One of many Storage Rooms you’ll find in Dungeon Deep due for release very soon.
Okay, here’s my plan for my farming orbs: my idea is to make each world, such as House & Tree, Dungeon Deep, Village Square and Dwarf Mine unique and separate from the others, although within a game such as Village Square, you’ll find subordinate areas such as Tavern, Mineshaft, Mausoleum, Vaults of Time, Growing Fields, Storage Rooms and Church Interior. It’ s all very complicated, and I’ll explain why…
An Orb is technically speaking an enormous area both side to side and up to down. It is a cube that can be made to scale approximating an in-game experiential scale of something on the order of two miles across by one mile high. It’s damn big, and you can fit an entire town into one of these things.
It has a size limit and a mathematical limit and an experiential limit. I’ll explain this:
The size limit is set more or less by the map limitations, yet our map size is larger by many times than the biggest commercial game maps. They rely on strapping to accomplish the illusion of map size. We don’t.
Well, that is to say, we don’t have to if we don’t want to. But we DO want to, don’t we, men? (* footnote 1)
Thought you might have already forgotten how to search a footnote at the bottom of a page, since it’s all electrons now, so here’s the aforementioned footnote:
(*footnote 1: ref: Rustler’s Rhapsody.)
Ahem; where was I when I so rudely interrupted myself?
Ah, yes…Rustler’s Rhapsody…or was it Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension — that’s where the answer can be found, along with the Secret Tibetan Teachings Contained Within Star Wars … you can order that talk from someone, I’m sure … no, wait a minute, I’m sure there was an earlier subject. A quick check at the top of the page should reveal something…
I’m back from the top of the page. No luck there. Not a clue. Will continue search.
Back again. Search successful. I make note here of the fact that I did in fact successfully carry out a search throughout this text, looking to find the thread of the subject at hand. I found it, but now it’s been a while…what in the world was it? Hang on, I’ll take a quick peek once again.
It’s no use. I’ll just continue with why the orb has limits, the second of which is mathematical. It’s not just a question of programming, it’s sheer massive passage of electrons through a gate that will only allow one electron to pass through at a time, as it were.
No matter how big the thing, it’s processing speed that makes a pleasant experience, and that’s why we’ve chosen to limit it and for no other mathematical reason. We know how far we can push the engine and where it starts to lag, and there’s no way we’re going to build lag into the game.
Third reason is experiential: it’s called Elissa’s Law.
This Immutable Law, discovered by my subway-commuting daughter Elissa, says that no game should take so long that you miss your station.
Take it as written that she’s referring to pad or smart phone games, not PC games.
I have begun to make all my iPhone and Android games something that can be played in a series of 3-minute segments. I’m a very experienced New Yorker; I know that there’s a built-in safety speed limit for all NYC Transit System trains, and they can’t have changed all that much, despite the 50 years since I rode them daily. Technology has improved the safety factor, but trains are trains, and they only run so fast.
Based on my calculations and a quick consultation at the present NYC Transit Authority map, I’d time the games from start to finish at 3 minutes, the exact time it takes to get from the 23rd Street IRT station to the 34th Street station, provided you’re standing in the right car, which would be the last car on the train, to get to the 33rd Street exit without passing through the entire station.
This is something a non-New Yorker just wouldn’t know, and might not comprehend. It matters which car you board. It matters how close you are to the car exit. It matters whether you have a pass or token. It all matters, and that’s why, all said & done, it is in fact all about the Hokey Pokey.
Oh, no. I’m not going to explain that one.
Some of my games run 30 or 60 seconds.
Some, such as the remedy orbs, might go on for hours. But none of them will go on for days.
With my farming orbs, this has all changed.
You can spend anywhere from a minute or two up to several months in an orb, preparing it, carrying, planting, growing, harvesting, buying, selling and transporting stuff.
Then, when you’ve got it just the way you want it, you can play the MOD you’ve just made.
And when it’s just exactly right, and you’ve play-tested it to make sure it’s right, you can invite friends in to play it with you.
If you prefer, you can have friends come in and tell you how they’d like it to be; you make the changes they indicate, or they can make their own and invite you to see their idea!!!
Here’s what you get in my farming orb paks:
You get a Prototype that I’ve made, showing my ideas on how the layout should look. You can play this anytime, and it never changes. All the alterations you make are entirely in your own mods. You can make as many mods as you like.
You get a MOD PAK orb and .ini file. You take on the role of the male or female “engie” and pick up, carry, place, rotate, position and otherwise alter the appearance and placement of any engie object, which is most of the objects in the orb.
In dungeons, forests, mineshafts, castles, moors, waterways and other dangerous areas, you get a selection of monsters that you can place around anywhere, in groups or alone.
What? You don’t want monsters in your game? Well, who told you to take them out of the Storage Room in the first place? Leave them there.
In dungeons, you’ll have all the supplies and equipment you need for the gentle sort of inquiry that one makes of dungeonesque inmates everywhere. We’ve met the industry standard for dungeon gear, and took last year’s Dungeon Decorator Award for Best Stretch Rack and our famous Captain Crunch Body Smasher. You get both and more in your Dungeon Pak!!!
You don’t ever have to leave your dungeon to get victims!
We supply a generous sampling of dungeon victims, and you can dupe (duplicate) as many of each type as you like, just as we do to populate Planet Earth!
Yessir, as a matter of fact, I’ve included an EXTRA TYPICALITY!!! This XType is definitely offworld, as offworld as they get. He’s my ET friend from Altair IV, which you’ll remember from Forbidden Planet unless you never read my Recommended Movie List. Put it in a link? No, you forget Gold’s Rule: “The First Initiation is to get up off your fat ass.”
There isn’t any other way to start a journey than to take the first step.
Download a farming orb now. That’d be a terrific First Step in this particular alchemical process. Problem is, you can’t.
I haven’t finished them yet.
Okay, okay, I hear ya. I’m on my way back to work on my farming orbs for the hour remaining before this morning’s workshop.
Dick is working very hard to get the Farming Effects into the engine for me, and as soon as he delivers the effects, we’ll have these available for download. They’ll make any other farming game look totally lame, epic fail and word.
I know, I used “word” wrong. So what do you expect? I’m not only from another century, this isn’t even my goddam planet, monkey boy! (* see previous footnote) And furthermore, I don’t care. Caaarrrre. (* footnote 2)
(* footnote 2: ref: “Start the Revolution Without Me”)
Tune in next time for my dissertation, Make Your Own Mohole For Fun & Profit.
What is a Mohole? I KNEW you’d ask me that! Look it up, Maggot! (* footnote 3)
(* footnote 3: ref: Armee’s Army)
You get to listen to some great music while you build. When you’re in “engie” mode, nothing can harm you, so you can carry and place zombies, mummies, rats, bats and gnats — well, giant African Fire Ants, really — and all manner of inquiry devices anywhere you like.
You can populate your dungeon or not, as you wish.
In the case of Dungeon Deep, it could take you anywhere from an hour to several weeks to get everything just right, depending on your level of skill.
How much skill is required?
To get started, none at all. Later, you’ll be pushing, grunting and shoving just to keep up.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby