I'm a hapless noob largely inexperienced with Adventure Games as a medium. I played the shareware version of Commander Keene when I was little, and Sam & Max about ten years after its release. Recently I stumbled across 5 Days a Stranger, et al., and I decided to download AGS and give it a go.
The problem is, I wasn't into computers back when Adventure Games were big. They kinda missed me. So now every time I play one, I'm looking at it from the perspective of a post-Sierra gamer. I have lots of questions about Adventure Games, both as a medium for external ideas, and as an art form unto itself. I've been told "you just have to play a lot of adventure games, then you'll get it." And while that certianly is true, I think I could bennefit from getting your points of view on some things.
Off the top of my head:
How important is it to include seperate "look," "talk," and "hands" commands? I've always thought these were kinda superfluous. I mean, you always open doors. You always talk to people. You always pick up usable items. You always examine meaningless background elements, never anything more. So, what's wrong with a one-click interface? Now, I've heard the argument that a single-click interface would reduce the game to button-hunting, and I can kinda see their point, but I could also argue that existing LucusArts-style games are already a talkable-hunt, grabbable-hunt, or lookable-hunt. Only, instead of clicking on everything in the room, you're performing 3 different flavors of clicks on everything in the room. Since most of those clicks end up being dead-ends (It doesn't respond / You can't take that with you) or red herrings (It's a chair. This one's blue.) I would argue that using the sierra-style 3-click system just because it's availible is a cheesy way of making the gameplay take longer. The MAJOR exception to this, of course, is the ACTUAL sierra games, especially (in my mind) Sam & Max, where I was eagerly scouring the room with all 3 click types, because I quickly realized there was comedic gold stashed away under every single rock and shrub.
Do I really need to worry about the 286s in the audience? I was reading through the FAQ and my blood practically went cold when I read the Q&A about why fancy-schmancy 32-bit games won't work on a 286. I started to panic. People are still running those? Where do they find the parts?
A friend has assured me that it's not as bad as all that. That the question was only there to make the FAQ complete. I figured I'd ask for a show of hands anyway, though. If I made a game at 800x600, would you be unable to play it? If the game was 10MB, would you be unable to download it?
How comfortable are you with me tainting the Adventure Game format with other genres? I've seen the AGS Mahjong, the AGS Poker, the AGS Sh'mup. It actually reminds me of my brief affair with PlayFKiss. I see lots of experimentation here, trying to push the software beyond the scope of its original design. Would you folks download games like that? Would you buy them? Or would you much rather buy a higher-rez Mahjong or Card game, built on some other, more general-purpose engine?
Let's agree that Adventure Games are NOT dead. Which would you prefer: nostalgia, or continued advancement of the genre? Another way of phrasing this question might be "Do shiny pre-rendered Adventure Games miss the point completely?" Recent big-budget attempts to revive the genre have historically failed in a commercial sense, but my hope is that a well-crafted adventure game could still stand on its own in the Casual Games market, or perhaps even as donation-ware. But my intention is to use modern graphics, modern resolutions, and perhaps even a modern gamer's mindset when creating them. How does this statement make you feel? Be honest.
LucusArts-style trumped the verb-clouds, the verb-clouds trumped the type-ins, type-ins trumped the text-onlys. Are you interested in seeing something new trump Sierra-style, or would such a game be a blasphemous offense to everything that Adventure Games once stood for?
Thanks in advance! I hope I didn't offend anybody with this post. I am a complete newcomer to this genre and I have no roots here, so I'm relying on you guys to help me figure out what's going on, where I fit in, and whether or not I even belong here.
The problem is, I wasn't into computers back when Adventure Games were big. They kinda missed me. So now every time I play one, I'm looking at it from the perspective of a post-Sierra gamer. I have lots of questions about Adventure Games, both as a medium for external ideas, and as an art form unto itself. I've been told "you just have to play a lot of adventure games, then you'll get it." And while that certianly is true, I think I could bennefit from getting your points of view on some things.
Off the top of my head:
How important is it to include seperate "look," "talk," and "hands" commands? I've always thought these were kinda superfluous. I mean, you always open doors. You always talk to people. You always pick up usable items. You always examine meaningless background elements, never anything more. So, what's wrong with a one-click interface? Now, I've heard the argument that a single-click interface would reduce the game to button-hunting, and I can kinda see their point, but I could also argue that existing LucusArts-style games are already a talkable-hunt, grabbable-hunt, or lookable-hunt. Only, instead of clicking on everything in the room, you're performing 3 different flavors of clicks on everything in the room. Since most of those clicks end up being dead-ends (It doesn't respond / You can't take that with you) or red herrings (It's a chair. This one's blue.) I would argue that using the sierra-style 3-click system just because it's availible is a cheesy way of making the gameplay take longer. The MAJOR exception to this, of course, is the ACTUAL sierra games, especially (in my mind) Sam & Max, where I was eagerly scouring the room with all 3 click types, because I quickly realized there was comedic gold stashed away under every single rock and shrub.
Do I really need to worry about the 286s in the audience? I was reading through the FAQ and my blood practically went cold when I read the Q&A about why fancy-schmancy 32-bit games won't work on a 286. I started to panic. People are still running those? Where do they find the parts?
A friend has assured me that it's not as bad as all that. That the question was only there to make the FAQ complete. I figured I'd ask for a show of hands anyway, though. If I made a game at 800x600, would you be unable to play it? If the game was 10MB, would you be unable to download it?
How comfortable are you with me tainting the Adventure Game format with other genres? I've seen the AGS Mahjong, the AGS Poker, the AGS Sh'mup. It actually reminds me of my brief affair with PlayFKiss. I see lots of experimentation here, trying to push the software beyond the scope of its original design. Would you folks download games like that? Would you buy them? Or would you much rather buy a higher-rez Mahjong or Card game, built on some other, more general-purpose engine?
Let's agree that Adventure Games are NOT dead. Which would you prefer: nostalgia, or continued advancement of the genre? Another way of phrasing this question might be "Do shiny pre-rendered Adventure Games miss the point completely?" Recent big-budget attempts to revive the genre have historically failed in a commercial sense, but my hope is that a well-crafted adventure game could still stand on its own in the Casual Games market, or perhaps even as donation-ware. But my intention is to use modern graphics, modern resolutions, and perhaps even a modern gamer's mindset when creating them. How does this statement make you feel? Be honest.
LucusArts-style trumped the verb-clouds, the verb-clouds trumped the type-ins, type-ins trumped the text-onlys. Are you interested in seeing something new trump Sierra-style, or would such a game be a blasphemous offense to everything that Adventure Games once stood for?
Thanks in advance! I hope I didn't offend anybody with this post. I am a complete newcomer to this genre and I have no roots here, so I'm relying on you guys to help me figure out what's going on, where I fit in, and whether or not I even belong here.