[software] Need Programmers/Artists/Writers for Infinity/etc

Quest for Lucidity
1

Hi everybody! I have a feeling this is not the right forum to post this; however, I wanted it to grab the correct audience’s attention, right where I post all of my software here at LD4All.

Why am I reading this?
More than 5 years ago, I started posting software on this very site to help people like myself acquire lucidity. I was in my early years of high school–back when I actually knew what “free time” felt like. Obsessed and always thinking about lucid dreams, I was determined to master the skill and hopefully bring others along with me for the ride. Sleeping in every day over the summer, it was heaven.

Fast forward to now, and unfortunately things aren’t quite as imaginative. I’ve got a generous job and am a full time computer science student at a university, very close to graduating and moving onto my master’s degree. I don’t say this to flatter myself in front of you, but rather to explain how incredibly busy I am and how little time I have to focus on what I started here five years ago.

The truth is, the software isn’t just mine–it’s everybody’s. I kept it free from the start so people could easily download it and make it their own. Half a year ago, I took all of it down and promised to re-release it in a newly improved, and re-written, format. Truth of the matter is, life got in the way and, you guessed it, I fell short of time.

Now we are at an awkward intersection. I don’t have my promised updated software finished and several of you have been asking me for quite a while where it all went to. So, I propose a change of action.

What software?
Throughout my stay here at LD4All, I developed and launched four software applications. They were: Infinity, Paradiso, Lucid Warp, and the Lucid Dreaming Digibook. See below for a brief overview of each.
Infinity
A two week course that flooded the user’s evenings with various lucid dreaming induction techniques in a very precise order. Typical waiting time to achieve lucidity was anywhere between 3 and 8 days.

Paradiso
A course that allowed for users to create their own dreamscape, giving them tips on how to not only construct their own imaginative world, but actually spawn there every time they fell asleep.

Lucid Warp
A program that encouraged users to break the barrier between what is and is not possible. Users systematically freed themselves away from doubt–the proposed main cause for failure to acquire lucidity–by performing “mind tricks” and persuading themselves that they have the willpower to become lucid.

The Lucid Dreaming Digibook
An extensive library full of tutorials on popular techniques to achieve lucidity, improve dream recall, and provoke the idea of shared dreaming.

The proposal
I still have with me all of the project files that I used for my software. Mind you, it was made when I was a freshman/sophomore in high school, so it’s a bit scrambled and messy. But, it’s all there, waiting to be touched.

Starting this July, I would like to open all of my material up to the general LD4All public and allow for anybody interested to make any changes or updates. To do this, I am calling for individuals to step up and form a team to head up this four-software project. Who do I need, you ask? See below!

Programming Team
Let’s face it, without programmers, life would suck. I need one or more people that have at least some programming experience (either on their own or in school) who is willing to take the software that I have to the next level. Right now, Infinity/Paradiso/Digibook was created in Flash. Lucid Warp, on the other hand, in Visual Basic. Now, please remember what I keep repeating: I was a freshman/sophomore in high school when I made these. I will be the first to admit at this point in time that it’s crap and needs to just be wiped and restarted. Flash, Visual Basic, Java w/ Netbeans GUI creator, Qt–use anything you want!
How to Apply

  1. Reply on here stating your interest, as well as the below items.
  2. Post a screenshot or two of your most prized software creation, as well as an explanation on what I’m looking at.
  3. State what programming languages you know and where you’d like to take the project (that is, what will you be using).
    Graphical Team
    A lot of the images you may have seen on my software were pulled from the internet. In an effort to avoid copyright infringement, I need artists who are willing to donate some of their work for screen backgrounds, buttons, etc.
    How to Apply
  4. Reply on here stating your interest, as well as the below item.
  5. Post screenshots of some of your most prized work.
    Writing Team
    The content I wrote was written during, you guessed it, my early years of high school. It desperately needs updating and all of the courses could even use some more information and tweaking. The digibook, as well, could use more tutorials. The idea is to expand upon what is already there and make everything better. If you need to get rid of a certain day on a course, do so! Just make it beneficial and worth it.
    How to Apply
  6. Reply on here stating your interest, as well as the below item.
  7. State in one paragraph what you would do if you were lucid right now.

Assembling the Team
I am going to let this thread sit for two weeks until Wednesday, July 6, 2011. On that evening, I will look over who all is interested and put them together in a group, emailing them all of my software files. The idea is for this team to work together and make choices as a group, as opposed to just one individual. The first group’s decision will be to hire a project leader, as well as sub-leaders for each of the three main sections. I will give my two-cents worth of who I think should lead based off of the material people submit, but ultimately, the group decides. Then, from that point on, I will effectively release myself from the software and allow you, the community, to completely take over.

