Obvious warning, but each new animation variant adds more work per armor/weapon/hair/etc. Be careful not to end up with a situation where artists need to create hundreds of frames to have a fully compatible set.
Perhaps look at real-world cuts of gems to see how they're done. It's what I did when I made these simplified 3D gems http://opengameart.org/content/gems
You probably don't want to use dithering if possible (unless it's required for the Mana World style).
Instead of drawing the cut edges with dark lines, you might want to imply the edges by having a strong change in value between faces.
Perhaps sort your tall tiles in a draw order before drawing them.
I've placed a + sign at the center,floor of each tall tile. I numbered them in the order to draw them if you sort by screen y position first, then screen x position.
This should work if your tiles are always the same size (1x1 grid space). If your tiles are larger there are other algorithms to use (painter's algorithm, z-index, etc).
Scribe, I did the outline in GIMP. Blender does have an Edge setting that does toon style outlines but there's not very precise controls for doing individual pixel outlines.
I find Blender quite useful for this kind of situation. I could have tried animating a spinning cylinder manually but it would have taken way longer and not been very good.
And I think the layperson won't notice or care that this started in 3D.
Multi-player is something that usually has to be done from the beginning. It's easier to make multiplayer choices first, e.g. put all of the game logic in a server, and make single player just run from a local server.
Flare isn't built that way. The game is simplified in ways that won't work for multiplayer (e.g. fixed time step). It means we can actually make and finish a nice single player game, where a multiplayer game would take much longer to develop.
My expertise isn't in multiplayer games, and I vastly prefer single player games. That, combined with choosing a project scope I can actually finish, is why Flare is single player.
Now, some people are working on multiplayer support. Best of luck to them, and if they get it working great I'll include it in baseline Flare.
To those people, though, I would really suggest taking an existing proven multiplayer engine and building an action RPG on it using Flare's assets, rather than trying to make Flare a multiplayer engine. Maybe I'm overestimating how difficult a solid multiplayer code base is though.
So for now, Flare is lightweight and is actually getting done because it's been simplified. Maybe Flare 2.0 or 3.0 could have a bigger multiplayer focus? We'll see where the project goes.
Note that I plan to rewrite the loot dropping algorithm too (not a priority yet though). If you have ideas on that, I'm interested to hear them. I'm also interested in having different loot options -- per-creature loot tables, for instance.
Anything you've implemented that you feel would work in base Flare (as an option or as the default mode), let us know. If the implementation is general enough we might make use of it.
Obvious warning, but each new animation variant adds more work per armor/weapon/hair/etc. Be careful not to end up with a situation where artists need to create hundreds of frames to have a fully compatible set.
Perhaps look at real-world cuts of gems to see how they're done. It's what I did when I made these simplified 3D gems http://opengameart.org/content/gems
You probably don't want to use dithering if possible (unless it's required for the Mana World style).
Instead of drawing the cut edges with dark lines, you might want to imply the edges by having a strong change in value between faces.
Artists donate all this great open art and you want to use it for a closed game? Maybe that doesn't seem right to me.
Free/Libre art and code is important to people like me. We hope that you "Share Alike".
But yes, you can mix proprietary code and CC-BY-SA art as Botanica says.
Perhaps sort your tall tiles in a draw order before drawing them.
I've placed a + sign at the center,floor of each tall tile. I numbered them in the order to draw them if you sort by screen y position first, then screen x position.
This should work if your tiles are always the same size (1x1 grid space). If your tiles are larger there are other algorithms to use (painter's algorithm, z-index, etc).
I have to throw this a Favorite for the name alone.
wulax, that skeleton is ADORABLE. Great work.
Scribe, I did the outline in GIMP. Blender does have an Edge setting that does toon style outlines but there's not very precise controls for doing individual pixel outlines.
I find Blender quite useful for this kind of situation. I could have tried animating a spinning cylinder manually but it would have taken way longer and not been very good.
And I think the layperson won't notice or care that this started in 3D.
There are no plans.
Multi-player is something that usually has to be done from the beginning. It's easier to make multiplayer choices first, e.g. put all of the game logic in a server, and make single player just run from a local server.
Flare isn't built that way. The game is simplified in ways that won't work for multiplayer (e.g. fixed time step). It means we can actually make and finish a nice single player game, where a multiplayer game would take much longer to develop.
My expertise isn't in multiplayer games, and I vastly prefer single player games. That, combined with choosing a project scope I can actually finish, is why Flare is single player.
Now, some people are working on multiplayer support. Best of luck to them, and if they get it working great I'll include it in baseline Flare.
To those people, though, I would really suggest taking an existing proven multiplayer engine and building an action RPG on it using Flare's assets, rather than trying to make Flare a multiplayer engine. Maybe I'm overestimating how difficult a solid multiplayer code base is though.
So for now, Flare is lightweight and is actually getting done because it's been simplified. Maybe Flare 2.0 or 3.0 could have a bigger multiplayer focus? We'll see where the project goes.
Awesome! Welcome to Flare modding.
Note that I plan to rewrite the loot dropping algorithm too (not a priority yet though). If you have ideas on that, I'm interested to hear them. I'm also interested in having different loot options -- per-creature loot tables, for instance.
Anything you've implemented that you feel would work in base Flare (as an option or as the default mode), let us know. If the implementation is general enough we might make use of it.
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