hi our there.
Iris2 won the 1st Prize at the Dusmania 10 hobby game dev meeting at Frankfurt/Germany.
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hi our there.
Iris2 won the 1st Prize at the Dusmania 10 hobby game dev meeting at Frankfurt/Germany.


(SiENcE, Hagish, Ghoulsblade)
my Iris2 Presentation


Our new winning Trailer:

link to youtube.com


Our Overnigt Contest Contribution (10hours of work):
LaLaLove

more Infos here -> http://forum.freegamedev.net/index.php?t=msg&th=1343
All pictures from the Dusmania 10 Event: http://picasaweb.google.com/sicaine/Dusmania10
hooray
SiENcE


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TORCS 1.3.1
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TORCS 1.3.1


It has been a while since the last time I gave The Open Racing Car Simulator a try and this time I had unexpectedly much fun with it. Though some things are strange about it: the game generally runs smoothly, except for some rare, sporadic lags which make controls problematic for a second. There are great textures in the game but some of them are just bad (probably heritage from darker times.) I like the track's layouts but I wish there was an environment artist who would spice up TORCS' landscapes. Still, I think it's great.

There is a lack of a damage model, but it's still fun to practice an aggressive driving style sometimes. :) Oh yeah, I nearly forgot to tell you that I made a stupid little gameplay video.

I tried to compile the racing simulation from CVS and failed, but fortunately it is available in binary forms for Win/Lin/Mac and is easy to install.

One unusual aspect of the game's installer is that you can to choose to not install the unfree car models (although I don't know for sure how free the TORCS team's definition of free media is.)

Dungeon Hack landscape

Dungeon Hack, a spiritual remake of Daggerfall, will be blessed with an editor some time soon. Hopefully they will make the jump from awesome landscape generator to kick-butt role-playing game!

I also hope there will be a GNU/Linux version available soon. The only other application of which I'm eagerly waiting for a GNU/Linux port is FxGen.

Other than that, there's not much to say about Dungeon Hack. The current aim is programming and not already bother with gameplay/visual details. I think this is a good sign: they're not trying to rush things or to do everything at the same time.

You can get version Alpha build 23 of Digital Paint Paintball 2. The game is one of those, which I never figured out how to play. Problem was with the last version I tried, that I was unable to disable the too-much-for-my-gfxcard-water/reflection-effects.

FreedroidRPG 0.11rc1 town's new look

FreedroidRPG 0.11rc1 has lots of new features: Level changes and additionsWeapon additions and balancingPrograms (spells) balancing and a new skillNew music!Engine improvements (for example performance)Editor improvements (for example undo/redo functions)
I need to find some time for checking out that editor thingey!



CatchemRPG detail

CatchemRPG is supposed to become a Pokemon games-like game. Can't say I'm very interested, but the sprites do like rather nice (wonder where they are from. RPGMaker XP?) Also it's written in Java, so you don't loose much time giving it a shot.

PS: Apricot aka Yo Frankie! (sight) would very much like you to animate a character for them. [less]

For Day 15, I restarted work on the map editor program for my KRPGE framework. However, I did not make much visible progress.I... [more]

For Day 15, I restarted work on the map editor program for my KRPGE framework. However, I did not make much visible progress.I have a tendency to have rendering problem but eventually that get solved. There were quite a bit of work on the input system and also work on gathering data so it can load files. The class for editing is created but not much is in there yet.For the last hour of my programming time, I was investigating an interesting bug that crash my map editor after a certain amount of rendering. I found out that all the font that was opened stay open...so when I open enough of them, it crash.Tommorow, I'll have to fix rbgooey's textrender class so it doesn't create excess files to the point of crashing the program and continue writing my map editor program. [less]

Surt's goblin[more]

Surt's goblin
Surt contributed the first model to OpenDungeons (and it looks good!) The model also was quickly incorporated by Timong into jClassicRPG.

Meanwhile, JackyJ (creator of the cool 3D platform-marble and physics game irrlamb) released the first version of Choria, which seems to be a parody of MMORPGs. It reminds me of the funny (though unfree) Progress Quest.

Word War vi has reached release 0.19! Controls are fine now and the side-scrolling arcade is lots of fun to play. It might be the first game with Xbox 360 controller rumble effects on Linux!

RubyWeekend #2 is happening this weekend. I'll be helping kiba with art stuffs. It's gonna be fuun! As you might have figured, the rules are to use ruby inside the time span of the weekend to create a game. :)

The 3D Ultima Online client remake Iris 2 scored first price (best project) at dusmania (german indie games ...party :) ).

lalalove at dusmania
Part of the dusmania was a overnight games creation competition. Our result (made with LÖVE) is lalalove (working title), a game inspired by Lost Garden's Celestial Music. Basically you connect stars, asteroids and planets, to create musical compositions. The current state isn't polished but playable and fun for some seconds. We're definitely going to make it kick ass!

