2013/04/12

Upcoming Tasks

Everything is coming together for the Flare engine. It’s an exciting time, and there’s so much to do! If you are interested in helping in any way let us know.

  • Beta Engine tasks
    • Convert internal map units to floats
    • Cutscene additional cleanup
    • Consider minions feature
    • Input file standardization pass
  • Flare-Game tasks
    • Create new logo
    • Create new website
    • Launch name branding
    • Map and quest design for Act I
  • Tutorials
    • Create reference wiki pages for all data file types
    • Create example maps for DevLab
    • Create longer, friendly content-creation tutorials
  • Core Art
    • Test updated lights/colors for all three tile sets
    • Create one alternate of each existing set
    • Render HDCore data
    • Create set-pieces useful for Flare-Game
    • Add additional tiles to make the sets more flexible

2013/04/05

Change in the flare-game repo

We made a big change to the flare-game repo today, hopefully to help distributors/packagers in the future.

The repo at https://github.com/clintbellanger/flare-game no longer contains source code. It only contains the mods (and supporting data sources) for the actual game.

If you’re playing flare-game from the latest sources, you’ll now need to pull from flare-game for data and flare-engine for sources.

We suggest that a similar separation be used when distributing Flare in software repos, starting with the upcoming version 0.19. First the flare-engine repo is the bare-bones engine, and then flare-game which relies on the engine repo. Other games, like Polymorphable, can also be distributed this way (package just the game mods and set flare-engine as a requirement).

2013/03/31


Flare v0.18 Released

Release Summary
  • 10 Equipment Slots, up from 4 (and easily configurable)
  • Starting “Class” choice (beginner’s power/item kit)
  • Environmental/Ambient Sounds on maps
  • Much improved handling of Animations, Effects, and Sounds
  • New Powers: Stealth, Traps, Thrown Weapons
  • New Item Bonuses: XP gain, Gold Find, Item Find, and more
  • Improved support for various input devices
  • Two new starting quests
Screenshots






Engine Updates
  • Implement avatar layer composition and configurable slots (Igor Paliychuk)
  • Allow low quality (no alpha) textures for gameplay art (Igor Paliychuk)
  • Add support for font styles (Justin Jacobs)
  • Introduce AnimationManager and use it for existing animations (Stefan Beller)
  • Make buyback price the same as sell price (Justin Jacobs)
  • Remove many warnings from static code analysis (Stefan Beller)
  • New starting class system (Justin Jacobs)
  • Allow assigning titles based on xp, primary stats, or campaign status (Matthew Krohn)
  • Powers can require HP and optionally kill the caster (Matthew Krohn)
  • Add on-hit, half dead, and dead power triggers (Justin Jacobs)
  • New EffectsManager to handle buffs and debuffs (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add support for Passive Powers (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add “XP Gain”, “Gold Find”, “Item Find” bonuses (Justin Jacobs)
  • Support granting multiple stat/power points per level (Justin Jacobs)
  • Standardize init lists for classes (Stefan Beller)
  • Add on_clear map event type (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add flavor text option for item tooltips (Clint Bellanger)
  • Convert MenuCharacter to stat listbox (Justin Jacobs)
  • Allow bonus max HP/MP percentages (Matthew Krohn)
  • Implement per-enemy loot tables (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add Stealth bonus effect (Justin Jacobs)
  • Standardize sound effect loading function (Stefan Beller)
  • Add internal utility functions (Piotrrak)
  • Support NPC and map events based on hero level (Stefan Beller)
  • Allow Accept key to interact with the environment instead of clicking (Justin Jacobs)
  • Mouse emulation mode (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add default names for portraits to help keyboardless systems (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add –game_dataflag for setting a user-defined PATH_DATA (Justin Jacobs)
  • Introduce SoundManager for centralized sound handling (Henrik Andersson)
  • Add game_prefix to segregate save games and config files for mods (Henrik Andersson)
  • Add NPC Action Menu for NPCs with multiple discussion topics (Henrik Andersson)
  • Add location-based sound volume (Henrik Andersson)
  • Implement enemy style loot tables for map events (Justin Jacobs)
  • Make the local data folder prevail over installed ones (Yohann Ferreira)
  • Rendering optimizations (Stefan Beller)
  • Allow config file durations to be specified in frames, ms, or seconds (Henrik Andersson)
  • Fix LMB ignoring locks in some situations (Joseph Bleau)
  • Add cooldown_hit duration to prevent stunlock (Joseph Bleau)
  • Add status-based trader stock (Justin Jacobs)
  • Allow equipment bonuses to be applied while transformed (Justin Jacobs)
  • Handle fuzzy matching in translation files (Henrik Andersson)
  • Add item count ranges for loot tables (Clint Bellanger)
  • Don’t allow dead hero to trigger map events (Justin Jacobs)
  • Add additional cppcheck flags to the .travis.yml file (Hans Joachim)
  • Clean up BOM from the languages.txt file (Hans Joachim)
Game Updates
  • Updated equipment from 4 slots (weapon, offhand, body, artifact) to 10 slots (head, body, hands, legs, feet, weapon, offhand, ring, ring, artifact)
  • Added chainmail and mage armor (Clint Bellanger)
  • Clothes icon paintings (Ben at CrowLine Studio)
  • Mage, Leather, Chain, Plate icon paintings (Justin Nichol)
  • Ring art (Clint Bellanger)
  • Iron Buckler shield (Clint Bellanger)
  • Animal Figurines (Clint Bellanger)
  • Abandoned Tower art and quest line (Stefan Beller)
  • Mineshaft Longsword quest line (Justin Jacobs)
  • Beginning of new item list (Clint Bellanger)
  • Environmental Sounds on existing maps (Henrik Andersson)
  • New powers: Stealth, Caltrops, Bear Trap, Dagger Throw, Axe Throw (Clint Bellanger)
New Translations
  • Czech by Nikita Vanku (Zaraka)
  • Norwegian Bokmal by Hans Joachim Desserud
  • Polish by Pawel Puszczynski
  • Many thanks to the other translators who sent in updates
Credits

Flare v0.18 Credits List.

