Dream 2010-06-12
There was some buildup; apparently something like a generic medieval fantasy plot; some random magical overlord type creature was taking over the generic kingdom and enveloping it in generic darkness and distributing generic dark villains over the generic lands. Generically.
Well, me, mike, reed and zach were armored up to fight these things (These cool black-obsidian armor suits with colored light beams), and went about doing so. Running around the countryside, slaying doom-like demons and monsters with powerful weapons; well eventually we got into a castle, and ran through it mario galaxy style, eventually finding the end boss and kicking his ass easily. As a reward, it dropped this strange silver hang-glider looking apparatus; which, allowed you to glide-fly.
So, you don the thing, and it spreads out like a pair of batwings/batman style. At that point, if you get a good running start, you generate enough lift (somehow) to go airborne, then you hand glide to gather height and momentum. I believe it had some sort of futuristic scram-jet on the back of the unit, because you were propelled quite fast, fast enough you would actually fly (airspeed) even in real life.
Since I happened to be the plane guy, I tried it first. It was amazing.
No dream about generic flying could beat this; I could run, jump and take off into the air, gliding with minimal effort, flapping my wings if necessary for a quick change in course. It was like being a bird, you could soar over landscapes, dive down through rings and even shoot your enemies down while flying. With practice you could gain altitude in any condition as well, so there were no gliding limitations.
Well, we had to go onto level two, so I was designated "dragon-man" because I could fly + shoot plasma via plasma rifle. Level two was much harder, and required some tricky aerial switch throwing, IE dropping bridges and the like to allow the companions time to maneuver over. At this point, things got difficult, and we were forced to split up, I solo, and the other three as a strike force on the ground. I flew on ahead, taking out defenses and barriers from above, fighting some of the larger sky-predators as well. The ground team pressed down into the caverns to destroy the generators powering the evil machines that created force fields and creatures.
Eventually, I got bored of being a human with a flying suit, so I typed in a cheat code and just became a dragon instead. A big red cartoony looking one, was pretty strange. (Kinda, I have a model I made of the exact creature) Technically, no abilities changed, except that shooting plasma/fire was much more powerful and much faster, although I had a shot-cap, so I couldn't fire more than 8 fireballs at a time, like old arcade games.
Being the dragon, I could maneuver in the air way easier, and hover if I needed to, plus gain a free attack bonus on everything I did, and intimidation for lesser enemies. After assaulting the tower, I flew down into the caverns to rejoin my team; turned out they were doing just fine even without flying ability, so when I met up with them they kinda freaked a little, but figured out it was me pretty quickly. (cue mustache gesture)
Then, we tag teamed moving up this complex twisted tower, full of odd gravity puzzles like super mario galaxy, moving blocks, fighting vastly upgraded iron knuckles, hitting switches, fending off mobs, solving puzzles... It had just about everything you like to do in video games, but a flexibility in approach that was unmatched by any. You could kill all the enemies, use the environment to your advantage, negotiate, threaten, or even just slip by unnoticed. There was no set "objective" to complete except the main one, although every decision had consequences. Eventually, after winding up this long tower, we came to an impasse; The only way to go was up, and I couldn't carry anyone thanks to load restrictions (wasn't THAT great of a dragon).
So I grabbed an extra gun, and went upward to fight the boss myself. Turns out, it was some generic lich demon that had no real purpose in taking over the world. I'm sure it explained some crap to me, but I just shot at it instead of wasting time talking. It ran around like the end boss (The Campaigner I think) in the N64 Turok game; Was very hard to hit. Eventually he went down, but then morphed into this giant darkness form; And began the generic projectile-pause-claw swipe-pause-vortex loop of attacking. However I was privy to physical knowledge, it never was able to even hit me in that form, and eventually gave up on it and morphed into it's TRUE form, which was some weird looking alien-dinosaur skeleton with rotted flesh dripping off it (think Odin Sphere's King Gallon). That made the fight hard, since I had trouble determining the weak spot without an obvious bright red heart to pummel. Eventually I gave up because plasma and fire was useless, and just physically tackled the thing and tore it's head off; instantly killing it but making me lose dragon powers and flight wing just like mario when he collides with an enemy.
So there I was, atop the tower splattered with rotted blood, rifle scattered on the ground, darkness turning to light again, and no friends nearby (they can;t get up the tower, lol). I just looked off into the distance wishing I could fly again, because that was freakin awesome.
I was *about* to re-don the flight suit, but then, horror of horrors:
The cat woke me up. I took every measure to prevent this from happening. But it still meowed and woke me up anyways.
$@#^*(#$& Data.
-Z
2010-06-12
2010-06-11
GHOST, Mingl, XCore, Core, XGFX
Continually working on improving all the above components;
Here is a quick overview of what all this garbage is:
ghost - Lets you make programs for X11, Windows, Mac
mingl - Draws stuff in hardware lingo
core - Does everything you don't want to write yourself
xcore - Does things you should be doing anyways
xgfx - Makes everything look pretty + move around
In more details:
GHOST - Made primarily by the Blender.org guys; this is their generic host operating system toolkit; In other words, this is the code that allows you to receive low level input events and a OpenGL context; And the ability to create windows and draw to them/receive messages from them. I've heavily modified it to include some more game-friendly features, timing looks, multithreading and some specialized input event abstractions, joysticks support and other goodies. It's at least as good as SDL, and in many ways, far superior. Hard to find something better than code that has been attacked by many people.
