Ware the Flare has Flareware been?

If you follow Studio AAA on social media then you may have seen posts about a Flareware update going all the way back to last December, which is now 10 months ago.

In this blog post, I'm going to share a quick and low detail overview of what happened, mainly because I did aim to do a lot more with Flareware, but also because this update is largely informed by all the stuff that went wrong.

Lost Update 1.2:

Unfortunately, In January 2026 we lost a large chunk of work on new effects shortly after teasing the first major Flareware update.

All of the work we lost turned out to be completely unrecoverable, and to make it even worse, the loss of work was entirely the fault of the person writing this blog post.

This left me in a tricky spot where I had to decide if we were going to redo all of the Flareware update work, or go ahead with work on Dither Boy v6.0, which was a full rewrite of the Dither Boy software from scratch.

As you probably already know, we went ahead with Dither Boy v6.0!

Dither Boy poster created with star assets from Flareware v1.0

Scrapped Update 1.2:

While Dither Boy v6.0 was being worked on, I found a new developer to work with on Flareware and the next time I got an update was just after the release of Dither Boy v6.

When I booted up what I was told was the finished Flareware 1.2 update, redesigned to my original design document and spec, I was immediately excited! Most of the work was back to a very similar state to when I lost it before.

I left my desk for a bit and left Flareware 1.2 open.

When I returned, my laptop sounded like a jet engine and was hot to touch, sometimes it gets like this if i am rendering out a very long YouTube video or doing something messy in Blender or After Effects, which I thought was weird. I restarted my laptop after letting it cool down for a bit, and reopened the new Flareware version to continue testing, this was when I noticed that every single still image was being re-rendered in Flareware at a very high FPS... constantly, even when i wasn't touching any controls, and even for effects I hadn't even opened.

I am contractually unable to discuss the nature or extent of the issues I experienced with the unreleased Flareware version 1.2. I am also required to state that the developer will remain anonymous and that the dispute between us has been resolved amicably.

I will also add that the developer who worked on Flareware 1.2 is not to be confused with any of the people who work on Dither Boy, or Flareware v1, or Flareware 2.

All of the Flareware 1.2 work up to this point was scrapped, and we started again from the original v1 that is currently released.

The Good News: Thanks to your support, Flareware 2 is going well, and coming soon with...

Fully Reimagined Interface

I'm not going to spoil it, but Flareware has a brand new way to work, different from anything you've seen us design before.

Dither Boy Palette Compatability

Flareware 2 will be able to use any and all existing palettes you've created or downloaded for Dither Boy in a brand new way.

More Than Just Lens Flares

We have thematically expanded the visual possibilities with new lighting and optical effects outside the lens flare category.

100% Free For Existing Users

All users will get the new update for free, and there will be no price increase as a result of the Flareware 2 update.

Flareware Is below If you'd like to get in before the update, or you can wait for my next YouTube upload to see the new version of Flareware

(I don't have a release date for you, but can confirm i will not be making YouTube videos until this is done!)

STUDIO AAA ON YOUTUBE

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Flareware

£50.00

Flareware is a desktop software for Mac and Windows that creates custom lens flare and vivid optical lighting effects. Built for designers and digital artists who want cinematic-quality assets with a creative-first interface and export system.