This page exists to answer common questions about Fifengine. It is a reference to answer oft-repeated questions people in the Fife community encounter. It is not a complete guide to Fife, nor a tool for teaching how to use it.

If there is some common or important question you feel is wrongly left unanswered here, feel free to help us fix it.

What is FIFE?

FIFE is a multi-platform isometric game engine.

What language is FIFE written in?

It’s written in C++ with Python scripting capabilities.

What does FIFE stand for?

Flexible Isometric Free Engine.

Formerly: Free Isometric Fallout Engine.

What platforms does FIFE run on?

It currently runs on Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.

What is the current status of FIFE project?

FIFE has several stable releases under its belt. We are continuing to work on it to add and improve features.

How easy is it to create a game with FIFE?

Creating a full-featured game is a complicated task. FIFE tries to ease the development process for you by providing a stable basis for your game project. It helps to have some programming experience to get started. FIFE is an engine and you have to extend the engine to suit your needs. We have provided Python bindings to make the development process a little easier.

What projects are using FIFE?

[[Games using fife|Games]]

Licensing

What license is FIFE released under?

FIFE is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 or newer.

Can I use FIFE to make a commercial product?

You can create commercial games with FIFE without needing to pay us any fee.

The following basic rules apply concerning the used LGPL:

Features

What features does FIFE support?

You can use proprietery libraries in combination with FIFE if you don’t integrate their code directly into the FIFE C++ core or the FIFE Python scripts.

For a full list a features please visit our page.

Does FIFE support any scripting languages?

Yes! We use SWIG to generate Python bindings.

See SWIG’s homepage for more information on SWIG.

At this time we only generate Python bindings.

Do you have any plans on supporting other scripting languages?

Not in the immediate future.

Will the engine support network features so you can create multiplayer games based on FIFE?

FIFE does NOT have any network code at the moment so it does not support multiplayer games.

We are however hoping to add networking support in the future. We are looking for developers who have experience in writing network code.

Miscellaneous

I’d like to help out and support you. How can I contribute to the development of FIFE?

Great idea :-)

We suggest you start by introducing yourself on our forum and then head over to our IRC channel #fife on freenode.