Mingl - "Minimum Graphics Library"; essentially a wrapper around OpenGL; but, it's designed to specifically mimic OpenGL 3.0 specifications, and does an insanely good job of managing more annoying aspects of OpenGL programming; It makes writing graphical routines trivial, where you may spend hours trying to orient yourself in 3D space using any other toolkit (that includes you, blender. F*** your armature space conventions!). However, it's also interface abstracted just like GHOST, so it can use OpenGL, DirectX, software... it doesn't care. But it is primarily designed to expose low level hardware techniques to force you to write more efficient graphics code; and does a ton of things internally (like managing VBO/IBO/RC, states, transformations, ect...). It is still missing FBO operations, but those are trivial if you have a GL 2.0 + system (just need to sit down and do this)
XCore - Operating system and hacking level tools. A quite extensive library I made of tools I use frequently, such as texture conversions from DXT to / from anything, mathematical algorithms, VA/IA generation algorithms, numerical methods, statistics, even some unique IK algorithms and other tools. IT also contains agressive memory management and a slew of commonly used structures.
Core - The heart of everything; Based on the std C++ library; core contains separate components that should not rely on any one other component, like vec3 vec4, matrix3x3, matrix4x4, index_array, geo, and a lot of other commonly used, but often not needed tools. Chances are if you need any one of these tools, you need all of them.
XGFX - My rendering system built ontop of using mingl as the renderer interface. IS still under construction for the resource abstraction and management of massive resources.
No good screenshots; Just the city level again after implementing multithreaded loading + mingl improvements.
Here is a quick overview of what all this garbage is:
ghost - Lets you make programs for X11, Windows, Mac
mingl - Draws stuff in hardware lingo
core - Does everything you don't want to write yourself
xcore - Does things you should be doing anyways
xgfx - Makes everything look pretty + move around
In more details:
GHOST - Made primarily by the Blender.org guys; this is their generic host operating system toolkit; In other words, this is the code that allows you to receive low level input events and a OpenGL context; And the ability to create windows and draw to them/receive messages from them. I've heavily modified it to include some more game-friendly features, timing looks, multithreading and some specialized input event abstractions, joysticks support and other goodies. It's at least as good as SDL, and in many ways, far superior. Hard to find something better than code that has been attacked by many people.
Mingl - "Minimum Graphics Library"; essentially a wrapper around OpenGL; but, it's designed to specifically mimic OpenGL 3.0 specifications, and does an insanely good job of managing more annoying aspects of OpenGL programming; It makes writing graphical routines trivial, where you may spend hours trying to orient yourself in 3D space using any other toolkit (that includes you, blender. F*** your armature space conventions!). However, it's also interface abstracted just like GHOST, so it can use OpenGL, DirectX, software... it doesn't care. But it is primarily designed to expose low level hardware techniques to force you to write more efficient graphics code; and does a ton of things internally (like managing VBO/IBO/RC, states, transformations, ect...). It is still missing FBO operations, but those are trivial if you have a GL 2.0 + system (just need to sit down and do this)
XCore - Operating system and hacking level tools. A quite extensive library I made of tools I use frequently, such as texture conversions from DXT to / from anything, mathematical algorithms, VA/IA generation algorithms, numerical methods, statistics, even some unique IK algorithms and other tools. IT also contains agressive memory management and a slew of commonly used structures.
Core - The heart of everything; Based on the std C++ library; core contains separate components that should not rely on any one other component, like vec3 vec4, matrix3x3, matrix4x4, index_array, geo, and a lot of other commonly used, but often not needed tools. Chances are if you need any one of these tools, you need all of them.
XGFX - My rendering system built ontop of using mingl as the renderer interface. IS still under construction for the resource abstraction and management of massive resources.
No good screenshots; Just the city level again after implementing multithreaded loading + mingl improvements.
2010-06-04
TED Exporting + Mingl
"Walk the Walk"
I talk a lot of smack about things that I do. It's really nice when I visit artists that I can actually pop open their files and show them how to export them so I can load them in game.
It's much easier to convince people you aren't just blowing smoke when you can show them what you are doing in real time. Hard to dispute that kind of presentation.
So, more improvements on the TED file's; the exporter is more robust, and I'm in the process of verifying the data output is correct. So far this seems to be true, I've seen textures, models, scenes, and just about everything in the file working perfectly, especially animations. It's wonderful to just be able to load in a file directly exported from blender, and import it, then see your work immediately and accurately duplicated in a realtime game.
So here are some example shots; the next long haul is building the xgfx resource management system so I can maintain a logical coherence for all of these vastly different resources + files. Resources are essentially reference counted, but are not cleared until flagged to do so. Instance objects exist physically, so once they terminate they just dump all data. Plenty of re-use optimizations, tons of weird paradigms like "resource-source-instance" ideas with meshes; But this will be demonstrated eventually.
In order from top left clockwise;
Rayne from BloodRayne on PC with a static keyframe applied,
two of my custom levels,
Charizard from Super Smash Brothers Brawl on Wii with standard_wobble applied and hacked texture
another custom level,
The first boss from Dragon Blade on Wii, with wobble, note the material colors are showing now; easily removed.
Bowser Trophy from Super Smash Brothers Brawl on Wii
Rayquaza Boss from Super Smash Brothers Brawl on Wii with wobble.
Looks like I need a damn artist.
-Z
I talk a lot of smack about things that I do. It's really nice when I visit artists that I can actually pop open their files and show them how to export them so I can load them in game.
It's much easier to convince people you aren't just blowing smoke when you can show them what you are doing in real time. Hard to dispute that kind of presentation.
So, more improvements on the TED file's; the exporter is more robust, and I'm in the process of verifying the data output is correct. So far this seems to be true, I've seen textures, models, scenes, and just about everything in the file working perfectly, especially animations. It's wonderful to just be able to load in a file directly exported from blender, and import it, then see your work immediately and accurately duplicated in a realtime game.
So here are some example shots; the next long haul is building the xgfx resource management system so I can maintain a logical coherence for all of these vastly different resources + files. Resources are essentially reference counted, but are not cleared until flagged to do so. Instance objects exist physically, so once they terminate they just dump all data. Plenty of re-use optimizations, tons of weird paradigms like "resource-source-instance" ideas with meshes; But this will be demonstrated eventually.