Also: No more game videos on Vimeo allowed. Not sure if they permit videos of games you did yourself. [less]

The KRPGE engine is finally released! You can visit the KRPGE... [more]

The KRPGE engine is finally released! You can visit the KRPGE homepage for more information and download.Tomorrow, I will be tackling writing the KRPGE map editor.That's it. I don't have much else to say.Day 14 is complete and 16 more days to go. [less]

Well, I certainly didn't ancipitate the amount of work it takes to get a framework ready. I could release just the engine... [more]

Well, I certainly didn't ancipitate the amount of work it takes to get a framework ready. I could release just the engine but that mean developers have no context from which to work with. With the current workload, it seem that I will finish this in 3 days, not the next day. Never mind that the map editor will probably also take a long time too.In any case, rbgooey-0.0.5 is released. This library will be necessary for the use of engine.As for the experiment, I finished 13 days doing 4 hours of programming. As usual, there's a lot of commits. 17 more days to go. [less]

Our game now have Ukrainian localization. Thanks to Vadim Nehay.
This localization will be included to the final release... [more]

Our game now have Ukrainian localization. Thanks to Vadim Nehay.
This localization will be included to the final release 0.8.xxxx. Now it can be found in SVN.
By the way, we are wanna appeal to those who have translate our game to their languages. There are a lot of new phrases that need to be translated. We would appreciate if you renew your localization. [less]

Well,... [more]

Well, although we're in summertime so I should expect low interest and low feedback still we're heading for the next release with ultra speed! Countless changes and improvements - again especially around combat. New sounds for spells, new UI graphics effects to easily spot who is doing things, flying 3D impact point counter for the enemies. Now you can quite easily follow the happenings of the combat with the cool turning encounter camera mode. :) Character sheet was improved too, added resistance point output to it. You can also try to leave a combat - in that turn you won't act, and if you survive enemy attacks you can escape. Neutralization social skills too have received real effect - you can neutralize enemies with social skills like Reasoning. :D Also some popups before starting a combat is added for better understanding of the situation. Zphr's actively helping out in the graphics part. Also Tranberry has created point bar graphics for the HUD bar elements! Thanks for them a lot! [less]

Many... [more]

Many small fixes and minor enhancements are being added to the codebase. New 2D elements were created by Zphr meanwhile. HUD main log is now 2 rows longer thanks to the 2D changes. These are all in SVN. Light effect was added to spells, turn act window inventory lists are supporting item icons as well now. Some new sounds were added. Encounter Grounds generation was perfected, adding Cave Encounter ground for example. Logging to console was moved completely to text file logging to help later bug investigation. [less]

Meet Ramiro the Ram!... [more]

Meet Ramiro the Ram! our new character, actually it is there since a while ago but now is time to put it in game.
He is the male sheep, the Ram protector of all Mandy’s around, and will not hesitate in hitting if you get too close to them!
This week we got the sheep game (catching, throwing, animations, etc) working at a level we can move on to other games, like the piranha, rat, buck, turtle? and its logic.
But still there is a lot of things to do/tweak in our levels/hud/effects and here is where we can use your help, we have this character, the Ram, but no animations still, there are scheduled for the next week (not the one that starts tomorrow monday), so we thought that with the nice response we had with the “Animate Frankie!” post, we could try this again and let people contribute with their own animations so when the next week starts we have some already there, for tweaking/integrating and some nice extra time to work on the levels or make even more animations, we can always re-schedule
What are we looking for?, this character doesn’t have any animations yet, so we can use any kind, but most needed are:

WalkCycle
RunCycle
Idle animations
Hit / being hit (by a nut)
Being kicked
Death animation
Drowning
Charging to hit with the horns, pissed off animations, everything you think will fit to this character.

Grab the .blend file here. (Packed, ~1.2Mb). Animating at 40 frames per second (like Frankie’s) will work.
Nothing really fancy on it so should work with recent builds of Apricot, that you can find at GraphicAll, thanks to our build monkeys, also the Apricot branch (linux) have an special place in the “Automated Builds” section, under “Current Hot Branches”.
* You don’t have to leave your .blend file always, you can use Vimeo (good)/YouTube (bad) to upload the OpenGL videos (?) there, and we can ask for the .blend file later (you may want to do some tweaking before release or so).
As a side note, if you’re not an animator and would like to contribute with any other stuff (modeling, texturing, etc). Check the “Contribute your own stuff!” thread we created at blender.org forums and leave your questions/thoughts there.
That’s all! looking forward to what you blenderheads do with this character, hope you like it!
(Feliz Día del Amigo!) [less]

Day 12: 45 commits and 48 hours logged so far.Well, the game engine is completed and it now have a name: KRPGE(Kiba Role... [more]

Day 12: 45 commits and 48 hours logged so far.Well, the game engine is completed and it now have a name: KRPGE(Kiba Role Playing Game Engine).The only thing left is actually preparing it for release. I have to get rbgooey out the door first since rbgooey was updated for use on the engine.After that, I will be working on preparing the game engine framework so people can actually use it. It will have blanks placeholder files so people can add their code to it.Once I am done with releasing the framework, I will be working on the map editor again.I hope to finish it all before RubyWeekend #2. If not, at least I have some advantage over my peers in term of how much I have to do.(assuming at least I get the engine out)18 more days to go before I complete my training. :) [less]

Welcome to yet another FIFE blog update :-) This one will mainly focus on the planned name switch of the FIFE project.[more]

Welcome to yet another FIFE blog update :-) This one will mainly focus on the planned name switch of the FIFE project.

