Alora Fane

This talk of MARDEK is definitely sparking an active discussion! I want to address a few of the comments on the previous post, clarifying what I had in mind with some of the changes I described. Also some rambling about whether seeing this as a reimagining rather than a remaster might be the wisest way to go about it.

I wouldn't normally post so much in quick succession, and I don't intend to make a habit of it, but I feel that it's important to get some things sorted out quickly so then I can get to work. I'm also using this to actively and publicly brainstorm ideas myself, so then you can watch how it comes together and be a part of the process if you're curious about that.

I'm slowly working on releasing Sindrel Song, and I've been told that I really should get a publisher otherwise it's essentially doomed to failure. I expected as much, though I'm wary about it because I don't want to lose intellectual property rights. I particularly don't want to give away any kind of ownership of the Alora Fane world, which I intend to use for years to come. I'll have to do some negotiating and research and find something that works for me. I'd rather take a path of reduced profits if it meant that I could keep hold of my ideas.

If I were to return to MARDEK, then I'd need to market and promote that as well. There definitely would be some people who'd fondly remember it from the past, yes, but how many exactly? It didn't exactly reach the same level of fame as Spyro or Zelda or any of the huge household name games being remastered. I understand that some of you have a deep attachment to the old games and really want to see more, and a 100% faithful adaptation of what you love, but how many people would you say that's true for? The original was played by millions of people, but how many of those would fondly remember it? Thousands? Hundreds? Dozens?

When marketing the game, I'd need to explain things like its main selling point, something that makes it unique and worth looking into for people who've never heard of it before. I feel that MARDEK did well in its time because it was a product of that time, but it no longer is, so I wouldn't expect it in its original form to attract many new eyes. I wouldn't even know how to promote it myself. With Sindrel Song, I can talk about how it's about overcoming mental illness, finding value in life... It has some purpose beyond itself, some deeper reason to be. But MARDEK? It's a fun RPG, yes, but what about beyond that? What would make it stand out other than nostalgia, which not everyone would have for it?

The more I think about what MARDEK included in terms of plot stuff (a 'violet crystal' that 'brought out the worst in people', the 'chaosbringer') and lore (fire and dark people can't breed, or whatever), the more... unpleasant it feels to me. I suppose it feels 'raw', like the beginnings of concepts I've since refined over the course of years; revisiting it feels as palatable as eating a bag of flour even though I've since learned how to bake cakes. Or something.

So I've been wondering whether instead of aiming to make a faithful remaster, I should instead try to make something that's more like a reimagining. What MARDEK would be were I to make it now (which is exactly what I'd be doing), something like that. Sort of like the original is a first draft, which I could use to make a refined version with my years more experience. Something that hopefully the hardcore fans could still get something out of since there'd be a whole lot to recognise and the chain of events and cast would be essentially the same, but which would appeal to new people and be worth promoting as well. Something that wouldn't require you to have played some series of Flash games over a decade ago.

I already tried this with Taming Dreams, as I've said, but with that, I veered quite far from the source in a lot of ways. I suppose I'm imagining this as something in between the two, with inspirations from both.

This'd mean changes like the ones that I already described in the previous post. I want to talk a bit more about those same things to address some concerns that people brought up about them, to better explain what I have in mind.

Shared Universe

The more I think about it, the more I want - or I suppose 'need' - to set this in Alora Fane. While this wouldn't obviously affect much from the start, it could potentially affect more later on. For example, rather than there being reptilians (or whatever they were even called) in Chapter 3, those could be replaced by something like sindrels or varnyn.

This was actually the plan for Taming Dreams; the reptilians were a group of red-skinned sindrels (this was before their current design, when they were blue lizard people) called 'kendrels', who'd ended up in the Bronze Archipelago due to some interesting and convoluted (and thoroughly-planned) plot stuff that was crucial to some of the character's backstories. The character Solaar was also replaced by a white-skinned sindrel called Glimmer, who I later used as the original protagonist of Sindrel Song. Sindrel Song's 'wintrels' having white skin was originally meant to lead into this eventually.

It could be interesting to use an older, white-skinned Memody instead of that character, in that role... Hmm.

Light Blades

This 'light blades' concept would have characters still attacking with weapons, but instead of being physical violence, they'd represent 'disrupting' the dark miasma by charging it with light. A few people brought up the issue of fighting humans like bandits or the World's Saviours, and I have some thoughts about that.