In order from top left clockwise;
Rayne from BloodRayne on PC with a static keyframe applied,
two of my custom levels,
Charizard from Super Smash Brothers Brawl on Wii with standard_wobble applied and hacked texture
another custom level,
The first boss from Dragon Blade on Wii, with wobble, note the material colors are showing now; easily removed.
Bowser Trophy from Super Smash Brothers Brawl on Wii
Rayquaza Boss from Super Smash Brothers Brawl on Wii with wobble.
Looks like I need a damn artist.
-Z
2010-05-31
Fencing - Problem Solved
4 days of brain bashing of a very complex error to track it down and slay it.
At first, the program would crash if run outside of debug mode.
"Okay, so it must be a memory overrun, and I'm writing past the end of the array, because the debugger puts padding for detection against clobbering memory"; which looks like this:
uchar myarray[ 10 ];
myarray[ 10 ] = 60; //WHOA, myarray holds 10 ELEMENTS, so position 10 is the 11th element.
Often called a fence, I couldn't find it. What was weirder, std::string was throwing errors. std::map was having kittens. and ntdll seemed to vomit all over the floor at this party from hell.
As I burrowed into the code, seething rage ignited; was I being burned by out of date compilers? Was my code wrong? What had I done? What had THEY done wrong?
This project had it all, nested complex templates, deep inheritance heirarchies, large blocks of data and nasty C algorithms. Luckly, most of my (good) code has __debug_regression defined, so I was able to quickly rule out very large segments of code against error with a single look back at passed test dates.
But my mind was going, Dave.
I ignored the fact that if my code worked in debugging, then only the heap allocation method would cause 0xc0000005 errors thanks to ntdll 's nice memory bounding protection (mainly protects it from 0xBAADFOOD but yeah)
So, I eventually upgraded my compiler, my debugger, brought in the help of my custom designed memory heap manager (igtl_MMHeapSystem; I love you, I LOVE YOU! OH GOD YOU'RE SO SEXY MMMMM*codepronz*) and tracked down the offending bug. Hours of poking and prodding landed me with a really surprisingly simple conclusion.
I was off by one.
I'd been accused of being off kilter, off base, and not even on this world, but one? Off by one causes these insanely weird errors? Why did the debugger not detect the stack corruption? Why did the heap manager skip telling me I was writing one integer past my array? Why did absolutely none of the tools find this till I made my own?
Here's why:
When my array was writing past the end of it's detection, it wrote (coincidentally) over the bad food word. But, in the running of the program, that error PROPOGATED until some time later, when the error detection actually scanned memory; because no one in their right mind scans every single memory allocation (super slowness). By the time a scan actually occured, it was too late and bizzaro values had multiplied. But only in a small well contained region. That is, inside of a system dll I don;t have debug points in. Ironically, since the error affected nothing else in MY code, it really screwed up ntdll, and cause it to throw weird errors all over the place.. So, my code was just missing a +1, but the stack was being blow to pieces thanks to trying to protect itself.
Moral of the story?
Make sure to take a nice drink if you run into a hard problem. Usually, it's just something stupid. I use High Gravity Steel Reserve.
-Z
Here's some preliminary results with a nifty 3 instruction toon shader I made: (<3 Mecha Dragon)
At first, the program would crash if run outside of debug mode.
"Okay, so it must be a memory overrun, and I'm writing past the end of the array, because the debugger puts padding for detection against clobbering memory"; which looks like this:
uchar myarray[ 10 ];
myarray[ 10 ] = 60; //WHOA, myarray holds 10 ELEMENTS, so position 10 is the 11th element.
Often called a fence, I couldn't find it. What was weirder, std::string was throwing errors. std::map was having kittens. and ntdll seemed to vomit all over the floor at this party from hell.
As I burrowed into the code, seething rage ignited; was I being burned by out of date compilers? Was my code wrong? What had I done? What had THEY done wrong?
This project had it all, nested complex templates, deep inheritance heirarchies, large blocks of data and nasty C algorithms. Luckly, most of my (good) code has __debug_regression defined, so I was able to quickly rule out very large segments of code against error with a single look back at passed test dates.
But my mind was going, Dave.
I ignored the fact that if my code worked in debugging, then only the heap allocation method would cause 0xc0000005 errors thanks to ntdll 's nice memory bounding protection (mainly protects it from 0xBAADFOOD but yeah)
So, I eventually upgraded my compiler, my debugger, brought in the help of my custom designed memory heap manager (igtl_MMHeapSystem; I love you, I LOVE YOU! OH GOD YOU'RE SO SEXY MMMMM*codepronz*) and tracked down the offending bug. Hours of poking and prodding landed me with a really surprisingly simple conclusion.
I was off by one.
I'd been accused of being off kilter, off base, and not even on this world, but one? Off by one causes these insanely weird errors? Why did the debugger not detect the stack corruption? Why did the heap manager skip telling me I was writing one integer past my array? Why did absolutely none of the tools find this till I made my own?
Here's why:
When my array was writing past the end of it's detection, it wrote (coincidentally) over the bad food word. But, in the running of the program, that error PROPOGATED until some time later, when the error detection actually scanned memory; because no one in their right mind scans every single memory allocation (super slowness). By the time a scan actually occured, it was too late and bizzaro values had multiplied. But only in a small well contained region. That is, inside of a system dll I don;t have debug points in. Ironically, since the error affected nothing else in MY code, it really screwed up ntdll, and cause it to throw weird errors all over the place.. So, my code was just missing a +1, but the stack was being blow to pieces thanks to trying to protect itself.
Moral of the story?
Make sure to take a nice drink if you run into a hard problem. Usually, it's just something stupid. I use High Gravity Steel Reserve.
-Z
Here's some preliminary results with a nifty 3 instruction toon shader I made: (<3 Mecha Dragon)
2010-05-28
CURSES!
I've been fighting some errors for a while now with my importer code;
Eventually (2 days of brain bashing) I figured this out:
0xC0000005 errors are normal; But they're a good hint into memory over-walking.
