Sphere Community Game/Storyline and events
From Spheriki
This page contains info about the general layout of the storyline in the Sphere Community Game, as well as details about specific events.
Contents |
Idea
Daniel is your typical computer user. He happens to stumble across Sphere. Curious as he is skeptical, he installs and runs the package. The computer then drags him into the world within, and he wants out. But to get out, he needs to restore the world to what it was by "creating" the game. Only by bringing the world to life can Daniel be returned to where he belongs.
So it's a bit like Terranigma. The parts of the world that haven't been created are blank and dark, NPCs without creative energy appear frozen, and so on.
Characters
There are two main characters: Daniel and Tilde~.
Daniel
Average adolescent computer user. His curiosity is rivalled only by his skepticism. He just wants to get home really.
Daniel attacks by using creative magic skills, mostly elementally based.
He will get homesick at some point or another.
Equipment (armour only)
Daniel can really only wear armour, since his primary means of offense is his spells.
Body
- Cotton shirt: Daniel's well-worn shirt.
- Long shirt: Long sleeves protect from sunlight and sand.
- Leather tunic: A little loose, but he can get it tailored.
Legs
- Old sneakers: Daniel's faithful sneakers.
- Stiff boots: They're stiff.
- Leather shoes: A little tight, but he'll break into them.
- Jeans: Daniel's well-worn jeans.
Spells
- Space (non-elemental): A weak attack.
- Tab (non-elemental): First step to better scripting!
Tilde~
A small, mysterious girl. She seems to be a figment of the world, perhaps a manifestation of a glitch within it. She's playful, silly, and occasionally insightful and confusing. The world's glitches will also react to her. Sometimes she can float.
Tilde~'s mode of attack is her alarmingly potent martial skills with weapons of the world. She can use glitches, exploits and code as skills.
Tilde~ is actually nameless, but her tendancy to randomly spout melodious inclinations at the ends of her statements (which would put tildes at the end of her lines) gives her this nickname.
Equipment
Tilde~'s equipment is based loosely around the traditional RPG combat elements.
Weapons
- Wooden sword: Tilde forgot where she found this.
Shields
- Toy shield: Plastic, so it's rather fragile.
Legs
- Small shoes: Small and dainty!
Skills
- None yet.
World
Five main continents, plus an extra mysterious one that pops up later in the game.
- Articia (artwork)
- Chroniclus (storyline)
- Kamajs (coding)
- Audiopolis (audio)
- Terraforma (map design)
The extra continent is more like a giant island, where the final confrontation will take place.
Articia (artwork)
Articia is a snapshot of the free expression society of the '70s and '80s. A semi-tended urban landscape gives rise to the radical dreamers and interpretative artists who call it home.
If a person isn't wearing a smock, or a beret, or a goatee, or holding a paintbrush or charcoal, there's a good chance they're from somewhere else. And if it isn't art that's being worked on, that cold coffee that's been sitting aside for too many hours is being nursed. More traditional landscape and portrait pieces take a backseat. The few that do specialise in these older forms of art have traded their talent to the richer folk in Terraforma.
Free thinkers, or "hippies", have also found a welcome home in this retro society, though some of the young artists resent their presence. They commonly gather in parkland and in town squares and recite new age poetry, sharing their love of their mother planet.
Chroniclus (storyline)
Chroniclus is stuck square in medieval times. The theme is so strong so as to be a parody of the times, where the countryside is the unimaginatively vibrant combination of grass, forest trees, dirt, sand, water and mountain tiles.
The populace dress code ranges from ridiculous rags to ridiculous royal armour. Town houses and stone castles are bound by flagstones, and the one thing that everybody shares is incredibly stilted speech.
Slimes, bees, rats, animals that shouldn't be in caves but are, and yes, dragons all call Chroniclus home. Oh, and giant insects. Because insects are creepy and are easy to kill without remorse. I wonder if there's an RPG out there that involves killing women and children? It's always nazis and aliens. Insects look like aliens when expanded.
Kamajs (coding)
Kamajs is a dry continent. It is home to both budding scripters and the top rank of the field.
Sandy dunes come in contact with sparse tundras. Low-lying plateau-ish mountains and cliffs litter the open spaces. Trees are either spindly or lush waterholders (cactus-like), shrubs are spikey or nonexistant, same with grass.
To cope with the environment, people have either built towns around natural oases, or have dug mine-like tunnels beneath the surface of the rockier areas. Only the makeshift mines are cool enough to support the running of computer hardware. But many of the mine shafts and tunnels have been left untended and abandoned, making them ideal homes for creatures with a huge range of power levels, from great to small. Nobody truly knows how deep the tunnels go. The more established tunnels have sealed the lower levels with metal doors with security locks, but untended mines may just have a warning sign, or not be blocked off at all.
