming experience but maybe I'm terribly mistaken. Best way to find out is to try out: if you ever gave it a try, let us know how it worked out.

Here is a good free Python programming book that should be a great help if you would like to get started with the engine:
http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpytho ... python.pdf

 

[mvBarracuda]

We've done it again! We proudly present the FIFE 2008.1 release

Download:
Source package (FreeBSD, Linux, Macintosh)
Win32 binaries

For the 2008.1 release we decided to stick to the tropical island concept and called our example game "Rio de hola".

Caution: this release is still lacking a lot of polish, especially the "Rio de hola" game that ships with it. It lacks almost any form of gameplay but there is a reason why we decided to ship the release in its current form nevertheless. We planned to release future FIFE milestones under the LGPL to offer a less "restrictive" license to possible FIFE users (we know that the term "restrictive" is just our personal point of view).

We had to clear up the legal situation first and fortunately the software freedom law center helped us with the transition. The agreement of all developers who contributed code that was still used in FIFE was needed and because over three dozens of people contributed code to the project, this took us a lot of time. We were not able to reach all of them so we decided to either remove or rewrite the code of the contributors who didn't reply to our license switch proposal mails (from scratch).

We were able to replace the last parts of the problematic code today so now FIFE is officially LGPL'ed software. We're glad that we were able to make this step after it took us so long and we think that the new license alone is worth a release. Therefore we're proud to finally present the first FIFE release that is published under LGPL 2.1 or newer (your choice).

Engine and the editor tool made _huge_ steps forward since the last release about 5 months ago. Therefore we decided to release the current status as stable release although it offers not many new aspects on the content side and the content that is in place is very likely to change with the 2008.2 release.

The milestone itself seems to be a very important step into the right direction. You can build your own maps now with the help of the editor tool. Furthermore a basic application structure is in place that should give you an idea how can create your own FIFE-based game; this release is stable enough to start working on your game now

Most important changes since the 2008.0 release:
* License switch from GPL 2.0 to LGPL 2.1 or newer.
* Improved map format & resource loading (datasets branch).
* Vastly improved editor tool; batch object loading.
* New (work in progress) Rio de hola demo: new maps, graphics, sounds (still unfinished!).
* Eye candy: stepless zoom (OpenGL mode only), instance coloring & outlining.

Screenshots & videos:
Just two somewhat representative release screenshots.

Rio de hola:


Editor tool:


No videos from our side this time. You might see a video presentation of the new FIFE release soon nevertheless as the FreeGamer blog considers to cover the release with a short video soon. No final decision made yet but if it they actually create a video of this FIFE release, we'll let you know here

Read the full release announcement at the FIFE developer blog.

 

[mvBarracuda]

We're now looking for a web designer to help us creating a new FIFE website as the current version looks quite rusty already and its design is not consistent at all among the provided subpages (forums, news, wiki).

More information can be found here:
http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/en ... 7/17/20.20

 

[mvBarracuda]

It's time for a little FIFE update again We're currently considering to change the name of the project or to choose at least a new meaning for the FIFE acronym to express that we've moved away from our initial Fallout roots. The engine is simply neither limited to Fallout-like games in particular nor to RPGs in general anymore.

We would like to hear what the community thinks about it. You got two weeks to bring up proposals for new names or new meanings for the FIFE acronym at our forums:
http://forums.fifengine.de/index.php?topic=93.0

After that we'll open a poll and all registered forums' users can vote for two choices from the list of all proposals. The poll will stay open for four weeks; after that the developers will try to agree on one name from the top 3 of the poll.

You can read about our plans in details at the developer blog:
http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/en ... 7/19/21.53

A little screenshot from work in progress FIFE-based game OpenAnno:


I plan to cover OpenAnno in the second episode of the FIFE community spotlight series soon. Stay tuned

Last but not least: Urban Breznik, a friend of our team member Lamoot, was so kind to provide us with a draft for a new FIFE logo. We're interested in all kind of feedback concerning the draft. If the community thinks it suits the project we'll introduce it as new official FIFE logo after we decided on a new name (text can be adjusted; the cube itself would stay regardless of a possible name change). Discussion concerning the logo takes place at the forums:
http://forums.fifengine.de/index.php?to ... 873#msg873



That's it from our side for today see you at the next update.

