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

[Gilbert]

YEAH! Why not? It makes us gay!

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

[mode7]

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.

[WHAM]

I hear AGS is pretty good...

(Sorry, couldn't resist...)

[Monsieur OUXX]

The Journey to Kelabra was made with Visionaire - I don't think the engine needs any more recommendation than this.

LOL

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 :-)

[Eggie]

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 makes Myst-style adventures in the Fallout 3 engine. You can turn pretty much anything into an adventure game with a little ingenuity.

[Grim]

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)

[Anian]

Something I find interesting on the 3D end of things: This guy 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

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

[Igor Hardy]

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.

[straydogstrut]

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

Weekday Warrior

Here's a Video 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.

[Igor Hardy]

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

Weekday Warrior

Here's a Video 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.

[Monsieur OUXX]

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.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

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).

[Monsieur OUXX]

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............

[straydogstrut]

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.

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.

Let's continue with engines comparisons.

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

[Ali]

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.

[Monsieur OUXX]

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.

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!
As I said I'm experimenting with OgreKit, which is pretty much the Blender Game Engine with a different renderer.

[Technocrat]

...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.

[Ali]

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.

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!
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.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

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.

[Armageddon]

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

Weekday Warrior

Here's a Video 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. :'(