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Old Games - The Plan

5 years ago - Edited 5 years ago1,815 words

After a couple of days looking into it, here's what I'm planning to do about re-releasing the old games I mentioned in the previous posts.

If you haven't seen it already, I listed fifteen old games in ∞ this post ∞ that I could possibly re-release in a not-browser-embedded form.

I started ∞ a poll ∞ to assess which ones are most interesting to people. It turned out pretty much as expected: few votes overall, and the ones people would be nostalgic about top the list. I'm surprised Taming Dreams and Clarence are that high, but I suppose that shows a lack of interest in the rest more than anything.



While I felt a bit of excitement when I realised I even had a lot of old files I thought were lost, and that it was more possible to convert them to non-.swf formats than I initially thought, exploring the old code has been harrowing. There's a feeling of suffocation, of stagnation; I've been feeling for ages like I've never truly grown up and found a career or an income or anything like that, and this just intensifies that because I'm looking at things I "wasted" years on in the past. "I'm STILL doing this? I've got nowhere? Is this all there is??" Something like that. So I don't want to spend too long on this.

Considering that, I'm only looking into making a few of those old games available in this 'remastered' way. At least at first; now the possibility's here, I could conceivably release the rest sporadically over the next year or so when there are lulls in the barrage of high-quality content I'm constantly inflicting upon the world like an indie games machine gun.

I've made ∞ a page on this site for the games ∞, on which I've included the following (though most are hidden currently):


Belief
Sindrel Song

Taming Dreams
Alora Fane: Creation
Miasmon
Clarence's Big Chance
MARDEK RPG


Those are the ones I'll be focusing on first, though not in that order. Here's what I've found so far from looking into those:

Taming Dreams

This one's actually proving to be quite a pain, which is quite annoying since it'd be nice to make it available. There are no issues with ActionScript since it's in AS3, but it made heavy use of some external libraries (Starling and Spine), which apparently drastically changed in between versions to the point where old functions ceased to exist, breaking my code. I don't remember which versions of those libraries I used in the final version of Taming Dreams, and I've tried using multiple different ones, but they all give different errors about missing functions. I seem to remember this missing functions issue even soon after development, though I can't remember what caused it or what I did about it. Annoying, especially since the code's not mine so I can't really figure it out and edit it. It might be a while before I can get to this one, then, as it'll require a significant time investment.

Alora Fane: Creation

Both Deliverance and Beast Signer did (slightly) better on the poll than this, which is understandable since more people were able to play - and now subsequently remember - them. But they're in ActionScript 2, and might be a huge pain to work with, while AFC is in AS3 and I was able to get an exe version of it working within minutes. So this one shouldn't be a problem, though I'll spend a bit of time looking at my old quests to see which ones I can bundle with it. I never released it because I was going through a dark time (am I ever not??) and the stories I made for it were reflective of that, as I said previously, so I suppose I'd have to make that clear in the description/commentary.

Miasmon

Similar to AFC, this one's in AS3, and I've had no issues converting it to an exe. I'll test it anyway, but I don't think it should be a hassle.

Clarence's Big Chance

This is in AS3 too and I was able to get an exe working quickly, but I felt I should playtest it first, and the idea of doing that with the keyboard was off-putting. Flash never had native support for controllers, but it's possible to do that with an executable apparently, so I spent several hours yesterday figuring out how to get my USB Xbox controller working with it. I succeeded, though there's still work left to do since the code's poor and input checks are spread all over the place so I likely haven't caught them all yet. It doesn't allow you to configure the keys though, so it wouldn't work with another kind of controller, so I might add that too... though I do wonder how worth it it would be. It does feel more like an old-school video game when played with a controller though, less like a mere Flash game. This is probably the first of these games I'll make available, because it's familiar and of lesser interest, so it seems an easy one to start figuring things out with. I can't imagine many (any?) people will be willing to pay for it, but we'll see.

