FreeGameDev Planet - Games

Our first techdemo release is finally available for Linux, Mac and Win32! This release is based on PARPG SVN trunk revison 522. Built against and tested with FIFE SVN trunk revision 3236.

Preamble

This preamble has been written to give you an upfront overview of the current status of the project. In the last months the project slowed down considerably and we basically decided that we’ll rather release what we have right now instead of trying to implement more features and add more content, risking to collapse before we reach the finish line of the first release.

This said: we didn’t manage to fix a number of bugs and didn’t reach the original aim to implement a couple of quests that you can actually play through. You can walk around, talk to other characters, change to different (placeholder) maps, listen to background audio tracks and play around with the settings. That’s it. It’s possible that this is the first and last official PARPG release due the issues we are facing lately. Hopefully this release will help to attract some fresh blood that will get the project back on track. If not, it was at least fun for us to spend a year of our life on such a project and release what we have achieved to the public. And move on after that.

Download

Linux, Mac, BSD variants

• FIFE 0.3.0 r3236 source package (needed to run PARPG)
• PARPG techdemo 1 r522 source package

Win32

• PARPG techdemo 1 r522 win32 installer

License

• All Python code is licensed under GPL 3.0. For the full license see: /game/license/gpl30.license
• Assets are either licensed under Creative Commons 3.0 BY-SA or public domain. For the full licenses see: /game/license/cc30_by_sa.license & /game/license/public_domain.license
• Most directories contain an .license file that states under which license the specific assets in the directory are released under and who created them. Use this file to properly attribute developers in case you reuse PARPG assets in your project

Supported operating systems

PARPG is officially supported in combination with these operating systems:

• Linux (32 & 64bit)
• Win32 (32 & 64bit)

PARPG should nevertheless also work with (prolly some tweaks required):

• FreeBSD (use Linux install instructions)
• Mac OSX
• OpenBSD (use Linux install instructions)

Install process

Linux

1. Unpack the fife_r3236_src.tar.gz archive to a folder of your choice (called [FIFE] from now on)
2. Install scons using your package manager
3. Install swig using your package manager
4. Install Python 2.5 or 2.6 and a matching version of PyYAML if you don’t have them installed yet
5. cd into the [FIFE] directory and run: scons ext && sudo scons install-python
6. In case you encounter any build errors, install the necessary libraries and try these pointers
7. Unpack the parpg_td1_r522_src.tar.gz archive to a folder of your choice (called [PARPG] from now on)
8. cd into the [PARPG] directory and run: ./run.py

Mac

1. Unpack the fife_r3236_src.tar.gz archive to a folder of your choice (called [FIFE] from now on)
2. Install scons using macports
3. Install swig using macports
4. Install guichan using macports
5. Install Python 2.5 or 2.6 and a matching version of PyYAML if you don’t have them installed yet
6. cd into the [FIFE] directory and run: scons ext && sudo scons install-python
7. In case you encounter any build errors, install the necessary libraries and try these pointers
8. Unpack the parpg_td1_r522_src.tar.gz archive to a folder of your choice (called [PARPG] from now on)
9. cd into the [PARPG] directory and run: ./run.py

Win32

1. Run parpg_td1_r522_win32.exe and install PARPG to a location of your choice (called [PARPG] from now on)
2. Make sure that you’ve installed (Active)Python 2.6, PyYAML and FIFE (they either ship with the installer or can be downloaded with the help of it)
3. To run PARPG itself, cd into the [PARPG] directory and execute run.py (should be automatically associated with your Python 2.6 interpreter)
4. To run PARPG with file logging, cd into the [PARPG] directory and execute log_parpg.bat; the log will be written to logfile.txt

Map editor

• To run the PARPG map editor, cd into the PARPG directory and execute parpg_editor.py
• A work in progress map editor tutorial can be found at http://wiki.parpg.net/Map_editor_tutorial

