Driving that Tren to the End of Dreams

My recent move had me hooking up my Playstation 4 again and remembering all the good times I had playing Dreams. Naturally, the next thing I did was to set up my PSVR and put in that CD so I could revisit my old creations. What happened was a bittersweet trip down memory lane because while checking out my worlds, I stumbled upon Tren, a recently released, delightful little puzzle game tucked within Dreams. 

Tren immediately captured my attention with its toy train charm and super chill puzzle mechanics. However, this joy feels a little tinged with a sense of loss. Media Molecule has scaled back support for Dreams, and for the time being, there’s no PSVR2 compatibility on the horizon—a clear signal that this chapter is closing. The Dream of Dreams is still here, but it's a shadow of what it used to be, and only time will tell until the nightmare of its sunset is inevitable.

To be honest, the addition of Tren to Dreams is pretty puzzling in and of itself. It's a fully fleshed-out game within a game making it truly a hidden flatscreen gem inside a VR creation engine. I mean, I guess it isn't as puzzling when you figure Tren is built by THEE John Beech. He's such a cool developer. I loved reading his bio and to think that this, from a former construction worker turned creative director, is all because he was amazing at making Little Big Planet levels back in the day.

Maybe they were thinking that by adding this game people would see that Dreams isn't just a VR game builder but a flat-screen game builder as well? or maybe it was just getting this game out there before the end was here? Maybe it was just too good not to release? I'm really not sure, but if you own Dreams, you should check out Tren. It's pretty amazing.

Gushing in charm

In the end, Dreams was never just a game; it was a toolkit that unlocked creativity for everyday players. Media Molecule designed Dreams as a creative platform for ideas where players could build anything, from games to art. There were a lot of problems with the platform by its very nature: it took more effort and technical understanding than the average player might expect, and achieving real creative freedom meant a steep learning curve. Nonetheless, those who mastered the toolkit produced a bunch of cool stuff. If it ever fully dies, it'll leave a gap in the creative VR gaming landscape that’ll be hard to replace. I don't know if we'll ever get a VR creativity platform quite like it.

I guess what I love most about it is that Dreams’s inclusion of VR wasn’t just a side feature; it was integral to the game's vision. At the time, Dreams was one of the few platforms enabling users to build VR content without traditional game development skills. Unfortunately, VR development is costly, and without widespread headset adoption, the platform always had a niche, but very cool, community with no way for its potential whales to keep it afloat like they do with MMOs.

I suppose Dreams faced another particularly high hurdle since it's also a platform that needs constant updates, moderation, and support for the community. It really feels like for VR developers, breaking even is difficult when the target audience remains relatively small compared to traditional gaming.

Enter 2023 . . . Sony’s PSVR2 didn't warmly hug backwards compatibility with PSVR1, and that was probably the beginning of the end. 

I feel like current creative VR platforms have something to offer but lack that accessible, playful approach that Dreams championed. The spirit of Little Big Planet lived on in this game, and that's part of what made it fun. Sure, platforms like Rec Room and VRChat allow creative expression but really lean heavily toward building social spaces rather than in-depth game creation. For advanced creators, VR-supported engines like Unity and Unreal offer immense power, but they’re beyond reach for most casual users. A lot of people seem to be gravitating to other platforms like Resonite, but  . . . I don't know . . . it feels like Dreams held a unique spot, bridging the gap between professional tools and hands-on play while always oozing with charm.

Dreams will leave its legacy as a trailblazer in user-generated VR content. Its maintenance mode is a reminder that even the most ambitious projects face challenges in balancing creativity with commercial viability. For now, those who cared can look back at our creations, hold to the worlds we built, and hope that one day, another platform will allow us to pick up where we left off. Until then, the memories, the charm of Tren, and the spirit of Dreams live on.

Happy Dueling!

More Dreams -- Symazing and Dracula's Castle!

I had kind of been agonizing over this past week's community jam project in Dreams. The topic at hand is "Symmetry," and I went completely brain dead . . . right up until yesterday.  I made a long ramp that bent like a pool noodle and thought . . . I bet that's fun to run up.  So I took it and made several clones where you could go up and down it like chutes and ladders.  Then I turned it black and white like keys on a piano, then cloned that again and made it face the other direction like it was a mirror image . . . and viola, I had an idea: Symazing!

Welcome to the noir world of . . . symazing!

Basically it's an obstacle course with a symmetrical left and right hand side. The object . . . get to the finish portal!  In the process of turning one of the pool noodle ramps white, the cat character I had downloaded for the playable hero of the maze not only turned white, but also glowed!  Having a cat for a hero demanded that I had a dog for an enemy and someone had already made the perfect evil dog enemy. Thank you, Dreams community! All I needed to do was tint the dog a little black and it was perfect.

