Gameinformer November Cover Revealed – Dreams

With LittleBigPlanet, Media Molecule built its reputation on giving players a toolset to make zany, memorable levels that caught the attention of both creators and users everywhere. With Dreams, the developer takes things to the next level with an accessible, creative suite that allows players to create nearly any game they envision alongside a social space for collaborating with other users and sharing their creations with the greater world. We recently took a trip to Guilford, England to see if Dreams could live up to such ridiculous ambitions.

Our November issue chronicles the sights and sounds we saw (and made) in Dreams and outlines why we came away believing in the promise of Media Molecule’s bold vision. We have exclusive details on the game’s story mode, tools, and much more. Starting this week we’ll also have exclusive online content to support the story, including features, interviews, and gameplay footage.

https://www.gameinformer.com/2018/10...evealed-dreams

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2pH2abOtyg

Stop frame of putting a level together

https://twitter.com/Peter__Field/sta...27740942991360

The cover was entirely made in Dreams:

https://twitter.com/gameinformer/sta...60354671800321

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229 rapid fire questions:

https://www.gameinformer.com/exclusi...about-dreams-0

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That detail:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DoqxKP6UcAA25zR.jpg

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https://i.imgur.com/t4UiLse.gif

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRv1ir5KT_U&list=LLJ2KxLcdOl4IAqfBHPIjupw&t=0s&index=2

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwgb1tI91VA

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SHl_TR-6_4

Holy crap. Some of those clips are outstanding. AND. THAT. GIF.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by koltonaugust

Holy crap. Some of those clips are outstanding. AND. THAT. GIF.

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Yeah, Dreams is everything the LBP community were asking for ... and some.

https://i.imgur.com/gNqkpId.gif

Fish:

https://i.imgur.com/phVxXeJ.gif

https://i.imgur.com/GPP6TYg.gif

Watch those pallets and remember, there's NO water physics in this game and that water is only made of paint strokes:

https://i.imgur.com/UmcJv1B.gif

https://i.imgur.com/EYkZBpe.gif

I can't tell if that first gif is VR or the person just doesn't know how to control the camera...

Cool gifs and images. I think the First Person game has some cool animations. Head bobbing is a good thing.

Nothing much today. Just an introduction to the characters:

https://www.gameinformer.com/2018/10...ams-story-mode

https://s3.amazonaws.com/prod-media....oxy_vista2.jpg

The characters sound interesting. I'm looking forward to see these characters in action.

Also, I love the tree model in the background.

An interview with Siobhan Reddy

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...lecules-dreams

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Why isn't Dreams out yet. Vid:

https://www.gameinformer.com/exclusi...dreams-out-yet

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https://imgur.com/ed68AW1.gif

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Time laps building:

https://twitter.com/Peter__Field/sta...09494913568770

My god!

My hands are gonna melt to my PS4 controller when this comes out!

:p

I'm having an interesting discussion with Peter Fields (formally ND employee). He explained that the 'space' takes up thermo. So if you build a building wall by wall, feature by feature, it takes up far less space than if you took a square and then added a space to create a room. Here's the optimisation tool in action. I'd also suggest reading through the thread:

https://twitter.com/Peter__Field/sta...16589604712448

So you're 55?

Anyway, so basically what he's saying is, that using individuell walls is cheaper than hollowing out the place to create one 4 sided wall. It sounds complicated. Also, lowering resolution probably makes the splats on a object bigger, or just blurry because resolution is lower. That is probably one of the only textures we have in the game in addition to the UI elements, skybox and stuff.

What he said about emitters also confuses me and worries me. I don't think it will be impossible to emit a scenery object and develop a LOD technique in Dreams. Basically you could do this for trees and houses. A tree could have a very low resolution when the player is 100 meters away and the leaves are just a green thing instead of highly detailed individual leaves. When the player comes closer the tree gets higher resolution and more detailed. Same with houses. Don't know if that works flawless.

Also, wetness is a thing. Is it fluidly changeable with logic? Have to check the streams again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mdkd99

So you're 55?

Anyway, so basically what he's saying is, that using individuell walls is cheaper than hollowing out the place to create one 4 sided wall. It sounds complicated. Also, lowering resolution probably makes the splats on a object bigger, or just blurry because resolution is lower. That is probably one of the only textures we have in the game in addition to the UI elements, skybox and stuff.

What he said about emitters also confuses me and worries me. I don't think it will be impossible to emit a scenery object and develop a LOD technique in Dreams. Basically you could do this for trees and houses. A tree could have a very low resolution when the player is 100 meters away and the leaves are just a green thing instead of highly detailed individual leaves. When the player comes closer the tree gets higher resolution and more detailed. Same with houses. Don't know if that works flawless.

