Mindflare

I haven't touched this project in ages. Initially, I started it I think back in... 2006 or 2007. Looking back, I don't really like how I initially did the lighting, and there are a lot of changes I would have made.

I'm just posting a blog to announce that this is cancelled. Sorry to disappoint anyone who was hoping for a full release, but this isn't going anywhere. I'm working on several other projects, like a small mini side project. And of course, there's Muse and Night Shift Noble. Muse is not intended to be that long of a game (NSN will be longer and more expansive) and hopefully will be out by winter.

Mindflare began as really... me experimenting with different effects in Photoshop. I made the title screen first, thought "Mindflare" sounded cool, and formed a basic plot around an idea I once had. (It was about a man who could hear the dead, visiting a graveyard and experiencing various "visions" of their lives.) The game's plot is actually... pretty different, but it has some foundation in that.

There are several major problems that lead me to choose to announce that it's cancelled:
1. No motivation. Honestly, I want to put more of my effort into Muse and Night Shift Noble, which I'm working on with a team, and welll, I don't really want to pour effort into this, because I think those games can be so much more.
2. I haven't touched it in ages. I started it for a Ghostlight Demo Day release sometime October 2006 I think, and I put out the original release in a matter of hours after starting. I worked at a pretty fast pace and hoped to have a completed game by the next summer. Unfortunately... several other things got in the way. I continued to produce random battle systems in my spare time and entered contests instead of working on Mindflare. (The result of these are... ABS Project, ~ABS, Linear Motion Battle System, Vanilla Villain.) Oh God, Vanilla Villain, I don't know if that will ever go up on RMN. >_> Perhaps someday, it had a pretty smooth shooting ABS. But yeah, getting a bit sidetracked... I probably haven't worked on this game since before Halloween of last year. (Which was when Muse was born.) Ironically, Muse was intented to be finished in a short span of time (by December) but my teammate procrastinated on mapping, and thus the whole project was delayed to a short contest demo release on New Year's, a few other updates in the spring, and a long period of not working on RM (until about a month ago) due to business with life and school. RM-wise, Muse more or less sort of took over.
3. I kept revamping stuff. I think my older work on the game looks horrible, and I'm pleased with what I have currently, but I never made any real progress on the game, because instead, I continuously went back to rework things, make things prettier, and generally improve the quality... but the second chapter of the game never went any further than few maps. Perhaps I'll release what I have now, because I think some parts of it are quite a visual treat, but who knows. I'm definitely no longer working on it anymore.
4. Mindflare has no solid foundation, plotwise. It was a game that was completely spawned out of me experimenting with special effects, atmosphere, various aspects of puzzles, lighting, fog, and basically what you see in the game. There was a plot in the works, but I myself didn't really know where it was going... I only had a vague idea. None of the characters I created really had any real personality, because the game was focused on shiny graphics. If I were to continue working on it, I don't really know exactly how to progress, because I'm not sure how the plot would go. All of my other current major projects do (or will) have a solid plot foundation, especially Muse. I know how the plot of that one is going to go, and many characters have been carefully laid out.

Anyways, I'm basically typing this to procrastinate on my school summer assignments. I rambled a lot here and said a lot of random stuff, and I really gotta get to work. In conclusion, if you liked Mindflare, hope for a potential "cancellation" release (just to show what I did have), play Muse when it comes out, and support our future projects. I hopefully have two releases soon, one being Muse by the end of the year, and if I get time before delving into college applications, I'll work on and release my small side project. Of course, I also gotta work on my AAG testing too... Haha, okay. Time to get to work on my homework that's due tomorrow.

Thanks for reading, if you read all of that.
-k.l.