This week, I want to offer another bit of prose by Ted and demonstrate one way that the things in Lila’s outer and inner worlds connect.

In the game, there is a small village where nomads of a certain sort gather. It’s called Jalopy, and although it is a village, it has no true citizens because it’s a common stopping point for a group of nomads that travel with their houses, churches, and shops mounted onto their vehicles. While there, everyone enjoys entertainment by nomadic puppeteers and their giant puppets.

* * *

Dad only calls him by his first name, Jerry. Mom says he’s a modern day hobo. Lila figures “hobo” must be a couch-surfing shower user, because on the rare occurrences he pops up, that’s all Jerry seems to require.

The door bell would ring — this is the era when mom and dad were still together — and dad would usher him into the living room. Mom’s back would stiffen, she’d crisply acknowledge him with a “Hello Jerome”, and then she’d disappear up to the bedroom, returning only once Jerry had disappeared for another 7 or 16 months.

Lila would watch dad and Jerry talk. Man-talk, adult-talk, in low tones. Lila would cast herself far enough away to give them privacy, but still see their faces. Dad’s large, dark eyebrows rising and falling, arching and pressing together; it looked like a woolly bear ballet. Jerry’s face reminded Lila of the neighbor’s basset hound, skinny and saggy. His jowls would wobble with agreement, swing and ripple.

Jerry’s visits perplexed Lila. She sensed that Dad was tickled and glum, all at the same time. When she asked where Jerry came from, Dad would only respond, “Oh he’s a friend from Wayback.” Lila looked in a school room atlas once: Wayback didn’t exist.

Mom was only too unhappy to talk about Jerry. “He’s homeless” “He’s a mooch.” “He’s a smoker.” “Your dad and Jerome went to college together. Jerome was too lazy to get his degree.” “Finish everything you start. Or you’ll be a Jerome too.”

Mom never said anything about Jerry talking to himself, but Lila noticed. He would go outside when he had his cigarettes. Their skin was so bright and clean compared to Jerry’s stubbly tan. The pumpkin-orange tip reflected in his eyes.

He’d gab with a mouth-shaped wrinkle of his trench coat. Or he’d move his toes in his boot and chat with the unglued sole as it flapped up and down. He’d laugh as his gloves danced — the two middle fingers making very convincing legs. He could animate the lips of his poor-boy hat, throw his voice into his breast pocket and make it squelch to a stop when he slid his pack of smokes back in.

He’d mediate arguments between paper bags when they accused their plastic cousins of ruining the environment. Effortlessly, he would create snaggle-toothed ghosts with Styrofoam cups and twigs of wood.

Watching and listening to him, the seams of her skull stretched to bursting with fascination. Lila so wanted to talk to him or his menagerie! But it always felt like she’d be interrupting. Something grandma said gave her the idea: “Never go to a full house empty-handed.”

Lila drew a picture of Jerry and all his friends clustered about him. Wriggling ghosts rose out of the smoke of his cigarette. Smiles and winks hid in the folds of his clothing. Weeds and porch knotholes angled their new-formed ears at him.

She held on to the picture through a Christmas, an Easter, the end of one school year and into the beginning of another. Finally the door-bell rang.

Later that evening, Jerry and a Kleenex-and-plastic-straw creature stopped their discourse about the silliness of baseball when Lila opened the screechy screen door. The Kleenex instantly lost its life and Jerry stubbed out his smoke. He smiled.

Lila gave him the picture. His eyes widened and spread. Grinning.

And from then on, Jerry’s traveling menagerie was eager to include her in their chin-wags. And every time Jerry left — apparently he had many friends with many couches — Lila would draw him more pictures, usually of the stories and descriptions relayed to her by his improvised puppet-friends.

The last time she saw Jerry, her dad hadn’t been home. Mom had Lila’s new “uncle” met Jerry at the door. The tone was terse, low. The sounds Ernest made when he saw another cat through the window. Jerry went away and a month later Mom and Dad split up.

Dad had to move out, so if Jerry had ever came back, well, Lila was sure her mom wouldn’t bother to tell him where Dad had gone. But Lila’s latest pictures, all 24 of them, were waiting.

* * *

You can find the concept art for Jalopy in the gallery.

[This week we have an interview-style chat with our very own visual designer, Mr. Gregorius Maximus!]

Who are you and what do you do at Creatrix Games?

My name is Greg Tice, and I’m the sole artist for Creatrix Games. I guess you could say I wear all the many hats (and helmets?) of the art department, from intern to director. Its my job to make sure Lila has a visually striking and unique style. Its Jason’s job to make sure I don’t take it too far! Worry not–he shall not succeed.

