Flare 1.09

Flare 1.09 is now available for download. This release features several interface improvements, new options for mouse movement, and the introduction of alchemy.

Interface improvements

A handful of the options that were previously found on the “Interface” tab of the configuration menu have been moved to the in-game interface. The action bar now contains four small icons that control the following: loot tooltip visibility, mini-map display mode, stat bar label visibility, and combat text visibility. In addition, the option to auto-equip items has been moved to the inventory menu.

Some of these options are new to this version. The new default mode for loot tooltip visibility hides tooltips that would be obscured by the player and/or enemies. The mini-map display mode is an entirely new setting, allowing players to choose 1x zoom, 2x zoom, or hidden.

Please note that the options that previously existed in the “Interface” tab of the configuration menu are no longer there. Mods that aren’t based on fantasycore will need to be updated to present these options in game. Players that want to change these settings on a mod that hasn’t been updated will need to either load up a fantasycore-based game first or change them via Flare’s settings.txt configuration file (see the README for where this is located on your platform).

Another big change is to the way dialog choices are presented. Instead of being in a separate menu, dialog choices are now displayed inside the dialog window. The most notable change this brings is the ability to display dialog choices alongside the dialog itself for context. This makes it easier for NPCs to ask the player questions.

New options for mouse movement

Two new options have been added to the “Input” section of the configuration menu for tweaking the way that mouse-only movement works. The first option allows swapping the movement button. Typically, this means using left mouse vs right mouse for movement. The second option controls if the player can attack enemies by clicking on them with the movement button. Based on feedback during development, these two options cover a good variety of preferences when it comes to the way mouse movement behaves.

Introduction of Alchemy

The Empyrean campaign had a balance issue when it came to potions. Highly leveled players could easily farm potions from low level enemies. Yet they would still be just as effective because they heal a percentage of the player’s HP/MP. Without changing how the potions themselves worked, the next way to balance this was to change how the potions can be obtained. Enter the Empyrean campaign’s new alchemy system.

Florin in Perdition Harbor now offers an alchemy service, as well as selling a mortar and pestle for portable potion crafting. Crafting a potion requires an empty bottle, which can be purchased from all traders that sell normal potions. These empty bottles can be combined with one or more ingredients to create potions. These ingredients are Aloe Vera and Mana Crystals, which now drop from enemies instead of potions. Currently, the only potions available to craft are single ingredient ones. Use an empty bottle and Aloe Vera to create a Health Potion, or use an empty bottle and a Mana Crystal to create a Mana Potion. More ingredients and potion recipes will come in the future.

  Windows

 Linux

Changelog

Engine features

  • Redesigned mouse movement with better handling of non-melee attacks.
  • New mouse movement options to swap the movement button and/or restrict the movement button to be movement-only.
  • Loot tooltips can now be hidden when entities are near pieces of loot. The setting “hide_radius” has been added to engine/loot.txt to control this.
  • Overhead markers are now displayed for entities that are obscured by tall tiles.
  • Dialog options are no longer shown in a separate menu, but are instead part of the main dialog window.
  • Added support for dialog responses. For any line of dialog, a list of response topics can be given.
  • Add ‘save_pos_onexit’ to engine/misc.txt for saving the player’s current position upon exiting.
  • Added ‘colorblind_highlight_offset’ and listbox ‘text_margin’ to engine/widget_settings.txt.
  • Added a compass to the minimap.
  • Moved several interface options to the actionbar. Loot tooltips, combat text, statbar labels, and mini-map mode can be adjusted.
  • Moved the interface option for automatically equipping items to the Inventory menu.
  • Add ‘toggle_fps’ to the developer console commands.
  • Added a 2x zoom mode for the mini-map.
  • Add a video setting to disable parallax layers.
  • Add ability to use icons in books.
  • Add support for shadows on book text via ‘text_shadow’.
  • Add item property ‘book_is_readable’ to control displaying ‘read’ vs ‘use’ in item tooltips.

Engine fixes

  • Fixed shrinking tab widgets when widow was resized.
  • Remove broken ‘font_fallback’ from engine/font_settings.txt.
  • Add tooltips to language list to show language codes.
  • Make strings related to elements more translator-friendly.
  • Fixed a bug where looped map sounds wouldn’t play if the player entered the map with a sound volume of 0, but later raised the volume.
  • Fix buttons and checkboxes not handling clicks while the “Accept” key is pressed.
  • Fix incorrect descriptions of controls on mobile devices.
  • Add renderer support for batching calls to local pixel drawing. This speeds up the pre-render of the minimap.
  • Widgets that use custom images can now fall back to the default image if the custom image is missing (instead of exiting in failure).
  • Using consumables from the Inventory menu will now subtract from the stack that was clicked on.
  • Missing items now maintain their stack quantity when moved around.
  • Fix potential memory leak when redefining images in books.
  • Fix book open sound effect not being played in all cases.
  • Closing a book with the ‘Cancel’ key no longer closes all other menus.
  • Fix handling of disabled widgets when using keyboard navigation.