Turns out, you can;t do this anymore (used to be able to; I'll figure out the fix):
struct myvec{ float x,y,z; } //Nicely packed struct takes up 12 byts, 3 floats in order.
float myfloats[9] = { 0, 0, 0, 10, 15, 10, -5, -10, 0 }; //Nicely packed float coordinates.
myvec somevecs[3]; //Make some vectors
memcpy( &somevecs[0].x, &myfloats[0], sizeof(float) * 9 ); //Copy them in!
Before you scream at this; Note that this works perfectly lots of times. Apparently, there are some rare cases you can cause this to break and GDB is helpless in figuring out you just walked passed the save/writable zone in an array. It's really hard to get this kind of thing detected, especially when using pointer casts.
Basically, if you run into a situation in which you find yourself doing this; Please stop and redesign your code so you do not have to do this. Unfortunately, there is no "fast" solution without redesigning some kickass wrappers and C-style code; but if you OOP this, you run into massive overhead and ultra slowdown from all these specialized copy operations; So, what can you do.
In my testing, caching blocks of floats seems to work best, then just forcing your user to slowly copy them into their structures. Although, I don't do that, because I redesign my structure to WORK with a float * internally so this can be as fast as possible and still lexically coherent.
What a $(#@^& problem.
-Z
Here's a picture. .TED files contain a lot of information; Once I clean up this stupid problem I'll post more goodies. By the way, these are models from the PC game "I of the Dragon" because I don;t want to show my models until they look somewhat decent. Obviously, again, I'll never use these; They're only good test sets to play with.
Eventually (2 days of brain bashing) I figured this out:
0xC0000005 errors are normal; But they're a good hint into memory over-walking.
Turns out, you can;t do this anymore (used to be able to; I'll figure out the fix):
struct myvec{ float x,y,z; } //Nicely packed struct takes up 12 byts, 3 floats in order.
float myfloats[9] = { 0, 0, 0, 10, 15, 10, -5, -10, 0 }; //Nicely packed float coordinates.
myvec somevecs[3]; //Make some vectors
memcpy( &somevecs[0].x, &myfloats[0], sizeof(float) * 9 ); //Copy them in!
Before you scream at this; Note that this works perfectly lots of times. Apparently, there are some rare cases you can cause this to break and GDB is helpless in figuring out you just walked passed the save/writable zone in an array. It's really hard to get this kind of thing detected, especially when using pointer casts.
Basically, if you run into a situation in which you find yourself doing this; Please stop and redesign your code so you do not have to do this. Unfortunately, there is no "fast" solution without redesigning some kickass wrappers and C-style code; but if you OOP this, you run into massive overhead and ultra slowdown from all these specialized copy operations; So, what can you do.
In my testing, caching blocks of floats seems to work best, then just forcing your user to slowly copy them into their structures. Although, I don't do that, because I redesign my structure to WORK with a float * internally so this can be as fast as possible and still lexically coherent.
What a $(#@^& problem.
-Z
Here's a picture. .TED files contain a lot of information; Once I clean up this stupid problem I'll post more goodies. By the way, these are models from the PC game "I of the Dragon" because I don;t want to show my models until they look somewhat decent. Obviously, again, I'll never use these; They're only good test sets to play with.
2010-05-14
TED file format; Restricted XML
Ever notice how awful XML documents are?
Well, I upgraded my model exporter from blender to 2.49b; so now, instead of the annoying variety of formats I used to use (obm, arf, brf arf2.0, brf3.0, grf, iRF) I decided to spec out a more logical, easier to understand but far more byte/size inefficient DXML format.
I call it "TED" (Text Extracted Data).
The goal of TED files is to export the maximum usable, useful information out of Blender 2.49b+.
What TED files should NOT be used for:
I have not made the exporter for 2.5.2 yet because I have been burned many times by blender changing specifications mid-stream on me. Luckily, the ted exporter is written to avoid this as much as possible; but when more alpha versions come out I will snap one in easily. Until then, 2.49b it is.
If I could show you a .TED file I would; but HTML can't understand < > signs.
Have a dragon instead (All credit goes to DragonBlade from the Wii; Obviously I'll never use this model, it just happens to be the first example I picked)
Blender on the left, mingl without GLSL on the right (in-game)
-Z
Well, I upgraded my model exporter from blender to 2.49b; so now, instead of the annoying variety of formats I used to use (obm, arf, brf arf2.0, brf3.0, grf, iRF) I decided to spec out a more logical, easier to understand but far more byte/size inefficient DXML format.
I call it "TED" (Text Extracted Data).
The goal of TED files is to export the maximum usable, useful information out of Blender 2.49b+.
- This includes Meshes, Armatures, Animations, Objects, Materials, Textures, and some scripting and logic elements. Meshes should contain enough data to be GLSL renderable (IE normals, tangents, uv layers, parameters).
- TED files must also conform to a very strict file standard, so there will be NO allowed coordinate systems other than the default universal correct system (RHR, +X forward, +Y left, +Z up; This is universal for ALL transforms. Matrices also have a standard definition of Xx Xy Xz Yx Yy Yz Zx Zy Zz where X is the forward axis, Y is the left axis, Z is the up axis. Quaternions follow these definitions as well.)
- TED files must be easy to read in; Though they are not (byte) efficient, they should contain "hints" for a loader so it may allocate elements beforehand; for example declaring the number of elements in an array before reading it in. You might notice .TED files can be
- TED files must maintain a logical and render-system friendly data model; And must encapsulate all data elements; No element can have differing types of data; ergo a tag can store an array of strings, an array of ints, an array of floats, or other tags ONLY.
What TED files should NOT be used for:
- Final game data (you should convert to your own or local host format)
- Final Level descriptions (TED files do not provide hashing or optimizations or portals of scenes)
- Replacing something you already understand (unless it has something you need; just make a converter to convert TED to whatever)
I have not made the exporter for 2.5.2 yet because I have been burned many times by blender changing specifications mid-stream on me. Luckily, the ted exporter is written to avoid this as much as possible; but when more alpha versions come out I will snap one in easily. Until then, 2.49b it is.
