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Make Your Own Point And Click Adventures

Posted by simoniker on from the scumm-of-the-earth dept.

Thanks to Jakob for pointing to a Boomtown.net article discussing independent developers keeping point and click adventures alive on the PC. The article is headed "..most of us remember with fondness the Monkey Island era of point and clicks, but now fans of the genre are making their own", and has links to a number of fan/indie-developed games such as Pleurghburg: Dark Ages or the in-development Project Joe, plus free adventure game engines such as Adventure Game Studio and AGAST.

24 comments

  1. Of course this game genre is near extinction. by Dolemite_the_Wiz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I crave the unpredictability of a human opponent over the internet as I will never play the same game twice.

    I can play games like this once and that's it.

    What more can you do with linear games such as the ones described in this story.

    Dolemite
    ____________________

    --
    Save the World! Use a Quote!
    1. Re:Of course this game genre is near extinction. by dwvanstone · · Score: 1
      Like I've done with The Longest Journey:

      • Buy it for a friend, then wait with anticipation as they get to the good parts
      • Wish there were other adventure games that good
      • Reminisce
      • Share your favorite elements with other friends who've played the game

      Good adventure games like this can not be replayed, but they can be remembered with fondness.

    2. Re:Of course this game genre is near extinction. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Do you say the same thing about books as well? That's how I look at adventure games: They are interactive books.

    3. Re:Of course this game genre is near extinction. by notque · · Score: 1

      I wish I could disagree with you, but I am starting to feel the same way with all video games.

      I want to praise RPGS, and their singular style, but more and more I find myself not finishing games.

      --
      http://use.perl.org
    4. Re:Of course this game genre is near extinction. by Grand · · Score: 1

      ill agree, but I really do want to drag my 'under a killing moon' game out of the bottom of the pile of games. They do have replayability if they are fun and have a good story, you just have to wait a couple of years. :-)

    5. Re:Of course this game genre is near extinction. by Dave_21-6 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't believe these games are necessarily dying out just because there are multiplayer games out there. They are dying out because they are a bit expensive to produce versus the number of units it will likely sell. The big publishers are not satisfied with 100k units sold for a title anymore, so who knows when we'll see another King's Quest series.

      In terms of why would anyone want to play this kind of game, I view these games as a story or a world to be discovered. I also don't necessarily want to play with human players or grind out another level on a more-dynamic game like Everquest. Sometimes I just want to sit down with a good book, and this is a pretty close equivalent.

      And while it would be interesting if these types of games were replayable in some significant way, I am more than happy to plunk down $30 for 30 hours worth of entertainment from a title. If one of these games gives me that much for my money, I'm pretty pleased.

    6. Re:Of course this game genre is near extinction. by Shishio · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The "unpredictability of a human opponent" is great in games like first-person shooters, where direct competition is an integral part of the game's interest. For me, those games are more interesting as they become more challenging.

      Adventures and RPG's, however, have a much different place in my game collection. Some of the point and click adventures, as mentioned here, can be very static, but many others have plenty of replay value. RPG's, particularly ones released for the consoles such as the SNES and PSX, have different approaches and different options that can be taken. Even some of the very linear ones like Earthbound can be enjoyed plenty of times.

      I agree that those discussed in this story could use more to them. But the general need for a human opponent for a game to be unpredictable or have replay value is unfair to a great deal of classic games.

      In a way, it (online human-interactive adventuring) makes the games more predictable. Most of the veterans or strong players of the online games now become that way by their ability to sacrifice more time and money to the game. The casual players receive much less out of a game than they normally would. This is fine in a FPS, where skills generally carry over and where there is usually a new game every so often to level the playing field.

      Human interaction makes for a nice adventure, but so does a strong story. I'm sorry for the long rant, I hope it makes sense when I submit it. :)

      --
      Twelve fingers or one, its how you play. ~Gattaca (Vincent)
    7. Re:Of course this game genre is near extinction. by FortKnox · · Score: 1

      What more can you do with linear games such as the ones described in this story.

      Who says one player games are linear?
      Look at something like Deus Ex.

      By placing multiple solutions to every puzzle, and affects that it makes to future stories, you can make a VERY complex and replayable game.

      It just needs effort and desire poured into it.

