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I can draw a revised room outline and simplify the walkable areas. I can also include an "inside the treehouse" mock-up as well. I'm going away for a few days, so that will probably be late next week.

One thing I've seen coming up in the forums, unrelated to any particular room, is different speech views. It seems like both LucasArts and Sierra with Portrait and Background would be useful to include in the demo, and having, for example, a "happy" speech portrait and a "sad" speech portrait for the same character might be called for as well. Maybe that should go in the "complicating characters" room listed above?

For just the first three rooms, probably sticking to one speech view is best, but it seemed worth mentioning.

AND THE WINNER IS @Pinback! Congratulations! 

Thank you everyone for your entries and for making this a great competition this month.

I tried out some VERY ROUGH PLACEHOLDER color blocking to propose a composition for the first room.

Obviously final version would be FAR higher quality.

Does this kind of design work?

*2 walkable areas: 1 continuously scaling (all paths are part of same area even though it is pieces); 1 fixed scaling (balcony).
*3 interactable hotspots to look for key (bench, toadstool, shrine)
*2 objects (door, gem on balcony)
*1 inventory item (key)
*1 possible object animation (door open/close)
*No walk-behinds needed
*No regions needed if light level is normal
*No animated background needed

@Creamy Very nicely done! Lots of objects to interact with if the player is on the colorful side of the wall, and lots of potential NPC conversations if the player is on the black and white side.

I'd happily play a game in this room. 

I can see the wisdom in the comments above with regard to keeping things simple and accessible. I had thought this thread was about a demo game to showcase a lot of what AGS is capable of, rather than a very basic simple-game tutorial. I can appreciate the value in both.

Perhaps @Crimson Wizard was correct at the beginning that the "demonstrate many AGS features" and "demonstrate very basic AGS features" angles should be available separately (although the bigger project could include a version of the smaller).

If so, a possibly good way to proceed could be to start by making the first three "basic" rooms we've been discussing, then release those as the "basics-only" download (also playable online? This can be done simply by building to the web port?).

Work could then continue to extend the game into the "full-fledged" larger one with those same three basic rooms, plus medium and advanced. That way, it saves the work of doing two truly separate projects, and at the end, the basic and full versions are both available.

I also appreciate keeping the beginner more in mind generally, so maybe it would be good to modify the map/menu with some more user-friendly descriptions that make it even more accessible to someone who barely knows what AGS is.

First, the three "regions" could be re-titled as, e.g., "Village of Beginnings: AGS Basics for the beginner" and so on.

Second, there could also be a block of hover text over each room icon, perhaps providing a "difficulty level", a list of the game features showcased, and the room number in the editor where one can find the code and room setup.

This would be in addition to the help icon available in every room, which would expound upon each feature in more detail whenever the user desires.

I don't know if that reconciles the ideas of a basic and a more thorough demo game, but I gave it my best shot. 

@cat I had the same thought about the score. A gem icon with 1/10 or whatever next to it and you're good to go!

I also had an idea about the NPC/Combining inventory puzzle. Maybe an NPC (like a Wizard) has a gem for you and will give it if you can complete a challenge that involves asking the right questions to discover which items in the room to pick up and combine. There could be other NPCs milling around (like students or apprentices), whose dialogs change based on what information you're looking for. For example, the wizard says "Make me a summoning circle that will call a goblin" or something, and only by asking lots of questions of everyone in the room can you figure out what items you need and how to construct them from all the simpler inventory objects in the room.

To keep the puzzle doable for newcomers, though, there probably shouldn't be any "dead ends" in the dialog, so that the puzzle is always solvable.

Is that the right difficulty of puzzle we're looking for at that point in the tutorial?

Here's a partial draft of a 640x360 map/menu screen. I still have the multi-layer version, so text can be changed, things can be renamed, redrawn, moved around, etc.

Treehouse would be the locked door puzzle, Stream would be the bridge puzzle, and Wizard's Hollow would be whatever puzzle involves dialogs and combining inventory items.

