woensdag 27 februari 2008

Mojoworld

I did some ressearch on mojoworld and it seems a great technology to do some tests. Here's a short movie a found. Looks very dreamy.

Idea for braintraining excercises

Last night I came up with an idea for the brain training part of my game concept:

At first I had the idea of doing this exercises with a computer program on your PC, but I got inspired by a little game on my mobile phone called 'braintraining'. It is a 'Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training' copy.
This game gives you daily exercises that can only be played once a day. It also keeps track of your progress and saves the data in a calender.

I would like to use this kind of program for a few things:

-Training (reality check, prospective memory)
-Keeping track of ones sleeping schedule (by entering when you go to bed and with an alarm function which wakes you up. Also the use of the snooze function can be tracked.
-Using the sleeping schedule data for the stimulation of ‘mnemonic induction of lucid dreaming’.
-Giving the user the option to record his dreams (with sound or text) immediately after waking up.

The data of the program will be user specific. The program will generate codes(passwords) based on the user information and the progress he/she made. These codes can then be entered in the PC game to unlock new abilities.

In this way your mobile phone will keep you aware of the game and your dreams and will be a tool to help you get lucid dreams.

I think that this program should also work as a stand-alone program. People can download/order and play it. This could work as an advertisement for the game.

Kawashimas Brain Training:

maandag 25 februari 2008

Connection

These are two schematics. The first is a schematic of how a dream is build. The second is an adaptation of how a game could use the first schematic.

dinsdag 19 februari 2008

idea for controlling dreamspace

I have been pondering about how the player can influence his/her dreamworld. If the player has achieved a totaly lucid state (so, if the player has 'total control') he/she might click on an item - let's say a tree- and move a slider. This slider will influence the total of trees on that particular grid square.
The player should also have the ability to move the items.

zondag 17 februari 2008

Test

As promised, a little test. a random world that is more static near you:





Note: if you give a certain spot more attention it is more likely to stay that color. Try making the 'world' as red as possible.

vrijdag 15 februari 2008

Concept update

Recently I have been working on my concept. there are a few things that I've decided.
The game will consist of two main elements:


1. A virtual environment that simulates a dream environment. This environment will consist of static, semi-static and random elements that are influenced by the player.
2. 'Braintraining'-like exercises that will influence the players influence in the virtual environment.

The virtual environment:
This part can be seperated in a few elements; The world structure, the players influence on the world structure, and the actual gameplay.

The worldstructure is the basis for the other two. The world is build up on a grid. every square of the grid is build up randomly. The square with the current location of the player is semi-static. If the player moves to a new grid this grid will become semi-static. The previous post with the test shows a possible way how this can be done. All the items and NPC's on the grid square will work in the same way.
The more attention a player gives to a certain place or object, the more likely it is to stay static.

The player will have to search for certain places to do a mission. The mission square will be at a certain distance. this distance is measured in 'number of grid squares passed' and not in an actual distance (like metres or miles). In this way it is possible a player returns to the starting grid to perform the mission. Of course this square will look totaly different. The mission square is also placed random.
If a player succeeds in doing the mission this mission square is more likely to stay in this place.

The excercises
There are a few different types of exercises that will be described here. These exercises will give the player more power. This will result in a less random world. Places that need to be reaced can eventually be reached directly, objects will stay static for a longer time, etc. also the player will gain other powers like flying, walking trough walls, creating elements of the world, shaping the worldmap, etc.

I will try to make a little test that simulates the worldstructure, so this can be tested and explained easier.

Test

I've made a simple test. I tried to recreate what happens if you have a random shape that gets more static when you approach it. Imagine a world that consists of these types of shapes.



In my opinion everything in a dream is random untill you look at it. It is a bit as with quantum mechanics. An electron decides what form it takes at the moment it has interaction.

maandag 11 februari 2008

progress

I've made an RSS feed available for this blog:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Lucidgame

So it's easier to keep track of my progress

donderdag 7 februari 2008

Program

Mojo world, create procedural worlds

woensdag 6 februari 2008

Progress

The best thing I can do at this point is to treat a lucid dream and all its components as a game or game features. There are a few different aspects that can be used:

-The techniques for getting a lucid dream. (Can this be implemented in a certain gameplay?)
-The functioning of dreams. (Can this aspect of the human brain be simulated by a computer?)

