Flare

Synthesis

August 1, 2010

It's amazing how much less motivated I feel when I've accomplished something. Sounds weird, right? I've put together a menu system, title screen, written a few original minigames and tied them into my town engine. Kinda clunky, but it does work. I even hacked my actor class to create a bush. Makes perfect sense in context, trust me.

And now, to... oooh... well, I dunno. Saving and loading is probably my next trick. One thing I wish I could fix with XNA is that damn device storage selector. For people with one drive it doesn't show up. Fantastic. But if you have an Arcade unit with a hard drive plugged in, you get this highly unnecessary prompt. Can I scan all devices, figure out which one the user stores most of his content on, and just default to that? I'll even let them change the drive in the settings menu. Could we please skip that ugly and immersion-breaking menu?

No? Well, all right then.

And yet more changes. The combat system on the demo page will be significantly streamlined for the finished version. I've come to the realization that having spells stick or not stick is a terrible idea. Unnecessary complexity. And hoo boy, have I learned a lot about programming since then. Last year I was sitting on a stool in the corner with a dunce cap on. Now I'm at the point where I don't need the stool any more.

Hate XNA audio

May 20, 2010

XACT is evil. It's that simple. Try and make typical RPG town music by having a short intro followed by a looping main segment? Won't have it. You can't even load WMA files, Microsoft's proprietary audio format, without converting them to WAVs.

Frustrating. Fortunately, the saints at Stack Overflow are here to help. The "solution" I found, should that link eventually go dead:

Create one Sound Bank. Drag both WAVs from the Wave Bank into that one Sound Bank. Each one should be a separate track. The looping track should be Track 2. Select it at the Play Wave level, check Infinite looping, and (crucially) set its time stamp to be the exact length of the intro part. You can specify down to 3 decimal places. I used a program called Audacity to get the intro song's exact length. Oh, and compress your audio. It'll reduce your WAV file size by 3/4.

Revenge of the tile engines

May 2, 2010

The reality is that the details of the tile engines are the trouble. Camera movement is a pain, especially snapping the camera to a player and tracking her through the map. I had to ditch an insane scheme for character movement that seemed like worse code than the tripe it was replacing, but it means I can script cinematics without losing my mind.

For now I'm using some lovely Lost Garden sprites. It's really instructive to have to create multiple shadow layers, split tree tops and tree bottoms for player movement, and, well, not have the desire to gouge your own eyes out while programming. Oh, hot tip for anyone else wanting to use those sprites: they're on a 40 pixel grid and need to be moved one pixel up. You'll see.

Tile engines

January 15, 2010

It turns out that tile engines are not as hard to make as I thought. That explains why everyone and their sister has a video on YouTube of Crono running around a pixelated meadow. So when I went to build mine, I didn't expect I could make a good one in less than a month. Less than a month later, I've built a good one. It looks awful, and you're not getting any screenshots for a while. But I'm rocking an 8-way run, multiple levels, and basic cinematics. The real sticking point is dialog. If I can nail that, it's smooth sailing from here to my eventual hostile takeover of Square Enix.

Mwa ha ha.

Still alive

December 7, 2009

I love both versions of that song, from Portal and Mirror's Edge. In case you were wondering, yes, I am still alive, and so is this project. We're in holiday break right now. This isn't crunch time, and I don't have a pack of investors breathing down my neck, so I can tell my happy volunteers so hug their families (or not, as the situation warrants). We're on track for a 20XX release, just days before the Earth crashes into the Sun. Until then, enjoy Assassin's Creed 2 (uh, and tell me to stop playing it if you see me on XBL).

Toothpaste writing

October 20, 2009

I'm sure this is familiar to anyone who's written a story before: you have your beginning, middle, and end, with a list of events to cover along the way. But as you start the linear writing and discovering more about your characters, the events turn out differently than you expected. It's weird, like pushing toothpaste out of a tube and finding walnuts coming out of the cap. Walnuts that think they're people.

