2011/03/07

Why yet another Diablo-like?

Flare is mentioned in this post about 4 problems with FOSS games. The author says “I’m actually pretty psyched about FLARE, but if I was a Windows user I’d probably be thinking ‘why not just reinstall Diablo?'”

Great question — once that I don’t have a good answer for. It’s a fool’s quest to try to beat or match Blizzard, even the Blizzard of 15 years ago!

I’m doing this because I’m having fun. Writing low-level game code is how my brain spends its spare cycles. And of the genres of game I’m interested in, 2D isometric action RPGs are probably the most interesting/ambitious.

Staying close to the formula is helping keep my engine on track, for what that’s worth. If I’m lucky, someday, people will use Flare to tell their own interesting stories. I don’t even have a storyline in my current plan. I intend to create enough assets and code to make basic storytelling and world-creating possible. The genre is still ripe for potential, even if Diablo was a perfect game.

Flare v0.11 at Free Gamer Blog

I’m always excited when someone at Free Gamer Blog talks about Flare. Thanks for the plug, qudobup!

And some Russian Blizzard fans…

“It’s not Diablo, but it’s also not bad”

2011/03/03

Mouse Movement

Pavel Kirpichyov “Cheshire” has submitted a patch that enables mouse movement to Flare. For those of you who prefer that method, it’s a great start! Look for revision 237 or later. To enable mouse movement, set mouse_move=true in your new save file.

Enemy HUD

Cheshire has submitted another patch! This one adds an enemy HUD on mouse-over. It shows the enemy’s name, level, and current HP. Look for it in revisions 239 and later.

2011/03/02

v0.11 Video

by Sunburn. Warning: a couple spoilers of the new Cave level.

Over 1500 downloads in 2 days

No real publicity or advertising — basically there are hundreds of people very interested in the project and its progress. Excellent!

So the obvious question….

What’s Next?

Every time I put out a new version I get a flood of great feedback. Now that we’re seeing what kind of Powers can be done easily, it’s tempting to think about making new powers and replacing old ones. It’s tempting to rework the entire Powers menu and make it talent-based with optional trees of powers. That may come eventually. But for now it’s important to actually finish something — I have a constant desire to replace just about everything in the game, but it’s far more fun to actually have something worth playing.

The To Do List says that Vendors are up next. It’s a much-needed addition for two reason: (1) a way to get the correct weapons at early levels and (2) potions! It’s pretty hard to think about combat balance when a fundamental feature like “buying potions” isn’t implemented yet.

Vendors

I’ll probably do Vendors as a left-screen menu. Perhaps the menu will show the name of the vendor as a caption. There will be a large block of sale slots (similar to the Inventory menu). Probably drag and drop to buy or sell. The starting vendors might have: dagger, shortsword, leather armor, buckler, wand, rod, slingshot, shortbow, health potion, mana potion, and 10 random items level 1-4.

Vendors can have a fixed item list plus a number of random items. I’ll probably use the Loot algorithm to give vendors random items — just assign the Vendor a Level and he’ll carry random items +/-3 levels.

Potions

I’ll do a new implementation of Potions in v0.12 that uses the Action Bar. The Action Bar is not storage (like Diablo’s belt system) but shortcuts to powers and items (like WoW or Torchlight). Put a potion on the Action Bar and it will show the number of potions in your inventory. It should be grayed-out or darkened when there are zero potions remaining.

Potions can be implemented with Powers. Perhaps with a new “requires_item” or “consumable” field that tells the system to remove that item upon use.

2011/02/28

Flare v0.11 “Enemy Powers”

Flare v0.11 is up! It’s been a long, busy four months and I’m finally back on track. The focus on this release is Enemy Powers!

  • Enemies have four slots for powers. New enemies shoot bows, cast spells, throw javelins, and more!
  • Most powers moved to a config file.
  • New: Cave level (head east from the Goblin Warrens. Creatures are level ~6)
  • New creature art: skeletal archer, skeletal mage, fire antlion, ice antlion, antlion hatchling
  • Some magical ranged weapons have Ice and Fire Ammo…
  • Various bug fixes and new minor features

Special thanks to these contributors:

  • Brandon Morris composed the Cave theme
  • Thane “pennomi” Brimhall scripted the Cave enemies and events
  • Gordon “mogrohl” patched the looting-while-dead bug
  • ferrer patched uninitialized music variables
  • BartK contributed new zombie sounds (“Braaaains!”)
  • Full list of credits here

Download v0.11

2011/02/26

v0.11 Release Candidate

Google Code revision 232 represents the release candidate for v0.11. As far as I know, the code features I want are complete. I may still add a couple bug fixes. I’ll also add a few tweaks to pennomi’s cave map.

Items that modify Powers

Items may now modify powers. This was mainly implemented to have various projectiles by bows e.g. to have slingshots shoot stones.

I converted all fire/ice resist slings and bows into weapons that shoot fire/ice missiles (and I switched the resist on them… a bow that shoots fire gives resistance to ice). This isn’t just for show — it adds that elemental trait to attacks. These weapon powers show up as Green Text on the weapon tooltip. The system can be used to add things like bleed/stun to weapon attacks. It can’t change the base power type though (e.g. you can’t make a melee sword shoot missile fire… yet).

Enemies with Elemental Resist/Vulnerability

The fire-shooting bows aren’t just for show. Now creatures can resist or be vulnerable to Fire and Ice. Generally, if a creature shoots ice spells it is resistant to ice but vulnerable to fire (and vice versa). So Skeletal Mages that shoot Ice Shards take double damage from fire (e.g. Burn spell or fire weapons). The new fiery-colored antlions that spit fire take half damage from fire and double damage from ice.

New Creature Art

I added fire, ice, and hatchling versions of antlions. These are simple recolors/resizes.

2011/02/15

Random Updates

Fireball (a ranged magic spell cast by some enemies) has new art. I figured out that fire has to be significantly turbulent to register as animated, especially when flying across the screen.

This isn’t something I planned on doing until later, but I added on-hit and wall-hit after effects on spells. Now that’s how Blood Strike creates its blood spurt on hit. Some elemental spells have on-hit and wall-hit sparks. And finally, arrows stick into walls. This actually helps with aiming — sometimes a missile will clip a wall or corner and it wasn’t obvious before. I think the result feels much better and adds a lot of needed polish.

Since I’ve come this far, I want to change the way ammo works on ranged weapons. I want to make ranged weapons have a specific power as ammo. Then I’ll implement slingstone missiles and arrow missiles as separate powers. This should also let me create more powerful-looking missiles for magic bows.

2011/02/14

Weekend Update

I was able to update several items this weekend (revision 219).

  • Created a nice spear animation
  • Created a goblin spearman to match. You’ll find two in the Atrium and two in the Complex.
  • Updated the cave tileset to include exit markers, crates, barrels, chests
  • Linked the Goblin Warrens to the Cave Level 1
  • Enabled fire/ice resist gear. Damage reduction due to resistance is calculated first, then regular armor absorption is applied.

Here’s what I want to finish for v0.11:

  • Create a new Shoot animation
  • Populate the cave level