The second image of the spiritual is very close to I myself pictured them. Only real major change would be to loose the long neck as it makes them look a bit deformed. Other then that very good work.

Quote:

You shall be judged by 'love' and love alone.

Well, that was part of the ending though. The Techno race originally designed the test, assuming that the Cryos will be able to uphold their ideals if they are good. But the dreamworld gets turned upside down by the conspiracy theories of Cryos. But is doubt really evil? What about mistrust, jealousy, selfishness? Are they necessarily evil? What about love? Is love always good? And I am not talking about obsession, but the pure form of true love. What if love is the very reason of mistrust, jealousy and selfishness? Anyway, the dreamworld turned out to dive down to hell. What do you think she did? The simple definitions of good and evil is the reason why the test fails. But from the test, Crystal showed a valuable human nature that surpassed good and evil. Evil is not the absence of good in my opinion, there are stuff in between that are neither good nor evil. And the plot gets to the concept where assigning good or evil is not an easy process either, in addition to the fuzzy definitions of good and evil.

Quote:

My definition of love is giving of yourself without expecting anything in return

But how do you decide what to give, how to give, how much to give, or to whom to give? Is it love if you give blindly? Can there still be love if you choose to not give?

but why so superficial and cliche you would ask.

aww i can't see your pics.

What kinds of conflicts you guys have in mind? What kind of topic you guys want the player to think about even after the game?

:( I can't see those pics either, and I really want to, since I'm a concept artist and I want to help design what the races look like.

Me, I was imagining the spiritual race would look someting like this: Human with feathered wings, rat tail, and claws
Or maybe this: Human with feathered wings, lion tail, claws, tufted ears, and fangs
Or this: Human with dragon wings, spade-tipped tail, claws, and funky hair

(Not those are just old sketches I have that I woulduse as a starting point, not drawings that I did with the spiritual race particularly in mind.

For the techno race otoh I would want a kind of geisha/gothic/cyberpunk look, probably with lots of tattoos; exoskeletons, mechanical wings, pupil-less eyes (not literally, this is a manga drawing technique), that sort of thing. So the spiritual race looks warm and organic while the techno race looks cool and a little mechanical. But make it clear that they aren't robots or androids or anything.



About theplot/themes - it's okay if we disagree a little because each of us can write different scenes and endings, although we do all have to agree on how the game should begin. To answer Estok's qestion, the kind of conflcts I want to write about are personal, psychological, maybe a little bit political. As I said before, I want to write the minor villain. I think we should have an equal number of major characters of each race and gender, and then maybe a human of each gender, but one of them would be the player and one the sidekick. So:

Major Villain: Female Spiritual
Minor Villain: Male Techno (Skew! :) )

PC: Human (gender of player's choice)
Sidekick: Human (other gender)

Other roles:
Spiritual Male
Spiritual Female
Techno Male
Techno Female


Anybody have a different idea? If not, feel free to call dibs on creating a character (not the PC).

Quote:

Original post by Estok But the dreamworld gets turned upside down by the conspiracy theories of Cryos. But is doubt really evil? What about mistrust, jealousy, selfishness? Are they necessarily evil? What about love? Is love always good? And I am not talking about obsession, but the pure form of true love. What if love is the very reason of mistrust, jealousy and selfishness? ... Evil is not the absence of good in my opinion, there are stuff in between that are neither good nor evil. ... Quote: My definition of love is giving of yourself without expecting anything in return But how do you decide what to give, how to give, how much to give, or to whom to give? Is it love if you give blindly? Can there still be love if you choose to not give?...

Ok, wait a minute I'm not sure what you mean by dreamworld. Is this whole game going to be a dream or are you going to have the Techno race create a dreamworld as a means of studying the humans before they attempt to awaken them?

Doubt is not evil...it is simply a means of searching for the truth a truth that noone can fully understand although they may seem like they do...You may agree with many different versions of what people think is true but you can never narrow it down to specific forms of truth. All we know is that we're alive here and now and this world is all we know.

