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Q: What's yellow and flies?

A: Banana-man

(ducks)

I've been thinking of an adventure game that allows replayability, which is (I think) one of the greatest weaknesses of this genre. It is also a great design challenge, given all the conventions you would expect in an adventure game.

Of course, I'm talking here at a very abstract level, but I'm thinking of a character whose reactions would be modelled after what happens to him, and what happens to him is affected by his actions. It would be a constant loop between character and environment.

You could almost spell RPG while I say this, but the thing with RPGs is: a) I don't like numbers told to players, as you don't deal with numbers in the real life (at least, not numbers which represent your life (i.e. strenght, dexterity), b) I'm talking more of emotions, which RPGs seem to only represent by static cutscenes.

While I'm saying this, one of the most appropiate examples of what I'm talking about is the first part of ChronoTrigger. I'm going to say why:

Spoiler

Almost all things you do in the Fair return to you when you are in the Trial. In the end is just a bunch of guys which stand in one side or another and it's quite a binary decision, but you get the idea.

[close]

So that's one of the aspects I've been thinking for a good adventure game. I'm not buying much into the "ideal" stuff as you are supposed to not to fall in love with your creations, because the "ideal" adventure game is constantly changing in your mind. I think it's more an issue of experimenting and see what works and what not.

My 2 cents to you.

I'm announcing right now the second part of this series, "Creating adventure games with AGS", in Spanish because I'm a lazy guy who writes his blog in his native language . If you're looking for AGS learning resources in this language, this is the opportunity you've been looking for so long.

The article is available at: http://www.ciroduran.com/blog/2007/04/25/creando-juegos-de-aventura-con-adventure-game-studio-ii/

There is also another Adventure Game Engine called "Wintermute", but I've never downloaded it or checked out its community...

[Something amiss]

There is also a free online episodic flash adventure game (that was a lot of adjectives :-) ). It's called Something amiss, you can find it in this address: http://www.somethingamiss.com/

Enjoy.

[Update:]

Hey guys, long time since I got in this forum,

I'm writing right now a tutorial to create adventure games, using AGS as a tool, so it's general rather than technical. I plan to write a bit about an informal design document, and all the activities you would have to do even before firing up AGS. It's in Spanish, mostly because there are few AGS resources in this language, and because it's my native one :-).

So, if you can read it, stop by: http://www.ciroduran.com/blog/2007/04/10/creando-juegos-de-aventura-con-adventure-game-studio-i/

I would appreciate any comment of what you'd like to see in future parts. ¡Muchas gracias!

Update: The tutorial is completed. The index goes like this:

- First part: Introduction to AGS and Adventure Games
- Second part: Game planning. Writing a design document.
- Third part: Guided tour through AGS
- Fourth part: Sprite import. Character creation.
- Fifth part: Room creation.
- Sixth part: Room scripting.
- Seventh part: Dialogs, dialog scripts and messages.
- Eighth part: Wrapping up. Menus, credits, manual and publishing.

I've ruined the productivity of the lab I work for by introducing my colleagues this little game:

http://aluminumangel.org/attack/

It's Crack Attack, a game based on a SNES ROM (Block Attack, I think it's called). You must put the blocks in lines of 3 or more blocks, and it's quite addictive, more if you play against an opponent (only in LAN, on the Internet is quite difficult to play). It was quite hilarious, as everyone started to play and tried to challenge me, I always won, and I got to the point I didn't want to play anymore but people still insisted... :-P I guess you can humilliate other people too with this game :-)

[Sam & Max 2 Developers Form New Studio]

Although I haven't read further about this note, it sure looks interesting, my best wishes to these guys, who have the nerve to produce professional adventure games in these days.Ã,  :=Ã, 

(Taken from www.gamasutra.com)

Sam & Max 2 Developers Form New Studio

The lead team members of LucasArts' recently cancelled Sam & Max: Freelance Police have left the publisher and developer to form their own company, named Telltale Games. With most of LucasArts' senior developers from the company's halcyon adventure days, already gone, the loss of Dan Connors, Kevin Bruner and Troy Molander, alongside other key LucasArts personnel, make it even less likely that company will ever again attempt a traditional graphic adventure.

The trio's stated goal, according to an interview with consumer site GameSpot, is to “reenergize” the adventure game market, with the decision to start the new company apparently coming about after the fan outrage following LucasArts' cancellation of Sam & Max: Freelance Police in March. Since then, LucasArts has also trimmed the majority of its San Rafael development staff, with rumors indicating at least some game development will be conducted in the new LucasFilm Singapore office.

The company intends to create games based on popular licenses, in order to attract more casual customers, and although there has been no indication which licenses are being pursuing, it has been strongly implied that Sam & Max is amongst them. The characters are not owned or created by LucasArts, as many assume, due to regular cameo appearances in unrelated games, but are in fact based on a comic book by sometime LucasArts and current Pixar artist Steve Purcell.

YaSoft Switch Off (http://yasoft.km.ru/eng/switchoff/) - If you are poor as me, and have a 56k connection, and a family which uses the phone, this program allows you to set a time to turn off the computer, hibernate, hangup the phone, etc.     Besides it's free, it's also very small, and works in the system tray.

I'm in the band of a teather group, I play clarinet , along with two guys who play guitar and bass, and some 15-year-old girl who plays drums sweet.