Known bugs / limitations

• FPS rate tends to be rather slow on some systems; the FIFE team is working to address this in their view_performance branch, for details see http://forums.parpg.net/index.php?topic=570.0
• While it’s possible to talk to the NPCs, you can’t solve any of the quests without using the ingame console (see ticket #229)
• Some unit tests are broken (see ticket #253)
• Random music playback hasn’t been implemented (see ticket #250)
• PARPG crashes on exit in combination with Windows Vista 64bit if FIFE is built via MSVC 2005/2008 (see ticket #114 for a workaround)
• There is no regular main menu, you’ll have to use the key to access the placeholder menu (see ticket #118)
• Containers don’t support taking everything out of them at once (see ticket #225)
• You can’t drop items onto the ground (see ticket #223)
• Some map objects are semi-transparent while they should have been rendered opaque (see ticket #251)
• Full list of open tickets can be found at http://parpg-trac.cvsdude.com/parpg/report/1

How to provide feedback

You can reach the development team in a couple of ways and provide feedback:

• PARPG forums: http://forums.parpg.net/
• PARPG IRC channel: #parpg @ irc.freenode.net (visit http://irc.parpg.net to join the channel via your web browser)
• PARPG bug tracker: http://bugs.parpg.net
• PARPG blog: http://blog.parpg.net/

All feedback is welcome!

Acknowlegements

We thank everyone who supported the project and believed in the idea of creating an old school isometric 2d RPG despite the general trend of more and more higher budget cross platform (read: consoles and win32) 3d RPGs. We do especially want to thank qubodup, a loyal follower who supported the project since its first steps and has helped us by spreading the word about PARPG with his ingame videos and his continued news coverage at http://freegamer.blogspot.com/

Furthermore we want to thank the developers of FIFE, the engine of our choice. Without you this project would not have been possible at all and we’re glad that the project is finally in good hands again now. If you want to find out more about FIFE, check out their website http://www.fifengine.net/

The PARPG developers

The first beta release of the map editor is now available. Download from here: knights_map_editor_001.zip. This is a Windows only release currently. There are also not any proper instructions yet, but this blog post (and the previous one) will give you the basics of how to use the editor.

There is also a new release of Knights. You will need to install this before you can use the map editor, as the older versions of Knights are not compatible with the editor.

To use the editor, first download and unzip it. Then run knights_editor.exe.

Before you can start using the editor properly, you have to tell it where Knights is installed. To do this go to File -> Settings and fill in the “knights_data directory” and “Knights exe location” fields. These will usually be set to “C:\Program Files\Knights\knights_data” and “C:\Program Files\Knights\Knights.exe”, unless you have installed Knights to a different location. The program saves these settings so you only have to do this once.

You are now ready to start editing. To load the standard Knights rooms file, go to File -> Open and open the file “knights_rooms.txt” in your knights_data directory. (It is a good idea to make a backup copy of this file first, in case you break anything.) The standard Knights dungeon “segments” will appear on the left hand side of the window. Double click any one to open it for editing.

To place tiles you can click one of the tiles at the bottom of the window and then use the mouse to “paint” this tile onto the map area. You can use either the left or right mouse button to paint (i.e. you can have two different tiles selected at once, one on the left and one on the right button). You can also ctrl-click any tile on the map to select that tile (this may be faster than going down to the palette at the bottom all the time).

In the tile palette you will notice certain tiles have letters attached. The “P” indicates a “live” pentagram (the other pentagram tile without a “P” represents a “dead” pentagram that has no effect when stepped on). The “G” and “N” represent the gnome book and the Necronomicon respectively. “S” indicates the special pentagram, used for destroy book with wand quests (as opposed to a normal pentagram). “L” indicates doors which are “permanently locked” and can only be opened by means of a switch.

By clicking “Switches” you can cause actions to be triggered when a knight walks onto a certain tile or presses a switch. Double click the map to place a switch, or right-click to remove an existing switch. The switch actions have to be entered using a special scripting language which will be the subject of a future blog post.

By clicking “Rooms” you can set the locations of the individual map rooms which make up the segment, or view the existing rooms. Note that the actual dungeon rooms extend one square further in all directions than what is visible in the map editor (so that the rooms overlap by one square in the game itself). To place rooms, drag out a rectangle while holding the left mouse button. The right mouse button is used to delete existing rooms. Note that all rooms must be set properly before the segment can be used — if this is not done properly, the game is likely to crash.

