[cakewalker]

Hi all,

I'm kind of new here, so i hope this is the right place.
I'm planning and setting out all what is needed to start to develop a small adventure game. I have some questions to the devs around here.

What engine, or framework do you recommend?
Currently i am thinking about flash since it can be used for web, pc and mac publishing.
Or do you guys think, this is a bad idea?

I looked into other engines like AGS and torque 2D, but the first lacks mac and the second web opportunities.

Second question, if i don't choose flash, should i choose something C based?
I'm no programmer, so that's why these question are quiet technical flavored.

Thanks in advance!

[Ascovel]

Hi there, cake!

All the engines you mentioned have good reputation. Personally, I use AGS and must say it is very flexible and overall problem-free.

It's true that the games made with it are not portable to web browsers (just yet) nor to Macs. However, AGS has the great benefit of a large, friendly community, who will be interested in helping you with your game's development and commenting on the finished product later on.

[Pandaara]

I say stick with AGS. You only need to look on the official website to get support and documentation on the engine and it's very user friendly. I'm in the middle of making something with it and I'm getting that much used to it as I progress with it.

I also recommend taking a look at the Wintermute engine. It's free as well, and offers much more features and proper 3D support - but it's not as intermediate as AGS.

[cakewalker]

Hi! Thanks for your replies and suggestions.
I'll need to play around a bit with AGS and Wintermute before i make this decision i think. They seem both

The thing is I know i will have to extend these engines in at some point in one way or another. In flash i know how to do that, i can manage actionscript pretty well. I'll have to build up from zero though.

[J.H]

AGS and Wintermute are definitely the best IMO.

[Trumgottist]

I guess I should mention SLUDGE (which is the engine I use) since you mentioned Mac. The biggest advantage of SLUDGE is that it's cross-platform. Its games run on both Mac, Windows and Linux, and the development kit runs on Mac and Windows. It's probably not as easy to use as AGS though, as it's completely script-based, and it doesn't have the huge user-base.

Originally Posted by cakewalker

The thing is I know i will have to extend these engines in at some point in one way or another.

That depends on if you plan to do something really unusual. I know SLUDGE to be flexible enough to do almost anything you'd think of for a point and click adventure game, and I believe the same is true for AGS and Wintermute too. (Should you really need to extend the engine, SLUDGE is open source, so in theory you can add any feature you want. In practice, if you want to do something SLUDGE is incapable of, you're probably better off using a general engine rather than an adventure game specific one. I've heard good things about Unity.)

And one more engine that hasn't yet been mentioned (probably because it hasn't yet proved itself) is Dage. A 3d engine for adventure games. If you're considering 3d, Dage and Unity is what I'd look at.

[cakewalker]

Wow, ok thanks again for your comments and suggestions.
I'm going to test all these and see which one suits me best. I like the that Sludge is cross platform. To me that is important.

Atm I'm not thinking about 3D, but i was very much impressed about what Unity promised to offer. It has about every feature you can ask, or that i can think of, and runs on almost every platform.

So thanks again all!

[cakewalker]

Oh and before i forget, there is one i found, that looked interesting to me.
I still need to look further into this one though.
https://developer.playfirst.com/

[glenfx]

you can try Visionaire 2D too.
http://www.visionaire-studio.net/cms/startseite-2.html