Because the mountains are low-lying, they don't form snow and thus do not produce rivers or other waterways. When it rains, the tundras come alive, and plantlife grows tall and proud. Rain is rare, however.
Many pathways have been built through cliff valleys, either running along them, or across them using bridges overhead or between mine tunnels. Sometimes ladders exist to move from cliffside mineshafts to the ground, to cliffside pathways, or to other tunnels on the same cliffside.
Audiopolis (audio)
Stone stone stone. It's all about stone architecture here, which makes sense, considering this continent's relative height above sea level. The ill-defined coastlines are lined with soft sand, but the rest is like a vast Greek/Roman metropolis.
Why such a bizarre design for a continent's layout of cities and towns? Each city and town is build with a high, dome-like rock wall. This is to shield against the possibility of flooding. The designers of the wall were obviously thinking well ahead, because many locations flood often.
Each city has at least one auditorium, where the citizens commonly hold operas and orchestral performances. It seems that all the people of Audiopolis have some musical talent in them. Unlike in the ancient age that the city architecture represents, technological advances have allowed electronic audio devices to exist, such as loudspeakers, microphones and radios. Sheet music can be found in anybody's abode, as well as collections of tapes, vinyls and audio CDs.
The land is mushy with salt water. The flora and fauna are unique in that they seem to belong more below the waterline than above it. Brilliant corals grow like shrubs and trees, while mosses and lichens can make rocks slippery. The entire continent is infused with flowing rivers, and the aquatic life are all too happy to make use of them. Fish are the obvious inhabitants, but squids, octopi, jellyfish, starfish and sharks can live in the rivers. Where eddy currents occur is where large "burrows" can be found, their entrances hidden just underneath the water's surface.
Terraforma (map design)
Terraforma is a land of misty, rolling plains, cold marshes, and thick, full forests filled with deciduous foliage. Its citizenry is a unique merger of cartographers (map makers) and miners. The only common element seems to be their incessant desire to learn more about the land around them.
The marshes are treacherous, and filled with the spirits of the fallen. Jack-o-lanterns can be found (not the pumpkins, but the mythical being), glowing flames dancing an eerie ballet on the surface of the boggy swamps. The forests see both damp greenery and cold, dry autumn all at once, due to the span of the continent.
Mists roll across the countryside, covering the tracks of wolves and other predatory creatures. Shadows are sometimes possessed in the mist, before making their way to a forest for a permanent home in the darkness of the thickets and the rotting logs. Small streams trickle along minor valleys, and moss grows on the tree trunks. Their roots are dotted with mushrooms, and rocks have become the homes of lichens.
Meanwhile, the cartographers take their place inside old-style terraces, working in lamplight right into the night to perfect their map-making skills. All kinds of papers, parchments and plotting equipment can be found in any cartographer's den (as well as their pockets.) All towns are marked at their very centre with a large magnetic compass, and a smaller sundial next to it.
The miners reside in more industrial conditions. The houses are similar to those of the cartographers, but more crowded, and more dirty. At night, it is indeed a sinister-seeming place, with all but a few candle lamp posts lit, the others broken and untended.
In the day, miners go to their quarries, well away from the marshy bogs. Dug into the sides of mountains and cliffs, the quarries are a whole other environment in and of itself. They seem very similar to those dug in Kamajs, without the concrete rooms or technological equipment. Instead, picks, pickaxes, lanterns, wooden beams, helmets, vests, and boxes and filters half-filled with dirt lie strewn along the sides of corridors, against buttresses and in corners.
Coal is the primary extraction, though dozens of other minerals and materials can be found beneath the surface. Dedicated mine lifts exist, but there are still many unknown perils hidden in the total darkness. Some local tales of folklore speak of the spirits of miners that have died in the tunnels.
Unissued skills
These skills haven't been given to a character yet, but they're worth noting.
Enemy
- Transform: Damages the enemy by morphing it around. (animation: uses TransformBlit() of course.)
- CreatePerson: Summons for help. (can't think of anything better. Enemy skill only. Animation: enemy dropping from the top or something, or fading in with a blue-grid effect.)
Environment
- Lava tile: See below.
- Poison tile: See below.
- Frost tile: changes the spot the enemy's standing on into a spot that can damage it. (animations: water/lava/poison flowing under the enemy as long as the battle lasts? ice will thaw, lava will turn to stone after a while.)
Person
- Person Up: Character floats. Animation: er, character goes up and continues floating. No bobbing, just still in the air.
