I had an odd dream today, something out of the neverending story, animation done by Blizzard.

It's a bit long, so you might want to skip to the section that starts with "The Pitch".

I'm soaring above a massive, beautiful plain, there are towers dotting the landscape, each tower with a miniature sun topping it, leading along roads always south to north, beings of pure energy are constructing roads, towers, shimmering portals of pure energy, and castles moving northward, at first slowly, and advancing at a more and more rapid rate. These beings fan out, and begin spreading their towers in jagged lines, each with a different colour of energy. One red, one blue, one purple, and one white.
I watch in curiosity as the towers begin to intersect, red and purple veering into blue, and white seeming to avoid the other energies. I hear a rumble, and a great sadness overwhelms me, and I begin to fall into the land itself. I can see a darkness spreading, south to north, devouring and ripping the land asunder. The beings are building more towers in the south, standing and siphoning their own energy into the towers, attempting to hold back the darkness in a desperate flight north, to a great gaping portal, a swirling maelstrom of all four colours of energy.

The darkness begins to overtake the first of the towers, it swirls about the first towers, and the beings begin to blast them apart, causing the darkness to burst forward. A tower is fully engulfed, it's demolishers failing to stop the darkness from devouring it, the darkness extinguishes the miniature sun, and explodes forward again, this time faster, engulfing all connected nearby towers, quickly spreading through read and purple's borders enclosing blue, the darkness has now surrounded blue, and begins squeezing in upon them, like some great, terrible snake. In a desperate last stand, twenty five of the beings merge themselves into one gigantic being of shocking power. The being forges his way through the inky curtain, almost making it to the light again, but is pulled into the void by a long tendril of darkness incarnate.

Red and purple have now converged, and are building conduits between their towers, workers of both colours are pouring energy into these crystal nexuses, their towers burn hotter and brighter, and the darkness cannot continue for some time, this buys enough time for red and purple to make it into the swirling portal, meanwhile, white is pinned between a high cliff, a river, and the darkness. Workers panic-stricken, beat at the cliff, attempting to carve a stairway, while a second set races to construct a bridge. It is to no avail, the darkness shoots into the water, and at maddening speed, travels the entire river and slams into the cliff face, attempting to constrict white again, White completes the stairs, but the darkness has surrounded white.

White has completed their third project, a six-pointed star of crystal nexi. Sixty white workers extinguish themselves tearing the very earth surrounding them asunder, the entire landmass appears a quarter mile to the north, a great mesa rising above what once stood before, and white fights their way west into the swirling gateway, escaping the rapidly approaching darkness.


The Pitch:

This dream was a strange one, and once again, a product of taking 20mg Melotonin last night... It helps you sleep, but you start having bizarre dreams!

So, I decided to fire up Dream Maker, and Macromedia Flash, and Photoshop today, and started pounding out concept art, icons, and code before the details slipped away.

I wrote down the ideas for the gamemode.

Essentially, it's an RTS-like game, relying little on resource management, and research, and is played as a frantic rush to make it to the north edge of the map.

The game can be played by one to four players.

There are currently four types of structures, the "Sun Tower", the "Crystal Nexus", the "Castle", and the "Gateway".

You start out with a Castle, and a Gateway, and two sun towers. You accumulate workers by using the Gateway. You can only have five workers at first, and every castle adds another ten units to your maximum.

It takes a few minutes for the darkness to start building up, and you have to accumulate energy by assigning your workers to enhance sun towers. Enhancing Sun Towers serves three purposes: 1) Keeping back the darkness. 2) Extending your construction range, and 3) Accumulating energy. Each tower can have up to ten workers Enhancing them.

All structures cost energy to build, and the more workers you have constructing them, the faster they build. If Twenty-five workers are selected, you can merge them into an avatar. The avatar acts like a small mobile, but powerful sun tower, but does not spread building range. They can be "expended", receiving all workers back, or can be used to assist in building, avatars build as quickly as 25 workers, but move faster, and buildings constructed by avatars have more health.

Darkness advances at first in spikes and bubbles, but a curtain slowly catches up to the spikes. It spreads VERY quickly in water, and prefers to devour lowlands before devouring higher elevations.

If you find yourself stranded in the darkness, your only hope is amassing enough towers and avatars in one place to beat it back for a moment (as the curtain is the only part that destroys land, spikes, bubbles, etc. only make it unusable.), and then keep building northward quickly. The darkness picks up pace as it goes, becoming harder and harder to avoid.

If the darkness catches workers using tendrils, or brings an avatar down, darklings will spawn. Darklings are weak workers/avatars, and attempt to corrupt other workers, able to move out of the darkness only a short distance. If they reduce the health of an avatar or worker to zero, the worker is now a darkling.

If the darkness devours a sun tower, any sun tower within the influence of that tower will begin to spread the darkness much faster, acting in a chain effect. It is possible to use this against opponents by leaving a chain of sun towers in the path of your opponent, but make certain to disconnect the Sun Tower from your main chain, or it'll backfire!

If the darkness devours a portal, it will spawn five darklings, and if the darkness devours a crystal nexus, it will overload the nexus, and explode, creating instant darkness in a large bubble.

Castles are merely destroyed by the darkness, reducing your worker cap.

The goal of the game, is to continually head north, while not leaving a trail to the south for the darkness to follow. Destroying buildings requires 30 seconds and one worker, but can be reduced by the number of workers, or even by being near crystal nexi. (crystal nexi also increase energy production of whatever they are around.)

Six crystal nexi in a star of david pattern creates a powerful safe zone. They will literally hold back the darkness completely until their power is exhausted, and they are destroyed. If ten workers are charging the nexi, they gain a boost in power, and longevity. A powerful teleportation circle can be created by sacrificing 60 workers.

Essentially, that's about it. Each player can choose to work together to survive, or can elect to screw each other over in order to win. The darkness slows the more it devours, so a team can buy itself time if they manage to engulf enough of their opponents. This, again, can backfire, especially if the darkness manages to accumulate a lot of darklings.

Any thoughts on this? I know it's a bit complicated and long-winded, but it's just gotten into my head, and I can't get it out.