Adventure Game Studio

Why isn't there a serious, modern, Adventure Games engine?

Don't misunderstand me:
- AGS is serious but not modern (there's no real support for 3D - I *do* know it's a feature, though! AGS has a very specific audience)
- Wintermute is modern-ish but the plugins are rare and the support is awkward. It aims mainly at 2.5D
- Lassie has disappeared from the Radars
- other engines are falling apart.

Don't tell me Adventure games are a niche market -- there are plenty of 3D adventure games being released since Beyond Good and Evil.
Also, don't tell me that not everybody wants to make 3D games -- I know that, but 3D features apply to 2D (anti-aliasing, Z-buffering, special effects, particles, etc.)

I'm more curious why the motivation is so low.

Here's one that might qualify: http://www.dageport.com/

Quote from: Khris on Fri 10/12/2010 11:21:24
Here's one that might qualify: http://www.dageport.com/

I'm actually really stupid because I had noticed that one a few months ago and then forgot about it.

EDIT: I remember why I discarded it : At the moment, it relies heavily on scripting. The IDE is still in developement. Also, it's not clear how good is the rendering engine (there's not point using 3D if it then looks ugly :-D)

Well I'm pretty sure Unity3d can be modified with "plugins" so it's not much of a hassle (well, need of knowing programing) to make an adventure game...not sure what kind of "adventure game" you mean though, can you give an example?

I'm sure Telltales type of adventure games can be made in Wintermute and most probably in AGS.

Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Fri 10/12/2010 11:31:16
I remember why I discarded it : At the moment, it relies heavily on scripting. The IDE is still in developement. Also, it's not clear how good is the rendering engine (there's not point using 3D if it then looks ugly :-D)

So you want a such game engine with what you can (alone) make games that look like Crysis, of course without scripting, modeling or any work from you, and you want it free, preferably with option that you can sell the games as much as you like?

I'm wondering also why anybody haven't ever done this? That would be SO awesome!

Yes, DAGE has some way to go before it's the engine you want, and the rendering engine is pretty basic at the moment (though it does have the beginnings of Glsl support, which I lack the scripting skills to properly implement. There are also 2D effects filters like bloom which work pretty well).

I'm sure that Wintermute 2.0 (http://wme2.dead-code.org/) aims to be what you're looking for, but it's still in development and won't be free.

However AGS appeared years after the popularity of 2D adventures, we should be pleased that 3D engines are springing up at the same time as 3D adventure games! Also, if DAGE is going to develop into the engine it could be it needs support, so why not make something short with it?

I just made this game (http://www.dageport.com/content/item/44/), the DAGE equivalent of Lassi Quest. The graphics are simple, but if you use 3DS Max there's nothing to stop you producing some nice baked textures which would make things look more lovely. Since I use Blender, which won't export multiple textures in 3DS format, this wasn't possible for me. Hopefully in the future DAGE will offer more control over textures and better integration with Blender.


EDIT:

Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Fri 10/12/2010 11:31:16
(there's not point using 3D if it then looks ugly :-D)

Also, I think Grim Fandango and the early Telltale games (which were well designed but looked far from amazing) stand against you on this point.

Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Fri 10/12/2010 11:31:16
I remember why I discarded it : At the moment, it relies heavily on scripting.

?? Every serious game relies on scripts. From SCUMM to AGI to SCI to Quake to Source, every game has a scripting language to make it extendable. The era of hard coded engines has long passed. What do you want, Klik and Play? :P

An engine cannot be serious and not have scripting capabilities.

QuoteAlso, it's not clear how good is the rendering engine (there's not point using 3D if it then looks ugly :-D)

You work around the limitations of a rendering engine if it isn't the best evar. Just like if your engine can only support 256 colours, if your rendering engine can't do, say, specular mapping, you work around it by not designing characters and sets that don't rely on that. There are Playstation games that look beautiful, and I don't think the PSX even supported bump maps or realtime lighting. Or 16 bit colour. I still think Spyro the Dragon is a nice looking game, as is Tomb Raider,even if they're blocky and without advanced texturing.

You don't need HDRIs and refraction or anything to make something look good. You just need an artist who can work within these limitations.

Hi. There is a lot of serious engines actually:
crystal space, unity3d, Irrlicht, Panda3D, Ogre
All you need to do is script pathfinding, dialog system, interactions, modelling characters and scene, rigging, animation etc
them you will have your own modern adventure game!
o/

Quote from: Rahakasvi on Fri 10/12/2010 13:36:04
So you want a such game engine with what you can (alone) make games that look like Crysis, of course without scripting, modeling or any work from you, and you want it free, preferably with option that you can sell the games as much as you like?

Oh, what a nasty answer :-D

Yes, actually I do.

More seriously : DAGE is not automated enough (no production pipeline, the scripter pretty much has to do everything himself), so it's impossible to make a big game fast, and it makes it error-prone (you know the story: the more sscript you have to maintain, the more errors you introduce -- exponentially!). It doesn't mean it's bad, it just means it's not mature enough at the moment. For example, at the moment, AGS is much better with that matter.

I've thought of Unity (it's pretty much the ultimate solution) but the license is very restrictive. Also, the so-called "adventure game" plugin remains to be found. The basic (free) version of Unity doesn't accept plugins.

There's a huge gap between DAGE and Unity -- nothing inbetween.

However, DAGE is the best challenger.

Quote from: Exsecratus on Fri 10/12/2010 14:32:52
There is a lot of serious engines actually: crystal space, unity3d, Irrlicht, Panda3D, Ogre
All you need to do is script pathfinding, dialog system, interactions, modelling characters and scene, rigging, animation etc

You answered your own comment yourself :
- Ogre is a rendering engine, not a game engine
- Irrlicht, Crystal Space, Unity, Panda are generic game engines. Not point-n-click engines. So I'd have to code pretty much everything (you gave the full list!) of Pn'C-related features. And then the visual tools to exploit them easily. And then you'd end up with another DAGE. I'd rather contribute to DAGE, actually.

Maybe slightly off topic question, but is it true that a 3D game will always be much more problematic/complex to script than the same game in 2D (even assuming all the models and textures are already created)?

And if so, could someone give me a few examples of the additional issues that going 3D brings. Especially those processes that can't be automated.

Quote from: Ascovel on Fri 10/12/2010 14:54:03
Maybe slightly off topic question, but is it true that a 3D game will always be more problematic/complex to script than a 2D one (even assuming all the models and textures are created)?

And if so, could someone give me a few examples of the additional issues that going 3D brings. Especially those processes that can't be automated.

Could you create another thread (and then edit your post to point to it) before this thread gets nuked with random posts? :D
(said without sarcasm, I swear)

Quote from: Scavenger on Fri 10/12/2010 14:22:43What do you want, Klik and Play? :P

http://www.scirra.com/ - things have moved on since the KnP days, thankfully.

Quote from: Sslaxx on Fri 10/12/2010 15:12:40
Things have moved on since the KnP days, thankfully.

THANK YOU

Thousands of researchers have spent the last 20 years trying to find a way to make "visual programming" something real, so I'm slightly annoyed when someone posts a hateful comment like "If you can't script, then don't try to make a game, you lazy NoobZ0R".

Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Fri 10/12/2010 14:51:30

Quote from: Exsecratus on Fri 10/12/2010 14:32:52
There is a lot of serious engines actually: crystal space, unity3d, Irrlicht, Panda3D, Ogre
All you need to do is script pathfinding, dialog system, interactions, modelling characters and scene, rigging, animation etc

You answered your own comment yourself :
- Ogre is a rendering engine, not a game engine
- Irrlicht, Crystal Space, Unity, Panda are generic game engines. Not point-n-click engines. So I'd have to code pretty much everything (you gave the full list!) of Pn'C-related features. And then the visual tools to exploit them easily. And then you'd end up with another DAGE. I'd rather contribute to DAGE, actually.

That is the best you can find, there is no AGS easy to use engine for 3D adventure games yet.
DAGE and Wintermute 2 are being develop.
And like Ascovel said, 3d is more complex to do than 2d when it comes to programming.

Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Fri 10/12/2010 14:45:28
More seriously : DAGE is not automated enough (no production pipeline, the scripter pretty much has to do everything himself), so it's impossible to make a big game fast, and it makes it error-prone (you know the story: the more sscript you have to maintain, the more errors you introduce -- exponentially!). It doesn't mean it's bad, it just means it's not mature enough at the moment. For example, at the moment, AGS is much better with that matter.

You sound pissed off because nobody made for you a single click modern 3d adventure game engine... There is no "make a big game fast" in 3D or 2d even, and even with AGS if want to do some quality game, you need to do some scripting.
So here is the answer to the first post: there are generic engines, you need to stop being lazy and learn how to script or use dage or wintermute2. There is no "make a big game fast" software that will do everything for you.
"why the motivation is so low?" My guess is because it is hard to make a engine in first place. Or a company that already have their 3d adventure engines don't want to share them for free or don't want to share them at all.

o/

Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Fri 10/12/2010 15:30:49

Quote from: Sslaxx on Fri 10/12/2010 15:12:40
Things have moved on since the KnP days, thankfully.

THANK YOU

Thousands of researchers have spent the last 20 years trying to find a way to make "visual programming" something real, so I'm slightly annoyed when someone posts a hateful comment like "If you can't script, then don't try to make a game, you lazy NoobZ0R".

Don't thank me just yet.

I actually find dealing with scripting languages much easier than working with tools like Construct or KnP (or even 2.x's Interaction Editor), due to the way my brain works. So while yes, easier ways to handle common things would be appreciated, I'd still prefer to work with programming languages for the most part.

You mentioned that Crystalspace, Unity etc. are generic engines, but if you look at the forums you'll probably find everything you need, somebody already probably coded it. UDK is now in v2 and it has a cool scripting alternative, but, at least to me, the pipline is kind of complicated (and on that note Reality factory has a really messed up pipeline) and also, 90% games look very samey (Arkham Asylum, UT etc.).

You can try YoYo Gamemaker if you want almost no coding whatsoever, also has stuff already made to make a point and click game.

And on a bit off topic note: why the hate on Grim fandango, it's a game from 97 and it looks nice, it has better graphics than new S&M games.

"You need to stop being lazy".

Am I dreaming or what?
I've spent 5 years trying to develop an OOP module for AGS, for the record. Thousands of lines of code. So thanks for insulting me frontally.

But that's not the point. Many people here seem to believe that one can achieve anything you want with just motivation. That's not true. How many vaporware games? How many abandonned killer apps? Scripting won't fix the production pipeline issues. It won't fix the scalability issues. It will sabotage the maintainability.

I thought my gameplay through. I've made artistic and gameplay choices that require state-of-the art rendering, and scalability. I'm not asking questions randomly.

You seem to believe I'm pissed. I'm not. I was asking a genuine question : "How come such an engine is not there?". It seems to all come down to a bad timing (Wintermute 2 and DAGE under production). That's unfortunate.

However, the late hateful answers indeed made me pissed. So I'll just say : I'm getting more and more tired to come accross people -- whatever the forum -- who are convonced that reinventing the wheel is the solution to everything, and that refusing to do so is laziness. That's being extremely naive, and that can bring only failure.

