dream fragment

I'm working on the prototype for a video game I intend to create with a good friend of mine.
The game will require fast AI pathfinding over dynamic terrain for a large amount ( >1000 ) of enemies.
My current navmesh/A* approach is working fine, but I'm a little worried that it's not going to scale well if we want to add even more enemies.
I remember that one of my friends did her masters thesis on swarm AI,
so I decide to call her on Skype to get her opinion on my situation.
Unfortunately I'm having trouble navigating my contact list.
The names don't seem to be sorted alphabetically...

I hear the door bell go off, so I go downstairs to check who's at the door.
A man in his early 20's offers me a package addressed to "Hyu".
Huh? Did I order anything using my nickname? Why would I do that?
I accept the package and the man just leaves without asking me to sign anything.
What the hell?

I go back upstairs and open the package.
OH MY GOD. It's the Oculus DK2 I ordered!

I am so excited!
I unpack everything as quickly as I can, tossing the empty package into a corner of my room.

Once I've plugged everything in I notice that my computer is now running Elite: Dangerous.
That's not right, I was working with Unity3D before...
hmm....
I try to increase my awareness, going through the last few minutes in my mind.
Yup, I'm definitely dreaming.

I'm so disappointed. I got all excited for nothing.
Then again... I wonder what happens if I...
I sit down and hold the device in front of my eyes, trying to see if the displays in it are showing anything.
The device just straight up vanishes from my hands as soon as the screens cover my entire field of view.
I'm left completely immersed in the game, sitting inside the cockpit of a Sidewinder, which is the ship you start out in in the game.
Huh, that's kind of a neat trick.


Also I'm in a spaceship. Did I mention I'm in a spaceship?
I'm super excited and get going immediately.
Fortunately the controls are identical to the joystick setup I use in waking life, so I have no trouble maneuvering the ship.
I use the lateral thrusters to lift off and to get to the center of the station.
The moment I let go I immediately feel the weightlessness, which makes me feel a little sick initially,
but the feeling quickly subsides.

As I maneuver out of the station, I notice for the first time how tight the entrance actually is.
You don't really get a sense for it on a computer screen.

Unfortunately I don't really remember much else.
I faintly remember feeling the heat of a sun radiating into my cockpit as I dropped out of frameshift, but that's about it.


The experience got me thinking about how virtual reality is going to affect dreams though.
I wonder if it'll make it easier to incubate dreams about video games.
I imagine it could also make such dreams more immersive.
Usually when I have video game dreams, it feels like I'm merely an observer.
I'm not really in the dream, it's more like I'm viewing it on a monitor that happens to cover my entire field of view.
Perhaps this is going to change with regular usage of VR.

13.09.2014

September 13th, 2014 Fragments (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

- I went to visit a campsite with my wife. We were driving uphill and there were a lot of turns. Each turn was like in slow motion, like wavy, a good way to spot it was a dream, which I did not!

- I was working in a shoe store. I felt weird, like why I would work there, but at the same time, I did want to do the best job possible and help clients. There was a guy wanting to buy seafood but I had no idea about it and just offered him assistance. He told me that he wanted to work with someone older. I told him that I did not work at the seafood department anyway. Someone else assisted me.

I did help some people there until I went to a huge lobby that had several fireplaces, each fireplace was about 4 feet wide.

This morning I had a lucid but it was very vivid and I wasn't of the greatest level of lucidity either. The only part I recall from being lucid was being in a public restroom with a younger Asian woman. There were other events prior but I can't recall them that well. It had something to do with being in a store, and I think I was looking for bread for some reason.

Dream - Lucid

I woke up in a bed, though looking back, it was unfamiliar. It was supposed to be at the house I grew up in. I got up to get a shower. I looked at a clock, and one said it was 9:__am (can't remember the minutes). I then looked at another clock and it said 10:___am. I was confused. I then knew what happened: The clocks had sprang forward, which I had thought that the clocks had just changed a couple of months before, and I had gone back in time. I wasn't sure what made me realize I had gone back in time, but I just knew I had; something was off.

Something about my younger brother needing a shower first for some reason. My mom and him were both there. He was much younger, probably 11 or so.

I then saw an orange tabby cat somewhere. He had actually appeared before in the dream, but I can't recall when. He had a hurt front leg. I wanted to help him, but I didn't want to injure him further. I went somewhere else and saw my dad. My dad said something about the cat. I told my dad that I didn't know what to do since you aren't supposed to move an injured animal. He agreed with me that that was correct.