Game changes

  • Fix the “Locked Out” quest not appearing in the completed quests list.
  • Add interface option buttons to the actionbar.
  • Add auto-equip checkbox to the Inventory menu.
  • Added script font for Cyrillic languages.
  • Made changes to the Wizard’s Tower: Laboratory map to prevent attacking Metzger from outside the intended range.

New translations

  • Catalan (ca) by Marc Tormo i Bochaca

Translation updates

  • German (de) update (Fyrenic)
  • Scottish Gaelic (gd) update (GunChleoc)
  • Brazilian Portuguese (pt_BR) update (Rui)
  • Portuguese (pt) update (Rui)
  • Ukranian (uk) update (Igor Paliychuk)
  • Vietnamese (vi) update (Nguyễn Gia Phong)

FLARE Team organization on Github

We have relocated the engine and game Git repositories to a separate Github organization. They can be found at:

To those of you who regularly pull from these repositories, be sure to update you remotes:

### These assume that "origin" is pointing to the "clintbellanger" repos

# flare-engine
git remote set-url origin https://github.com/flareteam/flare-engine.git

# flare-game
git remote set-url origin https://github.com/flareteam/flare-game.git

Flare 1.08

Flare 1.08 is now available for download. This is a small release to patch up a few bugs in 1.07.

The most critical bug from 1.07 was one that caused players to lose unlocked passive powers upon death. In rare cases, this may have resulted in permanently losing power skill points. If you have experienced this, and 1.08 does not fix it, you can try to fix it with the developer console. In the console, enter exec respec=powers to reset your power skill point allocation.

  Windows

 Linux

Changelog

Engine fixes:

  • Fixed sdl_hardware renderer not clearing top/bottom for tall windows.
  • Re-create render context when “ignore_texture_filter” setting changes.
  • Fixed bug where points spent on passive powers would be de-allocated after dying.
  • Prevent upgrading powers with the ‘+’ button while the player is dead.
  • Fix off-by-one error when calculating loot drop rates.

Translation updates:

  • German (de) update (Wuzzy2)
  • French (fr) update (Simon Georges)
  • Scottish Gaelic (gd) update (GunChleoc)
  • Italian (it) update (Fabio Loli)

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

 Linux

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.

  Windows

 Linux

Changelog

Engine features

  • Allow modders to define a target screen DPI for resolution scaling.
  • Added video option to toggle using DPI scaling.
  • Add virtual joystick buttons for touchscreen devices.
  • Add ability to make groups of map enemies invincible based on campaign status.

Engine fixes

  • Fixed performance flaw when “always show statbar labels” was enabled.
  • Fix bug where incorrect Power menu tooltip was fetched when not using a mouse.

Game changes

  • Fix Torture Chambers quest breaking if the player skips the switch at the end.
  • Fix being able to attack imprisoned enemies in Torture Chambers by making them invincible while the barriers are up.
  • Reset Torture Chambers quest if it was finished without opening the barriers.

Translation updates

  • Spanish (es) update (Diego J. Romero López)
  • Scottish Gaelic (gd) update (GunChleoc)

Flare 1.05

Flare 1.05 is now available for download. It includes many new features, a few of which I will now highlight:

Developer mode improvements

The developer console has been made more compact and the old developer HUD has been removed. The new HUD displays the radius of hazards as well as the origin points of entities. The text output of position information is gone, as it would often be covered by the developer console. Replacing it is a tile cursor. Right clicking on a tile will display information about the mouse cursor position, the tile itself, and any entities that inhabit the tile. Holding right click will also calculate the distance from the player’s position.

Isometric draw order fix

We’ve had a long standing issue with the way some tiles were being drawn in relation to other objects on the map. Tiles that are part of larger objects are split in a way that would make them improperly overlap entities. This has been fixed for the majority of cases, but at the expense of some less optimized rendering code. So if you experience performance issues after updating to 1.05, please report them.

Multiple images in tileset definitions

Previously, Flare tileset definitions could only contain a single image file. This made it difficult for modders to expand on existing tilesets. It also made it impossible for old graphics cards to use the hardware renderer in combination with very large tilesets. Now, modders can freely add new images to tileset definitions, eliminating those two issues.

