Snatcher style adventure game?

[Kunio]

I am interested in making a game similar in gameplay style to Snatcher. If you aren't familiar with the game, basically its a graphical interactive novel.  The area you are in is represented as a picture at the top of the screen, and you interact with everything through a menu at the lower portion of the screen. The player is not represented on the screen as a sprite, its more like you are looking at things from a first person perspective.

Here is a screenshot of the game to give you an idea of what I'm talking about:


In my game however I want to use the mouse to interact with some objects instead of doing it entirely with the text menu.

Basically my question is this; how hard would it be to acomplish something like this in Adventure Game Studio? I was thinking about trying to make the game in flash but was curious if it might be easier, or work out better in Adventure Game Studio.

The game would contain small amounts of animation, and I would think it would work because it is esentially the same as an adventure game except the player is not represented on the screen. My only real concern is how easily I could impliment the text menu at the bottom of the screen.

Also if anyone has any tutorials on doing something similar to this I would be very interested in seeing them.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Gilbert]

I'm quite familiar with this kind of game (I have a PC engine and played lots of these games, have snatcher too, but just don't have the time to play it, yet).

I think it won't be difficult to make such games with ags, just hide your character and doing something with dialogs.

The only possible obstacle I can see is maybe the limit on amount of dialogs (500 max topics, 2000 max dialog lines), don't know if that's really insufficient tho.

[BerserkerTails]

Gilbot: PLAY SNATCHER. That game is amazing! Kojima-San is teh GENIUS!!1111

Sorry... Anyway, it would probably be quite easy to make an adventure game like Snatcher with AGS. You could probably even do the shooting sequences with some fine coding.

Aww man, seeing that screenshot makes me want to play the game again...

<RUNS FOR HIS SEGA CD>

[Gilbert]

AFAIK, the Mega CD (errr Sega CD, I think the Mega Drive version was never released in Japan, like there was no TG16 English version) was just a port from the PCE version, and due to technical reasons, the PCE version probably has better graphics.

Oh offtopic now, I better stop :p

[Kunio]

Glad to see there are other Snatcher fans here =) it's definatly one of my favorite games of all time.

Would it be possible to do the text menu using a GUI somehow? and will it be a problem trying to display text at the bottom of the screen instead of at the top with the characters etc.

Also if anyone is familiar with flash, do you think it would work better to do it in flash than AGS? I have absolutely no knowledge of flash however and would have to learn it. AGS seems simpilar to use which I like.

[juncmodule]

To do it in Flash you would need to learn ActionScript.

To do it in AGS you would need to learn how to script.

I think they would both be fairly easy to do it in. Since I know AGS better than Flash ActionScript, I would do it in AGS.

A lot of things you are looking for you could even do without scripting (image, animation, etc). It looks like the GUI is where you would need some scripting.

I've never worked with text lists or scrolling through them, however, to the best of my knowledge this is possible. You should check out some save game dialogs, perhaps Proskrito's SCUMM templates.

good luck,
-junc

EDIT: By the way, I messed around with listboxes, this is very easy to do. Just create a ListBox in the GUI editor.

Under the game start function put this:

ListBoxAdd(3,0,"Move"); // 3 is the GUI number
ListBoxAdd(3,0,"Look"); //0 is the object number
ListBoxAdd(3,0,"Investigate");
ListBoxAdd(3,0,"Ask");

Then under GUI script put this:

if (interface == GUI3) {
   if (button == 0) {
      if (ListBoxGetSelected(3,0) == 0) {
         Display("MOVE!"); // or whatever you want to happen
      }
      if (ListBoxGetSelected(3,0) == 1) {
         Display("LOOK!");
      }
      if (ListBoxGetSelected(3,0) == 2) {
         Display("INVESTIGATE!");
      }
      if (ListBoxGetSelected(3,0) == 3) {
         Display("ASK!");
      }
   }
}

I think you can use the ClaimEvent() function to handle this within rooms.

I imagine that is all complex and confusing. Just study the help file, especially the ListBox functions. Experiment and I'm sure you will figure it out.

good luck(again),
-junc

EDIT 3: Here is what I put together:

http://www.juncmodule.com/snatcherGUIsample.zip

EDIT 4: Actually, this is one is better organised and allows you to use arrow keys and the enter key in the Listbox... (template game, open new game, select template, make sure it is in your AGS directory)

http://www.juncmodule.com/SnatcherSample.agt

right click, save target as...you will need the latest beta, sorry.

[Kunio]

Wow, thanks a ton juncmodule! Very helpful stuff, I really appreciate it!

[juncmodule]

Not a problem.

I've never actually used ListBoxes. It was very educational for me too!

later,
-junc