~

Only got a few hours of sleep last night. Super early morning this morning for work. Really looking forward to sleeping in this weekend! I need it!

All I remember is that I said something like this while I was talking with someone
"Man this place is boring, the whole country is boring..."
Then this somebody said
"Oh no it isn't, let me show you the sea of Hungary!"
"
What the heck, does Hungary have a sea"

"Of course, it does" - he said

Soonly , I'm on a higher ground near to that beach. Then I descend down to the beach.
This somebody is with me and says things such "Wonderfull, isnt it?" I say "yes, I gonna look around, come"
But he\she stays there , watching around , I guess. then I see a forest like thing, there is a little lake, surrounded by trees on the end of this lake , theres a waterfall, it seems to be wonderfull.
"I go there " I say, then he\she says "Watch out ..."
As I go there , Things got weird, the way to the lake was got longer and everything gone to very dark.
I realize this is a jungel and that I could be killed by some wild animal...
Then in this moment I feel a bite on my finger ..
I see its a little lizard and it jumps around I was like "get off you little sh***" ,Then I thinked "Probably it wasn't venomous.
I try to run out from this place, back to the beach, but then I lost my power and a part of my consciousness.. I feel a kind of pain...
Wild Instincts emerge, this animal self is unleashed now, I moan in an animal way , anger shakes up with the instincts , I use all my energy to move, its like if I'm partially paralysed but I still try like crazy, and I manage to stand up , walk, then run with this distorted moving coordination.
I can hardly breath, Incredible weakness is in all my muscles ,I cannot think.
Then , I finally reach the beach, I kneel I look up the sky and I scream from suffering.

Then the dream switches, now I'm in some kind of weird fps, I'm in the same place, now I have a weapon in my hands
and I'm near to a car , theres a swat guy standing there
as I'm about to shoot time slows down and I see the crosshair and it marks the guy , and then I see some titles like "danger factor" and then it describes that the more I'm visible the more danger I can get into
I get shot , I feel nothing
I respawn
I go back there but now theres no one.
Then I respawn and Again the same happens I get shot.
It ends.

That was a bit weird...

I had the first genuinely good dream in a while. I was in a fort of mats dancing. A dance teacher was there. Music was playing. I went to change the music, and one of the CDs said "Dream Incubation". It had a disturbing drawing on it, maybe a snake. I don't remember what happened before the dancing.

After the dancing, we went out to play basketball. I think my brother was there. He kept throwing my ball away from me and I would chase the ball to get it, and then there were annoying black bugs by where the basketball was and they were touching my skin. I woke up at 1:10 a.m.

The next dream I woke up at 3:05 a.m. From 3 to 3:30 is the hour where demons wander so I went into my mom's room after writing down the dream. The end of the dream was lucid. I was at a camp with a bunch of people, events were going on. I did a back flip and landed on my feet and then fell down on my back and hit my head and it hurt, so I thought this is real not a dream I finally did a flip and landed on my feet. Then I was given a schedule on a napkin. A bunch of people, girls, decided to go for a run and left the building, so I dropped the napkin and followed them. They got ahead of me and I couldn't catch up. There was a steep grassy hill and I almost fell down. Part of it was as steep as a cliff. I saw a graceful thin woman dancing at the bottom of the hill/valley/cliff. It was a beautiful sight. I started to fly, and I realized it was a dream. I thought, I'm dreaming. I flew back to the building and pushed through the people, a fat man with short black hair. I went into the bathroom and closed my eyes and tried to stay in the dream, and woke up. I now realized that the girl dancing at the bottom of the valley/cliff was me, a graceful woman thin and strong not afraid to climb down to the valley, good at dancing and heavenly, the person I will become after years of being in heaven. I was seeing my future self dancing.

Later in the night I dreamt I was laying in a bed with a boy and I was upset about something and he was hugging me calming me down. I forget the rest of that dream.

This dream was like a videogame, i entered a castle in order to fight a witch.
Then i showed my sister another videogame, but she didn't like it.

I could not remember any more because when i woke up i noticed i was late for college and that made me nervous

09/10/2014
Fragment
"Parking Fee"
The only thing I remember is driving toward the beach, in the daytime, and then having to make a U-turn in order to find a free parking spot. The beachside parking was, apparently, too expensive.