Also, wetness is a thing. Is it fluidly changeable with logic? Have to check the streams again.

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No, I'm 60.

I'm surprised how age really doesn't play a role in LBP or Dreams. People would be called weird, if they played 'Kids games' when being adults, but in creative games like these it doesn't matter and that's a good thing.

Anyway, I think if you save objects like trees in different LOD stages, you can emit them in different stages with some simple logic. I don't see this not being a thing.

OoOooooooooooooold! :p Nah, i'm jk. I think MM has family games down. I wouldn't call their stuff kids games as they're not really dumbed down. It's just colorful. Tearaway was their closest game to a kids game, but even that was more gimmicky than kiddy.

Basically what I think he is saying though is that the sculptures don't use vertices to determine its shape, but voxels which is basically a grid, so to speak. Each part on this grid has info about the sculpture. Because he hollowed out the walls, this evenly spaced grid now must store that empty space as empty whereas with vertices you wouldn't. Imagine a square that you hollowed out a square in LBP. That would only have to store the 8 points and the texture whereas in Dreams (im assuming) each point in the hollowed part has to be recorded and lowering the resolution would change the size of the hole because there's less "space" points and each point would fill up more space in the sculpture.
Voxel games include (technically) minecraft (the terrain is stored as voxels), subnautica (I believe it's still in the game if you use console, but terraforming), and pretty much anything that places really heavy emphasis on sculpting or terrain altering, but it has to be the main feature usually.

On a related note: I'M SO FRICKIN EXCITED THIS IS IN THE GAAAAAAAAAAME!!!! The dephysicalize tool was my second favorite (behind analogue note functionality) additions to LBPV!

I'm worried and relieved about the emitter news. On the down side: no more squeezing everything into a level. On the plus side: if level transitions work as well as they say they do, we can focus on bigger chunks of the level rather than the small. This could mean larger "open" worlds that send some data about where the player entered the next location from

Cell A ------------------------> Cell B
__________`````````````````__________
|xxxxxx^xxx|```````````````|xxxxxxxxxx|
|xxxxxxxxxx|``````goes to```|xxxxxxxxxx|
|xxxxxxxxxx|``````------->```|xxxxxxxxxx|
|xxxxxxxxxx|```````````````|xxxxxx^xxx|

The `'s are for formatting and the x's are just space in a cell. The ^ would be the player looking a direction at a certain placement. And of course I'm just speculating.

Storing data:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1049716789360414720

Signal Transmitter/Receiver:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1050511129968107520

Automatic edit removal:

https://twitter.com/Peter__Field/sta...01365665730560

https://abload.de/img/screenshot-www.youtubqufze.jpg
https://abload.de/img/screenshot-www.youtubtuf00.jpg

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New video. As always, I'll post the Youtube version up as soon as it's available:

https://www.gameinformer.com/exclusi...lecules-dreams

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Full version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_N_LdPjvzc

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In the full length video there is something very interesting. As they were looking through the settings in the mannequin, they came across a section named 'structure'. In this section there was a panel and upon it a human form made out of bone icons. That, to me, very much looks like a panel we can control, changing the shape of the mannequin by moving the bone icons around.

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https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DpUyT1LXcAAI_jO.jpg

I love this thread. Thanks for gethering all this info GribbleGrunger! This is all the info I've been waiting to have confirmed as it's kind of where I thought they were going based off of the LBP series progress, but it still always surprises me about just how big of a step up these tools are. Also, I love that tentacle and devil imp! Can anyone correct me if I'm wrong, but you can edit the imp right? I remember hearing that a long time ago, but none of the demos have shown it and had people pick from a selection instead.
The bone thing scares me a bit, but super glad it's in game. I'm just afraid of a bunch of stretching and weird animations.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by koltonaugust

I love this thread. Thanks for gethering all this info GribbleGrunger! This is all the info I've been waiting to have confirmed as it's kind of where I thought they were going based off of the LBP series progress, but it still always surprises me about just how big of a step up these tools are. Also, I love that tentacle and devil imp! Can anyone correct me if I'm wrong, but you can edit the imp right? I remember hearing that a long time ago, but none of the demos have shown it and had people pick from a selection instead.
The bone thing scares me a bit, but super glad it's in game. I'm just afraid of a bunch of stretching and weird animations.

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Yes, you can edit the imp but we've not seen it yet. I would imagine, because the imp is something we use right from the very introduction, that it's something we have access to immediately and it hasn't been shown because they don't want to show the beginning of the game.

