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AG Theme Of The Week #9 - Choosing your own Adventure

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Joined 2006-06-14

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I would love to have the ability to make a game such as those in the Myst cycle with gorgeous graphics and fantastical Spire-like lands to explore, but being deficient in both drawing skills and imagination and being of a very practical bent I would first calculate how many hours it would take, how much it would cost to hire people who actually do have these skills (which I greatly admire), and realize that I should stick to my strengths.

I salute all those who can and do.

Diego, I too want to play that game.  Hop right on it!  Laughing

     
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Lady Kestrel - 18 July 2017 01:45 PM

Yes, but I did recognize the ladder. Grin

diego - 18 July 2017 01:52 PM

I’m delighted that you did - I thought I made it look more like a sled or something - but NO WAY you’re gonna decipher the first object in the inventory! (hint: it’s not a snake)

Well, I think it’s either a rope or some toothpaste squeezed from the tube, but I could be wrong.  Wink

     

Carpe chocolate.

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I love the theme dumbeur!  Thumbs Up  I’ll be back sometime when I have more of it & have had some to think!  Laughing

     
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Lady Kestrel - 18 July 2017 02:48 PM

Well, I think it’s either a rope or some toothpaste squeezed from the tube, but I could be wrong.  Wink

Indeed, it’s a rope! Incredible, but my drawing skills are of a much higher value than I first thought! Cool

     

Recently finished: Four Last Things 4/5, Edna & Harvey: The Breakout 5/5, Chains of Satinav 3,95/5, A Vampyre Story 88, Sam Peters 3/5, Broken Sword 1 4,5/5, Broken Sword 2 4,3/5, Broken Sword 3 85, Broken Sword 5 81, Gray Matter 4/5\nCurrently playing: Broken Sword 4, Keepsake (Let\‘s Play), Callahan\‘s Crosstime Saloon (post-Community Playthrough)\nLooking forward to: A Playwright’s Tale

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For me, I am really inspired by the unique level design in Psychonauts, and the gameplay of Day of the Tentacle.

I would love to make a 3rd person adventure game where there are 4 very different people in an art museum who find themselves sucked(literally) into 4 different paintings. Your goal is to somehow work together to escape these paintings, and stop whoever caused this anomaly.

I would like the artistic direction of each character’s world to be a representation of the painting they were sucked in. For example one of the worlds would look like a japanese painting:

whereas another can look like an egyptian one:

Just like in Day of the Tentacle, I would like characters to help each other by sharing inventory items across the different paintings. In a bigger twist though, you can also swap characters between paintings. Each character has certain abilities that can help in bypassing a certain puzzle in a painting, so you can experiment with different characters in different paintings to bypass the puzzles.
You can switch between characters at will. I would also like to have a more open approach to puzzles. Basically there are many different solutions to any puzzle, and you can even bypass solving some puzzles all together.

     
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He he - When I read the title I thought this was about something completely different Wink
But I guess that was intentional Shifty Eyed

I have often thought about making my own AG, and have almost started on it many times. The main problem is that I have absolutely zero artistic talent, and I’m also quite lazy Meh I am however a professional programmer, so that part wouldn’t be the problem.

Anyway, if I had unlimited talent, time and money my game would be like this:

It would be a futuristic setting, quite blade runner inspired, but less dark and dystopian. There would also be some connection to ancient times and archaeological sites, kind of like The Pandora Directive or a futuristic Indiana Jones, and ultimately the future of mankind would depend on your actions. It would also drop you in the game, without any explanation or starting goals except you daily routine, you would then slowly get pulled into something, but it wouldn’t be until quite late in the game, that you realize what is actually going on, you just know that there is some evil scheme and some weird things happening.

The graphics would be realistic 3D over the shoulder perspective, and the setting very open world like, but not completely open world. For example destinations out of running distance, like other districts in the city, other cities, countries or archaeological sites would only become available once you have a reason to go there.

The key feature of the game would however be that as little as possible is scripted!
Instead each character would be controlled by an AI, and they wouldn’t just stand around on street corners waiting for you to come and ask them questions, in fact if you just run up to them and ask “Excuse me, I’m someone you have never heard of, do you mind telling me everything you know about the McGuffin?”, then they will just look at you like you are crazy and walk away.

