Alora Fane

Well! I'm surprised by the amount of interest the previous post got, and so quickly too. There seem to be a lot of good reasons to remaster MARDEK, and now really does seem to be the best time to do that. I'm very reluctant to change nothing though. Here are some thoughts about how I intend to try to tackle this.

I've read all the comments on the previous post, but rather than spending time addressing them all individually, I'm writing this post to address them as a whole.

I wasn't aware of this 'flashpocalypse'; this is the first I've heard of it. (I thought Flash died years ago.) I can't really imagine how this would make Flash games unplayable, it's not like the old, downloadable versions of Flash Player would stop existing, right? Still, it seems that this would be the perfect time to make an enduring version of MARDEK.

I talked about the Spyro Reignited Trilogy in the previous post because it's the most recent example of a remaster that I've played, and I get the impression it's been well-received. It's interesting looking at what they've changed and what they haven't. Every line of dialogue is kept exactly the same, but it's been re-recorded. The music seems to be essentially the same, though it varies dynamically - a modern tweak - but there's an option to revert to the original soundtrack if you want. The level layouts are the same, though they're a whole lot more detailed and generally nicer-looking. Interestingly, the dragons that you rescue in the first game, which were palette-swapped clones for the most part in the original, now each have appealingly-designed, unique looks (which show so briefly that I can't help but feel bad for the artists, since they clearly took a long time to make).

So it seems that visual improvements like that are acceptable, I suppose because the essence of everything is the same?

Perhaps a more appropriate example for what I have in mind would be the 3D remakes of the old Final Fantasy games, which at this point are probably at least as old as MARDEK itself! I haven't played those in years, so I can't remember them as clearly as this Spyro game I'm playing currently, but I think they changed a whole lot more. The essence of the story was kept, but the playable characters were actually made into characters rather than faceless custom nobodies, and they were given personalities and things that weren't there before (in the remake of III, at least). The graphics also jumped from 2D sprites to fairly simple 3D.

If I were to remake MARDEK, it'd probably be something like that. A couple of comments on the previous post suggested an attachment to the pixel art style, but it'd actually be a lot easier to use 3D now that I can, and it'd open up options that weren't possible before. I could use the same models for the field, battles, and dialogue portraits, I could use what I've developed for facial emotes over the past couple of years for easy and varied expressions, and characters would be able to visibly equip armour in a way that they couldn't in the originals (if it felt right to do so; it would have been possible in the original, but I remember it being a deliberate choice not to... so we'll see). Animations would be much easier too, and could be more dynamic.

I'll have to experiment with how best to go about this. A while back, I posted a few images of this thing on Twitter and this blog, which was an experiment using the same tile-based coding techniques from my early days, but with 3D tiles:

That's one possibility. I've also done a bit of work on my most recent project, Belief, which was supposed to be in the same general style as those old RPGs anyway. This has free movement, though I suppose it's hard to show the difference with screenshots.

I've not done much at all on that yet, so I haven't got much to show. The characters would look more interesting if they weren't all bald, naked clones without textures, and if the lighting were less bad. As it is, that's not a very impressive screenshot, I know!

I'd need to do a bit of experimenting before deciding on visual and movement styles that works best. That'd take time to figure out, so it's not something I can show at the moment, though I do have something in mind. The visuals aren't going to be on the same, beautiful professional quality as games like the Spyro one, obviously, since I'm just one person and my art skills aren't at that level, but I suppose it'll be adequate in the way that Sindrel Song's graphics hopefully were? Perhaps you could say it's like going from SNES retro to PS2 retro?

Beyond the visuals, there are other things that I'd like to change, but I'm unsure how much I can change. I do get the impression that a lot of you wouldn't like it if I changed anything... Some of the comments suggested as much.

Since I'd be remaking something that people were already familiar with, and there'd be no chance of spoiling anything, at least at first, what I'm imagining doing is being extremely open about every step of the process. For example, for every single conversation, I'd write a post where I included the original dialogue and a new version with any proposed changes. If people were really against the changes, I wouldn't make them. If they thought "oh, yes, that does actually work better", they'd stay. We'd essentially decide together on what goes in, rather than me just holing myself away and making something sacrilegious that only annoys and disappoints people!

