Hi there,
I would like to make a small game for my first game similar (in mechanics) to Darklands (if you are familiar). It will hopefully have three components. (1) An overland map; (2) Cities, navigated by background screens (but no walking). The player navigates by selecting choices of text (which may also result in other things like dialogue, battle, shops, etc.); (3) Some kind of turn-based battle system (I don't know if this is possible with AGS...). Other things I am hoping for are random events on the overland map (I think the overland map can just work as one, or a series of, regular rooms like the one in the tutorial). Please advise this newbie. Thanks!
Matt
Everything is possible but especially the battle system needs some more advanced coding. Theres no premade battle system anywhere in ags.
Well for the navigation. It sound to me as if you have a screen of a city and you get a dialog where you choose what to do next.
I guess the easiest way would be to just start a dialog. You can run any script command in a dialog script by butting an" " at the bgegining of the line.
You also would have to hide the player. I think theres some attribute like
player.Visible = false;
to do tis.
Just a few things to get you started.
This is perfect, thanks for your response ;-)
Yes, technical implementation of (1) and (2) is more or less a piece of cake.
(3) is where it gets tricky, depending on the sophistication of the battle system.
Looking at this shot,
(http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/1074-darklands-dos-screenshot-combat-screen.gif)
I have no idea how interactive this is; in general you can script pretty much everything in AGS. The script language is extremely powerful for a game creation system; a tile engine, a 3D engine and a real-time strategy game are just a few examples of what has been done already/is in the works.
Having said that, if you don't have a background in programming, aim lower. AGS takes a good deal of work off your hands but it won't keep you from doing the heavy lifting.