I also gave the world two suns that change from a dark black to a pale white and they switch on and off every seven seconds. Stylistically, I'm loving how this level turned out. 

The first problem I was facing was my pool noodle ramps were very hard to jump up to, so I gave the cat a mega jump.  Perfect.  After this I found a couple of nice "balance" quotes and used them in the level to give it that personal touch.  

Loved the way this one turned out.

~~

During the off week for the Dreams Game Jam, I decided to remake an old fashioned haunted house ride from the amusement park I used to visit as a kid. Behold Dracula's Castle, the real thing!

Unfortunately, that's just too many poly's to remake and the models they had for Dracula and Frankenstein existing in the Dreams library were enough to kill the ride remake just around the first bend.

So, instead I tried to match the themes of the ride to the track I had made, i.e., hall of pictures, whale bones, Frankenstein, headless horseman, Dracula, wolves, torture, electric chair, undead miner, etc.  It kind of fell apart at the end, and I just wanted to make sure I got the rotating tunnels. whew that was a lot of work.

Behold, Dracula's castle, the dreams version!

I spent entirely too long making this thing.  The first part was laying down all the track and getting the walls put up.  It was a lot of work.

Here's a top down view of the ride path inside Dracula's Castle

Building a ride that cue'd certain things happening as you traveled the path meant building a HUGE timeline to go with it.  This was really the first hurdle and I learned a lot about using pathing blends to make the cart turn at certain spots.

The amazing timeline of Dracula's Castle

I pushed the limits on a lot of memory constraints in this ride. Dreams only lets you put "so much" into a level. I wish I could have put in a lot more!

I tried . . .

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed my dreams.

Happy Dueling!

Community Jam Projects in Dreams -- Exactly What I Needed

I'm continuing to play Dreams, and I have to admit, I'm starting to surprise myself by how designing levels in this game is just starting to "make sense" now. I was complaining earlier this week to my oldest about how I wanted to just be able to get into the game and "make things happen."  What I meant by that was to finally lose the sense of confusion when approaching the myriad of game controls.

Something clicked this week and I was able to flesh out a quest where you collect 8 shells and a crab pops out of the water to tell you a story.  Was it the most elegant of presentations? No.  Did it work? Yes!  . . . and it even had a strange bit of charm to it.

Backing up for a second . . . why the heck was I making a shell collecting quest with a story telling crab? Well that's because Dreams has a community "game jam" of sorts every couple of weeks. I discovered it about three weeks ago and submitted my first piece.

The theme two weeks ago was "illusion." For this "game jam," I made a very long hallway with words that floated in the air while you walked through a swirling mist.  The words came from a poem I wrote 20+ years ago about a time in my life where I had a pretty severe allergic response and ended up with beet-red eyes for about a month.  It was pretty crazy.

On paper the poem is quite short--one of my shortest.  In game, it ended up being super overblown and dramatic.  I liked it, and it was really fun to make.

The coolest thing about this, however, is that by entering it into a community game jam, my level has been played through many more times than it would have otherwise and even received a few thumbs up from people passing through! Yes!

So this week's game jam has the theme of "storytelling." I wasn't sure what I was going to do at first, but after making a "beach scene," I decided to have a crab give a quest to collect shells before he'd tell you a story.  That was my basic shtick . . . a crab telling you a story.

Next came making the shells so that they would be collectible when you ran over the top of them. To do this I had to make a microchip that would destroy the shell, make a sound, and send a signal to another microchip that was counting shells. 

The first night trying to craft the collectible shells was a bust, but, after complaining to my kid and a good night's sleep, something just clicked . . . and I figured it all out.

The power of the microchip!

Next was figuring out what to do with the crab, so I made it so after you collected the 8 shells, the "counting" microchip would send a signal to another microchip that would delete the small crab and make a large crab and a book appear and queue a timeline.  For the timeline, I simply read an old, motivational boy scout tale I heard once about crabs in a bucket. 

This is why I'm not an electrician . . .

After this, it was all polish.  I started adding beach towels, chairs, beach balls, palm trees . . . basically all the beach themed items I could find from searching Dream's item directory.  I added a dock and a lighthouse, an exit, and a seagull flying overhead.

At first the lighthouse was merely going to be decoration, but then I thought . . . nah . . . I want to go out there!  So I found a raft model and invented a kind of moving conveyor to and from the lighthouse, but what to put in the lighthouse?  Why . . . how about a crab rave?! YES!

As I kept creating and adding things, I then hit a wall.  Yup.  I found the limit on things I could add to the game.  I simply ran out of audio space and object space, and then I had to call my project "done."

Check it out!