Soon, I'll play through the first chapter myself, making notes about what I'd rather do differently, and I'll post about it here to check with you readers about what you think.

For now, I have some general suggestions - bigger than simple dialogue tweaks - that I'd like to hear thoughts about. Would you accept changes like this, or detest them so much you'd hire a sniper to angrily take me out?

Shared Universe

I've set up this Alora Fane world in some detail, with the intention of using it as a shared setting for my games, so it seems a shame to spend who-knows-how-long on something that has nothing to do with it.

Taming Dreams was an attempt to make a MARDEK set in the Alora Fane world, but I changed a lot there. The Bold race, for example, which most of the characters were, were vaguely leonine, rather than just plain humans. They had weird noses and ears.

I decided a while ago that the Bold are literally just humans, though - perhaps their genetic code was saved by the Aolmna after they destroyed their home on Earth? - so that could mean that in this, the human characters are technically Bold and 'Belfan' is a continent in the Bronze Archipelago.

I wouldn't need to make too big of a deal of it, and I don't know if it'd actually affect very much. But it would mean that this would put this firmly in the same world as whatever games I make in the future. It seems weird to have the Alora Fane site if this isn't based in that world.

Light Blades

By extension, in the Alora Fane world, monsters are actually 'solid hallucinations', essentially inner demons made manifest. I quite like all the lore surrounding that. In Taming Dreams, I had the characters deal with these 'positively', by aiming to 'tame' them through emotions rather than defeating them with violence. I really don't like the idea of making a game which is essentially based around violence again, but I wonder whether I can find a middle ground.

Perhaps the monsters are indeed miasmon, formed from the miasma, but the Bold of the Bronze Archipelago deal with them by using weapons made of a kind of insubstantial ore, which passes right through living creatures, but disrupts these dark creatures with light. Instead of having health bars that deplete, monsters would have a purple bar, which fills with gold - dark being taken over by light - as you attack them. When it fills, they dissipate, defeated.

There are some human enemies, and perhaps when you fill their dark bar with light, they're knocked out of a stupor, and make a comment like "I don't know what came over me!" or even "thanks!" before running away.

You'd still be solving problems by hitting things with equippable weapons, but it's at least slightly more in line with the kind of thing I'd be proud to make?

I can't remember whether the mental nature of monsters was established as early as MARDEK. I suspect it might have been? Maybe there were books about it in the game? So this wouldn't be a complete reimagining so much as a refining of what was already there, knowing what I do now.

Mechanically, it'd be the same as before. You'd collect and equip weapons and learn skills, you'd have probably similar stats. It's just that the lore behind what those weapons do would be different.

Sentimancy

If I were to do that, perhaps the bland 'magic' might be replaced by 'sentimancy', which would work the same as the old magic, but in terms of lore it'd be an explosion of emotional energy, using the same mechanisms as the monsters/miasmon (dark thoughts make the miasmon coalesce into monsters, while focused emotional thoughts can cause it to instantly coalesce into a burst of miasmal energy which affects miasmon but doesn't hurt people). That'd just be adding a description of how magic works in this setting that wasn't there before.

But then...

Sentiments?

MARDEK made heavy use of elements: fire, water, air, earth, dark, light, aether, fig (mainly). I spent a while over the years revising these as 'sentiments', which I'm quite proud of.

There are two versions of the sentiments. The "elemental sentiments" are Courage, Fear, Bliss, Destruction, Creation, and Sorrow. The "social sentiments" are Amity, Enmity, Joy, Sorrow, Desire, and Fear.

I used the 'elemental sentiments' in earlier projects like Taming Dreams and Alora Fane: Creation, and they had direct parellels to these other elements. Courage manifests as flames, for example; destruction is lightning. I thought it was an interesting take on the same elements system that everything else uses, but I've yet to use them in anything widely released, which feels like a shame. Belief, with its social-skills-based interactions, uses the social sentiments, meaning that the elemental ones have been pushed into the background.

I'd like it if I could use these elemental sentiments in place of elements. But would you be able to accept that, or would this be one of the things that'd ruin the experience for you because it's too different to what you remember?

Characters had elements in the original, so with this they'd have sentiments. I think that someone being 'of the fire element' is less meaningful than being of 'the courage sentiment', but what do you think?

