Hisa's Garden

Hisa's Garden is a trapped-in-virtual-reality character game off the traditions of Sword Art Online, Log Horizon and Overlord. The protagonists are a small after-school gaming activities club trapped by the final server shutdown of Altima, the greatest VRMMO of the previous generation.

Hisa's Microscope

Hisa's Garden Character Creation
Hisa's Garden Classes

Background

Released in 2022, Altima was among the first and by far the greatest child of the first generation FullDive virtual reality MMO boom. Though hardly the most mechanically innovative of games, Altima defended its incumbency in the fantasy VRMMO niche through an enormous advantage in existing content. This was bolstered by the release of powerful, separately sold user creation and custom content tools that expanded the game far beyond its origins long after release. Over a generation the game exploded, peaked supreme and then gradually waned. Eventually, as with all good things, it came to an end. With the announcement of its successor, HiSA Online, that would operate on a revolutionary new engine, it was also quietly announced that the nigh abandoned world of Altima would finally be allowed to end.

Altima Archaeology Club

In a certain school in a certain prefecture of Amahara, there exists a small but unique school club – the Altima Archaeology Club - that has been exploring the world of this once thriving game, rambling through myriad realms filled with the works, monuments and achievements of their forebears. Though it is a world whose existence has been but an eyeblink compared to reality, it is still a place that is older than they are. Now however, that world is coming to an end, and with it, so will the club founded upon its exploration. To celebrate and mourn the end of this reality, the club gathered in their humble guild hall to wait out the very end.

But the end didn't come.

The members of the Altima Archaeology Club who gathered in the modest wooden cottage serving as their virtual "club room" watched what they thought was a pre-planned World End event. The stars in the sky swirled erratically and the earth shook and shattered as if the whole world were tumbling into a void... And then the falling stopped. Looking out the windows they saw the night sky of Altima replaced by an alien astronomy. The unprecedented smell of grass and trees billowed through the windows. From that moment, they found they could no longer log out.

Altima of Old

Senses and Systems

The Altima of old began as a goggles game and received an engine overhaul and FullDive 1.0 support somewhere along the way. Compared to recent games running on FullDive 3+, Altima had significant limitations. While players have full natural articulation of their avatar bodies, the game engine had trouble when the player's avatar differed significantly in size and proportion from the player's real body. This leads to some players reporting minor irregularities like feeling as if they are always wearing stilts, feeling less physically confident than real life, or 'losing track' of their body; for example, being unable to tell what gesture their hand is making when holding it behind their back. Body plan limitations contributed to most players citing a distinct discomfort playing the opposite gender, though this certainly did not stop everyone.

There was full integration of vision and hearing but not smell or taste. Touch existed (bound to surface textures) but had noticeable imperfections, especially around fluids, air flow and feelings of humidity or temperature. Overall, the construction of the world was still fundamentally based on polygons and textures with finite resolution, making very close examinations of objects disorienting.