(I did make another attempt at the totem experiment, but I only got about 5-6 hours of sleep and don't remember much of anything.)

i tried that Sensory induced lucid dream where you lazily try and concentrate on the 5 senses for a few secons. sure enough i started going down the rabit hole. i remmeber being frightened when this started happening and i woke myself up. just gogta let go next time. its cool though watching myself fall asleep

I was reading a girl's journal. I don't remember how I found it nor what it said. I was outside. Then a bunch of people came to a cottage that, in the dream, I was living in with my mom. The girl wanted to hurt me with a knife so I told her she could read my journal, and I gave it to her. The journal I gave her was black thick and leather, and wasn't a journal I have in real life.

The girl with my journal went to a sort of church. Later she thought I meant she could keep my journal and I asked for it back. Other things that I forget now and never wrote down happened.

Later I was running in the street with a bunch of kids. One or two looked like my two brothers and we were in a room inside and one was paralyzed and kind of looked like my brother Justin. A girl who looked kind of like my sister Jenny came in and we fought and then I helped the 3 of them when they were in a car by playing music that was on my real-life radio at the time.

Date: 3 Sept

Mini-wbtb: lecithin

Decided not to wbtb, no latte, but had a natural wake. Didn't quite concentrate on lding, but had some thoughts about it.

LD Frag: In a classroom and I see one of the classmates that greets me. At some point my awareness increases and I realize that I'm in the room with my class and dreaming. One of the long term goal experiments comes to mind (learn to recognize DS by experience from the dream). The room is full of classmates sitting behind the desks and I start my mantras despite there being some instability "I see classmate, I know that I am dreaming, etc." and make them all repeat this with me. I list a number of classmates and stress the dreaming part. One thing that strikes me is the synchronisation between my thoughts, my words, and the words that come out of all classmates - it all happens exactly at the same time, and it's as if I can feel this invisible causality connection.

After going through a number of names in alphabetical order, I decide that this amount of information is enough for now and that no more should be repeated. An unknown DC teacher wearing grey comes closer, not a very pleasant one. I decide to change him a bit and give him a hug. He seems so touched by this that he sheds a few tears that fall down his shirt, leaving realistic wet marks.

At this point, I recall the shoe task and start looking around for shoes. The are shoes scattered around but from different pairs and sizes. The room becomes someone's apartment. In addition, again, I become too picky trying to find a pair of shoes that I like. (And we know what this usually means). Finally, I find a pair of colorful moccasins, very nice ones and get on with the task. There are papers into the first one, so I have to take them out before putting the shoe on. I grab the second shoe and as am about to put it the dream ends.

FA: I have a task of the month thread FA where I read my current dream post and another dream that includes OpheliaBlue and Schmaven.

Another fragment/mini-dream: I appear somewhere more like outdoors and realize that am still dreaming, though I have the definite certainty that am going to lose lucidity (like feeling your mental sharpness going down) and I continue forward focusing on maintaining the alertness.

Frag: It's like the same apartment again as I figure out 'dreaming, same place'. These are like wildlets in reverse as I'm in the process of waking up.

Wake up, brief review.

Frag: Only remember the ld part. In an appartment again, this time I find a pair of slippers and put them on without any issues. Wondering what to do next, I exert a great deal of effort to recall the other tasks that I didn't plan on performing tonight. The fortune cookie task finally comes to mind and I head towards the kitchen. There's lots of stuff on the counter including pieces of cookies but for some reason I decide to have a DC do the work for me and skip the cookie altogether. I look to my left and see two DCs (think they were from the non-ld part), both of them holding a piece of paper in their hands. I take the one from the nearest DC and try to read it, the words change to something like 'crazy couple'. I consider the task complete and get distracted with the dream to lose lucidity.


Shoes & Cookies Part II

Date: Sept 10

Decided to skip wbtb due late bedtime. Woke up naturally and had trouble falling asleep until couple of mins before the alarm.

LD: I finally fall asleep and find myself starring at...myself. There is a doppelgänger DC right in front of me, seated near where the desk used to be in my old room. But she looks more like doll, an object rather than a real person even though she is looking at me. I decide to ignore her and turn to the other side where under pressure (due to alarm), I go to recall immediately my tasks. The ones I had planned to try don't fit the place and current time constraints so I decide to go with basic totm instead.

