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#Post#: 42--------------------------------------------------
Adventure Architect #1
DIR By: Pam
Date: May 23, 2021, 6:09 am
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Josh Roberts — August 21, 2002
Adventure Gamers
HTML https://adventuregamers.com/about/author/151/P15
Tap, tap. Hmm. Is this thing working? Testing, one, two, three.
Yep, everything seems to be in order. Okay then, welcome to the
first installment of my new online adventure game design
journal. You might be wondering: Who’s writing this, anyway?
Thanks for asking. My name is Josh Roberts, and I’ve been
covering the amateur scene for Adventure Gamers since December
of 2000, reporting on projects like Space Quest: The Lost
Chapter, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis 2, and the
King’s Quest VGA remake. But as of today, I’m a complete rookie
in the area of game design.
It’s probably the industry's best kept secret that many of the
most entertaining new adventure games these days are being
designed not by the major studios, but by amateurs—fans of the
genre working alone or in small teams to do something that we’ve
all wanted to do at one time or another: create our own
adventure game. Beginning this month, I’ll be taking my first
steps down that road as well. I’ll report on everything I learn
along the way, from choosing a game engine and deciding on a
story idea to writing the plot and, eventually, even beta
testing and completion.
I’ve never done anything quite like this before, but I do have
lofty goals. I want to design a professional quality game that
will have everything I look for in a graphic adventure: great
characters, a compelling story, unique puzzles, and—of course—a
good dose of humor. I’ll try to provide insights into the whys
and wherefores of my decisions by discussing my philosophy for
puzzle design and storytelling in puzzle-based environment, as
well as character development, visual presentation, and project
management. And when all is said and done, there’ll be a
completed adventure game at the other end.
So you want to design an adventure game…?
Flash back to a few weeks ago. I’m staring at a blank screen and
feeling a little like the Hero at the beginning of Quest for
Glory. “So you want to be an adventure game designer?” asks a
voice in the back of my head. Its tone suggests that I’m not
particularly likely to succeed. “What now?”
Good question. To begin with, I have to choose a game engine. Do
I try Adventure Game Studio, or AGAST—the Adventure Game
Authoring System? These are the two most popular engines, and
both have faithful users who swear by them. I know that both
engines are powerful enough to run games that I admire, like
Passage: Path of Betrayal with AGAST, and the King’s Quest
remake with Adventure Game Studio.
I download Adventure Game Studio v2.3 first because it seems
more inviting to the newcomer. Clear instruction manual? Check.
Helpful demo? Check. Friendly online community? Check. I don’t
feel too intimidated yet.
I quickly create a test game and borrow a few screens from the
Reality on the Norm shared universe series. Why spend time
designing my own backgrounds until I know if I can even handle
the room editor? In just a few hours, I learn the basics:
· Defining walkable and unwalkable areas for the player.
· Adding walk-to, pick-up, talk-to, and look-at functionality.
· Designating walk-behind areas to produce a 3-D effect on a 2-D
backdrop.
· Placing an item in a specific location, and allowing the
player to pick it up.
· Learning basic scripting to enable the player to walk between
rooms and appear in an specific horizontal-vertical location
upon entry.
It doesn’t take long before I’ve tackled a basic scripting
challenge, received help from the AGS community boards, and most
importantly of all—actually made two working rooms. And it’s
easy. What had previously seemed the exclusive domain of
professional game designers is now within my grasp.
Putting the graphics into “graphic adventure”
I’m not done testing yet, though. Using a few existing game
screens is a good way to start, but it’s only a start. The next
challenge is learning to illustrate my own backgrounds. I look
at some of the words being tossed about in the online forums:
antialiasing, saturation, layers, filtering—these mean nothing
to me.
I need a crash course in computer-generated artwork, so I go
online and search for a helpful tutorial—ideally one geared
toward adventure games. To my surprise, there are dozens. What I
discover in my search for the right tutorial is that there’s no
one way to create background art. Some types are entirely
digital. Others are hand-painted and then scanned into a program
like Adobe PhotoShop. I go with one by AGS user Eric Feurstein
which falls somewhere in between — sketching a scene with a
pencil and paper, scanning it into Photoshop (or, in my case,
JASC Paint Shop Pro), and tracing the rough sketch on a new
layer. Then I use the paintbrush to add colors to the new
picture on different layers. The results aren’t bad for a first
attempt. I play around with a few more techniques and background
scenes—at this point just random settings unrelated to any story
or plot—and I become more confident in my abilities.
With the game engine, basic scripting, and background art under
my belt, I know that I’m capable of creating a functional
adventure game. The technical aspects aren’t as daunting as I
feared, and creating background art is actually fun. I leave
some of the other tutorials until later, confident that I can
learn what I need to when the time comes.
But now comes the hard part. I’ve wanted to make an adventure
game of my own since I first loaded the original King’s Quest
into my Tandy 1000 about 15 years ago. Suddenly I have the
freedom to make any game that I want. I’ve been given the keys
to the adventure game castle. But there are so many choices to
be made before I can start.
Next: From story idea to storyline—choosing an adventure game
setting.
#Post#: 43--------------------------------------------------
Re: Adventure Architect #1
DIR By: Pam
Date: May 23, 2021, 6:13 am
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Choosing an adventure game setting
So there I was, sitting at my desk late at night with the lights
turned low, facing off against the dreaded blank page and
wondering how to begin designing my first adventure game. A mere
sixty seconds after the euphoria of discovering that Adventure
Game Studio gave me the means to create any adventure game I
could possibly imagine, and already I was stumped on the very
first question: What kind of game do I want to make?
I decided to focus on the game’s tone. What mood did I want the
story to evoke? Simple enough. I wanted a story that really said
adventure, something reminiscent of the classic Saturday
afternoon movie serials and '40s-style cliffhangers where danger
lurks around every corner. But I also wanted to capture the
off-beat humor of games like The Secret of Monkey Island and
Grim Fandango. Essentially, I wanted an adventure yarn with a
sense of humor—but not with humor as the main focus.
