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.

Flare 1.02

Flare 1.02 is now available for download and fixes a few crashes along with some language updates.

  Windows

 Linux

Changelog

Engine features

  • Support multiple campaign statuses for requirements in engine/titles.txt. (Justin Jacobs)

Engine fixes

  • Fix crash on exit caused by not clearing the Hazard queue. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Fix regression that caused a crash when configuring mods in the wrong order. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Fix bug where player title wouldn’t update after “unset_status”. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Fix potential NULL dereference in vendor window. (Justin Jacobs)

Translation updates

  • Scottish Gaelic (gd) update (GunChleoc)
  • Polish (pl) update (Pawonashi)
  • Russian (ru) fix (Igor Paliychuk)
  • Ukranian (uk) update (Микола Франчук)

Flare 1.01

Flare 1.01 is now available for download! It includes many bug & crash fixes, as well as a few game play changes based on player feedback.

Downloads

  Windows

 Linux

 Mac OS

  • The Mac OS version is still having issues, so a new version is not available at the moment.

Changelog

Engine features

  • Add “Renderer” option to the Video section of the Configuration menu. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Support loading some hard-coded Configuration menu values from menus/config.txt. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add WidgetSettings class for loading previously hard-coded properties of some Widgets. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add support for changing the buyback price after the player leaves the map. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add ability for certain classes to open a specific tab of the Powers menu automatically. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add ‘respec’ Event component for resetting XP/stats/powers. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add ‘no_aggro’ Power attribute. (Justin Jacobs)

Engine fixes

  • Fix bug where if minions were blocking the player, they couldn’t be moved out of the way. Minions are now forced to move out of the way if the player is close enough. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Fix bug where removing a primary stat bonus would break passive powers that relied upon said bonus. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Fix crash on exit when using the sdl_hardware renderer on some systems. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Fix disappearing text caused be resizing the window in some cases. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Fix a regression in button and checkbox logic that prevented them from working with keyboard and controller input. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Fix rendering of tabs when individual tabs are too short or too long. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Adjust gamma slider range so that the default value is in the middle. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Clean up error messages that are displayed when the stash hasn’t been created. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Prevent the same key from getting bound to multiple actions. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Prevent editing joystick bindings when joystick is not in use. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Don’t try to send items to buyback when using SELL_WITHOUT_VENDOR. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Fix named Effects not showing up in Power menu tooltips. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Fix passive powers not respecting some power usage requirements. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Fix some events being activated when they shouldn’t if the player was inside of their location rect. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Fix Power attribute pre_power not working for AI creatures. (Justin Jacobs)
  • WidgetScrollBox now scrolls in 5% increments based on the size of its contents, as opposed to a hard-coded pixel amount. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Fix memory leaks in GameSlotPreview, LootManager, PowerManager, and ModManager. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Fix incorrect dimensions of SVG icon. (Alexander Wilms)
  • Fix Windows installer not using the correct working directory for launching Flare after install. (Justin Jacobs)

Documentation

  • Add documentation for creating Mac OS build. (Thomas Leavitt)

Translation Updates

  • Scottish Gaelic (gd) update (GunChleoc)

Game changes

  • Redesign final Fort Nasu puzzle, in response to the frustrations of many players. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Increase elemental ring bonuses by 10%. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Tweak slingshot stone graphics to make it more visible on some maps. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add appdata.xml for use with various package managers. (Alexander Wilms)

1.01 coming soon, string freeze starting today

First off, I want to say thank you to everyone who’s been playing 1.0. The response has been very positive and I, personally, couldn’t be more happy.

We’ve gotten a lot of feedback on bugs and gameplay annoyances, which we’ve fixed for our next release. A full change log will be available when 1.01 is released some time this weekend.

There were a few new/changed strings in the engine and the game data, so we are starting a short string freeze for translators. Translations should be in by 2:00 PM EST on Friday, March 30. Below is a summary of the strings that need attention:

#######
### mods/default/languages/engine.pot
#######

#: ../../../src/DeviceList.cpp:55
msgid ""
"SDL software renderer\n"
"\n"
"Often slower, but less likely to have issues."

#: ../../../src/DeviceList.cpp:58
msgid ""
"SDL hardware renderer\n"
"\n"
"The default renderer that is often faster than the SDL software renderer."

#: ../../../src/SDLInputState.cpp:703 ../../../src/SDLInputState.cpp:707
#: ../../../src/SDLInputState.cpp:711
#, c-format
msgid "'%s' is no longer bound to:"

#######
### mods/empyrean_campaign/languages/data.pot
#######

#: ../powers/base/magician/thunderstrike.txt:4
msgid "Lightning strikes from the sky with a high chance to critically damage movement-impaired enemies.

Update: Translation is now possible via Transifex for both the engine and game.

Flare 1.0

It’s been over 4 years since Flare 0.19 was released. Finally, Flare 1.0 and the new Empyrean Campaign are finished and ready for download!