More interesting snippets:

More on Receivers/Transmitters:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1050801646354255872

Expanding on the Mannequin:

https://twitter.com/Peter__Field/sta...98023037984768

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Youtube version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEvhuDg12jQ

I really appreciate that they're letting Peter Field answer all of these questions, and that he's taking the time to do so. Also, GREAT questions Gribble. I hadn't even thought about half of these, but everything I've wanted to know. Super happy to hear that about bones as now we can create super adorable SPIDERS :D
https://imgix.ranker.com/user_node_i...rop&crop=faces

Quote:

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Originally Posted by koltonaugust

I really appreciate that they're letting Peter Field answer all of these questions, and that he's taking the time to do so. Also, GREAT questions Gribble. I hadn't even thought about half of these, but everything I've wanted to know. Super happy to hear that about bones as now we can create super adorable SPIDERS :D
https://imgix.ranker.com/user_node_i...rop&crop=faces

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I've got many more but I don't want to bother him too much LOL. I'll leave it a few days and try digging a little deeper.

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About the sculpt thermo:

https://twitter.com/Johnee_B/status/1051546429536251905

Follow up question about thermo use:

https://twitter.com/Peter__Field/sta...55643092594689

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If there is no transparency in Dreams, just how have they made the glass in this door?

https://media.giphy.com/media/csCgjT...axpZ/giphy.gif

Awaiting an answer from a Tweet.

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About the glass:

https://twitter.com/EcksAndWhy/statu...39279108517889

More thermo:

https://twitter.com/Peter__Field/sta...19867119214592

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The most fascinating tools in Dreams. (clearly a newbs view of the tools):

https://www.gameinformer.com/2018/10...ools-in-dreams

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No global optimiser:

https://twitter.com/Peter__Field/sta...90875670953984

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Thermo with logic:

https://twitter.com/Peter__Field/sta...99548828872709

https://twitter.com/Peter__Field/sta...06858653487104

Thanks for asking those question, very nice of you.

So you can place down bricks hundreds of times to create houses, which is cool. But I feel like doing that will impact the performance, if done too often, even without textures and very simple geometry.

Awesome stuff!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GribbleGrunger

No, I'm 60.

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Wow, awesome! My mom's the same age and the last time I showed her one of my levels I couldn't even get her to hold the controller correctly. lol

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mdkd99

Thanks for asking those question, very nice of you.

So you can place down bricks hundreds of times to create houses, which is cool. But I feel like doing that will impact the performance, if done too often, even without textures and very simple geometry.

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I think that was just a theoretical question in order to help understand the concept. As Peter pointed out in one of the first tweets, he didn't optimise the build when he made the house, he just hollowed out a square. Building it wall by wall would reduce the thermo by a lot because the space of the hollowed out square is still part of the thermo. If I was to approach a city sized level, I'd likely build a generic house (let's say with the frontage missing) and then emit a selection of frontages onto it for variety. Just like in real developing, it's going to be up to us to make sure the framerate is consistant but from what John said about cloning 100s if not 1000s of times, it doesn't affect the performance much, so I really don't think assets will be the main problem.

I think logic is going to be one of the main problems. My idea of having a central complex logic system that uses the Transmitter/Receivers is going to help reduce the load. My example was putting 5 lifts in a level and using the central logic to control all 5 lifts with only basic logic on the lift itself to receive the data necessary and interpret it. Peter's answer seems to verify this is a good way of doing things.

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Character count needs to be taken seriously!

https://twitter.com/Peter__Field/sta...59194931781632

I think using tags will work.

It's a bit concerning. I love all the tools and I think a lot of things will be possible in Dreams, but not being able to create proper LOD technology to improve CPU usage due to the emitters loading in all the data even before a object is spawned or memorizers not existing in the game or complex logic on many characters being very heavy on the hardware makes it seem like Dreams will have some tight limits. I hope the story mode will make things a bit more clearer in terms of limits.

"Hopefully players wont hit the thermo cap for a really long time :)" - CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! Bombs and lava EVERYWHERE.
Also question as I don't have a twitter. For Animation, is there a setting to create points to which an object travels to instead of following my shaky hand's path? For instance an elevator. I wouldn't want that shaking around as its going down. I'd be surprised if they don't have it but I haven't seen it yet.

@mdkd99 - I'm not sure if the Load On Demand (is that what it stands for?) is taken away with how they describe dream loading. If the server is good enough (plz PLZ be good enough) and the levels are small enough/designed well and loading is efficient, it should be better than the emitter workaround.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by koltonaugust

"Hopefully players wont hit the thermo cap for a really long time :)" - CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! Bombs and lava EVERYWHERE.
Also question as I don't have a twitter. For Animation, is there a setting to create points to which an object travels to instead of following my shaky hand's path? For instance an elevator. I wouldn't want that shaking around as its going down. I'd be surprised if they don't have it but I haven't seen it yet.

