Ok, now. This one I gotta write down. Very odd dream. I was on some sort of campus, and it had a LAN of sorts. There was a game - I forget its name, though it was like "Everquest" - sort of. Very similar, but not quite, somehow. It was created by some guy on campus, you know, the one locally revered as Genius Boy Wonder. Well, maybe not that bad, but he was the hero of the campus; everyone admired him. For his overall abilities and intelligence, not only the game - which may actually have owed its popularity to being connected with him.
I was new to the campus, and my self-appointed mentor/guide guy was showing me the game. I liked it, and after a while he brought his character in to combat me. I had chosen something akin to an Elf class, and he had chosen a Barbarian thing, so even though his hits nearly killed me, I could generally run away from them. In retrospect, it is odd that a high level Barbarian's hits would merely do massive damage to a starting Elf (and not cause instant death), but - well, dreams can't be concerned with such details.
Anyway, I had taken severe damage and was heading for the local drinking fountain - yes, drinking fountain - to restore health. I eventually made it and decided to employ hit and run tactics to wear my opponent down. Unfortunately, the Barbarian was able to use the fountain, too - not by standing next to it and "hitting" it (the usual method), but by hitting it from a short distance with one of his ranged attacks. (Don't ask why he wasn't using these ranged attacks while chasing my Elf around.) I commented that this was dumb and does Steve or Carl (or whatever the programmer's name was) know about this? Why wasn't it fixed? My friend gave me a funny look and said he didn't know, why don't we go ask him. We went down the hallway to another room. It was a classroom, and Steve (or whatever) was teaching some class. It was obviously computer related, because the classroom was also a computer lab. Computer related notes filled the chalkboard. I was interrupting class, so I felt a bit awkward - I was questioning the work of the most celebrated student on campus, and I was doing it in the class he was teaching (I guess he was *some* student). He looked a little like a cross between my supervisor at work and Val Kilmer
I guess he decided that I needed to be "put in my place", and explained why, because of the implementation the game used (through hardware, no less - I was duly impressed) it would be very difficult to do. There was some stuff about a pseudorandom number generated by TIMER+3 being used, and that (TIMER+3) memory address was accessed. I maintained that it shouldn't be difficult to, at the very least, add a check routine on the player's location to verify that (s)he was at least within certain range of the fountain. "Ok, then, let's see," he said, seating himself at a terminal and logging in as a "Developer" ID. This screen, and the fonts used, reminded me of the high score entry screen in GT3. He then slid aside and indicated that I was to take over. I took me a moment to realize (even in the dream) that he expected me to log in; he was creating a new developer account. The default name was "Bob"; I'd meant to put my name as Bob, but I didn't want to use the default. So I put "[last name with slightly odd spelling]", or something; I don't remember exactly anymore, but it had "[letters]" in it where a much simpler spelling would have sufficed. I suppose this is probably from the spelling of Zelasny. Anyway, I had just been anticipating the lines of assembly code (and others), feeling a bit overwhelmed with being asked to add a feature to an application I'd never dissected before on hardware I'd never seen, but also quite confident that after a little poking around I'd be able to do it. Unfortunately, at that point I was [rudely] awakened by my alarm clock. I guess I'll never know, now.