Dreams Creator Early Access |OT| Hey Now, This Is What Dreams Are Made Of

[Rodelero]

What do you think about publishing works in progress? Currently I have tons of passages that will simply lead to endless falls. But I'd like to get some feedback on the game. I'm just worried that I lose my fifteen minutes of fame and then won't see people return to the finished version.

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To a large extent I think any approach to publishing right now is a shot in the dark. The discoverability is flawed and changeable. Before the discoverability changes last week, you pretty much only got attention via the Most Recent tab, which meant publishing as a WIP was practically the best way to go because updates gave you continual visibility. Since the update to how Recommended works, new projects can pick up a lot of attention quite quickly, but I don't think there's any real clarity around what dictates a game being recommended or not. It definitely doesn't seem all that meritacratic right now, with a lot of the things being recommended to me having a really low likes/plays ratio which seems a little odd.

If you want feedback on what you've got right now, you can always stick it up as a scene and try and find people to play it from here, Reddit, Twitter and so on.

 

[Roygbiv95]

- not currently. Possibly multiplayer online when it arrives will need it like other games. But browsing and downloading dreams - or uploading your own - doesn't need plus
- yes you can do that now
- current completely playable offline except obviously you can't download any new levels. Story mode we don't know yet but I'd guess they'd be playable offline
- hope but it's a very solid early access already

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Thanks bud! This game is/will continue to be amazing from the sound of it.

 

[Tawantabe]

Some times i get them with transparency so it's not always the number of things in the thermo.

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ok thanks.

I figured out the exclusive gate issue but i think i basically cheated it for now, used the active port to shut off a node before the counters that trigger animation.

Now i just spent some time figuring out how one does math, so i can do health reduction only to plug it into health amount and get nothing, plug it into health modifier and see the number is very high 100 thousand or something at 100 what the heck is the range of this health modifier, if i have it plugged into number display or get variable modifier im counting down from 100 by 10 as my result. I was thinking of not using their health modifier and trigger a destroyer but im not sure how to say when value reaches zero trigger.

Edit: figured out I was doing way to much, put the damage modifier on a timeline and that was all it needed >.<

Double edit: still think it's weird the values on the health modifier and health gadget. Trying to have variables to feed into the modifiers depending on what's going on, I have to divide the modifier variable by 25 to get it to a respectable range. But when I do this my floating damage numbers have to count up. Something on that side is making it count up. The enemy attack with no modifier just shows the flat attack number. Odd

Does anyone know what you'd start trying to do to order numbers greatest to least? I figured out getting the highest of all but I need someway to sort variables.

 

[Oneself]

For now i'm using that method but i'll need help if it's a problem in the level, to put music on top for exemple. Music will have to match the rythm anyway i guess but then for the whole game it would be boring maybe. I couldn't find a better way for now. Using notes crescendo is obviously worse for an eventual music on top. The thing is it has to be all the time in the level so it has to be audible all the time for the rythm, but also not annoying. I can still use an advice of course :p

For now i optimized it (it's super important that it unconsciously shows the player when the blue period ends)

Also i created my character for that future game. If i have that percussion based music, why not some vanillawarish setting! I understood some of the keyframe linked to animation phase o, i could make the jump more fluid by moving the hat!

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Looks really good! I have yet to work on audio in Dreams so I'm not sure what can or can't be done, but... what I'd normally do to avoid the music sync/overlap is soften the attack of a mid range sound that has a slow decay and use it forward then reversed for every color change.
Ahem.
Blue starts the normal sample
It then plays reversed making a build-up til
Red restarts the normal sample
Plays reversed building up to
Blue etc.
Try it with reverbed "windy" or "ice sounding" percussions / bells / synths to get that crystal feel. That is, if my explanations are understandable. -_-

 

[Rodelero]

ok thanks.

I figured out the exclusive gate issue but i think i basically cheated it for now, used the active port to shut off a node before the counters that trigger animation.