I recall the shoe task and have a look at my feet - bare, the next second my mind produces a pair of shoes exactly like the slippers I had when I lived in that room. I take them off and look for another pair of shoes next to me. There are a few actually and I'm conveniently facing the wardrobe. The ones that look from the same pair and right size are orange flip flops that I put on. My attention is briefly caught by another pair of rather fancy high heel shoes that I figure belong to my mom. I'm excited to try them but at this point my feet's motion translates into physical motion...Yet, the dream still holds together despite a brief wave of instability.

Since I'm still here, I decide to do the the fortune cookie task, moving on to the place of the old desk. There are lots of items on top of it and I scan for a fortune cookie while thinking about one. There is a misshaped fortune cookie and a piece of paper coming out of it. I notice at first that there are only black and white drawings of snoopy or a simialr character but the other side of the fortune reveals a conversation next to the character. The drawings disappear to leave an ever changing text. In its last version that I try to memorize it is an old German proverb that repeats the same word three times. It looks like an old Latin proverb (dream knowledge) translated into German.

After completing the task (though later forgot the saying), I get a surge of confidence and decide to try another pair of shoes this time with laces for the bonus wings. There is a pair of purple sports shoes on the floor and I grab and start to untie one of them. It feels pretty accurate and not messy at all. This excites me that once they are untied I will put them on and tie them, no problem. As I prepare to put one on, I notice that there are papers inside again. I take one piece out and decide not deal with the rest of the paper, but rather press my foot inside. My foot presses against the papers to make space and then my physical foot moves again and this time dream is gone for good.

Disappointed but after a while with closed eyes, sleep resumes.

DEILD: I'm back into the same room, but this time it's dark as if midnight. This is not welcome as I hope to find my shoes somewhere nearby. With a touch of sarcasm I decide to order more light, though I know it's rather difficult to turn on the lights either by a switch or by command. To my surprise the space in front gets lit up as if there is a screen behind me that casts bright light ahead.

Alas, the alarm rings at that very moment...

Dream
Lucidity
Notes

I somehow became aware I was dreaming. I started exploring the house, the area was very bright, unlike my other lucid dreams where it's usually dark or gloomy. I went into some rooms, which were all empty. I tried teleporting with a door and once I opened it, the room inside was distorted but eventually turned into a regular room. My teleportation failed so I went outside, saying "I want an F22 to be parked outside." Upon opening the door, the area was very bright and I was in a beautiful suburban neighborhood with trees on the other side of the street. I looked for the Jet but didn't see it. Instead, a Volkswagen was parked under a covered parking spot.
---------------------------------------------------

On the forums, I had read a guy asking if people usually have dreams inside or outside, so I started drawing a little box or circle on my journal depending on whether I was inside or outside. It was an extremely short dream. The 2 girls that I see in a lot of my dreams yelled at me, saying not to put so much stuff on my dream journal, which startled me and caused me to wake up. Ever since, I haven't put whether my dreams have been indoors or out

09.09.2014

September 9th, 2014 Fragments (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I traveled to some Alien planet where they were working on healing and upgrading me somehow.

I had a few addiitonal long dreams, but I was way to tired to write them down and I forgot them!

I was in a psychiatric hospital laying with my online friend Jes. We were in love with each other. Later I realized I shouldnt have layed with her because it is a sin to act homosexuality. Then I got to an elevator and I chose down because I didn't want to get to the top of the building and jump off. It was heaven or hell though, I should have chose up. I got to the bottom and walked out and there was a man sitting at a desk. I asked him if he was Jesus. He said yes and i sat next to him, and i knew he was lying and that it was actually the devil and I was in hell. Then I was walking outside millions of people were walking and I saw my cousins Preston and Hannah. Then I did a sidekick because someone shoved me. Then 3 old men grabbed me and they were cannibals and they were eating me with white plastic spoons. I was praying to wake up, I was saying Jesus wake me up. I wasn't able to kick or defend myself in any way. The old men eating me was a metaphor for me being afraid of growing old, that I would be consumed by old age and be no longer strong and beautiful and able to do figure skating and gymnastics. I already died though so I won't grow old. Scary dream though. Lucid the whole time or most of the time.

I was flying and then I was standing in a field by two trees that were swaying violently with the wind. An old lady was standing next to me. I didn't tell her that it was a dream. She said isnt it beautiful and i said yes. I told her I had no place to stay and she told me I could stay with her. We walked for a while and then i was in an orchard. The old woman dissapeared and there were a lot of people there. Then I was in another field doing dream-ballet with a woman that i loved at the time. We danced and I enjoyed dancing and then I woke up.