Here we have a conceptual scene of a group of three memekins in the hills near Jalopy: a Naturalist (bottom, left), a Trapper (middle), and a Painkeeper (right). I won’t say much about the details since none of this is final yet, but one key fact is that you are what you wear.

Willian Gallis, from the site KongBr, did an interview with me a little while ago. On his site, the text is in Portuguese (he translated it–unfortunately, I don’t speak the language). He generously gave me permission to post the English version of the interview here. Thank you, Willian!

Willian Gallis: First of all, I wanna thank you for this interview.

Jason McIntosh: My pleasure!

Well, the first thing everybody always wanted to know is: Who are Creatrix Games guys?

Greg Tice (the game’s visual designer) and I have been making games and games designs for a long time together. Creatrix has been around for about two and a half years as a company (as in, being full time developers) and we made a few downloadable games in the past. I have no “real” game industry experience, other than as an indie developer trying to build an established company. When we started Lila, I brought Neo Binedell on board as the lead programmer.

We have a second (non-MMO) project in the works, and there are other people involved in that team. So Creatrix Games is made up of a couple of teams, all working remotely via the Internet. It works out well, actually.

So, it’s your first big game?

We made a casual game for Playfirst, which was funded, so I guess this is our second “big” game, though none of them are big in terms of budget.

And how is the experience of developing one of the first Premium Games for Kongregate?

Working with Kongregate has been great. We are given basically as much creative freedom as we want, and you can’t really ask for more than that. It’s been lots of fun, but really challenging because the game deisgn and the actual development are very ambitious.

What [is] the major idea behind Lila Dreams?

The player is a being called a “memekin” which exists in the psyche of Lila, an 11 year old girl. So the game world is all in her mind, and all the locations and game elements usually take on some aspect of her personality, thoughts, and memories.

There isn’t really any single “goal” for the game, since it’s more like an ongoing world that you can explore. But there are creatures, villains, and some characters to meet. The game is very light on story, though, and is more about exploring and going on short adventures with others.

And from where the inspiration for this game came from?

I don’t think there is any single inspiration, other than I knew that I wanted to make a game in a world without a lot of rules. But I didn’t want it to be a typical medieval fantasy world, so I chose to make it all in a little girl’s mind.

I saw something about Lila’s mood affecting the whole game. How it is supposed to work?

The idea is that players can collectively change Lila’s mood, and the emotion of her mood determines some benefits and changes to the game world. Certain areas opening up or closing, creatures appearing or disappearing, and other changes like that are determined by Lila’s mood. There will also be visual markers to depict her mood, like sky colors and various statues and things in the geography.

I loved this concept. But how exactly can the players change her mood? Doing some specific quests or just acting weird?

Acting weird? I wish we could use webcams and players that behave the strangest would change her mood!

Haha. That would be nice.

There are some mechanics to make it happen, but those are top secret right now. The mechanics are intended to allow every player to contribute to which mood he or she wants to choose. But the outcome depends on large groups working together.

The cooperation is very distributed, though, so it won’t be like raids or something in WoW. It’s much more casual than that.

Are there other types of player interaction? Like Player battles, Cooperative quests, etc.?

Players will be able to group and go adventuring together in instanced labyrinths.

I have all kinds of ideas for other things, but the initial release will be only a slice of the full design due to budget constraints. After launch, we hope to be adding new things all the time.

Another thing I heard is that the game won’t be a grind MMO. How is the game gonna work?

Weeellll.. that is all secret at the moment. But I have tried to remove as much grindy gameplay as possible. There are no levels or experience points, for example.

So, the equipments will be one of the ways of measuring the player skill?

Equipment will be a very central part of it, yes.

These equipments are the usual ones (swords, armors, etc.) or something new?

I’m trying to stay away from medieval stuff as much as possible, and since we’re talking about a world made of psyche, there will be a mix of things, including medieval, modern, and futuristic stuff.

Any chance of having a Plasma Rifle? I always wanted a Plasma Rifle.

There might be something like it. But we’re trying to be unconventional and stick with the theme of the setting, so it won’t be like a totally incoherent mix of swords, guns, and lasers.

It will all have a connected feel that fits the style of the world, so probably you won’t see a plasma rifle by that name, but maybe functionally there will be a weapon in there that would be similar.

Another interesting feature I saw is about the [creatures]. What can you say about them?

We’re going to have quite a large bestiary. Each area has a set of creatures that inhabit it, so there will be different types of things to encounter that fit with their habitats. We’re trying to make their behaviors as varied as possible so you always find something new.

And what can you tell about the cities?

There are a few major cities, and I hope we can get them all in the game by launch, but if not we’ll just have more stuff to give people later! Cities will be the main social areas, as well as centers for recuperating after a long expedition.