Flare is made by a lot of great people. Tremendous thanks to everyone who makes it possible. It’s hard to keep track of everyone with a project of this size. If you have been accidentally omitted from the credits list, let me know and I’ll add you right away!

A Note on Save Files

Note that Flare v0.18 isn’t set up to load save files from previous versions. With the armor slots changing so drastically it required recreating most items. You still may want to back up your existing save files if you’re attached to those characters. But we expect players to start new characters in v0.18.

Downloads courtesy of SourceForge
v0.18 Gameplay Video

Have a tour of the new v0.18 features while you download. Turn on annotations to see my developer notes. Watch at 720p!

2013/03/21

String files update for bug fixes

Today I approved an update of the translation files related to various bug fixes — our extraction script had some errors, and some engine data wasn’t being properly formatted for translation.

The .pot files were recreated and the .po files for each language merged for these changes.

If you’re actively working on a translation, this may affect your work. Our apologies — we try to avoid this after a string freeze. This doesn’t affect many strings in total. There are a couple ways you can move forward:

  • Send us your .po file and we’ll merge in the updated messages
  • Run a msgmerge on your end with the new pot file
  • Work with the updated .po file and copy your work over

Here is the exact msgmerge command we use:


msgmerge -U --no-wrap <name_of_.po_file> <name_of_.pot_file>

Either way we’re available to help. Drop me an email, or find us on the #flarerpg IRC channel.

2013/03/17


Animal Figurine Artifacts

I finally finished up this set of four animal figurines. In Flare these are powerful artifacts that add +1 to a core attribute — often letting heroes use equipment or powers beyond their current skill. I also added a splash of paint markings one each one that basically fits the theme of that attribute.

  • Bear Figurine (red paint) grants +1 Physical (aka Strength)
  • Owl Figurine (blue paint) grants +1 Mental (aka Intellect)
  • Cat Figurine (yellow paint) grants +1 Offense (aka Agility)
  • Turtle Figurine (green paint) grants +1 Defense

animal figurines render preview with red bear, blue owl, yellow cat, green turtle

Download these Animal Figurines at OpenGameArt.org

In my imagination, these sort of serve as “spirit animals” to the heroes in the Flare universe. I like the feeling that they’re simple, almost like children’s toys — which sort of gives them their power. I drew inspiration from the game Zen Bound 2 when thinking of these.

How the icons look in-game at fantasycore size and the upcoming hdcore size.

32 pixel icons
64 pixel icons

2013/03/15

Flare v0.18 ready for Translators

The string freeze is now in effect for Flare v0.18. This just means that we won’t change any displayed text between now and the v0.18 release at the end of March. This gives translators two weeks to create and submit updated translation files.

I’ve created a very basic Tutorial page on Translating Flare.

The most important file to translate is the engine.pot file.

After that, time permitting, the fantasycore and alpha_demo data.pot files.

Contact me if you have any questions. Also, if you’re editing an existing translation, be sure to contact the previous translators to make sure they’re not already working on it.

I’ll take translations up until the end of the day on March 29th. Once it’s March 30th everywhere on the globe I’ll begin packaging Flare for various platforms. Thanks for helping!

2013/03/13

Flare v0.18 String Freeze and Release Target

The deadline to get string changes into Flare (and flare-game data) is by the end of the day this Friday, March 15th. Starting on Saturday we’ll openly invite translators to work on and submit updates. I’ll post instructions here Saturday on how to help with translations.

We’re aiming for the end of the month, Sunday March 31st, as the release date for Flare v0.18. This is when the v0.18 tag is applied and Win + OSX binaries are released on this site. Updates to other repos will follow shortly after, thanks to our great volunteers and fans.

2013/03/08


Stealth

The Ranger tree got a new power this week: Stealth. We created it by abusing the “transform into a creature” code. It’s a great demonstration of how flexible the game can be just through the data.

While stealthed you can either leave stealth or use a Sneak Attack — a high-crit melee attack: animated gif of stealth and sneak attack on a goblin

Stealth is created as an enemy with unique art and several passive powers that work together. These passive decrease your threat range, decrease your movement speed, and increase your crit chance. Additional passives are used to trigger a countdown stealth timer and to break out of stealth when attacking or attacked.

Dev Lab

I’m working on a new set of maps that I hope to include in v0.18 (and will grow later). These maps are in a new mod called Dev Lab. It’s an in-game tutorial with demo maps to show how to get started with modding. Advanced maps will show interesting ways to use creatures, events, traps, items, and powers to create unique experiences. Edit the Dev Lab maps directly in Tiled to see the code behind all the tutorial demos.

We think these in-game modding tutorials will be more engaging than articles or videos (and those can come later). Hopefully the Dev Lab will help people who enjoy playing Flare get into modding Flare.