Quote from: anian on Fri 10/12/2010 15:56:23
You mentioned that Crystalspace, Unity etc. are generic engines, but if you look at the ofrums you'll probably find everything you need, somebody already probably coded it. UDK is now in v2 and it has a cool scripting alternative, but, at least to me, the pipline is kind of complicated (and with that note Reality factory has a really messed up pipeline) and also, 90% games look very samey (Arkham Asylum, UT etc.)

You can try YoYo Gamemaker if you almost no coding whatsoever, also has stuff already made to make a point and click game.

And on a bit off topic note: why the hate on Grim fandango, it's a game from 97 and it looks nice, it has better graphics than new S&M games.

Thanks for the constructive answer.
I'm not satisfied with Grim Fandango because : 1/ It's not 3D but 2.5D, and 2/ It overcomes the problem of 3D quality by using a cartoony style.

Quote from: anian on Fri 10/12/2010 15:56:23
And on a bit off topic note: why the hate on Grim fandango, it's a game from 97 and it looks nice, it has better graphics than new S&M games.

At the risk of going further off topic, I guess that was in reference to my comment. There's nothing but love towards Grim Fandango from me. The design for Grim Fandago is some of the best in any adventure game.

However, the graphics (both pre-rendered backdrops and realtime characters) are simply not up to much compared with 2D adventures from 1997 or recent 3D adventures. The blockiness and intersecting polygons are very ugly, and while it was well suited to the skeletons, it worked poorly for characters like Glottis.

Here are two dialogue setups for comparison:

(http://www.grim-fandango.com/media/screenshots/year_1/glottis.gif)

(http://ve3dmedia.ign.com/images/06/87/68707_SamAndMaxTheDevilsPlayhouse-Screenshot-01_normal.jpg)

"How come such an engine is not there?"
I don't know.
But if you find a easy to use 3d adventure game engine with state of art rendering, let me know. I need it too.
o/

Quote from: Ali on Fri 10/12/2010 16:20:16
the graphics are simply not up to much compared with recent 3D adventures.

+1
More generally, it's OK to camouflage technical limitations by using some specific tricks (like the choice of a peculiar graphic style, e.g. cartoony) but it can't be the solution to everything.

QuoteThat's being extremely naive, and that can bring only failure.

How does reinventing the wheel bring only failure?  You look extremely opinionated without actually backing up any of these statements.

Many of these engines have some (in some cases a lot) of the heavy lifting done by the modding community, and I'm sure if you look you'll find plugins for most of these engines that do most things you want to some degree.  Inventory, pathfinding, stuff like this is requested all the time.

If something you want is missing, though, you could certainly do what so many other people do and ask for assistance in that engine's thread.  Or you can just buckle down and learn how to do it yourself, which saves endless trouble in the long run (and posts like this).

Bottom line:  you're never going to find an engine that does everything you want or need without doing some modification on your part, and for the foreseeable future that means learning how to code/scripting language of the editor.

Quote from: ProgZmax on Fri 10/12/2010 16:29:22

Your post contains only thruths.

I think I've started on the wrong foot, and everybody believes I'm arrogantly making random statements out of the blue.

So, here are is the result of my searchings for the last week :
- DAGE is not mature enough (heavy scripting needed, even for basic actions)
- Crystal3D is said (by reviews) to be heavily patched and to have a steep learning curve
- Ogre3D is only a rendering engine (I've found many of the so-called "easy" integration woth other libraries for scripts, sound and physics to be detailed in tutorials that turned out to be obsolete)
- Irrlicht is very performance-oriented but seems to be more for nerdy coders. Also, the rendering system seems to be ageing.
- Unity 3D Pro is too expensive
- Unity 3D basic doesn't allow plugins or shaders -- that's my main objection so far
- Panda 3D: I hadn't found it before : I'm currently having a look
- YoYo Game maker : I hadn't found it yet -- I'm having a look. So far it looks like it' more render-orietned and the support for sound is not great.
- Wintermute 2 won't be free
- Most of other engines I've come accross don't have GUI's that allow a fast processing of the game's material. It forbids artists from using them -- I'd be on my own, as a scripter.

Quote
How does reinventing the wheel bring only failure?

That's my opinion. But I'll never be able to convince someone with the oposite opinion, so let's stop on that topic.


So far, the best challengers are :
- Panda3D
- Unity 3D basic

It's not free (at least right now), but NeoAxis uses OGRE. http://www.neoaxisgroup.com/ It's .NET based. Whether or not they will (or can) translate it to Mono is another matter. So in terms of integration that might be an option.

I think you should be prepared to pay for a high-end 3d engine, then.  Considering all the features you're looking for, you've very unlikely to find them in a 100% free engine without license fees because, quite frankly, whoever made that super mega engine put a SHITLOAD of work into it.  Paying for applications has quite a few benefits, though, like being able to reasonably recommend features, patches, and updates.  The two primary apps I've paid for that I use for game making (Pro Motion and Renoise) have allowed me to beta test and offer feature enhancements that went beyond simple tweaks. 

People like CJ who devote a decade or more to a piece of software for free are, I stress, extremely rare; it's far more likely to see freeware software out there that has very little (if any) developer support and are kept alive largely by the community.  That said, if you do happen to find a super impressive, mega robust 3d engine and editor being developed for free by a guy who routinely adds requested features and fixes from forum members then do let me know!

The FPS Creator (http://www.thegamecreators.com/?m=view_product&id=2127), though lacking, shows that a user-friendly creative product that takes advantage of more modern systems is possible. It's not enormously flexible, but it's a start.

I don't see why a similar program for adventures couldn't be made in the same style. Not that it ever will be.

Quote from: Sslaxx on Fri 10/12/2010 17:18:07
It's not free (at least right now), but NeoAxis (...)

WOW!
Last time I checked (a few years ago), NeoAxis was very clumsy, heavy and bugged. And there was close to no community.
Now it has taken off!
That page (http://www.neoaxisgroup.com/addons/extensions) is very encouraging.

A serious challenger for Unity!
Also, it's virtually free for non-commercial games (see the licensing comparison (http://www.neoaxisgroup.com/neoaxis/licensing#comparison))

I'll have a look et FPS Creator. It's true I 've discarded all the so-called "FPS creator" and "RPG creators" because usually, over-oriented engines are not very good at doing something else than the thing they were designed for. But it was silly of me, because the Point-n-click genre is pretty much the lower limit in terms of requirements, so it shouldn't cause any problems.

NeoAxis looks good but their licensing options are pretty atrocious.  I mean seriously, $395 for the privilege of using the engine to release (1) commercial game?  That's really shitty and applies even to their full commercial license.

How about Leadwerks? It's connected over the FPS creator page and there's a comparison on Neoaxis forums (btw it's been upgraded since those comments). It looks like it might be good for adventure games, cause the scripting seems easy to get into, with Lua for example, and it's focused on lighting so it's perfect for atmosphere. http://leadwerks.com/werkspace/index.php?/page/products/_/tools/leadwerks-engine-r3 ...it does cost a bit ($200 plus $50 for the World editor).
http://www.thegamecreators.com/?m=view_product&id=2031&page=movies

Quote from: ProgZmax on Sat 11/12/2010 20:41:44
NeoAxis looks good but their licensing options are pretty atrocious.  I mean seriously, $395 for the privilege of using the engine to release (1) commercial game?  That's really shitty and applies even to their full commercial license.

I agree with you, but on the other hand they're the only ones that don't block  some major feature from the basic (free) license.
For all other engines, there's a catch with the free license (crappy shader, etc.). Not with them (except for the watermark, but I can live with it).

I'll have a look at leadwerks.

It seems like the only serious 100% open-source solutiosn are DAGE and CrystalSpace

-- but I wonder why the DAGE guy introduced some limitations to the rendering engine, whereas it's based on Ogre3D? (he probbaly had a good reason for that, but I wonder why he didn't just add a layer to Ogre 3D instead of "masking" it, thus having to manually maintain state-of-the-art rendering forever and ever).

Quote from: ProgZmax on Sat 11/12/2010 20:41:44
NeoAxis looks good but their licensing options are pretty atrocious.  I mean seriously, $395 for the privilege of using the engine to release (1) commercial game?  That's really shitty and applies even to their full commercial license.

You know, I've looked at other products, and they all had 1-product commercial licenses too. So don't blame NeoAxis for doing what others have done.

Being closely watching NeoAxis for a year by now.

While there's incredible amount of power in it, it's still broken and loose pretty much. Serious problems are:

* Devs not reacting to actual issues.

Bugs are fixed, but for a feature, standard answer is "buy-shit-expensive-commercial-license and implement yourself". If I could implement something complex such as animation system for just a single project, I'd be better off writing my own wrapper to the Ogre3D engine, right?

* No solid animation system.

For an engine with such vision and scope, smooth way to manage and blend animations is a must.
Not for Neoaxis, yet.

* Lack of background loading
Word around is this'll be added. Still, loading times are slow right now. Playing Divinity II right now... basic loading takes around 6 seconds. NA has about same graphics capabilities, but loading same map would be over 5 minutes, at least.

* Lack of any documentation

* C#

Even some kind of basic scripting system would be friendlier than this crap.

  And my biggest gripe:

* Whole thing feels basically like unfinished fps game. Or tbh, it IS one.

And badly planned game at that: Simply adding a weapon to existing set takes insane amount of things to do. Not to mention making totally new mapobject type with custom function or anything else that isn't part of broken fps.

Also, there's no "start a new game" button. It's all basically an editable fps and for every project, you have to reinstall whole engine and start sraping out default stuff you don't need. Result is a horrid mess.

--
Looks, which I admit are unbeatable, isn't everything yet!

Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Mon 13/12/2010 09:38:43

It seems like the only serious 100% open-source solutiosn are DAGE and CrystalSpace

-- but I wonder why the DAGE guy introduced some limitations to the rendering engine, whereas it's based on Ogre3D? (he probbaly had a good reason for that, but I wonder why he didn't just add a layer to Ogre 3D instead of "masking" it, thus having to manually maintain state-of-the-art rendering forever and ever).

DAGE is freeware, but not open source. I wasn't aware that it was based on Ogre3D, at least that's not the impression given in this thread:

http://www.dageport.com/forum/index.php?topic=235.msg958#new

Quote from: Ali on Mon 13/12/2010 13:22:07

Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Mon 13/12/2010 09:38:43

It seems like the only serious 100% open-source solutiosn are DAGE and CrystalSpace

-- but I wonder why the DAGE guy introduced some limitations to the rendering engine, whereas it's based on Ogre3D? (he probbaly had a good reason for that, but I wonder why he didn't just add a layer to Ogre 3D instead of "masking" it, thus having to manually maintain state-of-the-art rendering forever and ever).

DAGE is freeware, but not open source. I wasn't aware that it was based on Ogre3D, at least that's not the impression given in this thread:

http://www.dageport.com/forum/index.php?topic=235.msg958#new

Jeancallisti is Monsieur OUXX, to clarify.

I suspected as much, but I don't see any indication that it's built on Ogre3D. Of course I know nothing about how a game engine gets made!

Quote from: Ali on Mon 13/12/2010 13:38:07
I suspected as much, but I don't see any indication that it's built on Ogre3D. Of course I know nothing about how a game engine gets made!