On the File menu you have the usual New, Open, Save options. I recommend saving your work regularly since this is still beta quality software and it could crash at any time

The map editor has Undo and Redo features, available on the Edit menu (or by pressing Ctrl+Z or Ctrl+Y).

On the Segment menu you can add and delete segments to/from the current file. Each segment can be given a name (by editing the box on the right-hand side of the main window); this is not used in the game but is useful for keeping track of segments in the map editor. The segment “category” can also be set; this should be left blank for most segments, but can be set to “gnome_room”, “liche_tomb”, “guarded_exit” or “special_pentagram” for the special mission types. (See the segments at the bottom of the standard knights_rooms.txt file — the ones with names beginning “Z” — for examples of these.)

Last, but not least, there is also a feature where you can test your creations in the actual game. To do this, double click the segment you want to test, then go to Segment -> Test. Assuming you set your Knights exe location correctly, this will start a copy of Knights and put you into your chosen segment. After you’ve finished testing you can either close the Knights window or press ESC – Q to quit in the usual way.

If anyone does give this a try, please send me feedback – both as to any bugs you may find (I’m sure there are plenty) and also any suggested new features or improvements. Also, if anyone wants to send me dungeon rooms they have made, then I would be happy to put them into a future version of Knights!

Today excello announced a new duel cup sponsored by Bigfoot Networks! It will be a 32 player Single Elimination cup on Sunday the 21st, you can find out more information on http://www.teamexcello.com/index.php?p= … amp;id=236 or join the IRC channel #excellocup. We really hope that everyone signs up for this cup, because the bigger succes this cup is the more likely there will be more excello cups with prizes!
The first place prize this time is a Bigfoot Networks Killer Xeno Pro network card and its worth about 100 USD!

There is also news from the #pgZ Long Bomb Cup. With the past 2 weeks of the cup running smoothly, we enter the third week of this season. There's already been some tight and exciting matches and excellent shoutcasting done by Jehar of Tastyspleen.TV and we have a great match lined up for this Sunday night Lost !n Nirvana vs Quad at Home! Tune into WarsowTV (connect warsow-esport.net) on Sunday at 20:30 CET, bring some popcorn and prepare for a thrilling match.
Be sure to check http://longcup.tourney.cc regularly for updates regarding the cup.

Last but not least upcoming Sunday the 14th Inane and BelliCus are once again hosting an ESL duel cup with the same prizes as last time (ESL-tv premium accounts for top 3). Though ESL will only hand out these wonderful prizes if 16 players sign-up and play, so support Inane & BelliCus, Warsow and ESL. You can find more information about the ESL cup by joining #ESL.warsow in IRC or going to http://www.esl.eu/eu/warsow/news/117361/.

I hope to see all of sign-up, play and have fun spectating the cup! See you ingame.

Wormux 0.9.1 is out ! Here is the changelog:

• Bugfixes:
  
  • Fix shoot key handling when user exceeds the weapon max strength
  • Fix: Do not apply damage from explosion twice
  • Fix rope size check when attaching
  • Fix some memory leaks
  • And some others...
    
• One new skin: bugzilla
• One new map: chess map
• 4 new musics: circux, diabolicux, exoticux and woodlux
• Menu improvement: better management of tabs on small screen.
• Cleaner code
• Update translations
  

Nice progress is going on here with converting the project to Ardor3D engine. I've ported Obj loader of JME2 to Ardor3D. With a lot of help from Joshua (lead dev of Ardor3D) finally I could repair the remaining problems with the migrated Geometry batching too. That two made the static object rendering mostly complete. Also the partially billboarded trees are working now. After that I managed to integrate the GeometryClipmapTerrain of Ardor3D to replace the current awkwardish method how terrain was created in jcrpg's jme2 version. Still it's very basic integration: needs a lot of tweak like texture generation, dynamic loading and even alpha holes. I've created an extreme view distance screenshot for you, but it's really not for normal use, ate a lot of memory and gave low FPS - there's need for Level Of Detail based on distance for the trees and such to make it usable later. Anyway, check the screenshots (one with very high distance, one with normal. :)

The seventh beta for 1.8 is ready. Please note that due to a critical bug fix only versions >=1.7.14 are allowed on the development multiplayer server. For more details about this and celebrating the new release please visit this forum thread.
As with the last releases, we continue to offer two versions of changelogs: a rather nice to read players changelog that only includes changes every player will probably notice and the (rather) complete changelog with (almost) all the details, which is likely to cause a serious headache...
At the moment the Windows package and the MacOSX packages are ready. You can find them at the download page. Once the others are done you can find them at the download page, too. Please keep in mind that it is a development release which might include quite many bugs. If you find one, report it.

