Point 'n click adventure thingymajig
Community Forums/Graphic Chat/Point 'n click adventure thingymajig
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I'm picking up this un-named project I started and left about 2 years ago (where has the time gone?!). I would have put this in the showcase, but really there's not much to show yet. I never got beyond making the engine - there's no game. I'm really cautious of making a point and click, unless it offers a fun experience for the player. Walking long distances to try Object X on Object Y doesn't seem like fun to me. So I need some ideas about how to develop this further - how do I turn this into a proper game. One thing I considered was making it a 'point and click lite'. You have to solve some 'mini puzzles' in a room to progress to the next room. What do you think? |
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| Sounds like a cool idea. I remember seeing this before as it reminded me of the Penguin from Wallace and Gromit. Stick with it, it looks like fun. Jason. |
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| My advice would be to pay careful attention to plot, story, characterisation, humour (since the game seems amusing), and dialogue. Simple "use object A with object B" gameplay can work pretty well as long as there is a compelling reason for it. Simply solving puzzles for the sake of solving puzzles can be pretty tedious - and I strongly believe that narrative can be the hook that makes it all worthwhile. I'm not saying that this is the only approach that works, of course. |
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| This is what scares me - the sheer level of storyline and dialogue needed to make a traditional point 'n click adventure, not to mention animation, voiceovers, art assets etc. This is why I gave up on this before. I think above when I said 'mini puzzles', perhaps what I'm really thinking is 'mini games'. The original Sam n Max had this with it's 'Whack a mole' and 'Car battleships'. If I could string together these games, it would be like having several games in one. I could compartmentalise each part of the game, to keep the coding simpler, but base it on the same engine. And hopefully it will keep me interested, as I will be designing and coding mini games, rather than just churning out more and more assets to throw into some epic-storyline adventure. |
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| Why not have a look here for some inspiration. http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/ Some of the games are pretty cool and well worth playing for some ideas. Jason. |
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| This looks most interesting. I particularly like the way the fish and the character are both observing the arrow. |
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| Nice style of graphics |
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| Thanks I had a play with some of the higher-rated user-created games on www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk - whilst the graphics aren't much, they're actually pretty decent games at heart. I particularly like the simple interface with just a few options (e.g. use/take, talk, walk and look) I'm not sure how to handle the camera... at present the character moves with the keys, and you look around him (like a chasecam) with the mouse. I'm toying with the idea of making it mouse only, and click to move? But then I might have camera issues, say if you want to inspect an object from a different angle. Will have a look at creative writing too, it's not something I've done before - I'll have to pitch it just right, as some 'amateur comedy' in games sounds too forced. I might go for a mix of intellectual satire / slapstick. |
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| why not create some cubes in the editor and name them something like camera_1_range_100_tracking_YES. then... In your game, replace the aptly named cubes them with an invisible pivot (or just hide the cubes) that can be used with entitydistance recording their handle, range and weather they 'track' (in custom types or arrays). Then... In the game test for the closest camera pivot that can see the hero(if not tracking) and then switch to that cameras view (as in stick the chasecam at the pivot's position). You could also write a good chasecam routine for when not in any cameras range. For the mouse issue, just use camerapick on an interactable object (set to 2) then it wont matter about what angle you are viewing it at. eg, in your editor have the name ie. "fishbowl_non-staticobject_makepickable" (or whatever you design your name parser to respond to :) If you wanted clickable walkto positions you could use the same system as above but prehaps call it for example: "bookcase_staticobject_makepickable" instead of non-static (so your gui responds to it but doesnt/cant get picked up by the player) |
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| Not a bad idea - just worried about the active camera 'jumping' as you move around the room - could get really confusing (I remember Alone In The Dark did this) I'm thinking I could just have one camera, and slide it on a rail left to right, but always have it pointing at the action. |
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| Caffy, a rail camera is a really good idea. Games like Lego Star Wars are a good example of how you can do a fixed camera for something like this (check out the PC demo if you haven't seen it already). I'm thinking of working on something similar, a simple environment and a rail camera. |
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| I also think that "jumping" from camera to camera can be disorientating. In my opinion, this type of camera is unfit for games in which there is the possibility of fixed camera angles obscuring important objects in the environment. If the objects that you interact with are stationary then you can use fixed camera angles that take their position into consideration, but if the interactive objects move about then there will almost inevitably be times when important stuff is out of frame - very annoying! Personally, even for adventure games, I prefer a standard third person camera that follows the PC and can be manually rotated around him. It's more immersive in my opinion; it draws the player into the environment. Barring this, an "on rails" camera would be my second choice. For me, the ideal control/camera system for an adventure game would would mix camera orientated directional movement (pressing down would rotate the character to face the screen and move forward, pressing up would rotate the character to face away from the screen and move forward, etc), visual clues as to where interactive objects are in relation to the character (the turn of a character's head, the glow or sparkle of interactive objects, a hotkey to highlight interactive objects, textual tags, or some combination of these), and a camera that can be rotated around the character. |
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| I think I'll stick with it as-is (standard chase cam from above that can be tilted up and down). It's a bit like Mario 64 and most 3d platformers. I like the idea of glowing objects... I wonder if I can do this in a better way than simply flashing it with EntityColor. |
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