Dream: Yard Sale

It seemed as though stealing was ok; provided you weren't caught in the act, you were nearly home free. At one point I had stolen a nice car. It was a black sports car that could move. I traveled along roads that seemed to match the layout of Holly, but with far more traffic than Holly has during rush hour—which is three cars in a row. I was pulling moves off that would normally be cutting off traffic, but no one ever honked at me in anger. At one point, while driving on the far north side of town where traffic was sparse, I saw a garage sale, and stop. I'm rather surprised that the vehicle was able to stop in such a short period of time, given my speed.

At a garage sale, I began looking though what the person has to sell. By now, I've browsed though to their front porch. The owner of the sale is still in their house. I give a hello and ask if there is any more inside. She says yes, to which my friend enters the house (no idea who they are or where the came from, just that they are my friend). The lady makes a comment about how she was too lazy to move everything out or into grandpa's old shed. I chuckle at this, as a lot of work has already been done, for just the outside alone makes for a large sale.

I'm left looking though the shoes there, and the owner walks outside, to which I oddly say hello to her twice more. She later notes that it was odd for her to reply to me at all, like I know her or something. She said that she was replying to my "creed" by saying hello back, like creed meant greeting... no idea why.

Upon a table, I see a pair of glasses that look similar to mine. A few words to the lady are spoken; something about the glass probably wouldn't allow me to see, as they aren't mine. The other glasses are quite thick.

I look at them again, then take mine off, first checking my vision. As I am nearsighted, seeing the table clearly was nothing new. For a better reference of vision, I look back towards her. I could see perfectly well into the distant night. From the clearly visible dots of white light in the dark sky, to the tree leafs hanging to the left.

This is where some rather unique to dreams happened. I made a full realization that I was dreaming. I could see perfectly well without glasses on. I even said "You know what. I'm dreaming. Because," I bring a finger towards the Earth in the sky, "there is no way that I'd be able to see anything like that so clearly." I know that its the Earth I'm pointing at, but I wasn't ready quite yet to say something so bizarre.

I had to fight myself from waking up, because I knew there was no way I could hold such a dream for long. The lady responded to my statement very calmly, and had a bit of congrats to her voice. I marveled at the night sky, which I didn't realize in in the dream had come so quickly. Then again, I wouldn't have cared, even if I had realized it. I was in a dream after all, and odd things were common. I slowly lost hold of the dream as I woke up.

Note: Publish date is set to that of the dream. Posting date is Sept 7, 2008.

Red Faction

~2003 - January 2004

The VW00x series were my learning of RED (the Red Faction (PC) Level Editor) back in 2003. They ranged from simple creations of rooms and linking them together, to creating skyboxes and getting an idea of scale in the game. That scale turned out to be 1 RED unit to one real life yard.

One of the test levels was the capstone of my worse fear at the time. The level consisted only of a horizontal H shaped platform inside of an invisible box. Inside RF the sky box was visible on all sides. The fear was falling indefinitely. Yay for facing fears and getting rid of them. *looks both ways and continues story*

These levels lead to the creation of The Temple, a port of the 007/Perfect Dark level created by Rare. The Temple took me six months to recreate. I scraped the level twice before getting the scale right. The first of those two I figured I’d created a huge number for the length of the main room, only to test it and have the player end up about 15 feet tall. In the second attempt, I was closer. Until I had made the doors for the level, I’d thought I was right with the scale. The doors were normal sized and far too close to the ceiling. Eventually I began to understand the true size of that monstrous room. 60’ x 48’ x 138’ (DMVWTemple preview image, file)

Some time in the middle of developing The Temple, I created Hex Duel. From design to completion, I spent one Sunday morning. A few minor touch ups were made the weekend later. The basic idea was a Dueling level, a level meant to be one vs. one, and in a hexagonal shape—my favorite polygon. (VW010 screenshot top, inside)

Several months after completing The Temple, I returned trying to create a Capture the Flag map (CTF). In the end, my lack of creativity and self creation lead to incomplete files on my hard drive. For most of my high school years, I was unable to create my own content. If a finished product was available, I could do something with it, like in the case of The Temple. (If you can’t tell, I like saying The Temple….) (VWCTF001 screenshot side, inside)

The hexagonal shape, my piece of Keeping Sanity that had some creative sparks. My second attempt at a CTF map involved several hexagonal and square rooms linked together by teleports. It work so well too—in single player mode. Sadly, the RED editor was unable to use teleportation triggers properly in multiplayer. RF’s creators made teleporting specifically for single player, which is where I tested my maps. In multiplayer, after some tweaking, the teleport trigger will teleport everyone on the map to the destination point. Needless to say, this feature was rather useless. Perhaps some day I can return to that map and make it inside some other level editor.

*The grey box textures show walls where I no longer have the original textures for