FOnline: 2238 Dev Update

FOnline: 2238 is an independent free-to-play MMO project, started early in 2007. It’s being developed by the Russian independent group Rotators, and has been in public beta since August 2009. The basic idea is to have a new MMO engine (FOnline Engine), running with assets from Fallout 1/2, with a combat system based on that of Tactics. For a good, detailed description, see the ModDB description.

Being steadily in public beta for some time makes it worthy of note for GameBanshee, but on top of that they’ve recently brought out some impressive news. The developers have been able to incorporate 3D assets from Van Buren into their game, turning FOnline: 2238 in a visually pleasing combination of Fallout 1/2 and Van Buren graphics.

Jumping into the 3d era
FOnline: 2238 Announcement, Jumping into the 3d era
(or: how we learned to not be that flat anymore.)

A long time has passed since we released our last developer video and really, it was about time this changed. The new developers video features a topic that we have been working on for some months and we are proud to finally have it in a shape to present it to the public: 3D models.

We decided to move the FOnline engine from a pure 2d to a 2.5d engine, due to the fact that sprite editing is a long and tiresome job. With every change on the player characters, it is nesaccary to edit more than 10.000 single images, even if it’s something simple like a different hair color or a new armor type. The use of 3D models helps us in developing more and diversified content in a shorter timer span and still keep the look and feel of the original games.

After the release of the first 3d model converter for the Van Buren models (Van Buren – the code name of the cancled Fallout 3 by Interplay, for the ones who don’t know it), we thought it was a great idea to reuse the material we could get out of the tech demo that has been released in 2007. Even if not complete, the build featured character models with already more than 90 animations and a lot customisations for body type or hair and beard styles.