In this structure, every room would be accessible from the map and maybe have an "exit to map" icon as a GUI (or as an object in the room), but rooms could also be walked between from each other if the player wants, and would join to form a complete game world.

If people like it, I figure we can add room names as we figure out what puzzles might go with each room.

So the proposed process would be:

-look at what features are sorted into what particular room (@cat's post above)
-figure out a rough puzzle that uses those features
-invent rough room ideas based on that puzzle
-add room to map (I can do this or I can upload the .ase file somewhere)
-draw background for each room (different artists can contribute--whoever's interested)

@cat I think those are good improvements. There were so many "beginner" concepts I wasn't quite sure of the best way to group them. 

Some more story-oriented ideas:

I think a fun idea could be that the "beginner 1" puzzle could be a "trap door shuts behind you" situation, so that it makes sense to enter the room and then be trapped.

I like your bridge puzzle for room 2 as well. Since it's animated backgrounds in that room too, maybe the bridge leads over a small river, and following the scrolling room eventually brings you to a waterfall. Both river and waterfall could be part of the animated background.

An NPC requiring something that you have to make by combining items could go all sorts of ways--I'm thinking of some kind of workshop (like a machine shop, inventor's lab, magic spell-brewing kitchen, or some other place that would have lots of interesting objects laying around.

@Crimson Wizard Yes, thank you. I was looking for a way to make it more efficient and couldn't quite figure it out.

Here's a text version of the proposed feature groupings into rooms/locations:

Beginner 1, "Room Basics"
*Walkable areas (Walkable areas (incl. scaling & non-contiguous)
*Walk-behinds   
*Hotspots
*Objects

Beginner 2, "Rooms part 2 and NPCs"
*Dark/light regions   
*Scrolling rooms   
*Animated backgrounds   
*NPCs
*Dialogs

Beginner 3, "Inventory and animations"
*Inventory items
*combining items
*animated objects
*moving objects
*1st person interface room

Intermediate 1, "Sounds and Music"
*Sound effects
*Music
*Voice acting

Intermediate 2, "Keyboard use"
*Keyboard controlled movement
*Text input / text parser

Intermediate 3, "Complicating characters"
*Different views for player character
*Different playable characters

Advanced 1, "special effects"
*"Dark room" with flashlight
*reflections
*shadows
*Partially transparent or translucent effects / windows

Advanced 2, "modules"
*tween module
*Rellax module
*typewriter text module
*Other modules?

As stated above, we can contract / expand the grouping to different locations, whatever makes sense. If different features belong in different difficulty levels then I've done here, that's worth noting too. My intent is for this to be a draft we can revise together until it makes the most sense.

[organizing the features into groups/rooms that hopefully makes sense.]

I see the sense behind making each room self-sufficient and having all accessible from the beginning.

I still like the map idea as a room menu, though. Maybe if one starts out on the map instead of in the "basic" first puzzle room, one could still enter it from the outside?




Anyway, I made an attempt at organizing the features into groups/rooms that hopefully makes sense. That feels like the logical next step to me.

The number of rooms could certainly be expanded or contracted based on what people think is best.

And the titles of each room here are just the "feature" themes. Each room could also have a "story" component (if they are still grouped into "areas" for each difficulty level).

What does everyone think? (Apologies for the gigantic image -- couldn't figure out how to make tables work in the forum post).
EDIT: Instead of straining your eyes, see the post further down with a much better version of this table.

Thanks, Khris. Always good to know the context of why things work a certain way. I'll label this as solved.

NOW VOTING for one week! Use the poll at the top of the page.

Thanks for your entries, everyone! Good luck!

So thanks to some helpful advice to discord, I set the cursor mode to "interact" manually, which made the window functional. But isn't that mode supposed to activate automatically when the cursor is over a GUI? I never had to switch the curcor to interact manually in other games. 

Hey all,

I started a game using the blank template. Made a GUI with an inventory window in it. Gave the player inventory items. They display correctly in the GUI window, but do not activate when clicked on.