Well, this is what it uses. http://glscene.sourceforge.net/ - GLScene.

Quote from: Ali on Mon 13/12/2010 13:38:07
I suspected as much, but I don't see any indication that it's built on Ogre3D. Of course I know nothing about how a game engine gets made!

No it's not based on Ogre3D at all. It's me having hallucinations :-) I've reviewed so many game engines that I start confusing them :-)
And indeed, I'm jeancallisti on the DAGE forum. The DAGE developer is very nice, by the way, and your answers over there were useful, Ali.

I've come across "Ogitor", which is a World Editor for Ogre3D. That's a BIG step forward using Ogre. But it's still in a very early state, Also, that's still only the visual rendering. It  misses sound, physics, scripting. As I said before, last time I tried, I failed integrating some essential features because some tutorials were obsolete (mainly, Lua). So I don't know what to think of it.

I'm so tempted to use the Blender Game Engine. Seriously. For a gorgeous-looking point-n-click game, that would just be the "appropriate technology", wouldn't it?

I started making a not-very-impressive tech-demo for a direct-control adventure in Blender:

(http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/5807/blenderadventuredemo.jpg)

I got as far as basic interactions, camera control and an inventory system but this was a huge headache for me, and I had no idea how to approach a dialogue system. Then I heard Pauli announce the first version of DAGE and I gave up.

Quote from: Ali on Mon 13/12/2010 16:18:26
I started making a not-very-impressive tech-demo for a direct-control adventure in Blender:

I got as far as basic interactions, camera control and an inventory system but this was a huge headache for me, and I had no idea how to approach a dialogue system. Then I heard Pauli announce the first version of DAGE and I gave up.

Yeah, that seems to me the main objection to the Blender Game Engine -- it's complicated to script. And it would still need an Editor for all non-3D items. For the adeventure engine per say, I'm so tempted to control AGS with Lua -- that would be one less problem! Actually, that would also control the sound, the events and potentially the pathfinding.

EDIT: Ali, is there any way you'd share your tech demo's source code?

I know next to nothing about programming, but Lua seems pretty easy to learn and use for scripting.

Quote from: anian on Mon 13/12/2010 16:33:34
I know next to nothing about programming, but Lua seems pretty easy to learn and use for scripting.

Thanks for providing constructive comments anian! But let's not go further that way -- This thread is more about "putting all the components together" or "what's the best out-of-the-box solution" than about "what's the best scripting language".

Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Mon 13/12/2010 16:29:08
Ali, is there any way you'd share your tech demo's source code?

Yes!
http://www.filefront.com/17644874/blender_adventure_demo.zip (http://www.filefront.com/17644874/blender_adventure_demo.zip)

WASD to move, left click to interact, right click to examine. Spacebar to open inventory and F1 to switch to fixed camera.

Hopefully all the dlls you need are there. It was made in Blender 2.49 cobbled together out of other scripts available online. I'm afraid the inventory system is not actually working properly: the objects appear in the wrong slots, and I couldn't work out why!

Quote from: Ali on Mon 13/12/2010 17:26:20
http://www.filefront.com/17644874/blender_adventure_demo.zip (http://www.filefront.com/17644874/blender_adventure_demo.zip)

Thanks a lot! I'll fiddle with it. Blender Game Engine offers great native features for Adventure Games, like clothes physics, water effects, etc. Wouldn't it  be gredt to see Roger's hair and space cadet's uniform flot in the wind? ;-)

As some of you have noticed, I've been snooping around on several forums : Crystal Space, Blender and DAGE.

It turns out that the game called "Yo-Frankie" (code name "Apricot"), which was supposed to be some super tech demo for both Blender Game Engine and Crystal Space, ended up using only Blender Game Engine, because they couldn't get Crystal Space to work. LOL.

Wherever I go, everybody agrees that Ogre3D has the best real-time rendering. Blender's real time rendering, Irrlicht, etc. are always slightly behind. It's no big deal, but, eh, in terms of maintenance it means that Ogre3D will still be ahead, even in 5 years. That's important too.

@Ali, @others :
Here's a mid-level World Editor + advanced rendering system based on both Blender Game Engine and Ogre3D. It also includes physics, and I suspect it includes sound (even 3D sound):
It's fully cross-platform (including iPhone) and has a BSD-like license (free+redistributable).

The project is very recent but also very active.

Gamekit:    http://code.google.com/p/gamekit/

I'll have a look at how good is the rendering (they say it's for "fast prototyping"), and if it can make easier the steps you found hard to achieve in your tech-demo, Ali.

What I particularly like is that the scripting can be made with C++, Lua or even logic blocks -- a native feature of Blender (I don't care myself but that would be great for artists who want to make simple point-n-click).

I remember reading about this project on BlenderArtists, before YoFrankie. (The fact that those guys gave up on Crystal Space was one of the things which put me off it too.)

I didn't know they'd released anything, so thanks for posting it!

Quote from: Ali on Wed 15/12/2010 12:49:59
I didn't know they'd released anything, so thanks for posting it!

I downloaded their "ready to use" package, started Blender, oipened the "momo" .blend file, clicked on Game-->Start... and got "The application encountered a problem and needs to close"
EPIC FAIL!
I'll go on their forums and snoop.

OgreKit definitely looks like an incredible base for a generalist point-n-click games engine.

Things that have an incredible potential but that you don't see at first glance:
- The 3D modeling tool is part of the game editor (and vice versa)
- The game logic can be made of "bricks" (ANYTHING, from collisions, to mouse movements, to surfaces behavior, etc.)
- You can cutomize your stuff in C++ (at a relatively high level!) or in Lua.
- You can write plugins for Blender to integrate all point-n-click editor features into the GUI.
- They're very active
- It has Ogre3D, so it will look good until the end of times.
- It has the MIT license (you can use it to make commercial games!)

Also, check this out : Maratis (http://www.maratis3d.org).
It's brand new, it's from January.
- It has the GNU license
- It looks like it's what Sketchup is for 3D modeling: very clear and yet relatively powerful.

Big things are happening in the game editors world. We feel the shockwave of the Indie games rebirth (the tools to make them are flourishing everywhere).

@Ali: If I create a SVN repository to start trying building a proof-of-concept on OgreKit, would you be interested?

Maratis does look quite an interesting little tool. Note that it's the editor that's released under the terms of the GPL - the core engine is using the zlib license. GLFW is either being used or going to be incorporated (to facilitate ports to other OSes e.g. Linux). It also uses Lua.

Quote from: Sslaxx on Thu 17/02/2011 20:52:09
it's the editor that's released under the terms of the GPL - the core engine is using the zlib license.

It's not too much of a constrain, is it? All you have to do is to say in the credits and the readme that the game was made with Maratis.

Quote from: Sslaxx on Thu 17/02/2011 20:52:09
GLFW is either being used or going to be incorporated (to facilitate ports to other OSes e.g. Linux). It also uses Lua.

I'm not sure I get your point. Are you saying that at the moment it's using something else internally? Whether or not it's using GLFW, the developer doesn't really care, does he? How is GLFW bbetter than what they're using right now?

Quote from: Ouxxey_games on Fri 18/02/2011 09:22:41

Quote from: Sslaxx on Thu 17/02/2011 20:52:09
it's the editor that's released under the terms of the GPL - the core engine is using the zlib license.

It's not too much of a constrain, is it? All you have to do is to say in the credits and the readme that the game was made with Maratis.

Quote from: Sslaxx on Thu 17/02/2011 20:52:09
GLFW is either being used or going to be incorporated (to facilitate ports to other OSes e.g. Linux). It also uses Lua.

I'm not sure I get your point. Are you saying that at the moment it's using something else internally? Whether or not it's using GLFW, the developer doesn't really care, does he? How is GLFW bbetter than what they're using right now?

It's not about "better", it's about cross-platform compatibility, for the runtime at least.

As for constraints, unless for some reason you use the editor's code in your game, it isn't at all.

Quote from: Sslaxx on Fri 18/02/2011 11:41:45
It's not about "better", it's about cross-platform compatibility, for the runtime at least.

Ah, OK! Sorry.

Quote from: Sslaxx on Fri 18/02/2011 11:41:45
As for constraints, unless for some reason you use the editor's code in your game, it isn't at all.

Everything alright, then.

Oh, and regarding what you said concerning OGREKit - I'd be interested, for one at least.

http://www.visionaire-studio.net/cms/welcome-2.html

Although its 2D, Visionaire is very powerful. A Whispered World, Kaptain Brawe, and the Zak McKraken remake were done with it, aswell as a few really nice looking upcoming games.
Apparently there will be support for 3D characters in the next release aswell.

(http://images.siteface.net/siteface/Shop/3174/3_3.jpg)

(http://images.siteface.net/siteface/Shop/3437/1_tww.jpg)

Yeah I've come accross Visionaire and forgot to post here. I still don't know what to think of it. At the moment it still seems to be some sort of twin brother of AGS, but the purpose of this thread is more to investigate the ability for 3D.

Quote from: Koplin on Thu 03/03/2011 06:57:12
Although its 2D, Visionaire is very powerful.

?

I've never liked Visionaire. Apparently, since version 3.X, it supports scripting (Lua afaik), it used to have an Interaction Editor like thingy only.
I'm not sure to which extent (2) can be solved with scripting but here's why I prefer AGS any day:

(1): While it supports native 1280x960 (which AGS doesn't, yet), it does a bad job when it comes to 320x2X0. So people who think 1280x960 looks way better than 1024x768 and on the other hand don't need powerful, yet easy scripting are very welcome to use it.

(2): Since the homepage currently proudly features a Monkey island style template (which is a joke, compared to ours, btw), that's a perfect opportunity to point out a big flaw: say I was to put a door in my game and I want to set it up so that a right-click open/closes it. All I do is name the door "door>v" and add a couple of lines of code, linking the door to a global variable.
That's all I ever need to do; even if the door starts out as locked, a right-click, which here produces "open door", will automatically fail since the door is locked.
Not so with Visionaire though.* A) I have to include the whole right-click behavior manually, not just once, but for every door, and of course the look action for every other object (also handled by the AGS template automatically).
B), opening the door with a right-click is a completely separate action from selecting "open" and left clicking the door. Thus, if the door might be locked, I have to code all the "is door locked" stuff twice.

In short: no siree, thank you very much, no more Visionaire for me.

Twin brother my ass :=

*If anybody who knows this to be false wants to correct me, feel free to do so! I'd be glad to hear Vis finally came around.

Quote from: Ouxxey_games on Thu 17/02/2011 20:35:54
@Ali: If I create a SVN repository to start trying building a proof-of-concept on OgreKit, would you be interested?

A bit late to reply...

I think I might be interested, but I'm not 100% clear on what a SVN repository is. Could you explain the idea?

I just know that DOTT2 have switched from Visionaire to Wintermute because of the scripting issues.

Anybody tried to do something with Maratis?

The Journey to Kelabra (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=42777.0) was made with Visionaire - I don't think the engine needs any more recommendation than this.

YEAH! Why not? It makes us gay (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gay)!

gay (comparative gayer, superlative gayest)
1. Happy, joyful, and lively.
2. Festive, bright, or colourful.

