Open source 2D RPG engine searching for interested C++ programmers

[mvBarracuda]

Team name:
FIFE developing team.

Project name:
FIFE - Flexible Isometric Fallout(-like) Engine.

Brief description:
Just like the name of our project suggests we work on a new open source engine for isometric RPGs. The engine started as a Fallout-related project but we recognized very fast that it offers the potential to be used as a general 2D isometric engine for the development of cross platform RPGs. The engine supports the assets of the original Fallout games but it is meant to be suitable for the creation of all kind of 2D RPGs. We are focusing on the programming of the engine itself but will bundle it with an example mod. This way modders have a starting point to create their own games based on our engine.

Since we do not focus on the creation of a complete game we will be working on comfortable and easy-to-use editing tools. Engine and editor are planned to run on all flavours of Linux, Win32 and MacOSX.

The FIFE project is almost 20 months in development now and we have released five public pre-alpha and alpha versions of the engine on sourceforge / freshmeat over this time. We did recently release our latest stable milestone: FIFE 2007.1. Now that the work on the 2007.1 milestone is finished, we're currently working out the roadmap for the next two upcoming releases after that: 2007.2 & 2007.3.

Target aim:
Open source GPL v2.0; non-profit

Compensation:
We are confident that advanced coders will find it quite exciting to work on the creation and the designing of a whole engine with other experienced and passionate open source coders. But as we're a non-profit project the only thing we can provide is the satisfying feeling to work on an ambitious project.

Technology:
Linux, Windows, MacOSX
C++, Boost library
SDL, OpenGL (optional)

Warning:
It seems that we should have stated this earlier as a lot of coders seem to be overstrained with the undertaking of creating a whole engine. That is not meant to sound rude but FIFE is a quite complicated large-scale project that needs a different working approach compared to smaller projects. We're searching for experienced C++ developers which want to take the challenge and work with other serious and experienced programmers. Please have a look at our code first before you apply for any position. There were several developers who applied for positions in the past who couldn't cope with the task and did leave the team.

As this is neither satisfying for you nor for us, the best way to find out if you want to take the challenge is to have a look at our current code base. You can either get the most recent code from our Subversion repository or download a fresh engine snapshot from our homepage (if you're not familiar with SVN yet or don't have the needed tools installed). If you got a Subversion client installed (we suggest to use TortoiseSVN if you're on win32), you should definately go for the SVN checkout. The source packages tend to become outdated rather fast as they're just updated for every major milestone.

SVN sourcecode checkout:

svn co https://svn1.cvsdude.com/fife/engine/trunk/

HTTP sourcecode download:
FIFE 2007.1 src package

Talent needed:
Engine designer
Advanced C++ skills and engine design knowledge are required for this position as you will need to make design decision about the architecture of the engine. Experience with SDL, OpenGL or QT would be really appreciated but isn't a must. It is far more important that we find someone who can invest a serious amount of time to improve the engine design and give the development a direction.

Engine programmer (misc.)
We're searching for developers who are able to improve certain aspects of the engine. Possible development areas are:
* Audio code development (OpenAL, for a more detailed description, have a look at the following paragraph)
* General SDL-related development (e.g. rewrite of the current input manager)
* GUI-related development (using luaGUI, our own Lua wrapper for the guichan GUI library)
* Map-related tasks (pathfinding, line of sight, etc.)
* SDL software renderer development
* OpenGL hardware renderer development
* Scripting / Lua development
* Unit test development

Editor designer & programmer
Advanced C++ skills and engine design knowledge are required for this position as you will need to make design decision about the architecture of the editor. We did initially plan to use qt4 for the editor, however our old editor programmer went absent without official leave :-/

So we decided to leave the decision which GUI library to use for the editor to the programmer who wants to work on it. Some possible choices are:
* Qt4
* CEGUI
* WxWidgets
* Guichan

As long as it's open source and works cross platform (Linux, Win32, Mac) we're fine with whatever library you choose

It's hard to define a good starting point for the editor programmer, however he should be familiar with the engine code itself to understand the way the engine works and adopt this concept for the editor.

One possible starting point would be to have a look at the recently finished map format design document and the archetypes concept:
FIFE XML map format design document
Archetypes concept

Team structure: (only currently active members listed!)
Jasoka -engine designer & coder
Phoku - engine designer & coder
Prock - mac porter / audio coder
Sky0 - engine coder
mvBarracuda - project manager

My job as project manager is to keep the team together and to ensure that the communication structure inside the team works so everyone enjoys working on the project. Among other things I'm responsible for the news updates @ FIFEngine.de, the project wiki and to provide the official and unofficial win32 packages.