There’s a brainstorming technique called mind mapping, in which
you write a word or two at the top of the page and then begin
writing everything you associate with that word beneath it. I
decided to try this with a few different settings to see if I
could find the right fit for the kind of game I had in mind. The
idea that intrigued me the most when I'd finished was the Wild
West, partly because I was surprised at how quickly my ideas
flowed for it. There they were, hundreds of words full of
potential scrawled all over a page and a half of loose-leaf
notebook paper: Dusty desert towns. Train robberies. The Gold
Rush. High noon. Six-shooters. Red Rock canyons. Dynamite. Gun
Powder. Gallows. Treasure maps. Indian legends. Spanish gold.
Rattle snakes. Coal mines. Skeletons. Vultures. Jail cells.
Outlaws.
It was a big jumble of ideas, sure, and it needed to be fleshed
out, but I could see a story beginning to take shape. I grabbed
more scrap paper and began to scrawl out a rough story arc. What
if the main character was a down-on-his-luck cowboy with a
penchant for finding trouble? Suppose he stumbles upon a piece
of a tattered old treasure map that he’s not supposed to find.
Suddenly he’s being pursued by people he’s never met—people who
are dangerous, and bent on finding him before he finds whatever
lies at the end of the treasure trail.
OK, good start. What next? I start to think about things that
haven't been explored in the traditional Cowboy and Indian
mythology. What about the thousands of years of civilization
leading up to the American westward expansion? Surely there must
be legends to draw from there. I go online and research the
history of the Anasazi Indians, their colossal cities carved
into the sides of cliffs, the first mention of them to the
Spanish explorers in the 1500s…and the story begins to write
itself for me.
I furiously try to keep up, circling bits and pieces of my
writing here and there, crossing out others when they don’t fit
my needs. Now I’m drawing lines to and from different pages of
my notebook, tying everything together, and writing a secret
history of the Southwest that’s never been imagined before.
Suddenly I have a cowboy story, a treasure hunt, and a sprawling
conspiracy all rolled into one. It’s a strange mix that I never
would have imagined before I'd started. But it feels like
there's a story in there, so I keep working on it.
Days pass. Every night I rush home from work and scrawl down
more ideas, or go jogging at lunchtime and work out the kinks of
something that bugged me the night before. I begin to get a
general feeling for where the game is going. At this point, I
don't know all of the characters, nor do I know exactly how the
story ends. And I have only a vague idea of the treasure that
everyone is pursuing. But I have some starting points.
Logic would suggest that I should continue to hammer out the
plot before going any further, but my mind is spinning in
several different directions, so I decide to proceed on a couple
of fronts. I'll continue to tweak the overall story until I have
a definitive beginning, middle, and end, but at the same time I
want to let my imagination wander, so I'll start to think about
puzzles and game locations. I'll also start to sketch out some
preliminary artwork. By working on several aspects at once, I'm
hoping that my mind will put together ideas in ways that it
would otherwise miss. I also hope that it will keep me from
getting stumped in any one area.
Things I want to consider as I ponder the overall storyline:
What is the hero really like? What’s the right mix of humor and
seriousness? How does the end of the story complete the
character arc as well as the quest? Is the resolution worthy of
the build up? What surprises can I throw into the story to keep
the player on his toes? Even with so many questions, though,
I've never been more excited about a project.
And I'm just getting started.
#Post#: 44--------------------------------------------------
Re: Adventure Architect #1
DIR By: Pam
Date: May 23, 2021, 6:19 am
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Giving the game a beginning, middle, and end
Adventure Game Design Journal—Day 57. Nearly two months of work
has led me to write the following paragraph in my notebook:
Players will take on the role of a down-on-his-luck cowboy as he
stumbles across an old treasure map scrawled with strange
symbols. With nothing to lose, and hounded by the law, he sifts
through ancient Indian legends, tracks down the skeletal remains
of a 300-year-old Franciscan missionary, navigates an
underground river, and attempts to avoid the clutches of a
mysterious secret society bent on finding the treasure before he
does!
I've taken all of my ideas about ancient conspiracies, mythical
treasures, ghost towns, abandoned mines, hidden Indian villages,
and on and on, and condensed them into the above paragraph. Now
I need to turn that paragraph into a story with a definitive
beginning, middle, and end.
For the past few weeks, my days and nights have been filled with
thoughts of hidden treasures and vast conspiracies. I’ve been
working out all of the details of the game’s back-story, and the
final results are this: The treasure is an artifact related to
the mythical Seven Cities of Cibola, which were first revealed
to the Spanish explorers by a Franciscan missionary named Fray
Marcos de Niza in the 16th century. The secret society in
pursuit of Cibola goes by the name of the Brotherhood of the
Hidden Sun, and they have roots stretching as far back as the
Crusaders.
(And as an aside, when I talk about vast conspiracies and
legendary treasures, I subscribe to the school of thought that
says that facts are meaningless—except when they help to
embellish something I’ve already made up, of course. So be
warned: This game will not be historically accurate, unless
you’re inclined to believe the ravings of a 16th century
missionary.)
With a general story in mind, and two months worth of notes in
hand, I look to see if any of the ideas I’ve jotted down in the
past might be a good starting point for the opening scene. A few
words jump out at me: Abandoned gold mine. Ghost town. Treasure
map. I jot these down at the top of a new page and decide to
come back to them later. Next I scratch a few more words on
another page: Strange rock formations. Indian legends.
Franciscan abbey. Bandits. Train robbery. Jail cell. Ghost
stories. Old hermit.
These are the story elements that seem to be the most fleshed
out in my notes. I put the two pages side by side and try to
figure out how all of these locations and ideas might come
together. Could they all be connected somehow? If I could relate
the Indian legends to the treasure, and the treasure to the gold
mine, and the gold mine to the town—then the town itself might
be important to the hunt for Cibola. And on and on it goes, like
a never-ending game of connect the dots.
