Isometric 2D Rpg Searching For Experienced Python Programmer & Lead Writer *Screenshots & Video*

Team name:
PARPG development team

Project name:
PARPG - Post-Apocalyptic RolePlaying Game

Brief description:
The project has been originally founded in early 2009 and has been in production ever since. The game is heavily inspired by gems of the golden age of Western isometric singleplayer 2d RPGs such the Fallout series (especially Fallout 1 & 2), Arcanum and Planescape: Torment. While we released a first techdemo of the project in March 2010, I had to step down from my position as project manager to focus on my studies. Unfortunately the project slowly fell apart back then as I was not able to attract a new project manager to take over where I left. Now I'm back in action and we're working on getting the project back on track with the help of ... YOU :-)

The game is set in an alternative future post nuclear Scandinavia. Can you stop the nuclear winter that threatens to turn the Earth into a giant snowball or is the fate of our world sealed?

Target aim:
Open source (GPL 3.0) and free of charge

Compensation:
As the project has no commercial ambition, the only reward we can offer is the satisfying feeling to work on a project in the spirit of the golden age of isometric 2d RPG classics. So this is mainly for people who would either like to have a portfolio project under their belt or simply love these old school RPGs and would like to work on such a game themselves.

Technology:
Win32, Linux, Mac
Python 2.6 / 2.7
FIFE game engine (the core of the engine we utilize for the project is written in C++, but SWIG bindings are in place and supported out of the box, so PARPG developers don't need to touch the C++ core of the engine at all)
You can use whatever Python IDE you like, PyDev seems to be quite popular lately

Talent needed:
Lead writer
In a nutshell: our writing efforts never took off in a consistent and structured way. When the project started, we've agreed upon some basic setting guidelines and wanted to leave the rest to the to be found writers. Unfortunately that process didn't work out well in reality. Interested writers in the past mostly focused on fleshing out NPCs or proposed potential storylines for the game. At the same time, no writer was really willing to commit to fleshing out setting elements and what kind of writing themes would be worth exploring in the game. So now we've got loads of writing ideas ™ sitting in the wiki but there is almost no consistency to them. Therefore we have decided to tackle the problem from a slighty different angle than in the past.

We're looking for a lead writer who would be willing to commit to the more substantial parts of the writing process. We're looking for somebody who is not afraid from making decisions in the fields of setting, themes to explore and storyline of the game. Obviously somebody who is familiar with the post-apocalypse genre would be strongly prefered.

For a more information about the lead writer position, check out this advert: http://wiki.parpg.ne...g_a_lead_writer

Experienced Python programmer
We're currently looking for another experienced Python programmer who has either worked on a team project before (open source or not) or feels comfortable to work on such a project due extensive programming experience with solo Python projects.

Let me explain the current situation of the project and elaborate why we're looking for an experienced programmer. The project was founded in early 2009 and we have made steady progress towards the release of our first techdemo in March 2010. While we actually released the first techdemo, the large scope of the project and my lack of experience working with other individuals besides programmers on such a project took its toll and in the end I had to step down from my position as project manager to focus on my studies.

Although I tried my best to attract a new manager for the project, this did not work out in the end. Unfortunately the project slowly fell apart in the last months and there are just a few (though quite dedicated) developers left. As I've started to sort out my study-related problems, we're currently working on getting things back on track.

We decided to limit the scope of the project for now to get things running again by mainly focusing on programming efforts in the next months. The techdemo we shipped in March has enough content in place (graphics, dialogue) to implement new game features without being reliant upon the help of new graphics artists or writers. Focusing on the programming department for now will hopefully also ease managing the project for me in the next couple of months.

The most important tasks are an overhaul of the dialogue engine that is already in place (although it's still quite basic) and implementing support for basic stats for player and non-player characters in the game. Taking care of these two tasks provides enough improvements over our first techdemo to warrant a second public techdemo release of the game, that will hopefully help to attract additional contributors, both for the programming department as well as for the other fields of work.

If you're interested and would like to get your hands on the code, check out the install guide at our wiki: How to get your hands on the latest PARPG sources. Keep in mind that the linked guide just describes how to grab the latest PARPG code from our SVN repository. In case you want to actually test the game, please follow all the steps of this guide: test latest PARPG SVN revision

Team structure:
Right now there are two programmers involved. Beliar is mainly focusing on updating PARPG to keep it in sync with the SVN version of the FIFE engine that we're using. Technomage is a new Python programmer on the team who helped us to get things rolling again since he got involved.

Zenbitz is our game design guru and designed the vast majority of the mechanics of PARPG. Besides him one artist (Q_x) is involved who can produce 2d art when the need for it arises, e.g. when implementing a new feature that requires some kind of graphical representation.

Right now it's most important to get things rolling again. So placeholder art that is shortly available for testing purposes is much more useful at this point than high quality art that will take more time to produce. We can always try to attract additional artists after the 2nd techdemo has been shipped and replace any placeholder art in future releases.

Although I'm still busy with my studies, I'll try my best in the field of project management. I'll take care of these tasks:
* Writing community updates at our blog on at least monthly basis
* Maintaining and administering the project infrastructure (forums, blog, wiki, svn repository, trac)
* Taking care of release and milestone planning with the help of the programming department
* Building win32 binaries of the game for release and testing purposes if needed
* Recruitment of new developers after we shipped the 2nd techdemo

Website:
As mentioned above: the entire infrastructure for such a project is already in place. We're hosting our own blog, wiki and forums while our SVN and Trac repositories are hosted by codesion.com. Furthermore public releases of the project are offered at sourceforge.net:
* Blog
* Forums
* Planet (Project activity aggregator)
* SVN (we're currently discussing the pros and cons of switching to a distributed version control system like Git or Mercurial)
* Trac
* Wiki

Contacts:
The best way to get in contact with me is to visit the IRC channel of the project: #parpg at irc.freenode.net (freenode network). In case you don't have access to an IRC client right now you can also simply join the channel via your web browser: join #parpg IRC channel in your browser

If you prefer email communication for first contact, you can email me as well at Martin DOT Vohland AT googlemail DOT com. Our IRC channel is pretty much the established way of communicating with the other developers so interested programmers do hopefully have no IRC aversion :-)

Previous Work by Team:
I've been working as project manager of the FIFE project from mid 2005 to mid 2008. FIFE is the isometric 2d engine that we're utilizing for PARPG. We shipped eight public releases of the engine in this timeframe and I was pretty much responsible for the same tasks that I listed above, including recruitment of new developers. Furthermore I've been maintaining the FIFE win32 devkit, a collection of tools and libraries to easily and painlessly build the FIFE engine from source on Windows systems.

Additional Info:
Here are a couple of screenshots from our March 2010 techdemo release:




And here's even a fancy video :-) nothing beats moving pictures:
PARPG techdemo 1 video at youtube (switching to 720p quality recommended)

Other project-related art (concept art, portraits, renders, etc. click on the thumbnails for fullscreen versions!):
















Feedback:
ANY

We appreciate all kinds of feedback. If you want to tell us something, even if you're not interested to get involved, shoot right away :-) We can take it.

[Edited by - mvBarracuda on December 31, 2010 1:51:15 AM]