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--- research_report_tot:start [2010-01-11 12:59] – 94.225.45.31
+++ research_report_tot:start [2010-01-11 13:34] – 94.225.45.31
@@ Line 41: / Line 41: @@
 == The vegetal mind ==
 being a plant, vegetal mind, being inside a plant, inside the seed, guilds
+A brainstorm discussion of the project lead to several ideas and inspirations.
+One of the strongest ideas was the desire to create a game in which you feel like a plant, experience life as a plant and perhaps learn from the plant's existence ways of improving our lives as humans on this planet. There's two attractive aspects to "playing a plant": one is letting going of individualism (no longer thinking of yourself as a single unit separate from others) and the other is the idea of a sort of unconscious or subconscious life (dubbed "the vegetal mind" during the meeting, i.e. a state of life where everything you do is instinctive, where, in other words, you are fully connected with your environment).
 http://lib.fo.am/tale_of_the_vegetal_meeting_notes
@@ Line 49: / Line 51: @@
 http://lib.fo.am/tale_of_the_plant_dungeon
-== The hex game ==
+== Casual games ==
-casual games
+We realized that there is already one type of game that is capable of "reducing the player to a plant". It's the mindless casual game that is so popular with web savvy senior citizens.
+Perhaps we could come up with a match-three class mechanic, the outcome of which would produce a plant.
 http://lib.fo.am/tale_of_vegetal_time
-hex
+== The hex game ==
+When thinking of simple software systems to grow roots in 2D, we stumbled on the hexagonal grid. Hexagons have been a staple for a certain type of strategy games, so it sort of felt right.
+We started prototyping a root growing game with hexagons.
+The abstract nature of the hexagon shape also connected well to our desire to make a hi-tech underground factory.
-hex dressed up
+http://tale-of-tales.com/foam/growHex1.mov
-dave continues inside the roots
+== Hex dressed up ==
+The mindlessness of the early hex prototypes was extremely satisfying. But the lack of aesthetic connection to plants (apart from a vague abstract representation of root growth) felt uncomfortable.
+When Dave introduced us to a way in which textures on a hexagonal grid could be used to represent roots more naturalistically, we found a means to correct that problem.
+http://tale-of-tales.com/foam/growHex12.mov
+== Dave inside the roots in 3D ==
+At some point, Dave started working on a 3D version of the root growing game.
+This became the most detailed gameplay prototype in this phase of the project
+== Tot above ground ==
+While Dave was creating the gameplay underground, we decided to work on what would happen above ground as the result of this root growing activity.
+We felt that one of the important motivators in the social experience of the game, would be the plant avatars that each players would be growing. So we came up with a system to represent how these plants might look. And how a garden would look comprised of such plants.
+adding missing elements: avatars, garden
 no game
@@ Line 73: / Line 93: @@
 make a game for people?
-adding missing elements: avatars, garden
 ==== Context ====