Each character would have some psychological parameters, like how extrovert / introvert naive / cynical, helpful / misanthropic, cleaver / dumb, brave / cowardly etc. that they are, and each would also have their own backstory, like workplace, education, interests, marital status etc. In order to even get them to talk to you, you would need some kind of hook, and you would need to lure, trick, manipulate, threaten, bribe or blackmail them into helping you or telling what they know. There would even be the possibility that they would lie to you and send you on some wild goose chase.

To help with manipulating people, you would have some sort of electronic gadget or AI, that would automatically analyse their Facebook, Twitter and other publicly available data, perhaps even some non-public data like bank statements, medical records or government databases. From this information it would provide you with a psychological profile and other potential useful information.

For example, you meet a lady, your AI tells you that she recently lost a son in an accident. You then start by introducing yourself as an old friend of her son, tell her that her son was somehow mixed up in the whole affair you are investigating, and that you don’t believe that his accident was an actual accident, but that he was murdered, and you need her help to get to the bottom of her son’s death!
All a lie of course!

Or it tells you that someone is a passionate fly-fisher, recently divorced and has financial problems. You can then use either fly-fishing or the divorce as a hook (pun intended) to get friendly with him, before casually offering him money for his access card.

Being able to skilfully manipulate people (anyone who has seen The Americans know what I’m talking about) would be the main puzzle type in the game, and in case of failure it should be possible to reach some dead ends or deaths. For example screw up manipulating a key character, they might refuse to talk to you or call police / security / the bad guys. The AI should however warn you when you have reached a dead end and offer to reload or rewind time to just before you meet the character fist time, giving you a chance to try a different approach, but also potentially having to replay large parts.

There should however also be more normal puzzles like breaking into a warehouse. But here I would like to make them more realistic and physics based with multiple solutions. For example breaking into the warehouse you could acquire an access card from the fly-fisher, but you could also simply kick in the door or break a window, doing so would however set of an alarm, and police / security / bad guys would arrive, so instead you need to hide from them and risk getting caught and killed / arrested.

There should also be a least on large maze, however the AI should help you by auto-mapping paths you have already tried.

Finally time should also pass in the game, and there should be a day/night cycle, with people going to work, having lunch breaks, going home etc. and different objectives can only be completed at different times, like breaking into the warehouse at night, or talking to the fly-fisher in the bar after work hours. Based on your skills it should be possible to complete the game in a few days gametime or over several weeks, but there shouldn’t be any punishment for being slow, and key events will only happen when you are there to witness them.


Perhaps an AI based game is a very ambitious goal to set, but since I’m never going to actually make it, I can set the goal as high as I please Wink

     

You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ

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Iznogood - 18 July 2017 04:42 PM

He he - When I read the title I thought this was about something completely different Wink
But I guess that was intentional Shifty Eyed

I could take credit for being clever with that title but honestly, I just liked the sound of it. Wink

I have often thought about making my own AG, and have almost started on it many times. The main problem is that I have absolutely zero artistic talent, and I’m also quite lazy Meh I am however a professional programmer, so that part wouldn’t be the problem.

I’m in exactly the same boat.  I thought I could just farm out the art/animation work, but since posting here I’ve seen the talent some of the game designers have that I could just never match even 10% of.

I love your game idea btw; maybe as true AI helps us develop more and more complex games your dream could become a reality.

     
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chrissie - 18 July 2017 03:18 PM

I love the theme dumbeur!  Thumbs Up  I’ll be back sometime when I have more of it & have had some to think!  Laughing

Thanks chrissie! Smile  I really thought I’d fluffed it; it’s amazing the things that one can get nervous about.

     
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Joined 2015-02-06

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Nice topic dumbeur! It’s really cool to read/see people’s ideas of what game they would like to/plan to create. I actually made a small demo years ago using Adventure Maker, Bryce and Photoshop. Unfortunately I never finished it nor will it run on anything except Windows XP. Regardless, I enjoyed the challenge at the time. I had a big vision of creating a full length Myst style game. Who knows maybe after I retire I’ll get back to it, lol.

Here’s some screenshots.

     

This message will self destruct in 3… 2… 1… BOOM!!!

