PARPG - nuclear winter isometric 2d old school RPG

[mvBarracuda]

Unfortunately the PARPG topic from the old forum has been lost due the server crash. If you would like to know more about the game, check out this first press release that basically summarizes the most vital information about the project up to this point: http://blog.parpg.net/2009/10/press-rel ... available/

If you need more information about the project, both the blog and the project wiki are good starting points:
Developer blog: http://blog.parpg.net/
Project wiki: http://wiki.parpg.net/

In case there are any questions about the project, just shoot. I'll try to answer them asap. We'll continue to post news update in this thread; hopefully this is not against any rule of this forum.

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Heya and welcome to yet another PARPG news update. We hope you had pleasant holidays and wild New Year's Eve parties :-)

Some of us just returned from their holiday break and now it's time to find out who's still around and can help us to release our first techdemo in early 2010.

This said: open source enthusiast Sindwiller is definately still around and released an updated but yet still work in progress version of his Snow may never end audio track. Feel free to give it a listen and let us know what you think.

While our programmers have been enjoying a well-deserved rest, the FIFE team has been working on a new stable release (the first one after 18 months!) of their open source engine that is utilized by PARPG as well. If things go as planned, their 0.3.0 release will be shipped at 2010/20/01. With some massive luck, the new experimental view code that is currently in testing stages, will make it into the release as well. We've tested the code ourselves and although there are some smaller bugs left, performance improvements have been massive on some systems :-)

Zenbitz hasn't been lazy over the holidays, but rather continued to work on the dialog scripts, so feel free to check out the latest dialogs in action.

Looks like our concept artists don't celebrate Christmas; at least I have no idea when they were able to find the time to pump out a massive number of new character portraits. Last but not least, we're doing some hidden product placement to advertize a long time favourite indie RPG project that recently released a first combat demo of their game.

Read the full news update at the PARPG blog to find out which game it is: PARPG development blog

And as mentioned above, here's one of the new portraits, say hello to Jacob:



That's all for today, next news update scheduled for Monday, 18th of January.

[qubodup]

And here is a video of the gameplay I could spot so far: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEQzki9KqXA

[Julius]

The characters need shadows But otherwise this is looking really promising so far.

[mvBarracuda]

Ingame character or the posted character portraits Julius?

Thanks for recording the video qubodup! That was really appreciated :-)

[Julius]

in game, the portaits look awesome!

[qubodup]

in game, the portaits look awesome!

I too thought you meant the portraits

[mvBarracuda]

in game, the portaits look awesome!

Absoluteley, the ingame graphics are quite work in progress.

Right now we simply try to finish the work on our first techdemo release to actually have something that people can download and try out. To get feedback by users who haven't tested the SVN version yet and especially by potential developers who would like see what's currently in place before deciding if they would like to invest more time into this.

Consistent graphics are not a major concern right now. We can hopefully attract more 3d artists with a first techdemo who can help us to introduce a consistent and more polished look for the game.

[Julius]

I would add shadows never the less. I bet it's really not much work, but first impressions really count a lot; even to potential developers. And judging from the video qudobup posted the missing shadows really look odd (even one of the youtube commenters complained about it).

[qubodup]

(even one of the youtube commenters complained about it).

Youtube commenters are an important feedback group! Nearly as important as Slashdot commenters! Sorry, sorry, it just sounded funny..

I for one could do without shadows. I would rather prefer having more dirt/stones lying around in the snow. All the white is not pleasant to look at for me.

If you decide to tackle the shadow issue, irc.freenode.net#gemrb might be of help.

[mvBarracuda]

Heya and welcome to yet another PARPG news update! We've finally made it: the first techdemo release of PARPG is available for Linux, Mac and Win32 :-)

Win32:

* PARPG techdemo 1 r522 Win32 installer

Linux, Mac, BSD variants:

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

You can find detailed instructions how to install PARPG on your system at our blog.

My permanent departure: This said: I'm sorry to say so but it turned out that I won't have more free time on my hands in April. There have been changes in real life and I simply don't have the time and the energy to continue my job in project management. That's why I've decided to ship this first techdemo release of PARPG and retire after that.

