We Dreamers by stevejohnson

[raw]
made by stevejohnson for LD26 (COMPO)
This is an abstract multiplayer art piece. The game works as intended in Chrome, Firefox, and IE 10 (maybe 9 too). It should still play acceptably in Safari (though not as prettily). I plan to do a more in-depth postmortem and visualization of the resulting content in the next couple of weeks, so send me an email (steve+ld@steveasleep.com) if you'd like me to send you a note when that happens.

Things you can do:

1. Move with the arrow keys or WASD.
2. Harvest color with space.
3. Dig out new rooms by bumping into walls. You need color to do this. The new room will be the color of your dot, which is affected by the color in your bucket.
4. Dump color with r, g, and b (or 1, 2, and 3) to change the color of your dot.
5. Leave notes on rooms (if you are level 2).
6. Put down big block letters (if you are level 3).

Watch the sidebar for how to level up.

Enjoy yourself...and be at peace.

FYI: When the world gets big, it looks pretty cool to zoom your browser out. As the world gets bigger, the game will take longer to load. I've provided a version with about 20% of the data (only the interesting stuff) in case you're having a hard time loading or running it. (There are NO code changes in that version, only less user data.)

Read my journal for technical info.

Ratings

Coolness 76% 2
Overall 3.51 238
Audio 2.85 464
Fun 2.75 769
Graphics 2.92 650
Humor 2.23 549
Innovation 4.38 6
Mood 3.36 210
Theme 3.60 492

Feedback

Rongon
28. Apr 2013 路 22:34 UTC
Really nice idea, and implementation is JavaScript at its finest :)
I like creating own world games (even better if colorful), but is there a victory condition, or limit to digging?
馃帳 stevejohnson
29. Apr 2013 路 02:12 UTC
The only limit to digging is...your imagination! Victory is just unnecessary clutter. Minimal is best. :-D

(Thanks for playing!)
karsyf
29. Apr 2013 路 06:28 UTC
Interesting, I didn't know what I was doing but I felt chilled out =D Had to use 2 different nicks because IE9 didn't work and moving to Chrome wouldn't let me use the previous one.
Deadlyapps
29. Apr 2013 路 06:32 UTC
Awesome stuff. Really impressive technical aspect.
swizzcheez
29. Apr 2013 路 06:33 UTC
Nice bit of minimalist brain rot. Have some upstars.
evelyn-jolli
29. Apr 2013 路 06:40 UTC
this is a good gam
wrongcoder
29. Apr 2013 路 06:45 UTC
Neat. Quite unique. Technologically a marvel for the available time. To be honest, though, I don't get the purpose of it.
StuStutheBloo
29. Apr 2013 路 06:47 UTC
WrongCoder I left you a bunch of messages in rooms but you didn't reply :(

This was fantastic. How did you even put this together in the time available?
PsenFilip
29. Apr 2013 路 12:25 UTC
I really enjoyed my play session. Had a good time reading all kind of different messages and just messing around.
I love the collaborative stuff and the openness. Art is cool and the sound is charming. It is also a nice piece of tech.
Legogris
29. Apr 2013 路 14:09 UTC
Cool stuff with Firebase!
I have just started checking out BaaSes myself and this just reinforces my idea of just how fast you can get up and running to prototype new concepts. Haven't seen Bacon.js before, looks interesting. Would be nice to see some more in-depth post-mortem on this :)
semi
29. Apr 2013 路 14:41 UTC
Ooh, collaborative art! I liked the idea and of course took the liberty of leaving my mark on the world. Makes me happy! Thanks!
馃帳 stevejohnson
29. Apr 2013 路 21:04 UTC
I really appreciate all your comments. Glad it makes a positive impression. I'll try to do a more in-depth postmortem and data visualization in the next couple of weeks. Send me an email (see game description) if you want to be notified when that happens.
nintendoeats
30. Apr 2013 路 05:25 UTC
That's a neat thing! I actually don't have anything intellectual to say about it. I'm sorry Steve, I was wrong. I shouldn't have shouted.

