What Is Dreams Eternal?

Sinopsys:

Dreams Eternal is an FPS game which tries to concentrate on the storyline instead of just shooting. The goal of the game is also to have a scary athmosphere. Basically the game will play in the dream world and will concentrate on puzzle solving.

Basic Story Outline

This is what we have at the moment. I think this is not yet rich enough to make the game complete. I can probably think of a few extensions to this story easily but I first want to throw this in the ring to see if others have some ideas too.

Description:

First a bit about the game itself. The goal of the game is to make an FPS that concentrates on a strong story and puzzle solving. The 'shooting' part will be there but it is not the main thing. Multi-player could be an option in the future but that's not the main purpose of this game. This game is basicly a single player game where you are immersed in an intensive story. It should also have good graphics and music or sound effects. More on that later. We are going to use the Crystal Space 3D Engine for doing the 3D graphics (I'm also the manager of that project so I'm quite comfortable with CS :-).

The game will be Open Source and there will also be free levels but I want to keep the option open of making commercial levels in the future. When that happens all contributors will obviously receive compensation. This is something that will be discussed early in the project when there are enough people there. To facilitate discussion I set up some mailing lists and message forums on the Dreams Eternal SourceForge page . On that page you will also be able to access the public CVS and other development stuff regarding Dreams Eternal (currently there is no CVS yet).

Now something about the story. Basicly the summary of the story is as follows (a more complete story will follow later): a scientific experiment went wrong with the result that the entire earth population is asleep and stuck in their dreams. You are one of them. At first you don't realize what is wrong. There will be more and more clues in the game as you progress on how to solve the problem. The first clues come from before you go to bed. The player gets to see a few cutscenes (if possible) containing news items telling something about this scientific experiment. After that you go to sleep and start dreaming. The entire game plays in the dream world. At first you are in your own dream (nightmare) but soon you realize that dreams from other people intersect with your own dream and you can jump to other dreams. This will be the main focus of the game. Several dreams from people will represent several levels in the game. Basicly you will have to find the dreams of the scientists responsible for the experiment to try to find clues on how to exit the experiment. The scientists provided safety measures to be able to do that but unfortunatelly they don't work very well and the scientists themselves were all caught in their nightmares so they are incapable of solving the problem themselves. To find the dreams of the scientists you have to go through other dreams first. For example, the dream of the journalist who made the story on television.

Some remarks about the game itself. The game should be very scary. You are playing in the nightmares of other people after all. To be scary I think it should not overdo in monsters. It is much more scary if there is only a monster here and there at a very unexpected place instead of monsters everywhere. There should be a build-up of expectation. Because the game is in the dream world it is possible to use very spectacular or imaginative levels. i.e. in a dream world you can see everything including floating castles, red sees, ... This will be a real challenge for level designers :-)

Well that's basicly it for now. If you are interested in helping me with this project then mail me at Jorrit.Tyberghein@uz.kuleuven.ac.be