I recently played "A new beginning" which was also made with visionaire. While the game was pretty good it was extremely buggy. Maybe its bad coding but some of the bugs like weird stuttering and people disapearing and reapppering somewhere else made me suspicious.
Overall I also think the game could've been made with AGS as well. The problem with AGS is that I doesn't handle even the supported HiRes resolution very well. The alpha blending is just to slow once you have a lot of parallax layers e.g.

I hear AGS is pretty good...

(Sorry, couldn't resist...)

Quote from: Ascovel on Thu 03/03/2011 13:14:52
The Journey to Kelabra (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=42777.0) was made with Visionaire - I don't think the engine needs any more recommendation than this.

LOL

Quote from: Ali on Thu 03/03/2011 12:25:01
I'm not 100% clear on what a SVN repository is.

LOL again. :-)
Well, to put it simple, it's some sort of shared folder on the Internet where we can upload the project and its code, and there is a mecanism to work together while avoiding overwriting each other's changes.
SVN is the same thing as CVS, or more generally it's called a versionning tool, if you ever heard of that. It's what every programmers use as soon as there are more than 2 of them working on the same project :-)

This thread's become pretty interesting, despite the obnoxiousness of the initial post.

Something I find interesting on the 3D end of things: This guy (http://www.fallout3nexus.com/modules/members/index.php?id=137055) makes Myst-style adventures in the Fallout 3 engine. You can turn pretty much anything into an adventure game with a little ingenuity.

One things that has been said about NeoAxis engine is that its licence is too expensive- that's clearly not true. If you read up about available licenses it says that an indie license is only 95 bucks, and it applies if a game's income is lower then $100 K- which is most likely going to be the case with most games that aren't about shooting people in the face.... So I'm thinking, that maybe developing a game in the free version of this engine, then if it shapes up well and is nearly ready for release, paying for that cheaper license is not a massive expense, really.

  Then, of course, it has been said also that this engine sucks, so.....

  If only AGS could have more power when it comes to processing sprites in higher resolutions...... then most of us wouldn't have to look elsewhere.

BTW, really interesting thread. 8)

Quote from: EHCB on Fri 04/03/2011 12:40:09Something I find interesting on the 3D end of things: This guy (http://www.fallout3nexus.com/modules/members/index.php?id=137055) makes Myst-style adventures in the Fallout 3 engine. You can turn pretty much anything into an adventure game with a little ingenuity.

Well then there the Source engine, which some people don't like, but if you bought HL2 or similar, you have na SDK to download, and there's plenty of tutorials on it. So Myst style games: http://www.moddb.com/mods/dear-esther

Quote from: Grim on Sun 20/03/2011 05:51:23
One things that has been said about NeoAxis engine is that its licence is too expensive- that's clearly not true. If you read up about available licenses it says that an indie license is only 95 bucks, and it applies if a game's income is lower then $100 K- which is most likely going to be the case with most games that aren't about shooting people in the face.... So I'm thinking, that maybe developing a game in the free version of this engine, then if it shapes up well and is nearly ready for release, paying for that cheaper license is not a massive expense, really.

UDK has a more extensive devleopment kit (making trees, animation, shaders etc.), it's free to use and the conditions get rough as in you have to pay only after earning more than $50 000 from game sales: http://www.udk.com/licensing

Quote from: anian on Sun 20/03/2011 10:45:32
Well then there the Source engine, which some people don't like, but if you bought HL2 or similar, you have na SDK to download, and there's plenty of tutorials on it. So Myst style games: http://www.moddb.com/mods/dear-esther

Dear Esther isn't a Myst like game. There are no puzzles or even any kind of interface - you just walk around the 3D mountain land until it ends. In general doubt you can make something like an adventure game with the public Source tools.

Maybe the Thief games' engine (Dark Engine was it called?) could be used for an inventory and physics based adventure game, but I don't think it's legal to use it for commercial games.

Quote from: Ascovel on Sun 20/03/2011 10:54:08
In general doubt you can make something like an adventure game with the public Source tools.

I don't know about that. I'm sure i've heard of the Source Engine being used for all kinds of genres for which it wasn't intended. A quick Google and here's a couple of, admittedly old, 3D adventure game examples made with the Source Engine:

Shantytown (http://students.guildhall.smu.edu/~shantytown/index.php?Page=Screenshots)

Weekday Warrior (http://students.guildhall.smu.edu/~weekdaywarrior/contents/html/home.html)

Here's a Video (http://students.guildhall.smu.edu/~weekdaywarrior/Weekday%20Warrior%20Final%20Trailer%20Web%20Divx%206%20640p%2030fps%20msadpcm%20audio.avi) of Weekday Warrior (although the interface looks a bit clunky)

I don't have HL2 installed right now so i'm not sure how traditional point n' click they are. Also, i've never gotten around to learning Source so can't comment on how easy it is to make point n' click style games with it.

I do agree with EHCB though when he says you can turn pretty much anything into an adventure game with a little ingenuity. I see no reason why you can't pick an existing engine like Source or *shameless plug* Unity and make it work for you. Someone, somewhere will have done half the work for you anyway;-) Don't get me wrong: i'm all for lowering the accessibility barrier and I *don't* subscribe to the idea that drag and drop game creation has to be dumbed down and lacking in features - and why should it? Everyone has imagination and everyone should be able to turn that into games if they want to. It doesn't have to be the antithesis of scripting, you can have both, it's just all in the way you present it. I'm always on the look out for that kind of visual creation software for games and software development in general as it's an approach that really interests me - I think it's a wonderful idea to free the designer in all of us - but the lack of such a program for 3D Adventure Games shouldn't hold you back.

I'd be very interested to see if you do settle on an existing engine and try to make an adventure game with it. I wish you every success. As for myself, when I get my other projects out of the way, i'll probably return to Unity and do just that. For the most part, you can do a lot of work just in the visual editor, including GUIs (although it's easier if you script them), and when it does come to scripting, the language isn't that hard and there's lots of people in the forum and UnityAnswers boards willing to help out. Things like point n' click in 3D, inventory systems, dialog boxes, have already been done, so there shouldn't be too much to overcome.

I'm glad you started this thread, it's been a great read so far, lots of good examples.

Quote from: straydogstrut on Sun 20/03/2011 12:38:28

Quote from: Ascovel on Sun 20/03/2011 10:54:08
In general doubt you can make something like an adventure game with the public Source tools.

I don't know about that. I'm sure i've heard of the Source Engine being used for all kinds of genres for which it wasn't intended. A quick Google and here's a couple of, admittedly old, 3D adventure game examples made with the Source Engine:

Shantytown (http://students.guildhall.smu.edu/~shantytown/index.php?Page=Screenshots)

Weekday Warrior (http://students.guildhall.smu.edu/~weekdaywarrior/contents/html/home.html)

Here's a Video (http://students.guildhall.smu.edu/~weekdaywarrior/Weekday%20Warrior%20Final%20Trailer%20Web%20Divx%206%20640p%2030fps%20msadpcm%20audio.avi) of Weekday Warrior (although the interface looks a bit clunky)

I don't have HL2 installed right now so i'm not sure how traditional point n' click they are. Also, i've never gotten around to learning Source so can't comment on how easy it is to make point n' click style games with it.

That's interesting. I never heard of those. What is also interesting is that 90% of underground adventure games seem to never make it to any major adventure gaming forums and they exist only within communities dedicated to specific engines. Quite a few of them seem to be made as school projects, like these 2 Source games.

Just to settle it: 99.9% of all the tools and engines that have been mentionned so far do have the potential to make adventure games. They just miss the extra 10% of coding to adapt the point-n-click gui and mechanisms to them. That's what I'd like to do, but I just want to pick the underlying engine carefully.

Let's continue with engines comparisons.
By the way: I'm still toying with OgreKit for Blender. I encourage all adventurers around here to try it.

You know, it wouldn't be that difficult for someone to make an 'adventure game' library that could be easily ported to work in multiple engines that support c++ (or whatever language you use).  For example, it wouldn't be a big deal to design the framework for a gui designer much like AGS's that allows you to call up and use your designs along with responding to mouse clicks.  Really, that seems to be the only thing causing most people to stumble over many of these engines near as I can tell, the rest of the functionality is already there (movement, animation, interactions, dialogue).

Quote from: ProgZmax on Mon 21/03/2011 16:15:08
Really, that seems to be the only thing causing most people to stumble over many of these engines near as I can tell, the rest of the functionality is already there (movement, animation, interactions, dialogue).

That's pretty much what I'm talking about............

Quote from: Ascovel on Mon 21/03/2011 06:57:17
That's interesting. I never heard of those. What is also interesting is that 90% of underground adventure games seem to never make it to any major adventure gaming forums and they exist only within communities dedicated to specific engines.

You make a good point there! I hadn't heard of them either. I only found them as I specifically went looking for them, and those are the only two that I found, and both student projects. There must be similar projects out there, yet it's quite surprising that the usual adventure haunts haven't been abuzz with news of them.

Quote from: ProgZmax on Mon 21/03/2011 16:15:08
You know, it wouldn't be that difficult for someone to make an 'adventure game' library that could be easily ported to work in multiple engines that support c++ (or whatever language you use).  For example, it wouldn't be a big deal to design the framework for a gui designer much like AGS's that allows you to call up and use your designs along with responding to mouse clicks.

That's a fascinating idea ProgZ, can you elaborate? Are there any examples of existing projects? Not that my poor coding skills would amount to anything like that in a million years, but i'd be interested to find out more about the kind of thing you're talking about. It sounds like creating an 'adventure game' plugin for a near feature-complete Engine, or building some sort of developer interface for an Engine that's more bare bones (just modules of graphics, sound etc). I may have misunderstood though.

Quote from: Ouxxey_games on Mon 21/03/2011 10:34:31
Let's continue with engines comparisons.

Yes let's! These examples are a feast for the eyes=)

Quote from: straydogstrut on Mon 21/03/2011 22:33:37

Quote from: ProgZmax on Mon 21/03/2011 16:15:08
You know, it wouldn't be that difficult for someone to make an 'adventure game' library that could be easily ported to work in multiple engines that support c++ (or whatever language you use).  For example, it wouldn't be a big deal to design the framework for a gui designer much like AGS's that allows you to call up and use your designs along with responding to mouse clicks.

That's a fascinating idea ProgZ, can you elaborate? Are there any examples of existing projects?

Seconded! With many of these engines it's easy to adapt the basic system to allow for adventure game style interactions, but the prospect of coding integrated inventory handling, point & click, pathfinding or a dialogue system is what boggles my mind.

Quote from: Ali on Mon 21/03/2011 22:39:53

Quote from: straydogstrut on Mon 21/03/2011 22:33:37That's a fascinating idea ProgZ, can you elaborate? Are there any examples of existing projects?

Seconded! With many of these engines it's easy to adapt the basic system to allow for adventure game style interactions, but the prospect of coding integrated inventory handling, point & click, pathfinding or a dialogue system is what boggles my mind.

But... But... That's the whole point of this topic (at least the second half)! Ali, you (yourself) even posted your attempt with Blender game engine! :-D
As I said I'm experimenting with OgreKit, which is pretty much the Blender Game Engine with a different renderer.

Quote from: straydogstrut on Sun 20/03/2011 12:38:28
...Source, ShantyTown, Weekday Warrior, ...