With ordinary monsters, they'd have a purple bar, which would fill with yellow light as you struck them with these weapons (which would produce yellow 'damage' numbers). Monsters would turn your yellow bars purple (they'd produce purple 'damage' numbers). 'Healing' would restore your light (also yellow numbers). When you faced random human enemies like the bandits, they'd be 'possessed by their demons', essentially, and your weapons would phase through them but strike at those inner demons. When they were defeated, the person would be free of their demons, and it'd be like snapping someone out of a rage.

Characters like the World's Saviours, though, would also have light bars from the start (because they're heroes!), and your own light-based attacks would only 'heal' them. I'm imagining the battle against them being a complete stalemate at first, as neither your attacks or theirs are doing anything. I can imagine either them or your characters commenting on it. Then one of them - Bernard, probably - would take out a dark-charged weapon like those wielded by some monsters (much as some monsters wielded equippable weapons in the original), and he'd strike you with that and have an effect. The others would then swap out dark weapons as well. You'd have already faced monsters by this point which would have dropped some of these dark weapons, which would have been mostly useless to you by this point, likely just cluttering up your inventory. But you'd be able to swap weapons mid-combat, so you'd be able to swap out to these dark weapons and... achieve victory? Some players might figure that out naturally, which I can imagine being quite pleasing.

That's one possibility, but then would turning them completely dark actually be a desirable outcome? Wouldn't they just become like the bandits, who start off fully dark? But then what happens to your characters when they become fully dark? Maybe they're 'overwhelmed by darkness', but just crumple on the floor and hold their head.

Or, interestingly, perhaps when at full darkness, your characters don't fall on the floor dead, ready to be revived. Instead, you lose control of them and they start attacking your party members. You could heal them as normal, but they'd only snap out of this state if they were restored to full health. This could create some interesting dynamics I've not seen in other RPGs.

(I'm aware that your darkened characters attacking your party with their light weapons wouldn't exactly be detrimental to you... Maybe the charge of their weapon would change in this state?)

With the World's Saviours, you could turn them all dark, at which point one of your characters says "we can't leave them like this!", and you then have to turn them all back to light again, at which point one of them says that you're not worth their time or something and the encounter ends. It'd feel more like a unique event and less like another standard battle that varies only in terms of stats. (Not entirely dissimilar to things in the original Final Fantasies, for example having to just defend rather than attacking when turning Cecil into a Paladin in FFIV.)

These are just a couple of possibilities; I might need to think of other ways of handling this, if I were to go down this path. They could even have some entirely separate bar, or maybe the World's Saviours aren't included at all (I bet that'd go down well). I'm still very much in the brainstorming stage regarding this.

I really don't want to make a game that revolves around violence though, and that's something I'm determined to stick to. I know people would want that, but I really, really don't. There's enough stuff out there that already caters to that basic instinct. I couldn't spend years of my life on that.

Also though, I just really like the dark/light purple/yellow thing I've already done a lot with in Sindrel Song. It's interesting, and I don't think it's in a 'sissy' way. It's not a million miles away from the light side/dark side from Star Wars.

Sentimancy and Sentiments

It seemed from the previous comments that I've not explained the sentiments very well, so I'll try to expand on those.

In the original MARDEK, I used the traditional elements just because I was young and was copying off everyone else. They're what I was used to, what I'd grown up with. But I suppose I was already trying to go somewhere more interesting with that by assigning the elements to characters or by devising lore about how they'd work in things like relationships.

There was a big thing about the elemental crystals, and how they were the roots of the natural elements in the world, but this was directly, blatantly lifted from earlier Final Fantasy games, and it's one of the aspects of the originals that seems so naive in hindsight. I mean maybe you could say oh, it was just playing with the typical conventions, but that doesn't really make it less dull, in my opinion, especially since it became such a core part of the story rather than a throwaway joke.

It's interesting that the MCU has spent years dealing with a story involving the Infinity Stones, which are essentially the same thing, and that seems not to have been met with derision or anything. Still, I feel that what I tried to do with the crystals in Taming Dreams was a more interesting extension of that.