Now i just spent some time figuring out how one does math, so i can do health reduction only to plug it into health amount and get nothing, plug it into health modifier and see the number is very high 100 thousand or something at 100 what the heck is the range of this health modifier, if i have it plugged into number display or get variable modifier im counting down from 100 by 10 as my result. I was thinking of not using their health modifier and trigger a destroyer but im not sure how to say when value reaches zero trigger.

Edit: figured out I was doing way to much, put the damage modifier on a timeline and that was all it needed >.<

Double edit: still think it's weird the values on the health modifier and health gadget. Trying to have variables to feed into the modifiers depending on what's going on, I have to divide the modifier variable by 25 to get it to a respectable range. But when I do this my floating damage numbers have to count up. Something on that side is making it count up. The enemy attack with no modifier just shows the flat attack number. Odd

Click to shrink...

I've not really used the health gadgets, but I'd check the blending modes on your wire inputs. It's one of those subtle features that people tend not to realise exists until they get stung by it. If you have a tweaker open and hover over an input it will have a symbol on it, either a 0, an X or a gate (think it's an exor but not certain). The standard behaviour is the exor gate, where the wire entirely overwrites the input, but it's easy to accidentally change it to X, which is multiplicative, where the wire gets multiplied by the slider setting, or 0, which is blending where the inputs get averaged.

Does anyone know what you'd start trying to do to order numbers greatest to least? I figured out getting the highest of all but I need someway to sort variables.

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I'm not aware of a simple way to do this, and it doesn't look like anyone has shared a contraption for it either. How many things do you need to sort?

 

[Orioto]

Looks really good! I have yet to work on audio in Dreams so I'm not sure what can or can't be done, but... what I'd normally do to avoid the music sync/overlap is soften the attack of a mid range sound that has a slow decay and use it forward then reversed for every color change.
Ahem.
Blue starts the normal sample
It then plays reversed making a build-up til
Red restarts the normal sample
Plays reversed building up to
Blue etc.
Try it with reverbed "windy" or "ice sounding" percussions / bells / synths to get that crystal feel. That is, if my explanations are understandable. -_-

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Thx! Well i'll try to experiment with that, it's a little abstract right now :p

 

[travisbickle]

Anyone any ideas for double dragon style movement? Always side on to the camera while moving up and down the screen as it were.

 

[Rodelero]

Anyone any ideas for double dragon style movement? Always side on to the camera while moving up and down the screen as it were.

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I'd think you'd get that pretty easily by splitting the controller X/Y into an advanced mover's X & Z, no?

 

[burgervan]

Anyone know if there's a way to hide the imp completely while transitioning between scenes? It's not a big deal, but it always pops up for a second and makes a sound. It's annoying.

 

[Tawantabe]

I've not really used the health gadgets, but I'd check the blending modes on your wire inputs. It's one of those subtle features that people tend not to realise exists until they get stung by it. If you have a tweaker open and hover over an input it will have a symbol on it, either a 0, an X or a gate (think it's an exor but not certain). The standard behaviour is the exor gate, where the wire entirely overwrites the input, but it's easy to accidentally change it to X, which is multiplicative, where the wire gets multiplied by the slider setting, or 0, which is blending where the inputs get averaged.



I'm not aware of a simple way to do this, and it doesn't look like anyone has shared a contraption for it either. How many things do you need to sort?

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Thank you, had no idea about the wire blend I'll check for it. Trying to sort 3 to 6 things for now.

 

[Rodelero]

Thank you, had no idea about the wire blend I'll check for it. Trying to sort 3 to 6 things for now.

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To be honest, thinking more about it, I'm struggling to think of any approach that isn't going to be either really messy (even for a relatively small number of elements) or pretty complex.

The messy approach would be to wire every pair into a less than/greater than calculator, and then count for each element how many elements are less/greater than it, which effectively gives you the rank. For six elements that's a lot of calculators and wires, but I think it would work. The more general and scalable approach would involve a physical system, where you store the data you want to sort on chips on small objects. The objects would then swap themselves based on comparisons, and you'd get a result after a few frames.

