HW:Gamedevnet2

This is the second advert that will be posted at gamedev.net and other game development forums. It will be used to try to recruit an engine programmer who could evaluate the possible engine options for us.

Team name: PARPG development team.

Project name: PARPG - post-apocalyptic roleplaying game. It's just a working title at the moment and we can reconsider it later.

Brief description: I had plans for such a project for quite some time but it was more of a vague idea than anything else. In late January I decided to start writing down my ideas for the project at a wiki. PARPG will be an old school 2d isometric roleplaying game, inspired by genre classics such as Fallout, Arcanum or Planescape: Torment.

As the project is in early concept stage, there are not many decisions set in stone yet but the following key elements have been agreed upon: * Singleplayer RPG. No plans for multiplayer support. Coop support not a priority. * Post-apocalyptic setting. Story, setting and game mechanics details get fleshed at the moment. * Written in Python (2.5x branch). Utilizing the FIFE game engine. * Isometric 2d perspective instead of going for full 3d engine complexity. * Open source code and asset licensing. * Open development philosophy. Public development wiki and forums. Anonymous SVN checkout. * Meaningful choices and consequences. Multiple paths to complete quests, including non-violent ways. * Tactical, turnbased combat. * Emphasis on well-written detailed branching tree dialogue.

More information about agreed upon setting aspects and game mechanics can be found here: * Game mechanics draft. * Setting draft.

Target aim: Open source & non profit. Actual code and content licensing (which open source license to choose) will be discussed among the team.

Compensation: Although there are no intentions to make monetary profit with the project, there are a bunch of potential reasons for developers to get involved: * Improving your personal portfolio with the demo version of the game to land a job in the industry. The demo will be a one town / location version of the game. Creating such a demo will be an already quite challenging task and it gives us the chance to test concepts in a smaller scale undertaking first before trying to tackle a full game. A more detailed description of the demo concept can be found at the project wiki. * Love for old school isometric 2d RPGs. * Enthusiasm for open source game development. * Gaining game development experience by working on a team project.

Technology: Targeted platforms: Linux, Win32. Mac support would be a plus but judging from the project that I worked on in the past, finding a Mac maintainer can be a lot of hassle so supporting Macintosh systems is not a must.

Programming language: Python 2.5x; not all important Python libraries have been ported to Py3k yet so we'll stick to the 2.5 branch for now. Time-critical code can be written in C++. C++ <> Python bindings are supported by FIFE via SWIG.

Engine: FIFE. I was personally involved in the FIFE project for three years and although the engine is not feature-complete and development is currently going slow, it might be the best basis that is available for such a project. I'll elaborate on the whole engine question below.

IDE: No IDE preference from my side. There are a bunch of good free as well as commercial Python IDEs available. I can't see a good reason at the moment to agree on a single IDE that needs to be used by all programmers; so freedom of choice for you.

Talent needed: Python / C++ programmer Programmers can work in a bunch of potential fields: * Game-related development. Implementing game features in Python. * Tools development. Creating / improving all kind of asset creation tools, e.g. a map editor. An example map editor tool comes with FIFE so this can be used as a basis. * Engine-related development. Extending / modifying the FIFE engine core for our purposes.

As we've already agreed to go for isometric 2d graphics and agreed to write the game code in Python, the number of potential engines for such a game is rather limited. FIFE looks like the best choice for such a game but I was involved in the development of FIFE for 3 years so I might be simply unintentionally biased. Subsidiarity is one key project philosophy so rather than setting the final engine decision in stone now I would like to get feedback by interested programmers first.

Here's where you come into play :-) I did some research on isometric game engines with Python support in the past and so far only FIFE and GemRB sound like viable options. I'm prefering FIFE at the moment as I know the engine pretty well and I'm quite positive that it will suit our needs for PARPG based on the experience working on a FIFE-based techdemo called "Rio de hola". It's quite likely that we'll end up modifying the engine core code but FIFE should provide at least a good basis for our game.

So the first task for the programming department will be taking a closer look into FIFE to find out what kind of functionality is already well supported by the engine and which kind of features we'll end up implementing on our own. Especially for the engine-related programming C++ experience will be needed.

Engine requirements are still a bit vague at the moment as game mechanics, setting and story have not been fully fleshed out in this early phase of development. However PARPG will resemble other isometric 2d RPGs as Fallout, Arcanum and Planescape: Torment. Therefore we can use these existing games at least to a certain extend to distill the engine requirements for PARPG. I'll compile a list of requirements until the next weekend and update this post with it after that.

Team structure: barra - public relations, developer recruitment, infrastructure maintenance, project management. Lamoot - graphics artists; helps with building up the graphics department of the project (defining guidelines for artists); he contributes to the settings discussion as well. qubodup - open source enthusiast; contributes to a bunch of fields: web design, license-related aspects and game mechanics. zenbits - Python programmer; besides his plans to contribute as game programmer, he currently fleshes out the mechanics of PARPG. Zenbitz comes from a pen & paper RPG background.

A listing of my prior game development experience, skills and the specific tasks I'll take over in the development of PARPG can be found at my personal user page at the project wiki.

Website: PARPG blog PARPG forums</a> PARPG wiki</a>

Contact: I prefer contact via email: martin DOT vohland AT googlemail DOT com In case you can't get in contact with me via mail for whatever reason there may be, you can PM me here as well. However personal message notification via email does not seem to work so it could take a day or two until I spot your PM.

Previous Work by Team: I was one of the founders of the game engine project FIFE and worked on it for three full years from 2005-2008. My main tasks were recruitment of new developers, public relations (posting news at the blog, staying in contact with the community), infrastructure maintenance (wiki, SVN, trac) as well as maintaining the FIFE Win32 compile SDK - an easy to use all-in-one package to build FIFE from source on Windows systems.

More information about FIFE can be obtained from one of the old help wanted postings</a> I posted here at gamedev.net. Furthermore the FIFE wiki</a> is a great starting point as well.

Additional Info: Here are some screenshots of the FIFE techdemo "Rio de hola": <img src="http://wiki.fifengine.de/images/thumb/b/b1/2008.1.013.jpg/300px-2008.1.013.jpg" alt="Rio de hola #1" /></a> <img src="http://wiki.fifengine.de/images/thumb/5/5f/2008.0.009.jpg/300px-2008.0.009.jpg" alt="Map editing tool #1" /></a> <img src="http://wiki.fifengine.de/images/thumb/f/f8/2008.1.014.jpg/300px-2008.1.014.jpg" alt="Map editing tool #2" /></a>

Some screenshots of OpenAnno - a FIFE-based realtime strategy game currently in development: <img src="http://www.openanno.org/wiki/images/thumb/e/e8/Oa_rev1489_ingame1.png/311px-Oa_rev1489_ingame1.png" alt="OpenAnno #1" /></a> <img src="http://www.openanno.org/wiki/images/thumb/5/5f/Oa_rev1489_ingame3.png/311px-Oa_rev1489_ingame3.png" alt="OpenAnno #2" /></a> <img src="http://www.openanno.org/wiki/images/thumb/6/6a/Oa_rev1489_startmenu.png/311px-Oa_rev1489_startmenu.png" alt="OpenAnno #3" /></a>

Feedback: Any kind of feedback is appreciated. We're more than willing to learn from any mistake so shoot, we can take it :-)