Hey everyone, do you remember way back in the day when Klik & Play was the fastest way to make a game? Me too!
(And I still have it:Klik & Play on eBay (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=300245923890&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=020))
It's a classic, but I must let go sometime.
QuoteNO PROGRAMING! Everything is controlled with mouse clicks and simple menu commands.
Now where's the fun in that ??? ;D
Klik and Play/Games Factory WERE capable of good games if you tried hard.
OR, if you were god, like Chris 'Datadogg' Ushko creator of M:I2 LeChuck's Revenge which remains one of the best freeware adventure games I've ever played, even after all these years.
I mainly use AGS and Game Maker, though there was a time when I designed my own game engine and then abandoned it when it was almost finished.
Quote from: ProgZmax on Wed 30/07/2008 13:22:48
there was a time when I designed my own game engine and then abandoned it when it was almost finished.
Me too, a very very simple choose-your-own-adventure gamemaker. Unfortunately my Delphi knowledge wasn't good enough to let it run from anywhere on the computer, and seen as I can't remember the file path it needed I can't run it anymore.
I used Klik & Play, which was great apart from the lack of scrolling. I then used the Games Factory (which I still have), but it had a habit of breaking when you did so much with it. Also they seemed to have broken the nice platform engine that came in Klik & Play, so you had to do your own. Also played with Game Maker briefly, but you couldn't do too much in that without learning the language and I couldn't be bothered.
I've spent most time on the RPG Maker series which are very nice (but limiting). They more or less taught me how to program without me realising it. Then there's the O.H.R.R.P.G.C.E. which was the first game maker I ever used. Horribly menu-driven DOS program. Made "Dollar's Quest" on that one.
Out of everything AGS is most definitely my favourite.
Klik and Play was my first game creation program. Never made anything good with it, though.
Klik&Play was a must-have back in 93, yes, but the limitations were extreme; what can be said is that it was one of the most easy-to-use programs ever.
Okay, other game development kits i've tinkered with:
Inform- great for interactive fiction. Not too hard to learn if you already know a programming language, and highly versatile.
DIV Professional- My first game ever, a board puzzler / Match3 one, was written in this. DIV was a great piece of software and was supposted to be remade for Windows XP, but then the team dissolved, and that was the end of it. I loved the community back then; DIV showed me how nice it is to have a group of game makers cluttering a forum. It also forever marked me as a man who has a strange taste in nicknames. VaporeonEvolved, anyone?
3D Game Studio - I own it. The cheapest, non-commercial basic edition, though. It's
fun to have, but I find the scripting a pain, and I suck at 3D modelling, so it more or less
sits in my CD rack and gathers dust. I use the manual to stop my table from wobbling,
though.
Game Maker- I meddled with it and found it okay, but then I found...
Construct (http://www.scirra.com/) - can do everything GM can do, and more, and is about as easy to use. Also,
free download, no registration. I am using it to make a sidescrolling shoot-em-up, to warm up with it.
But mostly, I try to stop using editors, toolkits and suchlike- well, okay, not AGS of course, but that's not a toolkit, it's a religion. I'm making good progress with C++/Allegro, and must say that it is great fun to create your own "engines"/programs/stuff.
I still need to learn all the professional names for "stuff", though.
Quote from: Ghost on Wed 30/07/2008 13:54:29
Inform- great for interactive fiction. Not too hard to learn if you already know a programming language, and highly versatile.
Ah yeah, add ADRIFT and Inform to my list. ADRIFT was too limiting and Inform was crazy, like a 3rd generation language pretending to be 4th generation. Very interesting, but far too wordy for my liking.
I think I made my first actually playable game in Shoot 'em up construction kit for the Amiga. That was easy and fun.
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AGS is made for adventure games. Sure, you can cheat your way around creating more than just adventure games (Colourwise being a perfect example), but it's just not worth the trouble.
Game Maker is great, extremely flexible and easy to use. I'm currently working on an exploration game with it. I have all the control over everything I need. with no glitches or whatever.
If you want anything more powerful, then get Blitz Basic. I think it's the most stable game engine, but it looks more like a "real" programming language. It's both 2d and 3d. Though the 3d engine is very competent, don't expect to make the next gen first person shooter, but I suppose it could perfectly handle a 3d adventure game. I wonder why no one's tried that out yet ::) Some day I might
I suppose the next best choice is C++. My knowledge with it is very limited, though.