What’s the most recent game that you played?

I’m replaying Planescape Torment for the 100th time. I am determined to go through the game with an evil alignment. I’ve never actually managed it, my bleeding heart always gets the better of me. As for new games, Mario Galaxy is currently in heavy rotation.

What are your favorite art mediums to work with?

Ink, acrylic, charcoal, and anything that I can find in the parking lot, kitchen, or scattered about my desk. This means that some artwork has a vitamin water or coffee scent.

You are responsible for visual design of everything from characters to architecture. Where do you get inspiration for such a diversity of visions?

I have a treasure trove of art history books. You can’t go wrong with the masters. But really inspiration strikes at the oddest times and from the quirkiest things. I do keep a notebook in the bedroom since I often wake up with quite a few interesting ideas that are quick to fade.

What color is your hair lately?

Dr. Pepper can colored at the moment.

As the visual designer of Lila Dreams, you have immense power over the perception of the game to its potential audience. How are you planning to shape the look of the game so it appeals to a broad group without it becoming generic or watered down?

Its a tight rope walk. We bounce all the ideas around and eventually end up at a result that is unique and not too far off the deep end. I believe that if places and things have a foundation in reality you can take them pretty far before you start to lose people. However, the public doesn’t always shy away from the strange and absurd. Just look at the success of Alice in Wonderland and Dr. Seuss!

What’s your favorite flavor of coffee?

Coffee has flavors other than coffee? I’ve been on a Turkish coffee bender lately. Its like pure energy mixed with pond sediment.

What aspects of yourself or your thoughts are you putting into Lila Dreams?

I often think back to my perceptions as a child. How the world looked and what fascinated me. Basically I’d like to instill that sense of wonder of exploring a larger than life and mysterious environment.

In what ways will visuals contribute to the fun of playing Lila Dreams?

Oddly enough I’m not a graphics snob. I still play the old Infocom text adventures every now and then! However, as an artist I am aware of how immersive good art direction can make a game. I’d like players to forget they are playing a 2D MMO and feel as if they have a tiny window onto an imaginary world that they are oddly a part of.

Thanks for your time and thoughts, Greg!

And now, the latest of his Lila Dreams works made public: Experius, the city of administration.

Today we introduce the official writer of Lila’s fiction: Ted Ludzik.

Writer, actor, and all around really smart guy, Ted has been a tremendous asset to the project since he began collaborating with us about a month ago. Bringing his own style to the game’s world, he’ll weave the words to chronicle Lila’s ups and downs.

So, here we present a short vignette from some of the experimental stories being created to help us define Lila’s life in all its dimensions. In this brief excerpt, Lila is at her grandmother’s funeral reception, which is taking place at her grandmother’s house.

(Disclaimer: the events herein may or may not be in the final canon of Lila’s story. We’re still exploring possibilities.)

Lila hadn’t realized the turmoil that had been roiling under her skin. Like a greasy-backed sea serpent three inches below the surface of an algae choked Sargasso, she had been alone with her frustrated sadness upstairs. In the midst of her “closest” family, she had flailed with a hydra of simmering anger and was befuddled by how she was supposed to act in a never-before-experienced situation. Nobody told her how to do this yet!

But her jaw released and what her dad described as “the only pouting smile on the face of the planet” and “Lila’s lip mushroom!” began to billow up.

With her dad’s butt sticking out of the dishwasher, she couldn’t help but smile.

In his best suit (which was half a decade out of style), he was scooping out small wads of tomato chunks, bloated spaghetti strands and amorphous dollops of dishwasher-digested globs.

“Izzat dinner, dads?”

Startled, Lila’s dad spasmed a little further into the gloom of the washer. Bravely, he clambered back out, his caterpillar thick brows rose in greeting, “Naw, just some maintenance.” He looked almost fondly at the dead food gathered in his hand. He stuck it up towards her, “Unless you’re hungry?”

“Ewgh! I’m all good, thanks.”

He kneeled to standing and shook his hand into the garbage can, then washed the remainder out in Grandma’s white porcelain sink.

Lila talked over the gush of water. “I thought she never used that thing. She was a hand washer, wasn’t she?”

Dad dried his paws on the tattered rag that hung off the oven’s wood-patterned handle. “Yeah. But she was feeling pretty dragged out those last few weeks. Amazed she even had enough mustard to get up and dirty a few dishes.

“How are you doing, pod?”