Into all this, I plunge the cowboy who I’ve chosen to be the
hero of the story. I decide that the game should open with some
kind of discovery that will create a sense of mystery. The
abandoned gold mine seems like the perfect place for it, if I
can just figure out what the cowboy is doing on the outskirts of
a nearly abandoned town swirling with mystery.
I stop and think for a moment about how I might open the game,
and then I write:
'Rattlesnake' Jake Dawson finds himself in the hills above a
dusty desert town called Old Sierra, staring at a cheap-looking
treasure map that he won in a game of poker. The map is clearly
a fake—a copy of a copy, at the very least—but he's got nothing
to lose, so he’s set off to see what lies at the end of the
trail. It's just Jake, his horse, his trusty six-shooter—and
this nagging feeling that someone is following him.
Next I try to put together some of the mishmash of ideas
relating to the town and the treasure:
Old Sierra was a boomtown a few years back, built up during the
Gold Rush and all but deserted in its aftermath. Some folks
still believe that there's gold up in the hills, but most say
the area ran dry a decade ago. There's even an abandoned gold
mine just outside of town, but it's been locked up and avoided
for years—most of the town says it’s haunted.
Of course, everyone's got a story to tell about the weird
happenings around Old Sierra, what with the Indian ghost stories
about the Sacred Valley, and the weird hermit who's lived in the
hills for longer than anyone can remember. And with a gang of
bandits on the outskirts and a crooked sheriff running honest
folks out of town, Old Sierra’s sure seen better days...
Now I'm getting a feel for how a lot of different threads might
relate to each other, and things are starting to make sense.
With a few more ideas floating just out of reach, I begin to
outline how the opening scene might play out.
Jake stands at an overlook near a cave entrance. A trail leads
winds off-screen from the overlook before returning near the
outskirts of town. There's a second cave hole looming high
above, but he can't reach it—yet. And not too far away is the
blocked entrance to the abandoned mine. Does his map lead him to
some kind of secret backdoor into the mine?
From here, I play around with a few ideas for how to draw Jake
into the mystery surrounding the gold mine, the treasure map,
and the Indian legends. What will he find in the cave? Who's
following him? How does it involve the secret society? And
what's the origin of this cheap-looking treasure map he's gotten
a hold of?
I draw a circle in my notebook and write the words "Old Sierra"
inside it. This represents the town. Next to the circle I begin
to draw little boxes representing the locations that Jake can
visit just outside of town: The gold mine, an Indian village
hidden at the bottom of a canyon, a strange rock formation, and
so forth. Now I start to draw other circles in different places
on the page, representing additional locations I've thought of
for later in the game. For each one, I ask myself: Does this
make sense based on what I've established so far? Why would the
main character go here? What might he be looking for? What sort
of obstacles can I put in his way?
One of my goals here is to figure out the linear story
elements—that is, the events that must happen in a certain
order, and the facts that I want to reveal at a particular time
and place in the story—with the many interchangeable sub-quests
that allow flexibility of movement and discovery. I want to take
the player on a story that follows a very specific flow without
ever intruding on the freedom to explore at his own pace. That’s
why I like the idea of tying together a number of distinct
locations at the beginning of the game. It gives the player some
freedom of movement to explore a large area with a collective
back-story that all fits together, and then serves as a
launching pad for what I envision as a more linear sprint toward
the finish line once the treasure hunt leaves the Old Sierra
area.
So now I have the makings of an opening sequence. I repeat the
same process for the endgame—drawing a circle and labeling it
with the name of the game's final location, and I create a
second flowchart that helps me establish the requirements
leading up to this final scene. (Extra credit to anyone who
guessed that yes, the endgame takes place inside the lost city
of Cibola!) I ask myself what the hero has to have experienced
up to this point. Which parts of the story are "extra," and
which parts are critical to ensuring that everything that needs
to happen has actually happened? And then I begin to create a
bit of a logic puzzle of the "If A, then B must be true" variety
to make sure everything fits.
Finally, I take what I know of the beginning and the ending, and
I try to figure out how to connect the two. The middle of the
game is kind of like an accordion that can stretch or shrink
based on the level of my ambitions. My strategy is to take every
single idea I have—every possible location, every character,
every sub-quest and visual gag, every puzzle idea, everything
that absolutely must happen to advance the story—and throw them
up against a wall to see what sticks.
When I've finished outlining the story, I have a design document
that amounts to a macrocosm of the entire game. Before I begin
work on a single animation or line of code, I’ll need to hammer
out the details in microcosm form. But right now, the
macro-design stage is pivotal for making sure that the overall
game is cohesive and well paced.
And so, slowly but surely, everything seems to be coming
together.
#Post#: 45--------------------------------------------------
Re: Adventure Architect #1
DIR By: Pam
Date: May 23, 2021, 6:27 am
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The pre-production phase—puzzles, locations, and concept art
A few months ago, I set out to create an adventure game from the
ground up with three important features: an engrossing
storyline, a good dose of humor, and the right mix of
challenging but enjoyable puzzles. I wanted to make a game that
weighed in heavily on the fun factor scale, and also had the
professional-quality production values to back it up. I knew it
would be fun, and I knew it would be a lot of work. What I
didn't know was just how much fun—or how much work—that would
be.
But now here I am, a few months in and finally I'm ready to
begin adding new layers to the story outline. This is where the
game's production paths start to diverge. With the basic
storyline and backstory firmly in hand, I can start to work on
the "details phase" in which I hammer out everything there is to
know about each game location, each character relationship, each
puzzle—and how they all fit together. And I can also begin
serious work on the visual design phase, which involves
everything from animating character sprites to drawing and
coloring each room background.
