Flare
Flare (Free Libre Action Roleplaying Engine) is a simple game engine built to handle a very specific kind of game: single-player 2D action RPGs. Flare is not a reimplementation of an existing game or engine. It is a tribute to and exploration of the action RPG genre.
Rather than building a very abstract, robust game engine, the goal of this project is to build several real games and harvest an engine from the common, reusable code.
The Flare engine, which is purely a runtime, is written in C++.
Flare uses simple file formats (INI-style config files) for most of the game data, allowing anyone to easily modify game contents. Open formats are preferred (png, ogg). For creating maps, we also support Tiled with the Flare plugin.
Originally the first game to be developed using this engine was part of this repository. As the engine became mature, the game content was moved to an extra repository and is now called flare-game. (happened around sept. 2012)
Copyright and License
Most of Flare is Copyright © 2010-2013 Clint Bellanger. Contributors retain copyrights to their original contributions.
Flare's source code is released under the GNU GPL v3. Later versions are permitted.
Flare's default mod (includes engine translations) is released under GNU GPL v3 and CC-BY-SA 3.0. Later versions are permitted.
The default mod contains the Liberation Sans font which is released under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1.
The GNU Unifont font is released under GPL v2, with the exception that embedding the font in a document does not in itself bind that document to the terms of the GPL.
Links
The following links are specific to the engine
Games made with flare
- flare-game A medival fantasy game. In the first days of the engine this game influenced most design decisions a lot. The art is 3d rendered 64x32 px isometric perspective.
- polymorphable A game made for "The Liberated Pixel cup", which was a competition about game art and making a game thereof. The pixel art is 32x32 orthogonal perspective featuring a medival setting. The development has finished.
- concordia Another game using the art created during "The liberated pixel cup". While this started without stress regarding the timeline for the pixel cup, this story is more thought through and the content is more organized.
Building from Source
Flare uses SDL2, SDL2_image, SDL2_mixer, and SDL2_ttf. Please see the INSTALL.md file for instructions.
Settings
Settings are stored in one of these places:
Linux/Mac OS X/Unix
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/flare/
$HOME/.config/flare/
./config
Windows
%APPDATA%\flare\config
config\
Here you can enable fullscreen, change the game resolution, enable mouse-move, and change keybindings. The settings files are created the first time you run Flare.
Save Files
Save files are stored in one of these places:
Linux/Mac OS X/Unix
$XDG_DATA_HOME/flare/
$HOME/.local/share/flare/
./userdata
Windows
%APPDATA%\flare\userdata
userdata\
If permissions are correct, the game is automatically saved when you exit.
In addition, there is a mods directory in this location, which can be used to override system-wide mods.
Command-line Flags
| Flag | Description |
|---|---|
--help |
Prints the list of command-line flags. |
--version |
Prints the release version. |
--data-path |
Specifies an exact path to look for mod data. |
--debug-event |
Prints verbose hardware input information. |
--renderer |
Specifies the rendering backend to use. The default is 'sdl_hardware'. Also available is 'sdl', which is a software-based renderer. |
--no-audio |
Disables sound effects and music. |
--mods |
Starts the game with only these mods enabled. |
--load-slot |
Loads a save slot by numerical index. |
--load-script |
Execute's a script upon loading a saved game. The script path is mod-relative. |