Blog – Page 2

Flare 1.07

Flare 1.07 is now available for download. This release contains several bug fixes, some quality-of-life improvements, new translations, and a few new features.

Power level bonuses

New to 1.07 is the addition of items that can grant bonuses to the player’s unlocked powers. In the above screen shot, you can see that Ardwen’s Gloves raise the level of the passive Stone Wall ability. The stat and level requirements for the upgraded power is waived. In other words, a level 2 player with Stone Wall 1 will be able to use Stone Wall 2 despite the latter requiring a player level of 3. A handful of the unique items in the Empyrean Campaign have been updated to make use of these new bonuses, so be sure to keep an eye out for them.

Improvements to item icons

We’ve improved the appearance of item icons. The engine now supports image overlays based on item quality. This makes it much easier for players to find the good loot in their inventory at a glance. The quantity text on item icons has also been improved to be easier to read.

Navigating cutscenes

Players can now move backwards and forwards through cutscenes with either the buttons at the top of the screen or the left/right arrow keys. In addition, the movie-style scrolling cutscenes and now be scrolled up and down with the respective arrow keys. The Hyperspace map in the Empyrean Campaign has also been updated with a book stand that provides access to unlocked cutscenes for re-watching.

Completed quests in the Quest Log

Players no longer need to keep track of which quests they’ve already done. Completed quests are now listed in the Quest Log underneath the list of active quests.

New sound effects

The previously silent Cursed Graves have been given some new sound effects. Also, a new sound effect will now play when the player tries to use a power, but lacks the required MP.

New language translations

Bulgarian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Vietnamese have been added as new language options. Several other languages have received updates as well (see the full changelog below). There are unfortunately still some languages which are severely lacking in translation completeness. Those wishing to help can check out the engine and game on Transifex.

Windows

Installer (Engine + Game) (130.8 MB)
Engine + Game (130.9 MB)
Engine (6.5 MB)

Linux

Engine (x86_64) + Game (131.0 MB)
Engine source (5.6 MB)
Game (146.4 MB)

Changelog

Engine features

Added descriptions for some of the player stats to help clarify their purpose.
The game now remembers if the player dismissed the quest log notification.
Navigating cutscenes has been improved. Players can move back and forth through scenes with left/right arrows.
Vertical scrolling cutscenes can be manually scrolled with the Up and Down keys.
Scenes in cutscenes can now pause indefinitely by using “pause=-1”.
Added a “lifeform” flag to enemy stats. Setting it to false will display “Destroyed” instead of “Dead” when their HP reaches 0.
Mod descriptions can now be translated with “description_locale”.
Added “enable_overlay”, “start_at_bottom”, and “overlay_at_bottom” to HUD log configuration.
Added “requires_status” and “requires_not_status” to book text.
Added ability for book text to use special variables like “${AVATAR_NAME}”.
Added random selection of portrait and class to New Game menu.
Allow setting the class list height in the New Game menu.
Display a list of completed quests in the Quests log.
Item icons can now have an overlay image based on their quality.
Added widget settings for modifying the appearance of the quantity text on item icons.
Added support for playing a sound effect and showing a message when player lacks required MP for power usage.
Added ability to grant bonuses to power levels via items with the “bonus_power_level” property.

Engine fixes

Fixed GetText bug where fuzzy state from header wasn’t being unset properly.
Fixed rendering bug in WidgetTabControl.
Fixed crashes when using an empty WidgetListBox.
Fixed GetText bug where strings weren’t being sanitized.
Fix locked left/right keys when loading a cutscene from the dev console.
Using the –mods command line flag doesn’t overwrite the user’s mod configuration.
Fix infinte loop bug when trying to render multi-line text in a small area.
Fix interaction with loot hitboxes interfering with loot tooltips.
Improved handling of mouse movement for melee characters. The player will no longer execute their primary melee attack if they are out of melee range of their target. Also, the player will begin to attack if they enter melee range while moving.
The user keybindings are now reset if the keybindings file is not forwards compatible. Anyone using remapped keys will need to set them again with this update.
Improved performance when dealing with campaign statuses.
Fix NPCs/enemies not begin affected by statuses set in on_load events until the player re-entered the map.
Various fixes to MenuPowers, including better handling of when powers no longer meet their requirements.
Fixed crashes that occurred when NPC did not have animations.
Lots of code cleanup.

New translations

Bulgarian (bg) by Emil
Brazilian Portuguese (pt_BR) by Gabriel Iasi, Vicente Monteiro
Vietnamese (vi) by Nguyễn Gia Phong

Translation updates

Belarusian (be) update (Mikalai Valer’evich Sakalouski, Zmicer Turok)
Czech (cs) update (hark34)
German (de) update (Wuzzy2)
Spanish (es) update (Diego J. Romero López)
Scottish Gaelic (gd) update (GunChleoc)
Russian (ru) update (Sam Vo)
Chinese (zh) update (dumaosen)

Game changes

The player’s name can now been seen if they write it in the Book of the Dead.
Fixed not being able to do the Merchant’s Journal quest if Abasi was in his final location.
Added color-coded overlays for item icons and improved quantity readability.
Added new sound effects for cursed graves.
Added new sound effect for when the player does not have enough MP to use a power.
Tweaked the bonuses for some unique items to include bonuses to Power levels.
Some small additions have been made to the Hyperspace map. Most notably is a book which can be used to re-watch cutscenes.

Flare 1.06

Flare 1.06 is now available for download. This update contains some fixes for the Torture Chambers and brings a few improvements to the Android port.

Torture Chambers

There were two issues that had been reported with this map. The first being that it was possible to attack the imprisoned enemies without consequence while the barriers were still active. I wanted to fix this without changing the existing hero attacks, so I ended up adding the ability to make groups of enemies invincible based on campaign status. Modders that are interested in this new feature should refer to enemygroup.invincible_requires_status and enemygroup.invincible_requires_not_status in the Attribute Reference.

The second issue was a bug with the “Warden’s Notes” quest in this map. The end of the quest contains a switch to unlock the chambers and a teleporter to return to the main area. Previously, it was possible for players to skip the switch and teleport back to the main area. This left players with no way to unlock the barriers. This has been fixed by requiring the player to use the switch before the teleporter becomes active. For players that had already encountered the bug, the quest should reset the next time you visit the Torture Chambers.

Android port improvements

The existing controls for the Android port had behaved like a desktop user with “Move hero using mouse” enabled. When using such a control scheme, the mouse cursor is generally near the hero in the center of the screen. This is acceptable for desktop users because the cursor is just a small arrow. On mobile, however, this cursor is replaced by the player’s finger. This results in the action being completely blocked, and thus a poor play experience. To remedy this, I’ve added a virtual joypad to the Android port. On the left is a virtual d-pad for movement. On the right are two buttons which correspond to the two primary attacks.

Another “flaw” on mobile is vastly higher DPI screens than most desktop systems. For reference, my desktop is around 92 DPI, whereas my phone is 300 DPI! So running Flare on my phone’s 1280×720 display resulted in the game running at the higher virtual resolution of 600p. This led to me adding a virtual_dpi setting, which lets modders define a target DPI for their game. I’ve set the fantasycore mod’s target DPI to my desktop’s setting, so the game will now use the lower 480p resolution on mobile. This results in everything being bigger and much easier to interact with. While disabled on desktop by default, I’ve also made it possible to enable DPI scaling in the Video options.