Most cities have a story and are based on some aspect of Lila’s personality or life. So, depending on how much time we have, I’d like to give each city some mysteries to be discovered by players. We’ve certainly got plans for it, but again budget is such a constraint that we will probably defer a lot of this kind of content until after the game’s initial launch.

There is a lot more I could say, but I don’t want to disappoint players if we don’t actually get to implement some of it.

Are you guys planning to open a Alpha Test like some of the other Premium Games?

There will be closed Alpha testing, and then probably closed Beta, then an open pre-release period. My guess is that a lot of the testers will come from the Kongregate community for the closed phases.

Of course, betas are buggy and incomplete, but that’s the price of admission, I guess.

Ok Jason, thank you very much of the interview. Do you have any message for the Brazilian Kongregate community?

I would love to see Brazilian players in the game! I usually only think of it in terms of North America because that’s where I live, but the thought of an international audience is really exciting and humbling to me.

First, a disclaimer: The things listed here represent my ideal implementation. What the actual implementation and form of classes turns out to be may differ from what you read here.

In other words, we’re going to try and implement all of this stuff, but we might not be able to or we might find some changes that are more fun during the process. Don’t be surprised if the game is a little different from this plan.

1. There are classes in Lila Dreams?

I haven’t really spoken much about specifics, but I thought I would reveal that there will be character classes in Lila Dreams. [Edit: After this post was published, I changed the term "class" to "role" in the game design, so what you might think of as "classes" in many MMOs would be called "roles" in Lila Dreams. Henceforth, the confusion shall be minimal! (I hope. *gulp*)]

These are maybe not what you’re used to, though. We’re not talking about monolithic, long-term classes that require months of dedication like in World of Warcraft or many other MMOs like it.

Which leads to thing number two that you didn’t know…

2. Classes are dynamic

Your character will be able to play any class that you are in the mood to use. This has some neat effects:

• You will never be unable to play with your friends because they “don’t need another healer in the group.” You can switch to any class very easily.
• Specialization is possible, but not required. If you get bored playing one class, there’s not a lot of investment necessary to try another class for a while.

But there is some investment necessary…

3. Classes must be unlocked

Each class must be unlocked by performing a set of tasks for a teacher. This is to:

• Limit player information overload by not giving access to everything all at once.
• Give new players high-reward, immediate goals to work toward.
• Each class “quest” (I hesitate to use that loaded term) serves as a tutorial about the class.
• You get a taste of the kinds of activities the class will perform to judge if you will find the class fun to play.

Once you’ve unlocked a class, you need to know that…

4. Classes come with baggage

In this case, “baggage” refers to the abilities, stat modifiers, and Perks/Quirks associated with a class. When your character plays a specific class, these various effects will apply.

You might gain some abilities, be restricted in the use of others, get bonuses with some equipment, penalties with others, and so on. There are a lot of factors that a class can apply to your character.

And all those factors lead to the realization that…

5. Classes are contextually constrained

The idea behind this is that class capabilities are determined, to some degree, by the current environment and things nearby the character.

This is to introduce unpredictability into the strategies used while playing a class, so that it doesn’t become a matter of simply min/maxing the best gear and abilities. You will also have to consider constraints or benefits of your surroundings during play, which I hope will bring in a fun layer of unforeseen conundrums to wrangle!

So, that’s a brief summary of my plans for the class system. There is, of course, a lot more to it, but I can’t let all the cats out yet.

Tell me something I don’t know

Got cool ideas for classes you think fit into Lila’s world? Let’s hear it!

This week, we feature another vignette from Lila’s life, written by our own Ted Ludzik!

Lila drew.

Her father tried to support her creativity. It felt like a good parenting thing to do. But Lila was always so far away when there was a pencil in her small hand.

“Hey, that’s the cottage,” he noticed one time.

“Kinda.” Her eyes were half-lidded. All the energy was in her hand. It skittered from the lollipop-grains of cedar shingles to the ridges of walk-way stepping stones.

“It’s… really good,” he offered.

“Thanks.”

“That’s not the lake though, is it?” His finger motioned to what looked like two giant rivers that crossed in a swirling X at the base of the rough-hewn cottage.

“No.”

Distantly, Lila thought she might make her father and other people feel excluded, lonely even, when she fell into her doodling. But she couldn’t help it. Dad would go back to his model train magazine. Her friends would give her a big “Coleslawyalater!” She always forgot to thank everybody for letting her go.

The crossed rivers on her page had gouged giant chasms in front of the cottage. They both started at their own huge springs of light that frothed like volcanoes, adding to the flow in the rivers. The rivers that created these Chross Chasms, she realized, were her fanciful take on the diagram from her Health and Activity Class. She hadn’t known that the optic nerves actually crossed over one another somewhere between her eyes and brain.

