Hidden Object Game Creation

[mawilbolou]

Hi there. I am an absolute beginner and I am looking to learn how to create a Hidden Object game.
I was looking for a template or decent tutorial, but cant seem to find a good one.
There is a post here...
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/beginners-technical-questions/hidden-object-games/
But it doesnt really explain everything from start to finish.

Basically have a background image, a list of objects placed above the BG Image,
a GUI bar with a picture or text description of each object in the list.

Click on an object, have it disappear and cross off the item in the GUI.
Similar to this...



Any help would be greatly appreciated
CHeers
Matt

[Rik_Vargard]

What I know is that when you want an object to disappear when you click on it you can use : oOBjectName.Visible = false;

[Khris]

I was thinking about the easiest way to do this and came up with a somewhat weird solution:

1. put the crossed out words in the background image
2. create a room object for each hidden object as usual but compose the sprite of the object image and the non-crossed out version already in the correct position, so that when the object is placed in the room, the box with the name covers the crossed out name
3. in each object's "any click" handler, hide the object, which will also reveal the crossed out name
4. block being able to also click the words by putting a transparent but clickable GUI on top

[mawilbolou]

I'm gonna try this, thanks @Khris Sounds like a good solution...

[cat]

However, hidden object games often randomize the items that have to be searched. This would not be possible with Khris' suggestion.

[glurex]

Back in the day, in my game "Another Museum" I played slightly with that idea for one of the puzzles (get the roman object). Now I might approach it differently, but I guess the core idea of what you want to do is there. I can even think of a 'penalty' for clicking more than once in the wrong spot: a small delay and randomly moving the cursor. However, it might end up being annoying.

[mawilbolou]

Yeah a penalty feature would be good, there's almost always a hints button to hint a certain region.

[Crimson Wizard]

I was thinking about the easiest way to do this and came up with a somewhat weird solution:

1. put the crossed out words in the background image
2. create a room object for each hidden object as usual but compose the sprite of the object image and the non-crossed out version already in the correct position, so that when the object is placed in the room, the box with the name covers the crossed out name
3. in each object's "any click" handler, hide the object, which will also reveal the crossed out name
4. block being able to also click the words by putting a transparent but clickable GUI on top

I would advise against baking texts with the image for at least two reasons:
1. Difficult to change if you spot a mistake or want to change the text looks.
2. Difficult to translate if you add translations to your game.
(in both cases you probably would have to resort to creating dynamic sprites with texts drawn by a script command)

Furthermore, merging object's image and text on the image means that after you do you can't adjust individual object and their text position separately, you will have to remake whole merged sprite. If later in development you realize that you want to change the looks of GUI, you will have to remake ALL the combined sprites.
And, indeed, as cat said, in such case you are stuck with the fixed text's position, you won't be able to position text elsewhere at runtime.

EDIT: There are other concerns with such "merge everything together" approach:
* you won't be able to "hide" or move the GUI at runtime.
* you won't be able to have "scrolling rooms", or any camera effects at all (like zoom in/out).

So by following this "easy" solution you are going to make other things harder, if not impossible to have.

[Khris]

Yeah, this approach is obviously not a good solution in general for various mentioned and unmentioned reasons.

The idea behind my suggestion was that @mawilbolou learns the basics of AGS while also getting quick results.
There's no good answer to a thread like this short of actually writing the exact step-by-step tutorial that was asked for, so I tried to think outside the box