If I could show you a .TED file I would; but HTML can't understand < > signs.
Have a dragon instead (All credit goes to DragonBlade from the Wii; Obviously I'll never use this model, it just happens to be the first example I picked)
Blender on the left, mingl without GLSL on the right (in-game)
-Z
2010-04-12
Nathan + Dinosaurs = WTF?
Dream 2010-04-12
Summary:
Mal works for a space mine, enters a dimensional portal, meets creatures that seem to have come from "Dinosaurs"
Details:
Mostly fuzzy; But I remember this space mine working on some sort of larger extrasolar object in some small star system; It was a rather rich deposit of extremely rare and non-natural elements (that's right, this SOB had naturally occurring elements heavier than uranium!) so, they were mining it for fuel. Well, Nathan Fillion apparently was the star of this episode (Damn you, Captain Hammer!) and after losing his wife and kids in some sort of car-accident; he continued working his mining job. Well, someone discovered an anomaly, some sort of portal, and after some testing they decided to send a human in without telling any outsiders. Being a space mine, you go to the place to work, and don't return for quite some time, so this was easy to keep secret, always a lot of illicit practices in these sorts of "prying eye" isolated situations.
The backdrops looked like any stereotypical deep earth mine, large steel girders lining large elevator shafts, domed, reinforced ceilings and plenty of weird looking mine equipment (I've been in a few myself, so if you've never been in a mine, look it up!). Well, the anomaly was just some sort of large blurred region of space, and, well they voted Mal up to jump in, since he had nothing to lose. Would certainly end his pain or make him a hero, so why not? He obviously didn't feel that way, but, eventually consented and in a rather Mal-like way, just ran into the damn thing with no warning.
Well, upon entering the other side, it was a direct seamless transition to this darker world, there was breathable air, survivable pressure (~1.2 atm, similar to being under 2m of water on earth), and reasonable temperature (~87 F). Well, comically, the portal was above ground, and lands our hero in a are filled with cycad like trees. Naturally, he was now screwed as he could not get back up to the portal, and wanders around. Eventually, he finds he is near an ocean, and can see civilization by the hallmark of regular geometric shapes being constructed near the sea shore. Upon investigating, he finds all of the structures heavily damaged by some sort of raging sea current, and promptly leaves after finding some really disturbing skeletal parts; Not human, but some sort of alien/dinosaur like parts.
The sky in this are was black, grey at the edges, but seemed to emit light ambiently, as if there was light coming from the sky, but it was only visible in reflections off the earth. There were no stars visible, the sea was also black, must be some odd light-absorbing pigments in the world chemistry;
Well, this part gets a little fuzzy, but somehow Mal runs into this teenage dinosaur, and they become allies, and he introduces him to their world, and becomes some sort of science project, blah blah generic plot basically. Mal almost gets into a fight with a small gang of dinosaurs, but being Mal smart talks them out of it, gaining respect from the gang. I remember something about deeply rooted political messages, environmental concerns, societal oddities about sex and crudeness; Was a really interesting situation;
But! His friend helps him get back to the portal, so he can return home, which the mining company didn't expect, but he brought back a few artifacts to prove he was gone, and destroys access to the portal (to save his friends in the other world).
So yeah, the social parts were hazy at best; not 100% sure what actually happened, though it would be trivial for any Firefly fan to fill in the gaps with some terrible fanfic writing.
-Z
Summary:
Mal works for a space mine, enters a dimensional portal, meets creatures that seem to have come from "Dinosaurs"
Details:
Mostly fuzzy; But I remember this space mine working on some sort of larger extrasolar object in some small star system; It was a rather rich deposit of extremely rare and non-natural elements (that's right, this SOB had naturally occurring elements heavier than uranium!) so, they were mining it for fuel. Well, Nathan Fillion apparently was the star of this episode (Damn you, Captain Hammer!) and after losing his wife and kids in some sort of car-accident; he continued working his mining job. Well, someone discovered an anomaly, some sort of portal, and after some testing they decided to send a human in without telling any outsiders. Being a space mine, you go to the place to work, and don't return for quite some time, so this was easy to keep secret, always a lot of illicit practices in these sorts of "prying eye" isolated situations.
The backdrops looked like any stereotypical deep earth mine, large steel girders lining large elevator shafts, domed, reinforced ceilings and plenty of weird looking mine equipment (I've been in a few myself, so if you've never been in a mine, look it up!). Well, the anomaly was just some sort of large blurred region of space, and, well they voted Mal up to jump in, since he had nothing to lose. Would certainly end his pain or make him a hero, so why not? He obviously didn't feel that way, but, eventually consented and in a rather Mal-like way, just ran into the damn thing with no warning.
Well, upon entering the other side, it was a direct seamless transition to this darker world, there was breathable air, survivable pressure (~1.2 atm, similar to being under 2m of water on earth), and reasonable temperature (~87 F). Well, comically, the portal was above ground, and lands our hero in a are filled with cycad like trees. Naturally, he was now screwed as he could not get back up to the portal, and wanders around. Eventually, he finds he is near an ocean, and can see civilization by the hallmark of regular geometric shapes being constructed near the sea shore. Upon investigating, he finds all of the structures heavily damaged by some sort of raging sea current, and promptly leaves after finding some really disturbing skeletal parts; Not human, but some sort of alien/dinosaur like parts.
The sky in this are was black, grey at the edges, but seemed to emit light ambiently, as if there was light coming from the sky, but it was only visible in reflections off the earth. There were no stars visible, the sea was also black, must be some odd light-absorbing pigments in the world chemistry;
Well, this part gets a little fuzzy, but somehow Mal runs into this teenage dinosaur, and they become allies, and he introduces him to their world, and becomes some sort of science project, blah blah generic plot basically. Mal almost gets into a fight with a small gang of dinosaurs, but being Mal smart talks them out of it, gaining respect from the gang. I remember something about deeply rooted political messages, environmental concerns, societal oddities about sex and crudeness; Was a really interesting situation;
But! His friend helps him get back to the portal, so he can return home, which the mining company didn't expect, but he brought back a few artifacts to prove he was gone, and destroys access to the portal (to save his friends in the other world).