Adding Foreshadowing

Since I largely made the story of MARDEK up as I went along, there isn't much in the way of foreshadowing or meaningful connections between events. Now that I know exactly what's going to happen, at least in the first three chapters (or two, as they'd be released; see my previous post), I could make some changes to add more emotional weight or meaning.

For example, in the original chapter 1, Mardek and Deugan, as children, are beset by Mugbert, a bully who never appears (in a meaningful role) again. It's just essentially a big dumb monster with no story relevance, there only because it's the convention of the genre to have bosses as obstacles. In Taming Dreams, this was revised as being a young Steele, who reappears later in the story (or would have, had I got that far with it) with more story significance. Would it be acceptable for me to replace Mugbert with Steele in this?

Changes like that wouldn't necessarily be adding anything new, but rather it'd be adding to what people would already recognise... I'd hope. It's not as if people would be thinking "who's THIS? Where's Mugbert??"; instead they might think "oh! That's Steele from later in the story! Interesting!"... Or maybe I'm overestimating people's openness to change?!

Similarly, but more drastically, in the intro of Taming Dreams, you play as Hero Mardek, like the original, but he's accompanied by 'Enki' instead of some super-powered Deugan. I liked this change a lot, because it actually gives some character to both Enki (who was meant to have a major role later on in both the original MARDEK and in Taming Dreams), and to both Deugan and Mardek. Mardek's simple-minded and okay enough about himself to see a hypothetical hero as essentially himself, while Deugan's less secure, and sees his imaginary hero as Enki, who he looked up to but who now is gone. I think something like this would be a huge improvement over the rather weird description of Enki that Mardek's mother gives of him out of nowhere (after which point he's never even mentioned again, I don't think?), but again, I don't know whether people would be open to changes like this.

(Deugan being unworthy of a hero role would add motivation for - and value to - his later sacrifice, which I feel comes out of nowhere in the original and has little to no emotional weight behind it.)

(I still like Taming Dreams a lot, but I think remastering that would be less appealing to people than remastering MARDEK...)

In the original intro, Hero Mardek and Hero Deugan save a generic princess (who represents nobody) from a generic dragon (which represents nothing). I wonder whether I could change that dragon into a cyclops? That way, it'd be a preview of what's to come, when they face the Governance de Magi?

Unless I turn all the GdM into dragons!!!

(I actually tried that in early plans for Taming Dreams, for this reason, I think. It didn't work! So I changed the dragon from the intro into a 'dark god', which did work, since the 'GdM' were gods in that.)

I also feel like the 'saving a princess' thing doesn't hold up well in our modern culture, and I'd prefer to change that, but I don't know how. I like the idea of making it Emela (or maybe I'll spell that Emeela, as in Taming Dreams? Hmm), who Mardek's fancied for a while from afar? Or maybe Deugan has? Or both of them? It needn't be explicitly her, though players familiar with the characters would recognise her as such. It'd give more weight to that character and nothing important would be lost... though you might feel differently.

Time Jump

In the original chapter 1, you played as Mardek and Deugan as children, which I did because I felt that being with the protagonists since their early years might help the player feel attached to them. After that chapter, though, Mardek spends several years with Rohoph in his head in which absolutely nothing happens, which just seems strange.

I'm wondering whether to instead set this intro in their young adulthood, directly before they're about to join the... thing I'll get to next. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is just because I don't really want to play as children; I find them annoying, and it might make the game seem overly childish to new eyes. Another is purely technical. If I made one adult-sized model and rig for the characters, then I could reuse it for all their incarnations, whereas adding child versions would mean extra work.

When the scene transitions from the fantasy to their real world, they could be sitting at a table in their little den, having just played something like D&D. It'd also fit better if the 'princess' was replaced by Eme(e)la, since as teenagers they'd be more likely to have feelings like that about a girl. This might also help to establish them as 'losers', in the way that, say, the cast of Stranger Things are (were?), which would make their later accomplishments and developments feel more significant.

Other than that, the events would be the same as before. They'd go to the forest, find the crashed spaceship, etc.

Knights and Seraphim

In the original, they join the 'Goznor Guard' or whatever they're even called, who are... knights. Or something. I can't actually remember; I don't think there was much thought behind it. In Taming Dreams, I reimagined this as a group of roaming problem-solvers called the Seraphim, who were sent out from their 'Cloud-Clad Castle' to help with the world's problems in a diplomatic way. Seraphim in training were called Cherubim.

