Dream: Vampire Manor
by the skullkitty (14th May, 2007 @ 12:05 pm)
Somewhere in Furcadia there is a fantastic vampire-themed dream. It’s beautiful and original, with purposeful rooms and an ominous but elegant atmosphere. The kind of place you could really imagine as being a favourite hang-out for immortal, damned creatures of the night. Actually, I know such a place exists because I’ve been there. Alas, Vampire Manor isn’t it.
It’s not the fact that the dream is built with exactly the same patches as every other dream out there that makes Vampire Manor particularly uninspired. It’s the fact that it uses exactly the same floor-plan. This is supposedly a ‘manor’ and yet we’re initially dumped into an uninspired courtyard entrance with no apparent external doors. The sheer number of internal doors, however, is far more intimidating than the brightly-lit blood fountain and somewhat unconvincing Grim Reaper and werewolf ’statues’. I’ve only been here for about five seconds and already my art-sense is tingling; not a good sign for the aesthetic congruity of the upcoming tour. Bravely pressing on revealed innumerable ‘private rooms’. Some effort has been made to differentiate the room décor, however the overall arrangement is fairly similar and the actual rooms themselves seemed physically far too large. Plus… why so many? It seems a lot of wasted space for a dream with only three people (one a ‘bot’, one yours truly); this is a theme that continues throughout the dream.
I’m tempted to describe the place as a labyrinth, however this would be a bit of a misnomer since there are very few ‘corridors’; instead almost all rooms immediately join off the courtyard. I’m not sure if I like this system or not; it’s very easy to find your way between rooms, but at the same time it feels almost… piecemeal. Like very little planning has been done with regards to the dream’s flow. Though now that I think about it, this is probably less something that’s due to the courtyard arrangement per se so much as the dream itself. The patching is ho-hum — a lot of Indigo Nightfall — but even the quality pieces can’t save this dream from what is some really shoddy dreamweaving. ‘Clipping errors’ — being able to see the corners of other rooms — abound. Trees grow out of the floor. Pools of blood end in neat square rows against vibrant green grass. The line between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ is blurry (and not in the good Frank Lloyd Wright kind of way). Some rooms lack walls for no apparent reason. What little DragonSpeak is present is also of somewhat dubious quality. The door-locks are especially flaky (and poorly-animated), and it’s possible to lock them and get outside before the lag kicks in. The ‘lock’ simply makes the square in front of the door unwalkable, which is annoying in itself. Seemingly random items make you sit down, such as the blood on the floor in the ‘Torture Room’ (whose image I apparently forgot to upload). Items pilfered from Diablo rear their ugly heads once more, as well as some eviscerated hanging corpses I swear I last saw in the original Doom.
Vampire Manor not only takes the Big Three Public Dream Rooms, but it extends it out to the Big Six; a bar, a strip club, a chapel, private rooms, a bathroom and an arena. In fact, there’s very little in this dream that feels like a ‘manor’ at all. There are no sitting rooms or corridors, for example; just a bunch of ‘common’ dream locations thrown together. There’s almost no cohesion here that makes me feel that I’m in a real location rather than just someone’s development sandpit.
Like I said at the start, there’s gotta be a good vampire-themed dream out there somewhere, but Vampire Manor sure as hell ain’t it.
Overall Assessment
- Pros: Relative ease of navigation. Nice, big text box.
- Cons: Too large for its population. Poor use of space. Uninspired design.
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Popularity: 19% [?]
I enjoy reading your reviews they are very, uhhm.. enjoyable.
Haha! This place. Don’t get me started! I’m sure I’m out of place commenting about the population rather than dream layout, having stumbled on this little review that I will tuck away, but I believe what must be said, must be said. I worked here for about four months total, but a year spanning. Outside of it being one of the most well built, look-wise, dreams I’ve come across, the place is rank with horror. Mediocre role play taken -WAY- to personally. One instance was some random incomer “kicking” someone with a one line post, and then leaving. In most places this would just be ignored, but the staff on hand (since that’s the only thing the place is every populated with) had a three hour “session” of “r u ok?” The Management is deplorable as the owner, Shariku, hates well thought, long detailed posts as they “are rude to others who do not wish to read these posts.” I offered to aide in helping the role play level of the dream in an attempt to save it, and was promptly banished. This dream will not survive much longer, if it hasn’t been taken off already.