Fanmadefallout is no more (if you don't know yet)

[egalor]

It's quite sad to see such a good and sturdy project depart after seven years of work. However, that might serve as an example, in order to avoid similar mistakes in parpg.

http://fanmadefallout.com/

[maximinus]

The link is a most excellent (if worrying!) link. This says it all, in seven years:

... we barely scrounged a completed dialogue together and made the script for it. We struggled to actually make a quest. We did finish most of the maps.

This is a awful thing to happen in a project that is full of good ideas (check out their wiki). All I can add is this little nugget of advice next time you have an hour to spend on PARPG:

If you only had ONE HOUR to left to improve PARPG, what would you do?

Thinking like this concentrates the mind a little! Anyhow, sad tale aside, let's think positive 

[Dave Matney]

Something that stood out to me in reading that, that doesn't seem to be a major issue for us, is they were battling the engine the whole way.  The thing in their letter that I feel applies to this project is that it's being developed via forums and IRC, which they had problems with, and as it's all volunteers it's hard to say who can and can't work on this (and when you say someone can, how long will it be before they up and vanish?).

The final thing that stood out to me, and I fell this is the most important, is that they had trouble with versions, and didn't seem to back anything up.

But it's sad that seven years of work has seemingly gone to waste.

[egalor]

I doubt the whole amount of work will be wasted (apart from the time spent on tinkering with the Fallout engine, unsuitable for heavy modding). I'm sure someone will re-develop the game on some other engine, maybe even on FIFE or something similar.

[Sirren]

I read the whole thing and I have doubts about the engine issues.
I actually started a small total conversion myself. A single town with 10 maps and a story set a few months before the war. The engine had its issues, but what stopped my project was scripting. I don't mean story writing, I mean NPCs scripts. I'm sure Python is simpler, more powerful and more flexible than Fallout crappy C based scripting engine. Still scripting is "The Great Stopper" for some 95% of MODs. We either are able to manage scripting or we're not going anywhere.

[shevegen]

what's with the guys now

actually i feel, and i my be biased, PARPG already has a lot more momentum going on than many other projects

but always interesting to see patterns of other people failure, and what to avoid then ...

[NineOfHearts]

It was sad to hear that so much work and time resulted without a finished project. I know that everyone's busy with their personal lives but I get up every morning and work on writing and come back home and look over the writing one last time before going to bed. I agree with Maximinus, one hour of focus to the project will pay off very nicely.