New game data attributes

  • (Powers) Powers can now be prevented from being placed on the actionbar with no_actionbar. Also, multiple instances of requires_item and requires_equipped_item are now supported.
  • (Events) Loot tables can now be used for rewards with reward_loot and reward_loot_count.
  • (engine/misc.txt) Modders can now control if the buyback persists across maps with keep_buyback_on_map_change.
  • (engine/default_keybindings.txt) A default set of keybindings can now be provided by mods.

  Windows

 Linux

Changelog

Engine features

  • Tileset definitions now support multiple images.
  • Display a message when unable to use a consumable item from the inventory.
  • Add a hint to consumable/book tooltips to expose their interactable nature.
  • Add ability to prevent certain powers from being placed on the actionbar.
  • Multiple entries of “requires_item” and “requires_equipped_item” are now supported for Powers.
  • Add “keep_buyback_on_map_change” to engine/misc.txt to disable saving the buyback between maps.
  • Add “reward_loot” and “reward_loot_count” to Events for rewarding via loot tables.
  • Support hidding the developer console title label.
  • Mod-level default keybinding support added.
  • Improved developer mode with inspection cursor.
  • Passive powers can now continuously cast their post_power.

Engine fixes

  • Fixed incorrect render order for some objects; aka “character partly hidden by front of tent”.
  • Fix stats/powers not updating when changing equipment in some cases.
  • Prevent auto-equipping items if they would cause existing items to be unequipped.
  • Fix revive effect not being applied when the player has zero HP.
  • Removed unused color key attribute parsing from tileset definitions.
  • Fixed building on FreeBSD.

Translation updates

  • Spanish (es) update (Eric R)
  • Scottish Gaelic (gd) update (GunChleoc)
  • Italian (it) update (MOB2)
  • Polish (pl) update (Pawonashi)
  • Portuguese (pt) update (Rui)
  • Russian (ru) update (Ademaro)
  • Ukrainian (uk) update (Sergiy Borodych)

Flare 1.04

Flare 1.04 is now available for download. It contains a few bug fixes that were overlooked in 1.03.

  Windows

 Linux

Changelog

Engine fixes

  • Fix a regression that caused book text that was not left-aligned to be cut off. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Fix a crash when teleporting to the default position of map with a summoned creature. (Justin Jacobs)

Game changes

  • Fall back to Liberation Sans when fancy fonts lack the appropriate glyphs for the current language. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Fixed translation script not grabbing subtitles from soundfx/subtitles.txt. (Justin Jacobs)

Translation updates

  • Scottish Gaelic (gd) update (GunChleoc)
  • Portuguese (pt) update (Rui)
  • Ukrainian (uk) update (Sergiy Borodych)

Flare 1.03

Flare 1.03 is now available for download. Newly implemented is the ability to trigger events from books (demo below). Flare 1.03 also includes a handful of bug fixes, as well as several translation updates. Many of the translation updates are from new volunteers that joined the Transifex team.

  Windows

 Linux

Changelog

Engine features

  • Buttons that trigger Events can now be added to books. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add ability to control image display in books via campaign status. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add ability to execute Events upon opening/closing a book. (Justin Jacobs)

Engine fixes

  • Fix crash when using invalid primary stat in stat_per_primary. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Fix crash when a book contains an invalid image filename. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Fix incorrect handling of newlines in tooltips. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Don’t spam “Entity stuck” message while pushing an entity out of a bad tile. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Keyboard key names such as “Backspace” and “Left Ctrl” can now be translated. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Prevent HP/MP/XP bar meter from exceeding the size of the bar. (Justin Jacobs)

Translation updates

  • Scottish Gaelic (gd) update (GunChleoc)
  • Greek (el) update (Nea Retrogamer)
  • Spanish (es) update (Diego J. Romero López)
  • French (fr) update (sang-froid)
  • Italian (it) update (MOB2)
  • Portuguese (pt) update (Rui)
  • Ukrainian (uk) update (Denis Lysenko, Микола Франчук)

On Transifex

If you’ve been following closely, you saw that I closed the Flare projects on Transifex yesterday. I cited Transifex as being unsuitable for our workflow. I’ve since been convinced to re-open the project pages and decided shift our workflow slightly to better adhere to the Transifex way of doing things.

For those completely unaware of our presence on Transifex to begin with, you can find both the engine and game projects on there. Translators interested in helping make Flare better in your language can join the flare-engine team. 14 of our 20 translated languages are without an assigned translator, so there are many places you can help.

And we will still be supporting our existing methods of submitting translations. So if you would rather submit your work as a Github pull request or send it via e-mail, feel free to do so.