Maybe someone will come up with something better, but frankly sorting is a tricky fit with the way the logic works in Dreams. Would be nice to have a gadget for this really, but that would presumably be limited to only a small number of inputs.

 

[Tawantabe]

To be honest, thinking more about it, I'm struggling to think of any approach that isn't going to be either really messy (even for a relatively small number of elements) or pretty complex.

The messy approach would be to wire every pair into a less than/greater than calculator, and then count for each element how many elements are less/greater than it, which effectively gives you the rank. For six elements that's a lot of calculators and wires, but I think it would work. The more general and scalable approach would involve a physical system, where you store the data you want to sort on chips on small objects. The objects would then swap themselves based on comparisons, and you'd get a result after a few frames.

Maybe someone will come up with something better, but frankly sorting is a tricky fit with the way the logic works in Dreams. Would be nice to have a gadget for this really, but that would presumably be limited to only a small number of inputs.

Click to shrink...

Ok thank you for pondering on it. So mayyyybee like a physical hill height representing the stat with a bunch of rays telling me the highest hill or something might be easier than sorting the numbers? Even if i find the rank of the numbers i still dont get how id tell the logic to order them. A gadget would be nice even limited I could just start grouping numbers or work around it somehow.

 

[WillyGubbins]

Maybe someone will come up with something better, but frankly sorting is a tricky fit with the way the logic works in Dreams. Would be nice to have a gadget for this really, but that would presumably be limited to only a small number of inputs.

Click to shrink...

Some of the MM folk have been talking on Twitter recently about potentially adding list/array/hash table gadgets or similar.

 

[MrKlaw]

Some of the MM folk have been talking on Twitter recently about potentially adding list/array/hash table gadgets or similar.

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Simple angles and trig functions would be good too

 

[Pikelet]

Anyone know if there's a way to hide the imp completely while transitioning between scenes? It's not a big deal, but it always pops up for a second and makes a sound. It's annoying.

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I think that there's a setting in the tweak menu of the camera gadget that says 'Hide Imp'.

 

[burgervan]

I think that there's a setting in the tweak menu of the camera gadget that says 'Hide Imp'.

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Yeah but it doesn't seem to work when transitioning between scenes. It's a very minor annoyance but I was hoping there was a way to avoid it.

 

[Orioto]

Question time folks.
Collisions are really confusing to me and i could use some enlightenment.

So.. in your puppet, you have different things.
_You have the collider you see in the corresponding page of its settings, that appears like a white spherical shape. You can change its size.
_Then you have the physical settings of each part of your model, that are active or not.
_Then you have some sort of mysterious other thing i guess, cause...

When i deactivate all sculpt of the model collision, and the puppet collider is really small.. well my character will still bump on things, based on its actual model shape. Also remeber i had a problem cause i wanted the hitbox (so it should be the puppet setting collision) to be smaller but i was clearly dying when the surface of my character head was touching the obstacle..

Also i had some sort of crazy problem (bug ?) when doing my pickup/killing object (two objects). I used the killing obstacles logic i had but for some reason it wasn't killig the character, and i could'n't see what was different, so i tried making just a cube alone and add the danger logic from MM, and it was working, with the same logic.. I couldn't undestand why, then i made an other one exactly the same, but this one wasn't killing my character, same sculpt, same settings.. WTF..

And now my switching pick up works but i realized the red part will kill you sometimes, and sometimes not.. And for exemple when it doesn't kill you the hat of my character touches it, when it shouldn't be a collision at all (not the actual hat model, nor the puppet collider..)

This is a real mess honestly..

 

[FloatingDivider]

Some of the MM folk have been talking on Twitter recently about potentially adding list/array/hash table gadgets or similar.

Click to shrink...

This is 100% a must they need to add lists and arrays because doing the wire spaghetti to hack together that functionality is 0.00% fun. I tried a while ago and it felt like I was dickpunching myself with wirespaghetti before giving up. It seems like such a vital function to most game development too that I thought it's absence during early access was weird to say the least.