I already have many thoughts on this and I will try to summarize these over here.
Every time I have something new I will update the file and post to this blog.

More inspiration

This is an article from Jayne Gackenbach. She has studied the effects of video game play on nighttime dream. She discovered that people that play 3D games are more likely to get lucid dreams. This is also described in my paper 'lucid dreaming and game design'.

dinsdag 5 februari 2008

More inspiration

Will right talks about interesting things (video 2/6). Procedural design, user generated content, measurable user trends.

video 3/6:

Fractal

A Lucas Arts game from 1985 which uses fractal techniques to build the landscape.

More inspiration

This is brilliant!!! I've found a paper on procedural game design that exactly covers the questions and problems I have like 'how to integrate play and world creation?'.

" In order to integrate space generation and gameplay, one has to become part of the other. Charbitat is an experimental single-player game prototype in which the player creates the world as s/he plays through it. There are no points to win or records to break but the gameplay is a goaldriven exploration and generation of space."

It describes a game called 'Charbitat' in which the player creates the gameworld while being there.

Screenshot from 'Charbitat' and tech








More inspiration

This is a scene from 'Waking Life'. It's a realistic view on lucid dreams. Not a stupid spiritual one

More inspiration

Apparently there's a kind of instrument called 'the dream machine'. It produces light flickerings that match the frequency of the alpha waves in your head. This movie should have the same effect:

Instructions
Movie


There's also a program that is called i-doser that stimulates the same alpha waves with sound that slowly interferes. The program clames to be able to reproduce the effects of several types of drugs, lucid dreams and other halucogenic states of the mind.

Programs

Here are some programs that I could use to create sculpt my project.

-Vue 6 (see Trailer)








-Processing (see exhibition)

Scriptie

Dit is mijn scriptie, in het Nederlands:

Lucide dromen en Game design.pdf

More inspiration

www.dream-recorder.com/ - A program that uses a webca to detect movement during sleep(REM-Sleep) wakes you up and records anything you tell it (supposedly dreams)

www.wefeelfine.org/ - A cool site that harvests feelings from web logs and shows them as little bouncing dots.
artport.whitney.org/commissions/thedumpster/ - same concept but about 'breaking up'.

Kronos Projector - A great video/image vj tool thing. play with time and space.

www.youtube.com hyve search. It is a virtual world with endless input taken from places of your interest.

www.stumbleupon.com This site suggests nice sites of your interest. you can say if you like it or not. The more you use it the more suitable sites you will get (based on your own input and thousands of other users)

www.Last.fm - same sort of project but for music.

web3.highfeather.com A great project of a friend of mine. It's a symantic web system based onm users input, moderating, voting. It works great.

www.flickr.com A great photo site/ tag based database.

vrijdag 1 februari 2008

Concept

Untill now I only have a vague Idea of what i want to make. Here I will describe what I've come up with:

(Work)title: Lucid

Product: Game

Genre: 3D adventure sim

Abstract:

The game 'Lucid' is meant to learn people about lucid dreams. In a lucid dream one has - to a certain extend- control over a dream. This can be trained. 'Lucid' will be designed to train people having these kinds of dreams.

The gameworld will be inspired by the seemingly randomness of dreams. Therefore it will be a procedural design which will be influenced by the playeres actions and movements. The longer the player plays the game, the more clear and static the game will become. In this way the player will construct his or her dreamworld in a very intuitive way.

Inspiration

www.electricsheep.org "Do androids dream of electric sheep'

This is a program (a screensaver) that creates random moving images from a 'DNA' code. A user can say if he likes an image and this particular DNA code will then make chilldren with other liked DNA codes (from other users). In this way the computers share a 'collective dream' that gets prettier and clearer all the time.

Kick-off

This blog will be used by me to log my process of the project I am currently working on. This project is the last one I am supposed to do for my study Design for Virtual Theatre and Games.