But who sat in the cottage at the crux of these rivers and watched everything that eddied by?

She flipped to a new page. Lila drew a family of three inside the cottage.

Oliver, the father, was bent backed and wizened. He sits on the porch all day long. The porch juts over the convergence of the rivers, precariously supported by randomly nailed struts and planks and even by stray roots of the nearby Family Trees.

Oliver has a pin-cushion’s worth of fishing poles hanging out off the porch: carbon fiber, bamboo, graphite, fiberglass, straightish tree-twigs. They all dangle one or more fishing lines into the rivers below. They jitter and shudder, reacting to every vision that flows over their lures. Oliver watches them all over his walrus-stache, though he never grabs for a single rod, no matter how hard the sights below are nibbling.

His hands are busy, she drew, whittling at cartoon-like speed. Lila’s hands buzzed as she drew the blur of his hands and knife. Sawdust and curly shavings bury his feet.

He whittles what his poles detect in the rivers below, what the rivers carry directly from Lila’s eyes: perfect replicas of iPods and truck tires, or shirt wrinkles and sitcoms on plasma TVs. Oliver could whittle anything: Godzilla breath or the sparkle from a sun showered raindrop. Like everyone, he made mistakes. But he can’t stop to check his work, because the next sight is already bumping against his lures and has to be recorded.

So, he tosses every whittled vision (or Whision) over his shoulder and in through the front door of the cottage…

…to his graceful three-armed wife, Arthura, who weighs and interprets each Whision to help her write her three massive books.

The Book of Nothings: using ink squeezed from the barely visible cobwebs of the silkwurms of southern Lucidon, Arthura records Lila’s failures in life.

The Book of Wishes holds Lila’s wants and desires as penned with a gossamer quill that was once the wing of a Halogenetic Bug.

And Arthura’s most muscular arm records in the largest book of all, The Book of Days. Only the hide of the Crunkled Megasaur is strong enough to bind together the results of all of Lila’s reality.

Of course, the confines of the cottage would soon be stuffed full of Whisions, if Arthura and Oliver’s adopted son Hermacles did not spend his days rapidly corralling huge arm-loads and whizzing them all about the Wurld. Most of his deliveries make it to the vast Libraries to be sorted and filed.

But so great are their number, it’s inevitable that many Whisions are accidentally dropped to become part of the cerebrostratum or given as tokens by Hermacles to his many tavern friends and lady-loves. Some are misunderstood by the Librarians, and flushed through the sewers into the abysses of the Underwurld, where they could merge and mutate or split and shatter, some even gaining a semblance of life.

Lila tired thinking about the activity of the three, momentarily guilt-ridden for seeing so much and making them work so hard every day. Fortunately, she realized, every night when she closed her eyes to sleep, the gushing rivers of vision must dry up completely. The family could rest. The canyons would be empty and dark.

Her hand cramping around her pencil, Lila decided to give the trio a little break and closed her eyes.

This week, I present another concept drawing of one of the game’s locations: Elevon. It is a manifestation of Lila’s ingenuity and logic, populated by gentlemen scientists and their quixotic experimentations. They even have a rocket.

This is a city of science, but a strange mix of it. Retro and bionetic (living machinery) mingle amid the step pyramids upon which buildings are constructed. Exposed gears and pipes peek out of the pyramids and suggest mysterious goings-on. You can never tell with inventors.

Surrounding Elevon’s pyramids is a vast stretch of desert, where only thorny plants and hardy iguanas thrive. Well, there might be more out there, but don’t go exploring unprepared.

Better late than never, they say. It might not be Tuesday, but here’s a little something I wanted to share anyway. (I didn’t mean for that to rhyme, but sometimes… you’ve just got it.)

Behold, the icy shores of Northlook Island!

Ta-ta! Now I must get back to doing secret game design things.

Ok, so I didn’t post anything last week. I’ve flogged myself for six hours and twenty-nine minutes for that. But, really, I didn’t want those wonderful memory stories to stop coming! Go back and post one if you didn’t already.

With the titillating title of this post, I have to deliver something. And I’m absolutely dying to share what we’re doing behind these tightly closed doors, so I’m going to allow myself a smidgen of satisfaction and show off some of the pre-Alpha art Greg has done.

First, though, what the heck is “pre-Alpha?” Am I some kind of space cadet geek or something? Actually, the game production schedule is broken into some big pieces, and we just call those ridiculously ambiguous names: pre-production, prototype, alpha, and beta. Lila Dreams is in prototype now, where we’re building the main parts of the game that will support all that fun stuff we have planned. Next comes Alpha, which means we have all the major features done (but they’re probably not very fun and definitely not refined). So, “pre-Alpha” means somewhere before Alpha.

