• Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views




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    1. 06/11/10 Game Design, Navigation

      by , 06-14-2010 at 09:50 AM (New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight)
      Note: And the rest of this night was taken up with a couple of fragment dreams, both of which were unfortunately non-lucid. I really need to improve on my RCs!

      *Outer Realms Software*
      I was sitting at a computer. Tigress was sitting beside me, both of us were talking about a video game we were working on. The part of the game we were working on would have a town located near a dungeon. The strange thing about the dungeon was that it wasn't stable… it was constantly changing and rearranging itself. Passages would adjust themselves, dead ends would open up, passages would close off… so each time the player entered the caves it would be a completely different layout. This would be cool, because each trip down there would be new. I was figuring this could be easily done with a random maze generator. I was looking at the screen trying to think if UDK (Unreal Development Kit) could be used to generate a random maze. I would have to Google that.

      The next idea we had was to have some characters in the maze that weren't evil. While there would be merchants in the town, the maze we were planning would be big and the player could easily run low on supplies. Then it would be a pain in the ass to have to leave and come back since the entire maze would've changed again. So to fix that there would be random goblin merchants wandering the maze. These merchants would sell the same items as the town merchants, just at an inflated price. Their excuse for the inflated prices would be that the dungeons are dangerous, thus it is dangerous for them to be down there selling stuff. In fact they most likely sell to both the player characters and the enemies alike, and are probably in very little danger, it is most likely the fact these goblins are just greedy that makes them charge so much. Tigress and I talked about the rules involving the goblins for a few minutes.

      After Tigress and I were done talking about the goblins, it was time to start doing something. I was looking at a blank screen. It was ready for me to start coding. But what to code? Would UDK handle a random maze? I would need custom models… maybe I should start there first? But making really good models just takes so long… maybe I should just make place holder models and use them for the initial build. Yes, that would be good enough. Before I could even launch the 3D modeling program I woke.

      *Watch the Way I Navigate*
      I was in a car with Tigress. We were driving down the street rather fast. That didn't bother me since I have a tendency to speed myself. I had the feeling we had just left the Pima Community College, West Campus, and now we were driving down Speedway. Tigress was taking the street name very literally as we flew past other vehicles that were barely moving compared to us. I also noticed that she was beginning to drive erratically. She was swerving all over the road. I looked over and noticed for the first time what Tigress was doing while she drove. She had her laptop opened on a make-shift stand to her right, a cell phone pinned between her shoulder and her head as she talked on it, a piece of paper on the center of the steering wheel where she was drawing a rough map, and she was steering with her left knee. Talk about distracted driving. We were rapidly coming up behind a pickup.

      "TRUCK!" was all I managed to say as I saw the impending wreck. Tigress looked up and swerved around the truck. She asked if I could grab something for her, it was in her backpack. I said I was too busy watching the way she was navigating… That brought to mind the lyrics of a song called Feel Good Inc. by the Gorillaz, "Yo, watch the way I navigate
      Hahahahahhaa!" And I was watching as Tigress was navigating directly towards a stopped bus…

      "BUS!" I cried out. She swerved around the bus. She said I was getting way too worked up over those little things. She said she really needed that hard drive from her backpack, so could I please get it. I was just happy to be able to put my head down for a bit so I wouldn't see the impending doom…