Oh crap! Wow, uh... hang on! I was serious about that "lets discuss how we can tie this all together" thing and I'd personally like to hit the pause button long enough to have that conversation.
My personal vision, from the start of the collaboration, was for a landscape of people above ground, but an almost creepy lack of them below grown in the odd abandoned labs. I envisioned a collaborative story where everyone adds a little more to the back story of what they where doing in the lab and what went wrong. Things have progressed WAY out of that area, however, but perhaps at least some of that can be salvaged in Lab 3.
I'd like to have permission to tweak Lab 3 into what I envisioned it as being, a mysterious and totally abandoned area with a semi-spooky storyline. This would involve removing people and replacing their dialogue with fitting sign writing. I would also like to remove screen x980y1000 and x982y1001 with 2 new areas which will be the playground for the back story I was referring to. Very important to me was the odd symbols and how they would be used as a kind of archaic meets science symbol, and I really wanted x980y1000 to be a series of rooms that showed that. It seemed obvious to me for some reason that that would be what would happen their, but obviously it's just my own personal insanity. %-D
So, if I can have permission to do my renovations to lab 3, I'll be very happy. I won't change the challenge area except to remove the people and perhaps add some story line to the room at the end of the challenge... yeah, in fact if it is ok, I might want to make that room (x987y1004) much more significant to the story as it currently seems a strange place to have such high security: why protect a bunk bed and a computer THAT well?
EDIT:
I realized after I wrote that this morning that I really never talk about how to unify the level, or how "my" area would help do that. It seems that the main tie that binds this level is a series of labs researching teleportation. We have lab 3 which may or may not be abandoned, and lab 4, which having another look seems to have only one scientist still working there. I think if we tweek the dialogue to explain why 1 lab is abandoned and the other is almost so, we'll have taken a big step towards unifying the level.
Also, their is the time travel device. I don't like it's location as it is really random. It might have made more since of this portal device were linked up to some kind of "magic" stone work, but it's hard for me to make since out of that device being in an ancient ruin. I suggest we have it in a small lab 1 instead. Also, it might make more since to say it is a dimensional gateway rather than a time machine. Dimensions are always easier to handle that time travel.
I think the cave at the far left is an interesting but so far random inclusion. Lets, again, pull that area together with either the ancient areas or the 2nd lab.
One of the main things I haven't seen that I was hoping to see, is the idea of an ancient technology of portals represented by the statues. We have a cool elevator, but I was thinking of something more. I'd like to try to do a little of that with my lab 3 renovations, but it would be nice to see more.
And let me say these are ALL JUST ideas. I'd love to hear more, and if you really want to just shoot down my whole set of ideas, go ahead. I DO realize this is a collaboration, I just get really excited about story lines.
Finally, let me point out that I may only have time to do a sketch of what I would like to see happen in lab 3, as I have very little time to give to this, but REALLY want to contribute.
Oh, and sorry for how long this is.