Name switch
Why we're searching for a new name

When the FIFE project was founded it was planned to become an open source engine for the creation of RPGs like the Interplay classics Fallout 1 & 2. Furthermore we wanted to add support for the Fallout file formats to FIFE not just but also for having easy access to assets that could be used to test the engine. The other reason for Fallout support was that the Fallout engine was not designed for modding purposes. Our hope was to provide a better platform for Fallout-like games than the engine of the original game.


However things have changed. We moved away from our Fallout roots and old limitations and legacies have been removed among this way as well. FIFE stopped to be a Fallout-like engine and started to become a general purpose isometric game engine not limited to RPGs anymore. While browsing a bunch of forums we have discovered that the current name of the project (especially the "Fallout-like" part of it) gives a wrong impression of the possibilities of the engine. Therefore we would like to see a change in this field.

Possible options

There are basically three options for us:

Completely new name

We would totally abandon the FIFE name in this case and pick a cool new title for the project.


Advantages:

We might come up with something more catchy than "FIFE".
That would be the most effective way to show that FIFE is not related to Fallout anymore.

Disadvantages:

We would need to register a new domain for the website.
The FIFE brand has already at least a certain popularity and we would need to invest quite some time into advertizing the new name to make it well-known.
Change the meaning of the acronym

The second option is to stick to the name FIFE but to change the meaning of the acronym. We should get rid of the Fallout-like part of it at least though a completely new meaning for all letters would be possible as well.


Advantages:

The FIFE name is already quite well-known so we could profit from its popularity.
No new domain for the website needed.
We can show that the engine is not related to Fallout anymore (though a completely new name would work even better in this aspect).

Disadvantages:

We would need to spend some time to advertize the new meaning behind the FIFE acronym.
People might still think that the engine is limited to Fallout-like games because it's still called FIFE although we would have changed the meaning of the acronym.
Keep everything as it is

Last but not least we could stick to the name FIFE and don't change the meaning of the acronym either.


Advantages:

We wouldn't need to invest any time advertizing a new name / meaning of the acronym.

Disadvantages:

People looking for an engine that suits them might disregard FIFE because of its name.
Keeping the old name / meaning of the acronym feels like sticking to legacies just because of being afraid of change.
Roadmap to a new name

Now we don't want to decide on our own but we're sure that the community got some good ideas as well. Therefore we decided to make the possible name switch a three step process.

Collecting ideas

In the first phase we're collecting suggestions for new names as well as new meanings for the FIFE acronym. You got two weeks (2008/07/20 - 2008/08/03) to bring up proposals at the FIFE forums. You can post your ideas at this thread:
http://forums.fifengine.de/index.php?topic=93.0

Voting

The second part of the process is to create a public poll at the forums that contains all proposals that have been collected in phase one. Every registered forums users can take part in the poll and can vote for two of the available options. The poll will be open for voting for four weeks (2008/08/04 - 2008/08/31).

Picking a winner

After the poll has ended the development team will take the top three choices from the poll and will try to agree on one of them. We hope that with just three options we can find a solution that the majority of the developers are pleased with.


So we encourage everyone to take part in the name switch process and support the project this way :-)

Project birthday

Slightly related to the name change: FIFE will turn three years old at Tuesday, 2008/09/11. We have hopefully picked a winner until then and can present the new (or old) name of the project at the IRC birthday party. Hopefully a bunch of developers will be around at the channel and answer your questions about FIFE. This is just an early announcement of the birthday party. You'll see a more detailed official birthday reminder at one of the following blog updates.


FIFE IRC channel can be found here:
http://wiki.fifengine.de/IRC

Draft of a new FIFE logo

Urban Breznik, a friend of our team member Lamoot, was so kind to provide us with a draft for a new FIFE logo; Urban is studying to become a professional visual designer. Although we have a bunch of different logos at the forums and wiki, we would like to agree on a new official logo together with the planned name switch. You can take a look at the draft here:
http://wiki.fifengine.de/images/5/58/Fife_new_logo.jpg


All kind of feedback concerning the new logo is appreciated. Tell us what you like or dislike about it. Discussion takes place here:
http://forums.fifengine.de/index.php?topic=86.0

Still searching for a web designer

And slighty related to name switch and new logo: we're still searching for a web designer who would like to help us to overwork the fifengine.de website. More information about the web designer position as well as a list of required skills and tasks that would need to be taken care of can be found here:
http://wiki.fifengine.de/Help_wanted#Web_designer


That's from our side today :-)


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