But before I branch off in those directions, I'd like to take a
step back and bring into focus the visual aspects of the
pre-production phase. As I was working on the storyline, I also
spent some time trying to visualize the different ideas that
came from those brainstorming sessions. This was helpful because
it got me thinking visually—something very important in a
graphic adventure—and it also became a two-way street where
ideas from the storyline were influencing the puzzles, and ideas
from the puzzles began to cry out for inclusion in the
storyline. (Case in point, as I'll illustrate later, is a desert
location called Vulture Rock.)
So here, then, is a transcript of what I jotted down in my
design notebook, followed by a glimpse into the pre-production
visuals that sprang from it.
In a dusty red rock desert, you come across a rock formation
protruding into the sky like a tall, thin cone, with a
horizontal "beak-like" outcropping at the very tip. This is
Vulture Rock, and it's dotted with nests along the surface.
There also appears to be a long and very precarious-looking
trail that winds back and forth (and on off the screen, perhaps)
up to the top. At the very tip, where the "beak" juts out,
there's a nest all the way at the end. Walking to it would be
fatal, though, because it would snap and fall under your weight.
This is unfortunate because, of course, you need to retrieve
something from the nest.
The idea for Vulture Rock came to me after I wrote the words
"strange rock formation" in one of my early brainstorming
sessions. It stuck with me because I thought that, visually, it
would be a pretty cool place for the hero to have to visit and
navigate, and it seemed to make sense in a desert context. It's
also full of puzzle possibilities.
Notice, though, that at this point all I've done is suggest an
obstacle—you need to get something in the nest, which is
dangerously out of reach—but I didn't pose any solutions. That's
become one of my key design strategies. This phase of the game
development is about creating obstacles for the hero; in the
next phase I'll start to fill in the solutions. I have a few
ideas about how to solve the puzzle, but I try to keep those
thoughts separate until I've established every in-game location
and obstacle throughout the game, or at least throughout a
particular game area.
Then I'll begin to look at different ways to relate locations
and items to each other, and in turn to relate multiple layers
of different puzzles to each other, so that I can increase or
decrease the level of complexity for each puzzle based on the
needs to the story at that particular point. I don't want to
rely on inventory-based puzzles at every turn, and this seems to
be a good way of keeping a number of possibilities on the table.
On to the next conceptual element: a Wild West jail cell that
also stems from a few words I'd jotted down earlier. In fact,
initially I'd even thought about starting the game with the hero
having to escape from a jail cell, but in the end I couldn't
make it work in the context of the story. Instead I filed the
idea away, and found a natural place for it later in the game
after I'd fleshed out the who, what, and where surrounding the
treasure's backstory.
You're in a typical Old West jail cell in a typical Old West
town. Unfortunately, you get to see the cell from the inside.
There's a barred window set into the crumbling side wall of the
cell overlooking a back alley, and beneath the window lies a
slumped-over skeleton with one arm clearly outstretched and
visible. The rest of the sheriff's office is visible on the
other side of the bars, and through them you can see a desk,
bookshelves, a bottle of moonshine, and a longhorn skull strung
up on the wall. A deputy sheriff paces back and forth across the
room nervously, glaring at you as he moves.
Here I didn't focus as much on the problem because it's
self-evident: the hero is locked up and needs to find a way to
escape. I've always liked these kinds of closed room puzzles
because it's clear that the game is going to supply you with
everything you need to piece together an escape—if you can
figure out what you're supposed to do. I envision this as a
complex (but fairly intuitive) puzzle that will force the player
to give it serious consideration before completing it.
That's all I've got for this time. Next month, I'll move away
from this preliminary concept work and into the early phases of
actual game production.
#Post#: 46--------------------------------------------------
Re: Adventure Architect #1
DIR By: Pam
Date: May 23, 2021, 6:36 am
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Forming a design team, and storyboarding the game one location
at a time
It turns out I'm not a very good listener. Here I am, five or
six months into my first adventure game design project, and I've
ignored the most frequently repeated words of advice for any
first-time adventure game designer—I didn't "start small." Then
again, I knew before I'd even decided on a story or setting that
I'd probably end up ignoring that mantra anyway.
I wanted my game to be different than most other amateur
efforts. Thanks to Adventure Game Studio and a few years worth
of computer programming classes in high school and college, the
most difficult technical obstacles were already out of the way
before I started. But I knew from the very beginning, even as I
worked alone on the game's storyline, that making a professional
quality game would take more than just myself, no matter how
committed I might be.
Recruiting a team is a tricky thing for a first-time game
designer, though. The amateur gaming community is full of people
who formed a design team for a game that wasn't far beyond the
"cool idea" phase. I've seen it happen so many times that I know
the pattern by heart. Someone posts a message online looking to
form a team to work on an "awesome" game idea. Volunteers flock
to the project, only to discover that the game really is just an
idea. The team gets bogged down sorting out the details of the
storyline, or—worse yet—produces a lot of artwork and animation
that then has to be thrown away because the storyline is
completely rewritten two months later. The next thing you know,
team members start to disappear, and the project slowly fades
away.
That's not what I have in mind for my game, though. Some readers
have asked why I spent month after month of pre-production time
working on the storyline and characters, detailing every
possible action and reaction I could imagine. The answer? To
make sure that when the time came to form a team, I'd be ready
to hit the ground running. And, after more work than anyone
should ever have to do without getting paid, the moment finally
arrived.
Working from a project management model that I learned during my
time in the editorial department at Marvel Comics, I decided to
divide the production of the game's visual elements into four
positions: layouts, pencils, color separations, and animation.
With the story outline and in-game locations already established
in my design dossier, I began work on the layouts myself. This
position is a natural fit for me as the game's creator, because
it allows me to apply my creative vision to each game location,
keeping in mind its relationship to individual puzzles and the
wider game itself. I chose to work in a mostly linear fashion,
breaking the game into four acts and determining which locations
would be necessary for each act.
