Flare 1.06

Flare 1.06 is now available for download. This update contains some fixes for the Torture Chambers and brings a few improvements to the Android port.

Torture Chambers

There were two issues that had been reported with this map. The first being that it was possible to attack the imprisoned enemies without consequence while the barriers were still active. I wanted to fix this without changing the existing hero attacks, so I ended up adding the ability to make groups of enemies invincible based on campaign status. Modders that are interested in this new feature should refer to enemygroup.invincible_requires_status and enemygroup.invincible_requires_not_status in the Attribute Reference.

The second issue was a bug with the “Warden’s Notes” quest in this map. The end of the quest contains a switch to unlock the chambers and a teleporter to return to the main area. Previously, it was possible for players to skip the switch and teleport back to the main area. This left players with no way to unlock the barriers. This has been fixed by requiring the player to use the switch before the teleporter becomes active. For players that had already encountered the bug, the quest should reset the next time you visit the Torture Chambers.

Android port improvements

The existing controls for the Android port had behaved like a desktop user with “Move hero using mouse” enabled. When using such a control scheme, the mouse cursor is generally near the hero in the center of the screen. This is acceptable for desktop users because the cursor is just a small arrow. On mobile, however, this cursor is replaced by the player’s finger. This results in the action being completely blocked, and thus a poor play experience. To remedy this, I’ve added a virtual joypad to the Android port. On the left is a virtual d-pad for movement. On the right are two buttons which correspond to the two primary attacks.

Another “flaw” on mobile is vastly higher DPI screens than most desktop systems. For reference, my desktop is around 92 DPI, whereas my phone is 300 DPI! So running Flare on my phone’s 1280x720 display resulted in the game running at the higher virtual resolution of 600p. This led to me adding a virtual_dpi setting, which lets modders define a target DPI for their game. I’ve set the fantasycore mod’s target DPI to my desktop’s setting, so the game will now use the lower 480p resolution on mobile. This results in everything being bigger and much easier to interact with. While disabled on desktop by default, I’ve also made it possible to enable DPI scaling in the Video options.

Changelog

Engine features

• Allow modders to define a target screen DPI for resolution scaling.
• Added video option to toggle using DPI scaling.
• Add virtual joystick buttons for touchscreen devices.
• Add ability to make groups of map enemies invincible based on campaign status.

Engine fixes

• Fixed performance flaw when “always show statbar labels” was enabled.
• Fix bug where incorrect Power menu tooltip was fetched when not using a mouse.

Game changes

• Fix Torture Chambers quest breaking if the player skips the switch at the end.
• Fix being able to attack imprisoned enemies in Torture Chambers by making them invincible while the barriers are up.
• Reset Torture Chambers quest if it was finished without opening the barriers.

Translation updates

• Spanish (es) update (Diego J. Romero López)
• Scottish Gaelic (gd) update (GunChleoc)