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MARDEK Re-Release - Progress and Plans

5 years ago - Edited 5 years ago1,328 words

I've spent the past couple of days working on this MARDEK Re-Release. I've got everything working now; all I need to do is make some minor tweaks, test it (which'll take ages...), then it'll be ready (though I can't say when it'll actually be released because of how long the Steam release process is).

I mentioned in a previous post that I was unable to edit the original files of the game in the newest version of what's now called Animate (formerly Flash), since it's coded (*really* stupidly) in ActionScript 2, which is no longer supported. Getting it working was a huge pain, and it's entirely thanks to someone's comment on a previous post that I was able to at all, after downloading archived old versions of the program from ∞ here ∞.

At first, I decided to try the latest one that still supported AS2, but while that could technically export the project, it introduced a bunch of weird game-breaking bugs which would have taken too long to fix. I ended up downloading and trying CS6, CS4, and finally CS3 before discovering that the latter is what I apparently originally built the game in. That exported without any bugs, thankfully.

But it introduced new issues! The amount of music in the game (almost 80 tracks) meant it took ten minutes or more to export each time, only to give an 'insufficient memory' bug at the end, apparently due to something to do with that version of Flash for which the solution was only available in later versions. It also gave an error when trying to export to an .exe projector. So I spent several frustrating hours trying to extract the original audio files from the .fla (which is way more difficult than it should be), trying and failing many times before finally getting them out, to my great relief. Then I had to modify the game file to load external sound files instead, which involved figuring out how to work with the ancient AS2 code...

It was strangely nostalgic, that. Returning to something from what feels like the distant past even though it was only just over a decade ago. Lots of thinking about how much my mind and the world have changed in so short a time. Looking through my old code - and researching little bits of things online - felt like archaeology.

But I did get it working, eventually, and that means that the sound's no longer compressed at all. It doesn't sound like you're listening to someone playing it in an adjacent room while wearing earmuffs anymore! This alone likely enhances the experience quite a bit, and makes this more worthwhile than just getting the .swf from an archive.

In addition to that, I spent this morning teaching myself how to make a separate shell program in C sharp (which I can't type properly without triggering bold formatting! I use C sharp for Unity, but this is something I've never done before). That's been interesting. Not as difficult as I thought it might be. Now, when the game starts up, you see this:



Already it makes it feel more like a 'real' game and less like a mere Flash game.

It's not possible to give the game support for any arbitrary resolution, because of how it was built. That kind of thing has to be taken into consideration from the very beginning of development. All the menus have to be coded for it, and there are other things like making sure the battle backgrounds are long enough to fit on huge widescreens. If you arbitrarily scale up the standalone .swf of MARDEK - like by dragging the window corners - you get ugly issues when the pixels are at fractional sizes, like lines between tiles or just ugly sprites with pixels of mismatched sizes (which is something I think looks appalling, personally). These three resolutions allow you to increase the size while keeping things pixel perfect, and the screen ratio remains the same.

You can use a windowed mode, for which I made a custom title bar, so the window looks like this, with no additional border:



That is, the title bar is replaced with that dark brown strip at the top, and there's a nice 2 pixel black outline around the whole thing. A little thing, but one I like as the designer.

Or if you choose the non-windowed option, the rest of the screen fills with black, with the game centred. It feels much more immersive than playing the game on a cluttered website surrounded by balloon-chested anime girls begging you to save them or whatever, that's for sure!

I couldn't add support for controllers though, sadly, partly because of the poor decision to have the inventory use the mouse, but mostly because there's just no support for it in AS2. Recoding that would be too difficult at this point; I'll definitely be handling this better in the remake.

(Hmm, thinking about it, maybe it's possible to use the shell to send keypresses to the embedded Flash file when controller buttons are pressed? The right stick could move the mouse cursor... I'm not sure that actually is possible, but I'll look into it!)

You might also notice that I've cleaned up the title screen a bit. The sponsor branding is gone, and the game includes all three chapters, so the subtitle's changed to reflect that. I'm also using the least old version of the Fig Hunter logo. I wasn't sure what to do here - whether to use my Alora Fane one, especially if I'll be uploading under that name on Steam - but... hmm, maybe I'll think about that a bit more, actually. (Oh, I have a pixel version of the Alora Fane logo from Taming Dreams; maybe it'd be better to use that, hmm.)

There's also an extras section. What I'm thinking of doing with this is providing something people have been asking for for ages: the notes that I have for the remaining chapters! I managed to find something, which is probably all I had, so that definitely seems like something that could add value to this.

I know it's not the same as actually spending years of my life finishing the thing, but it's infinitely easier.


To be clear, the game will be exactly the same as it was when it was released back in the day on Flash portals. No tweaks, changes, 'improvements', beyond these basic 'outside the game' presentation things. There's so much that certainly could or even should be better, but that's going to be the point of the remake. The point of this is to give the "KEEP IT EXACTLY THE SAME!!" people what they think they want.



Anyway, this is coming along quite well! I just playtested through the first chapter again (so much I can do much better, ugh!!), since I wanted to be sure it all worked from the start. It doesn't transition correctly to the next chapter though, so I'll need to change that.

I've already got Clarence's Big Chance ready to upload to this site, but Sindrel Song is going to be properly released on Friday, so it feels like a bad time to be releasing everything all at once. I might hold onto CBC (and my other old games) for a little bit, though I'm not expecting much of a response to Sindrel Song anyway. I'm not exactly making any effort to promote it, largely due to all the insecurities I have about it, not wanting to bother anyone with it, preferring instead to just quietly release it and let it die...

It being Christmas doesn't seem like the ideal time for a MARDEK re-release either. Or maybe it's a perfect time?? Either way, it'll take weeks to become available once I add it to Steam, so I can't predict when this might be out.