Hey Tobias! In my opinion, the MARDEK trilogy is one of the best game(s) I've ever played. I'm definitely excited for all these new games you're working on.
I'd say a lot of these ideas seem cool for these new games. A lot are unique, and some follow the categories of "commonly used in games" and "realistic/logical." The realistic/logical aspects (I'm referring to the things you mentioned like body, mind, food weight, etc) for the battle systems seem definitely interesting. While they would make sense in battles, and would (probably) be one of the main things that makes these games stand out from others; in a way I'm on the fence about it. Don't get me wrong, it certainly is different and I usually like originality in games. However, there's just something about that old, regular, battle system with the attacks, agility, etc; that seems like it could be better for battles, but maybe it's just me.
To furthermore explain what I mean, the part where you mention the body points and attack DMG working with eachother; it has its pros and cons. It would bring a lot more strategizing to the battles, but it also seems a bit weird to me in a way. The body part would make sense for magic, but with physical attacks it seems odd to me. I feel as if it would be strange if body points corresponded to a let's say blade's own power and strength when that's in the blade and the body points are for the user. I get it that it takes up energy to do things like swing the sword and usually the force of the swing controls the impact of the sword, but I still feel like most of the body points should correspond more to actual body. Why I say magic would make sense is because it does seem like it would make sense that channeling power and strengths as a(n) attack/defense/healing/etc would take up energy.
For these games, I have a few questions, unless you aren't willing to answer, which I would be fine with but would still leave me curious. Although potions won't be the "main" healing items anymore, will they still exist in the game? Will items up/add things like stats, haste, regen, and nulls, like the power drink, speedy juice, healthy juice, and rainbow juice from the original MARDEK? If not then that's a shame, I'm really looking forward to that type of thing again. It could be fun to mess around with with certain enemies (particularly bosses.) If you were to eat a food that delays you for 1%, then is that 1% of 1 or any amount of speed point(s) (or whatever you're gonna call that), or is that 1% of the entire speed? I feel as if it would make more sense if the items didn't slow you down TOO much, but still delayed you in a way. Will there still be all the elements and statuses and will anymore be added? I feel really comfortable with the elements and statuses in already, and to be honest, I wouldn't really mind much of a change if more were added. Will the stuff with Anshar and Rohoph still exist? I'm still very curious to see the strengths of Gaspar (who's supposed to be the Annunaki to fight in chapter 4,) Anu, etc, and the connections they had made with Rohoph in the past.. BEFORE HE SLAUGHTERS THEM AND TRAPS THEIR SOULS! Are you still working alone or with someone on your games? I'm curious because there's this other RPG I grew up with called "Epic Battle Fantasy" if you've heard of it. In a way, it's similar to MARDEK. Good battle mechanics, good story, humorous at times, likeable art style and design, etc. The creator, Matt Roszak works with Phyrnna. Matt works on most of the coding and Phyrnna does the music (and let me tell you, there are a LOT of themes in the EBF games.) The games end up being played through really nicely, and come out quite a bit sooner than it would with one person working on it.
I would recommend you upload these new games to Steam too, and perhaps start a Patreon if you haven't done/thought about doing either one yet. You could get some good profit off of each, which can go into your life and your games (stay healthy while developing.) You could possibly also use the profit to work with other people on your game. Not only would you get things done faster, but there would be a lot more brainstorming and opinions on game mechanics, and parts for later in the game. Obviously, the main outcome would be up to you, but you'd get more options to choose from.
I also want to bring up the art-style. These art styles seem rather acceptable but weird in a way. Although I get your old MARDEK series was made with Adobe Flash, and we only have a few more weeks with Adobe Flash, and you need to remake things, they don't need to be all pixel-like anymore, they can just look normally drawn out. You don't need to go fully with anything to get a good game out of this. You don't even need the best art style, you'd still for the most part get a good game out of this and possibly profit if you upload it to Steam and/or Gamejolt or game sites like that.
Anyway, I think that's all for now. I thank you for engaging and hearing out your community's voices now, that's definitely good. Hopefully we can see more of your admirable game-making talent, and hopefully people can see your work and you can get some popularity from the internet. Hopefully this helped you in some way, shape, or form. I'm looking forward to the future of Alora Fane!