So yeah, the social parts were hazy at best; not 100% sure what actually happened, though it would be trivial for any Firefly fan to fill in the gaps with some terrible fanfic writing.
-Z
2010-04-01
Dream: Splinter Silent Snake Solid Hill Cell
Dream: 2010-04-01
Summary:
Recurring dream mixing metal gear and splinter cell and silent hill
Details:
This is a recurring dream; as such, the majority of events are similar to all the previous reincarnations of the dream, with only minor changes. I'd say it's very graphic, and horrible. (how often do you get to disembowel things anyways?) Definitely nightmare quality.
So, the dream usually starts out, you take the movie-role of this gray haired, grizzled marine in his 60's; Getting a debrief from president Kennedy about a mission to stop a Russian bioweapon from being released. Your main character looks a lot like a regular chisel jawed blond haired blue eyed German marine, constant fatigues, side bowie knife, a poker face that could break glass, and plenty of gnarled features indicating a slew of victories. Always looks angry though, the beret slightly off kilter, as if asking any young punk with enough balls to mention that was the wrong angle, just to start a fight.
Kennedy gave you a top secret clearance, and this dark green folder with information on this russian woman (naturally in a black latex suit with dark red hair and goth-style accenture; d-cup) who is in charge of the train shipment of the materials needed to create the bioweapon.
You repeatedly ask for more information on the bioweapon, as it is obvious no marine can withstand that kind of weaponry, a bit like trying to punch a landmine. No information is given, apparently this whole thing is hush-hush since it would severely escalate tensions.
Switch scenes to a large cargo plane, four engines and a regular "Red Cross" drop mission of aid, with you secretly stowed on board; jumping off for a night skydrop to land deep in a pine forest, silently, and with plenty of guns and ammo to take out a small militia.
At this point I'll describe the scenery to get an idea of the feelings invoked, since text leaves a lot of detail out. It's about 0320 (sun relative time), damp is forming on all the leaves, you can feel the earth cooling; but it was mid-summer, so the respite from burning heat is welcome. At night, you can hear trucks in the distance, men barking commands, the train had stopped here, secretly, the moon was not out, so darkness was impressive, seeing farther than 20 or more feet was impossible, what lay in the unknown was a mystery; it was likely there were infra-red autoturrets posted around the site, more than likely landmines or classic beartraps laid to thwart and unprepared soldier; classic tripwires and claymores a traditional favorite. All of the trees were dark and tall, traditional pines, the forest floor was mostly cleared; unsure why. There was a rich smell of damp in the air, mostly the dew pervading. Knowing this mission was essentially suicide, as you were ordered to stop this train and shipment at all costs didn't help your mentality; smoking would simply trip an alarm and get you shot early.
Moving cautiously, using all of your available skill to avoid the assumed traps; luckily there were none. There were only 6 guards, and only off duty ones. The train may contain secrets, but would it be better to follow the train to it's destination and discover where the base was, using your e-rad to signal your location?
Apparently, you decide to sneak onto the train, and quickly find out that is impossible; as the train is a unusual design, it looks out of place, a futuristic, slightly blue steel color; No visible doors or windows, it had the feel of an airstream trailer, but quite a few of them connected.
Somehow there is a gap in memory, and it's 1240, afternoon sun glaring down producing a high 90's heat. You had found the camp, and damaged the rail tracks so the train could not make it's shipment, and radioed the position, all without being seen, detected, or killing/alerting anyone. Now you wanted blood; you could see your female target having a cigarette with an AK-47 slung across her back; she was still wearing the ridiculous black leather getup, lol fanservice I guess. Anyways, you strafe one of the smaller buildings, to get a look inside and see if you can start causing some havok; well, inside of this "small" building is a solid black cat; it approaches you, it's rather friendly. Inside the building is a darker red metal decor, lots of white plastic spherical containers and hoses connecting them, leading to a side chamber. This was no building, it was a gas chamber to test the bioweapon.
Immediately you move to sneak out, but the door slams shut and the alarms and lights go off; gas of a light yellow color begins to come from some of the hoses. You whip out your mask and use the cat to determine what the gas would do; holding it with a knife to it's neck so you wouldn't make it suffer too much. The cat seems annoyed, but entirely unaffected by the gas. IT wasn't an irritant, or mutagen, or anything obvious; You put the cat down, the room now hazy with this thick gas; it doesn't stick to you skin either. Time splits, since this is a dream, and you become two instances in time, one of them NOT having entered the chamber, and sneaking to a larger building, the other entering the secondary chamber ,where there were larger plastic cylinders and spheres with other colored chemicals. In that reality, the cat follows and a door from nowhere slams shut like a guillotine; and a greenish gas pours out, immediately burning the skin like fire; the poor cat's eyes begin to melt and it begins hacking up blood, so you mercifully cut it's head off; then quickly gut the can and use it's hide to protect other regions on your body while you wait for the gas to time out. The green gas left unusual burns on the skin, but otherwise seemed to just be a extremely toxic agent. Well, in that reality, turns out the gas penetrates clothing, and while you are basically chemically burned alive, searing agonizing pain; trying to break the door down or stop the system or just escape, you cant, and get to suffer the agony of death, and fail your mission.
Now imagine for a moment, YOU were that person. And also assume that you could not tell it wasn't a dream (lucid). You're trapped in a sold metal box, nothing but dangerous storage vats of chemicals in the corners and ceiling, tubing piping a agent capable of melting your epidermis, And the door is magnetically sealed, and at least a centimeter thick. Unhinged and sliding into the other side about a half a foot too. Basically, you are dying a horrible death, and there is nothing you can do about it. Isn't that lovely?