Mistrust, Jealousy, and selfishness...are evil there are not good. See if you think of good and evil in terms of truth and falsehood then good is truth and evil is falsehood, something that is false simply is not the truth therefore the absence of any truth, thus evil is the absence of good, much like darkness is the absence of light and cold is the absence of heat, there really is no physical cold, when you feel cold your feeling the heat being taken from your body and put into other matter around you. And when you ask, "is love always good?" your now taking good and replacing it with evil. But therefore there is a line but if you don't know good from evil you would try to make this argument. As far as there being a middle way inbetween good and evil there is none. In everyday life you are confronted by different levels of good and evil your job is to discern between those levels of good and evil. But being human and finite you don't really know the outcome of your actions therefore you sometimes cannot see the distinction.

And about deciding what to give how to give and to whom to give it to. You cannot possible know the best ways in which to give but you must decide from your morals which is best. You should give with your whole heart, mind, and soul. And since you are an imperfect being, humans are at the natural base animals, even with the ability to make decisions we are imperfect therefore we cannot do it on our own. And "can there still be love if you choose not to give?" If you choose not to give then there is only selfishness and because there is no substance within you but your 'will' and soul then you are alone...simply alone.

There is way too much to explain but as I will be able to write for the spirituals if everyone agrees I will attempt to explain in a different way.

As far as the pictures go I think you can't see them cause I'm using tripod to post them and they aren't the best web host so I probably ran out of my bandwidth quota. Anh! Don't know what to tell ya other than wait and trying again. They show up whenever I load the page so I dunno.

That last post was me....

:D
couldn't ya tell

I think that the techno race should be 'Asexual' so that there isn't any distinction between male and female but they are still cabable of showing affection, trust, relationships, etc...

Quote:

Original post by 5MinuteGaming I think that the techno race should be 'Asexual' so that there isn't any distinction between male and female but they are still cabable of showing affection, trust, relationships, etc...

Ooh, I like that idea. How about: the spiritual race can be dualistic - they can be all about the balance of opposites and symbolism, like male and female, hot and cold, etc., while the techno race can be all about moderation and functionality - androgyny, room temperature, blurred lines and grey areas?

Quote:

5minutegaming Ok, wait a minute I'm not sure what you mean by dreamworld. Is this whole game going to be a dream or are you going to have the Techno race create a dreamworld as a means of studying the humans before they attempt to awaken them?

The second. The dreamworld is a test space, constructed initially according to the ideals of the Cryos. The dreamworld reflects the collective subconscious believes of the Cryos. Cryos think that the world is as real as it is, and their doubts about their own ideals turn into conspiracy theories, which turn into self-fullfilling prophecies, turning the dreamworld into a nightmare, seeming manifesting human instinct desires for chaos. According to design of the test, this outcome indicates that human are evil at heart. The question is why isn't the test valid. Why the outcome still suggest that human is "good" so to speak.

In my opinion we need to slow down on the drawings and stuff. The game story is supposed to present a conflict, an idea or a meaning. Everything in the story are metaphores and vehicles to express the underlying idea. So while you guys think of the details about the characters, we also need to think about the central idea, of what we are trying to tell from the story. I know that the top and bottom designs affect each other, but I think that we are lagging on the top-down developments.

As of now the settings do not make much sense yet. We haven't answered why the human are in cryos, why there are two races, why they evolved to be so, and why they evolved separately. When you say that the races "evolved" do you simply mean change and advanced? Or do you actually mean by the processes of evolution? And why do we want these races in the story? What is their significances, what do they represent? How do they help convey the idea of the story?

