[mvBarracuda]

What is PARPG?:
PARPG is the working title of an isometric open source roleplaying game based on a post-apocalyptic setting. The project is currently still in its early planning stages. It will be a hommage to the golden age of RPGs of the late 90's and early postmillenium years. Main source of inspiration will be the Fallout series but also other classics of the genre, e.g. Arcanum and Planescape: Torment.

There are no fancy screenshots in this announcement so in case you're just looking for the eyecandy don't be disappointed: there is none at this stage of development.

The vapourware trap:
You've seen such announcements prolly over a dozen times before and the vast majority of them might have turned out as vapourware in the long run. There is no guarantee that PARPG might not suffer from the same tragic issues however I'm trying to explain why this project has a better chance of succeeding than some others that you've seen in the past.

My main source of confidence is my prior experience in the field of open source development. I was one of the founders of the open source game engine project FIFE and worked on the project over the course of three full years from 2005-2008. While working on FIFE I learnt a fair share about project management in general; but also about public relations, developer recruitment, maintenance of development-related infrastructure (SVN, Trac, Wiki) and software engineering in particular. This development background will hopefully help the PARPG project to succeed in the long run.

I know that it's impossible to remove doubts about the future development of the project at this moment. Some might still know me from my involvement in FIFE and I can hopefully convince the ones who don't know me yet with solid progress over the course of the next months.

Technical framework:
There is no final decision about all details of the technical framework of PARPG yet. What can be said is that the majority of the game-related code will be written in Python. Python - the 2.5x brach of it for now - was chosen as it features an easy to adopt clean syntax (yes, we are aware of the whitespace complaints), comes with a large standard library and seems to be well suited for easy and fast prototyping of game concepts. We might need to mix in some C or C++ in case time-critical code turns out to be too slow in Python.

The most important decision besides the programming language of choice is the question which engine to use for PARPG. FIFE might be well-suited for the task, however I'm not a programmer so I won't try to enforce any decision in this direction. One of the key principles of the project is subsidiarity: leave the important decisions to the departments that understand them. Therefore we'll sit together with interested programmers later to see what kind of choices we have (FIFE, GemRB, custom engine based on libraries like pyglet, etc.) and decide about it once we feel like having a clearer picture of what we want to achieve and what kind of technical framework would be needed for this purpose.

Setting, gameplay, key design elements:
The game is to be set in a post-apocalyptic world similar to that of Fallout. Key elements include:
* Cold war in the past ending with an atomic war with no winners.
* Collapse of society as we know it.
* Hardship to survive in a radiated environment, between bands of highway men, mutants and other deviant forces.
* Irony and parody of the cold war and the retro 50's vision of the future.

The exact setting is yet to be defined. There are numerous interesting locations to be picked. The game could be set in a snow-covered world, or in a more temperate climate or perhaps in a desert as the original Fallout. It could include successors to the remains of the Soviet Union (ever wondered how soviet vaults would look like?), remains of other allied nations or anything else, interesting enough to fit this setting. The final decision would be on a community of skilled people with imagination, in which great ideas would hopefully evolve.

Gameplay is planned to be a combination of meaningful, well-written dialogue and turn-based combat. The player would have multiple progress paths through the game and not all would include combat. The combat itself would be turn-based and include various tactics to overcome your foes.

Everything else besides that is up to the people who are attracted by the points outlined above, have experience in the relevant fields and would like to get involved in PARPG development. A compiled list of key design elements as well as important remarks about the project philosophy can be found at the PARPG wiki.

What is done:
So what is done so far? A couple of things: I've set up the basic infrastructure for the project (blog, forums, SVN, Trac, wiki) and I've started to outline the concept at the wiki. I might need three additional weeks to flesh out the remaining details that are currently flying around in my head but haven't been written down yet. Once these steps are tackled, I'll start to try to recruit developers for the other development departments: writing, gameplay, programming and graphics. Audio / music is not a top priority at the moment so we could get started without any developer in this field though having a composer or an audio engineer on the team is surely a nice plus.

What's still left to take care of:
A couple of things are unfinished business at the moment. I'm still waiting for a final decision from sourceforge if my hosting plea gets accepted. Hopefully they'll get back to me in the next couple of days. Furthermore there are a bunch of wiki articles left to flesh out. I'm not totally sure what kind of essential information is still missing before actual recruitment can start but that's why decided to announce the project at this early stage of development.

The purpose of this announcement:
I'm posting this announcement on a couple of forums where I'm either actively contributing or at least lurking on a regular basis. Hopefully there are community members out there who would like to provide early feedback. The best part of it is that there is still a lot of things to decide so your informed opinion can make a real difference.

Feel free to sign up at the forums, take a peek into the project wiki, visit the development blog or simply join the project's IRC channel. All kind of early feedback concerning the game (development) concept outlined at the project wiki is really appreciated.

Contributions:
Last but not least one final word about contributions: the project is still in its planning phase. That means I'm still busy writing down my ideas to convince other developers to join the effort. Once concepts are properly outlined - which will be hopefully around the end of February - official recruitment can start. The contribution policy is: power to the people who understand what they're doing and who don't mind spending some time on doing so. That means that although all kind of feedback is appreciated and will be taken into account, decision making will happen among the developers of the revelant department who invested their time into the project. We prefer the rule of decisions based on informed discussion over the rule of decisions by simple majority vote.

If you would like to know more about the next steps of PARPG development beyond the developers recruitment phase, feel free to check out the roadmap article at the wiki. Furthermore we recently compiled some first guidelines for interested contributors.

[mvBarracuda]

It's time for a little news update :-)

We've boiled down possible setting and game mechanics aspects in the last week. So far we've agreed on a nuclear winter setting; furthermore the game will take place in Northern Europe / Scandinavia. In case you're interested about the details, feel free to check out the full news update at the PARPG development blog.

[Hajo]

[mvBarracuda]

The whole setting is heavy work in progress. So far the snow setting and the Scandinavian theatre have been agreed upon. There are a lot of setting-related discussions at the forums at the moment. Feel free to check them out:
http://parpg.fifengine.de/forums/index.php?board=2.0

[mvBarracuda]

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.

[Hajo]

I wonder why FIFE isn't automatically set as engine for PARPG. I mean, you worked so many years on FIFE, know so much about it, why choose something else now?

[mvBarracuda]

I'm not a programmer Hajo. PARPG was started by me coming from a project management background. I personally think that FIFE might be the best engine available for the purpose but it needs to be evaluated nevertheless to avoid wasting a lot of time later on if FIFE turns out to be not suited.

For now we agreed to give FIFE a shot and put something together with it. If the team is happy and no unforeseen issues arise we'll continue going down this path; if major issues show up we'll reconsider the choice.

[mvBarracuda]

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.

[BadMrBox]

I'm a swede.
_________________

[mvBarracuda]

So in case you're interested:
http://parpg.fifengine.de/mediawiki/index.php?title=Contribution

[BadMrBox]

I'll check it out :).
_________________

[mvBarracuda]

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.

[mvBarracuda]

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!).

[mvBarracuda]

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 :-)

[Verious]

It looks like your team is making a lot of progress. I poked around the site a bit and there is already a lot of development related content.