The guitarrist and bassist have another rock and roll group called Eyacular Tocando (something like Cum by playing, in spanish), I sometimes play with them as a guest musician . I do the cover art for them also.

Hey Eleazar, welcome to the forum, I hope you can get along with all the people who dwell here :-).

I'm not much of a frequent poster, but sometimes I get an itch to write a message or two :-P. If you have some issues with translations, I think can help.

Netmonkey told you something about me, it's fair to return the favor: visit Netmonkey entertainment!!11!!!11!

Not sure about Blackthorne or Heart of the Alien (never played them), but the rest of those games use vector graphics, so there wouldn't be any sprite sheets to look at, at least not original ones. You could try taking a lot of screenshots, or get some software that records everything on screen as an AVI. The reason the animation is so smooth is that everything is moved on the fly (like a Flash movie) instead of fitting the animation into a few frames.

heh heh, forget about it, Ben, Flashback and Another World graphics were sprites!, the difference with other games released to the date were that they were created using Rotoscope, a catchy name for recording a human walk cycle and converting it to a drawing. And by the way, if you replay Flashback in these 60fps-or-more FPS days, you'll note Flashback runs quite slow (in 24fps to be precise).

You may want to google for it searching by "Game Sprites", or you can reach directly Game Sprites Archive, which has sundry sprite animations of PC & console games.

Well, I think no one of you has mentioned that producing an original MIDI is a lot easier than producing audio... If you want to created a nice MIDI you only have to put the notes (or record them if you have a keyboard and playing skills) and it will hear fine.

On the other hand, if you want to produce an original audio clip you have to put the notes, bring the musicians, pay the recording studio, this if you want to create something fine; even if you want to produce something not that professional, you still need musicians for your cause, some microphones, a good chunk of MB in your hard disk, a good PC in general (you will need to process audio clips for a while), and you should live with the fact that you will have to record live (instead of recording in separate tracks like you would do in a studio).

I haven't mentioned that you can find background music on the Internet, but you usually won't like how it sounds. And please, do not even think of putting Britney Spears in your game unless it's absolutely necessary (i.e., your game's main character is Britney), or another band you can hear on radio, it looks incredibly amateurish (even for an amateur community  ).

Well, I think those are my two cents for this topic. I haven't fiddled with .MODs so I have no opinions about it.

Sometimes pays not knowing a language entirely ... By the time I played the game I didn't knew the meaning behind 'red herring'. I just though it was another item to collect, and so I did .

Two things:

1) Check if your monitor has a 'setting' for each screen configuration. Sometimes the settings for 640x480 are different from 800x600.

2) You coudl really have a problem with your graphic card. Check new drivers in their web site.

Ciro: So you're selling your games? That's great man! That's part of my future programming plan aswell. Who are you selling to? Are they looking for more games? Do you have any tips for a newbie in the game selling business? BTW, the second image link doesn't work...

Heh heh, actually I'm trying hard to make publish these game, I hope this thing can continue (if it's profitable, of course ). Actually, I saw a job ad by some guy who knew another guy who was interested in making games for cell phones (there are not much 3G cells yet here in Venezuela).  I contacted him, did a couple of games, and we're about to publish them (I hope by monday), we have yet to see if this thing will give money (I'd love to see them published and make more, but producing a game needs a lot of time I could use to work in other more profitable things, I'm a busy man ).

I'm far from being a professional in the game business, so asking that question is a bit out of order, I'm afraid. Hell, I even still have to study 1 1/2 years more to obtain my university degree , it's a mix of 'luck' (I hate to use that word ) and to take quickly the oportunities you see around.

I downloaded the game. I never liked the game but wanted to relive the old days. But I can't sem to get the game started. I can wiew the help and creits but cant actualy play the game

Mmm, to you and Darth... check that you have all the files in the zip in the same directory. When you click a new game, it loads 'nivel1.xml' file, or it won't work, it's the only reason I could imagine why wouldn't it work (check as well if you have the Flash plugin player version 7, sorry if I have to oblige you to upgrade )

Gilbot: that's certainly a problem I saw, but adding lines to such an small clip is a problem, as it will cover almost all the body, hence looking very ugly .

The rest of all: Thanks a lot for your comments , I will implement the monks' AI this weekend as I have to deliver the complete game by monday. If I caused you a little curiosity to Flash game building you can check this excellent tutorial for tile based games, from which I used heavily some code snippets to make the game work.Ã,  8)

I've developed 2 games for Java enabled cell phones, one is a simple TicTacToe, and the other is yet another Solitary game . I can show you the screenshots, but I'm afraid I can't give them to you, as I'm in process of selling this games to a content provider and I still don't know the details of the contract.

Screenshot for TicTacToe (30Kb)

Scheenshot for Solitary (30Kb)

Remember that game?, a game from Broderbund where a guy running around a level colecting crates while avoiding some crazy monks who are chasing him, well, I released a remake of the game in Flash, done for a videogames course I took this term , it still lacks the monks' AI (hence there are no monks), but the rest of the game is ready :-P, and you're free to test it if you want.

Yes, I want to download Lode Runner (119Kb).

Just download and if you have Flash player execute loderunner.swf, or if you don't but have the plug-in for your favourite browser, browse over loderunner.html, cheers!