Website:
Homepage
Development wiki
Getting started guide for interested developers
Doxygen code documentation
Design documents
Developer blog
Roadmap for the upcoming releases

Current release:
FIFE 2007.1 Win32 (official release)
FIFE 2007.1 src package (official release)

Ways to contact the team:
IRC channel: irc.quakenet.org | #fife
eMail: WEB.DE - E-Mail - DSL - Modem - Shopping - Entertainment
icq: UIN >> 98600423

Important:
You can either use our free XMLmaps with the engine or access the original Fallout maps with it. If you want to use the Fallout maps you will need a legit copy of Fallout 1 or 2. The FO 1/2 maps are far more advanced compared to our own XMLmaps. However the new 2007.1 release ships with our new demo map: official_map.xml. This is the first more advanced FIFE demo map that shows how our map format and specific concepts like archetypes, tilesets and object prototypes work.

To give you an impression about the status of the project we took sample screenshots of the current release (The latest two were feature customs maps of the 2007.1 release, however the majority of the shots were taken with Fallout maps and older releases of the engine):

Official 2007.1 demo map: official_map.xml:


FIFE with real square tiles. Useful for the creation of classical non-ISO 2D games like jRPGs:


FIFE offers a console interface to debug your games with:


Transparency for roof tiles:


Feedback:
Feel free to add whatever feedback you like Critics will help us to improve the project.

 

[peterhuang913]

umm...is this considered spamming or advertisement?

 

[mvBarracuda]

I hope that recruitment is allowed on these forums

If that's not the case, the thread should be deleted. I wasn't aware that I might break any forum rules by posting it :-/

 

[mvBarracuda]

About FIFE
FIFE is an open source 2D engine that aims to become a whole framework for the creation of cross platform (Linux, Mac, Win32) roleplaying games. Although we are having trouble getting the development started on the editor, we aim to include modding tools in future FIFE releases. The project is in development for almost 21 months now (ohh, we're getting old :-/) and we did release several public milestones of the engine over this time.

The latest release, entitled FIFE 2007.1, shipped about one month ago and features our first larger custom map for FIFE. The engine supports some of the assets of the Interplay RPG classics Fallout 1 & Fallout 2. The Fallout assets served as test content for the engine but we've moved away from our Fallout roots over the last year and FIFE is slowly becoming a general purpose 2D RPG engine, suitable for the creation of all kind of roleplaying games.

Here is an impression of our demo map that shipped with the 2007.1 release:


About the contest
The demo map shown above was created with free graphics from Reiner's tilesets site. We're trying to build a community around FIFE and we're also of course trying to get them involved in the project. A first step into this direction is our upcoming graphics contest, called: Send them in!.

The contest will start at the first of June, 2007 and the end of it is scheduled for the first of August, 2007. There are basically four different categories in which you can take part: floor tiles, roof tiles, static & animated objects and animated characters. You can take part in more than one category but there are certain requirements for each category; if you want to win the prize of the contest, you'll need to fulfill them.

So what is the prize? FIFE programmer Phoku offers to code an (useful) ~10 man hours feature into FIFE for the winner. This is probably a good way if you're considering to use FIFE for an own project but one important feature is still currently missing in your opinion. Although there will be no monetary compensation as the whole team works in their free time on the project, we're hoping for a bunch of interested participants nevertheless.

We're aiming to use the contributions of all participants of the contest for a new demo map that will hopefully already ship with the upcoming 2007.2 release.

More information
You want to know more about FIFE and the Send them in! contest? Our project site and the development wiki are good starting points for you. Our wiki features a separate rather detailed article that is dedicated the contest. All details about the rules of the contest, license-specific issues and the different contest categories can be found there.

If you still got questions about this upcoming event, feel free to visit the team at their project irc channel or ask your questions directly at the talk page of the corresponding article. You'll need to register at the wiki to get write access. We were not keen to enforce wiki registration, but the spam attacks of unregistered bots are really getting on our nerves and waste our time that could be invested far more useful.

We want to thank every interested graphics artist who takes part to support an work in progress open source project

 

[Kharn]

Ah you finaly made it over hear martin, Welcome to TF.

 

[Vormund]

That sounds very interesting - I'll be looking at the code tonight, although I don't have the quite experience necessary, it'll be fun to play with anyway.

umm...is this considered spamming or advertisement?

Your post is spam, peterhuang913. Most of your posts are spam. Stop spamming!

 

[Kharn]

Vormund, I know the project very very well and it is well worth any time you can put into it. If you whant to see what the engine is trying to emulate and update take a look at the Fallout games 1 & 2 only for a idea.

 

[mvBarracuda]

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

 

[mvBarracuda]

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:
2007/06/25/12.05 - FIFE engine repository - Trac

 

[lutics]

Open source games turn out bad why?
hacking made simple. I used to make hacks for games, its not hard. making it open source makes it 10 times easier, & will ruin the game community.