 

[Mareus]

Man, that FIFE engine sure looks nice. Just wish you didn't need to know scripting to use it. Also, I don't see why you would change the FIFE name. It sounds quite good and the logos are also great.

 

[cardtrick]

I love the new logo -- it's absolutely perfect. Simple, iconic, modern, and suggestive of "isometric". Couldn't be better. (My preference is for the orange-y one, but any of them are good.)

As for the name -- screw acronyms. Who remembers what they stand for, anyway? I have no idea what OGRE means, for example. On the other hand, FIFE has pretty solid name recognition at this point -- no sense in wasting that. The easy solution is just to keep the name FIFE and lose the acronym. In fact, to remove even the suggestion that it is an acronym, just change the name to Fife Engine. I think it has quite a nice ring to it, anyway.

 

[Higher Game]

After so long, it's best to keep a name even if it isn't ideal.

 

[Truth]

FIFE engine. ATM machine. NIC card.

Logos look good, btw.

 

[mvBarracuda]

Man, that FIFE engine sure looks nice. Just wish you didn't need to know scripting to use it. Also, I don't see why you would change the FIFE name. It sounds quite good and the logos are also great.

To be totally upfront: even simple "scripting" knowlegde is not sufficent for a full featured FIFE-based game.

There is no way around learning Python if you want to create a somewhat sophisticated game with FIFE. But there are a bunch of nice free Python resources online so there is nothing that stops you learning the language.

ThinkPython (great beginner introduction into programming & Python): http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpytho ... python.pdf
Dive into Python: http://www.diveintopython.org/toc/index.html

There is another possible option to ease your life in the future. Somebody could build a kind of isometric RPG maker based on FIFE. Such a tool would be far easier to use for people who don't have a programming background 'though it would be geared towards RPGs and wouldn't be as flexible as FIFE itself in this regard.

Now we would just need a volunteer for such a FIFE-based iso RPG maker

As for the name -- screw acronyms. Who remembers what they stand for, anyway? I have no idea what OGRE means, for example. On the other hand, FIFE has pretty solid name recognition at this point -- no sense in wasting that. The easy solution is just to keep the name FIFE and lose the acronym. In fact, to remove even the suggestion that it is an acronym, just change the name to Fife Engine. I think it has quite a nice ring to it, anyway.

I wouldn't mind getting rid of the acronym meaning completely either. But maybe somebody comes up with a nice new meaning so we'll wait for the community proposals

I personally don't like the idea of changing the name completely but even for this case there is the possibility that somebody comes up with a fantastic proposal so we'll wait and see.

Thanks for the positive feedback guys That's really appreciated.

 

[mvBarracuda]

Welcome to yet another FIFE update! This time we're proud to bring the second issue of the community spotlight series to you.

In this episode we cover the progress (or the lack of it) of the current FIFE-based projects in general but also the development of the OpenAnno project in detail. OpenAnno is a free and open source realtime economy simulation with strategy elements loosely oriented towards Sunflower's Anno series.

You can read the full community spotlight article at the FIFE developer blog.

Here is a little visual teaser for those who would like to get a first impression of OpenAnno before deciding if it's worth to dive into the mass of text. More screenshots can be found in the full article that is linked above.

 

[mvBarracuda]

Hello and welcome to yet another FIFE update

This time we'll cover the ongoing name change process of the project. We asked the community to send in proposals for a new name and new meanings for the FIFE acronym to underline that we've moved away from our Fallout roots. Now that the proposals have been sent in, we've opened a poll and every user who's registered at the forums got over three weeks to vote for two of the choices.

Furthermore our artist Lamoot started working on two new tutorials that should help FIFE users to create nice-looking isometric graphics. The birthday of the FIFE project is nearing as well; just one month left until FIFE turns three! Last but not least we ask the community to lend us a hand to track down a bug that affects a rather huge number of Linux users. In case you running Linux and ATI hardware don't hesitate to get in contact with us!

You can read about the details at the FIFE developer blog.

 

[Fez]

Stick with the name FIFE and just say that it doesn't stand for anything now. That's what a few companies have done with their names.

Anything is better than "KNIFE (e.g. Kool New Isometric Flexible Engine)".

Although I did get a kick out of the acronyms having FIFE within them. Fractal acronyms?