> About the entire scene render: I must be missing something. Assume I have a fully put together room (say, spanning 10 tiles wide), a camera set for the isometric, and I also have a previously rendered tile at my disposal. What happen if I render the room at several fold resolution (so 2000x1000 instead of the 640x320 that I need), then shrink the image to match the previously rendered tile? Wouldn't that allow me to cleanly cut out 64 x 32(n) pieces?
Ah, so there's a difference between rendering one solid piece (e.g. a room) and rendering a sheet of already-split tiles in one render. It's much easier to deal with the former, the solid pieces. I have done this for some larger structures in my games. But I've only done it when the pieces aren't mix & match; I've done it when those tiles always go together (e.g. the "broken tower" in my game is 7 tiles that are always in the same configuration, rendered as one solid piece). Depending on the shape of the tiles, you should be able to slice tiles after rendering that can be rearranged.
I thought you were talking about rendering split tiles in a Blender scene and getting a perfect tile sheet out of it, in a single render. That's far trickier.
Setting up an entire scene to render in one-shot is possible, but it's extremely hard to get the tiles the correct size. Basically your camera orthographic scale and camera Z position needs to be perfect otherwise the tiles will all be offset improperly and hard to slice up in the final version.
It might also be tricky if you're casting shadows, have to make sure you're not throwing shadows onto nearby tiles. Same if you're doing Ambient Occlusion, mirror/reflection, etc.
I still opt to render one tile at a time because it's easier for me to handle the output.
--
Rendering in OGA tileset's style is going to be tricky in 3D. If you're using a 30 degree camera angle (as with isometric) flat square tiles would become a 2:1 rectangle. But you want square base tiles, not rectangles. You could build tiles that are 1:2 size so that it renders as a 1:1 square, in theory. I haven't tried this yet.
In the Frontier folder are the newest maps that use Tiled properly. Open those maps in Tiled and poke around, see how they're set up. Try altering those maps to see how it works.
From Tiled 0.8 you can Export as Flare's map format. If you're experimenting on the Frontier maps, put your new map files in /mods/frontier/maps/
Apologies that the Goblin mission is confusing. I realized it too late before releasing v0.15. I'll try to make it better next time.
As c said, shift-click will pull one item from a stack. I'll try to add some helpful tooltips to the menus later that explain all this.
I created most of the art myself, though many people have contributed pieces. Most of the sound effects are from here on OGA. The music is contributed by two composers. Full credits: https://github.com/clintbellanger/flare/wiki/Credits
In a more complete game there would be more areas to explore, so it wouldn't feel like there was nothing to do but grind between areas. What you're playing really is still an alpha demo. I am glad you already find it addictive!
No boost please. I have intentionally kept the dependencies on this project minimal.
(edit) Oh, I see you're using boost for unit testing. If it's possible to keep that separate, so that people simply building the game don't need boost, that's fine.
I'd stick with C++03. I can't actually compile C++11 in my primary dev environment (old macbook with XCode 3) without changing to a new IDE or maybe buying upgrades.
Should I just create a virtual destructor in GameState? I'm a bit rusty on that stuff. I'll get in there and fix that.
I haven't used those types of pointers before. I don't mind doing that kind of careful preventative coding, but I'll probably put that off until Beta after the feature freeze is in place.
Same situation with the std namespace, at some point I'll go and clean up that code but it might not be until Beta. Thanks for the reminder, I'll definitely create a ticket for this.
I like your direction array idea, I'll ponder it. I might only hesitate to consider 16 directions, which I think Diablo 2 used to great effect.
Hm, I might have made a mess of the tarball if I created it on my OSX machine. OSX likes to put .DS_Store files everywhere; were those the files you see?
Thanks for the tips. One thing I love about working in Open Source is that people with different expertises are happy to help.
Anon, thanks for the kind words! Hopefully it keeps getting better from here.
Answers:
1. Part of the plan for version v0.17 is to put all menu options in config files under mods/[modname]/engine. Game makers will be able to set a corner/edge for each menu to attach. So you'll be able to change this, though it's something usually mod or game makers would change. Side note, try Flare at half your resolution (960x540) and see if you like it.
2. If we get the quality good enough, we will do random level/item/enemy generation. That's something we'll probably aim for later, maybe in an experimental branch while the core engine is in Beta.
Also, as far as replay value: I'll be putting out map-making tutorials soon. All those map areas that currently say "Unknown destination" are places where people can easily add in new maps via mods. I hope we'll see a large amount of community content for download.
> About the entire scene render: I must be missing something. Assume I have a fully put together room (say, spanning 10 tiles wide), a camera set for the isometric, and I also have a previously rendered tile at my disposal. What happen if I render the room at several fold resolution (so 2000x1000 instead of the 640x320 that I need), then shrink the image to match the previously rendered tile? Wouldn't that allow me to cleanly cut out 64 x 32(n) pieces?
