Flare enough

<summary>I compiled Flare 1.05.03. </summary>

N.B. There was a flaw in the provided installation instructions, read http://www.amigans.net/modules/xforum ... id=110768#forumpost110768

In gameplay terms, it has more content than the alpha/early stuff did, and an actual storyline (Empyrean). I played it for an hour as of now. I didn't play on a foreign OS, since the basic concept was familiar already. Although as far as I can remember, I compiled the older versions before playing as well.

Technobabble: libsdl2 is now used, I used the usual prebuilt ones and compiled statically... so if libsdl2 is improved, this needs a recompile to use it. But more importantly, I alluded to here (2014) that 0.19 wasn't really playable on my system. Now there is a separate timer. That means that the game world runs "as it should" irrespective of the framerate. It doesn't take unreasonably long to run from place to place. Just areas with rain are slower (graphically).

I accept a few "playtesters" in the sense, that I'm interested if it doesn't run for you, because I found only one issue and I'm going to work around
it not by altering the code, but by saying "don't do this".

I noticed the graphics do not draw fully with hardware acceleration, but at least running the game like this, it is immediately discernible when the menu screen shows up. As I haven't had a crash or other nuisance from it,
I'll just put a remark that in settings you need to have "hwsurface=0". I think I'll forego the installer script: I'm not even sure how to alter such a plain text setting file from that environment.

PM me if you want to eliminate the obvious "runs only on the one system"-type problems. Most likely going to upload on a weekday this week. OS4Depot.net, yes.

...

This was -almost- as easy* as the stuff four years ago and earlier, but at least I've long documented the finished cases (tip of the iceberg!) enough to be able to get back to work promptly.

* earlier this year I wasn't able to put together two intermediate builds

edit: THIS weekend doesn't really move things forward, so let's see about week 21.

@Thematic

I'd be happy to give it a try on my X5K. Feel free to PM me the details for download.

Cheers,
Bill "tekmage" Borsari

@Thematic
I could test it on sam440, x1000 and x5000if you still need

@Thematic

if you still need here Peg2 G4

@Thematic

PM sent ! been playing Flare on my X1000 since 1st version out for Amiga

PM sent too. I finished the last version of Flare on my Sam. Very great game !

From the VICE thread I realized there might be some PORTING to do here: the SDL2 compositing code? Unless that is automatically in use?

@Thematic

Compositing should be used if application requests for an accelerated renderer. It's a good idea to check serial logs, too.

@Capehill Thanks, the game sends this to console so I guess "yay":

I have a problem running Flare, the con: output is:



WTF is it looking in env:mplayer?

@Severin

There is no string 'mplayer' in the program file, not 8-bit, not 16-bit.

I ran it out-of-place so it wouldn't find anything, this is all:

@Thematic

I get the following if I move mods.txt from config/ into mods/



I installed both archives to ram: to test.

EDIT:

Creating the .config and .local drawer structures in envarc removes the env:mplayer errors and now I just get:

Doesn't work for me either, can't find the 'default mod'.

N.B. The new 1.06 Lha already has the mods/default files.

Maybe I cannot read, after all... the flare-game 'repo' does not have the default part of the data.

has the required files: extract anywhere and put the mods/default under the mods that is in the game directory.
(mods.txt can be in either mods or config, I haven't looked what happens if both exist with different entries)

Thanks!

Getting there now...

Got the first window open and displaying the left 3/4 of the picture (can see a few bricks to the right of the gate) but there is no text in the buttons.

The partial gfx is the hwsurface=1 setting.
I had the no-text occur when I guess it didn't find the font (which is also in default).

hwsurface=0 here, fonts from default are installed... weird.

I compiled 1.06... I'm going to package it with the 'default' so that _one_ file is needed from SF.

edit: Done.

I've got 1.06 working but it took a bit of fiddling...

If I don't have the following srawers:

env:.config/flare/
env:.local/share/flafe/mods/
env:.local/share/flare/saves/empyrean/

default setings are used and they have the hwsurface and font problems.

mods.txt must be in env:.config/flare/ or progdir:mods/, it can't find it in progdir:config/

After quitting the game the env: files have to be copied to envarc: or the save & config files are lost.

EDIT:

is the "CC-BY-SA" tooltype doing anything?

Does not work here. Can't click on play on the Flair intro screen. Nothing happens when I click on anything