Lesson aside, here’s what you came for. (Disclaimer: this art represents one tiny slice of the game world. Don’t go thinking it’s all about monsters and combat and stuff–that’s only one focus of several. You probably already know that if you read this blog regularly, but someone just coming here for the art might get a different impression.)

The first of our test creatures is called a Barnockle. It’s a little multi-eyed thing that sits on pretty much any surface (sticky butt, you see) and shoots out little poisonous spores at anyone who comes near. (It’s on the left, there.)

Then we have a Shakroo. This is a boney-insectoid creature that has to hop to stay alive, so it hops a lot. Just don’t let it hop on you or those pointy feet will be stabbing you in the face. In.. the.. face! That’s gotta hurt.

And then is the conflicted Wocky. Except, it’s us that is conflicted, because it seems like a gigantic, cute, furry-tailed thing. In reality, it’s nasty and mean, and tends to stun with its sonic attack. Don’t get any ideas about petting one without special preparations which are classified right now.

There you have it, some Lila Dreams art that may or may not end up in the actual release.

While the above pics are static mock-ups, they were made with the in-game art. So what you see there is how the game actually looks right now (minus the glorious multi-layer scrolling). These are not official “screenshots,” just to be clear, but they’re a really good approximation.

This week, we’re rather buried with development work, so I thought I would let you–our dear readers!–do the blogging for me.

So, here’s what I ask: tell us a brief story from your life when you were Lila’s age, 11 years old. What worlds of wonder did you create and explore as a child? Could be a place, a feeling, an adventure–tell us about it!

You get extra points if your story sounds like something Lila would experience. Hey, if it’s really good, we’ll put it (or some part of it) into the game with your permission. Wouldn’t that be cool?

From my own childhood, I remember a couple of friends and I would play in some huge crop fields in the late autumn (after harvest, I guess). My memory is of when there were no plants, so it looked like a vast, barren kingdom begging to be explored. What dangers lurked out there in these abandoned plains?

We marched around with our walking sticks and wooden swords armed, our handkerchiefs tied up and filled with supplies (the usual peanut butter sandwich and some kind of fruit drink). The cool thing about these fields was the little crystal rocks we’d always find in them: shiny gems and magical pebbles sprinkled around waiting for us.

What strikes me now is that even in my memory of the place, I never noticed the roads and houses surrounding the fields. We literally went to a different world.

How about you?

Well, Joseph asked, and since I’ve mostly spilled the beans on as much gameplay talk as I am comfortable with, I thought maybe I could discuss some of the technology we’re building for Lila Dreams.

Some graphics snobs will scoff at a 2d game. The client is what? Flash? The server is what? Java?! Ha-ha-ha-ha! “Your game is so low-tech players have to pedal to keep it running.” (Ok I just made that up–it’s bad, I know.) But, seriously, there’s a lot to love about 2d art. Especially when you’re on a budget!

One central technology for the game is the “2d bones” animation system. That’s just fancy-talk for little bits of art attached together like a paper doll puppet that has joints. Only digital. This has a ton of great benefits over traditional animation techniques.

Avatar Customization

Since player avatars are made up of various pieces, it’s really simple to mix and match. So, instantly you get a huge range of customization options. And because the system uses hierarchical rotations, we can do cool things like attach items to your avatar’s hand and the item will move with the hand. It’s gonna rock.

On-demand Animations

Because the art is in pieces, and there are no “cel” frames, we can create animations separate from the art, then mix and match animations. For instance, maybe there are several styles of walking animations (one of which is a limping walk, just for Chris Pasley). Since the animation consists only of motion data, and not artwork, that animation can be used by any avatar.

But wait! There’s more. This opens up a particularly large amount of options for emotes! You could have hundreds of emotes. I could design a dancing mini-game around that fact. (Wait, did I just type that out loud?)

This just goes on and on.

Creature Comforts

Well, maybe not comfort, but body parts! Interchangeable ones. So the game can randomize body parts for creatures and the issue of a room full of clones goes away. So maybe for each creature there are several head, torso, and limb variations, and each creature would have some random configuration of them so that each one appears a little different from the others. How cool is that?

Animation for Everyman–sorry, Everyperson

One more nice thing about this system is that to create an animation, you don’t have to be able to draw. You just drag joints around and set keyframes. So even if we can’t all be an artistic god like Greg, we can maybe make some really cool animations. This has the benefit of allowing us to spread that workload around the team, or maybe even to talented community members! That way we can generate mountains of animations without killing a single starving artist.

So, there’s a little taste of the kinds of things we’re doing in terms of technology. We’re doing a lot of other stuff, too, but we have to parcel this out across weeks so there’s something to talk about! It’s for your own good, so don’t complain.

And now, we present concept art of a snail mail courier.

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.