Hi runners x I’m Stady One. As you can see in the title I’m going about to make a text adventure. I’m 26yrs old (gonna become 27 in august this year) and I’m living in Germany (so English is not my first language). I’m an artist (how far I can call myself ‘artist’) – always wanted to become a comic artist. I went through different steps in my life always figuring out who I am and what I wanna do in life. So my apprenticeship as a media designer in print and digital design is one of these steps I did so far. Atm I’m working self-employed as a freelance illustrator and designer, 'cause illustrating things is one of the things I put my focus on. I think about , hmm… I don’t wanna lie, ~4 years ago I started to set my focus more and more on game design. There was always this game design part in my life (started after elementary school my friend and me used to develope tiny games) that never let me go. In the past 2 years I tried to matriculate into university for game design. I sent my portfolio in got an invitation to the entry examination for the study game design and negative reply after the tests and the interviews. (This year I tried again and got a negative reply again – 3,25 points were missing for entry.) So I thought about it and I think I don’t need to wait till I’ve studied game design to start making games. I start now. So: here I am.
If you interested in my person, I still making art and running different blogs and sites. Here are some links you can check out:
As mentioned before I’m coming from the comic artist fraction. Back than (I guess it was 2012) I participated at the 24h comic day where you had to develope and draw a 24 page long comic in 24 houres. At this challenge I draw Quest Runners for the first time. After the challenge the idea of a new unusual alternative fantasy world didn’t want to let me go. I’ve worked on Quest Runners for these years now and created a little universe with a new interpretation of dwarfs, elves and mystical creatures. I felt to add something to this world. I like hip hop and the urban style x so I wanted to see a fantasy world mixed up with street wear and hipster lifestyle. (The idea with the mix up is new – first Quest Runners was just an alternative fantasy world.)
I always had the feeling I want to tell stories. That’s why I went from a usual artist to a comic artist. (Edit: I know you can also tell stories with paintings & illustrations – my prefered medium just evolved into the sequential art.) But this was not enough. I also always wanted that people can interact with my story too. Experience a great story and get involved with own interactions, choises and own decisions x have an impact on the story and to form it. To build the story and the world with me. Through games we learn and start to think about certain context. I think the life itself is a big game. I’m living through games so I came to the conclusion that a game is the best medium to realize the things I wanna do.
At last I love to make people happy, enjoying their time and to have a good feeling. To make you laugh, to make you cry and to make you thinking about certain things is very important to me.
I wanted to make a game for a long time now. I tried to entry in university for game design to study game design to realize a game at last. I thought an university would give me material I need to realize a game, support me with knowledge they have and to work with other people studing the same and to learn through that. But I think now x a game study is not the only way to achieve your goals. It’s a nice feature but not the core thing. So I started by my own. And I looked for other people in the web. Fellow students are not the only persons you can work with – there are many other people making games in the world. For example you.
So I decided to use this forum to work with the Unity community and to share my project, the progress and the ideas with you guys. Feel free to drop any bomb related to this project if you feel so. Participate in this project, follow the development, criticize and commend – whatever lies on your heart and you feel you have to say.
So from the time on I decided to make a text adventure out of my comic idea Quest Runners I was thinking about how to realize the project. I thought about how to get into the game branche & I thought a text adventure would be a good start for the beginning (I cant’ start dev a AAA game at my first project). But how I’m going to realize this quest adventure?
First I thought about which possibilities I have. Back then during my apprenticeship I’ve learned a little bit Html5, CSS3 and JavaScript x so I thought to use this little knowledge to start making the text adventure. I started to build the user interface with html and the functions (like choosing a choise how to react in the story) with JavaScript. I showed it a friend and he said I’m doing it very complicated.
My first try build a html game interface – I set all texts into html:
My first try build the mechanics – each button for each choise got its own function:
My friend told me it’s inasen what I’m doing and wrote me a new function for the buttons:
His solution was more cleaner and solid (I had some problems with my JavaScript – it worked but sometimes you had to click many times on a button till it reacted).
We talked about the project and he gave me the advice to use a game engine for my goal. I searched in the internet for different engines that may fit into the game I wanna do. So I decided to use Unity.
Unity offers you a great ranche of possibilities. I feel free to do with the text adventure whatever I want (no limits). The most of what the engine offers you, I won’t use I guess … but if the text adventure runs good and I want to put some special things into the game x I have the possibility to do so with Unity. The other thing is multi publishing. I want to publish the game for desktop and mobile. Build once in Unity I can export the game for different platforms without building it from the start again. Unity is a great engine, there are a company putting a lot of effort into the engine so I think I’ve been given good with this engine. Let’s have a try at least.
So my buddy gave me the advice to use JSON for all the texts of the text adventure game. He said you can use a JSON database in Unity. I trust him but I’ll check it later.
What is your advice? Any ideas how to implement all texts into the game? Is JSON the best solution or is there something else more comfortable/better fitting in for Unity?
Hello!
You can basically use any text format to bring your content into the game, you’d just need a way to deserialize your data. JSON has the advantage that Unity already has JSON serialization built in.
Thx Philipp, that’s what I was looking for. So JSON isn’t a bad choice.
And thank you for reading my thread. I try to hold this project as transparent as I can. I’ll post each new step I achieved in the project to keep you guys up2date.
As a kid I was always drawing illustrations personal comics with stories and creating complete D&D modules with finished situational adventure and new monster art.
After several years in US military I decided to pursue my desire to become a comic book artist. I started to attend college and happened upon a 3D animation course. As soon as I learned I could become a professional animatior my goals swiftly changed. For some reason animation grabbed my by the ears and wouldn’t let go.
I landed a animation job straight out of school, and have been working as a professional animation artist for the past 17 years. Along the way I started to meld my interests in animation and game development. I began modding, then contracting and just recently started to work on my own designs.
Keep at it - I believe those who come from comic book backgrounds have a ‘different’ perspective on game design.
Haha, I thank you ANMATOR2b x your post was very inspiring. It motivates me to work even harder on my goals! It gives me a feeling I’m on a right way. Thx
It motivates me to work even harder on my goals! It gives me a feeling I’m on a right way.