My first attempt at conceptualizing the world of Lila Dreams in terms of its geography was to sit down, and create a map. “Ok, this here, that next to it, and maybe over here this other place with this area in between.” It was fun–like when I was a kid and drew all those D&D maps!
But, that didn’t feel right. It felt too expected.
We’ve all played games where the geography is like real life, and you walk from point to point in a seamless transition from place to place. It’s pretty cool, but in a world where reality isn’t always solid ground, it didn’t seem like the most interesting choice. (And sometimes it’s boring to walk across 24 miles of empty landscape to reach a town.)
So, thought I, why stick with convention? Why can’t places be connected by doors that lead to points between areas that aren’t geographically logical? For instance, you might step through a door in a warm tropical forest and find yourself in an underground maze or on top of a giant beetle or in the picture of an advertisement in a magazine laying on someone’s living-room floor.
It gives us a good bit of flexibility to take players to exotic places without all the fuss necessary with that fancy “logic” stuff. The connections will persist; there will be a navigable and memorable geography, but it just won’t be like the kind of geography we’re used to. It’ll be more interesting and more fun. We can skip the boring parts!
There are four kinds of doors in the game.
- Bedroom door. This is the primary kind of door, and it generally leads you to “normal” places like cities and landmarks.
- Garden gate. There’s only one place this leads to, and that’s to your personal garden.
- Schoolhouse door. Only the brave should venture through this door. It leads to the dangerous labyrinths, of which there are many types.
- Asylum door. These only exist in a particularly wretched place called Dementra, and unspeakable horrors shamble therein.
Doors are not the only means of travel. But they are the most basic.
13 comments ↓
This game is really starting to sound interesting. I can’t wait for more updates.
Man, Lila Dreams is sounding better and better. When will you guys stop teasing us and let us sign up for pre-alpha?
I remember my months in FF XI. Constant grinding, and that’s only after waiting an hour for a party. Looks like “completely different from any other MMO” doesn’t even *begin* to describe Lila Dreams. I’ll be watching this development blog with great anticipation.
So is a labyrinth the same to all players? Or would characters with different alignments have different goals?
I’m looking forward to learning about how the different factions of players will interact. What’s the point of being massively multiplayer without having interactions between people, right?
Oh yeah, this is on my RSS feed now, so you’ll have at least one reader. Best of luck!
Ha, are there David Bowies in the labyrinths?
Ryan, all will be revealed in time, but rest assured that the “multiplayer” aspect has not been ignored.
I’m very pleased to say that we have almost 300 subscribers to the blog, and we appreciate every single one of you!
Fyorl, labyrinths are a particular type of adventure area where you enter with specific goals to accomplish. I didn’t want to call them “dungeons” because of the obvious connotations, and “labyrinth” has more of a mysterious, imaginative feel to it. Maybe the terms will change later; I’m not sure.
It would be interesting if doors allowed things other than players through. I don’t know what kind of NPC’s you’ll support, but wandering critters would be an interesting element.
You’ve mentioned that there are four kinds of destination. What if the destination could leak out of the door? Either in a purely cosmetic way (the stuff around a door starts to use the same bitmaps/appearance of things at the other end), or places start to colonize one another.
I’m also glad to see something new being done in the gaming world. So many retreads. I can’t wait. The ideas behind this seem great!
Where did you get the idea for a setting inside the imagination of an 11 year old girl, it’s pure genious.
Just from the concept art, the game looks amazing. (This might just be because I think you can tell alot about a game from it’s concept art.)
Oh, and I definitly like the term labyrinth.
Anyways, I know you’re nowhere near testing, But I would love to do any sort of testing.
I’m one of those subscribers, and I’m psyched to see this thing keep taking shape!
Keep us posted!
Thanks
I love the connection between “School” and “Labyrinth”
Hopefully the doors are not also used to completely segment the world into small disparate areas complete with load times between.
I like the idea, but I can’t help but think that it lends itself towards levels, instances and other features that disconnect the playing population and are more MOG than MMOG
trav, there will be both instanced areas and persistent areas. We’ll be doing as much as possible to allow players to share the experience and socialize.
Again, the ideas just keep blowing me away
I really like the non-traditional map you guys are thinking up, that should help foster the setting (doors are like mental connections - synapse)
Also I like the name ‘labyrinth’ as well
Keep pumping the brain juices around and don’t loose sight of your vision, it is inspiring…
Very cool, I like the idea of more dreamlike transitions between places. The comment about critters is brilliant, I wonder if in this dream world critters migrate between places in their own unique ways based on their species, and you could either sneak through behind or somehow tag along by making friends. Maybe in some encounters they steal you across unexpectedly and you have to find your way back.
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