I began with act one, which is essentially a brief prelude that
sets the scene for acts two and three (the heart of the story)
and act four (the endgame). As I discussed in the third
installment of this column, the game opens at a crossroads in
the hills above the town of Old Sierra. I knew that there would
be an abandoned gold mine nearby, and that the hero would need
to find a way to sneak in, discover the mine's secrets, and then
escape. Working from this basic premise, and bearing in mind
that the goal of the opening act is to lay the groundwork for
everything that will happen in acts two, three, and four, I
decided to set the puzzle difficulty at "low" to allow for
maximum character discovery and interaction with the game
environment.
Next I began to sketch out the first few screens in a continuous
background shot to get a feel for their relationship to each
other. One of the benefits of having planned much of the game in
advance by this point is that I could also include visual
elements like Vulture Rock in the background scenery, to give
the game a visual consistency that wouldn't have been possible
with a haphazard approach. At the same time, I decided upon the
first puzzle—the hero needs to reach a back entrance into the
mine that is, unfortunately, out of his reach—and its solution:
He builds a ladder with the available materials scattered around
the area. This puzzle meant that I needed to populate the area
with everything the hero would need to reach the solution.
I suppose the easiest solution would have been to actually
provide a removable ladder on one of the screens, but I didn't
want to make it that easy. I also wanted to force the hero to
interact with a character or two before entering the mine, just
to help establish the backstory involving the town of Old Sierra
and the hero's specific quest. To do that, and to force
exploration of the game environment, I chose to spread out the
required puzzle elements across several screens. This is a much
more linear puzzle-and-location formula than I'll use for the
rest of the game, particularly for the two middle acts, but it
seemed to be a natural approach for the first location, which I
knew would be limited to just five or six screens.
With the first puzzle and its solution established, and with a
solid idea now of how to approach additional areas and puzzles,
I was able to easily sketch out the first five game screens. And
at this point, I was also ready to bring on another artist to
turn the rough layout sketches into polished pencil artwork. I
pitched the project to a local artist named Frankie Washington,
and soon was able to bring him on board as a background artist.
Frankie and I also worked together on designing the principal
characters in the game—a crucial step in determining the overall
look of the game itself.
After we completed the first screen, I posted a scaled down
version of the image online at the Adventure Game Studio
Critics' Lounge. There I stumbled upon my first real stroke of
luck. A few of the board's visitors took it upon themselves to
apply different coloring techniques on top of the pencil work,
and I was more than a little impressed with the results. After a
day or two of consideration, I contacted one of the artists—a
college computer science student by the name of Dan Lee—and
discussed my project in greater detail with him. Soon, he became
the third member of the design team.
That was about four weeks ago. Today, we're finishing up the
color work on the area outside of the abandoned gold mine
(consisting of five screens and one puzzle), finalizing the
pencil work for the interior of the mine (eight screens and six
small puzzles), and beginning the layouts and puzzle design for
the next portion of the game (acts two and three).
#Post#: 47--------------------------------------------------
Re: Adventure Architect #1
DIR By: Pam
Date: May 23, 2021, 8:08 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Contributors Wanted
If you've read my previous columns—and judging from the e-mails
I've been getting since last time, at least some of you think I
should be writing these little missives a bit faster than I have
been—you're probably aware that I'm trying to make my first
foray into adventure game design a memorable one.
It's a game that's being created under the banner of my very own
not-for-profit creative outlet, Chapter 11 Studios. And, as of
this column, I'm happy to announce that it also finally,
officially, has a working title! Rise of the Hidden Sun: A
"Rattlesnake" Jake Dawson Adventure is set to be the first game
released by Chapter 11, though certainly not the last. In fact,
I'm a little hesitant to even mention it, but currently Rise of
the Hidden Sun is slated to be just the first in a series of
Jake Dawson adventures, the second of which will be the equally
over-the-top Curse of the Hidden Sun. How's that for getting in
way over my head—err, I mean—for thinking ahead?
I'm now several months into the production of the first Jake
Dawson adventure, and as I mentioned last time, I've quietly
begun to recruit some truly talented amateur artists to join
efforts with me on the project. And now that I've completed the
game's critical early design phases, and work on the game itself
has begun, I'm ready to assemble the rest of the team.
On a general adventure game design note, I think describing open
positions will be helpful in demonstrating my particular
approach to dividing the labor among team members. It's also a
shameless way for me to get the word out there as well. Note
that each position will work with the lead designer—me—whose
responsibility will be to keep everything running on schedule,
and to ensure that there's internal consistency and quality
within each area. I'm currently looking to fill the following
positions.
Pencil Artist
Similar to pencil work on a comic book or graphic novel, the
background pencils in Rise of the Hidden Sun are the visual
backbone of the entire game. The pencil artist will work in
conjunction with Chapter 11's other pencilist, Frankie
Washington, and myself as the lead designer, in determining each
screen's look and feel. He or she will be responsible for
creating clean background artwork based on existing concept
sketches and design notes, and must be able to emulate the
project's previously established artistic style. Access to a
scanner, familiarity with PhotoShop or a similar program, and a
minimum commitment of two to four background screens per month
are required.
Colorist
If the pencilist provides the game's skeleton, the colorist
gives it flesh and blood. This position is responsible for
digitally coloring the finished pencils, and will work in
conjunction with Chapter 11's other colorist, Dan Lee, in
determining each screen's final colored appearance. Proficiency
with PhotoShop or a similar program is a must, as is the ability
to emulate the project's previously established artistic style.
A commitment of two to four background screens per month is
required. Finished game screens will be 640x480 resolution at
256 colors.
Animator
The animator will create character animations to match
previously created character sketches, and will be required to
emulate the project's established artistic style for all
animations. There will also be the opportunity to design
entirely new characters. This position requires previous
experience working with Adventure Game Studio or another game
design program. (Either that or you've got to be a very quick
learner.)