- Person Inviz: Character becomes invisible. Animation: person becomes half transparent, a bit more shiney perhaps.
- Person Boost: Ups a random stat slightly for this battle only. Animation: dunno, figure it out if we're using this?
- Enemy Speed: Downs the speed of an enemy. Animation: whole screen fades to transparent grey for a second, framerate drops to half the speed in that second and goes back to normal after the spell.
- Person Speed: Ups the speed of a character. Animation: whole screen fades to transparent blue-purplish, framerate doubles.
- Direction Shuffler: Confuses the enemy. Animation: enemy turns to many directions. Dirs if enemies are sprites, else angle changing?
Sound
- Volume 0: Character can't talk, resulting in that the person can't use sound skills and some other skills (like more magic-like skills). Animation: speaker with cross through it symbol next to character.
- Too Loud: Character/enemy becomes deaf for this battle, making him immune for some spells but also lowering the success rate of using magic. Animation: loud music/sound playing (not too annoying for the player!), screen shakes. Enemy looks dazzled.
- Ultrasonic: Damages enemy. Animation: grey mist waves flow by from the right of the screen, high-pitch sound plays.
Script
- Exception Catcher: Revives character if he dies once.
- Object error: Try to destroy the enemy in one hit (kind of like Death in any FF game).
Items
Recovery
- Bandage: Heals a small amount of HP.
- Salve: Heals a little bit of HP.
Effect/"bomb"
- None yet.
Special grid items
- Oil Drop (fits: Fire; effect: Valley of Flame): A droplet of lamp oil. Valley of Flame inflicts fire damage on all foes.
- Desert Gem (fits: Fast, Earth; effect: Sandstorm): A gemstone found in the centre of the desert. Sandstorm inflicts earth damage on all foes and reduces their accuracy.
Events
Rough outlines go here, while precise details go in linked subpages.
Enter the Sphere
Leads in from the beginning of the game.
This is the initial cutscene, where everything starts. Daniel is in his room one moment, and in his computer the next.
A bedroom, belonging to DANIEL. It's a bit messy, with papers strewn over his desk, a few on the floor, and items of clothing on his bed. The computer stands out in the disarray.
- Daniel comes across Sphere.
- Daniel installs Sphere and tries it out.
- Then the computer does some wacky stuff and Daniel is dragged into it.
Welcome to nowhere. Population? You.
Welcome to nowhere. Population? You.
Leads in from Enter the Sphere
Daniel finds himself surrounded by a dark, blank grid. He stumbles over a 'T' trigger, which creates a few desert houses and some NPCs. It also makes a canyon-like path, which later leads to an old mine shaft.
Nothing can be seen at the moment. The screen is initially black.
- There is the sound of something/one falling.
- This is followed by a *thud* sound.
DANIEL has fallen flat on his face. He is surrounded by a deep blue grid, overlaying a black, empty void.
- DANIEL comments on having hit his head to be seeing such strange patterns.
- DANIEL says to himself that he'll find the kitchen sink and maybe get a drink.
DANIEL looks around a bit. He only now realises how strange this place is.
- DANIEL comments on really needing to find the sink.
A 'T' trigger appears nearby.
The player gains control of DANIEL. The edges of the map are bounded. Stepping on the 'T' trigger continues the scene.
A large statue rises at the exact point of the 'T' trigger. Surprise, it's in the shape of a clay 'T'. DANIEL has to step back to accommodate for it.
- DANIEL makes a comment on having really hit his head hard.
The screen fades to white. When it fades back, some abodes and some NPCs appear. The houses have thick walls and are painted white on the outside, though some have a few cracks and stains. A couple are merely light tents, large and more permanent than the stereotypical 'camp' tents. The NPCs wear light, collared shirts, and a couple have white lab coats. They do not move.
- DANIEL asks to himself what is going on.
The player gains control of DANIEL. This map will later be a full-fledged town. The player cannot leave yet. Talking to most NPCs will result in "..." as the response. One certain NPC will continue the scene.
- NPC struggles a comment about a little girl, a mine, and something about the north.
The player can now move about. The north map exit is the only working exit, the others just block or are blocked.
SCENE END.
Shift + Backtick = ?
Leads in from Welcome to nowhere. Population? You.
Daniel enters the mineshaft, and discovers Tilde~, a spry, mischieveous girl.
Event template
Leads in from (insert event name here). If this event doesn't come from a previous event, there's no need to put anything here.
A summary of what happened to lead into this event, and what happens in this event.
Description of the environment and surroundings.
- Cutscene sequence event 1.
- Cutscene sequence event 2.
- Cutscene sequence event 3.
- etc.
