I’m taking a break from 3D for a while, and want to make a fun point and click adventure game like Monkey Island. Maybe one with commands such as “Go North” “Take ladder” “Use ladder” etc.
Do you know any good (free or cheap) tools for making this? I feel like taking a break from scripting so a nice visual interface would be nice. But maybe with a fall back of outputting the game in XML if I need to port it into Unity, say, later.
I looked at Adventure Game Studio but that seems kind of old and probably only works on PC.
AGS and Visionaire are two of the better ones. There are some text adventure engines like ADRIFT and Quest. They will all require scripting.
Making an adventure game in Unity is not too difficult if you build a simple sequencer (something that keeps a list of actions and runs them from top of bottom) and just use that to do everything.
AGS (Adventure Game Studio) has long been considered one of the best out-of-the-box solutions. It is designed to make games exactly like the Sierra and Lucas-Arts greats of old, and can replicate that style quite well.
There is also the Wintermute engine, but I believe that is also only for PC, and it’s been a while since its been updated.
Sadly, the scene for developing classic point-and-clicks has been focused on older tech for a while, and not many of the solutions available have a very long reach in terms of platforms. Honestly, you might be better off simply designing a point-and-click in Unity from the get-go. With version 5, the NavMesh feature is now available for even the free users. That was a major sticking point that prevented me from developing a point-and-click in Unity. A capable navigation and path finding solution is essential for a point-and-click game.
That looks quite cool actually.
I may start by making something simple just using the uGUI buttons for commands. Trying to look how to do 2D animation in Unity… Maybe I could rig some 2D characters in mech anim.
Lots to think about. Cool. Better get on with it then.
For trial purposes, you could use a few sprite sheets from some classic adventure games for testing purposes. I usually go for the Space Quest sprites. It’s faster than trying to come up with your own visual solution first.
I would also use Unity’s new UI scene tools for the interface. They’re pretty sweet, and would work just fine for this manner of application.
Even if you want to make a 2D game, I would still use the nav mesh for path-finding. If absolutely necessary, you could just switch the camera up to the top of the scene, looking down on the nav mesh, and put your sprites flat against it. Unity won’t know the difference. You could also go for more of a perspective view, if you wanted some of the benefits of a perspective camera. (such as your characters realistically shrinking as they got farther away from the camera) Of course, you could also simulate the same thing in a 2D orthographic camera by automatically scaling your characters based on whatever axis you determine to be “up.”
I’ve put a lot of thought into these various problems. I’m such a massive point-and-click fan.
I was thinking of doing a 0D game. Just with text. But I’m not sure if today’s generation has that big an attention span. I know I probably don’t. Although I used to love those text adventures on the BBC computer at school. “Take ladder”. “You have the ladder”. I can’t remember what it was called. Should be online somewhere. Only thing I remember is that is had a ladder.
Those were great. I spent many hours playing Infocom and Scott Adam’s adventures back in the day. Of course, that led to an obsession with figuring out how to make one. Spent many hours developing the parser. First the simple verb noun and finally a full sentence parser. It was very interesting work.
Anyway, if you are looking to make a true text adventure I recommend **TADS **or http://textadventures.co.uk/ where you can build your own text adventure online and share with the community or play the adventures others have made.
One of my favorites there was Barbarian. I never won the game because I discovered Unity shortly after finding the game. Got lost figuring out Unity instead.
Inform is another popular one with a very interesting way of writing games. I’d recommend glancing over the source for one of the games before diving in to see if you’d be able to stand it.
For today’s click generation, what about choose-your-own-adventures? It’s all the 0D of a text adventure without having to fight with a command parser. There are some Unity products on the Asset Store, or you could use Twine or Inklewriter for free.
For Monkey Island-style games, on the other hand, I second everyone’s recommendation to use the excellent Adventure Creator.
@Ryiah I had a look at Inform before when I was researching natural language parsing. It looks very interesting but doesn’t seem to have much documentation.
@TonyLi I did have an idea of trying to find a Choose Your Own adventure and turn it into a game perhaps with audio so you could even play it without looking. But there’s nothing out of copyright just yet.
I guess i’ll just try a few.
I’m moving towards having buttons for “Go” “Take” “Use” and then sub-menu buttons. Then have text for the descriptions and an image with some simple 2D animation in it. i.e. first probably first person. Depends how ambitious I get.
OK. So I’ve started making this adventure game just with the uGUI.
I’ve come across an interesting dilemma. In the original text adventures you type in commands like “Go north” or “Pick up tree”. And it has humorous replies like “Did I say you could go that way?.” or “Pick up a tree? You’re not superman.” etc.
But with a button system, it is possible to limit actions to only the possible things. Like if you click “talk” it displays a submenu of only items that you can actually talk to. Or if you click “Go” it can display only the available directions.
e.g. if it says “There are exits to the N,S and E”. And you click Go, should it have NSEW and then if you click W say “You can’t go that way!”.
Making progress figuring out the puzzles is fun. Some occasional comic relief is welcome too. The numerous replies of “I can’t take that”, “I see no small door here” and so forth that were limitations of the parser were more frustrating than fun. You could do all of the real object interactions first then go back and add a few time wasters / silly things to the lists just to provide some humor and additional play time.
With stairs would you “Go up”, “Use stairs”, “Climb stairs”?
Or with an elevator you could even “Take elevator.” even though that means something different.
Hmm… the button system is actually turning out to more troublesome than the text system!
So far the main buttons I have are “Go” “Take” “Use” “Look” “Open” “Drop” “Talk to”.
I’ve got 27 rooms which seems to be about the average for these sorts of games.
Synonyms for climb are primarily involved with going up. What about if the stairs go down though? Personally I would go with “Go up stairs” or “Go down stairs”. Using “Walk” may not be bad either. Maniac Mansion, for example, uses “Walk To”.
One thing newer Lucas Arts games, such as Day of the Tentacle, did was drop their movement button in favor of movement when a command was not selected. If an action was not possible, clicking the button deselected the command.
OK I see in Maniac Mansion they also have:
*Give
*Close
*Push
*Pull
but don’t have drop? Guess you can’t drop things then. I don’t think I’ll need “close”. I might need “climb” as in climb the rope/tree/ladder and maybe “jump”
It’s going to be a bit more like Philosopher’s Quest on the BBC Micro. Really old school.
I’m finding out that a lot of the data structure for an adventure game amounts to a series of recipes.
So I have a set of objects which can have various properties, like “movable”, “openable”, “passable” etc.
Should have a demo finished by next week.