Are you a living monster?

October 8, 2009

One of my favorite parts of the Flare code base is the system that handles character combat actions. When a character is attacking or casting a spell, or when a monster is attacking, you need to be able to only run that one action. There's lots of checks involved: are the actors still alive? If you're casting a spell, do you still have enough MP to cast it?

If yes, go on with your action. If no, we need to do a little checking to see if that action can be squeezed in. Look for another target if the monster you want to attack is dead. I really enjoy programming these bits of usability. Here's a segment from the Encounter.cs class.

// Did we make it? if (actionValid) { // We did! On with the action itself. timeSinceLastAction = 0; actionRunning = true; // What happens here is, surprise surprise, dependent on the type of action switch (actions[0].Type) { case EncounterAction.ActionType.CharacterCastCharacter: case EncounterAction.ActionType.CharacterCastMonster: case EncounterAction.ActionType.CharacterCastMonsterCataclysm: // Spells and cataclysms just require a title bar announcing them. The spell casting itself happens a little later. title.Message = Enum.GetDescription(actions[0].Spell.Name); combatantManager.Combatants(actions[0].SubjectIndex).PrepareToCast(); // If it's a spell, we need to pause the recipient's timer if (actions[0].Type == EncounterAction.ActionType.CharacterCastMonsterCataclysm || actions[0].Type == EncounterAction.ActionType.CharacterCastMonster) { combatantManager.Combatants(actions[0].RecipientIndex).TreePaused = true; } break; case EncounterAction.ActionType.CharacterItemCharacter: // Likewise with the items, except we feed the title bar a different name title.Message = Enum.GetDescription(actions[0].Item.Name); combatantManager.Combatants(actions[0].SubjectIndex).PrepareToCast(); break; } // On to the next step actions[0].Advance(); } else { // Your action isn't valid. But we may refund your ticket by choosing another target. switch (actions[0].Type) { case EncounterAction.ActionType.CharacterAttack: case EncounterAction.ActionType.CharacterTaunt: case EncounterAction.ActionType.CharacterCastMonster: // Assuming you're still alive, let's look for an alternate target for you. if (combatantManager.Alive(actions[0].SubjectIndex)) { // Go through the combatants, look for a living one, and beat the tar out of him. for (int i = 0; i < combatantManager.CombatantCount; i++) { // Are you a living monster? if (combatantManager.Combatants(i).Alive && combatantManager.Combatants(i).IsMonster) { // Yay, found one! This will take effect on the next update cycle, 1/60th of a second from now. actions[0].RecipientIndex = i; // If you have an effect, it may need to be retargeted. That's a word. if (actions[0].Effect.Type != EncounterEffect.EncounterEffectType.None) { SetEffect(0, actions[0].Effect.Type, actions[0].SubjectIndex, actions[0].RecipientIndex); } return; } } } else { // You're dead and thus totally effed. Sorry, dude. } break; } }

Ground floor

October 1, 2009

Hello happy people. I'm Jordan Roher, project lead for Flare. I do some of the programming, writing, marketing, web design, and all of the worrying about this game. Thanks to the generous editors at Destructoid.com I've found a few talented individuals who are helping bring this game to you.

This blog has no publishing engine, no comments, and no RSS feed. It's just me and a copy of Dreamweaver. If you want to comment on one of my posts, send me an e-mail. To see what's new, check back once a week. I don't have time for a content management system; all my energy is spent working on Flare.

I'll use this space to answer questions, talk about my struggles writing in C#, and post concept art or snatches of code. Flare is still quite a ways from release -- maybe you could tell from the combat prototype -- but it's nice to see you here on the ground floor.

While you wait through Flare's interminable development, why not enjoy a few laughs? I wrote a webcomic called The Villain when I was at Florida State University. It was tnspired by 8-Bit Theater, and my one claim to fame was making a guest comic. Fairly proud of the punchline.