[mvBarracuda]

The FIFE project is trying to fill various positions on the team with fresh blood. Feel free to take a look at the the detailed help wanted thread we posted at gamedev.net recently:
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=471055

[mvBarracuda]

No fancy new screenshots this time but we updated our compile SDK for Windows systems. You'll need the new SDK to build the latest SVN revisions of FIFE on Win32. Grab the new SDK here:
FIFE Win32 compile SDK sfx 7zip version
FIFE Win32 compile SDK zip version

[RampantCoyote]

Aw, man, I want fancy screenshots!

Seriously, though, congratulations on this release!
_________________
Tales of the Rampant Coyote - Old-School Game Developer talks Indie Games, RPGs, and the Games Biz

[mvBarracuda]

It's update time!

It was pretty quiet in the last weeks. One reason were the number of university tasks but another factor was my personal lazyness and lethargy caused by the holiday period. Now FIFE is back with yet another news update :-)

Here is a nifty new screenshot of the currently work in progress editor tool:


Furthermore our latest blog post covers the latest issues we encountered but also progress reports from the audio module, editor development and pather front.

You can check out the whole news update at the FIFE developer blog:
Time for heroes - yet another FIFE blog update

Last but not least: we're of course still trying to recruit new developers for the project :-) Don't be shy and visit us at our developer IRC channel.

[mvBarracuda]

It's update time again :-) three weeks have passed since our last official blog update and we're glad that we can report to have made several steps forward in this time.

To just summarize the most important points:
- We decided to revive the island_demo concept from the 2007.1 release and ship a island_demo like game with future FIFE releases
- View code changes to improve performance and resolve z-order issues
- Floating text renderer support for map instances
- VFS improvements for editor tool
- Vastly improved pychan extension
- FIFE documentation server with fresh doxygen, epydoc documentation generated on a daily basis; live IRC logs for developers
- Tweaked FIFE forums design
- Fresh blood on the team: two new programmers, one additional project manager
- New precompiled Win32 SVN snapshot available

Feel free to give the whole detailed blog update a read here:
http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engine/wiki/2008/01/28/17.22

In case you're just interested in fancy screenshots we got something for you as well. Here is a list of all new screenshots that are shown in the update:
Floating text support:


Continuum graphics pack: 45° rotation:


Continuum graphics pack: 135° rotation:


Continuum graphics pack: 225° rotation:


Continuum graphics pack: 315° rotation:


Continuum graphics pack: playing around with rotation, tilt and zoom parameters:


Last but not least: here is the download link for the mentioned new SVN snapshot for Win32:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fife/FIFE_r2057_win32.exe

[mvBarracuda]

We've done it again! We proudly present the FIFE 2008.0 release :-)

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

Screenshot of the new editor tool:


Youtube promotion trailer:
FIFE 2008.0 promo video

Theme of this release:
For the 2008.0 release we decided to pick up the island_demo concept again. Right: again. We already used this concept for the 2007.1 release but we put it on ice as we worked together with the Zero-Projekt developers on a different example game for the 2007.2 release. The cooperation didn't work out as planned for either side and so both teams stick to their own projects again now.

After the cooperation has ended we considered all possible options and finally decided to flesh out the old island_demo concept and base our future example game upon it. Although we were able to finish the initial planning work for the new island_demo game some days ago, there is almost none of the new planned content in place yet. On the other side the engine itself and the editor tool that ships with it now made _huge_ steps forward since the last release about 4 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 2008.1 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. We'll surely adjust the structure of the island_demo client over the next months but this release is stable enough to start working on your game now.

This release is surely not the beginning of the end of the road for us, but it's the end of beginning for the FIFE development team. Enjoy it as we do :-)

Important changes since the 2007.2 release:
* New audio module with support for some more advanced audio features.
* Optimized view code to improve the performance and resolve map instance z-order issues.
* Switched back to island_demo concept; this will be the example game that ships with future FIFE releases as well.
* Ability to save maps
* Routing pathfinding (previous release only had linear pather)
* Pluggable rendering system with several new plugins included.
* New editor tool, which can be used to layout maps
* XML-format improvements: stack position, z-position, camera definitions, animation x/y offsets
* Vastly improved pychan extension; XML based GUI definitions
* Quadtree adjustments
* Ability to define own settings formats and interpret them from scripts
* Ability to attach cameras to instances (so that they are tracked while they move)
* Separate x/y scaling for cellgrids, allows more flexible geometry definitions (e.g. rectangle)
* Basic mouse map instance picking.
* Improved engine-script exception reporting
* Mouse cursors can be changed from scripts

Few non-code related changes:
* Rough task list for the whole island demo has now been created
* Vastly improved documentation with nightly updates for engine core & scripts
* Lots of new content gathered and created for island demo e.g. agent definitions, clouds graphics, music...

Read the full release announcement at the FIFE developer blog.

[Verious]

The video looks quite interesting, although I'm not sure I understand the purpose of the rotation, since the tiles retain the original orientation.

[mvBarracuda]

[mvBarracuda]

The FIFE team released a new version of their compile SDK for win32 systems today.

The new SDK addresses an issue with MSVC2005 debug builds that was just recently discovered. Furthermore libSDL and SWIG have been upgraded to the latest versions.

Read the full announcement at the FIFE development blog:
New compile SDK for win32 release announcement

Download URL:
* FIFE 2008.0 win32 compile SDK (selfextracting 7zip version)
* FIFE 2008.0 win32 compile SDK (zip version)

[mvBarracuda]

It's time for yet another FIFE update :-)

This time we got something special for you: a new series entitled "FIFE community spotlight". The idea behind these new community spotlight articles is to have a closer look at the projects which are utilizing FIFE for their games. The first community spotlight covers the computer roleplaying game project "Zero" that is currently in development.

You can read about it at the FIFE blog:
FIFE community spotlight #1: Zero - a postnuclear cRPG

Here is some eye candy from Zero to convince you to actually read the whole community spotlight article:
















Last but not least and slightly related to the community spotlight series: we did recently declutter our wiki starting page. Check out the new and hopefully improved version here:
FIFE wiki

All kind of feedback concerning the community spotlight and the new wiki starting page is appreciated by the team :-)

[Verious]

[mvBarracuda]

Just a short update :-) a first SVN snapshot of the upcoming 2008.1 release is availabe for win32 systems.

Download URL:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fife/FIFE_pre-2008.1_r2282_win32.exe

Important changes since the 2008.0 release:
- Instance outlining
- Real stepless zoom for OpenGL render backend
- Curing singletonitis by getting rid of audio manager & vfs singleton via refactoring
- New music by the new composer torrent71

Unpack to HDD and read the README.txt that resides in the root directory.

Screenshots of new features that ship with this release:
Improved editor tool:


Instance highlighting:


Zoomed in:


Zoomed out:

[mvBarracuda]

Welcome to yet another FIFE news update.

A lot of topics to cover and just few time on my hands so I'll just list everything and you decide if it's worth reading :-)
* New project manager on the team and first blog update by him
* New composer on the team and first music tracks available
* Experimental networking branch (woohoo! multiplayer FIFE)
* Experimental MSVC2008 build system support
* Physfs branch
* New context menu
* A new name for FIFE?
* First Zero-Projekt video released

In case one of these topics sounds worth checking out, head over to our developer blog:
* Blog update: the smell of spring
* Blog update: Panic

[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

[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