Hi all!
I've been developing or modding games sporadically as a job and then a hobby for about fifteen years. I've worked mostly with FPS engines like Unreal, Half Life. My biggest project (if not quite a tour de force) was
Terminus Machina, a Deus Ex 1 total conversion in which I basically went padded-room insane doing everything from writing to programming to concept art to UI to 3D modeling to music et. al. While the game made a front-page splash on the Moddb site and got mid-90% on the ratings.... NEVER AGAIN!!! For one, I almost got divorced and fired from all three of my dayjobs and had CPS take my kids away. For two, Deus Ex is a proprietary engine whose clandestine and eldritch copyright webwork between Warren Spector, Eidos, Square, blah blah means I could never make a dime off the thing outside of begging for Starbucks chump change donations and a handful of Bandcamp soundtrack sales. For three... I've been having difficulty escalating to that William Burroughs-grade state of insanity to work that hard, which is probably a good thing. Wifey and shrinky say so, anyway.
So -- Adventure Game Studio! Yes!
I'm at the core a writer / programmer. Mostly I'm a poser artist, and I'm only a musician when I'm trying to get laid -- which is unnecessary given the marriage hookup, nowadays. So it seems AGS will be the perfect rehab for me.
The game I want to make is an amorphous blob consisting of 20,000 random acts of futurism, flavorful but fragmented character prototypes, and subversive Marxist diatribe disguised as printed emails, item descriptions, and loading screen backstory.
But essentially, it's Game of Thrones meets Blademancer... I mean Neurorunner. The Bladetrix. You know what I mean.
Instead of the Dashiel Hammetian neo-noir detective, you get to be the CEO, the Tyrell dude. Except the Tywin Lannister of 2060 has performed a corporate coup on your formerly market-dominating megacorp, and you have to restore your family's "House" to its former glory. That's the elevator pitch anyway.
I was working with the Shadowrun Returns engine but... there are more ebola patients surviving than players on SRR at the moment, and it's $30 to get the game and expansion needed, and you cant program, add sound, models, music, can't sell your game.... So again, Adventure Game Studio!!! Yeah!
The thing is workingly titled
Neofeud. I want to port this thing to AGS.
Go check it out maybe if you haven't already filed for a restraining order.