I've been making my first game with AGS for about 3 months now, and although ive made all my rooms + characters, set up most of my dialog etc, ive got to the point where i need to start making my 'puzzles' and i think it's the lack of direction as to where to start that has completely killed my motivation.
I've come to realise that thinking the 'puzzles' up isn't as easy as i thought it would be!
Has anyone got any tips about how they go about thinking out their 'puzzles' so that one leads to another etc to lead to an ending ? I just can't find my starting point!
My reccomendation would be to set up a few main puzzles first. Put them in the places in the game where the reward is big. (Get access to new locations or new information or maybe a cutscene.) Make sure these puzzles fit in with the story.
At the beginning of the game there should be some relatively easy puzzles just to get the player started.
Many posibilities for smaller puzzles will give themselves as you might need a special item to solve the big ones. You just make a puzzle out of getting that special item.
After that it's time to polish away any details that just don't fit with the game and things that are illogical.
The hard part is really getting those first "pillars" in place.
A word of advice for future games would be to make all the rooms AFTER you make the puzzles. You might have to modify them now to make some puzzles work. If you don't it's very easy for the puzzles to become "give-this-to-that-guy-to-get-something-else", and that is boring in the long run.
What may help is thinking 'backwards'. E.g. you know the main character's goal, and you start imagining what obstacles could be put in between him and his goal. For instance, if you look at Monkey Island 2, the goal is finding the four map pieces - and the first obstacles that come to mind are the fact the the current owners don't want to relinguish them. Go from there.
And remember to find multiple uses for items, npcs and locations!
Thanks guys, ill give it a try.