$12256 / $11500
Hi, I am a CG Artist using FLARE to create a game. It is rather ambitious, I hope to make the graphics reminiscent of a PS1 era JRPG.
I am focusing on art asset creation and am currently partway through creating my own custom 'town' tileset. However, I cannot find any clear guides on how to convert the .TMX file into the format FLARE reads. I would like to be able to do that to test the map in-game. What are the steps?
Here are some work in progress:
Character
Town WIP and tileset
Screenshot Mockups with UI:
I hope to use this thread to share my progress on this personal project. Currently my milestones are:
- Main Character (Done)
- 1 Environment (30%)
- UI graphics (50%)
- All running in the game engine itself (This is where I need some help in figuring out)
Thanks.
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In Tiled go to Edit - Preferences. Then under the Plugins tab enable Flare.dll This will let you export a copy of your TMX map to the Flare format.
If you haven't yet, I suggest taking a peek at flare's TMX maps for examples. There are some specifics things to set up. E.g. there should be three tile layers named "collision", "background", and "object". And the first 16 tiles are reserved for special collision markers.
Looking neat! Keep us updated!
Hi Clint,
I got around to looking at some of the flare-game Tiled files on GitHub. I also looked at this article here:
https://github.com/clintbellanger/flare/wiki/Mapmaking
So from my understanding:
- Characters and enemies will always be drawn on top of the background layer.
- The object layer is used if you want things such as trees, fences and pillars in the environment to overlap with characters and enemies.
However, I still have some more questions:
1) How did you set up tiles in such a way that they can be in 'chunks' as opposed to single 64x32 pieces? Also, how do you set it up such that the position of the actual 'tile' varies? What I mean is for example the 'tall structures' tiles has the actual tile placed at the bottom of the 'chunk', while the 'water' tiles has the actual tile at the top.
2) When I opened the .tmx file of grasslands, it calls for several .pngs such as grassland.png, grassland_structures.png and grasslands_trees.png. However, the Flare exe only comes with a single, packed png of all the tiles that exists in grasslands. I suppose there is a way to convert the multiple .pngs to that packed format that the final .txt map file calls upon?
Thanks everyone involved for creating such a user friendly game engine. I feel that this has the potential to become the RPGmaker of Diablo style games :)
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First off, this project looks really cool. Definitely keeping an eye on this. As for your questions:
1) We have our tiles in Tiled setup to be 64x128. This leaves empty space above the smaller 64x32 tiles, but allows for "tall" 64x128 tiles such as walls. You'll need to modify your tileset image so that it fits on a 64x128 grid.
2) Some time ago, I wrote a Python script to take a Tiled tmx file and generate a Flare tileset definition + tileset image. You can find it here: https://github.com/dorkster/tilesetdef-generator. You will probably need to edit the image file path in the resulting tileset definition to fit the file structure of your mod.
I've reorganized the tileset as well as made some progress on the creation of additional art assets:
I think I more or less get how to do it now. My focus now is to try and get at least one screen to look like the finished product, although I should probably begin testing it in the engine soon. Thanks!
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The art doesnt look consistant. This is just my own view from what ive seen. Im not saying its bad. so dont think that. I just think the art does not all look like its from the same artist or place. Also your main character although he looks very cool he is very pixely for such a non pixel like world. There is images there with way to many colors to be pixel art like the main character is. I definitely get a pre rendered realistic tile mixed with traditional pixel art vibe. Maybe im being over sensitive. Because no one else has mentioned it.
Hi Malifer,
Sorry for the late reply. I've been caught up with stuff.
I actually feel the same way you do about the art not being consistent and could be improved. I can't quite put a finger on why myself, so I'm not sure how to solve this problem. So my intention is to simply plow ahead and finish all the art asserts first, when I can find the time to. Once the bigger picture is in place then maybe I will work to improve it. Thanks.
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I think the player model fits fine with the tiles. You mentioned PS1 era games, which makes me think painted backgrounds + "crisp" (e.g. no blended edges) sprites/models.
The problem I see is with the brick building tiles you added. They're nice on their own, but they don't fit the architecture of the previous set of tiles. To match the curved arches, I would suggest trying round pillars made out of the same (or similar) material as the walls.
Finally found some time to make a small bit of progress. Here is a tree asset that I made:
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That's some good looking bush.
Yep, looks great :)
Until I saw this I believed all FLARE assets looked like ass. I HATE 3D rendered in isometric.
But with your clean and simplistic art assets, it actually does give off a JRPG feel that makes me kind of like the art. I'd probably give it a go with these graphics- in general I stay as far away as possible from FLARE style games.
Keep it up with your own style, as the person above said, keep the colours light and the edges soft- don't follow the grim, muddy looking art that is FLARE.
i like these graphics, the tree / bush looks good. Do you already have some more tiles to show???
@Kemono
I think it is a little harsh to say that 'all FLARE assets looked like ass'. If you have been following FLARE's development, consider that Clint, the creator of most everything in Flare, is a programmer first and artist second, who self-taught himself most of the necessary tools to generate the art that he needed. The only reason that I am able to get as far as I did with my own art is because I went to art school and already have some experience doing art professionally prior.
I'm sure that if you told me as an artist to self learn programming I would not be attain an equivalent level of conpetence that Clint has achieved as a programmer who taught himself art. So I think we should all appreciate that.
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@rubberduck
I do actually!
Also, the assets are running in the FLARE engine now, although it needs to be ran on top of fantasycore and alpha_demo and is a complete mess under the hood. I need to clean things up, but I'm relieved that it at least survived the transition to the engine intact.
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FLARE has been such a great tool for me to realize my dream of creating a Diablo-style game with JRPG graphics, and I thought I should really try and give something back. So I'd like to share with all of you my tile creation process:
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@Ateo88
Great looking render. And thank you for the tile creation tips
Thats a nice tile you made. Its interesting how it was done too. just realized you can see it in use tiled in your screenshots.
Thanks, Malifer!
It's not tiled perfectly ATM in the screenshots though. I need to go back and fix it. TBH the isometric tile that I currently have in the screenshot was created before I learnt many things about creating isometric graphics, like 26.565 degrees and scaling with Nearest Neighbor instead of Bicubic. (You can actually still see the seams in the screenshot if you look closely enough) But yeah, I'm pretty sure that if you were to take a screenshot of the square tile that I created and convert it into an isometric tile with those things in mind, it should work :)
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Been working hard on this in my free time (Usually weeknights after coming home from my day job and weekeneds) and I think I have managed to nail down the style and level of detail I want the graphics to have. Some screenshots:
Here are some showcasing the UI:
Here's a link to a full view of what has been done so far:
http://i.imgur.com/sLRHeZR.png
And finally here is a video of the game in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPIQkfBl_Nk&feature=youtu.be
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Wow! There's so much detail in such a small scene.
Incredible work, Ateo88.
Very pretty! :)
Yes, it looks great :)
status report please. This looks extremely good.
Beautiful... yeah AI is hard!
You should figure out what is the AI going to do first, i think :D
Look like a good mod
He/she migrated to another engine and is well on the way to finish it:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1783280/Ghostlore/
While it's out of date now, the original demo that used Flare is still available in web-only form here: https://ghostlore.itch.io/ghostlore-web-version
But definitely check out the commercial version. It's much improved since the demo.
Thank you so much for your support and endorsement Dorkster. It means a lot to me. Congrats on the 1.14 release, I would love to come back to FLARE and some point
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