I never worked around with Games Factory, but here's an awesome exploration game made with Multimedia Fusion (http://nifflas.ni2.se/index.php?main=04Within_a_Deep_Forest&sub=03Download)
Of course I won't stick with Game Maker forever, but for the time being it's perfect for my game.
@Ghost: I tried to find a link for Construct, but I didn't even find it referenced everywhere. Maybe it has a new name now?
Quote from: Paper Carnival on Wed 30/07/2008 14:43:30
AGS is made for adventure games. Sure, you can cheat your way around creating more than just adventure games (Colourwise being a perfect example), but it's just not worth the trouble.
Why not?
Paper Carnival - Construct (http://www.scirra.com/info.php)
I have to say, Construct sound's interesting. I've tried game maker but never really stucked to it.
AGI studio is something I've looked in too, and maby I'll use it if I feel that I need to make a true hardcore AGI game, but till then, I'll stay with AGS.
Back when I had an Amiga 1200 I experimented with CanDo (a primitive Visual Basic) and GRAC(2), the latter being a graphical adventure creator.
I even started a handful of really shitty games and quickly abandoned them when I had to draw the second background (a dilemma I didn't solve yet ;)).
And of course, Inform.
Strangely enough, when I switched to a PC, it never occured to me to look for a graphical adventure creator and I continued playing with Inform for quite some time until I finally came across AGS, which I more or less use for everything now, even to code small utilities and stuff.
Other game authoring packages I've dabbed with include: Construct, Game Maker, AGI Studio, The Games Factory, Multimedia Fusion 1.5, and now I own Multimedia Fusion 2, (which is awesome, btw.)
AGS will always be my favorite adventure game designer choice though. (AGI comes close, but AGS seems more intuitive and has much broader support - these forums and the members herein.)
I've never used a programming language to make a game, but I have made tiny basic apps for a novice programmer.
So no one's tried DarkBASIC or Genesis 3D? I own Classic DarkBASIC, and Genesis 3D is still alive.
I was really anticipating Stencyl ... for the first 500 years of waiting for it.
But now I'm so sick of waiting for it I've developed a dislike for it and the over-all, "we'll release it when we want to" attitude over there.
It's been "teasing" for FAR too long. If they aren't ready they shouldn't have announced it so long ago. Just my 2 cents.
Aside from that I only really use AGS I don't mind saying.
Having just read the text on the Stencyl page, I'm curious how they want to achieve what they do.
It's like saying: "We're going to make a car that's going to be faster & safer then any other car" ...
Aren't more power and increasing ease of use irreconcilable?
Quote from: KhrisMUC on Wed 30/07/2008 22:35:19
Aren't more power and increasing ease of use irreconcilable?
Not in software. Ease of use comes down to good interface design, which hasn't got much to do with the "power" of the underlying software. Unless you consider a program with tons of options to fiddle with more powerful than one that simply does the right thing where applicable.
Admittedly in this case they probably cannot completely ditch the need for scripting and other "hard" stuff like that for any serious game project, but they could do a lot by using clever automatic code generation with visual tools and similar gimmicks (though being a bit of a perfectionist and a bit more of a programmer I can't help but cringe at the idea). That said, I have a hard time believing Stencyl will live up to the marketing speech.
Quote from: R4L on Wed 30/07/2008 17:05:31
So no one's tried DarkBASIC or Genesis 3D? I own Classic DarkBASIC, and Genesis 3D is still alive.
I tried DarkBasic - and found it seriously sucks (imho). I switched over to Blitz3D (http://www.blitzbasic.com/Products/blitz3d.php) and I'm super happy with that...
Quote from: miez on Thu 31/07/2008 14:36:58
Quote from: R4L on Wed 30/07/2008 17:05:31
So no one's tried DarkBASIC or Genesis 3D? I own Classic DarkBASIC, and Genesis 3D is still alive.
I tried DarkBasic - and found it seriously sucks (imho).
Seconded. To add insult to injury, all the manual/book shipped with the compiler has to say about making games is "Yeah that's possible too. Maybe. Dunno."
DarkBASIC Pro isn't bad. It's nothing great... but that doesn't mean good games can't be with it.
AGS is the only thing I've really used.
Oh, I tried Dark Basic too. It does indeed suck. I prefer Blitz 3d a lot more, you can find many great games made with it. Plus, Dark Basic never made any sense to me, whereas Blitz 3d seemed very easy to use (considering its power and flexibility). I just never had enough time to learn it well.
I use Game Maker, more than I do AGS. It's what I created those games in my sig with. It's a great program, with enormous versatility, and a really huge number of capabilities. The coding language it uses, GML, is really simple, and is a great introduction to programming in general.
