Adventure Game Designer?

[Cardician]

Hello all, sorry if this is the wrong spot but after consideration I couldn't figure out where else it might go.

My question is, are there any existing utilities to help one with the design of their adventure game? By this I mean a little app or something that aids in laying it all out and keeping it organized. Like provides a section on characters, dialogue, plot, a section for maps and so on. Does that make sense?

For example, there are apps that are specifically geared towards writing plays and such, I was wondering if there was something specifically geared towards helping us write adventure games.  The character section could link to the dialogue for that character. The map section could show how all the rooms connect and map to each invidual room description and items in the rooms, and so on and so forth. Just seems like something like this would be really useful for this community to help us create our game designs so I thought there might be something out there. Thanks 

[Stickieee]

Sort of non-technical bit of the AGS editor? Well, ideally, it would all be included in the AGS editor. A separate app could be a bit cumbersome with importing and exporting dialogs, maps and all back and forth between AGS and the magic-app.

So, make specific requests to CJ and while waiting, use the good old "pen and paper" method

[Mr Jake]

I might try and make something kinda like this in VB one day next week.. won't be amazing but I will give it a try :/

[Cardician]

Yeah, actually I hadn't even considered it tying in with AGS. That does make a lot of sense. Of course that isn't possible without Chris and obviously is not an important enough task to waste his time with.

Yeah, pen & paper is the typical way to do it, but I tend to be less organized that way. The only drawback to what I'm thinking, other than it not being part of AGS, would be the lack of graphic support. Though I suppose you could somehow tie files into it, unless you wanted to go all out and tie the ability to actually display or draw graphics.

Anyway, just curious is anyone knew of anything pre-existing. I certainly wouldn't bother Chris with this as he obviously has more important things to be doing with his time and its not really an integral part of the AGS application.

Hotspot, I was thinking of attempting something along the same lines if no one knew of anything already. We'll have to see what we come up with and compare notes. Who knows, it could be something others would find useful as well. 

[Tiki]

I've simply made an offline 'website' that organizes all aspects of my game.  The main page features links to "Story", "Dialog", "Characters", etc, and each of those branches off to other links, such as "Character art" or a to-do list.   

Simple yet effective.

[Scummbuddy]

Yes, there is already one.

http://www.rodekill.com/index.php?rusty=games#wurd

And this has been now moved from beginners tech to adventure releated talk. The beginners forum is scrictly for AGS editor related questions only.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Hmmm, interesting to be sure - I'll ask Rodekill if I can add it to my site.

[Dart]

I agree with Hotspot with using VB: It's REALLY easy to learn, and I bet it could do what you described.

In fact, I did a very similar program to what you want a month ago. If you want, I can upload it and you can decide from there whether you're interested in using Visual Basic or not.

[edmundito]

A sketchbook and Microsoft Word work very nicely...

[InCreator]

Organized?

Hell, my head is so full of ideas that designing/recording them materially would take another hundred years - which I don't have to waste unless I want another abandoned project and delay my first entry to the AGS games collection some more.

* looks at the background that took 3 days and got finally done 3 minutes ago... "about 10 more bg's to go..." *sigh*

when making such program, It should be super easy to use and it shouldn't eat any time. Otherwise, the game making would be somewhat doubled, both with effort and time consumption.

But insta-dirty-notepad-thingy in AGS would be a good idea. To mark quickly down all the stuff we need to remember, like script parts, mouse co-ordinates, just-flashed-into-head ideas, used/unused dialog options when making a dialog script and so on.
Also, I would find it super useful to keep track on all GlobalInts and similar stuff.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

InCreator, do check out Scummbuddy's link. Short of a notepad (netmonkey's right, that's the best way... unless, like me, you have a knack of losing the blasted things ) it's the best organizer you could have.

[InCreator]

Hey, it's good!  :o
Pity that it isn't integrated directly into AGS itself.
With an avalability to be available under any AGS form and window.
This way it wouldn't steal focus.

[KrisMacDee]

Do you know what's more simple than downloading an app? Using folders! : I name a folder named after my game, then make differentÃ,  folders inside the game folder and then name them after the different sections(e.g. Characters, backgrounds, items etc.). 8) It's much more convieniant than downloading this app.
Bigmac

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

That really is a matter of opinion. In my own, for instance, I find that's great with sprites, but with text an app like this which easily and painlessly switches between all those "folders" is much better. But, to each his own, so to speak.