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Post by Applelight Limited on Nov 20, 2014 1:12:45 GMT
See! It writes itself!
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 20, 2014 19:48:43 GMT
Dang, this stuff really does write itself. Trixie’s a lot of fun to write.
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Post by japaneseteeth on Nov 20, 2014 20:59:54 GMT
So, I've basically settled on the next big project that I'm planning to do: it's that "Spike has to rescue everypony from their dreams" thing that I mentioned somewhere else a while ago. The basic plot is that the Nightmare Forces attack during the Summer Sun Celebration and entangle all of Ponyville in their own dreams so that they can siphon their magic off. The only ones who escape are Spike, because he's a dragon, and Luna, because of her prior experience. However, the spell is built like a web, so in order to break it completely he has to go into individual dreams to break the ponies out of them.
This is where things get a bit tough. What I want to do is organize it so that each "dreamscape" is a mix of things that represent the pony in question's psyche, combined with some of their random experiences from the day (i.e. if they watched a movie earlier or something). I want each of the dreamscapes to be a really unique and odd mashup of stuff. Related to that, I want the process of freeing them to be the result of Spike having to battle some specific aspect of the world that's been corrupted by the Nightmare Forces, and that by defeating it, it breaks the spell, sort of like the "boss" of a videogame level. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:
* The first dream he wanders into is probably going to be a combination of Pound Cake and Pumpkin Cake (some plot stuff about how they'll be the easiest to save because they're so young). Their dreamscape would be a version of Sugarcube Corner, only extremely warped to have the sizes of everything wrong, because they're small and view the place as far larger and more epic than it actually is. The "Boss" of their world would be, say, a monster based on their memories of the taffy machine, because earlier in the day they got scared by it, so the NF channels that fear into making it stronger. So Spike has to "defeat" it somehow before they're released from the spell.
What makes this complicated is that I want there to be a sort of "trick" to how Spike beats the boss of each dream so that it's not just "Spike physically fights everything". So I want to try to gather some examples of Trick Boss type things that could represent the various neurosis that the NF are using to keep the ponies trapped. So some ideas of what kind of things Spike might deal with would be welcome.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 20, 2014 21:44:20 GMT
Trick boss types that immediately come to mind:
Trick a dumb boss into directly attacking itself. I.e. it tries to smash Spike with a hammer, then Spike stands on its head, and it smashes its own head with the hammer.
Trick a boss into attacking something that reflects the attack back at them.
Trick the boss into destroying the environment in such a way that injures them. Say, they destroy four pillars, and the ceiling collapses on their head.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 20, 2014 22:56:07 GMT
Writing Trixie and Ditzy Doo, I wonder if perhaps I've taken Trixie's personality a little too far.
I suppose if I have gone too far, I can say that Trixie's experience in this story is why she's relatively dialed back by the time "Boast Busters" happens.
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Post by Kyler Thatch on Nov 20, 2014 23:00:38 GMT
@jt: So one key element to the game is that bosses should feel more like a puzzle rather than a straight-up slugfest.
What's the gameplay for this anyway? 3D/2D platformer? RPG ala Final Fantasy? Something else?
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Post by Applelight Limited on Nov 20, 2014 23:36:34 GMT
Writing Trixie and Ditzy Doo, I wonder if perhaps I've taken Trixie's personality a little too far. I suppose if I have gone too far, I can say that Trixie's experience in this story is why she's relatively dialed back by the time "Boast Busters" happens. That seems OK. I think Trixie will always have a level of arrogance. @ JT The comics did something similar with dreams. Maybe you could look at that for ideas? I think these battles should involve mind battles. I'm not sure what the right word is but they could be about picking the thing apart metaphorically rather than physically fighting it.
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Post by japaneseteeth on Nov 21, 2014 4:43:26 GMT
@jt: So one key element to the game is that bosses should feel more like a puzzle rather than a straight-up slugfest. What's the gameplay for this anyway? 3D/2D platformer? RPG ala Final Fantasy? Something else? Actually I'm basically repurposing it as a fanfic. I think it would make a cool game, but that's way beyond my ability and I think the story could stand on its own. I kinda want to split the difference between the metaphorical defeat and literally fighting it. Like, Spike has to think his way through to find the vulnerabilities rather than just hit things until they die, but I don't want to go so far to the point that he can just think his enemies away. A good example is the "boss" that I had in mind for Rarity's dream: Rarity is trapped inside a sort of living, ambulatory cage, that basically carries her around between scenes of failure, both real and imagined. Spike can't just break the cage to get her out; he has to find the key to unlock it. Or for Applejack, she's caught up in the vines of a corrupted plant of some sort (either a corrupted and possessed apple tree or some sort of evil week equivalent) and Spike has to figure out how to destroy the roots because the branches are invulnerable. Or for Twilight, she's literally stuck inside of a book, etc. The intro one would be the one for the Cake Twins, and would be pretty simple: they're being chased by the taffy machine, and to defeat it, Spike has to destroy the power cord, at which point it's so weak he can wreck it manually. Overall it's tricky because I really want to ride the line in terms of "dreams represent the pony's mental state" and "they don't really mean anything", so it's constantly ambiguous from Spike's POV just how closely the dream really reflects the mind of the pony he's helping. I.e. when he's in Rarity's dream, he might see something involving himself, and he doesn't know whether it represents Rarity's real feelings about him, or if it's just a leftover fragment of memory from some experience they had that doesn't have any deeper meaning.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 22, 2014 8:58:02 GMT
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 28, 2014 5:14:16 GMT
I came up with an explanation (of sorts) for why Trixie is the way she is. I tried to play it for laughs, but I think it gets messed up the instant you apply any critical thought to it.
I'm wondering if it's such a good idea.
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Post by japaneseteeth on Nov 28, 2014 15:10:50 GMT
I'll try to look at it some time this weekend.
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Post by Applelight Limited on Nov 28, 2014 16:14:59 GMT
Yes, me too. Oh and I want to see your stuff too JT.
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Post by japaneseteeth on Nov 30, 2014 2:18:59 GMT
Speaking of that, I'm back on working out the outline for my Spike fic. I'm working on the outline a bit, and I'm still trying to think of good dreamscapes for Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. The ones I have so far for major characters are:
*Rarity: Combination of boutique, fashion show, and diamond dog mines, with crystals. *Applejack: A forest, halfway between an orchard and the Everfree, only with random rooms and buildings interspersed throughout. The trees seem to have weird fruit growing on them that do completely random things when disturbed. There are also inexplicably food items everywhere. *Pinkie Pie: Rock Farm fields, only weird in that there are giant rocks floating on strings everywhere, and balloons in and on the ground that are heavy as rocks. In the dead center of the field there's a farmhouse, but it's empty. *Twilight Sparkle: An extremely corrupted combination of her library, the Canterlot library, and Celestia's school, all twisted together into a labyrinth. *Celestia: Combo of her current palace, the Everfree palace (complete with pranks and secret passages everywhere), and various memories from her long history.
Note: I'd also like any other ideas you have for the ones I have already. I want the dreams to be really surreal and idiosyncratic, so I need to add an element or two to each that doesn't seem like it's really connected to anything else. Like in one dream, there might be clocks everywhere for no discernible reason.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 30, 2014 16:01:35 GMT
Last night, I dreamed about spiderwebs with masks caught in them.
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Post by Applelight Limited on Nov 30, 2014 16:38:10 GMT
@ JT
Just a small suggestion; what if the books in the library in Twilight's dream are all badly out of order (do ponies have the Dewey system?) and that worries her more than the fact that it looks like an M.C Escher piece.
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