[Environmental/Playground, small] Remembering the City

If you find these screenshots confusing, minmay, I submit that the problem is not in the screenshots but in your perception.

I don't get it; as far as I can see, those screenshots obey the "rule" perfectly.

minmay, the Jack, how about a new thread about the foreground/background issue, as it's clearly a general aesthetic discussion and not so much one about this level?

ETA: Thanks, Aptequar and WatcherCCG! Glad you enjoyed the level! And, yeah, the win tile issue was discussed with my betas. Personally, I don't feel that environmentals really need one, and I seem to remember quite a few environmentals without one. Is it *really* part of the definition given in the world.ini file that environmentals have a win tile? Or is there another, additional level type definition that says so, somewhere on the forum?

Me, I like the sense of being able to just keep on walking around an environmental; I guess I see them as something more akin to a virtual park than a game. ;-)

I did add to give the level *some* sense of closure, after discussion with my betas, though.

It was discussed back during the old forum: the one split between Playgrounds and Environmentals was that a Playground level was an infinite loop, a fun house with no end, while the Environmental levels showed off creativity, and ended with a nice little cutscene. Just FYI. Level is lovely either way.

Have you all forgotten that a level can have two categories?  You can make a level which is both Environmental *and* Playground.

It was discussed back during the old forum: the one split between Playgrounds and Environmentals was that a Playground level was an infinite loop, a fun house with no end, while the Environmental levels showed off creativity, and ended with a nice little cutscene. Just FYI. Level is lovely either way.

I guess it's no skin off my back, really, whether I call this Environmental or Playground. :-) Will try to edit the title of this thread...

Oh, and someone mentioned the music being too loud: yeah, I'm aware of that, actually. I really need to learn audio editing... I just used the track as provided by the composer, because, well, I *don't* know audio editing yet.

It's fine, if you ask me.

This is a wonderful level, really. The concept, the graphics, the ambiance sounds and the music are great, and work perfectly together. I'll replay this sometime, to get back in the mood.

Thank you, Teper.

Re: what Aptequar said about the places being ephemeral - I meant to reply to that, but forgot, so here goes:

Well, from a philosophical standpoint, *everything* is ephemeral, of course ;-) but there are degrees to this, in the level (as in reality ;-)). Also, there are different senses to the word ephemeral, I think... one being something close to 'transitory', and the other, maybe, closer to, though not identical with, 'ghostly'?

The city is, well, like the intro screen says, essentially something like a ghost, or a memory. There used to be a real city there a long time ago, and maybe some of the boulders and rocks (especially the more rectangular-looking ones) aren't boulders and rocks but the remains of its ruins... but the lights that appear only at night are not a physical phenomenon. (So maybe *they*, actually, are not so ephemeral at all - in the sense that they will always be there at night, because what isn't physical doesn't decay...?)

The I think, is real, and not particularly ephemeral (although it is, of course, a symbol of the transitoriness of every form of life).

The may or may not be ephemeral. I don't know any more about it than Juni does.

The in my mind, is not ephemeral, although it probably only looks spectacular in the dark. In my mind - but you're free to your own interpretation, of course - it's a little patch of nature developing rich and strange new forms after the fall of the civilisation of the city. A real and tangible sign of the future, if you will.

And Juni's village is entirely real and non-ephemeral, of course - but it is also quite obviously a dying place, visibly built from the scrap of that long-dead civilisation.

Wow, this level just became very depressing. Good thing Juni can just find another home. She's got a ton of them all over her planet, really.

Wow, this level just became very depressing. Good thing Juni can just find another home. She's got a ton of them all over her planet, really.

Naaah. It's not depressing. There's the remains of old civilisations all over our planet, too! That's just how it goes with civilisations... Do you get depressed over the fall of the Roman empire?

Anyway, yeah, this level is what you get if you have a level maker who's both an archaeologist and an environmentalist who believes our current civilisation has probably crossed its zenith. *g*

But, as I said, you don't have to interpret the level the way I intended it; that's just what I thought/felt when I was making it, but everyone's free to see something else in it. If I had intended this to be the only possible interpretation I would have made it clearer in the level itself.

The strongest inspiration was really Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, with its mysterious streetlamp-shaped plants, its mysteriously still working actual streetlights in sunken cities, and its people-shaped and house-shaped mushrooms that develop after the fall of human civilisation. It's not a depressing manga, IMO.

(I'd like to add that neither the manga nor my level really reflect my outlook on the future or my larger worldview. There's elements in the manga that resonate emotionally with me, though, and those elements have found their way into RtC.)

I like this level's calm spot. I just wish stuff was lighter colored, my screen shows anything dark as REALLY dark, so even if the colors are drastically different on your screen, they are the same on mine.

Thanks, egomassive! Heh, I'd been wondering if there was a way to prevent Juni from moving around during a shift... *and* I'd been wondering what that 'quantize' thing meant! (Should have just experimented with that a bit, really; dunno why I never did...)

Anyway: fixed all the stuff you mentioned, and filed away your technical advice for the next level. :-)

You do know that if you hover your mouse over anything in the KS manager, it tells you what it is and/or does in the text at the bottom of the screen, right?

I like this level's calm spot. I just wish stuff was lighter colored, my screen shows anything dark as REALLY dark, so even if the colors are drastically different on your screen, they are the same on mine.

Actually, my screen is similar - which is annoying, and I'll definitely bring a DVD of a dark movie to the shop the next time I buy a computer screen, just to test it! I like the sf show Farscape a lot, the later seasons of which had a fairly dark look, and since I've had my new screen, I haven't been able to make out any detail in the background in those eps anymore. *Very* annoying!

I tend to play Remembering the City in a darkened room, and preferably at night.

But there aren't really any colours in the dark parts of this level except for black. Well, and the blue background. I have to admit, if your screen shows the blue of the background nearly as dark as the black silhouettes of the foreground stuff, then your screen's colour problem is more serious than mine's.

You do know that if you hover your mouse over anything in the KS manager, it tells you what it is and/or does in the text at the bottom of the screen, right?

I don't use the KS manager. I've only recently learned why it is that it doesn't work for me (the 'long directory path' problem) - but I'm so used to editing the world.ini now that I'm not sure I want to switch to the manager. I should probably give it a try, though. :-)

Wow, can't believe I haven't commented on this level.

This is thus far my favorite environmental level.  It has a wonderfully original concept and the PERFECT accompanying music. 

The only thing I don't like is something I like:  I like the egg thing at the end as it is weird and a non-sequiter (ha!  The spell check didn't know non-sequiter), but YOU NEED TO MAKE A FOLLOWUP MAN!  What is it, why is it there, is it directly related to the city, or what????  :kicks the ground in frustration:

Just played it.

It was beautiful

Thank you.

Last night, I was too tired to play anything that might require good reflexes and/or serious thinking, so I decided to load an environmental level and just relax for a change. I grabbed this, loaded it into KS and started wandering aimlessly. Man, this was just what I needed   The level is just gorgeous. The nicely detailed backgrounds and beautiful music make for a great relaxing atmosphere.

You get an A