Musician
This position is responsible for composing the game's main
musical theme, as well as sound effects to accompany actions
throughout the game. As this game is a comedy-adventure Western,
familiarity with similar music themes is a must. This position
requires previous experience working with Adventure Game Studio
or another game design program.
Web Designer
What's a game studio without a flashy website? The Web designer
will work with me to redesign the Chapter 11 Studios website, as
well as to create new Web graphics and code the site in HTML.
This position is not responsible for writing any copy, however.
(That'll still be my job.)
There's one thing I ask of everyone who joins the team, which is
that each person treats it as a serious commitment. This is the
single biggest problem that I've noticed in other amateur game
design projects—people start with a great deal of excitement,
then lose enthusiasm and slowly fade away.
I'm taking a different approach. Just do a little work from week
to week, and slowly but surely, the project will come along.
Clearly real life can interfere now and then, but as long as I
can count on good communication and a good-faith effort, there
will never be a problem. One other requirement is that all team
members must be at least 18 years old.
If you'd like to apply for a position, send me an e-mail.
Describe your qualifications, including any previous adventure
game work, and include your date of birth. Please don't send any
attachments in your first e-mail, as these will be deleted
immediately.
#Post#: 48--------------------------------------------------
Re: Adventure Architect #1
DIR By: Pam
Date: May 23, 2021, 8:11 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Finding the balance—life, work, entertainment, and game design
It seems like years ago, but I’ve only been working on my
adventure game for about seven or eight months now. Since August
of 2002, when this whole thing started, it’s grown in scale and
scope to encompass a website, a series of (sometimes) monthly
columns, and a design team working to make the idea of
‘Rattlesnake’ Jake Dawson and Rise of the Hidden Sun a reality.
And so, perhaps not surprisingly, we’re not even close to
finishing it yet.
Considering how much time, effort, and caffeine has already gone
into the project, though, I’ve heard from at least a few people
who think we should be done by now. But amateur game design is a
hobby for me, and I have a personal life—or something that
occasionally resembles one—that needs my attention, too. It took
me dozens of abandoned projects before I realized the guiding
principle that makes this game different than anything else I’ve
ever started: It pays to goof off every now and then.
Sure, I give myself deadlines and keep to a self-imposed
production schedule, but there’s also something to be said for
the magic of plopping down in front of the TV and leaving the
world of concept sketches, walk cycles, and puzzle design behind
for a few hours. It’s about balance. Game design, like any long
creative process, has its ups and downs. It has bursts of
creative energy when everything seems to come easy, and it has
days when doing something else—doing anything else—is more
appealing.
Sometimes it’s okay to give in. The best way to keep fresh is to
make time for other hobbies as well. I set aside a few days
every week when I won’t even think about my game. The reverse of
that, obviously, is that I also make sure to plan for a few
nights after work every week when I will dig into the project.
By finding that balance, it’s easier to keep a schedule and
avoid a creative burnout. And while the process is slower than
if I spent every waking hour outside of my day job working on
the adventures of Jake Dawson, it’s also more likely to get
finished this way.
I’ve also found that my work environment affects my
productivity. When I try to work at my apartment, even when I’m
by myself, there are just too many distractions for my attention
span-challenged brain to avoid. So instead I take my laptop to a
local café a few nights a week and work on my game from there.
I’m still amazed at how much more I can accomplish simply by
getting out and making a night of it. It’s more fun, too, since
I don’t feel like I’m working in complete isolation, either.
As the project coordinator, I’ve assigned myself
responsibilities ranging from screen-by-screen conceptual
layouts to managing the sound effects and music to writing every
line of dialogue. The upside of becoming a game design
jack-of-all-trades is that there’s never an end to the work that
needs to be done. And since I’m running the project on my own
schedule, I can usually switch between the different creative
modes whenever I begin to get worn out by any particular part of
the design process. If the dialogue for a particular
conversation between Jake and another character just isn’t
coming naturally to me, I can switch to concept art or puzzle
design. Or, as the case may be every now and then, I can put
aside a few hours and write this column.
The flexibility means that there’s always something fresh to
work on. Since I find that the easiest work—in terms of my
creative impulses—is the concept art, I usually start by
sketching out whichever section of the game that I plan to work
on that night, and seeing where my sketches take me. Often it
paves the way for new puzzles or story elements that I hadn’t
fully worked out beforehand.
And speaking of puzzle design, that leads me to the topic for
next time: the process of integrating puzzles within a story.
I’ve spent my last two columns discussing things that are
external to the game itself, but starting next time I’ll be
digging back into the actual design process and focusing on my
strategy for creating puzzles that work within the story rather
than in spite of it.
#Post#: 49--------------------------------------------------
Re: Adventure Architect #1
DIR By: Pam
Date: May 23, 2021, 8:13 am
---------------------------------------------------------
The art of puzzle design
Okay, yes, I’ll admit it. This column is ridiculously late. So
late, in fact, that some of you may have wondered if I’d dropped
off the face of the planet altogether. And the truth is, I
almost did—I set off on a summer-long backpacking adventure
across Europe, which was followed by some major changes at home
once I got back, and capped off by the Red Sox’s devastating
loss to the Yankees a few months later. (I’m a Boston guy. The
rest of you wouldn’t understand, but trust me, the only thing
worse than the Red Sox losing in October is the Red Sox losing
to the Yankees in October!)
Anyway, the end result was that Adventure Architect fell to the
bottom of my priority list for a while. The good news in all
this? Although this design journal was silent, work on the game
itself continued at a satisfying clip. We’re putting the
finishing touches on several absolutely gorgeous new game
screens from Act IV, finished plotting a gigantic portion of
Acts II and III, and oh yes, completely redesigned our website
to highlight some of the most exciting elements of ‘Rattlesnake’
Jake Dawson’s first adventure. So, we’ve been pretty busy.