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Heya PARPG community

I don’t have the time for a detailed announcement, but we’ll ship our first official PARPG release tomorrow. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to implement some functionality that was originally planned for this first techdemo. But in the end we’re rather happy to release what we have right now before risking to collapse close to the finish line.

We’re just uploading release candidate packages for Linux and Win32. If you would like to help us testing these packages please visit PARPG’s IRC channel!

Hope to see some volunteers and see you for the final release tomorrow.

Last week there was no developer update as I was sick with the flu. This week however I wanted to do something different so I have been working on the sky in the game.

My first attempt was to simply place a skybox into the game with a star background. A skybox is simply a box with an image on it.

As you can see the results are not very pleasing. I tried numerous ways to increase the resolution of the image displayed however nothing seemed to work, including increasing the image size.

Instead I tried something completely different. I read about SkyX in the Ogre forums and decided to give that a try.

Firstly however I had to convert the shader code from HLSL to CG and then get it working in linux. Below you can see the results.

I am unsure that it is working 100% correctly at the moment. The screenshot with the dark clouds should show a star background which doesn’t seem to be displaying. The second screenshot with the white volumetric clouds seems to be working correctly however has very slow FPS.

FreeCol 0.9.2 has been released.

I'm in heavy evaluation process, taking closer look at the two alternative 3D engines for migration. Currently in a long process to convert the existing sources to use Ardor3D, to let me test how the new engine performs. Stability is the most important factor. Most of the codes in my experimental workspace are converted to Ardor3D. I could take a screenshot of the main menu. I still need to find a way to refactor the Input, the Terrain and the Audio system of jcrpg to let it work with Ardor3D's architecture. Hopefully the most beneficial will be the Terrain part, as there's a nice shader based terrain that streams data, and can produce 'megatexture' to cover the terrain. This will take a lot of time, I can foresee. But hopefully will lead to a better 3D architecture, speed and look.

If things settle down I'm planning to move to a different SVN repo, possibly googlecode. I'm a bit frustrated with SF.net SVN speed at times. Now will be the time to do so, as I'm restructuring the project while doing the migration stuff, moving the media to an upper directory, to let developers checkout less data. Also jcrpg will now build with Maven.

Kizzo once said that as the days go by, we are getting more and more organized. To further along our reoganization efforts, I have reorganized the source directory, consolidated a few modules, and implemented a distutils based packaging system. While it may seem strictly cosmetic, I think that the new directory structure is more akin to other projects, and thus future contributers will not only be less intimidated by a potentially foreign-looking directory structure, but also be able to dive into the code much quicker. The new build system is also more standard than what was previously present, meaning that us developers can worry less about packaging the code and more about making the code work.

If you are a baffled by the new changes,  they are explained thoroughly in the README.txt file.

USF has now a forum ! It is hosted by Freegamedev, thank to them !

It is located at http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewforum.php?f=33

Hi everyone,
we have been a little on slow motion the past few months due to real life that wanted to be accomplished first, but development speed is picking up again now.

We are planning to do a "wiki cleanup evening" on the 7. March 2010. Starting at 18:00 o'clock GMT+1 we will be cleaning up the wiki of old documentation and outdated information. If you would like to help out, please join us on irc #unknown-horizons @ irc.freenode.net or use the IRC Applet on the homepage.

We want to clean up the wiki to allow interested users and developers an easier access to up-to-date information on Unknown Horizons, make joining development easier and help users getting everything set up.

If you are interested in helping development with graphics, programming or sound please email us at team [a t] unknown-horizons.org or join us on IRC. We are always looking forward to new faces on the team!

More updates coming soon.

So long,
Nihathrael

:)