MARDEK

And now for the one people care most about... It's the trickiest one of all since it's coded so profoundly stupidly. The code isn't even in external files, it's all embedded on MovieClip frames scattered all over the place... Ugh. Thankfully someone found an archive of old Flash versions which might be able to open and export it, but I've yet to investigate, so we'll see. I wouldn't want to just use an exe wrapper for the swf, though, since I want to make some additional changes like removing the sponsor branding (though I hope it's not a problem that I'm doing that... It's been years and they're not exactly being released as Flash games, so probably not??). I considered also adding controller support, but I probably can't because some things like inventories rely on the mouse, and it's in AS2 anyway so the AS3 code I've written for that wouldn't work. It might be a while before this one's ready, and even when it is I'll have to go through the whole convoluted Steam process, which necessarily takes weeks.



So to reiterate, what I want to do with these games is to upload them on this site and make them available just from here, with a 'pay what you like' system in place. I think I can add a PayPal button to do that, which should accept most forms of payment and which is controlled by a reputable source (so you're not giving me your credit card details or anything). I'm not expecting to make more than a few dollars from them, but I'm hoping it might be something that trickles in over time, as people remember and rediscover experiences from their past. This is already what happens with my music on Bandcamp, so I'll be curious to see how it goes.

Speaking of Bandcamp, I'd also like to look into adding albums of my old music on there next, again expecting little other than maybe a few dollars every so often. Hardly the thinking of a businessman, and I'd make more money working a terrible minimum wage job for a month, but I suppose I'm more concerned with just making this creative work available for people to enjoy, and if people are willing to give me something in return out of appreciation, that's always nice.

I'll also be writing 'review' blog posts for each game, which will be associated with it on the games page. These will look at how it works, and what I think of it now in the years since it was made (I'll probably also write one for Sindrel Song to go along with its release soon). These will serve as the developer commentary, rather than something embedded in the game (which would be way more work for probably no gain).

I'll probably make Clarence's Big Chance available in the next couple of days, with a blog post about that then. After that, I might give a similar treatment to either Alora Fane: Creation or Miasmon, or even both, but the release of Sindrel Song is very soon so I'll likely focus on that at least a bit. Then I'll try to tackle MARDEK. If I can get that working on Steam, I'll do Taming Dreams last.

Honestly though I'm itching to get back to Belief. Returning to these old games is making me aware of how far I've come, at least in terms of behind-the-scenes stuff like code organisation, and I'm having a desire to make a bunch of changes to them which I'd rather channel into this new project instead.



Someone on Twitter mentioned this thing called ∞ The Basement Collection ∞, by the guy who made Meatboy and The Binding of Isaac. I remember that guy from Newgrounds back in the day; that cutesy grotesque style seemed to fit well with the general creative culture in that time and place. It's interesting that he seems to be doing well for himself now (maybe? I'm assuming, since he has at least two games that are widely known). He certainly pushed himself into the spotlight and community more than I ever did though.

This seems to be a collection of his old Flash games, and it's particularly interesting that it's from 2012, which is when I was still doing Flash stuff myself. The person on Twitter suggested a similar bundle of my old games might work, but I don't think so. I get the impression his are fairly short and very much like Flash games, whereas mine are longer and more like retro console games that just happen to be made in Flash.

Notably, the Steam description mentions all The Basement Collection games were remastered significantly, and packed with developer commentary and bonus material, yet I get the impression it was only being sold for a small price right at the beginning, and now it's almost free. I suppose it has been out for years though. It has a lot of reviews, so I'm assuming it has a lot of sales too. Hmm. I wonder if it was worth it.



Sorry YET AGAIN for being terrible at replying to comments! I've been quite distracted with this, both actually doing the work and feeling really sour about it all. Hopefully the hearts thing at least shows I'm reading and appreciate them though! I'm particularly grateful to those of you who've looked into or suggested ways to get things working.