      --
      Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
  2. Who does the art? by dwvanstone · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I find the idea of generating a text adventure (using TADS or Inform) to be very appealing. I love adventures, text or graphical, and I could come up with many clever puzzles or story lines.

    However, I could never come up with the art needed for the graphical adventure.

    I think it's a rare person who has the talents of putting together a good story, good puzzles, and good artwork in order to use these tools.

    1. Re:Who does the art? by El+Panda+Grande · · Score: 1

      I am a member of the AGS community, and have created a few point and click adventures, using these sorts of programs. Many have this problem There are ways around it. You can have other people draw your art, or just use mspaint, and make a really funny game. A few of the independant classics have had pretty crappy graphics actually

    2. Re:Who does the art? by ghostlibrary · · Score: 1

      If you are happy with icon art, rather than realistic or cartoon, it's pretty easy. For example, a program like 'stickers' lets anyone simply place a scene, e.g. their farm set has a barn, chickens, etc. So you put that down as your background, choose which items are icons that, when clicked, do something. Set exit points, barriers. Come up with a story, and enable the proper icons (i.e. Q&A, widget hunting, clues, etc).

      So I guess the short answer is "use other people's art tools".

      --
      A.
  3. Like these guys by barryfandango · · Score: 3, Interesting

    http://www.reldni.com

    high quality freeware games with a razor sharp wit... like Oscar Wilde meets King's Quest.

    The preceding paragraph was a complete lie.

    --
    In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
    1. Re:Like these guys by brave1 · · Score: 2, Informative

      The folks at Tierra Entertainment have done remakes of Kings Quest I and Kings Quest II.

      --
      - http://www.braveterry.com/
  4. Yup. by Dolemite_the_Wiz · · Score: 1

    Ever read/do 'Mad Libs'?

    Dolemite
    ___________________

    --
    Save the World! Use a Quote!
  5. old school games by JohnDoe69 · · Score: 1

    u can play alot of these games on FHM.com..they have the 100 greatest games and there are alot of old school awesome games

  6. ScummVM by ginbot462 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Don't forget ScummVM, based off Lucas Arts engine. You can use it to code your own.

    --
    Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story :: Battlefield Earth : Organized Religion
    1. Re:ScummVM by Squirrel+Killer · · Score: 1
      Don't forget ScummVM, based off Lucas Arts engine. You can use it to code your own.
      Really, how so? There isn't any mention of rolling your own on the main SCUMMVM page, the faqs, or the mailing lists. In the documentation, there's one section entitled "The inComplete SCUMM Reference Guide" that looks woefully incomplete indeed, basically leaving it at "Well, we know a good bit about the format, so theoretically, you could build one yourself."

      Which is unfortunate, since after reading this article, I figured an adventure game would be a neat extension to a story I've been working on, but all the other engines seem to be Windows-only. Although I can develop on a Windows machine, I'd love to port it to my Mac OS X laptop and have it available to any platform.

  7. HTML TADS by ronfar · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You can make very simple point and click adventures using HTML TADS. Note, this isn't anything like Sam & Max, but you have the powerful TADS text parser along with images, sounds and clickable links. It would be really easy to come up with something good, and I read that there is an X11 HTML TADS project.

    --
    All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
  8. Plug, plug, plug - Loki! by McMac · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hey, they're missing Project Loki - check it out at:

    www.sorsegods.co.uk

    We've been working on it (very part time) for bloody ages and we're finally coming to the point where the engine is working well and the graphics are coming together too!

    Hooray for us.

  9. Adventure Game Studio Classics by El+Panda+Grande · · Score: 1

    so many great games have been created using this program! go to www.agsforums.com and click on the games link. I highly recomend larry vales, PDA, (as mentioned above), the King's Quest remakes, and the rob blanc games.

  10. figures, just did my own by ghostlibrary · · Score: 1

    It figures. I couldn't find an engine, so I just finished coding my own this week (and I'm wrapping up the editor this weekend). *sigh*

    I hate catching a craze a month late, when I could simply skim off the labors of others instead :)

    (Mind you, it only takes 1 week to make one, using Tcl/Tk, and said engine then works on Linux/Win/Mac. Just a little language advocacy.)

    --
    A.