Recent DJ Posts

House of the About To Be Dead
I am in a castle, I look around the room I am in. In spite of having had recent dreams of Hogwarts, that is not what comes to mind first here. I am thinking I am in the process of designing a video game. I am designing one of the levels, this castle will be a great setting. So right now I am looking around the level, trying to see where I want to put enemies and items and stuff like that. I place the enemies all over the place, and then I decide to do a run through to see how my AI on the enemies is working. So as the level starts, the enemies attack me, so I grab a weapon and fight back. There are weapons lying around, so I am able to use the in-game weapons to fight. Most of them are melee weapons, but I also find a gun or two. Ammo is rare so I have to conserve it. As I explore the castle I see there are enemies where I don't remember putting them. I think that is great, that means the AI of the game is making the enemies track me down to attack. I kill some more of the enemies and then I see someone else is in there with me, not one of the enemies. I look closer and see Walms killing enemies. Wait a minute…. Walms? Time for a RC! I am dreaming!

Now I am lucid and watching Walms kill enemies, making quite a gory scene of it as well, it looks like he might be eating some of them… I resume killing enemies, just because I am dreaming doesn't mean they don't need to die, and I finally make my way over to where Walms is. It looks like he is going to attack me, but then he stops, apparently seeing that I'm not one of the enemies. He makes some kind of comment to me, I say I was going to see if he could use a song spell… say gravity maybe, since I don't remember seeing him use that in a dream, and I am wanting to know more about DT… Walms just looks impatient, he says ok, but he'll only show me once, there are too many people to kill to waste much time. If I need more help, it will have to be another time. He goes through these steps relatively slowly, it looks like part of him briefly teleports and then reappears, and an enemy on the other side of the room is suddenly in two pieces… it looks like the enemy got cut open by some sharp claws, which I see Walms has formed. Ok, so I will try duplicating that… I select an enemy and try to do the same thing… epic fail. The result is my arm on the other side of the room, still holding an in game sword I had found, and flopping on the ground erratically while the enemy watches it in a totally confused state. For some reason this strikes me as particularly hilarious, and I crack up laughing. Walms is looking at me like I have completely lost it, and then he goes back to killing things. I grow a new arm. I want to try that DT again, but it didn't work so well last time. I have an idea. I look at the enemy who is watching my severed arm flop about. I pick up a sword on the ground near me, then I open a portal… just big enough for the sword to fit through… and I make the destination of the portal right behind the enemy. I shove my sword into the tiny portal, it emerges from the other end and impales the enemy. I pull the sword back and the portals close.

I am pleased with that, so I do it some more. One of the enemies looks like my ex boyfriend, James. He is trying to say he still loves me, which I don't believe. Walms enters the room and is killing stuff. James says some insulting stuff about Walms, I don't remember what, and Walms gives him a dirty look. I tell Walms that this one is mine, I'll take care of him. Walms continues on his way, killing another enemy. James says he wants me to call him IWL, I say it's not going to happen. He says he really wants me to call, he misses talking to me and wants to… *glurg* Now he looks like he's about to be sick. I follow his path of vision and see Walms eating an enemy, James seems pretty grossed out by that. I find this to be hilarious, too, and I start laughing again. I tell James to be gone before Walms decides he looks like a tasty snack. James scoffs at that, saying I know perfectly well that he can… I slip my hidden blade through a tiny portal that opens behind James' neck… and thus stab him. I wake up here.

Designing the Moon
I am designing some more of my game. I am on the moon, with Nomad, and he is helping me design the game. I am working with a strange sort of biological machine, I am thinking this is normal, it is merely one of the utilities in the game design program I am using now. Nomad and I are discussing what we want to do on the moon, how we want to set things up, Nomad wants to start by terraforming the moon. Ok, that works, so we need to decide what areas we will have. I suggest different areas based on different elements, like a fire area, an earth area, an air area, etc. Nomad says that sounds awesome, and says we can start with the forest area. I am thinking of how the game can flow, and I am coming up with a vicious circle where each element needs one of the other elements and there isn't really any place to start. I am taking to Nomad about setting up the game so it will work smoothly, he seems a bit confused by the fact I am talking about video games, but he seems to play along for now. Upon finally coming to the conclusion that the earth level would be first, Nomad asks why I am talking about making a video game… I tell him this video game will be epic, with all these territories, it will make an excellent MMORPG. Nomad smiles and says that is awesome, we would make an MMORPG area for dreamers. I am a bit confused at first, then I think of something and tell him it is a great idea to use dreams to design parts of the game, maybe even most of it. Nomad says yeah, we should use dreams… dreams like this one! I look at him in a puzzled manner, he tells me this is a dream. That isn't making sense, I tell him we are designing a video game, not a dream…

Space Ark
I am with MoSh in the landing bay of the tower on the moon, we are going to go somewhere Q has told us about. I am lucid for the first time, and thinking I can't wait to see what kind of place Q has found this time. We get in our ships, MoSh gets in his ship with Asuka, I get in mine with Basara, and we launch from the tower. Before we have gone far we find a wormhole that Q has created, and we fly through the wormhole to a distant area of space. There is now a fleet of ships near us, ships flying through space going to somewhere I don't know. We fly over towards the fleet, and I see fighter ships around that look like the ships on Starfox… There is also one huge ship that looks like a section of a planet under a dome, the other ships are all flying around that one, which seems to be the one to be protected above all others. We make contact with them, and they give us permission to land, making me wonder if Q has been here before us to tell them we are coming… We land in the landing area, and there are some people there, they are talking about what the ship is for. Apparently they were able to get warning of their star going supernova, so they constructed this space ark, with a section of every kind of habitat from their home world and also a selection of all the different animals, so they would be able to start over on a new world. He says most of the space ark is wilderness, and they have to take care of everything to make sure no life is lost on the way to their new home.

Back to the Drawing Board
I am in a strange room, I know I am there to continue designing a video game, no doubt the one I was working on earlier. I am working on a puzzle part of the game now, testing it out to make sure it is working properly. The way to solve the puzzle is to step only on certain tiles and in the right order and use those tiles to reach the other side of the room. I do the jumps necessary to get across the room, I am wondering if it is the proper difficulty. Does it need to be harder? Easier? Have a difficulty setting? I'll have to give that some thought. When I am almost to the other side, I notice something wrong with one of the animated parts… there is a fan in a vent that is wobbling instead of spinning properly. So I get out of the game and enter a modeling mode, moving over to the fan and adjusting the size and shape of it to make it fit better. While I'm in the modeling mode, I adjust some walls and start adding a new room. In the new room there are two bodies that appear to be dead but will come to life and attack. This fact is actually betrayed by a slight twitch in the bodies that gives away the fact they aren't really dead. Now I just have to test to make sure they come to life at the right place to make the game challenging without making it impossible.