I'm really enjoying myself in Dreams lately. It took quite a bit of fiddling and thinking to overcome the hurdles I had initially, but it feels pretty refreshing to have made something like this, and the community game jams seem like just the thing.

Happy Dueling!

Crafting my first VR Dream

You may vaguely remember that the family got me Dreams for the PS4 VR back for my birthday. After letting the kids play it for a bit, what I found was the most intensive set of tutorials in any game, ever.  Why?  Well, to be honest, there certainly are enough Dreams Content Creators out there that I could be perfectly happy just playing other people's levels, but that's not me. I need to create! I can't be content to just wander haunted houses built by players for hours on end.

Just one of the many spooky floors from All Hallows' Dreams

 Ok, gotta admit, I could just wander haunted houses built by players for hours on end.

But I love creating things!

The game comes with a pretty nice pack of "ancient stone" default building items for you to play around with, and I ended up making a pretty pleasing scene where you talk to a frog and grab a Sonic-esque ring that changes day to night.

This seemingly simple scene took an amazing amount of time to build

I've played through a few hours worth of tutorials and I still have more to do believe it or not. 

The creations I'm finding in Dreams VR are all very strange and simple, and it very much feels like I'm living and walking around inside a puppet show, which is a pretty cool aesthetic.

I'd love to build a maze game filled with scenes. One of my favorite books was called "Maze" by Christopher Manson. The only problem with maze games is that they're more fun to make than to play generally . . . that was one of the problems with the maze game I made in Roblox.

I'd also like to make a poetry reading experience with a few of my poems.

Part of the problem is that it's just so darn complicated to make automated, programmed elements in these games, that most of the games just turn out to be obstacle jumping courses (much like 90% of the games on Roblox).

There's tons you could do . . . it's just challenging to do it. Thus why you have hours and hours of tutorials in the game. Mad props to those who create for sure.

Happy Dueling!

Strange Dream Last Night -- and Happy Thanksgiginv 2013!

So last night . . . well, I guess really early this morning (I took the dog out around 5:00 am and then fell back asleep for a couple of hours) . . . I had the freakiest dream, and hey . . . it's Thanksgiginv Day and I have nothing better to do, so thought I'd write about it here on TFN.

In the dream, my wife (Bailey Skystaff), my daughter, me, and Beau Hindman all went to a really interesting Austin Texas Dive. The Dive was pretty small, and in my dream I vividly remeber the yellowing walls that were painted to look like they were yellowing . . . outside of that it was very clean and new, without smell. The first thing I noticed was a man playing a cool keyboard set with electronic hand drums. The music was this really cool glitchy electro that was played very quietly. It was like that because not only the size of the venue made it so that it had to be played softly, but it was meant for that particular venue -- it fit the room perfectly. Off to the side of the keyboardist/drummer was a man with longer wavy hair who began scratching on a record some really lo-fi, quiet scratch beats.

In the dream I was really grooving on the scene. I remember that Beau stood up and helped reposition a CD folder that was near the drummer that was starting to fall to the floor due to the vibrations from playing. My daughter left the room for a moment and I looked back after her and then looked back at the show. By this time, the guy who was scratching the record had moved over to the right wall besides where they had set up their keyboards and DJ stuff. On this wall was a series of toys that had been modified somewhat to be part of the show musically, and the DJ then began to work on an ipad type of instrument and he was playing this kind of clown music. He turned to face the audience and started making a winding motion to his neck like he was winding up the toy to play while simultaneously making a circling "this is coo-coo" motion to his head, which was really funny in the dream, and the audience gave him a good laugh for his theatrics. At the moment when the DJ turned around to face the audience, we locked eyes and . . . it was none other than Michael Action Smith, the CEO from Mind Candy -- the company that makes Moshi Monsters.

And then I woke up.

DUDE VIVID DREAMS LIKE THIS FREAK ME OUT!

I think the hand drums came from watching this video last night on YouTube



He does these hand drum things at 20 seconds and 35 seconds that I think stuck with me in the dream.

I've sent Beau a couple of emails lately, and he's just a really nice guy. Perhaps my brain was just like . . . hey . . . it'd be cool to go to an event with Beau, like we did back at GDC Austin way back with his wife Leala.

The surprise of the dream was the inclusion of Michael Action Smith. LOL. I don't even know why . . . but have you seen how cool the Moshi Monster offices are?



(My co-workers would most likely find working here annoying, but I love the concept and his attitudes behind it -- those British peeps are kooky like that)

Whew . . . thanks for the brain dump . . . kind of wish that dream was real in a way. LOL. It'd make for a great show and a great story, so, Beau, if Michael Action Smith ever comes in concert with a toy glitch band, I'm calling you up.

Happy Dueling!