For the record, those two games are effing awesome, and if you've got Steam/HL2 on your computer, you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't play both of those games.

Quote from: Ouxxey_games on Tue 22/03/2011 10:46:12

Quote from: Ali on Mon 21/03/2011 22:39:53

Quote from: straydogstrut on Mon 21/03/2011 22:33:37That's a fascinating idea ProgZ, can you elaborate? Are there any examples of existing projects?

Seconded! With many of these engines it's easy to adapt the basic system to allow for adventure game style interactions, but the prospect of coding integrated inventory handling, point & click, pathfinding or a dialogue system is what boggles my mind.

But... But... That's the whole point of this topic (at least the second half)! Ali, you (yourself) even posted your attempt with Blender game engine! :-D
As I said I'm experimenting with OgreKit, which is pretty much the Blender Game Engine with a different renderer.

I agree, I don't think ProgZ's original remark was going against the quest to find a good engine for 3D adventures! It was the prospect of setting up functioning inventory handling, pathfinding and so on which made me switch from my Blender attempt towards DAGE.

I had a look at the OgreKit and it looks pretty robust. I would have liked to see some more intensive graphical effects in order to demonstrate its superiority over Blender's default system, but hopefully that will come in time.

Well, to elaborate....Take some of the music libraries out there, like FMOD.  FMOD handles all the heavy lifting (ie, all the code to import a music file, load a music file, and stream a music file are done for you).  All you basically have to do is import the library and make some function calls to load and play a tune.

This same approach could be done with an adventure game library, except it would likely benefit from a GUI BUILDER app to accompany it that would export the finished gui designs in a format the adventure game library can import and understand.  So basically you'd use this GUI BUILDER, which is an app made to design all your adventure game guis (verbcoin, verb bar, cursor states, inventory) and then you'd export that as a file much like a music file.  Then the library would interpret this file and allow you to do things like DISPLAY the main gui, seize control over the mouse for point and click, and other things.  The library could be as simple as just displaying a gui on the screen or as complicated as doing all the heavy lifting an adventure game would require APART from what a typical engine offers (rendering, objects, music, etc).  Basically you'd have a very specific library for a very specific type of game that provides only the bits not typically offered in a generic engine like Ogre.

Specific things I could see the GUIBUILDER doing:

1.  Allow you to import graphics for cursors and establish their properties (what each one does) and save/load them in an encrypted .csr file (or whatever).

2.  Allow you to import graphics for inventory items and establish their properties (what they do when used, looked at, etc) and save/load them in an encrypted .inv file (or whatever).

3.  Allow you to import graphics for images, buttons, and so on for the main gui, design them, and then save the entire gui (graphics and all) as a separate .gui file (or whatever).  The editor would allow you to do basic pushbutton states that the library would understand (like if you assign a button to randomly change the player cursor, when you load the gui up in the game and click on the button it will do so).

Obviously you could expand the functionality if you were designing this, but the goal of the GUIBUILDER would be to allow you to create content that is adventure game centric and not as easily done through direct coding means.



I hope that clarifies things a bit.

Quote from: Ascovel on Mon 21/03/2011 06:57:17

Quote from: straydogstrut on Sun 20/03/2011 12:38:28

Quote from: Ascovel on Sun 20/03/2011 10:54:08
In general doubt you can make something like an adventure game with the public Source tools.

I don't know about that. I'm sure i've heard of the Source Engine being used for all kinds of genres for which it wasn't intended. A quick Google and here's a couple of, admittedly old, 3D adventure game examples made with the Source Engine:

Shantytown (http://students.guildhall.smu.edu/~shantytown/index.php?Page=Screenshots)

Weekday Warrior (http://students.guildhall.smu.edu/~weekdaywarrior/contents/html/home.html)

Here's a Video (http://students.guildhall.smu.edu/~weekdaywarrior/Weekday%20Warrior%20Final%20Trailer%20Web%20Divx%206%20640p%2030fps%20msadpcm%20audio.avi) of Weekday Warrior (although the interface looks a bit clunky)

I don't have HL2 installed right now so i'm not sure how traditional point n' click they are. Also, i've never gotten around to learning Source so can't comment on how easy it is to make point n' click style games with it.

That's interesting. I never heard of those. What is also interesting is that 90% of underground adventure games seem to never make it to any major adventure gaming forums and they exist only within communities dedicated to specific engines. Quite a few of them seem to be made as school projects, like these 2 Source games.

I am very active in the Source engine and modding community, (Mostly modDB and Interlopers) when those mods released I loved them, especially Weekday Warrior, I have even made an adventure game in Source without codings, it is very advanced but it's still fun to play. Now, Dear Esther is a legend in the Source community right now because it is being remade and it is stunning.

http://www.littlelostpoly.co.uk/devblog/

I agree that it's not like Myst but it's still an adventure game and it does play a lot like Myst. Source is a great and easy to use engine, and probably the most modder and non-coder friendly. Too bad you can't sell your games though. :'(

Dear Esther, was epic. A perfect example for interactive art. now that the remake is coming i cant wait.

I did some modding way back in the HL1 days and some tests with hl2. It is easy to use but the coding with all the entities gets very confusing with complex things. And if you need more functionality it means going right to the source (no pun intended).

Quote from: ProgZmax on Tue 22/03/2011 20:33:13
I hope that clarifies things a bit.

It does, thanks! All the chunky capitalised keywords helped my feeble mind digest the information too;-)

Here's another one that looks quite interesting: Shiva3D (http://www.stonetrip.com/). It can build for multiple platforms, has a kind of drag and drop GUI editor and supports creating and using plugins even in the free and basic editions (but for sharing plugins, you can only export signed plugins which you need to buy a Verisign licence for). Licence/Edition comparison (http://www.stonetrip.com/shiva-editor.html). It seems kinda like Unity although the PLE seems more generous on the post-processing effects, shadows and render to texture effects that you need to have Unity Pro for.

It has a bit of an odd looking 'modules' concept - compared to just using objects and scripts directly in something like Unity - but overall it's still drag and drop as far as I can tell. Worth a look though.

Quote from: straydogstrut on Wed 23/03/2011 23:13:24
Here's another one that looks quite interesting: Shiva3D (http://shiva3d).

I think you meant this: http://www.stonetrip.com

Quote from: anian on Wed 23/03/2011 23:37:24
Shiva 3D ( http://www.stonetrip.com )

For the record: This has no free license.

Quote from: anian on Wed 23/03/2011 23:37:24

Quote from: straydogstrut on Wed 23/03/2011 23:13:24
Here's another one that looks quite interesting: Shiva3D (http://shiva3d).

I think you meant this: http://www.stonetrip.com

Thanks, didn't realised I'd botched the link. Will fix.

Quote from: Ouxxey_games on Thu 24/03/2011 09:27:27
For the record: This has no free license.

Not for publishing, no, but the price of the basic edition is very reasonable IMO.

The Myst: URU engine has just gone open source!

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/04/07/myst-online-goes-open-source/

I thought it was worth reviving this topic to mention that development on DAGE has stopped, because the Pauli author got a job (http://www.dageport.com/forum/index.php?topic=247.0). (Good news for him!)

He's considering releasing the engine open-source, which I thought might be of interest to some of the folks around here.

I hope that he does, it was pretty early days for DAGE but it definitely looked like it had potential, and it'd be a shame to see it die now.

Can we have a rating and a short summary again on the engines? Like how and why you rate it? There are added many more since I saw the last one.

The summary is pretty much still the same as I did a few posts ago.

In the meantime I've kept thinking about it, and Blender+OgreKit is really powerful, I keep finding new reasons for that:
- The Node Editor provides a GUI for people who can't program.
- Blender natively embeds video-processing features... Like Rotoscoping!!! http://goodspiritgraphics.com/software/tutorials/blender-tutorials/blendertut1/

Quote from: ProgZmax on Tue 22/03/2011 20:33:13
Well, to elaborate....Take some of the music libraries out there, like FMOD.  FMOD handles all the heavy lifting (ie, all the code to import a music file, load a music file, and stream a music file are done for you).  All you basically have to do is import the library and make some function calls to load and play a tune.

This same approach could be done with an adventure game library, except it would likely benefit from a GUI BUILDER app to accompany it that would export the finished gui designs in a format the adventure game library can import and understand.  So basically you'd use this GUI BUILDER, which is an app made to design all your adventure game guis (verbcoin, verb bar, cursor states, inventory) and then you'd export that as a file much like a music file.  Then the library would interpret this file and allow you to do things like DISPLAY the main gui, seize control over the mouse for point and click, and other things.  The library could be as simple as just displaying a gui on the screen or as complicated as doing all the heavy lifting an adventure game would require APART from what a typical engine offers (rendering, objects, music, etc).  Basically you'd have a very specific library for a very specific type of game that provides only the bits not typically offered in a generic engine like Ogre.

Specific things I could see the GUIBUILDER doing:

1.  Allow you to import graphics for cursors and establish their properties (what each one does) and save/load them in an encrypted .csr file (or whatever).

2.  Allow you to import graphics for inventory items and establish their properties (what they do when used, looked at, etc) and save/load them in an encrypted .inv file (or whatever).

3.  Allow you to import graphics for images, buttons, and so on for the main gui, design them, and then save the entire gui (graphics and all) as a separate .gui file (or whatever).  The editor would allow you to do basic pushbutton states that the library would understand (like if you assign a button to randomly change the player cursor, when you load the gui up in the game and click on the button it will do so).

Obviously you could expand the functionality if you were designing this, but the goal of the GUIBUILDER would be to allow you to create content that is adventure game centric and not as easily done through direct coding means.

Oh, by the way, nobody replied to that but it's very interesting. That's my quest with existing engines. ProgZmax, you baffle me: Sometimes you're on the side of : "do everything yourself, GUIs are for sissies", and there you're on the opposite side  :D I loved that post.  :)

Quote from: ProgZmax on Tue 22/03/2011 20:33:13
The editor would allow you to do basic pushbutton states that the library would understand (like if you assign a button to randomly change the player cursor, when you load the gui up in the game and click on the button it will do so)

In my opinion this is the one thing that is constantly overlooked and underestimated in engines and libraries: The state machines, and the handling of their related events.
However that's extremly important because that's where the said library would meet the underlying graphic engine.

Each engine (let's say Source, the UDK, Blender, etc.) has its own set of events and ways to manage them. Defining events that are universal enough (e.g. "mouse click", to give a simple example) is essential.

This is interesting, though slightly baffling to me.

I'm okay with scripting as far as the basics go (and all the games I've made are pretty basic). But I'd have no idea how to handle an inventory system effectively, and all my attempts have been disastrous. Dialogue trees are completely beyond me, I just don't know how they'd fit into an engine.

I'm probably repeating what I said earlier in this thread, but if there was a way of scripting those features in Blender then with the addition of Ogre it'd be an excellent choice for making really pretty 3D adventures.

EDIT: I suppose I should have posted this Blender Action/Adventure Game in this thread:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL8n-NgOYr0

Quote from: Ali on Mon 17/10/2011 10:45:06
I'm probably repeating what I said earlier in this thread, but if there was a way of scripting those features in Blender then with the addition of Ogre it'd be an excellent choice for making really pretty 3D adventures.