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Joined 2011-04-01

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Mine would be similar to Lady K’s idea - A first person world filled with puzzles, except I’d like to do it with photos in the style of the Capri, Yoomurjak’s Ring and Carol Reed games. I like the feeling of visiting real world places in games so I would include lots of interesting and hidden tourist spots. Hopefully this would also largely circumvent the problem of my lack of programming skills - taking a photo is much easier than drawing a screen from scratch, and I have an amateur photographer friend who could help out with the artistic side of things.

     
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Joined 2005-09-29

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My game would be bold and subversive but in the style of DavidCage games with more exploration and better writers, theme would be real world
Setting NYC
A guy who has a family with 2 kids and a wife, lower middle class wants to raise his family properly but financially in real bad position , you get to play first few chapters knowing the bad financial condition and dreams then trying your luck on wall street until some Big business tycoon will call you to his suite for an interview
And then he makes indecent proposal , it gets all dark and disturbing , catching all players by surprise, totally playable and bad bad thing which is done in movies but not in games, now you get to experience it as consequence of choice, a choice for better life

That offer will also be a binary choice, if he will accept it will be a different game with different family setup,grooming,events, accidents etc

If he will reject it will be more hard and bleak

Both are going to transform events and people around you and basically i want players to feel burden of choice, by direct experiencing your moral choice
How far a man can go to achieve his materialistic dreams or is it just basic survival needs set by society? 

It will be inspired by Boyhood, Margin call, Sliding doors and Indigo prophecy

2nd game would be set across Europe with Detective finding out heinous mafia cult running all kinds of bad stuff
Themes would be human trafficking, Corruption in Green/Global warming initiative
Inspiration Bron season 2 ,Gk3 and Brokensword

3rd game will be blank check to Suda and Swery to make best crazy AG game

     
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Joined 2014-11-29

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Lots of creative pitches in here, good theme idea.

     
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Joined 2013-02-12

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Great theme, dumbeur!

Idea 1: A detective game with programming puzzles, ideally using a ‘real’ programming language (or a cut-down version of one). Played entirely via a mocked-up terminal screen - you’re a person sitting at a computer and in the game you’re playing a person sitting at a computer. A kind of mixture of Her Story, Hacknet and Lists and Lists.

Idea 2: Exploring an alien world, discovering strange abandoned machines and figuring out how to program them using an abstract symbolic language (yeah, there might be a bit of a theme here. I’m a programmer, ok?). A bit like Voyage/Journey to the Moon with language symbols instead of inventory items - it’s about simultaneously exploring the alien landscape and the systems, understanding how they work and interact in order to explore further.

Idea 3: The Greatest Murder Mystery Ever Told. This is the one that might actually happen - at summer camp last year I did a presentation about Easter Saturday as a murder mystery, and I’ve been meaning to try and translate it into some kind of Twine game.

     
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Joined 2008-01-09

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I like your screenshots, Sir Beardalot.  It looks like an interesting world to explore.  You also highlighted one of the ongoing problems for developers which is the ever-changing computer systems.  Each upgrade has the potential of making your game difficult to run. 

Phlebas - 20 July 2017 05:42 AM

Idea 2: Exploring an alien world, discovering strange abandoned machines and figuring out how to program them using an abstract symbolic language (yeah, there might be a bit of a theme here. I’m a programmer, ok?). A bit like Voyage/Journey to the Moon with language symbols instead of inventory items - it’s about simultaneously exploring the alien landscape and the systems, understanding how they work and interact in order to explore further.

That reminds me of The Crystal Key, Phlebas, although the alien symbols were used as a code.

     

Carpe chocolate.

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Lady Kestrel - 20 July 2017 10:21 AM
Phlebas - 20 July 2017 05:42 AM

Idea 2: Exploring an alien world, discovering strange abandoned machines and figuring out how to program them using an abstract symbolic language (yeah, there might be a bit of a theme here. I’m a programmer, ok?). A bit like Voyage/Journey to the Moon with language symbols instead of inventory items - it’s about simultaneously exploring the alien landscape and the systems, understanding how they work and interact in order to explore further.

That reminds me of The Crystal Key, Phlebas, although the alien symbols were used as a code.

Ooh, I have that somewhere! I failed to get it to run last time, but I should have another try sometime.

     

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