 

[Rodelero]

This is 100% a must they need to add lists and arrays because doing the wire spaghetti to hack together that functionality is 0.00% fun. I tried a while ago and it felt like I was dickpunching myself with wirespaghetti before giving up. It seems like such a vital function to most game development too that I thought it's absence during early access was weird to say the least.

Click to shrink...

As much as I want to see them add such gadgets, I don't think it's that weird because they're a fundamentally tricky fit with the way that the logic works in the game in general. Even if we had, say, an array gadget, operating it wouldn't necessarily be that trivial. Sorting is quite a good example of something you'd want to be able to do with an array... but even if you had an array gadget sorting it would be extremely complex and there would be no efficient scalable way to do it. So then you'd probably have to have some way of sorting the array automatically, which is easy enough if it's a list of single values, but the power of a sorted array is hugely limited if you can't store pairs in some way that allows you to determine what index refers to what thing, at which point it's no longer obvious how to sort. At a certain point it might be cleaner to facilitate some amount of scripting, but that would be a huge change.

I think it's a bit of a rabbit hole in all honesty, but it's not like adding trigonometry functions where it's obvious how and bizarre that it's not there... it makes sense and it will be hard to get right.

 

[chainlinkspiral]

Did a bunch of weekend sculpture scrumming. A few of the oddities.

 

[EssBeeVee]

the details on the rope on both are really good.

 

[Host Samurai]

I impulse bought this Saturday night when I was really high and in a focused creative mood. So far, I am enjoying it and going through the tutorials, but the motion controls are getting in the way. I wish there was a way to just staple the thing or another option to just have a Photoshop type option (would be perfect for 2D style dreams).

 

[Graefellsom]

Heres a collection of what I've been working on, had a little bit of burnout recently and my mind is blank when trying to do things. Such great software.

 

[burgervan]

the details on the rope on both are really good.

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The first one is fantastic, but the second one is just on another level. That's gotta be a John Beech.

 

[Honome]

Heres a collection of what I've been working on, had a little bit of burnout recently and my mind is blank when trying to do things. Such great software.

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Those are very good! Did you already release them to be played or is still finishing things up? I would love to play them.

Keep up the good work.

 

[Graefellsom]

Those are very good! Did you already release them to be played or is still finishing things up? I would love to play them.

Keep up the good work.

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Thank you! They can all be played. I'll hopefully add new levels to all of them soon and do QOL updates as well. My username on psn/dreams is idonthaveorgans

 

[George c]

So, how do I create a new instrument or animation from scratch? When I go Main menu>Dream Shaping>my creations>start fresh, Instruments are missing as well as animations.

 

[Orioto]

Question time folks.
Collisions are really confusing to me and i could use some enlightenment.

So.. in your puppet, you have different things.
_You have the collider you see in the corresponding page of its settings, that appears like a white spherical shape. You can change its size.
_Then you have the physical settings of each part of your model, that are active or not.
_Then you have some sort of mysterious other thing i guess, cause...

When i deactivate all sculpt of the model collision, and the puppet collider is really small.. well my character will still bump on things, based on its actual model shape. Also remeber i had a problem cause i wanted the hitbox (so it should be the puppet setting collision) to be smaller but i was clearly dying when the surface of my character head was touching the obstacle..

Also i had some sort of crazy problem (bug ?) when doing my pickup/killing object (two objects). I used the killing obstacles logic i had but for some reason it wasn't killig the character, and i could'n't see what was different, so i tried making just a cube alone and add the danger logic from MM, and it was working, with the same logic.. I couldn't undestand why, then i made an other one exactly the same, but this one wasn't killing my character, same sculpt, same settings.. WTF..

And now my switching pick up works but i realized the red part will kill you sometimes, and sometimes not.. And for exemple when it doesn't kill you the hat of my character touches it, when it shouldn't be a collision at all (not the actual hat model, nor the puppet collider..)

This is a real mess honestly..

Click to shrink...

Anyone :( ? i think that's an important matter, but maybe i'm the only one having those problems i don't know.