Essentially, it goes something like this: Consciousness is the fundamental substrate of the universe; reality is essentially just a consensual, crystallised dream. Dreams are made of 'mindstuff', as is the world. Consciousness/mind moulds these dreamscapes out of fundamental mental elements, or sentiments, in exactly the same way that dreams are essentially formed from emotions. While the natural world might blaze with flame or flood with water, the mental world might blaze with anger or flood with sorrow, which are deeper and more fundamental and would exist in your experiential world even if you were trapped in a prison cell.

So the sentiments are sort of like the fundamental particles that make up mind/consciousness (they're not actually particles, but whatever!).

And the natural world is formed by consciousness. So the natural 'elements' like fire or water are products of consciousness, and sentiments run deeper.

The world of Alora Fane was deliberately 'dreamed up' by the Aolmna, which are a race with a deep understanding of how the universe works on a fundamental level, much more than we 2019 humans have. They've realised that consciousness is the root of all things, and have learned how to dream up new realities and solidify them. They did this with each of their 'fanes' by using six dense singularities of each sentiment, which are the source of that sentiment in the dreamed-up world. These are the crystals (or "Mementos of the Aolmna", "MotA", as they were called in Taming Dreams). They're the palette of raw colours from which the world is painted.

Miasma is a 'residue' of this process, a sort of leftover 'unformed dreamstuff', which is inadvertently shaped by consciousnesses into monsters using the exact same process the Aolmna used to shape the world with their minds (though on a much smaller scale, and untamed). This is why the monsters are both 'dreamed up' and as physically real as the world around them.

The exact process also allows trained people to focus the sentiments into pure bursts, using their own minds. While these might not necessarily affect physical bodies, they have a strong effect on conscious minds and miasmon.

Someone mentioned the scene where Eme(e)la zaps Steele with lightning. With sentimancy, lightning is formed by the destruction sentiment; rather than being called 'Thunderbolt' or whatever, the sentimental lightning spell is called 'Hate'. Wouldn't her casting 'Hate' at him because of her intense emotions make so much more sense??

I'm wondering whether mechanically, sentimancy could affect a completely different 'health' bar to normal 'physical' attacks. Perhaps it could it could drain something like willpower or mental strength or something, which would regenerate a bit each time that character took a turn? This willpower would affect both the attack and defence of that character or monster, and if it drained completely, they'd be stunned until it recovered. Or something; I'd need to give it more thought. I feel that MP is a very outdated mechanic I'd like to remove though, and having sentimancy instead affect something different like this might introduce more strategy by giving spellcasters and physical attackers more distinct roles. We'll have to see how it goes; nothing I'm saying here is decided, and it's too early to be concerned with things like that.

Someone's who's of the Sorrow sentiment, for example, would be 'attuned to' that sentiment, so they might be more likely to express sorrow themselves, but they might also be more compassionate towards others expressing it. Think of the Sadness character in Inside Out, if you've seen that; while she obviously represents sadness, there's also a beautiful scene where sharing in another's sadness helps more than trying to snap them out of it with joy could. A Fear person might be fearful, but also a good guardian because they put a lot of thought to security. This to me seems more intriguing in both a story- and lore-sense than being attuned to, say, 'water'. What does that even mean? I tried to come up with meanings for these elements (water is serene, fire is active and brash), but I suppose further development of that is what led to the sentiments.

So in summary, the sentiments are just a more developed version of what I was trying to do with the elements.

I copied something familiar, interpreted it in my own way, and then eventually shed the training wheels and ended up with something new.

In terms of relationships between the sentiments, I included this diagram in the previous post:

Each sentiment would be more effective against the one to the right going clockwise, and - unlike with traditional elements - against itself. If you're facing a Bliss person, then they'll be most affected by Fear (which shakes them out of a sense of contentment), and by Bliss, which resonates with them since it's the same. The one they're 'strong against' would be less effective when used against them; you won't affect a Bliss person much by trying Destruction on them.

Courage overcomes Fear; Fear disturbs the peace of Bliss; the peace of Bliss ends the violence of Destruction; Destruction tears down Creation; Creation builds new ways out of Sorrow; Sorrow douses the passion of Courage.

I'm really happy with those relationships, and I feel they're more interesting than the typical 'fire beats air sometimes or water or ice (which is for some reason different to water) other times or even earth depending on the game just because, I don't know, whatever'. Also, how many games have you played where elements had any connection to the story or the character's personalities? They're usually a case of complete gameplay and story segregation.

