Hi, I have been in the game dev business for 3 years now, and have made strictly real time action and stratagy games. I thought it might be a fun change to try my hand at a graphic adventure game, like Myst. I need help finding an engine or utility to make a game like this. I looked at AGE, but it seems as if this isn''t for sale any more. Does anyone have any reccomendations? Thanks!

Honestly, an engine to run a game like Myst doesn''t seem dificult at all. After all what is it exactly? It''s an image viewer. If you are looking at image X and want to turn left then the engine next loads bitmap Y which would of course represent what you would see if you indeed turned left in the world. After that, allowing interraction is just a matter of something like
if (left_click && mouse_position.x == x && mouse_position.y = y)
{
Run animation of hand lifting a key;
}

The hard part with a game like this would be the logic as far as programming goes. You aren''t up against lag or framerates or large database management. The feel of the game and the story are what is needed. After that you could almost do it with HTML though it wouldn''t be nearly as nice

Webby

Well if you have ever played a game like "Connections," then you will know what I mean when I say I would like to have a type of coversation maker. Myst takes place on a desolate island, so that was a bad example. The game I have in mind involves converstions between you and another person, where you have the option to select a question, and the cooresponding video will play. It would also be nice to have some inventory control. I was thinking of doing what you said, Will, but then I realized that there is likely an easier way to do something like that. Thank you anyhow though!

Well if you have ever played a game like "Connections," then you will know what I mean when I say I would like to have a type of coversation maker. Myst takes place on a desolate island, so that was a bad example. The game I have in mind involves converstions between you and another person, where you have the option to select a question, and the cooresponding video will play. It would also be nice to have some inventory control. I was thinking of doing what you said, Will, but then I realized that there is likely an easier way to do something like that. Thank you anyhow though!

You could try AGS . It''s free, but limited to 640x480x16.

For a few bucks you might try SLUDGE

There are quite a few out there. Google is your friend. (linked to a whole category of authroing systems)


JSwing

AGS is quite good, if you don''t mind a few little design quirks (such as being unable to delete certain resources if you decide, later on, you don''t need them)

Wintermute is very good, but they don''t have commercial liscencing information on their site; I imagine it would be quite expensive, it''s quite a well designed system with a lot of editor functionality.

Right now, I''m using AGE to prototype an adventure game I''m making, but I''m working on my own engine at the same time.

Keep in mind that adventure games need a good scripting system too, otherwise it can be a pain to create puzzles.

-=skjin=-

Wonderful, thank you all SO much!

By the way, I thought AGE wasn''t for sale anymore; how did you get a prototype?