Quote:

Propsed Endings So Far: -Main Character (who the user is playing) decides to stay with either the Technos or Spritual races on 'New Earth' -Same as the above except falls in love -Decides to seek out the last remnants of similar humans -Main Character Dies from a cryo disease

Are the spiritual and techno races assimilating? Why is it significant to choose to stay with one race or the other? What ideas or conflict are we trying to protrait through the love story? What are the alternatives choices to seeking out other humans (why would they not want to do that?, Any cost associated with it?)? What does a cryo disease death convey, what is the signficance of this death (a predicted death most likely) with respect to the theme?

[Edited by - Estok on September 4, 2004 6:15:57 PM]

How about:

A natural disaster striked earth, and the human must leave to find a new planet to live. The analogy is you knowing that your hard drive is going to crash, but you only have a floppy disk to backup what you want before it will crash. So the floppy disk flew to a new planet, and established itself there, and started a new earth. It turned out most of the stuffs contained in the backup were technology and science stuffs, which allowed the survivors continue advance and adapt (not by evolution). So many years later, the new humans had changed into the Techno race, a biometallic, android-like, highly adaptive and rational (or even too rational) beings that has a genetic signature that is no longer DNA.

There are other colonies that that Techno developed. There may be peace or conflicts among them, but that is not important. What is important is that most of them no longer give a damn what they left on earth, most believe that the floppy disk contained the best and most important informations about the former human race. There are more important things to deal with anyway, why bother? Nonetheless, an archeologist team was set out to return to earth.

Most of the findings of the team only verified the information already on the disk. The team recovered a genetic library (or body fragments or cryo-frozen human), and revived them. The revived humans, Cryos, had varying reactions to the situation. Some were glad to be revived, curious about the new world, and those that had regrets in their past lives and were ready to start anew; while some were gloomy, dwelling on their past lives, or thinking how they were the useless bunch that were left behind to die on earth. At this point, the Techno gave the Cryos the options to rebuild on earth, or to be transformed into Techno to follow the team back to the Techno worlds far far away.

But then there is Crystal, the cryo female, who remembered something else. The former earth didn't end exactly the way Techno infered. She could remember, ... that there was a second floppy disk, containing of the spirits of the human race that never left earth.

Concept arts for Techno
Civilian - asexual/male/female, no armor, minimum cyborgization.
Dark Crescent Commando - minimum armor and minimum cyborgization; derived from: Predator, Protoss Zealot.
Frost Electra - minimum exoskeleton, medium cyborgization; derived from Medusa, DBZ Cell, Piccolo.
Hoplite - heavy armor, maximum cyborgization; derived from Evangelion, Phantasy Star Online.

[Edited by - Estok on September 6, 2004 12:33:01 AM]

Quote:

Original post by Estok So the idea is that human were able to colonize on other planets, and one of those colony evolved into Spiritual and the other evolved into Techno. After many years the two races came back to earth and at the same time uncovered their common ancestor. What do you think should happen the first time Spirituals and Technos meet? What should happen when they discovered that they were from the same origin? How would you, the Cryo, think about the situation? Is this an analogy of seeing your own children grown up? What theme can you get out of the situation?

I was reading back through this thread trying to sum everything up and update the design doc (difficult because there is a lot of material here and no clear consensus about what we want to do...) and anyway, I couldn't answer this question when Estok first wroteit, but I have an answer now: not children but cousins! Have you ever read one of those children's books about a group of cousins living in a house without any adults, trying to maintain the household (particularly its nurturing environment) but making childish mistakes in their attempts and getting overwhelmed at times because they just aren't wise and mature and experienced. Or think about highschool reunions - when you're in high school your friends are similar to you and you know them well, but then you all go off to college, and when you see them again ten years later you may all seem completely 'alien' to each other, and have to re-discover that you're still friends and have essential commonalities.

[Edit]
Oh sorry, forgot - Also, I think each of our three races should have a different type of names: the humans should have 'real' names like Jaqsin (Jackson), the spirituals should have meaningful names like Sasafrass, and the Technos should have euphonic names like Vyella.