I think that the original aether and fig elements were a key part of MARDEK since they were at least original (I can't imagine any other game has a 'fig' element), so I'm wondering whether to add a 'seventh sentiment' related to mind/consciousness/thought/spirit. Or perhaps both Mind and Spirit, which are opposed but apart from the others. If I did that, I'd have essentially all the original elements, just with different 'branding'. The purple crystal could represent one of these sentiments.

In regards to status effects, MARDEK followed the JRPGs that inspired it by having a bunch of status effects which didn't often come up or mean all that much. It feels as if there are a bunch of status effects just there in many of these games, but you can get through the whole game essentially ignoring them or without even knowing what they do. Taming Dreams used moods instead, which I'm also planning to use in Belief.

Essentially, there's a mood for each sentiment, and being affected by that mood increases your sensitivity to the associated sentiment while reducing your sensitivity to its opposing sentiment. If moods were in this, then someone afflicted by a Fear mood (Panic, say) would have their own Fear sentimancy boosted, but they'd also be more affected by enemy's Fear sentimancy, or Courage sentimancy. They'd be less affected by Bliss, and wouldn't be able to use Bliss as well. They'd also change their facial expression visually, which I think is really amusing to see, way more than just seeing poison bubbles floating above someone's head. Plus moods add more strategy; you can deliberately change the moods of your own allies to grant them bonuses to their abilities while also making them more vulnerable.

The Governance de Magi

I do not like that name! Mainly because of the pretentious 'de'. The name actually fits more with what I have in mind now, though. Maybe "The Magistari" or something, hmm.

An idea clicked! This'll probably only make sense if you've been following this blog for a while:

That one image, for me, turns the 'GdM' from a silly bunch of stupid villains I've been dreading trying to work with into something that could be meaningful on many levels. A whole tree of satisfying plot connections erupts in my mind. It could work. I'm excited to work with it!

I want to say what I have in mind because I think it could convince people that it'd be a better story... but I also don't want to spoil it since I feel it'd be a story worth not spoiling!

Obviously it's different to the original, but not as much as the Taming Dreams redesigns - the 'Atonae' - were (I wish I had a clear image of all of those, but sadly I don't!).

It's also not some abstract, introspective, spiritual kind of thing either, what I have in mind. It's more in the spirit of the original, just... better, I think.

Were the original GdM ever shown beneath their robes? I don't remember.

3D vs Sprites

This was commented on a few times.

Working in 3D would be much, much, much easier than using some kind of sprite-based field. With sprites, I'd have to draw each character from each angle, in multiple frames of animation, and I'd have to draw more animation frames if I wanted to add even simple movements (so I probably wouldn't add many, or any). With 3D, I could make the model once, and rotate and animate it freely.

Plus I don't have enough experience working with 2D in Unity so I'd have to learn all that.

It's not easy to work with sprites, and, well, I just don't want to. 3D offers considerably more freedom and potential and would be quicker as well.

I mostly used pixel art in the past because I thought it was the easiest and most accessible way to achieve my aims. I learned from doing that for years though how easy it isn't. I would have made the original in 3D if I'd had the skills and resources.

Music

The music has always been one of the most important part of my games for me. I could never reuse a piece of music in two different games, for example, and I've always tried to compose the best music I can, tailored specifically for the experience. It's why I'd never be comfortable having anyone else make the music!

But it's also true that I wrote music for MARDEK when I was still learning - teaching myself, without guidance - and there are a lot of issues with it. I didn't understand music theory, or chords, or anything like that. I still don't have the same grasp of any of that that someone who's devoted their life to music would, but I've improved a lot in the decade+ since then.

The music in Taming Dreams was an attempt at redoing the score from scratch, and it was a lot 'better', in terms of construction. I liked it a lot. I still do! But it's completely different to the MARDEK soundtrack that people would remember.

I'll have to think about what to do. It might be possible to just clean up some of the old music, or at least write what are essentially remixes that draw heavily on the originals. Compare the music of, say, Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver with their originals. The melodies are recognisably the same, but the underlying harmonies are often very different (as I saw from actually transcribing some Gold music recently).

I'll write some posts specifically about that, with some experiments, probably soon. I can't address every detail all at once though. These posts are long enough!