And now, on to this month’s topic—puzzle design. Although I
firmly believe that the story is the most important element of
any adventure game, puzzles are a close second. If you make them
too hard or too obscure, it can ruin the entire game. Make them
too easy and the game is over in a few hours. But when done
right, the best puzzles become a seamless part of the story, and
as a player you don’t so much notice them as puzzles as you do
experience them as part of the natural flow of the narrative.
As I mentioned in an earlier column, I wanted to start my game
off with a series of easy puzzles that helped the player get
comfortable with the game and the story while also building a
little sense of accomplishment. I think that starting that way
also helps players become absorbed in the story in a way that
throwing a brain-twister at them too early wouldn’t allow. Once
they get comfortable, that’s when you start to turn up the heat
a little and make them work to get past each new obstacle.
When I sat down to start literally devising ways to keep Jake
from accomplishing his quest (I had a bad month of September,
and I got through it by thinking of ways to make Jake's life
miserable), I used three basic steps for each puzzle or series
of puzzles, based on my own observations of what works—and what
doesn’t work—in the games I’ve played over the years.
Step 1: Start with a story element
In the final act of Rise of the Hidden Sun, Jake finds himself
in the middle of the Arizona desert, standing before a strange
rock formation that looks suspiciously like a sand-swept desert
version of Stonehenge. The idea came to me about a year ago
when, as I researched the game environment, I noticed that the
American Southwest tends to produce lots of very strange rock
formations. It made me wonder what I might be able to do with
that in my game.
As I developed the story, I came to the conclusion that the
Stonehenge formation would make a great entry point to Jake’s
final destination: the underground city of Cíbola. If the
formation had fallen into disrepair due to the disappearance of
Cibola’s ancestral guardians, I could build a puzzle around
having to restore the formation to its original state, which
might in turn create an opening into the caverns below.
Step 2: Set a goal and create some obstacles
Because I tend to think visually when I’m designing a new game
environment, I began to sketch out possible layouts for the
scene. In one sketch, part of the Stonehenge formation had
collapsed in on itself and needed to be repaired. I asked myself
questions after each version of the scene: Why would Jake need
to fix the formation? How would he—and the player—know what he
needed to do, and how to do it?
I did a few more sketches and inserted a stone pinnacle in the
middle of the formation, along with a hint of an opening that
revealed the caverns below. I was beginning to visualize a
connection between the stone circle above and the caverns below.
After some more experimentation, I ended up designing a
two-tiered puzzle in which Jake’s actions above ground would
affect the environment underground.
I decided to allow Jake to have immediate access to the caverns
below, which would enable him to see his goal (the entrance to
the underground city) and the obstacle (something about the
strange formation needed to be changed in order to open the
entrance below).
Step 3: Work backwards to build the puzzle
Now that I knew what stood in Jake’s way, I had to figure out
how he’d solve the problem. After pulling out most of my hair
trying to figure out what would be a fair way of blocking Jake’s
path (I’m still young enough that most of the hair grows back,
thankfully), I came up with what I thought was a fairly complex
and rewarding puzzle that built off of a number of things that
the player would have learned in earlier parts of the game. (By
remembering things that Jake had discovered about the ancient
society that built the underground city, for example.)
The puzzle would also involve some trial and error, some
back-and-forth between different screens above- and belowground,
and the use of an ordinary inventory item in an unusual way. I
decided, for example, that Jake would need some sort of silver
reflective material to mimic an element that was already part of
the Stonehenge environment, so I went back into the design
document and added a silver serving platter as an object that
Jake would need to acquire at an earlier point in the game—in
this case, as part of Act III, which involves a train robbery.
(This is yet another reason to plot out the entire game before
you start coding or illustrating.)
Finally, the puzzle would require the player to do things in a
certain order, so in designing it I knew that I needed to leave
enough hints as to what Jake would need to accomplish, and also
allow for trial and error to let the player do things in the
wrong order while allowing him to correct the mistake at any
time.
Types of puzzles
This is just one example of puzzle building within the context
of the story. Most puzzles don’t involve so many working parts,
and there are many different types of puzzles that can be used
to keep the story moving while still presenting obstacles along
the way. The key is variety. Too many inventory or dialogue
puzzles are just downright boring, so in my case I’ve tried to
think of different ways to keep things interesting.
In the next column—and by that I mean, hopefully, next
month—I’ll talk about beginning the actual production of the
game: Taking all of the various design elements and plugging
them into the game engine to build a functioning game
environment.
#Post#: 50--------------------------------------------------
Re: Adventure Architect #1
DIR By: Pam
Date: May 23, 2021, 8:16 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Building a working adventure game world
(Or, everything goes wrong, but I charge ahead anyway)
You know that saying about the best-laid plans of mice and men?
Like, how they often go awry? Well, I would hereby like to
officially nominate amateur adventure game designers in general,
and myself in particular, to our rightful spot next to mice and
men in that vast pantheon of those whose plans don't always work
out according to, um, plan.
So, it turns out I've made a few missteps as project coordinator
for this, my first foray into adventure game design. Not fatal
mistakes. Not project-killing flaws, by any means. But the
boneheaded, what-the-heck-was-I-thinking (or wasn't I
thinking?!) variety. And those oversights only became evident to
me after I started to plug all of the game's various design
elements--backgrounds, objects, animations, music, sound
effects, et cetera--into the Adventure Game Studio engine to try
building a functioning game environment.
You see, with the story and plot now complete, the puzzles for
Acts I and II finished, background work and layouts underway for
all four acts, and a top-notch animator finally on board, it was
time. Time to test out the game engine. Time to stretch its legs
a bit. Time to really get down to business.
And then all hell broke loose.
Because, it turns out, I'm an idiot. I waited too long to firm
up the screen size and corresponding character sprite size, and
having never made a game before, I hadn't even considered the
issue of exact proportions. Certainly I knew that the character
sprites had to be relatively proportional to other objects on
the screen, but I somehow skipped the step where I actually
measured in pixels what those proportions would be. I was, in
retrospect, just relying on the game engine's ability to scale
characters as a catch-all for anything that I couldn't simply
eyeball at the right proportion.
