I lowered the leveling curve this release, but only slightly. It might be faster than before because of the zero-mana Shock. In general, I like fast. But the early levels might be too fast and the later levels might be too slow. Expect the XP needed to reach each level to be tweaked a bit each release. Some day when there are several large areas of level 2 or 3 creatures, it will make sense for the hero to level more slowly in the beginning. In other words: the leveling speed will change to fit the amount of content.
I removed the mana cost for Shock in this release. I did not find it fun being constantly OOM and unable to attack as a magic-user. Once mana potions are on vendors, I might add the mana cost back to Shock. Originally, Shock was supposed to be a chain-lightning spell (and still may be one day) to make it worth the mana cost, instead of just being a basic attack. I'm thinking of adding a new "wand/staff shoot" power in the slot where Lore is, and have that be the magician zero-mana basic attack -- maybe with the drawback of having a short range, or less damage, etc.
I experimented with various ways of being able to see the character behind the walls in the cave. I think some day I'll add "half-walls" to the cave, sorta like what the Dungeon has. It seems to be the best-looking method in my opinion. For now, though, I like hiding antlions behind walls *evil grin*.
OGA has recently started doing targeted fundraisers, and I'm happy to submit Flare items for fundraising.
So let's be frank here. I have a full-time job that I enjoy (writing code, not game-related). It pays the bills plus some. I also have a girlfriend of 5 years; we spend a lot of time together. In whatever time remains, if any, that's when Flare gets progress.
I don't expect to make money from the game -- except in the form of a tip jar perhaps (Flattr is fine for that), or maybe selling game-related items (my best idea so far: selling high quality cloth maps of the game world!). If I were jobless I'd definitely be trying to make some kind of money from this. But given my current situation, I'm basically able to do Flare in my free time without any worries of money. I have used my own money to fund a few essential art assets, and most of it has gone to OGA artists.
What Flare will need, and soon, is a ton of art assets. Right now Flare has only 2 tilesets (dungeon, cave) and even those could use many additions. Flare essentially has 5 monsters (goblin, zombie, skeleton, minotaur, antlion) and those could use several more animations and variations. I'll try to put together a list of most-wanted assets soon.
Anonymous, I'll take that into consideration. There's several ways it could be balanced:
Heal potions could restore a fixed amount instead of 100% health
Heal potions could restore health gradually instead of instantly
Heal potions could be incredibly expensive
Healing Orbs are a decent idea because they can't be hoarded. I could also add map features for one-time health regains (e.g. Diablo style Wells or Altars).
If you're not a programmer and don't want to get into building source code, I could do an occasional extra build. My packaging process isn't one-step just yet, so I really can't do nightlies at this point.
Instead of nightlies/weeklies, I can put out a binary whenever something cool is ready. E.g. right now there's mouse movement and enemy info display (courtesy Cheshire). Maybe I'll put up an out-of-band build today.
I'm entertaining the idea, after thinking about what the mod community might do if it's very easy to change the game.
My long-term goal with Flare is to make several games. After a few games are done, the core framework/engine will be tried and tested. Perhaps when I start making game #2 I'll find that I need the flexibility granted by scripting.
I made the tooltip visible when mouse-over on a corpse. This does not affect the mouse-over check when attacking on mouse-movement mode. See latest revision (240 or later)
I made a few changes and checked it in (revisions 238 and 239).
Changed the Enemy Menu position so it is always top center, regardless of Screen Size settings
Changed it so it still shows even when no longer mouse-over
Please svn update to the latest revision.
As for adding a main menu, the way I want to handle that will require a slight restructure of the GameEngine class. So you might want to wait on that for a bit, until I have that class prepared.
Anon,
Here's a Windows build for v247
http://code.google.com/p/flare-engine/downloads/detail?name=flare_win_r2...
Sxill,
I lowered the leveling curve this release, but only slightly. It might be faster than before because of the zero-mana Shock. In general, I like fast. But the early levels might be too fast and the later levels might be too slow. Expect the XP needed to reach each level to be tweaked a bit each release. Some day when there are several large areas of level 2 or 3 creatures, it will make sense for the hero to level more slowly in the beginning. In other words: the leveling speed will change to fit the amount of content.
I removed the mana cost for Shock in this release. I did not find it fun being constantly OOM and unable to attack as a magic-user. Once mana potions are on vendors, I might add the mana cost back to Shock. Originally, Shock was supposed to be a chain-lightning spell (and still may be one day) to make it worth the mana cost, instead of just being a basic attack. I'm thinking of adding a new "wand/staff shoot" power in the slot where Lore is, and have that be the magician zero-mana basic attack -- maybe with the drawback of having a short range, or less damage, etc.
I experimented with various ways of being able to see the character behind the walls in the cave. I think some day I'll add "half-walls" to the cave, sorta like what the Dungeon has. It seems to be the best-looking method in my opinion. For now, though, I like hiding antlions behind walls *evil grin*.
OGA has recently started doing targeted fundraisers, and I'm happy to submit Flare items for fundraising.
So let's be frank here. I have a full-time job that I enjoy (writing code, not game-related). It pays the bills plus some. I also have a girlfriend of 5 years; we spend a lot of time together. In whatever time remains, if any, that's when Flare gets progress.
I don't expect to make money from the game -- except in the form of a tip jar perhaps (Flattr is fine for that), or maybe selling game-related items (my best idea so far: selling high quality cloth maps of the game world!). If I were jobless I'd definitely be trying to make some kind of money from this. But given my current situation, I'm basically able to do Flare in my free time without any worries of money. I have used my own money to fund a few essential art assets, and most of it has gone to OGA artists.
What Flare will need, and soon, is a ton of art assets. Right now Flare has only 2 tilesets (dungeon, cave) and even those could use many additions. Flare essentially has 5 monsters (goblin, zombie, skeleton, minotaur, antlion) and those could use several more animations and variations. I'll try to put together a list of most-wanted assets soon.
jaderamiso,
pennomi posted this for getting Flare dependencies in Ubuntu/Debian:
sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev libsdl-image1.2-dev libsdl-mixer1.2-dev g++ svn
See his post here: http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/building-from-source-advice-requested#...
Anonymous, I'll take that into consideration. There's several ways it could be balanced:
Healing Orbs are a decent idea because they can't be hoarded. I could also add map features for one-time health regains (e.g. Diablo style Wells or Altars).
Of course, the source is available real-time on svn at Google Code: https://code.google.com/p/flare-engine/
If you're not a programmer and don't want to get into building source code, I could do an occasional extra build. My packaging process isn't one-step just yet, so I really can't do nightlies at this point.
Instead of nightlies/weeklies, I can put out a binary whenever something cool is ready. E.g. right now there's mouse movement and enemy info display (courtesy Cheshire). Maybe I'll put up an out-of-band build today.
I'm entertaining the idea, after thinking about what the mod community might do if it's very easy to change the game.
My long-term goal with Flare is to make several games. After a few games are done, the core framework/engine will be tried and tested. Perhaps when I start making game #2 I'll find that I need the flexibility granted by scripting.
p0ss, fun set! If I need new sounds I'll be sure to post here on the forum.
Cheshire,
I made the tooltip visible when mouse-over on a corpse. This does not affect the mouse-over check when attacking on mouse-movement mode. See latest revision (240 or later)
Cheshire,
Once again, excellent work!
I made a few changes and checked it in (revisions 238 and 239).
Please svn update to the latest revision.
As for adding a main menu, the way I want to handle that will require a slight restructure of the GameEngine class. So you might want to wait on that for a bit, until I have that class prepared.
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