I mean, after a number of years of experience in GML, I was able to download AGS, start it up, and have a fully customized interface within an afternoon. No awful default Sierra shiz for me!
But... AGS is a really wonderful platform for adventure game development, muuuch more so than GM. I could create a fuller adventure game in an hour with AGS than I could in a week with GM. So, what I recommend is this: AGS for adventure games, GM for everything else.
I'm a complete whore for the things.
Right now I've got unfinished projects in OHRRPGCE and Inform 7 and The Games Factory.
I also have the registered version of Game Maker 7 and a ton of utilities for doing stuff with the Build engine.
Why do I have all these things when I've never finished making a proper game?
Why don't you shut up!
I used The games factory a lot a few years back...i still use Click and create for making graphics. My dream of doing a point and click game was shattered quite fast when i used TGF hehe. too much bugs and it didn't work well at all. I started doing a Zeldaclone in it...playable for like 30 minutes or so...then i got tired of it...too much work. I remembered doing a platform game but got stuck when i tried to do moving platforms (Like in super mario world for the SNES) the character never moved with the platform when he stepped on it. so...I got pissed off and deleted that piece of crap :D
I mostly use Wintermute and SCRAMM, but if I'm just making an hour game I tend to go with GLUMOL.
Quote from: Pumaman on Mon 04/08/2008 23:00:42
I mostly use Wintermute and SCRAMM, but if I'm just making an hour game I tend to go with GLUMOL.
Hey, at least Wintermute's got a release ;)
I honestly tried to use AGAST one time but when it came to define the walkable area, I ran back to AGS as fast as I could.
I haven't tried any other game design software, and this is kind of off-topic (maybe it belongs in a new thread), but is AGS the adventure games engine with the largest number of games available? There are some excellent adventure games made by other games engines (I'm thinking in particular of Out of Order, which was made using the SLUDGE games engine - anyone who enjoys AGS games and hasn't played this one yet should certainly do so, in my opinion) but there never seem to be many downloadable games available on the game engines' sites. This suggests that AGS is the most popular games engine out there, but of course this doesn't necessarily mean it is the best.
Quote from: Pumaman on Mon 04/08/2008 23:00:42
I mostly use Wintermute and SCRAMM, but if I'm just making an hour game I tend to go with GLUMOL.
If you like Wintermute, maybe you should try AGS. I hear it's a pretty decent engine when it comes to adventure games.
Quote from: Paper Carnival on Tue 05/08/2008 12:57:36
If you like Wintermute, maybe you should try AGS. I hear it's a pretty decent engine when it comes to adventure games.
Nah, I've met some of the people who hang around on the AGS Forums, and as a result I don't think I'll ever be posting there.
When I first found out that there was available free game creation software, I did a lot of shopping around. A lot of the so-called engines I found were beyond being not user-friendly, they were completely incomprehensible. When I first saw AGS I was turned off by the default built-in GUI because I didn't understand that it could be replaced (I was a complete n00b! (wait...was? :=)), but after being told by several people I decided ultimately to go with AGS. I've looked over other engines, but AGS has always seemed to me to be the best balance of power, customizability, and user-friendliness.
In short, no. :)
I made a short demo game with AGAST about 7 years ago (wow, has it really been that long?). At that time I felt it was the best free adventure engine. I tried AGS as well back then, but found it a bit strange. But then AGAST died out then and I switched to AGS. And of course AGS has come a long way since then and now it's at the moment it's the best game making software I have used.
The best game design software was Adventure Creator. It's unique and light. Too bad the developer lost hope desparately and stopped its development, since people migrated to the monster called Adventure Game Studio.
I own DarkBASIC, and enjoyed what little I did learn about it... I didnt think it sucked, but then again, I don't really know what I'm talking about... I bought a Manual for it which I found fascinating.
I spent years using The Games Factory being totally unable to make a point-and-click game. In fact the first adventure game I made for my girlfriend was made using the Games Factory. It took much longer to make than Nelly Cootalot, and was much shorter.
Soon after finishing that game I discovered that AGS had been around all the time. Then I cursed the gods at the injustice of it all, and started playing around with it.
I've also played around with Genesis 3D (as Reality Factory) and Blender3D's limited game design capabilities. But they're all designed for action, not wandering from place to place talking to people and stealing their stuff.
Also I had a brief look at SCREAM: the now free engine used for 'Scratches', it has a lot of potential for games in the style of Limping Fish's 'Unbound'.