Ah, so there's a difference between rendering one solid piece (e.g. a room) and rendering a sheet of already-split tiles in one render. It's much easier to deal with the former, the solid pieces. I have done this for some larger structures in my games. But I've only done it when the pieces aren't mix & match; I've done it when those tiles always go together (e.g. the "broken tower" in my game is 7 tiles that are always in the same configuration, rendered as one solid piece). Depending on the shape of the tiles, you should be able to slice tiles after rendering that can be rearranged.
I thought you were talking about rendering split tiles in a Blender scene and getting a perfect tile sheet out of it, in a single render. That's far trickier.
Setting up an entire scene to render in one-shot is possible, but it's extremely hard to get the tiles the correct size. Basically your camera orthographic scale and camera Z position needs to be perfect otherwise the tiles will all be offset improperly and hard to slice up in the final version.
It might also be tricky if you're casting shadows, have to make sure you're not throwing shadows onto nearby tiles. Same if you're doing Ambient Occlusion, mirror/reflection, etc.
I still opt to render one tile at a time because it's easier for me to handle the output.
--
Rendering in OGA tileset's style is going to be tricky in 3D. If you're using a 30 degree camera angle (as with isometric) flat square tiles would become a 2:1 rectangle. But you want square base tiles, not rectangles. You could build tiles that are 1:2 size so that it renders as a 1:1 square, in theory. I haven't tried this yet.
Thanks, I'll add this.
Anonymous,
I need to create a tutorial on how to make Tiled maps for Flare. For now I suggest getting a copy of Flare from github, especially the Tiled folder:
https://github.com/clintbellanger/flare/tree/master/tiled
In the Frontier folder are the newest maps that use Tiled properly. Open those maps in Tiled and poke around, see how they're set up. Try altering those maps to see how it works.
From Tiled 0.8 you can Export as Flare's map format. If you're experimenting on the Frontier maps, put your new map files in /mods/frontier/maps/
Feel free to ask questions!
Anonymous,
Apologies that the Goblin mission is confusing. I realized it too late before releasing v0.15. I'll try to make it better next time.
As c said, shift-click will pull one item from a stack. I'll try to add some helpful tooltips to the menus later that explain all this.
I created most of the art myself, though many people have contributed pieces. Most of the sound effects are from here on OGA. The music is contributed by two composers. Full credits: https://github.com/clintbellanger/flare/wiki/Credits
In a more complete game there would be more areas to explore, so it wouldn't feel like there was nothing to do but grind between areas. What you're playing really is still an alpha demo. I am glad you already find it addictive!
No boost please. I have intentionally kept the dependencies on this project minimal.
(edit) Oh, I see you're using boost for unit testing. If it's possible to keep that separate, so that people simply building the game don't need boost, that's fine.
I'd stick with C++03. I can't actually compile C++11 in my primary dev environment (old macbook with XCode 3) without changing to a new IDE or maybe buying upgrades.
Should I just create a virtual destructor in GameState? I'm a bit rusty on that stuff. I'll get in there and fix that.
I haven't used those types of pointers before. I don't mind doing that kind of careful preventative coding, but I'll probably put that off until Beta after the feature freeze is in place.
Same situation with the std namespace, at some point I'll go and clean up that code but it might not be until Beta. Thanks for the reminder, I'll definitely create a ticket for this.
I like your direction array idea, I'll ponder it. I might only hesitate to consider 16 directions, which I think Diablo 2 used to great effect.
Hm, I might have made a mess of the tarball if I created it on my OSX machine. OSX likes to put .DS_Store files everywhere; were those the files you see?
Thanks for the tips. One thing I love about working in Open Source is that people with different expertises are happy to help.
Interesting. Maybe it's time for an ice elemental creature in Flare.
Anon, thanks for the kind words! Hopefully it keeps getting better from here.
Answers:
1. Part of the plan for version v0.17 is to put all menu options in config files under mods/[modname]/engine. Game makers will be able to set a corner/edge for each menu to attach. So you'll be able to change this, though it's something usually mod or game makers would change. Side note, try Flare at half your resolution (960x540) and see if you like it.
2. If we get the quality good enough, we will do random level/item/enemy generation. That's something we'll probably aim for later, maybe in an experimental branch while the core engine is in Beta.
Also, as far as replay value: I'll be putting out map-making tutorials soon. All those map areas that currently say "Unknown destination" are places where people can easily add in new maps via mods. I hope we'll see a large amount of community content for download.
Redshrike, glad you enjoy the new content!
Some of that pathfinding stuff is much improved for the next release (v0.16). Already we have an A* implementation added.
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