Thank you very much for reading and I sincerely hope at least somebody responds! I am extremely excited to see where this will take the software and think it’ll be a fun and valuable experience for anybody with the free time to spend. Please feel free to respond and I will talk to you in two weeks!

2

Glad to be the first applicant on the list.

I program in Java and while I don’t have much experience I am learning continuously. Do not think though that because I don’t have years of Java experience that I’m completely incapable. I am very good at getting things done so even if you don’t want me on the team as a programmer I could help manage the project as a whole (although I would really prefer to be on that programming team).

As for current work I’m working on an IT Solution as requirement for the IB program. It is currently simple, but that is because how it was requested to be by the client. I’m far more than capable of making a complex program and if I don’t know how to do it, like I said, I’m always learning.

3

Hey Scipio Xaos, thanks for being the first to step up! Just out of curiosity, if other people start signing up and would want to do this in another language, would you be willing to stray away from Java? If so, I think it’d be an awesome learning experience and would certainly solidify your foundation if you’re thinking about continuing computer science in college. :smile:

For anybody else reading and hesitating to respond, please know that this is only as much as you make of it. If you want to help out and only do one small contribution, even as tiny as designing a logo, that’s completely fine! If you do not know how to do something but want to learn anyway, that’s fine, too! Signing up doesn’t bind you to this or anything; it more or less just lets me know if releasing all of my content will be of any use.

If you’re on summer break and do not have much else to do, I encourage you to especially consider getting involved in this. Show the world (LD4All is indeed international, is it not?) precisely what you are capable of accomplishing!

I appreciate everybody reading this and look forward to seeing who else wants to join!

4

Yeah, I have no problem learning another language, but that will be just that. I have most experience in Java and short of console programs, my skill other languages is quite low.

5

Hey
I am German and my english is therefore bad but I hope that this is not a problem and that you can understand me :smile:
About a year ago I started to learn C++. I still suck at it but I think that I am no longer a beginner. The problem is that I unsterstand nothing of Win32. This means that I can’t create Windows Applications. But a few months ago I started to learn SDL, which is another way to realize the software (problem: it takes much longer).
If you dont find any better programmers that would take over this task, I would be ready to do it (I will have summer break soon ) :happy: , because I don’t want the project to die.
Here is a screenshot of a small game I created a while ago:

Beside from this I mostly programmed small compilers for a computer, that I am building but that’s another story. :happy:
To show you what I can accomplish with my skills and how I imagine the program I wrote a small menu. Here you can download it:
Here you can download it (The background music makes the file this big)
I tried to make it relaxed and I hoped it worked. :happy:
As you can see it’s more like a game menu than like a small Windows application :happy:
I hope that this is no problem.

ps: I plan to study computer science, too ! :smile:

6

Short summary: Merge the 4 single apps into a single one with additional features that runs on multiple OSs and devices (think smartphones here).

Long version:

Hey there.
I’m a programmer and would really like to help out with this project.
My favorite languages these days are Scala/Java (been doing the latter for the past 6 years) but I also do my fair share of Qt/C++.

Now, where to take this project?
I believe that the four components are quite awesome by themselves – I had thought about doing something similar a while back – but, among other things, should be merged together.

Where would that lead to?
Well, to support people’s quest for lucidity, they have to be remembered of it / RCs / etc regularly and be able to read up on LD… wherever they are at the moment.
So what I have in mind here is creating an application which first of all merges your four apps, making all this knowledge / these “tutorials” available as part of one package, but also move away from just the computer.
For example, people are using smartphones on a daily basis, so let’s take all that knowledge to them. Besides from also making that knowledge base available on your smartphone, features (not just on the phone) could easily be extended to a random reminder to do your RCs or the like.
Basically, this’d lead to you having pretty much the same functionality on both, PC, smartphone, you name it (as long as someone ports the software to your device) facilitating your Q4L.

Now to the tech side of this…
There are two aspects we have to cover.
First of all, I believe that it would be great if we could make the knowledge accessible in multiple languages. Therefore, we need to stuff it into some nice XML format (any other ideas here?) so that we can easily display it in the various apps but also so that it can easily be translated.
What the app itself would be about then would be providing a nice viewer for the XML files on the one hand but also offering additional functionality like that random RC check timer etc.
The big question would, of course, be how to achieve all this (esp. the portability) without repeating ourselves too much codewise.
As I already said, I do quite a bit with the JVM so what I could imagine is creating an Android app + a Java app (driven by QtJambi?) which makes it easy for us to reuse code. Another possible solution to this would be to do the whole app using javascript. That way, we could offer access to it in 3 different ways. Android/iPhone (there are some javascript sdks out there), Native (Qt using QML?) and your regular browser.
Depending on how much manpower we have at our disposal, we could, of course, also go for multiple, independent codebases for Qt, Android and – possibly – the iPhone.
In the end, that’d depend on the experience of the team.