Pod. His first ever nickname for her. Born before Lila was born; it came from her dad’s favourite veggie from Grandma’s garden and the furious cell-division that was carbonating in his wife’s pregnant tummy. His little pea-pod.

His work as mechanical engineer changed things up occasionally; she was also his “favorite little cog;” when she misbehaved, it was “Spanner;” when she was acting all goofy, she transformed into his “wankle rotary engine.” But now, even as she started to wrangle teenhood by its grade five horns, she retained the “Pod” moniker.

How was she? “Um, I dunno, kinda… empty?”

“I think you did a lot of your, mm, accepting while she was sick,” he said to her, but his eyes were looking through the yellowing lace curtains hanging off the kitchen sink window.

“Is that what it was? I thought I had turned into a drippy snot-machine.” At her dad’s subtle smirk, she asked gently, “Whaddaboutyou? I didn’t see you cry at all.”

The smirk flattened and his pupils suddenly seemed miles deep. Kneeling back to the dishwasher he stated quietly, “Well, like your mom says, ‘We all grieve in our own way.’”

His torso crawled back into the maw of the dishwasher and his elbows began to produce more grease.

And, here’s your weekly concept art: buildings from a city called Experius.

To be RPG, or not to be RPG

Using the label “MMO” (massively multiplayer online game, in case you didn’t already know) tends to give a lot of people preconceived expectations about Lila Dreams. Some of them are accurate: you will be online with a bunch of other fine folks, exploring, battling, and socializing in a persistent game world. But is Lila Dreams much of a role-playing game?

“RPG” (role-playing game) is another label that has a lot of expectations attached to it, and many people seem to have different ideas about what it actually means. I have never called the game an MMORPG, because to me it’s not exactly a role-playing game. There’s no linear, deep storyline for players to follow (there is some story, however). There are not gobs of stats to twiddle (there are a few, though). And there aren’t hundreds of quests to perform (but there will be plenty to do).

Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but let’s take a look at one area of the game that is kind of RPG-ish: the items.

You are what you equip

Without a level grind as a means to measure your character’s progress, I still want a way to give characters unique distinctions and different amounts of power and some sense of progression. One vehicle for that is equipment. There are a ton of properties that an item can increase, reduce, add, remove or apply conditionally. And all these various options are what will make the gameplay really deep.

If you are like me, you enjoy making tough decisions between two or more really great choices. It’s really compelling! I played this game called Iron Dukes, and in it you can outfit your ship’s crew with various items that give them various stat boosts. It turns out that this is really fun. In Lila Dreams, your options will be much more numerous and have many more possible effects. I still aim to keep simplicity in mind, but this is really the heart of character evolution, and it needs to be fairly rich. (Plus, I really enjoy complexity–my game designer Achilles Heel, perhaps?)

Each character will have some basic attributes (there are six). But once you determine them, they will not often change. Although, they can be modified by items, so they won’t often change permanently, but they can temporarily change from equipment modifiers.

These attributes and items will be applicable to all aspects of the game, not just combat. For instance, your attributes and equipment will affect gardening. I hope to spread the fun of the RPG elements across all the various activities in which a player can take part.

Now, this description of the game could lead into a very long discourse on the various equipment and options, which would segue into the combat mechanics and then veer back around to gardening mechanics where it would end with a heartfelt apology–but it’s still a bit premature for that. Therefore, I’ll leave you with some concept art and a song instead.

I guess that you, dear readers, mostly know that Lila Dreams will use the “free to play” business model, along with micro-transactions and some ads. This is a rather controversial thing in this day and age, so I want to describe our philosophy about how we will approach the thorns of this particular issue.

(If you don’t know what “micro-transactions” are, it simply means [in the context of our game] that you pay a small fee for in-game items and services, like buying a shirt or hat for your character or paying for an extra convenience in the game. If you’ve ever bought a ringtone for your phone or a song from iTunes, you’ve already used micro-transactions in other contexts.)

The controversy

It all began when lots of people played games like Everquest and World of Warcraft, and they merrily paid $15 per month for access to the game. (Nothing wrong with that! Subscriptions are nice.)

Meanwhile, over in Korea, where there’s an astronomical piracy rate because of obscenely fast Internet connections which I’m very envious of (don’t even talk to me about Japan’s broadband), they decided to use a different payment model in order to deter copying of their games. Why pirate something that’s already free to copy and share? They made their games free. But then they needed to eat, so they decided to charge money for items in the games.