Gameplay mechanics

A few comments touched on things like levelling characters, and the discrepancy between them. I haven't given those details any thought yet; they'll come later. One possibility is to do what some games have done (Final Fantasies X and XII come to mind) where you can switch characters freely during battle, and you don't have to have the protagonist out. Or I could even use a different kind of progression that doesn't involve grinding up levels. I'll give that more thought when I get deeper in.

I feel that random battles are something I'll definitely need to change, but as I said, we'll get to all that stuff later.

Actually, something I feel I should do - and I might do this very soon in another post - is to lay out the general events of both the original MARDEK and Taming Dreams side-by-side. Two columns, so you can clearly see the similarities and changes. Perhaps I could add a third column for what I'd like to do with this?

If I were to veer away from the original MARDEK in many ways, then perhaps I could at least do what I've been meaning to for ages and write a post about how MARDEK might have concluded. I don't think I had much in the way of notes about it - as I've said a few times, I largely made it up as I went along - but I do vaguely remember some things I had in mind. I know that's not the same as getting a true MARDEK IV... and V and VI and VII and VIII... but it might go some way towards answering some long-held questions?

I actually really liked working on Taming Dreams, and I managed to get three episodes of that finished. The problem there was that I had loads more planned; I intended to stick with it for years, and I had these naive delusions of earning tons of money from each one from all the loyal fans it'd surely accumulate. I released it stupidly, though; I aimed exclusively for mobiles (despite several people telling me how bad of an idea it was), I only released on Android because I didn't have a Mac to publish for iOS, I didn't market or promote it at all... I ended up giving it up primarily because I went to university right around the time I released the third episode (the first paid one; I felt bad about asking anything for the previous two), and I made friends for the first time in years which felt more worth devoting my attention to. Plus Flash became obsolete, as I've said.

I've been learning a lot more about how to release indie games these past few months, and I'll continue learning as I release Sindrel Song. Plus Steam works differently to how it did back then, and is easier to get onto. Whatever I make, the release process will be completely different to what I did with that.

While MARDEK was mainly made up as I went along, Taming Dreams was planned in excessive detail. I have a bunch of planning documents, one of which - a 'summary' - is literally as long as a short novel. A lot of things that were mildly interesting in MARDEK were made way more interesting (in my opinion).

For example, the character Legion was a robot possessed by several souls... or something. I forget. They were silly, those souls, but there wasn't much to it beyond a gimmick. In Taming Dreams, however, these souls belonged to (the gender-flipped Meraeador) Meraeadyth's father, mother, and mentor, and that mentor had actually been murdered by her father because he was jealous of him flirting with his wife, so that created a dynamic with far more value and opportunities for character humour than just silly caricatures, especially since you'd have learned a lot about those characters throughout the story before any of that. The technology used to 'trap' their souls was also crucial in traveling between Alora Fane's 'petal' worlds; it was quite complicated, but planned in detail and it made at least a fantastical kind of sense.

It'd be a shame to have spent so long on that exquisite cake, only to lose it because some people fondly remember the taste of the bag of flour.

Whatever I were to do with this, I definitely wouldn't plan to stick with it for years over the course of dozens of chapters. I'll just do three biggish ones, each its own separate game with many hours of gameplay. If I'll be heavily referencing existing chapters rather than making up everything, then I imagine I could do that in a couple of years - or less - and then it'd be done. Finished. Out of the way, at long last.

Obviously I'm still very much in the 'figuring out how to go about this' stage though, so I'm saying everything here very tentatively. But I'll keep posting about thoughts I have about where to go with this, and I'll keep reading feedback to gauge opinions about certain decisions.

I do realise that some of you are long-time devoted fans who probably feel really upset at me talking about changing anything... I really don't want to let you down, but I don't think nostalgia alone would be enough to carry something like this, considering that it'd be limited to a relatively small group of people and would probably feel to newcomers like something that isn't meant for them.

If you believe that MARDEK was fun, profound, meaningful, and interesting in its own right, don't you think with even more polish, it could turn into something even greater? Wouldn't you like to see a MARDEK made by the same mind, but with more skill and experience than the original, pouring the exact same amount of effort in? The same spirit in a shinier shell?

I do value your feedback though and the comments so far have been useful and interesting to read. Obviously this is something we're all passionate enough about to write out quite a lot about it, but I do understand that we're all excited about different directions.