Introduction to DreamScape

DreamScape Documentation Index.

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Introduction to DreamScape

DreamScape is a design example that demonstrates the modular and dynamic approach to interactive multimedia that is possible using ScriptX. The DreamScape library provides an open ended platform for plugging together dynamically loaded interactive multimedia objects. It includes a collection of example objects that plug together to demonstrate the possibilities of dynamic object oriented multimedia. DreamScape was developed by Don Hopkins and Steve Mayer, from Kaleida Labs.

The DreamScape metaphor is that of rooms connected together in a map, which contain interactive objects called products, that are all dynamically loaded at run time from separate ScriptX title containers. Every room and product in DreamScape is an independent plug-in object.

Rooms are full screen spaces whose edges can be connected together in a map, so you and the objects contained in the rooms can move between them.

Products are interactive multimedia objects that can be automatically preconfigured in the rooms, and that you can dynamically order up by dragging an icon out of of the catalog tool.

Tools are products that move around with you from room to room, that let you navigate, inspect and edit the properties of DreamScape objects.

Your DreamScape environment is defined by the room containers in the room folder, and the product containers in the products folder, that DreamScape finds on disk and plugs in during startup. At any time after starting DreamScape, you can plug in new rooms and products, by dynamically loading them from disk, floppy, CDROM, network stream, web server, etc.

You can interact with DreamScape in many interesting ways: navigating the rooms and playing with the things you find in them, picking them up and throwing them around and between rooms, plugging them together and pulling them apart like animated paper dolls or legos.

DreamScape objects can animate graphics and play sounds over time, move with velocity, bounce with elasticity, slow with friction, interact with each other when they collide, and respond to the physical characteristics and data properties of each other and the environment, as well as scheduled and unscheduled events, in arbitrarily programmed ways.

Objects called PuppetParts can also have multiple lego-like registration points, that move over time with the animation, so you can plug them together into articulated tree structures that animate with many degrees of freedom.


DreamScape Documentation Index.

Next: DreamScape Tools.