It worked. The Korean people did grin, and there was much rejoicing. The pirates were outmaneuvered, and the game makers could continue their craft.

Back here in America (with our much, much, much, much, much, much, much slower Internet connections and lower but still annoying piracy rate), having seen that the Koreans were doing well and that offering a game for free with optional, small purchases gave players a lot of benefits, some companies gave it a try.

It kind of worked. But there was much gnashing of teeth and even some confusion from gamers who liked to pay their money each month instead of paying in small amounts whenever they felt like it or not at all. Meanwhile, many other folks bought songs, ringtones, and even some games for their iPods and cellphones using very small fees to pay for very small bits of content.

Some time has now passed, and the micro-transaction business model is getting better (it may even start to feel fine, eventually). But times are still dark for micro-transactions in games, and there is much work to be done.

Our philosophy

It’s not so much a philosophy as an experiment, but there are some guiding principles we intend to follow when determining how to structure the use of micro-transactions in Lila Dreams.

1. Thou shalt offer a full, compelling experience to he or she who wisheth not to pay at all, ever.

2. Thou shalt not charge for that which maketh the gameplay unbalanced.

5 3. Those things for which players chooseth to pay shalt be worthy and enhance the game experience.

To summarize, that means we want to give you a complete game experience even if you don’t buy anything. But (you knew it was coming, calm down) we want to offer very compelling reasons for you to pay which will enhance your experience in the game.

This turns out to be a really good business model for us, because Creatrix Games is a really small company. For one thing, it deters piracy. If our games get pirated, it really hits us hard because we don’t have the marketing reach to make up for it in volume of sales. For another thing, we can remove almost all the barriers to entry, things like the need to install a program to play the game (gone, we use Flash for the user interface); things like paying a monthly fee to play the game (gone, you can play all you want for free). Without those issues in the way, we can get more players to try the game.

It also turns out to have some benefits for players. There’s nothing to download, no CD keys to juggle and lose, no copy protection to annoy you. You can play on Windows, Mac or Linux, from anywhere that has a web browser and Flash 9. You don’t have to pay if you don’t feel compelled. You choose what you want to pay for based on the merit of the content. If our game sucks, you don’t lose any money finding out.

I will be revisiting this topic later, once we can unleash more details about the game itself and after we have figured out with more precision exactly the way we want to implement this. Hopefully the five three principles outlined above will set your mind at ease. We do not want to rip you off or force you to pay, but we have to balance that with earning enough to eat dinner so we can continue to make this game awesomer and awesomer!

And now for something completely different

Here’s some new concept art for you. (Click on it for full effect.) What is it? It’s the base of Lila’s Tower, with the city wrapping around it. Aren’t those little cliff homes cool? Good job, Greg!!

[This week I turn the blog over to our programming pugilist and technology architect, Neo, for an introduction to his world. --Jason]

While I don’t have the gift of the gab (or jabber) that Jason has, I will never the less try real hard not to bore anyone to death with sterile algorithms but instead regale all and sunder with marvelous tales of the trickery in the trenches of online game tech (and bore everyone to death with that instead).

I am where Jason’s dreams come to die, the graveyard for his creative darlings. Its up to me to push Jason and Greg to new levels of inspiration and creativity and then to murder their darlings by feeding them to the monsters of technical limitation.

But fear not, while we may not get to experience their bursts of illumination in their full spectrum, at least we will wring out every inch of what is technically possible.

Don’t read this as a lack of confidence, far from it, it is just that I am so blown away by the talent of these two lads that I wish I could transplant all their creations directly into everyones minds.

Now that I’ve thoroughly ingratiated myself with them I can get back to work on the tech so that I have something to say next week, same time, same place, same ole human race…

[Obligatory concept art image for the week is in the gallery.]

In case you missed it, I recently did an interview with Wired magazine’s game blog. They also scored a couple of exclusive concept art images, so go read the darn thing!

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.

1. Bedroom door. This is the primary kind of door, and it generally leads you to “normal” places like cities and landmarks.
2. Garden gate. There’s only one place this leads to, and that’s to your personal garden.
3. Schoolhouse door. Only the brave should venture through this door. It leads to the dangerous labyrinths, of which there are many types.
4. 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.

First, a big “Thank you!” to everyone who has stopped by, and especially to everyone who has subscribed to the blog. We really appreciate your support, and we desperately need it to get the word out there about the game.

Here’s a bit of concept art that leads into what I will talk about now.

