Making a 2D point and click adventure in MMF2

[TheSynapse]

Hi there,

I've always wanted to make a 2D point and click graphic adventure (e.g. Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Simon the Sorceror). I've looked at Adventure Game Studio and it seems really cool, but there's two things that stop me using it:

1) I'm doing a MA in Video Games Design (in the UK) and we have to use MMF2 for our work, so I'm learning this package already and would rather not have to spend time learning another package (even if AGS automates and simplifies alot of stuff for that kind of game),

2) I'd like to put games up on web and maybe iOS at a later date (or at least have the option). Of course the swf and iOS exporter speak to my concerns here! :-)

I've combed the forums for mentions of making graphic adventures and found very little. Is there any work already done on this kind of problem/game that I've missed? I saw a post about 2 years ago about dialogue options but that seems to be it.

Has anyone got any advice on how I would go about embarking on such a project, or what it would involve? Would it be ultra-complicated, or might it be more straight-forward than I'm thinking? I'm really hoping I can stay within MMF2 and leverage it's power.

Many thanks for your help.

[DavidN]

It's definitely possible to do (I recall even an early Klik and Play game managing it, called 'Freddie Trims a Tree'), though I don't know of any specific tutorials for doing them. They're composed of a lot of different parts, creating a complicated project when they're all put together - pathfinding for basic point and click movement, the verb interface, keeping track of inventory and where objects are, dialogue, and so on. In MMF2 you don't have the advantage of frameworks for those being done for you, although in the end you may find the result more flexible as it's all your own game logic. The best I can offer is to start with something very small, getting each of these areas working in turn, and then to try and create a template or engine out of that that you can use for a larger game.

I'd be very interested to know about the work done with MMF2 on the game design course, by the way I'm glad to hear of it being used.

[Fanotherpg]

Just out of curiosity: On what University you are doing that MA?
Also Jason Darby is finishing book on that manner. And I suppose to give talk last weekend on that field.

There were several games on The Daily Click, as well as tutorials but most of them is not available now.

[nivram]

There are some open source examples on my website.

Marv

[TheSynapse]

Aha! Fanotherpg! Yes I saw your video - I was at AdventureX last weekend! Very interesting idea of yours - the use of text for objects. I'll be interested to see how that pans out.

I'd be interested to see what Jason Darby is up to with that book then. Like I said AGS is great, but I'd like to have more options for publishing. MMF seems to be going from strength to strength at the moment (of course, it IS commercial rather than free/open-source).

As for the Uni - Brunel University.

[TheSynapse]

There are some open source examples on my website.

Marv

Cheers for that, will go and investigate...

[dascribe]

http://ambrosine.com/
I think this website has some graphic adventure games.
It is a very old site and I think it was on that site that I found Clickteam.

So it is and has been quite doable for quite some time.

[TheSynapse]

Hi dascribe.

Many thanks for your link. Just seen it. Lists lots of resources, but I'm not sure how many, if any adventure games there are being made with MMF2.

One that I do know of however is this Star Wars fan-made game - http://soteadv.blogspot.com/

Cheers for your help. I'm just trying to find out as much as possible before I properly embark upon a project, apart from the fact that I'd obviously like to know what I'm getting myself into!

[gastrop0d]

I have very fond memories of That Night Before series, made in either TGF or MMF, can't remember.

Link: http://create-games.com/download.asp?id=2033

Some ideas:
- Use Advanced Path Movement object for character navigation of environment
- Store object names inside one of their alterable strings, the names of objects that that object can be used on in another, and verbs/actions that must be used to trigger the action in another string, the names of scripts to run when object is used
- You can make a very basic scripting system that uses object names, basic commands (such as "spawn", "move", "destroy"), references to dialog entries in a dialog database (even just a simple string object might serve this function) to run all your sequences. An example might be a string object whose paragraphs are written thus:
1 - move, player, 150, 650, 2
2 - speak, player, 5, 3
3 - speak, npc3, 6, 4
4 - move, npc3, 900, 650, end

This is an example of a script that moves the player to position (150, 650), has them speak dialog entry 5, have some npc speak dialog entry 6, then have the npc walk off the screen.

That's just some very basic ideas of where I would start if I were contemplating a project like this.

[dascribe]

http://ambrosine.com/games.html
This person has many resources listed, but he/she says on the site that he/she used Clickteam products to build his/her games.

"All of Amby's games created using Klik & Play, Click & Create, and/or Multimedia Fusion and are © Ambrosine 1996-2005. You may download and play them as you like, but they remain the property of Ambrosine. Any retransmission must include all files contained in the zip file."

The link I've posted goes directly to the point and click adventure games this person made.