I triple-checked all of the following conditions:

-"Override built-in inventory window click-handling" is set to FALSE.
-"Use selected inventory graphic as cursor" is set to TRUE.
-Parent GUI is set to "clickable"
-"Inventory window" GUI control is set to "enabled" and "clickable"
-There are no other invisible GUIs on top of the inventory window
-Inventory item width and height in the gui editor are the appropriate sizes for the sprites, which display exactly as intended.
-When I press ` for debugging and click on the window, it says "Mouse click over GUI 1"
-in Room_RepExec I placed a block that says

Code: ags

if(player.ActiveInventory != null"{
  Display("Huh.");
  }

This block of code never runs.

I'm just about tearing my hair out over this.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Here's what I'm working on. It's . . . not serious. Going to be more of an "unlock achievements" game than an adventure game.

I'm trying to pull something together quickly, but I'm also traveling for six days at the end of the month. It's gonna be tight. I may release something unfinished.

@Crimson Wizard 640 x 360 sounds good to me!

Based on @cat 's idea of a treasure hunt and collecting gems to get to the end of the game, here's a proposal for a structure that encourages (but doesn't SUPER enforce) a progression from easy to difficult:



As pictured in the image, completing the starting room awards 1 gem. This allows access to the "basic" rooms. Completing just 1 of the basic rooms awards a second gem, which opens up the "medium" rooms. Completing one more room of either "basic" or "medium" unlocks the "advanced" rooms. (I got the idea for this structure from Super Mario World N64 - steal from the best, as they say).

This way the player does need to complete ALL easy rooms to explore the medium, and so one, but there is at least some encouragement in that direction.

As discussed above, the "map room" serves as a kind of chapter menu, with all "gates" to feature-rooms on one map.

If people like this structure, the next question would be - which features go in "basic", which go in "medium" and which should go in "advanced."

Side note: it feels like the question of UI isn't quite settled. Anybody want to weigh in further on whether it should be a default interface or a one-click? One-click is simpler, but newcomers would have to copy the code in order to use it, whereas the defaults come pre-set-up.

Personally I lean toward one-click, but I do see the drawbacks.

What do we think? One-click or a default like BASS? Pros? Cons?

Lurkers, chime in!

I suppose this also raises the question of whether it's possible or desirable to ship AGS with a default one-click interface as one of the built-in options, but that may be a question for another forum.

Have a good evening

Didn't have time for digital art, but a pencil sketch seemed very appropriate! Thanks for the prompt.

One other thing that occurred to me that should be decided early on and certainly before any artwork is what resolution the game should be.

Obviously 320 x 200 is the classic, but I also worry that making it super low-res might make newcomers assume the game engine can't do high-res games. Would something like 640 x 400 be better, or this maybe a non-issue?

About the story - I thought it might be a treasure hunt. The goal is to find the magic big blue cup or something. To get it, you have to solve puzzles in each room. Collect a certain number of gems or something to open the final door. After you solve the initial "locked door" room, you get to the map where you can visit various places. The locations could be ordered by difficulty.

This sounds cool!

If I understand correctly, the first 3 rooms would be:

1: Title Screen / menu
2: "Locked room puzzle"
3: Map

and from the map you have lots of different options.

In the service of "keeping it fun to play," I think a fun way to do the map room would be almost Final Fantasy style, where the player is very small and can walk between different settings without having to go too far. For example, each "door" may not be a literal door, but a path, one leading into a forest, one to a lake with a sunken pirate ship, one into a volcano, one to a town/city, and so on. If the only place that is "locked" is the final room with the blue cup treasure, these could be pursued in any order.

Keeping with the Final Fantasy theme, the initial "locked room" could be getting out of a crashed airship. 

If this sounds too ambitious, I understand.

But as I said above, I'd be happy to contribute as much background art as anyone wants (I love drawing backgrounds), and if we get more contributors, different "areas" could be drawn in different styles by different people, which would also help show off the variety of possibilities for using AGS in different ways.

I'm happy to entertain other possibilities if people think something simpler would be easier for newbies or more fun, but I think the coding of the map room would still be pretty simple and easy to explore in the AGS editor.

Any thoughts / suggestions / questions / concerns / alternative ideas?