That's another change from Taming Dreams I'd like to keep, since it doesn't actually change anything other than the names of things. The cherubim had a completely different uniform from the 'Goznor Guard', but I wonder whether this could give you the choice about which you want, especially if characters had dynamic appearances. You could be given both the sky blue cherubim tunic, and the old breastplate with 'vomit green' pants combo (seen here modelled by Memody). Or maybe I could come up with a newer design that's half way between the two?

As you can see, there's a lot that I'd like to change (and this is just for the early bits...), but I'll only do so if people would be okay with it. If you read all that aghast, worried that I'll ruin this, let me know! (Nicely though, please.) Personally, I feel that these would be changes for the better which wouldn't take away from the core of the game, but I really do want to know what you think for each one. I don't want to 'ruin your childhood', but I suppose I need a reason for me to consider this worthwhile on a personal level.

Speaking of which, some people brought up concerns about whether I'd even want to work on a remaster, after so many years expressing negative thoughts about my old work. Honestly, I'm just trying to see it like this: either it's this, or I give up the games thing and go and pursue the old family business of door-to-door dildo dealing. How many of us do jobs we actually want to do? Few. There are many factors that seem like this might be a profitable path forward, and I'm really struggling with a lack of money and all the associated thoughts that go with that, so it's alluring to me for that reason.

I also think though that it'd be interesting to work on something that people would have an active interest in during the entire development. Something where I can post about every little conversation, every monster design, and people would likely always have something to say. While I'd be developing alone, it'd feel less alone, and might give me more motivation to develop quickly and not fall into unproductive slumps.

I also wonder If I can just mentally reframe how I see this old work. Not as something to compare to my newer ideas, but as something to fondly regard and nostalgically remember. I am enjoying this Spyro Reignited series, after all, and it's been years since I've played MARDEK. Maybe I'll find it quite fun going over it all again. I did like it a lot once, after all.

Either way, I'm not going to reluctantly force myself to do it, and do a poor job. I'll pour my heart into it as I always do... though I suppose we'll have to see how that goes if that heart of mine is drawn in one direction, and everyone wants me to go in another. Hmm.

Oh, also, I feel like using either Kickstarter or Patreon might work well for this, in a way that they wouldn't if I were to make something more original like Sindrel Song or Belief. There are two possibilities I'm wondering about there. One is doing as I said and talking openly about every detail of the process, but instead of just presenting that to everyone, I could present it (or at least some of it) to only patrons instead. So those who are generous enough to support me get the benefit of being a part of the process. The other thing would be starting a Kickstarter with a goal (I don't know what; $10k? $20k? More?), and if that goal's met, I'll work on this, but if it's not, I won't. Perhaps that'd be a good way to gauge interest for the project and to quell any doubts about it being profitable. It'd be way easier to stick with something if it earning money wasn't some distant fantasy!

I'd need to get to the point where I have a demo before doing that, though.

I'm still not certain that going down this path would be wise, but there are certainly a lot of factors that suggest it might be worth doing now. There are obviously a lot of things to work through first though, which I'm hoping we'll be able to come to a consensus about collectively over the coming days or weeks.

As I said earlier, I really would like to hear your feedback about these ideas - and they are just ideas, not decided plans - because I need to gauge what people want, and what they're willing to allow as far as changes go. I wouldn't be happy with something where nothing changed, but I get the feeling that some people wouldn't be happy with something were anything changed. We'll have to discuss it and find a compromise.

Oh, one other thing:

Another series that I liked a lot as a child (and actually first got on the same day as Spyro) was Oddworld, starting with Abe's Oddysee and Exoddus. Not too long ago, there was a remastered version of Oddysee ("New 'N' Tasty"), which was very faithful to the original. I got it, but wasn't extremely excited or anything. It was okay. But there's been a remake of Exoddus in the works for ages, which is supposed to use the original as a starting point, and to build a whole lot of changes and improvements on top of that to the point where it's a whole new game. They're aiming to "tell the story it was meant to tell", or something. I've been checking up on this every so often for ages, because the idea of something that's based on - but an improved version of - something I grew up with is way more exciting to me than an exact reproduction!

But I suppose it's subjective, as all things are.