Arcade Sequences in AGS?

[Jordanowen42]

Hello all-

I have an idea for my next game that would be, fundamentally, a Sierra style point and click adventure but it would involve several arcade sequences. Like so many point and click mini games the arcade sequences would be send ups of established games. For that reason I'm curious what sorts of arcade sequences are possible in AGS and can you provide examples of games that employ them?

Here's some of the types of arcade sequences I want to do:

1. A top-down maze game in the style of Pac Man where the player runs from enemies.

2. Rail shooter sequences where the player moves a targeting reticle with the mouse and shoots at enemies that jump out from behind cover, a'la Lethal Enforcers. (This would actually be an important and recurring element of my idea)

3. A multi-lane anticipation/dodge scenario where the player is on something like a jet ski and has to dodge oncoming debris and other obstructions, a'la the second level of Battletoads.

These are just a few ideas, curious if you think it's doable and any other cool arcade sequences done with AGS.

[Khris]

All of this is doable in AGS and has been done. AGS supports drawing arbitrary things to the screen and you can do math, that's really all you need for arcade sequences.

You probably won't be using many of the built-in tools that are specifically geared towards point-and-click adventure games, but again, all you really need is a bunch of sprites, variables / structs, repeatedly_execute and the functions that handle input and draw to the screen.

Check my signature for an example game.
Source code: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-09JLMC1i0bUpNwJ3J6a7SkITmXvW9C6/view?usp=drive_link

[Crimson Wizard]

There's a sticky list of the open-sourced AGS games in Advanced Tech Forums:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/advanced-technical-forum/a-sticky-list-with-open-source-ags-games/
Few of those are arcades.

These are not all arcades done with AGS. One way to find these is to go to the AGS game database, and search for "non-adventure games".
Games that were part adventure part arcade are more uncommon and may be difficult to find, because there's no tag to mark ones as such (afaik).

[Snarky]

King's Quest II+, Quest for Glory II VGA and Heroine's Quest are examples of Sierra-style AGS games with arcade sequences.

[heltenjon]

While not the best at such games, Iska Igra includes 10+ minigames and could be useful just to see the variety.

[Crimson Wizard]

King's Quest II+, Quest for Glory II VGA and Heroine's Quest are examples of Sierra-style AGS games with arcade sequences.

I was wondering if I should mention these, since the OP asked about "top down" arcade style. But indeed, if we speak of arcade scenes in a broad sense, there are multiple games that feature combat sequences. Besides the aforementioned games that feature QFG-like combat, there are also games like "Gemini Rue" which has a side-view shooting combat sequence with "shoot or cover" mechanic.

2. Rail shooter sequences where the player moves a targeting reticle with the mouse and shoots at enemies that jump out from behind cover, a'la Lethal Enforcers. (This would actually be an important and recurring element of my idea)

I suddenly remembered that I had a "rail shooter" demo game many years ago:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/jamm30qmmxm/ShootingGallery_Demo2.zip/file
https://www.mediafire.com/file/exxi3y0ddy1/ShootingGallery_Demo3.zip/file
Controls: mouse to aim and shoot, Left/Right arrow keys to move sideways.

I cannot recall if I still have a project source anywhere, but i may try looking around in a spare time.

[Laura Hunt]

Legend of Hand (Steam / itch.io) has a few arcade sequences, including a fishing minigame and some basic kung-fu fighting.

[RootBound]

I released an arcade game just a month or two ago. I haven't open-sourced it (though I might at some point). I'm happy to answer any questions about the code. 

AGS database link:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2803-bad-to-the-coral/

EDIT: here's a video of the gameplay:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?msg=636667288

[Kara Jo Kalinowski]

So essentially you can code whatever you want even though AGS is designed for adventure games...

repeatedly_execute, repeatedly_execute_always and late_repeatedly_execute_always are the functions that are going to define your game loop (the help file covers the difference between those functions)

Those game loops will run once per frame, so you can do whatever custom thing that you want to do within those loops, whether or not you're not using AGS's built in click handling events, etc.