Now, since this dream had that parallelism moment, let's continue with the dude who DIDN'T poke into the wrong building.
Upon sneaking into this larger facility, which was very poorly lit, only small red lights here and there, dimly illuminating what looked like a power facility, larger generators and tanks, narrow walkways and halls, a more concrete underground feeling. Eventually, you run into a larger section of hallway, some 20x20 ft, and see two guards talking, but one of them is beating the hell out of the other, which isn't even fighting back. Then, this sick thing happens, and the winning guard pulls out this jar and jams it into the other guys gut; Cue class gut-worm scene; this small, 8 inch long alien parasite of some kind tears the victim open, and begins threading itself through and consuming all of the poor bastards innards. Being undetected at this point, and pretty sure of victory, you run in and kill the other guard,kicking his body away and go to kill the other in another mercy kill, just like that cat (that in this reality, you did NOT kill but it is silently following you). But when you turn, the worm had grown at a unprecedented rate, you could see it moving around under the skin, blood and scraps leaking fluids as the guard just stares off, trying to scream without lungs in a agonized expression; seeming to be saying something important, but then the work gets to his brain, and pokes out an eye, blood gushing out and littering the face with brain bits. You ignore the posse, this is getting too weird, and you take a service elevator down a floor; The elevator had red lights, and was large, build for moving trucks it looked like. So much for being unannounced, but luckily, down here there was nothing but a few mech-armors and not many guards; This place held missile components for delivering the bio weapon. Solid snaking your way around, you simply murder guard after guard, leaving only the mechs to take out. Nothing you had could even get close to stopping them, so you continue onto the next room, which was a very large bi-level room with many smaller rooms, kind of like the stack/library in goldeneye. Well, it was still dimly lit in red, and in the middle of this giant empty room was some sort of weird reactor with seats in it ala borg style. You get noticed, and it becomes a intense firefight, you using a traditional revolver in favor of automatic weapons, since you didn't spray and pray, you killed. Eventually, whats her face walks in (leather chick) and talks to you in russian; sadly I can't understand it; nor do I have any way to reproduce it.
Well, turns out she is an alien queen, and had given the russians the keys to making this mutagen that would allow her to generate parasites across the world, and consume our race like we do mcdonalds hamburgers.
Like hell any US marine would let that shit happen, buuuuut we're not talking about an analyst here. Jumping down to take out the queen, you're electrocuted by the floor grid; A simple trap meant to take out aggressive morons. Lucky for you, as you lay there incapacitated on the floor, you see the black cat walk in, parasite sticking out of it's mouth, guiding it. The alien queen comes over and drops a worm on you, and it tears your guts out so you can feel how horrible the pain of death is before it damages your brain past the point of cognizance.
But, like a US Marine, you totally fucked her over. You didn't shoot her, because you unpinned a few grenades first. BLAM!
You eliminated the queen and the machine, saved your country.
The end. Or is it?
What makes me chuckle, is modern games are way more graphical than this in terms of content, but in terms of immersion? Hardly. You'd have to look at some older games to really get a good creepout or scare; simply because the composition for immersion is a very delicate balance and very hard/expensive to get right.
I hope some game house recognizes this and cranks out a decently silent-hill style game.
-Z
Summary:
Recurring dream mixing metal gear and splinter cell and silent hill
Details:
This is a recurring dream; as such, the majority of events are similar to all the previous reincarnations of the dream, with only minor changes. I'd say it's very graphic, and horrible. (how often do you get to disembowel things anyways?) Definitely nightmare quality.
So, the dream usually starts out, you take the movie-role of this gray haired, grizzled marine in his 60's; Getting a debrief from president Kennedy about a mission to stop a Russian bioweapon from being released. Your main character looks a lot like a regular chisel jawed blond haired blue eyed German marine, constant fatigues, side bowie knife, a poker face that could break glass, and plenty of gnarled features indicating a slew of victories. Always looks angry though, the beret slightly off kilter, as if asking any young punk with enough balls to mention that was the wrong angle, just to start a fight.
Kennedy gave you a top secret clearance, and this dark green folder with information on this russian woman (naturally in a black latex suit with dark red hair and goth-style accenture; d-cup) who is in charge of the train shipment of the materials needed to create the bioweapon.
You repeatedly ask for more information on the bioweapon, as it is obvious no marine can withstand that kind of weaponry, a bit like trying to punch a landmine. No information is given, apparently this whole thing is hush-hush since it would severely escalate tensions.
Switch scenes to a large cargo plane, four engines and a regular "Red Cross" drop mission of aid, with you secretly stowed on board; jumping off for a night skydrop to land deep in a pine forest, silently, and with plenty of guns and ammo to take out a small militia.
At this point I'll describe the scenery to get an idea of the feelings invoked, since text leaves a lot of detail out. It's about 0320 (sun relative time), damp is forming on all the leaves, you can feel the earth cooling; but it was mid-summer, so the respite from burning heat is welcome. At night, you can hear trucks in the distance, men barking commands, the train had stopped here, secretly, the moon was not out, so darkness was impressive, seeing farther than 20 or more feet was impossible, what lay in the unknown was a mystery; it was likely there were infra-red autoturrets posted around the site, more than likely landmines or classic beartraps laid to thwart and unprepared soldier; classic tripwires and claymores a traditional favorite. All of the trees were dark and tall, traditional pines, the forest floor was mostly cleared; unsure why. There was a rich smell of damp in the air, mostly the dew pervading. Knowing this mission was essentially suicide, as you were ordered to stop this train and shipment at all costs didn't help your mentality; smoking would simply trip an alarm and get you shot early.
Moving cautiously, using all of your available skill to avoid the assumed traps; luckily there were none. There were only 6 guards, and only off duty ones. The train may contain secrets, but would it be better to follow the train to it's destination and discover where the base was, using your e-rad to signal your location?
