They’ve created a “Martian Children’s Museum” with all the game’s different interactibles (weapons, tools, etc.) so players can warp in and test the limits of the game mechanics. This is a guide written by Mike McShaffry for people who are testing the very earliest version of the game.Unlike the last set, I think it will be pretty obvious what each one is.Ĭoncerning the alpha document, LOAF had this to add: hese are extremely cool documents that really give you a feel for how worlds were created.Ever a font of information, he had this to say as a general comment on the documents as a whole: The last two pages of the document are a map of “Demo Land”, a small island on which many of the various tile and scenery objects were placed (presumably for testing) it is noted that every object in the game was also to be present on this map, between two segments of a small canal system.īandit LOAF of the Wing Commander CIC offered a few additional insights when Joe and I asked for his input. There is also a map of something called “Pem’s Martian Monster Park and Hunting Preserve”, which was evidently the space for testing the game’s weapons and combat mechanics. Special locations for testing items and combat mechanics are detailed, as are convenient cheats which can be used for teleportation and as-needed healing. The alpha document is probably the document I find most fascinating, as it seems to be a guide for the alpha testers who first got to poke around with builds of Martian Dreams. In one sense, it’s basically just a dry summary of every detail of how the game was to progress.but in another sense, it’s a very interesting glimpse at how Martian Dreams was plotted and designed, and how the plot of the game was modified and tweaked over time. Many words and phrases in the document have been circled, crossed out, or otherwise marked up, which of course tells us that this document too was not the final version of the plot and game path. The cluepath and plot document - the first page of which is signed by a “Philip S.” - is probably the longest document in the collection, and describes in detail every point of the plot as it was intended to progress. At the point that it emerges from the pod, it is angry because now that it is adult, the dream is over. It begins as a seed that the Avatar must plant, in which it grows to maturity. 1) Martian Childhood Reminiscence – A Martian is dreaming of its childhoood.At the beginning of the document, a list of which dreams are assigned to which NPC (and which dreams are assigned to the Avatar) is given some of the dreams described thereafter were not - at the stage of the game’s development this document was produced at - assigned to anyone.Īs an example, here’s the first dream assigned to the Avatar: The dreamworld encounters document is a brief summary of the various encounters that the Avatar and various NPCs were to be able to have in the game. Does Roosevelt have the Avatar’s fingerprints? That’s one example. The flag list document is another short list, this time of the various boolean flags that were to control the flow of conversations with various NPCs in Martian Dreams. There’s also a really cool sketch of the gameworld map (that is: Mars), which was scanned in two parts by Joe Garrity and stitched together by myself: Lots of goldurned ice! The map locations document is a short list of coordinates - with some corrections, possibly indicating that certain landmarks were moved around during the game’s development - of where different landmarks and things can be found in the game. The tile sets document, for example, contains just that: hand-drawn sketches and notes about the various tilesets that were to be used in Martian Dreams, including the spaces reserved in the graphics repositories for NPC animation frames. There is some truly fascinating stuff to be found within these (often amusingly ketchup-stained) pages, at least for those who enjoy getting a look at the technical foundations of software.
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