Hey all, I'm sure I'm not alone but I occasionally have dreams of DEPTHS that include radically different ideas of the game, some of which I feel like sharing!
You know, there's something about dreams… We dream of things we could never imagine awake, we imagine things that are so out there, they seem like they couldn't have come from yourself… as if your subconscious mind has creative energy that is simply out of reach in your waking life. You wake up thinking "how did I ever come up with that idea? someone else must be writing this stuff".Well, last night I had some crazy ideas. Nothing worth putting in the game I don't think but would be funny easter eggs or something.One thing I remember most vividly, I was exploring these dank dark caverns filled with digging enemies that were like beavers; they built bridges and walls out of the muck and raw materials scattered about the passages. I remember some were for some reason or another either allowed to build or not. Those not allowed to build were those who had uncovered gemstones as they were to return these gems to me. I fought and destroyed those who had found gems and hid them to themselves. Weird, I know. Also, my favorite aspect of the dream, there were random soda vending machines here and there. In Depths, you can collect coins. In the dream, you could actually buy soda from the machines, which dispensed actually bottles of soda from your computer. You can't tell me that wouldn't be AWESOME. What else can I remember… Oh yea all these fire-breathing Ms. Pacman enemies scared the crap out of me… and later I found tons of caverns filled with gems I collected [no doubt inspired by my recent trip to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, they had an amazing exhibit on gemstones and minerals displayed in a mock-mining cavern]Random blog today, but at least it's not TOO boring, I hope. I'd love to hear if you guys have had dreams of your own games or of games you wanted to make or see made, and what wild ideas or things your dreams had.
Having dreams about your own stories is, in my opinion, one of the best ways to remain inspired and get new and unique ideas. Your subconscious is a strange beast sometimes.
I talk to Cyrus about this now and then, but I have had dreams about the characters of Terminys, for example, which gave me further insight into how they might act with each other, maybe things that I didn't flesh out enough about that character. And though I don't usually appear in my own dreams or really put myself with the characters, I did here. I distinctly remember them going off with each other, too, sending me away to buy something so they could have time alone.It was fucking depressing.Whenever you dream something, always write it down. There's probably a use for it somewhere.They say dreams are a tool of preemptive problem solving for the real world, we dream of worst case scenarios of our living fears and work to solve creative, work, or school related problems while we sleep. Unfortunately, in my dreams, Depths is a real 3 dimensional world with sounds and climate and aromas and so many sensory details I could never hope to reproduce.
DMNS is pretty awesome, haven't been there in a while, but they always have these crazy exhibits that screw with your brain if you stay in em too long.
But yea, I've had dreams about my own stuff before, I actually make sure I hang onto some of those ideas, because they're usually just really interesting. Some I've actually hung onto long enough to draw out, shit's crazy, love em.I'm digging those underground beavers.
I know right? I kinda want to translate them into somethng in the game somehow. there will be an ice crystal cavern level
Dreams can spark some interesting ideas. Thanks for sharing
Interesting blog.
I haven't had any dreams for about three months. Hrm.You dream about 4 times a night, it's just quite hard to remember. Because you're asleep.
Random question, but how would you all feel about an auto target system? Would make for more fun running and gunning, you would generalize the shot direction like you aim now but it would adjust to auto target. would only apply to enemies.
If you made the window small enough that it doesn't feel like it's controlling you or taking away from the gameplay, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea. But it reminds me of the system in Shadow the Hedgehog (that's the only non-FPS example I could come up with), which made the game too easy, in my opinion.