Apparently, you decide to sneak onto the train, and quickly find out that is impossible; as the train is a unusual design, it looks out of place, a futuristic, slightly blue steel color; No visible doors or windows, it had the feel of an airstream trailer, but quite a few of them connected.
Somehow there is a gap in memory, and it's 1240, afternoon sun glaring down producing a high 90's heat. You had found the camp, and damaged the rail tracks so the train could not make it's shipment, and radioed the position, all without being seen, detected, or killing/alerting anyone. Now you wanted blood; you could see your female target having a cigarette with an AK-47 slung across her back; she was still wearing the ridiculous black leather getup, lol fanservice I guess. Anyways, you strafe one of the smaller buildings, to get a look inside and see if you can start causing some havok; well, inside of this "small" building is a solid black cat; it approaches you, it's rather friendly. Inside the building is a darker red metal decor, lots of white plastic spherical containers and hoses connecting them, leading to a side chamber. This was no building, it was a gas chamber to test the bioweapon.
Immediately you move to sneak out, but the door slams shut and the alarms and lights go off; gas of a light yellow color begins to come from some of the hoses. You whip out your mask and use the cat to determine what the gas would do; holding it with a knife to it's neck so you wouldn't make it suffer too much. The cat seems annoyed, but entirely unaffected by the gas. IT wasn't an irritant, or mutagen, or anything obvious; You put the cat down, the room now hazy with this thick gas; it doesn't stick to you skin either. Time splits, since this is a dream, and you become two instances in time, one of them NOT having entered the chamber, and sneaking to a larger building, the other entering the secondary chamber ,where there were larger plastic cylinders and spheres with other colored chemicals. In that reality, the cat follows and a door from nowhere slams shut like a guillotine; and a greenish gas pours out, immediately burning the skin like fire; the poor cat's eyes begin to melt and it begins hacking up blood, so you mercifully cut it's head off; then quickly gut the can and use it's hide to protect other regions on your body while you wait for the gas to time out. The green gas left unusual burns on the skin, but otherwise seemed to just be a extremely toxic agent. Well, in that reality, turns out the gas penetrates clothing, and while you are basically chemically burned alive, searing agonizing pain; trying to break the door down or stop the system or just escape, you cant, and get to suffer the agony of death, and fail your mission.
Now imagine for a moment, YOU were that person. And also assume that you could not tell it wasn't a dream (lucid). You're trapped in a sold metal box, nothing but dangerous storage vats of chemicals in the corners and ceiling, tubing piping a agent capable of melting your epidermis, And the door is magnetically sealed, and at least a centimeter thick. Unhinged and sliding into the other side about a half a foot too. Basically, you are dying a horrible death, and there is nothing you can do about it. Isn't that lovely?
Now, since this dream had that parallelism moment, let's continue with the dude who DIDN'T poke into the wrong building.
Upon sneaking into this larger facility, which was very poorly lit, only small red lights here and there, dimly illuminating what looked like a power facility, larger generators and tanks, narrow walkways and halls, a more concrete underground feeling. Eventually, you run into a larger section of hallway, some 20x20 ft, and see two guards talking, but one of them is beating the hell out of the other, which isn't even fighting back. Then, this sick thing happens, and the winning guard pulls out this jar and jams it into the other guys gut; Cue class gut-worm scene; this small, 8 inch long alien parasite of some kind tears the victim open, and begins threading itself through and consuming all of the poor bastards innards. Being undetected at this point, and pretty sure of victory, you run in and kill the other guard,kicking his body away and go to kill the other in another mercy kill, just like that cat (that in this reality, you did NOT kill but it is silently following you). But when you turn, the worm had grown at a unprecedented rate, you could see it moving around under the skin, blood and scraps leaking fluids as the guard just stares off, trying to scream without lungs in a agonized expression; seeming to be saying something important, but then the work gets to his brain, and pokes out an eye, blood gushing out and littering the face with brain bits. You ignore the posse, this is getting too weird, and you take a service elevator down a floor; The elevator had red lights, and was large, build for moving trucks it looked like. So much for being unannounced, but luckily, down here there was nothing but a few mech-armors and not many guards; This place held missile components for delivering the bio weapon. Solid snaking your way around, you simply murder guard after guard, leaving only the mechs to take out. Nothing you had could even get close to stopping them, so you continue onto the next room, which was a very large bi-level room with many smaller rooms, kind of like the stack/library in goldeneye. Well, it was still dimly lit in red, and in the middle of this giant empty room was some sort of weird reactor with seats in it ala borg style. You get noticed, and it becomes a intense firefight, you using a traditional revolver in favor of automatic weapons, since you didn't spray and pray, you killed. Eventually, whats her face walks in (leather chick) and talks to you in russian; sadly I can't understand it; nor do I have any way to reproduce it.
Well, turns out she is an alien queen, and had given the russians the keys to making this mutagen that would allow her to generate parasites across the world, and consume our race like we do mcdonalds hamburgers.
Like hell any US marine would let that shit happen, buuuuut we're not talking about an analyst here. Jumping down to take out the queen, you're electrocuted by the floor grid; A simple trap meant to take out aggressive morons. Lucky for you, as you lay there incapacitated on the floor, you see the black cat walk in, parasite sticking out of it's mouth, guiding it. The alien queen comes over and drops a worm on you, and it tears your guts out so you can feel how horrible the pain of death is before it damages your brain past the point of cognizance.
But, like a US Marine, you totally fucked her over. You didn't shoot her, because you unpinned a few grenades first. BLAM!
You eliminated the queen and the machine, saved your country.
The end. Or is it?
What makes me chuckle, is modern games are way more graphical than this in terms of content, but in terms of immersion? Hardly. You'd have to look at some older games to really get a good creepout or scare; simply because the composition for immersion is a very delicate balance and very hard/expensive to get right.
I hope some game house recognizes this and cranks out a decently silent-hill style game.
-Z
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