Your approcah is not as different from ProgZmax's as you think, he just has a bigger, wider plan on the long run:
- You suggest to script the Inventory Management directly into Blender
- He suggests that a clever person codes it in C++, and makes it a DLL. Then (as I picture it) this DLL be called using Blender's script through a simple wrapper. The benefit is that any other app can do the same, would you want to do so. You could see this DLL the same way as a plugin in AGS, except it would be compatible with any other Editor/Engine.

I was blind, but now I see!

Now I understand it, that's a great idea. Where can we find these clever people?

(My only reservation would be platform-independence, if I'm right in thinking DLLs are Windows..?)

Quote from: Ali on Mon 17/10/2011 12:39:48
(My only reservation would be platform-independence, if I'm right in thinking DLLs are Windows..?)

He meant "libraries" in general. I said "DLL" to make it clearer.
Also even before talking about libraries he's dealing about general description standards.

About the "clever people"... If we code it in Blender it's then easy to do a quick-and-dirty conversion into C++ and to compile it as a library. In adventure games most logic relies on collections or related (inventory, characters, dialog trees, etc.).

Anyway at the moment I'd like to have something work with Blender.

Sounds cool. I'm no programmer, as you can tell, and I'm ridiculously busy with a film right now. (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=44469.0) However, if I can contribute 3D assets or experience with Blender at some point in the future I will!

Gamekit now comes with a Lua IDE => One more win.

Also, Blender is super easy to compile. the code is rather complex but for simple UI modifications it's manageable.
EDIT: That's not needed as all the UI can be tweaked using Python scripts. The only exception might be the Splash screen.

I've created a Google Code project, called "mao-mao-ags", but there is nothing in it yet.

Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Wed 19/10/2011 13:31:28
I've created a Google Code project, called "mao-mao-ags", but there is nothing in it yet.

What will that be?

Quote from: Sslaxx on Wed 19/10/2011 14:02:22
What will that be?

What we've discussed so far:
- Editor: A downgraded Blender (meant to be 100% point n' click oriented, and much easier to use)
             License: Same as Blender (GPL, I think)
- Game Engine: an out-of-the-box version of Ogrekit, to run the game you've made. Ogrekit is cross-platform.
             License: Same as Ogrekit: MIT (that means you may use it for commercial games)


http://code.google.com/p/mao-mao-ags/

The latest version of Blender has just introduced pathfinding via navigation meshes:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Nicks/Gsoc2010/Docs

Apparently it allows for obstacle avoidance as well as 'seek' and 'flee' actions. I haven't had time to experiment, but I thought it was somewhat relevant to this ol' thread.

Quote from: Ali on Tue 01/11/2011 12:51:16
I thought it was somewhat relevant to this ol' thread.

Yes it is, and that's great news.
I'm still investigating how to adapt Blender GUI to my specific needs (it's like the awkwardness of their GUI and Python API is hard-coded, despite their huge efforts since 2.5  ;))

===

Just for the record, this one went under the radar but it seems very dynamic: http://jmonkeyengine.org/
(http://jakubas.net.pl/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/jmonkeyengine-logo.jpg)
It's both a set of libraries and an IDE. It's comibning low-level stuff (Ogre3d) and high level (Java)
It seems rather (very) good, even though I definitely want to go for Blender, as it's the ultimate solution for including a modeling tool directly in the game editor.

Uuu, and this is from Ogre family, seems simple to use (because it has visual scripting to some extent) plus it has a lot of good thing from Ogre engines
http://www.openspace3d.com/

Unsure how many have noticed this, but Theo/Skygoblin left AGS and developed their own adventure games engine, Gobby (http://www.skygoblin.com/2011/meet-gobby/), for the development of The Journey Down HD, and the blog post outlines some stuff that might be relevant to this thread.

I searched this forum for "gobby", which brought up an unrelated thread, so I'm guessing this hasn't been discussed much yet?

[Replied to the wrong thing, can't find an option to delete. Bah!]

Quote from: David Ostman on Mon 05/12/2011 11:59:46
Unsure how many have noticed this, but Theo/Skygoblin left AGS and developed their own adventure games engine, Gobby (http://www.skygoblin.com/2011/meet-gobby/), for the development of The Journey Down HD, and the blog post outlines some stuff that might be relevant to this thread.

I searched this forum for "gobby", which brought up an unrelated thread, so I'm guessing this hasn't been discussed much yet?

They're a commercial company. It isn't likely that they'll be releasing Gobby for public use. And really, nobody knows very much about it beyond what's been said in that blog post, although the tech they're using is good seeing as they're interested in cross-platform compatibility. So yes, it does appear to meet the criteria of "serious, modern adventure game engine" but you or I are not going to be getting our hands on it. Then again, we never got our hands on SCI, AGI, MADS etc. and they were reverse-engineered...

Yeah, I wasn't thinking they'd release it for the masses, unless they set up some kind of licensing arrangement, but that's a hassle that might be more effort than it's worth to support.

Just brought it up as it could perhaps inspire anyone who's looking in what it takes to cobble something new together :)

As the person responsible for creating Gobby over at SkyGoblin, I can honestly say that, from what I can tell from what it is you're looking for in this thread, I doubt Gobby is it. It's not a generic tool for creating adventure games and we haven't really written it to in any way compete with AGS. I doubt it'll ever be possible to create a game in Gobby without a lot of knowledge in C/C++ and, depending on which platforms you intend to deploy on, some knowledge in Java, Android, iOS and Objective C. We're also a 2D engine and though it would take little time to add the rendering code to render 3D assets, we have no tools and no content pipeline for assembling them. As I'm sure most of us here already know, core engine technology's a very tiny piece of the puzzle when compared to the tools needed to assemble a game.

With that being said however, we're in no way precious about Gobby and I can't really see any reason not to share it at some point down the line. If someone else should have an easier time building a game of their own using our technology, that's a good thing and something we would very much like to encourage. At the moment we don't really have the time to package any of what we have into something coherent enough to be understandable for anyone outside of our office, but if there is serious interest in making use of what we have at a later time when we're not quite as bogged down in our own work and the code wouldn't just gather dust in a sad and lonely repository somewhere on the Internet, we'd gladly share what we have.

I'd love to get my hands on Gobby (GobEd?) sometime in the future, even if just to have a look at it.

Good stuff, Markus! Knowing your generosity I suspected you wouldn't mind sharing your engine, but didn't want to assume.

You mention on the blog that you made some design decisions with Gobby to "adress the different nitpicks Theo had with AGS when developing the prototype for The Journey Down." Can you explain in a little more detail some of the things you decided should work differently? For discussing future AGS versions it would be very interesting to hear what the pain points are now and how you fare with other design alternatives.

Also, when you say that developers would have to know C/++, does that mean that the game logic is written in native code rather than a high-level scripting language? I thought that was quite unusual for an AG engine, but I suppose if you're a small team who all know C it won't mess up your production pipeline.

I'd rather see Markus answer the techy questions but I'll gladly share one major difference between GobEd and AGS which has made my life (and Henrik's) one bajillion times easier:

Sprites aren't imported into the editor with weird ID's. They are called upon with one single thing and that is their location and filename -there is no weird abstraction in between the original asset and the one used in the engine.

For a "common" AGS user who builds smaller games, this wouldn't really be an issue. But for a larger production with literally thousands and thousands of frames of animation, being able to simply re-render our frames into the same folder as the originals and then just hit run and see the changes... is absolutely invaluable. Also, since we don't have to rebuild the sprite file every time we start up after adding assets, we save tons of time every time we start up the game. Again, not an issue for a smaller project, but JDHD in AGS took several minutes to start every time I made the teeensiest change in any of the sprites. That was a MAJOR disruption in my work-flow.

Theo has definitely mentioned the biggest difference in the workflow. During development, Gobby reads files directly from disk and our assets are referenced by their filename. This means that launching the game during development doesn't take noticeably longer than switching rooms in runtime. Also, we use virtual coordinates for everything which allows us to resample textures as we see fit as well as run the exact same room configurations on all screen sizes and devices.

We use a language called Angelscript (http://www.angelcode.com/angelscript/) for game logic. So far we've had very good experiences with it and I'm quite impressed by how easy it usually is to map C/C++ functions and objects to the scripting language (I wholeheartedly recommend it). Though we do almost everything from Angelscript, we write anything that's performance sensitive in C/C++. Since we iteratively create the engine and implement our scripts in parallell, the "engine" as a whole isn't really feature complete in a general sense and is more of a framework specifically tailored to the needs of The Journey Down. For instance, the Gobby editor is far from having the kick-ass "save-game-to-exe" feature found in AGS and creating a game requires that native code is written and compiled which uses Gobby as a library. All platforms require some C/C++, Android requires some extra Java to wrap the native code and iOS requires some Objective C for setup.

Quote from: theo on Tue 13/12/2011 21:17:12
Sprites aren't imported into the editor with weird ID's. They are called upon with one single thing and that is their location and filename -there is no weird abstraction in between the original asset and the one used in the engine.

Aaah! I agree, this is the most frustrating thing about AGS workflow.

While Gobby doesn't answer all of the demands this thread has been making of a modern adventure game engine, the fact that you're approaching multiple platforms is distinctly modern. Good luck with the development!

Yeah, I also find the need to import resources into AGS to be a huge pain and waste of time, even in a fairly small project. Just the fact that you have to keep them organized in the file directory and then also in AGS is pointless duplication of effort, even if you rarely need to re-import them. Besides, it makes the project file a huge glob of binary data, which complicates source control.

I can see some of the reasons for it, like the processing AGS does on sprites in the input phase to pick transparency and to expand animated GIFs into separate frames, but I don't think it's worth it. Something like how Eclipse works, where the resource files live on your file system and you can choose to include or exclude them from the project (and perhaps set a couple of other parameters of how they're interpreted, if necessary), would be much more convenient. (For the AGS 4.0 wishlist!)

This wouldn't been a problem until a few days ago when I thought to myself 'Gosh, you know I REALLY should have used gifs instead of pngs before I imported these thousand images over the course of four years' in my big AGS project. I thought about going through and reimporting the sprites but had to drop the idea immediately, too much work, too much margin for things going horribly, horribly awry. The filesize of this game is going to much much bigger than a game of it's length should be.

Really? I thought AGS stored sprites in its own format internally, so the source file format shouldn't matter.

Besides, a well-compressed PNG file shouldn't be any bigger than a GIF; rather the opposite. But Photoshop, for example, produces bloated PNG files, and you can use an app like PngCrush or PngOut to losslessly reduce the file size.

I've always used gifs for my work in ags, primarily because of its support for animated sprites.  This is also the main reason why I never went with wintermute since the author made it clear to me in no uncertain terms that he'd never support animated gifs.  Importing a single animation rather than a sequence of frames as separate images saves me considerable time in the importation process.

That said, conversion/compression of art assets could certainly benefit from being done last (as a precursor to distribution) so builds could be compiled more rapidly, though to be quite honest I'm working on games with LOADS of sprites and the compile time has never taken more than 30 seconds, though likely mileage will vary based on your cpu/fpu and ram.