1
Tobias 1104~4Y
Hello, and thanks for your comment. I'm glad you like MARDEK!
I think with the battle system, we'll all have to play it a bit before deciding whether it works or feels okay or not. Personally it feels fine to me in what testing I've done, but it's very rudimentary at the moment and I've no idea whether it'll scale properly; we'll have to find out.
Come to think of it, a big reason MARDEK 1 started with the empowered versions of the characters is because I wanted to see if the system worked both at the start and endgame levels, so doing a similar thing with this should be enlightening.
Swords don't affect the Body stat directly, they just add a fixed amount of damage on top. It wouldn't really make sense for a sharp sword to give you more energy and HP!
I'm unsure about how to handle status effects. I've played some games in the years since MARDEK that handle status effects more meaningfully than I feel the Final Fantasies that inspired MARDEK's system did, so I'll likely be drawing on those for inspiration. It's something I plan to experiment with.
The new story draws on many elements of the original, but it's not exactly the same, is all I can really say about that! I'm hoping it'll have the same appeal as MARDEK but with more coherence. But we'll see.
I envy Matt Roszak for sticking with EBF, getting several out, and making money from it! I don't have any plans to work with anyone else any time soon just because I really like doing all the aspects myself. Writing the music is a hugely important part of the experience for me, for example. I know it'd be faster to work with others, but it's not as if an appropriately skilled person I get along with would just appear as soon as I wanted them to. The main reason I've always worked alone is because I've never met anyone who had the appropriate skills and a shared interest; I think that's all about luck. I know it's possible to hire people, but even if I wanted to do that - and I don't - I feel I need to have some financial success under my belt first (MARDEK was not a financial success).
I'm still trying to decide what to do about funding; I'm thinking Kickstarter, but I might use Patreon if that doesn't work out. I already have a Patreon account, but don't feel comfortable pushing it if I've nothing to show just yet. I'm aiming to release on Steam; I already released my first game on there last month (Memody: Sindrel Song).
I'm not sure what you're getting at re the art style, but I like the 3D I'm using for this and it serves my purposes well.
I'm hoping this will be the year I make my triumphant return!!!1
I'd say a lot of these ideas seem cool for these new games. A lot are unique, and some follow the categories of "commonly used in games" and "realistic/logical." The realistic/logical aspects (I'm referring to the things you mentioned like body, mind, food weight, etc) for the battle systems seem definitely interesting. While they would make sense in battles, and would (probably) be one of the main things that makes these games stand out from others; in a way I'm on the fence about it. Don't get me wrong, it certainly is different and I usually like originality in games. However, there's just something about that old, regular, battle system with the attacks, agility, etc; that seems like it could be better for battles, but maybe it's just me.
To furthermore explain what I mean, the part where you mention the body points and attack DMG working with eachother; it has its pros and cons. It would bring a lot more strategizing to the battles, but it also seems a bit weird to me in a way. The body part would make sense for magic, but with physical attacks it seems odd to me. I feel as if it would be strange if body points corresponded to a let's say blade's own power and strength when that's in the blade and the body points are for the user. I get it that it takes up energy to do things like swing the sword and usually the force of the swing controls the impact of the sword, but I still feel like most of the body points should correspond more to actual body. Why I say magic would make sense is because it does seem like it would make sense that channeling power and strengths as a(n) attack/defense/healing/etc would take up energy.