@mdkd99 - I'm not sure if the Load On Demand (is that what it stands for?) is taken away with how they describe dream loading. If the server is good enough (plz PLZ be good enough) and the levels are small enough/designed well and loading is efficient, it should be better than the emitter workaround.

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Yes, there are tools to create straight paths between points. You can see the tool being used here. You can see it has more options when it's placed down but I don't know what they do:

https://youtu.be/j44wgbHGAvA?t=7m33s

LOD = level of detail.

EDIT: YOUTUBE DOWN AT THE MOMENT!!

Weird. Never seen youtube down before like this. And that's great about the extra choices! I hated having to switch between the move (touch for vita) animator and movers/followers to do one animation in LBP

Quote:

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Originally Posted by koltonaugust

Weird. Never seen youtube down before like this. And that's great about the extra choices! I hated having to switch between the move (touch for vita) animator and movers/followers to do one animation in LBP

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Those options are still available. I think the one thing some people are overlooking is the record function. That means we can set up complex logic and systems to accomplish complicated mechanics with platforms, record them, and then delete the logic!

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About the text tool:

https://twitter.com/Peter__Field/sta...64924545470465

Stop Frame animation:

https://twitter.com/TheSuperSoupy/st...88852886233088

https://twitter.com/TheSuperSoupy/st...90498223599616

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On character numbers:

https://twitter.com/Peter__Field/sta...07720896045056

https://twitter.com/Peter__Field/sta...07279604883457

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On the text tool and emojis:

https://twitter.com/monsterplant/sta...88552815845376

On storing information:

https://twitter.com/monsterplant/sta...16789360414720

https://twitter.com/monsterplant/sta...75620653969408

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Todays Game Informer article:

https://www.gameinformer.com/2018/10...ond-just-games

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About HUDS:

https://twitter.com/monsterplant/sta...82728490065920

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About the Calculator:

https://twitter.com/Peter__Field/sta...94286449545216

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Madrid Event today so hopefully some new footage will be coming.

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New video article:

https://www.gameinformer.com/exclusi...ions-in-dreams

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https://i.imgur.com/VzYwjvm.gif

https://i.imgur.com/m96dCK7.gif

https://i.imgur.com/0Xgduc3.gif

About that splash effect:

https://twitter.com/Peter__Field/sta...40412172292096

Bonus for hype:

https://i.imgur.com/SLLKEPL.gif

Looks really amazing so far. I love how tools have multiple options to avoid big chunks of logic for simple features.

So text for the UI is coming. Do we know how many font types there and how it works for 3D space?

I'm scared to ask just because they've always said yes to everything, but for this I'd be the most surprised for if the answer is yes. Can you create your own fonts? Obviously you can create your own 3D text, but would you be able to use something like that for the text tool for faster use?

I feel like that won't work. MM will probably add enough fonts, but I see where you're coming from.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by koltonaugust

I'm scared to ask just because they've always said yes to everything, but for this I'd be the most surprised for if the answer is yes. Can you create your own fonts? Obviously you can create your own 3D text, but would you be able to use something like that for the text tool for faster use?

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Yes, of course you can make your own fonts! The GameInformer cover was made in Dreams and that font was custom made for it.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/prod-media....er%20embed.png

I am underestimating Dreams once again. So you can create your own fonts, not like in LBP with a few types of fonts? That's honestly really amazing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mdkd99

I am underestimating Dreams once again. So you can create your own fonts, not like in LBP with a few types of fonts? That's honestly really amazing.

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It's still going to be free hand a bit fiddly though. It's just made so much easier with the strokes tool. What I'm hoping for is a keyboard template with greyed out letters. You make your own font and place the letter in the right place. Then you plug that template into the text tool. If it's not there, it needs to be there.

Jeez. I knew the answer would be yes, but now makes me feel like they haven't slept since before LBP2. I think that keyboard layout idea sounds great though! Would even allow for special characters.

Reading through this thread is really getting me a lot more interested in Dreams, the game looks a lot more "solid" than I thought it would be. (If that makes any sense?)

Why MM wanted to make Dreams:

https://www.gameinformer.com/exclusi...to-make-dreams

"The beta's already out by the way" -Mark
"CREATOR ALPHA, CREATOR ALPHA, CREATOR ALPHA, CREATOR ALPHA" -Siobhan
Siobhan trying to prevent mass panic.

Youtube version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq3cacfA-yE

That's a cool intention to make games. 'The beta is already out by the way.' - 'Creator Alpha!' Haha, I think Mark also wants the Beta to be out as soon as possible.