 

[Honome]

Thank you! They can all be played. I'll hopefully add new levels to all of them soon and do QOL updates as well. My username on psn/dreams is idonthaveorgans

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Nice, gonna play your levels tonight.

 

[Graefellsom]

Anyone :( ? i think that's an important matter, but maybe i'm the only one having those problems i don't know.

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Re: the not killing your your character I had a similar problem with the puppet not vanishing until I moved the destroy gizmo to the most outside layer of the puppet (i don't put that in the microchip). I'm sure I'm not doing it in the best way tho.

For the collision stuff maybe try tags?

 

[MikeProtagonist]

Anyone any ideas for double dragon style movement? Always side on to the camera while moving up and down the screen as it were.

Click to shrink...

Pretty simple. You can place the camera far away and then zoom it in until you achieve the isometric look. I haven't tried myself but you can also make the camera follow the character but not turn, probably using a gyro. Check out any 2D platformer tutorial and then just tilt the camera a bit from there.

Movement can be done with just the stick (it adjusts to the perspective based on the camera), but if you want a real digital control you could just read the d-pad directions and assign each to a simple mover.

 

[Orioto]

Re: the not killing your your character I had a similar problem with the puppet not vanishing until I moved the destroy gizmo to the most outside layer of the puppet (i don't put that in the microchip). I'm sure I'm not doing it in the best way tho.

For the collision stuff maybe try tags?

Click to shrink...

I have no clue what tags do regarding collisions

 

[Jump_Button]

Getting More use to Tool now i feel like i know the how far i can push and keep cost down

 

[Rodelero]

I have no clue what tags do regarding collisions

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I suspect they mean labels.

 

[Pikelet]

To be honest, thinking more about it, I'm struggling to think of any approach that isn't going to be either really messy (even for a relatively small number of elements) or pretty complex.

The messy approach would be to wire every pair into a less than/greater than calculator, and then count for each element how many elements are less/greater than it, which effectively gives you the rank. For six elements that's a lot of calculators and wires, but I think it would work. The more general and scalable approach would involve a physical system, where you store the data you want to sort on chips on small objects. The objects would then swap themselves based on comparisons, and you'd get a result after a few frames.

Maybe someone will come up with something better, but frankly sorting is a tricky fit with the way the logic works in Dreams. Would be nice to have a gadget for this really, but that would presumably be limited to only a small number of inputs.

Click to shrink...

Ok thank you for pondering on it. So mayyyybee like a physical hill height representing the stat with a bunch of rays telling me the highest hill or something might be easier than sorting the numbers? Even if i find the rank of the numbers i still dont get how id tell the logic to order them. A gadget would be nice even limited I could just start grouping numbers or work around it somehow.

Click to shrink...

So for no real reason, last night I went ahead and made the gadget that Rodelero has described: https://indreams.me/element/oqhXeqsFhtj

The gadget basically accepts up to 6 input numbers, and then outputs the rank value of each of those numbers.

I don't have a CompSci degree or anything, but it seems to work alright to me. It's about 2% gameplay logic thermo, but there are definitely some optimizations that could be done if it were necessary - for the sake of making it simpler for me to build there are a lot of redundant calculations.

The next step might be to create another separate gadget that accepts inputs AND rank values (e.g. total of 12 inputs) and returns the actual input values in the order of highest to lowest. Someone smarter than me could probably figure out how to do this really easily, but at the moment I'm drawing a bit of a blank on the best way to achieve it.

Hope you find it useful, but if you don't then it was at least a fun puzzle for me to do anyway :)

 

[Mahonay]

Hong Kong (Day/Night) might be the most impressive thing I've seen on Dreams so far for a city. Just an insane level of polish and detail.

 

[BitterFig]

Pikelet I remixed your element and made a sorting microchip that returns the sorted list. I ended up not using the rank as a I had in mind a modular way to do the sorting that could be implemented without too many wires. But for sorting 8 values it takes 8% of gameplay thermometer so maybe it was not the wisest decision hahaha.