Downloads

  Windows

 Linux

 Mac OS

Changelog

Engine changes

  • Add dependency checking and metadata to mods; remove –game command line flag (Justin Jacobs)
  • Engine and mod version checking. Mods can require specific engine & dependency versions. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add –mods command line option. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Allow mod files to “append” their contents instead of replacing the target file (Justin Jacobs)
  • Print filename & line number when file parsing errors occur (Justin Jacobs)
  • Switch to using SDL 2 (Justin Jacobs)
  • Refactored rendering system to support alternate backends (Henrik Andersson, Igor Paliychuk, Justin Jacobs)
  • Implement automatic frame skipping for slow systems (Justin Jacobs)
  • Refactor animation system to support higher framerates (Justin Jacobs)
  • Change default maximum framerate to 60 FPS (Justin Jacobs)
  • Resizable game window (Justin Jacobs)
  • Scaled rendering that always fills the window (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add –renderer command line flag (Justin Jacobs)
  • Fix engine failing to read fast inputs (Andrew Engelbrect)
  • Joystick buttons can be re-mapped (Justin Jacobs)
  • Allow mapping of joystick axes (Justin Jacobs)
  • Support binding all mouse buttons (Justin Jacobs)
  • Log console message to file (Justin Jacobs)
  • Warn when trying to run multiple instances of Flare (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add –help and –version command line flags (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add developer console and HUD (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add book GUI (Igor Paliychuk)
  • Add GUI for selecting quantity when shift-clicking on items (Justin Jacobs)
  • Refactor configuration menu code to support alternative platforms (Justin Jacobs)
  • Improved pause menu with volume sliders. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Support adding a background image to the minimap. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Don’t autopickup items dropped by the player (Justin Jacobs)
  • Allow multiple items to drop at the same time (Justin Jacobs)
  • Missing items due to mod configuration are now marked as “Unknown Item” (Justin Jacobs)
  • Smoother movement around 1×1 tile objects (Justin Jacobs)
  • Map rendering performance improvements (Stefan Beller)
  • Enemies can wander randomly when not in combat (Justin Jacobs)
  • Better support for using targeted powers when right-clicking on action bar icons (Justin Jacobs)
  • Implement action queue, allowing potions to be used while attacking (Justin Jacobs)
  • Added configuration option to always show HP/MP/XP bar text. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add option to hide loot labels; show them by pressing ALT (Justin Jacobs)
  • Prevent loot labels from overlapping each other. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Refactor AI power system to support unlimited powers instead of just four (Justin Jacobs)
  • Display bonuses in power tooltips (Justin Jacobs)
  • Allow more than 4 save slots (Justin Jacobs)
  • Enemy minions can now receive party buffs. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add option to automatically equip items (Justin Jacobs)
  • The last HUD log message is now displayed on top of open menus that might have previously obscured them. (Justin Jacobs)
  • “Repeater” powers no longer hit the same target multiple times. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Status effect icons now have tooltips to show effect name and duration. (Justin Jacobs)
  • More varied enemy movement patterns with the addition of random fleeing (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add subtitle support. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Usability improvements to WidgetInput. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Interpolate camera movement during intermap/power teleporting. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Added in-game timer, display time played on load game screen and pause menu. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Events can now be run from “script” files. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add “static” activation type to map events. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Mouse cursor modding support (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add ability to save game through Events (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add Event property to teleport to a random map from a list of maps (Justin Jacobs)
  • Allow equipped items to disable other equipment slots (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add support for loot table files (Justin Jacobs)
  • Randomized item drops and trader inventories via loot tables (Justin Jacobs)
  • Allow powers to spawn loot (Justin Jacobs)
  • Added knockback effect (Justin Jacobs)
  • New stats: Missile Reflect Chance, Damage Reflection (Justin Jacobs)
  • Allow powers to have no effect on targets with different movement types (Justin Jacobs)
  • Added ability for hazards to move relative to the caster (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add Power option to have caster “charge” forward/backward in a straight line (Justin Jacobs)
  • Support miss & “overhit” damage multipliers. (Justin Jacobs)
  • The primary stats (Physical, Mental, etc) can now be defined in a mod file. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Damage types (Melee, Ranged, Mental) can now be defined in a mod file. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Support grouping active effect icons. (DoKel)
  • Add “wall_reflect” option for powers. (Clint Bellanger)
  • Add support for changing attack animation speed. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add “color_mod”, “alpha_mod”, and “blend_mode” options to animations. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add parallax map backgrounds/foregrounds. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add support for map background color as used in Tiled. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Icons can now be loaded from multiple image files. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Added “movie credits”-style scrolling to cutscenes. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Cutscene improvements: music support and individual scaling of graphics. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Support for background artwork in main menus (Justin Jacobs)
  • Vendor buyback can now be stored per-NPC across sessions (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add MapSaver API (Igor Paliychuk)
  • Several new properties for powers, effects, events, etc. I forgot to list here to support new game content. (Justin Jacobs)
  • Mod syntax improvements; generated wiki page defining mod files (everyone)
  • MANY small bug, crash, and static analysis fixes (everyone)

New Ports

  • Android port (Igor Paliychuk)
  • Emscripten port (Justin Jacobs)

Translation Updates

  • Scottish Gaelic (gd) update (GunChleoc)
  • Galician (gl) update (Adrián Chaves Fernández)
  • German (de) update (Janet Hunt)
  • Italian (it) update (Jeffry84)
  • Japanese (jp) update (Paul Wortmann, sujiniku)
  • Norwegian (nb) update (Hans Joachim Desserud)
  • Polish (pl) update (Pawonashi)
  • Portuguese (pt) translation (Phillippe Caetano)
  • Russian (ru) update (Sergey Basalaev)
  • Swedish (sv) update (Henrik Andersson)

Game changes

  • Entirely new game to replace the alpha demo, the Empyrean Campaign!