Especially when thinking about Android LD apps, you might think that this isn’t quite a novelty but I believe that while most of these apps do provide some features, none provide the complete, free experience that I’m aiming for here.

Hope I got you to understand my idea :wink:

7

Scipio Xaos: That’s entirely alright. The great thing about learning a programming language is once you know one, switching over to others is only a matter of learning syntax and discovering any new features that you could not do before. And, since it looks like several people are interested in the programming aspect, there will be plenty of assistance from others if a language other than Java is utilized. Should be fun!

T0X: I can understand you just fine :smile: . I took a look at your program and thought it was a nice sample–good work! I have never used SDL myself, so I am a little interested in looking into it a bit more. If you say it is not so friendly in the sense that development will take longer, then perhaps another alternative should be selected. If the project were to be done in C++, it may be at least easier for everybody to work with something along the lines of Qt. Depending on people’s level of experience, it may cause the program to look a little more GUIish, but if that’s where it needs to go, then go it shall. I really appreciate your post and want to thank you for both the screenshot of the game and the menu!

daarty: I appreciate you going into detail on your thoughts, especially on portability. I definitely agree on merging the programs into one software–I am glad you mentioned that. I am also excited to see your ambition to move the software onto the mobile platform. If the project were to head into that direction, I personally think it would be beneficial to have both a free version and a paid version, except with a twist: there is no difference between the two. Users could choose to either take it for free, or pay, and have that money be donated to LD4All. Just a thought.

These are all awesome thoughts that I think anybody interested should keep in mind. If you are reading this and are still on the edge about joining, I encourage you to just go for it–you can always step down if you feel you lack the time commitment. I will try my best to get on here every so often between now and July 6th so that I can provide feedback on everybody who has replied.

Thank you guys!

8

At first thank you :smile:
But as I said I just wanted to give you an alternative if nobody else was replying (it seemed so when I posted this), because I really want the project to be done :smile:
(I don’t know if this was clear in my post).
However, I would still like to help programming and would be willing to learn some other languages if I need to (I want to expand my programming skills anyway and I think I have the motivation to do this, because programming is a lot of fun to me and I also want to expand my knowledge about lucid dreaming (I am quite a begginer :smile:). I think I will take a look on this QT (never heard of it) now.

9

Hi
If you want to avoid those copyright things, use images that are under Creative Commons license. There are tons of them.

I could search for images in the internet or make some basic stuff (like buttons), if there are no alternatives in the internet. I can also do some complex 3D work (that’s my best skill with graphics).

Here is an example of what I made using Blender:

912×659

EDIT: moved picture to Picassa with better quality.

I should have some spare time on July, so I could help with what I can.

10

NICE!
I am a pretty good programmer (at least for my age = 13years) and universal media-“freak”.
I can code in
PHP - good
Visual C# - medium (hate this cause it’s MICROSOFT-stuff)
C - bad (still starting)
Java - good
flash - medium (havent done for a long time)

'Cause of my age and in two days I will go on summer vacation for at least 3 weeks, I can’t work in a rhythm, but I will give my best to help de development.

11

T0X: I admire your ambition and think you would be an excellent member of the programming team. Everybody has to start somewhere and I think you’re right on track. Qt is pretty fun to play around with and makes GUI design a hell of a lot easier–most importantly, though, it provides some pretty nifty libraries that can bring some interesting possibilities in the C++ world.

vazix: It appears your image is no longer showing; however, I fortunately had a chance to see it before it went down. For lack of better words, that looks freaking awesome! Very well done! If you are willing to participate, it is entirely up to you if you want to search for images or create any of your own. It would certainly be a great opportunity for you to show off your impressive talent.

S0lll0s: First, you should not hate C# purely because it’s Microsoft branded–it is actually a pretty good language to be familiar with and can be incredibly useful, depending on what application you use it for. At any rate, I have nothing against 13 year olds (was one myself!), and think as long as you have the motivation to apply any knowledge you have, in addition to learning new material, that you’d be just fine for the team. The fact that you’re showing interest now at such a young age says a lot about you already. Summer break is the absolute best time to do things like this, especially if you enjoy programming. I mean, think about it, you have from now until you are 18 to take advantage of absolute freedom without having to worry about bills/food/etc. That combined with your ambition could produce one hell of an outcome!

Thank you all again for your continued responses! I will be handing over the material as promised next Wednesday, July 6. I encourage any hesitant onlookers to jump in and go for it! Have a great 4th, everybody!