For these games, I have a few questions, unless you aren't willing to answer, which I would be fine with but would still leave me curious. Although potions won't be the "main" healing items anymore, will they still exist in the game? Will items up/add things like stats, haste, regen, and nulls, like the power drink, speedy juice, healthy juice, and rainbow juice from the original MARDEK? If not then that's a shame, I'm really looking forward to that type of thing again. It could be fun to mess around with with certain enemies (particularly bosses.) If you were to eat a food that delays you for 1%, then is that 1% of 1 or any amount of speed point(s) (or whatever you're gonna call that), or is that 1% of the entire speed? I feel as if it would make more sense if the items didn't slow you down TOO much, but still delayed you in a way. Will there still be all the elements and statuses and will anymore be added? I feel really comfortable with the elements and statuses in already, and to be honest, I wouldn't really mind much of a change if more were added. Will the stuff with Anshar and Rohoph still exist? I'm still very curious to see the strengths of Gaspar (who's supposed to be the Annunaki to fight in chapter 4,) Anu, etc, and the connections they had made with Rohoph in the past.. BEFORE HE SLAUGHTERS THEM AND TRAPS THEIR SOULS! Are you still working alone or with someone on your games? I'm curious because there's this other RPG I grew up with called "Epic Battle Fantasy" if you've heard of it. In a way, it's similar to MARDEK. Good battle mechanics, good story, humorous at times, likeable art style and design, etc. The creator, Matt Roszak works with Phyrnna. Matt works on most of the coding and Phyrnna does the music (and let me tell you, there are a LOT of themes in the EBF games.) The games end up being played through really nicely, and come out quite a bit sooner than it would with one person working on it.
I would recommend you upload these new games to Steam too, and perhaps start a Patreon if you haven't done/thought about doing either one yet. You could get some good profit off of each, which can go into your life and your games (stay healthy while developing.) You could possibly also use the profit to work with other people on your game. Not only would you get things done faster, but there would be a lot more brainstorming and opinions on game mechanics, and parts for later in the game. Obviously, the main outcome would be up to you, but you'd get more options to choose from.
I also want to bring up the art-style. These art styles seem rather acceptable but weird in a way. Although I get your old MARDEK series was made with Adobe Flash, and we only have a few more weeks with Adobe Flash, and you need to remake things, they don't need to be all pixel-like anymore, they can just look normally drawn out. You don't need to go fully with anything to get a good game out of this. You don't even need the best art style, you'd still for the most part get a good game out of this and possibly profit if you upload it to Steam and/or Gamejolt or game sites like that.
Anyway, I think that's all for now. I thank you for engaging and hearing out your community's voices now, that's definitely good. Hopefully we can see more of your admirable game-making talent, and hopefully people can see your work and you can get some popularity from the internet. Hopefully this helped you in some way, shape, or form. I'm looking forward to the future of Alora Fane!
I think with the battle system, we'll all have to play it a bit before deciding whether it works or feels okay or not. Personally it feels fine to me in what testing I've done, but it's very rudimentary at the moment and I've no idea whether it'll scale properly; we'll have to find out.
Come to think of it, a big reason MARDEK 1 started with the empowered versions of the characters is because I wanted to see if the system worked both at the start and endgame levels, so doing a similar thing with this should be enlightening.
Swords don't affect the Body stat directly, they just add a fixed amount of damage on top. It wouldn't really make sense for a sharp sword to give you more energy and HP!
I'm unsure about how to handle status effects. I've played some games in the years since MARDEK that handle status effects more meaningfully than I feel the Final Fantasies that inspired MARDEK's system did, so I'll likely be drawing on those for inspiration. It's something I plan to experiment with.
The new story draws on many elements of the original, but it's not exactly the same, is all I can really say about that! I'm hoping it'll have the same appeal as MARDEK but with more coherence. But we'll see.
I envy Matt Roszak for sticking with EBF, getting several out, and making money from it! I don't have any plans to work with anyone else any time soon just because I really like doing all the aspects myself. Writing the music is a hugely important part of the experience for me, for example. I know it'd be faster to work with others, but it's not as if an appropriately skilled person I get along with would just appear as soon as I wanted them to. The main reason I've always worked alone is because I've never met anyone who had the appropriate skills and a shared interest; I think that's all about luck. I know it's possible to hire people, but even if I wanted to do that - and I don't - I feel I need to have some financial success under my belt first (MARDEK was not a financial success).
I'm still trying to decide what to do about funding; I'm thinking Kickstarter, but I might use Patreon if that doesn't work out. I already have a Patreon account, but don't feel comfortable pushing it if I've nothing to show just yet. I'm aiming to release on Steam; I already released my first game on there last month (Memody: Sindrel Song).
I'm not sure what you're getting at re the art style, but I like the 3D I'm using for this and it serves my purposes well.
I'm hoping this will be the year I make my triumphant return!!!1