Theoretical interface question (Shadowgate style?)

[Lakmir]

I'm working on a bit of a project. It's still in the conceptual phase so I'm not going to give any details, but I've been evaluating a number of different possibilities for consideration insofar as an engine is concerned. I've played a few of the more famous AGS-driven titles, and I figured I'd give it a try before attempting to reinvent the wheel, so to speak.

What I'm after is something along the lines of an oldschool Shadowgate, Deja Vu, or Uninvited style of game. Possibly Myst, but with less eye candy and more substance/text/inventory/story/interaction/etc. Generally I'm looking for a static first-person perspective, maybe with large speaker portraits or something, I don't know yet, to display at appropriate moments. Something like King's Quest, I guess, with no real animated "actors" or "characters" and a wholly-mouse-driven interface. Can AGS deliver something like this with relative ease?

[Ghost]

Surely, though first perspective isn't that popular around here. All you need to do is to check the "hide player character" box in each room, and then you can use each room as a static location.

Speaker portraits are built in if you use sierra style speech.

Plus, you might want to check out the PANORAMA module. It allows you to create rotating rooms, Zork Grand Inquisitor style, with relative ease:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=27632.0

[Nabeel]

Well, I'm happy to inform you that, yes, AGS CAN make such a game.

[Ashen]

OK, two replies while I was typing, but here goes anyway:

Welcome to the forums, but please do a little research first! I can't see anything in your post that isn't already adressed somewhere.

First-person games are addressed in the BFAQ. The Panorama module Ghost linked is a nice addition, though.

Speech portraits are supported by Sierra- or QFG4-style speech, depending on what exactly you want:

Speech style - in the default Lucasarts-style speech, when a character talks, the speech text is displayed above their head in the game, and the character's talking view is used to animate the actual character.
However, if you set this option to Sierra-style then the talking view is used to display an animating portrait separately in the top-left of the screen, with the text to the right of it. This is similar to the way that Space Quest 5, King's Quest 6 and other later Sierra games worked. You can also cycle to another option, "Sierra- style with background", which is the same except a text window is drawn behind the speech text to make it easier to read.
"QFG4-style speech" uses a full-screen character portrait, like the way that QFG4 worked.

By default, AGS pretty much is 'wholly-mouse-driven' (although there are keyboard shortcuts as well). In fact it's more work to make a Parser based game.


If the Manual, BFAQ and a search of the forums don't answer your questions fully, I'm afraid you're going to have to go into details about what you want to achieve. (If you really want to keep it quiet, but need further clarification on anything, PM me and I'll try to answer your questions privately.)