I was pretty intrigued by the screenshot of your editor that had the walkable areas and so forth defined with user-defined polys;  I think that's an absolutely grand idea and one I used when I was building my now-defunct game engine.  Is there a limit to how many points a shape can have in the editor?  I'd like to have a look at your editor some time!  

I've never really understood why you find it quicker to import GIFs than PNG sequences. AGS can import a series of images in couple of clicks now, so where do you save time?

Anyway, if we didn't have to import the sprites at all, just put the files in a folder in the project tree, it wouldn't be an issue any more, right?

Polygon-based walkable areas is another good idea. For one thing it would really simplify the pathfinding, and you could do things like overlapping walkable areas.

Quote from: Snarky on Wed 14/12/2011 22:47:33
AGS can import a series of images in couple of clicks now, so where do you save time?

Last time I tried this, it didn't work with alpha channel - also, in a 32bit color game it is kinda annoying to always have the messagebox if I really want to use alpha channel...

Quote from: cat on Thu 15/12/2011 08:30:30

Quote from: Snarky on Wed 14/12/2011 22:47:33
AGS can import a series of images in couple of clicks now, so where do you save time?

Last time I tried this, it didn't work with alpha channel - also, in a 32bit color game it is kinda annoying to always have the messagebox if I really want to use alpha channel...

If you quick import a series of PNG files with transparency they import just fine (they just look wonky in the sprite browser). Also, doing it that way there won't be a message box popping up asking you things. It's how I usually import sprites, even if it's just a single one.

The 'Import Multiple Sprites' thing uses the last options you used for a normal import, including the Use Alpha Channel setting

Didn't know that, thanks.

Quote from: Calin Leafshade on Thu 15/12/2011 12:15:57
The 'Import Multiple Sprites' thing uses the last options you used for a normal import, including the Use Alpha Channel setting

I tested this just before I replied to cat's post, and that's not the behaviour I got. A Normal import of a PNG excluding the alpha channel resulted as you would expect, but a Quick import afterwards of the same file resulted in it keeping the alpha channel.

I'm sort of going off topic with this one, though.

Quote from: Snarky on Wed 14/12/2011 22:47:33
Polygon-based walkable areas is another good idea. For one thing it would really simplify the pathfinding, and you could do things like overlapping walkable areas.

That's what I intend on doing in the Blender-based engine. That way, you can even map walkable areas onto 3D geometry (making the need for the AGS "downhill" module unnecessary, by design).

Quote from: David Ostman on Thu 15/12/2011 13:29:46
I'm sort of going off topic with this one, though.

Indeed, but we promise we won't tell on you ;-) At the moment, AGS import is "human error"-prone for all the reasons mentionned: heterogeneity of supported types (still images vs. Gif), need of mapping external resources with internal ID's, need of paying attention to the selected options at each import, etc. This should be moved to another topic.

At the moment I'm struggling to integrate Blender with PyGTK.

There is a powerful API used by Pyppet that does just that (you can have a glance here (http://pyppet.blogspot.com/2010/11/blender-python-operator-api.html) and here (http://pyppet.blogspot.com/)).

If anyone has enough motivation to produce a proof-of-concept...

I wish I had the technical expertise or the time to help. I have some rigged low-poly characters (from vegas showgirl and a couple of other experiments). You're free to use those if it helps, but I guess that's way down the line..

Quote from: Ali on Tue 24/01/2012 16:24:54
I wish I had the technical expertise or the time to help. I have some rigged low-poly characters (from vegas showgirl and a couple of other experiments). You're free to use those if it helps, but I guess that's way down the line..

Ali thanks, that will prove invaluable in time, but at the moment it's not the immediate goal. The goal here is to make PyGTK work, to be able to really customize Blender's UI.

Quite a bit of what you guys are talking about in an engine is already available in Visionaire. Now while I haven't used AGS, I can seriously vouch for Visionaire.

From where it stands, I think it’s the most progressive Adventure Game engine. In the near future the engine will have 3D character support, porting to Mac, aswell as iPad and android support. There is also some really nice features, like the ability have MKV’s as your movie format, supporting ANY resolution, and the ability to create game patches. 

The actual engine is a pleasure to use. It really is skewed in the favor of the artist…adding in animations, special events, new sprites etc, is super easy. The sound tools are also fantastic, with subtle features like changing the footstep sound depending on where the character walks. Things like using PNG's / Sprites straight from the file structure makes making alterations super easy. Honestly I sometimes render straight from MAX/After Effects into the engine.

Where it does fall short is in community support and documentation. Most of what I know is just from playing around with the engine-but once you have an understanding of how it all works, you can produce things very quickly.

It’s also one of the more actively developed engines, because it is being used by professional studios. The advances they are making are at the request of companies that are actually making full, successful, adventure games, so you are getting a 2D adventure engine that really is constantly evolving and improving to keep up with the demand of commercial games. 
Many advances now are in the handling of memory, getting the games to run smoother, and faster-allowing for even more complex animations and interactions. 

Quote from: Pyke on Tue 24/01/2012 18:28:48
Quite a bit of what you guys are talking about in an engine is already available in Visionaire.

Thanks for your comment! But there was already some discussions about Visionaire in this very thread, and the opinions were not very enthusiastic. Do you have comments to do about their comments?

===

My questions about coupling Blender with PyGTK or PyQt still stand, you guys.

@Pyke:
I don't follow Visionaire's development, so maybe things changed in the meantime, but here's what I said 10 months ago:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=42356.msg571234#msg571234

Since this flaw IMO trumps all the advantages by far, using Visionaire is out of the question for me, especially as I'm sticking to 320x240 2D games for now.

I havent used AGS, so my view is pretty biased, but I can give you my opinion on Visioniare.
With regards to your points, LUA is fully intergrated into the engine. If you look at Daedelic's games, you can get a pretty good idea of the more advanced scripting potential.

Resolution wise, you may be correct in Visioniare not handling lower resolutions properly. All of the games I have seen with it have been higher res-but thats really a place where it excells. STASIS runs at 720p, wide screen. At any one time I can have a few hundred frames of animation, particle effects, or video playing with no slowdown. As this discussion isnt an 'AGS vs Visioniare' one, but rather one focused on a modern engine, I think that handling high resolutions is a must.

I'm not sure how AGS handles scripting and in game events, but I can give you a quick rundown of how Visioniare does it. To quote: "that's a perfect opportunity to point out a big flaw: say I was to put a door in my game and I want to set it up so that a right-click open/closes it. All I do is name the door "door>v" and add a couple of lines of code, linking the door to a global variable.
That's all I ever need to do; even if the door starts out as locked, a right-click, which here produces "open door", will automatically fail since the door is locked."

In Visioniare, If I was to create a door, I would create an Object, and give it a Condition or True of False. True is OPEN, False is CLOSED. Then your command would be RIGHT CLICK -> If Condition = T, Close Door. RIGHT CLICK -> If Condition = F, Open Door. Visioniare treats each object as unique. There is no such thing as a 'Door' in the engine. There is just a defined area where you set up the commands for what happens when you interact in that area.
I used to keep a BASE LEVEL with all my different actions that I used often, but when you get into it it becomes really quick to set up interaction.

The templates and examples on the website really do let the engine down. Like I said, you really have to just muck around with it to figure it out. To set up something like a door proably takes about a minute, including linking any animations, etc.

I have had to use some workarounds for things that I'm sure AGS would probably be much easier for. For example, Visionaire doesn't support character dialogue portraits that dont 'pause' the game while you talk. As most of the conversations in STASIS take place over radio, I want you to still be able to walk around and talk - so I've had to come up with a way around that. But what it does have is very easily modified. For example, I have set up the dialogue engine to act as an in-game computer interface.

That said, Im sure that AGS does things really well that Visioniare doesnt, and visa versa. This really isnt a software debate, as those can never be won! When it comes to the things that a modern adventure engine should have however, I think that Visioniare is very progressive. Having the same built in codecs that VLC uses (so you can pretty much use any format for sound/video compression) opens up many doors. Having support for high resoution graphics, and being able to handle them is also something that a modern engine needs. But its the stuff on the horizon that really sets the engine apart. Multi platform support being a big one. If you were looking to create a commercial game, I think that that alone is a big enough deciding factor.

Just wanted to add in some things. ;)

Something was mentioned earlier with The Journey Downs GOBBY engine:

"Sprites aren't imported into the editor with weird ID's. They are called upon with one single thing and that is their location and filename -there is no weird abstraction in between the original asset and the one used in the engine."

Thats pretty much exactly how Visioniare works. Its a VERY artist friendly workflow.

For a "common" AGS user who builds smaller games, this wouldn't really be an issue. But for a larger production with literally thousands and thousands of frames of animation, being able to simply re-render our frames into the same folder as the originals and then just hit run and see the changes... is absolutely invaluable. Also, since we don't have to rebuild the sprite file every time we start up after adding assets, we save tons of time every time we start up the game. Again, not an issue for a smaller project, but JDHD in AGS took several minutes to start every time I made the teeensiest change in any of the sprites. That was a MAJOR disruption in my work-flow."

Building the entire game for STASIS (which is pretty damned big) takes about 30 seconds.

OK very interesting I'll give it a try.

Also, bumping my question about a proof-of-concept "Blender/PyGTK" or "Blender/PyQt"

I made a thread about something like this a while ago: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=43641 (thread stripped of links/images).

I'm surprised you're not going for Unity. It would take a few rudimentary scripts and editor scripts to give a very good basic adventure game engine.

Were the only issues plugins and license?

Quote from: TheDude on Thu 26/01/2012 18:58:20
I'm surprised you're not going for Unity.

A very flexible license is important. Something like AGS games.
It's not for myself, it's for the "community".

The creator of Pyppet is currently turning it into an SDK (so that any Blender developer can integrate it -- especially the GTK user interfaces) and porting it to Windows. It doesn't sound like it, but it's excellent news.

I've been mulling this over in my head.

What does everyone think to an adventure game *library*.

Essentially I mean a library that facilitates the creation of an adventure game but ultimately leaves the structure to the programmer. This would of course be significantly more work than using something like AGS but it would grant a great deal of flexibility.

The code structure would be an amalgamation of Windows Forms and AGS. That is to say that objects in the game are all sub classes of abstract base classes. You dont declare a new Character but rather you declare a new Jennifer which derives from the abstract class Character.

Everytime you declare a new derivative of the Character class the constructor adds it to a global, vectorised list in the game so that the underlying engine can be responsible for all the drawing. However if you don't want the engine to do your drawing then you simply override the draw function.

Providing the 'scripting' functions are kept on a different thread to the rendering then it should feel very similar to AGS in terms of coding a game. You still tell characters to go to rooms and you still tell them to speak, you just get to override it all if you so desire.

Now, granted it would be better if AGS could do this but giving AGS a scripting language as robust and feature-full as something like C# just isnt feasible at the moment, nor would it be particularly desirable since it would add a layer of complexity that casual users dont want.

Now, since adventure games are comparatively very simple things a library like this could be made actually very quickly.

Thoughts?

Quote from: Calin Leafshade on Fri 10/02/2012 13:17:44
What does everyone think to an adventure game *library*.

objects in the game are all sub classes of abstract base classes.

CALIN!
You sabotager! You troll! The correct thread for this is that one (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=45165.0).

