02/13/03
The Seven Cities Of Gold

The only dream I remember from my nap seemed to have been based on an old computer game of mine, The Seven Cities Of Gold. The goal of this game was to sail to the New World, trade with the natives, build cities, and sail back home with a boatful of treasures to attain a new rank. I used to love playing this game even though it was quite stressful whenever I was set upon by hostile natives. My tendency was to run wildly away until I came to their camp and trade like hell with the chief so we'd be friends. Oh, and I would NEVER rob burial sites, no matter how lucrative they might be. That was one sure way to piss everybody off. o_O

Anyway, in this game, you could choose one of two ways to play: You could play in the "real" New World, with the rough equivalents of North and South America (I kept trying to locate the Great Lakes but they didn't appear to be programmed into the game--grrr!), or you could build a random world and sail into that instead. You had to be careful not to get caught in storms or upon reefs, however, else you could destroy your ships; and you also had to keep track of the longitude and latitude you landed at, as you could easily get lost far from your ship and run out of supplies walking along the shorelines trying to find your way back! I grew to love the game more for the pleasure of obtaining riches from the natives and taking these back to Spain rather than for obtaining any new rank; hence I didn't really get into building cities, which would have cost a lot.

I have not played this game in a long while as it's not installed on this computer.

In my dream, I was at a computer (it didn't feel like my house, but I can't describe the setting at all as I did not get one look at it) playing Seven Cities. I wanted to build a new world with a randomly made map, so I selected that. I don't remember doing this; I just remember seeing a map form on the screen. Now, this isn't how the game actually went. In the real game, the map was built ONLY as you explored the new world. The more you explored, the more detailed and accurate the map became. In my dream, the map was built ahead of time and I was looking at the layout of the land to decide if I liked it or not. (In real life I'd often test a few random worlds before settling on one, depending on how rich they seemed to be.) It was forming right before my eyes. It was a long, narrow band of land stretching from the left (west) side of the screen to the right (east). Part of the land was cut off on the left, which means there was more beyond that. It tilted down a little bit and formed a rounded knob (peninsula) about two-thirds of the way to the right and that was it, the stretch of land to explore. In addition there were a few little islands and such around it, in particular about three tiny round ones in a row below it. These alternated between being actual land and between being coral reefs submerged beneath the water, yet still visible from the aerial view. The land for the most part appeared to be desert or just sand (it was light sandy colored with brown around the edges), but as I sailed toward it I seem to remember trees and such in spots.

This part of the dream also reminded me of when I sailed around in the game Ultima VI: The False Prophet. I thought of volcanic activity when looking at the land, as I might have to beware of it, so that's why it reminded me, as that game had lots of little volcanoes spouting around in it.

Anyway, I decided this looked like a very interesting land formation and started sailing toward it from the east. (That is, sailing from the right side of the screen to the left.) I had only one boat at first as that's how the game starts; you buy more ships and supplies later on with the money the king gives you. I started pulling up toward this stretch of land and then for some reason it's like I WANTED to try to wreck my boat, just to see what would happen. At one point it's also like I had more ships following and I could control them separately--perhaps I tried to crash another one and not mine (in the real game they all move as one)--but my ship was all I could ever see; the others were invisible. I was curious to find out if those little islands were really islands I could land on, or if they were coral. I had lots of different motives here, it seems. I drove the boat ashore at different places, trying to smash it into the beach to see if there was coral present or not; for the most part there didn't seem to be, at least along the shore of the big piece of land. I tried landing on the little islands, or else crashing into them to see if they were coral, but it's kind of like I sailed over them at first; they were too insignificant to cause any damage. I was mildly surprised, as since they showed up, I assumed they would cause damage to the hull. But the boat never seemed to suffer any problems, and if it did, they were minor ones.

I don't know if I ever found out what exactly those little round things were--islands?--solid land?--coral?--what?--but I was eager to land somewhere and set foot ashore and go looking for natives to trade with and gold to mine. I always got this feeling when exploring a random new world in that game. I know Seven Cities is relatively boring compared to many videogames of today, but I'm very lousy at most arcade and strategy games, so I liked its simplicity. I don't know, I just loved the idea of trading for piles of gold and making friends with these natives. :)



2003 Dreams
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