Bad idea. The kind of idea that probably gets professional game
producers fired, in fact. Fortunately, I work for free, and I
hired myself, so that's at least one disaster averted.
As you'll see below, the very first screen of Act I--which has
been my pride, joy, and inspiration for lo these many
months--has two problems that I didn't notice when we turned our
layouts into the finished screen that I planned to use in the
game. First, the signpost in the middle of the path is far too
large. Monstrously so, in fact, when compared to a reasonably
sized character sprite. And second, that same signpost in the
middle of the path is literally in the middle of the path! Duh,
Josh. This makes maneuvering around it infinitely more difficult
than necessary.
Figure 1: Jake discovers he's a small man in a very big world.
I ran into similar problems on other screens as well. In one,
for example, the character sprite for Jake is required to walk
across a railroad bridge looming over a large canyon.
Unfortunately, the gaps between the boards were so wide that
Jake appeared to "float" over the empty space when, technically,
he should have ended up falling tragically to his death. Another
screen found him completing a puzzle that required him to build
a ladder to reach a ledge that, all things being equal, was
pretty much about shoulder high.
In all, these proportion issues affected about 10 screens. Of
those 10, half were easily fixed with PaintShop, a few are
currently undergoing the kind of massive restoration usually
reserved for fading Renaissance paintings, and two are just
plain unsalvageable. It could have been a lot worse, though. I
was able to immediately put the brakes on all background screen
production, work with the artists to get the correct the
proportions on each layout sketch, and resume progress without
missing a beat.
Figure 2: Gone, but not forgotten. We'll add a more
reasonably-sized signpost as an object before this screen is
finished.
So what did I learn? Well, for one thing, I should have decided
on the screen resolution and character sprite size beforehand.
In fact, I probably should have created a sprite or two at the
very beginning of the process in order to test each screen
before moving it into final production. I also discovered that I
have a tendency to squeeze too many things into each screen. If
I'd kept those screens as I had initially conceived them, I
probably would have had to scale down the character sprite in
order to squeeze him into the scene.
Fortunately, I caught my mistake before the project moved too
much further along. The end result, then, was a brief moment of
panic followed by a comprehensive review and assessment of every
game asset. Basically, a speed bump instead of a train wreck.
And production continues.
#Post#: 51--------------------------------------------------
Re: Adventure Architect #1
DIR By: Pam
Date: May 23, 2021, 8:20 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Of cliffhangers and dangling plot lines...
Those of you who are astute observers or faithful readers of
this column will recall that this installment was initially
supposed to focus on character creation and design. I had
labeled last month's "coming soon" teaser something along the
lines of "Anatomy of a hero." (And thanks to all those who
e-mailed requesting pictures of that anatomy. Real funny,
people.)
Anyway, if you're still paying attention, you'll notice that
this installment is not, in fact, entitled "Anatomy of a hero."
For that, you'll need to wait another month or two while we do a
little more visual tweaking to turn Jake Dawson into the
reluctant, rough-around-the-edges hero he's supposed to be.
Instead, I'll use this installment to fill you in on a couple of
huge developments in the design process since the last time I
wrote.
First, in the tradition of the Saturday afternoon cliffhangers
of yesteryear, I've decided to release the game in four
connected chapters (or episodes) rather than waiting until the
entire game is finished to unveil the story. This required a
little bit of rewriting (or, to be more precise, expanding) of
the first episode to bring the length of the first chapter more
into line with the others. But now that that's done, each of the
episodes ends on a cliffhanger that leads directly into the next
installment.
And, when all four chapters are completed, I'll release a
compiled version of the entire game as well, with (possibly)
some special features like a voice pack, behind-the-scenes
concept art, and maybe even a sneak peak at the next big project
on the way. (And if you're wondering what that is, check past
installments of this very column.)
HTML https://cdn.nivoli.com/adventuregamers/images/articles/17733/2013__large.jpg
(Above: a preview sketch of what you--and Jake--can expect to
find in episode one.)
I think the benefits of releasing the game in episodic form are
evident, but if not, here are a few that come to mind. First,
we'll get the game out to players sooner rather than later,
rewarding both those who have been looking forward to playing it
and those of us who have been toiling away for what seems likes
ages making it. (And, bonus, instead of getting a playable demo,
you get a fully working first chapter!) Second, each episode
will build excitement for the next. Third, we'll hopefully get
another big promotional push when we release the entire game in
compiled form on CD. And last but not least, it allows me as
project manager to divide the game into smaller portions and set
up a reasonable production schedule in which everyone involved
can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
So, right now a lot of effort is going directly into finishing
up and expanding the first episode. But that doesn't mean that
we won't be working on the rest of the game at the same time. I
am dividing the work on each episode into different teams,
making sure that when episode one is being worked on and
completed, episodes two, three, and four are already in
development as well.
It roughly breaks down like this: The bulk of animation, sound
effects, and scripting work will be going into episode one,
while the bulk of music, pencil art, and coloring will be going
into episodes two and three. Episode four, while entirely
plotted, has yet to be developed into a functioning game
environment, so I am putting my time and energy on that front
into creating concept art that will eventually form the basis of
the background screens.
Meanwhile, you may recall that I promised at the start of this
column to fill you in a couple of huge developments. What's the
second? This time, it's some team news. I'm thrilled to report
that Dan Lee, whose amazing coloring work you've all oohed and
ahhed at in the past, is stepping up to become the project's
lead animator for episode one. This is especially great for two
reasons--not only has Dan been part of the project since nearly
the very beginning, but he also designed many of the characters
himself.
Dan is also developing his own custom sprite animating software
to speed up the process. Expect more on this, and animation in
general, in future installments.
Anyway, that's all for this month. Next time, I'll write about
how I divide and keep track of the technical and
not-so-technical work needed for each episode.
*****************************************************
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