Need Help Scripting A First Person Point-and-Click Style Game in AGS [SOLVED]

[emma_north1]

OK, before I go any further I want to apologise if there is an answer to this in the forum but I've been looking through the tutorials and forums for over an hour and haven't found what I wanted yet!

What I'm trying to achieve is a first-person point-and-click style game like the old Sierra classics such as Shivers and Phantasmagoria, or like the orginal Myst. However I'm having trouble in the early stages. Obviously for this I wouldn't need to bother with character design or anything, however because I have no character to "walk" anywhere, I'm not sure how to get from room to room or view to view.

I'm using Edges and the room_leaveLeft/Right scripts to try and get the player into the right rooms but when I run and click nothing happens because obviously no character is walking anywhere. What should I do? Has anyone got any tips or instructions for someone like me who is specifically making a first-person point-and-click such as this?

Your help would be greatly appreciated! 

[Anteater]

Create a dummy character to use as your main (and probably only) character. Then, in every room, make sure that the "show player character" variable is set to false. Then, instead of using leaveLeft/right functions, make all interaction and movement hotspot-based. You can then place hotspots on the sides of the screen for movement, as well as hotspots over areas of interest in each room.

[emma_north1]

OK, the dummy character I can do no problem if it's necessary and I'm fine with setting the show character variable. However my problem lies with the hotspots as there are or will be items in the room edge areas that I will want to allocate actual hotspots to if you get my drift. I had considered this method but is this the only way of doing this effectively?

Thanks for your help so far!

[Technocrat]

If you're making a Myst-style game, have you considered using something like this? Alright, to be honest I've never played Myst, all I know is it's first person.

For items near the edge, you could make them using objects rather than hotspots perhaps?

[emma_north1]

I think hotspots is still more feasible than objects but it is something else to consider, thanks! Still not sure what I should go for though 

[LimpingFish]

Okay, the answer to this is fairly simple.

1. Enable "Hide Player Character" in each room's properties window.
2. Create hotspots (say, a round blob or a rectangle at each side of the room. Or if the exit is a door visible on the screen, draw a hotspot over the door itself) at each point where the player can enter or exit rooms. Set each hotpost to use the "ChangeRoom" command, using the corresponding room names/numbers, under the "Any Click on Hotspot" interaction.
3. When the player clicks on these hotspots they will automatically move between locations/rooms.

This part of the tutorial covers basic hotspot interactions.

Good luck with your game.

[emma_north1]

OK, in that case, is there any way to use a different curser when these hotspots are triggered (like the old games I described, how they turn into an arrow pointing to the next room when you are hovering over the hotspot?

[Matti]

There's a thread dealing with that here.

[Ghost]

An interesting alternative could be the Panorama mod Steve wrote a while ago.
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=27632.0

[emma_north1]

Thanks for your help everyone, in the end I used hotspots and just adjusted them to fit around my other hotspots and that's working fine. But I do have a new post with a new issue now!