I'm currently in the process of writing a 2D arcade game in BlitzMax, which is coming along pretty nicely.
Last year I was doing some off-and-on work on a 2D graphical adventure engine... currently on the backburner, but maybe at some point in the future I'll dust it off again.
2D Graphical adventures are one of my favorite genre's, love the old Lucasarts adventures, especially the Monkey Island series.
Anyway, just one bit of advice: If you are seriously considering a graphical adventure, you better consider everything it needs to be able to do before you start programming anything, because it's a LOT easier to do things 'right' from the start than it is to try to mickey-mouse certain features in later on.
Things to think about:
- How to implement the depth of you scenes, so objects can pass in front / behind each other properly, and scale down when walking into the distance
- How to implement 'walk-maps', so your character(s) can properly walk around in the scene, around objects like tables and such
- How to implement path finding routines, so a character can properly walk from one side of the screen to wherever you want him to go, evading objects on his own.
- An extension on the pathfinding: reverse pathfinding, so if you click on an 'unreachable' spot, the characters automatically walks as far as it can, and then stop.
- How to implement an inventory system
- How to implement hot-spots, that trigger certain actions
- How to build/store/load levels
- How to implement your character controls
- How to implement a somewhat linear storyline that can progress based on your actions, its dependencies, scripts, cut-scenes, etc.
Overall, creating a good 3rd person adventure (where you navigate a character around the screen) is a lot more complicated than a 1st person adventure (where you see the game through the eyes of your character, like in 'myst'), but in my opinion the 3rd person view is a lot more appealing than the 1st person view for these kind of games. Seem to make 'em more fun, in part because there is a lot more happening on the screen.
Anyway, creating a good adventure game is definitely not for the faint of heart, there's a lot more to those than one might think up front. :-)
But the biggest hurdle in making any graphical adventure, is the magnitude of graphics work that would be required. In any good adventure, there are *tons* of graphics necesary for the background, countless variations of your sprites so they can move around and perform the tasks you need them to, etc.
There's a reason the big studies have dozens of people making the graphics for these kind of games.
Personally I started out with doing some google image searches to pull up some screenshots from existing adventure games, and used those as some placeholder graphics , so I had a typical 'scene', and worked on moving a character around in it, including some obstacles that were already in it.
Last year I was doing some off-and-on work on a 2D graphical adventure engine... currently on the backburner, but maybe at some point in the future I'll dust it off again.
2D Graphical adventures are one of my favorite genre's, love the old Lucasarts adventures, especially the Monkey Island series.
Anyway, just one bit of advice: If you are seriously considering a graphical adventure, you better consider everything it needs to be able to do before you start programming anything, because it's a LOT easier to do things 'right' from the start than it is to try to mickey-mouse certain features in later on.
Things to think about:
- How to implement the depth of you scenes, so objects can pass in front / behind each other properly, and scale down when walking into the distance
- How to implement 'walk-maps', so your character(s) can properly walk around in the scene, around objects like tables and such
- How to implement path finding routines, so a character can properly walk from one side of the screen to wherever you want him to go, evading objects on his own.
- An extension on the pathfinding: reverse pathfinding, so if you click on an 'unreachable' spot, the characters automatically walks as far as it can, and then stop.
- How to implement an inventory system
- How to implement hot-spots, that trigger certain actions
- How to build/store/load levels
- How to implement your character controls
- How to implement a somewhat linear storyline that can progress based on your actions, its dependencies, scripts, cut-scenes, etc.
Overall, creating a good 3rd person adventure (where you navigate a character around the screen) is a lot more complicated than a 1st person adventure (where you see the game through the eyes of your character, like in 'myst'), but in my opinion the 3rd person view is a lot more appealing than the 1st person view for these kind of games. Seem to make 'em more fun, in part because there is a lot more happening on the screen.
Anyway, creating a good adventure game is definitely not for the faint of heart, there's a lot more to those than one might think up front. :-)
But the biggest hurdle in making any graphical adventure, is the magnitude of graphics work that would be required. In any good adventure, there are *tons* of graphics necesary for the background, countless variations of your sprites so they can move around and perform the tasks you need them to, etc.
There's a reason the big studies have dozens of people making the graphics for these kind of games.
Personally I started out with doing some google image searches to pull up some screenshots from existing adventure games, and used those as some placeholder graphics , so I had a typical 'scene', and worked on moving a character around in it, including some obstacles that were already in it.