It might be cool to make a way for people to have a local version of this for their own social group. I don't know what that would achieve, it just seems like it would work somehow.
BlennosoftGames
30. Apr 2013 路 05:26 UTC
There is something very cheerful about this game. As far as I can tell you don't "win" you just smile :)
馃帳 stevejohnson
30. Apr 2013 路 05:58 UTC
Mac users may have to run with "arch -i386 python poke.py", possibly using the Python from python.org (not the system Python, which is only 64-bit). Alternatively, you could try distributing with pyglet 1.2alpha.

Anyway, I was thoroughly entertained. :-D
馃帳 stevejohnson
30. Apr 2013 路 05:58 UTC
Oh jeez, I meant to leave that comment on another game.
Prelucid
30. Apr 2013 路 07:02 UTC
Interesting.
SuperlevelSebastian
30. Apr 2013 路 11:15 UTC
It seems that it's offline? Stays a white screen here.
elbowroom
30. Apr 2013 路 13:06 UTC
Currently stays a white screen for me as well.
馃帳 stevejohnson
30. Apr 2013 路 21:07 UTC
Hmm, seems to still be up for me. Browser details would be helpful.
stqn
02. May 2013 路 01:44 UTC
Original. The scrolling was really slow in Firefox 20 (Linux / Intel hd graphics).
cardboard
02. May 2013 路 01:55 UTC
I love open-ended and creative games! I had fun just wandering around reading everyone else's notes. I might have to come back later to do some more exploring ;)
CherryNukaCola
02. May 2013 路 11:32 UTC
Wow, beautiful. Defies definition. Thank you!
Hegemege
02. May 2013 路 17:38 UTC
Fun! Felt a bit like geocaching :P
gerritg
02. May 2013 路 20:41 UTC
Now that's a fun guestbook :D
馃帳 stevejohnson
05. May 2013 路 04:00 UTC
Details and postmortem are here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2013/05/04/how-i-made-a-realtime-multiplayer-art-piece-in-48-hours-and-how-it-turned-out/
hughsk
05. May 2013 路 05:16 UTC
Really interesting, great to see an entry like this :)
SnoringFrog
05. May 2013 路 05:21 UTC
This is beautiful. Found some really awesome messages, had fun following a huge tunnel dug by Lies, and then spent some time extending it even further myself. Tried to make sure to leave some inspiration bits around too. Amazing stuff, I love it.
TenTonToon
05. May 2013 路 06:03 UTC
As someone else pointed out, this is an awesomely artsy guestbook. A very neat idea, and a technical prowess for the time constraints, that shows you've got some deadly programming chops.

All in all, a nice collaborative experience, very fitting of the theme. I'm just not too much into games without any gameplay to them - yeah, the ages old debate about games as art :)

Congratulations! :)
caranha
05. May 2013 路 13:27 UTC
That is a very interesting entry, and I loved the technical details.

I think it would be kind of cool if there was some sort of "decay", so that after a few days, some of the painted cells would go white and then fill again - as to keep the instalation fresh.

Also, having some sort of minimap or full view mode would be really great. (The browser's native zoom doesn't go very far...)

Thanks for the game!
shiprib
06. May 2013 路 08:03 UTC
Great original idea, and congrats on getting it done in the timeframe!
Chronodrax
08. May 2013 路 01:12 UTC
I just had the most interesting conversation with a wall, containing soul fragments of past dreamers.
It's like a dream: you cannot predict what you will find, but you'll always walk on the path of an interesting weird journey.
THANK YOU stevejohnson.

Oh. And too bad that the sound reacts sometimes badly when travelling to many successive tiles of various colors. It makes it hard to create music :D
pvwradtke
08. May 2013 路 03:27 UTC
Took me a while to find out how to fig rooms. After that, things went a bit better :). Nice experiment you got there, liked the idea of interacting with the world and seeing what others left there before.
galman
09. May 2013 路 09:26 UTC
Great concept! I really like it, I'll be happy to see what happen with this game a month from now ;)
atraxgames
14. May 2013 路 21:53 UTC
So this is a unique world for all players? Like an artistic MMO? This is extra-cool, a piece of art made by people around the world
evilDan
15. May 2013 路 01:27 UTC
Damn dude! That is clever - took quite a while to figure out the controls though. Impressive overall!