Here is the microchip
https://indreams.me/element/oetLfrNtEav

Getting More use to Tool now i feel like i know the how far i can push and keep cost down

Click to shrink...

This looks lovely!

EDIT: alright, I made a less elegant but more efficient version. It now takes 5% thermo to sort 8 values, 3% for 6 values and 1% for 3 values. All 3 version versions are in here https://indreams.me/element/oPPwYGiuzXo

 

[Pikelet]

Pikelet I remixed your element and made a sorting microchip that returns the sorted list. I ended up not using the rank as a I had in mind a modular way to do the sorting that could be implemented without too many wires. But for sorting 8 values it takes 8% of gameplay thermometer so maybe it was not the wisest decision hahaha.

Here is the microchip
https://indreams.me/element/oetLfrNtEav

Click to shrink...

Awesome! I'll check it out later, I'm really interested to see how you've done it

 

[Tawantabe]

So for no real reason, last night I went ahead and made the gadget that Rodelero has described: https://indreams.me/element/oqhXeqsFhtj

The gadget basically accepts up to 6 input numbers, and then outputs the rank value of each of those numbers.

I don't have a CompSci degree or anything, but it seems to work alright to me. It's about 2% gameplay logic thermo, but there are definitely some optimizations that could be done if it were necessary - for the sake of making it simpler for me to build there are a lot of redundant calculations.

The next step might be to create another separate gadget that accepts inputs AND rank values (e.g. total of 12 inputs) and returns the actual input values in the order of highest to lowest. Someone smarter than me could probably figure out how to do this really easily, but at the moment I'm drawing a bit of a blank on the best way to achieve it.

Hope you find it useful, but if you don't then it was at least a fun puzzle for me to do anyway :)

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Wow thanks for doing that, it will indeed help. I think with just the rank I can cobble some logic together to go through them. You did it way faster than my physical logic solution too!

Oh crap i didnt see your post BitterFig this is perfect. thank you!

 

[bushmonkey]

Wait... you can use move controllers as a control method in your games? Is this in the current version or is this a tease for a future update?

 

[Skies]

Any suggestions on how to make a dream where the order of game scene progression is randomized? Game scene 1 would have equal opportunity to lead to game scene 20 as it does game scene 2.

 

[burgervan]

Any suggestions on how to make a dream where the order of game scene progression is randomized? Game scene 1 would have equal opportunity to lead to game scene 20 as it does game scene 2.

Click to shrink...

A randomizer wired to multiple exits should work.

 

[Graefellsom]

Here's a button order puzzle if anyone wants to use it.. woke up one morning and realized how to do it, it's fairly simple but I felt proud of myself anyway.. i'm sure it can be optimised further https://indreams.me/element/oGnSTTSxcdU

 

[EssBeeVee]

Wait... you can use move controllers as a control method in your games? Is this in the current version or is this a tease for a future update?

Click to shrink...

It's been there.

 

[bushmonkey]

It's been there.

Click to shrink...

I'm gonna need to try it out when I get home. Does it just use to gyroscope sensor on the controller logic? There's no actual "PS move" settings in the controller tweaks is there?

 

[Skies]

A randomizer wired to multiple exits should work.

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Lol I wasn't even aware you could even link a randomizer to different doors. So simple. Thanks!

 

[Rodelero]

I'm gonna need to try it out when I get home. Does it just use to gyroscope sensor on the controller logic? There's no actual "PS move" settings in the controller tweaks is there?

Click to shrink...

Yeah I'm fairly sure you'd just use the same motion sensor as you would with a dualshock. There's a lightsaber move test out there, not sure if it's a dream or a scene.

 

[Graefellsom]

I suspect they mean labels.

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Ah yes, thank you for correcting me!

Weirdly I had no trouble making a 3 button puzzle but I can't wrap my head around adding a 4th.. I think I might just be too tired

 

[EssBeeVee]

stream starts in an hour. Guest is @yosp

 

[EssBeeVee]

kareem, shu, abbie, and jon for today's jam stream.