Adventure games on mobile phones

[He-Man]

Hello

I'm currently working in a company that makes games for mobile phones and we're thinking about making an adventure game. The cool thing about this is that it would actually be possible to make a game that graphicly resembles the old adventure games and still being the state of the art on its medium.

There is still two mayor issuses:
1. There is no mouse meaning that point 'n' click will be an unatractive control method
(Maybe this could be solved by making hotspots that are made interactive when the player character is moved close to them)
2. There's not a lot memory for graphics
(Maybe this could be solved by reclycling graphics for example by making the game universe consist of almost simular rooms)

What are your thoughts on this?
And would even consider playing an adventure game on your mobile phone?

Thanks...

[EldKatt]

It would be an awesome way of passing the time when traveling. A year or so ago I remember my brother playing Beneath a Steel Sky on his PDA, running ScummVM. The touchscreen was a great mouse alternative. I was very envious.

On the topic of graphics, have you considered some sort of tile-based system?

Interface like you describe I can see no problem with. It's been done before (Sierra parser games, practically all Japanese-style RPGs). It probably wouldn't be too hard to combine it with some kind of LucasArts verb panel--though considering the screen size limitations some kind of pop-up menu might be desirable (like... Normality? Can't think of any other example).

[auriond]

You might want to refer to this thread on the Silent Hill mobile game. It's a first-person point-and-click adventure game.

Try it for yourself - it addresses some of the things you suggested, e.g. similar rooms. They solved the boredom of similar rooms by having the player take on three characters exploring the same environment. Point and click wasn't a problem; going back and forth looking for the next thing to do was. So what you might want to do is to find some fast and easy way to change rooms, or to place shortcuts  along the way so people don't get tired of wandering up and down endless hallways.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

I played a LSLarry game on my mobile. Straight.up old-school adventure.

Bland, way too simplified and easy... but there's a limit to the capabilities of mobiles.

If I'm to daydream, I dream of a rogue clone, a dungeon crawl, more than adventure games.

[lo_res_man]

Ya! Lets all down a plaid potion!

[deadsuperhero]

Well, seeing as Google's Android is coming out, and it's based on Linux, and Linux runs the AGS game engine, the ScuMMVM engine, and the FreeSCI engine, then I'm going to have all sorts of games to play on it...

http://code.google.com/android

[Joseph DiPerla]

I am not sure how much development went into IndyJava, but that could possibly be helpful in making games for mobile hardware that supports java or j2me. Its just not supported anymore...

Here is a site: http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/foothills/8436/indyjava/
These are the features of it on the page:

- 24 bit color support
- MIDI, RMI, AU and WAV support
- AVI, MOV, MPEG1 support
- Path searching
- Complete "old style" interface
- Scrolling in any direction
- Recorded speech support
- Several controlable characters
- Alpha transparency
- Full-screen support
- Save & Load games

You can also try these engines: http://slage.com/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/doedels/
http://gage.sourceforge.net/

Hope this helps you and your company out a bit!

[m0ds]

I'm not convinced anyone other than the person who made IndyJava ever used IndyJava...but I could be wrong

[lo_res_man]

There is probably a whole community out there, scuffling in the dark, crawling in the underbelly of the world wide web. They only come out at night, whispering about glories long gone. Waiting, waiting for their moment.

A lot like us actually.
[edit] AW! My heart breaks I killed this thread, woe is for I am a broken soul, dashed upon the forum rocks, split opun the net tide. AlAS!