[Hajo]

[mvBarracuda]

[Hajo]

Nah, starting a second project definitely makes no sense. If I really can contribute - I use to start way too many things and then get nothing done. But I'll try to get in touch with them. Maybe not this week though, because after this week I'll be away three weeks, and I guess it's bad to pop up and then disappear for a longer while just after saying hello.

[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.

[mvBarracuda]

Hello and welcome to yet another FIFE update!

This time we got a whole pack of news for you today:
- Linux OpenGL bug that was worrying us for over a year finally fixed by OpenAnno developer!
- Rewrite of the rendering pipeline planned to improve performance and add the possibility of more advanced graphical features.
- FIFE becomes the Flexible Isometric Free Engine.
- 3 years of FIFE IRC birthday party at 2008/09/11.
- Departure of a founding developer. Who will it be?

You can read about it at the FIFE developer blog.

[mvBarracuda]

Hello and welcome to yet another FIFE news update!

This time we got quite some important news to announce: the FIFE-based real-time economy simulation and strategy game OpenAnno released its first public milestone recently. The primary purpose of this release is to show the framework in action and to attract some new interested developers for the OpenAnno project this way. Although there is rudimentary gameplay available, don't expect something too sophisticated our you'll end up disappointed. Their release comes in three flavours: precompiled binaries for 32 & 64bit Linux distros and a win32 installer:
* OpenAnno 2008.1 release download site

For the ones who want to get a first impression before downloading the release, there are screenshots and an official release trailer for your viewing pleasure :-)

Screenshot:


Release trailer:
* Low quality youtube version.
* High quality MKV version (H.264 + Ogg Vorbis >> Matroska container).

Read the full blog posting at the FIFE developer blog :-)

[Hajo]

Good to see the progress on open anno :)

I bet this will boost the visibility and publicity of the FIFE engine. There are a lot of anno fans out there.

[mvBarracuda]

Hopefully you're right Hajo :-) Not much going on at FIFE at the moment but on the other side the engine is quite stable so lack of progress is prolly something that shouldn't worry us at this point of development.

If there is something important still missing it's likely that the FIFE-based games in development (OpenAnno, Zero-Projekt) implement it and give back their changes to FIFE so that everyone can benefit from it.

[Hajo]

A sure sign that a project reaches maturity is that the wishes of the users get more and more esoteric. That means that all the basics are covered, people think it's good, but they need something super-special for their projects, and since all the basics are covered this feature is then requested as a the most important at all for an engine.

Well, this assumes there is an active community - I'm telling this from the experiences with my only project that caught some attention, and which is still living after about 10 years of development (I quit 4 years ago, but others continue and I watch the forums now and then).

I've been spying a bit on the open anno pages and I'm impressed. For such a young project it's already very nice :)

[dbest]

[mvBarracuda]

Hello and welcome to yet another FIFE news update :-)

When I decided to step back from my position as project manager of FIFE so I could focus on my studies and private life back in September last year, I was hoping to find a new developer who would overtake my tasks and act as new project manager of FIFE. Unfortunately there were no long waiting queues of volunteers who would have liked to jump into this effort right away. On the other side I didn't invest much time and effort into finding a replacement for me as I was preparing for my final Latin exams back then. So now that that I got some spare free time on my hands, I'll tell you how you can contribute to the future of the FIFE project.

LinuxDonald, the former project manager of the FIFE-based OpenAnno project, recently got in contact with me and volunteered for taking over the project management duties of FIFE. I was quite happy that he's interested in this position as that's a good chance to resume the development of the project, that is currently on halt. The idea to create a cross platform open source isometric 2d game engine is one that I still believe in; it's just that I lack the time and motivation to continue supporting this project by being responsible for a vast number of tasks. Therefore I would like to help handing over the project to an active development team as much as possible.

You want to know, what the fuzz is about all about? Read the full news at the FIFE developer blog.