I swear if someone answers Calin's post and starts an inextinguishable off-topic fire, I'll go berserk! :D

Oh come on, it's kinda relevant. I'll *create* your serious, modern Adventure Gamers engine.

Quote from: Calin Leafshade on Fri 10/02/2012 15:15:25
Oh come on, it's kinda relevant. I'll *create* your serious, modern Adventure Gamers engine.

Be my guest :-D

I dont know if wintermute was mentioned before, -> http://dead-code.org/home/
Its a really good engine with allows 2.5D Adventure Games.
I know the goal was real 3D Games, but maybe this is worth a look.

I think people are quite widely aware of Wintermute. However, Wintermute 2.0 might prove to be a modern 3d adventure game engine.

Unfortunately, it's still in development and there isn't much information about it. I'm not sure whether it will be free or licensed, either.

I'm actually more interested in Game Maker 9 as it will compile for iphone and android as well as windows and mac and will have a more modern 3d engine in addition to all the 2d stuff previous versions supported.

Just a heads up - Unity have some free licenses available til April 8th

https://store.unity3d.com/index.html

Quote from: m0ds on Wed 07/03/2012 21:34:35
Just a heads up - Unity have some free licenses available til April 8th

https://store.unity3d.com/index.html

I don't really get what's happening there, I can only choose free or $1500 version...the rest are greyed out.

EDIT: never mind, I got it, Android might not be bad, but is it free until April 8th (like the actual licensce expires at that time) or is this offer available until the 8th?  ???
EDIT2: it seems it's the get it now and have forever, but they've basically did what they did with the main engine, stripped stuff out of it and then made 2 products out of 1, still I guess for smartphones some of those stuff is not that important.
In any case, thanks for the heads up.

Heh, select "Free" and then Add Extras becomes available.

Nice tip Mods.  Gonna download it and have a little gander.

[update]
Coor, it ain't half taking its time to install...

I've just tried firing up Unity and its saying I have to register and that "a one-time 30-day free trial" is available to everyone.  Before I press 'register', does this mean it's only free for 30 days, or is it one of those things where it 'says' you have 30 days, but can keep using it afterwards?

It's a trial of the pro version. After that it reverts to the free version.

Ahaaa! Makes sense. Cheers :-)

Bumping an old theread, but for exhaustivity's sake :

Adventure Creator (Unity3D plugin): http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=49134.0

Looks like it may have taken only took three years to resolve this question.

Better start a new thread called "Why isn't there a peaceful resolution to the Israel/Palestine conflict?"

Quote from: Ali on Fri 18/10/2013 14:02:31
Looks like it may have taken only took three years to resolve this question.

To be fair: The question is not fully resolved, because (if I recall properly),  the unlicensed version of Unity3D has annoying limitations: a huge watermark, and cannot be used on mobile devices. Or something.
Also I suspect that AdventureCreator may target professional use in a not-so-distant future (hence might come with a fee in the future). Or am I just fooled by the very professional look of it? :D It's a sad world where really cool indie products look suspicious ;)

AGS still doesn't have a competitor in that world :)

The free version of Unity3D has no watermark (just a very short and unintrusive logo when the game starts). It does not export to several more exclusive platforms (consoles and mobile) but still does allow Windows, Mac, Linux and in-browser play. Considering that you get an extremely powerful engine for absolute free I think that's very, very hard to complain about.

Quote from: Ali on Fri 18/10/2013 14:02:31
Better start a new thread called "Why isn't there a peaceful resolution to the Israel/Palestine conflict?"

That's actually a good idea. Go on, Monsieur. Do it right now! :=

Quote from: DoorKnobHandle on Fri 18/10/2013 14:17:44
The free version of Unity3D has no watermark (just a very short and unintrusive logo when the game starts). It does not export to several more exclusive platforms (consoles and mobile) but still does allow Windows, Mac, Linux and in-browser play. Considering that you get an extremely powerful engine for absolute free I think that's very, very hard to complain about.

I don't want that start up logo though. I hope Adore gets finished soon, with whatever game was being made with it.

Quote from: DoorKnobHandle on Fri 18/10/2013 14:17:44
I think that's very, very hard to complain about.

Not complaining at all! :D I'm thrilled by Adventure Creator.
Just trying to be exhaustive :)

Quote from: Armageddon on Fri 18/10/2013 23:11:08

Quote from: DoorKnobHandle on Fri 18/10/2013 14:17:44
The free version of Unity3D has no watermark (just a very short and unintrusive logo when the game starts). It does not export to several more exclusive platforms (consoles and mobile) but still does allow Windows, Mac, Linux and in-browser play. Considering that you get an extremely powerful engine for absolute free I think that's very, very hard to complain about.

I don't want that start up logo though. I hope Adore gets finished soon, with whatever game was being made with it.

It sounds like Adore might be made proprietary though.

Quote from: Armageddon on Fri 18/10/2013 23:11:08

Quote from: DoorKnobHandle on Fri 18/10/2013 14:17:44
The free version of Unity3D has no watermark (just a very short and unintrusive logo when the game starts). It does not export to several more exclusive platforms (consoles and mobile) but still does allow Windows, Mac, Linux and in-browser play. Considering that you get an extremely powerful engine for absolute free I think that's very, very hard to complain about.

I don't want that start up logo though. I hope Adore gets finished soon, with whatever game was being made with it.

Adore and Unity3D are two very, very different beasts. I can only speak for Unity3D but if a relatively elegant black and white 3-4 sec start up logo is too much for you even when you get an incredibly powerful, flexible, cross-platform and full-fledged 3D engine with an integrated level editor suite in return, then I guess Unity just isn't for you. Considering the fact that you're looking forward to Adore instead (which is totally reasonable and fine of course!) probably means that you wouldn't be interested in most of the Unity functionality anyways?

Quote from: DoorKnobHandle on Fri 18/10/2013 14:17:44
The free version of Unity3D has no watermark (just a very short and unintrusive logo when the game starts). It does not export to several more exclusive platforms (consoles and mobile) but still does allow Windows, Mac, Linux and in-browser play. Considering that you get an extremely powerful engine for absolute free I think that's very, very hard to complain about.

Not accurate, it does allow exporting to mobile, see here (http://unity3d.com/unity/download).

You know, all this stuff about "modern adventure game engine" is a little silly.

Think about what you really need for a 2D adventure game. To display some sprites on the screen, catch clicks and do some pathfinding.
The pathfinding is the only thing that is even remotely difficult.

I mocked up the version of Adore used for White Wedding in a few hours. Admittedly it's not very well tested but it's fairly robust for a couple of hours work.
AGS was made at a time when resources were scarce and there were very few simple tools to make games but these days it's as simple as:


local image = love.graphics.newImage("myImage.png")
love.graphics.draw(image,x,y)


That's all you need to do to draw something to the screen in love2d. Combine that with animations and mouse clicking and you're about 25% of the way there.

I think the days of a specific "engine" are going away because it's so easy to customise existing systems.

Give it a try!

Now please explain how to do events and set up rooms and room changes and everything else. All the files you need to preload and the function names and everything it's too much. ???

Quote from: Armageddon on Sat 19/10/2013 11:18:44
Now please explain how to do events and set up rooms and room changes and everything else. All the files you need to preload and the function names and everything it's too much. ???

Is it really more complicated than AGS? LOVE2d has less tools for p-n-c adventure games (well it actually has no tools at all), but I think with a bit of organising a project, it could be very easy to create stuff.
I've started learning Lua because of it and seems like one of those easy to learn, bit harded to master things (though I know nothing about programming, so take from it what you will), but besides that, a lot of stuff uses Lua now days and personally I can't wait to see what Calin comes up with.

Nooooooooo! Not this conversation again! "it's so easy to do everything yourself from scratch! Why don't you?".

Because it's 2013 and we want to share tools that allow developers to focus on the actual game, not on making the engine. If making a fully functional, cross-platrform engine with an IDE was so easy, it would be common knowledge :D
So now, shhhhushhh Calin! You scoundrel!

Adventure creator is the closest thing to what I had on mind when I started this thread.

When it comes to making large games a lot of devs *do* make their own engine because its faster than retooling their pipeline to fit existing tech.

Quote from: Calin Leafshade on Sat 19/10/2013 17:54:55
When it comes to making large games a lot of devs *do* make their own engine because its faster than retooling their pipeline to fit existing tech.

Yes, but I could argue two things :
1) we also want a nice IDE for non-commercial games.
2) maybe they've been developing their own tools because Adventure Creator wasn't out there ;)
Middleware is an actual market, let's not argue about that. A world with Adventure Creator is better than a world without, for point-n-click makers.

Then for the Chris Jones' sake, Monsieur. Please buy it right now (if you've not already) and live in peace!

Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Sat 19/10/2013 17:44:22
Nooooooooo! Not this conversation again! "it's so easy to do everything yourself from scratch! Why don't you?".

Because it's 2013 and we want to share tools that allow developers to focus on the actual game, not on making the engine. If making a fully functional, cross-platrform engine with an IDE was so easy, it would be common knowledge :D
So now, shhhhushhh Calin! You scoundrel!

I disagree with all of that. Don't you have any sense of pride/prestige with your work? Don't you want to make the very best thing possible and to do that you have to make every bit of it yourself?

Quote from: Armageddon on Sat 19/10/2013 20:49:45
Don't you have any sense of pride/prestige with your work? Don't you want to make the very best thing possible and to do that you have to make every bit of it yourself?

To me, it's like Van Gogh saying "my painting is twice better because I collected the flowers myself to make the pigments".

Powerful middleware is the key to success, in order to focus on the contents, not on the technique. Having said that, it's not the middleware's fault if some developers then get lazy and stay in the template offered to them, hence producing something boring, standard, and not ambitious at all. But you could say the same for the AGS "lucasarts" or "sierra" templates: "I want to create my own Lucasarts template, the game will be twice better". Meh?


Side note: The only exception to that creative process would be when the game is at the brink of existing research (e.g. GTA V/Skyrim/Assassin's creed, where you need to create new powerful algorithms for crowd effects, distant rendering, etc.). But come on, point-n-clicks? All the theoretical aspects and technology are mature since around 2000.

Damn. I broke my own rule and fed the troll.

I wasn't trolling but while reading your post I had an idea about using XNA to make a Grim Fandango type engine. I wonder how well Unity could use 2d prerendered background with 3D characters.

If I'm not mistaken some guy at Double Fine submitted, basically as his job application to Double Fine, Grim Fandango coded in XNA, so that it'd run on the xbox.


Not really related to what you are saying, but still. Although isn't XNA no longer being supported by Microsoft now, or something?

Quote from: Armageddon on Sun 20/10/2013 21:21:12
I had an idea about using XNA to make a Grim Fandango type engine.

There is an actual AGS sort-of clone made with XNA somewhere around these forums (I can't remember its name, though).

Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Tue 22/10/2013 12:14:01

Quote from: Armageddon on Sun 20/10/2013 21:21:12
I had an idea about using XNA to make a Grim Fandango type engine.

There is an actual AGS sort-of clone made with XNA somewhere around these forums (I can't remember its name, though).

Are you talking about XAGE?

Quote from: Stupot+ on Tue 22/10/2013 12:35:13
Are you talking about XAGE?

yes