The reason why I'm announcing my departure now, is that the increased public interest due the recent release hopefully helps to find a new maintainer for the project. I do still strongly believe in the concept of an old school isometric 2d RPG but unfortunately time for me has run out.

Unfortunately not many of the formerly involved devs are still active at this point. But I'm sure that a new project manager can find a new interested developers for such a project.

PARPG infrastructure: To increase the chances that somebody actually picks up the project, I'll leave the entire infrastructure (blog, forums, wiki, trac, svn, etc.) in place for at least another full year. I'll pay for the hosting and will be around and do my best to support anyone willing to take over.

Ways to contact me: In case you want to discuss becoming the new maintainer of the project, feel free to contact me via IRC or email: martin DOT vohland AT googlemail DOT com.

That's all concerning PARPG for today.

Not sure who will post the next update at this blog. In case we can't find a new maintainer for the project soon, the next update will be prolly the first post mortem article mentioned above.

[mvBarracuda]

PARPG is back in active development :-)

For details, see: http://blog.parpg.net

[KroArtem]

mvBarracuda, one thing that scared me when I decided to test PARPG was needness to
a) checkout everything from svn
b) compile fife
c) compile PARPG
Now I feel myself a bit more skilled in compiling (at least I know how to install dependencies and type ./configure, make, etc) but also I'm too lazy.
And I can say that a lot of people prefer to install a game just in one click (well, may be not in one click, but they don't want to do all this stuff I've described above), so I suggest you to simplify the game's installation; may be to add fife engine to your svn and compile it together with parpg.

[mvBarracuda]

It's mainly a question of work/gain ratio KroArtem. We currently mainly target developers who consider to help out. Developers are usually tech savvy, so they might have an easier time to build it. I can't comment on the build process for Linux as I'm running win7. On win7 you download the FIFE win32 devkit, unpack it, run a batch file and FIFE has been built. That's it.

Anyway, PARPG is now searching for writers who are interested in contributing to the game. If you're interested in the details, check out the announcement at our blog:
http://blog.parpg.net/2011/01/writer-ap ... n-process/

[mvBarracuda]

Heya and welcome to a short PARPG news update.

If you've watched our wiki closely over the last four weeks, you might have realized that the PARPG team has been researching Agile software development in general and Scrum as one Agile framework in special. When we had our first stab at the project from early 2009 until early 2010, we ran into a couple of issues we couldn't really cope with back then:
* Lack of focus on actual development goals
* Lack of agreed upon development guidelines and processes
* Lack of communication and coordination between the different development departments

After qubodup recommended a Scrum book to me, I checked it out over the last year's Christmas holidays. I started to realize that Scrum could help us to stay focused, have an agreed upon process and ensure that developers actually communicate with each other.

As part of going Agile, we'll have our first sprint priorization meeting at Friday, 4th of February, 11PM UTC±0 at our new sprint IRC channel #parpg-sprint. The channel will be used for strict on topic sprint discussion in the future. If community members would like to attend the sprint priorization meeting, they're welcome to do so. This said: discussion will be restricted to PARPG developers to keep the meeting as productive as possible.

As we subscribe to the philosophy, that a news update without something fancy to look at isn't a good news update, there you go. Gaspard worked on some environment concept art:


Check out the full news update at the PARPG blog: http://blog.parpg.net/2011/01/parpg-goes-agile/

[KroArtem]

It reminds me... hey, Kamaz somewhere in Syberia?

[raptorus]

parpg-dev-team you are doing a great job!
But in my opinion you spend to much time for "concept art"
I mean, you dont create a new unique art-concept. your concept is traditional and well known.
So why waste the time of the artist? Dont lose your artists, they are great.
OR I maybe get it wrong, maybe this art will be used ingame than everything is fine. But then, i would call it "concept-art"

best regards

[mvBarracuda]

Our concept artist is a art student by trade. If he wouldn't work on concept art, he wouldn't contribute to the project at all. So we don't really waste time on concept art as our 2d artists who produce ingame graphics don't work on concept art.

[raptorus]

I understand, but you still can these pictures as loading-screens, cant you?

[mvBarracuda]

Yep, that's the plan :-) The last one shown almost looks like a postcard, so maybe we can actually turn it into an ingame item.