12

It looks like we have five people interested in this project–four programmers and one graphical guru. If it stays like this, then the rewriting of the actual material will be up for grabs within the team (or if somebody wants to join in later, that’s obviously alright). As promised, I will be getting everything ready and will ship off all of the files tomorrow evening. For anybody who replied (including people who sign up between now and tomorrow evening), I will be sending the download link directly to their LD4All inbox. From there on out, the project will officially be out of my hands.

I encourage anybody who ultimately works on this to either continue on this thread or start a new one for the purposes of team communication. That way, anybody on the forum can see what exactly is going on and if an outsider has any suggestions or wants to help, they can easily do so. However, this of course is up to the team.

At any rate, I am thoroughly excited to see all of you eager developers step up and absolutely cannot wait to download the final product! Thank you!

13

Hello,

I’m interested in the four programs you created. I’m not sure how much time I will have when I go back to school in September, but I’d like to check it out to see if I can be of any help.

My programming experience:
Senior year of high school, 2.5 years ago, I signed up for a C++ competition for my school. I hadn’t programmed before. I procrastinated learning it and really only looked at it for a few days before the competition. I ended up getting second place and eventually qualified for nationals. I spent the next two weeks after that working on a turn based RPG using ASCII symbols to make mazes that you could walk through and run into enemies. It even had a battle screen where the ASCII smileys representing the characters moved and attacked each other.

More recently, I have made a breakout like game that is pretty complex. I’m not very good at graphics so it doesn’t look very pretty, but it plays well and is unique and addicting. I’m still working on it somewhat. I used the Allegro library in C++.

I’ve also touched the Windows API and the .NET framework (C++) and created a little personal music player in the last week. Again it’s not very pretty, but it includes many features you would think of out of a music player.

I’ve also made a little game in flash that I spent two days on. It’s a simple vertical shooter that still has a lot of work that needs to be done to it, but I’m surprised at how far along I actually got it. It is the first time I’ve ever used flash.

I go to college at the University of Michigan as a Computer Science student in the school of Engineering. I’m going into my 3rd year with a 3.8 GPA. Next semester I’ll be taking Artificial Intelligence and Operating Systems.

I am open to learning anything I need to, plus I learn pretty quickly. I’ve partially made an electronic dream journal, but it’s just a console application. Next month, I was going to work on turning it into a Win32 application, but these programs could be more fun :smile:

14

Great to have you, dlees! Congratulations on your accomplishments–that’s pretty impressive! I’m especially intrigued by your rogue-like game–any idea on what career you want to pursue post-college?

I have PMed all of you except for S0lll0s. For some reason, it says the username does not exist when I try to PM you, haha. Whenever you read this, please send me a PM with your email address and I can email you the link to my software files. Or, I’m sure somebody else from the team can do it as well.

Depending on what the team decides, there may be a new thread created just for the sake of showing development progress. If that is the case, certainly keep an eye out for that if you are interested! Otherwise, I appreciate everybody’s patience and look forward to seeing what this group of individuals can accomplish!

15

Thank you Ben! Since you asked, I’m not really sure what career I want to pursue. I do like game development a lot, but really I’m not even sure if I want to do computer science. It’s nice as a hobby, but I don’t know how it will be as a career. Hopefully, next year I’ll have an internship and can see. I’m thinking about getting a PhD in computer science, but don’t know if I want to put all of the time and money into the schooling required for it. I’m interested in ways to connect the brain to the computer. For example, think of what we could do if we could store our memories on a computer. Alzheimer’s disease would be a thing of the past. It would also be cool to view our memories on T.V. or a virtual reality thing. It could use your imagination to create games in which you would actually be in the game, like a dream. Which brings up another point of how you could use these interactions to dream what you want to dream about… like lucid dreams! I’ve always imagined making a virtual world where I could do whatever I wanted. Then, I learned about LDs. But, I still think it would be cool.

16

I really liked your Infinity software it was nice intro way back when.
Anyways its not clear what format you are proposing are you planning to do an open source style development?
Creating some sort of online hosted Infinity style application is kind of interesting to me.

17

Do you have any specific ideas you have for the software motagota? I think any ideas on what you think needs to be improved about it will be very helpful for us. As far as the online hosted, I’m not sure if we will take it in that direction, but I was thinking something along those lines. What would you like to see out of it if it was online hosted?

18

Finally: First LD (8.7.2011);
Back home: 16.7.2011;
Birthday: 31.7.2012
Internet connection: Testerday.

Skype name same as nick, mind that the ‘0’ are zeros and it’s THREE ‘l’ in the middle.
For some reason my iPod and googlegroups don’t love each other, will join when back home.

19

How are things going with this? I didn’t see this before the deadline, but if you still need a writer, I would be happy to apply and see what I can do for you.

20

I too am curious how this has been going. Anybody from the team care to share?