That is part of Lila’s Tableau. (Remember, Lila is the 11-year old girl who’s mind will be inhabited by you, the players.) The Tableau is a kind of communication device. It’s pretty big, about the size of a two-level house. There’s one in every major town, and it’s connected to that mysterious tower you might have seen in the concept art gallery.

In this game, emotions are a really central aspect. Because we’re frolicking around inside this girl’s psyche–and you know how emotional pre-teen children can be!–we’re going to run into emotions. Therefore, emotions will touch almost everything in the game. Your character will have an emotional “alignment,” abilities and items will have attributes that are affected by emotion, and the environment itself will change depending on Lila’s mood.

A very cool feature (to which we owe credit to Chris Pasley from Kongregate for spawning the idea) is that players can actually affect Lila’s mood. I won’t get into any details, because I want to save that all for later when the design is more stable, but I can say that the Tableau is one key part of the process of how players change Lila’s mood. The rewards are many, so if your character is aligned emotionally with Lila’s mood, good things happen.

This is one of the central activities in the game: a kind of tug-of-war to influence Lila’s mood to match with your character’s alignment so you can reap the benefits. It isn’t a direct PvP type thing, but more of an indirect process of mass cooperation among the members of each emotional “faction.”

I really want to say more, but I have to wait and let those cats out of their bags later. Stay tuned for more exciting adventures!

Since we’re working in conjunction with the great people at kongregate.com, and the games on that site are mostly small Flash projects, you might be wondering what kind of game Lila Dreams will be.

Simply put, it is a massively multiplayer game with a Flash interface. Most of the game logic (the gameplay rules) is programmed in Java and runs on the server. Lila Dreams is very different from anything on Kongregate, which is not to say it’s better, just that it’s a huge game and is probably not what you would expect to find on the site.

Just in case you don’t know, a “massively multiplayer online game” (often abbreviated “MMO”) requires large numbers of players to simultaneously co-exist in a virtual world, playing together and living in the universe of the game. Very often, there’s a lot of belligerence towards Bad Guys that threaten the well-being of the Good Guys. World of Warcraft is probably the most popular example of this type of game. Lila Dreams is nowhere near as big as that game, but it’s very ambitious for a tiny team like ours–just three sexy men.

So, it’s like WoW?

Not really.

World of Warcraft is a medieval/primitive setting, whereas Lila Dreams has a mix of varying levels of technology. There’s even a touch of science fiction.

There are no elves, dwarfs, or other Tolkien-derived player races. There are no dragons, orcs, or other Tolkien-derived creatures. There’s no magic. Well, there are “powers” that might be analogous to magic spells, but in terms of the setting they are psychic powers and not spells. So, there’s no magic.

There is no level grind. Level grinding is when you do boring tasks like killing cellar rats over and over to watch your game character become more powerful so you can kill bigger cellar rats. I personally do not like level grinding, and I think that it puts the focus of play on the experience of grinding rather than on the experience of the game world. I am working hard to design systems that do not require grinding so that the game world itself is the focus of fun.

No level grind, but there is combat: juicy, 2d platforming combat with RPG-like mechanics! This wasn’t always the idea, though. I originally wanted the game to not have combat at all, but in the end I decided that combat is something that a lot of people want. And we aim to please! So, then I decided that if there must be combat, I will find a way to avoid level grinding. I’ll talk more about the combat systems in later posts. It’s very early in the development cycle to be giving out details.

There is a kind of crafting, and it’s a central part of the gameplay. All I can say for now is that you don’t craft items–you grow them. Yes, gardening. But in a surrealistic game world where plants are not just plants. But I must not give away too much! (It’s very hard for me not to spill the beans! Oh how I fight!)

So, it’s nothing like Wow?

Well, kinda.

You get to make a character, choose what to wear, fight exciting battles against a bestiary of insanely weird creatures from Lila’s mind, team up with friends and explore strange places, meet in towns and emote at each other, get to know helpful NPCs (non-player characters), grow items in your garden, and manage your character’s abilities and inventory. We’ll see how much more we can cram into the game before launch, but we also hope to keep building on it after launch to make it even better.

So, yeah, it’s got things in common with many other MMOs. It’s just a lot smaller than most MMOs since we don’t have even 0.01% of the budget of something like World of Warcraft.

When can I play?

My, aren’t you just full of questions. (Or not, I don’t even know if anyone is reading this blog to be honest!)

It’s coming out this year. And there will be beta testing for a while. [Clarification update: beta testing won't begin for quite a few months. My apologies if this was not clear. Bad, naughty Jason!] That’s as specific as I want to be. But it’ll be worth the wait!!