[Reid]

Hi everyone,

I'm working on a game that I hope will be high quality enough to sell in the near future because I believe it can become a very important game and one that people need to experience.

It looks as though the two most popular technologies for adventure games are Adventure Game Studio (http://www.bigbluecup.com) and Wintermute (http://dead-code.org/home/index.php/about/).

I have experience with bigbluecup's community (extremely knowledgable, friendly and supportive) and I also enjoy working with the Adventure Game Studio tools.

What about Wintermute? Can anyone offer opinions on the knowledge, helpfulness and the talent pool of the community? Lastly, any thoughts on the tools? Are they easy to use with basic features or cumbersome but powerful?

[Wormsie]

The WME community is very friendly and knowlegable, the developer Mnemonic himself takes part in many discussions regarding the features and questions (however, that tells you something about the size of the community - then again, most WME users are engine experts, that's what I've noticed at least). WME as an engine is very logical, consistent and powerful - not at all cumbersome. I recommend you give it a try to see which engine suits you better, these are all personal preferences afterall.

[Squinky]

I've been using WME for the past few months, but I also haven't really been a part of their "community", per se. The reason for this is mostly because there isn't very much of a community there to speak of, and because the engine's documentation and features are good enough on their own that I've never even had to ask questions on the forums.

Personally, though, I think that this is the way it should be. I'm not a huge fan of having an entire, closed-off community just for one particular game engine, instead preferring to spend more time at general adventure game dev sites such as this one and Adventure Developers. Honestly, development shouldn't be about what engines and tools you use, but more about what you actually do with them.

[MikaelS]

I myself use PaC DK : http://www.adventure-creator.com/

Granted, I haven't even tried other engines yet and I just finished first episode of my first game ( I need some original music somewhere before publish it good ). I ended up on this engine, because I read somewhere someone recommending this engine( can't remember where) for those new to this stuff and claiming this engine doesn't take as much scripting. I have no idea compared to other engines, since I haven't tried them yet. PaC DK sure been easy to learn and use, but only thing I miss is having big English-speaking community I can read on and perhaps be influenced, like AGS does.

[yodhe]

I don't know if it is just me (and I hope it is), but it seems that adventure games have become stuck in the point and click interface. Not that there aren't obviously advantages, it is just it seems rather compartmentalised.

To me an adventure game is not about the style of the game, but certain elements, such as a storyline, and the ability to interact with ones given environment, and generally a higher level of novel-ty than one would find in a FPS. Also I don't want people to think that it is an adventure game, rather my job will be done when they feel as though they are performing interactive fiction. This essentially means killing off the piece of string, linear feel that I find in so many games.

To me, and this is what I am working on, particularly as I am a proficient 3D modeller, is creating an immersive environment in which the player has the FREEDOM to do as they choose, and as the author I have to craft the game as such to elicit them to follow the clues, without punishing them for doing novel/enexpected things. It should be their story/adventure, not me trying to
teach/lecture them how to do things, but rather adding the spice and events to keep their attention.

I find in my game creation there are two distinct phase, which most adventure
authors/gamers miss. The first is creating the game, the second is sitting over
a handful of other peoples shoulders why they play it, with a pad and paper,
and make notes of how they interact with the environment. Ohhh so they open the window, and want to jump out, or they twist that object, or use that object to get around the problem that I didn't think of. Then going back to the drawing board and starting again.

Whooops, just realised that I am ranting.
Sorry, I just wish people would think about what an adventure game is, rather
than becoming limited by the interface, which I have found with what seem the current generation of adventure games. imho.


P.s. My advice is give up on making a game to a professional level, as 99.95% probability that you will never make it, as generally any professional games are a group effort of at least 10 individuals if not 100's in some companies. Make a game you would enjoy playing is what is important, chase the money and you will never get there, chase your dream of making a game that would "turn you on" so speak and you will get rewards far beyond your imagination.

[SSH]

The new debugging in the AGS 3.0 beta is a great new feature and very handy. The new IDE is much better, too. However, AGS still has some limits, although a lot of those have been removed in v3.0. But I would recommend that, whatever engine you choose, you make a short silly game entirely unconnected from your main project first to get yourself used to it.

[Reid]

Yodhe, great comments all around and I agree with you for the most part. The game I'm working on should not feel like a traditional point and click adventure because it will be all conversation based. I'm writing about 128+ lines of dialog just for one scene because of all the branching that goes on.

I could easily try and make this in a modern 3D engine like HL2, but the content creation needed will take much longer and I'd prefer not to spend years working on this game. The simplicity of AGS is beautiful. No banging my head on the wall to get things to work. If I know how to make characters walk and I write the script, it works every time.

My philosophy is to start small and simple. If people want more, I can always go bigger.

SSH, yeah, I'm waiting patiently for AGS 3.0.