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Can anybody suggest a 2D adventure game engine?
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TOPIC: Can anybody suggest a 2D adventure game engine?

Can anybody suggest a 2D adventure game engine? 6 years, 11 months ago #4334

I'm thinking about developing a game. While I can sorta code, that was many years ago and I've since re-trained. While I'm happy using pseudocode as the logic (or code within a nice, clean framework), I don't wanna spend a lot of time ripping my hair out trying to debug the actual engine itself (or code in incomplete functionailty from scratch).

Questions:
- Can anybody recommend a good engine that they've used? (Considerations include things like portability, simplicity...etc)
- Two minds... should it be a King's Quest style game or an AMOT style game? I like both styles and am hoping the story will be the big feature.
- Which engine is the most portable?

Re: Can anybody suggest a 2D adventure game engine? 6 years, 11 months ago #4335

My first epic adventure game I wrote was in HyperCard. Maybe a stack-based descendant would do the job well?


The obvious choice here would be livecode.com (github.com/livecode/livecode) which is open source, has a lineage that goes right back to HyperCard, and deploys on iOS, Android, OS X, WIndows and Linux.

Re: Can anybody suggest a 2D adventure game engine? 6 years, 10 months ago #4336

_Em wrote:
My first epic adventure game I wrote was in HyperCard. Maybe a stack-based descendant would do the job well?


The obvious choice here would be livecode.com (github.com/livecode/livecode) which is open source, has a lineage that goes right back to HyperCard, and deploys on iOS, Android, OS X, WIndows and Linux.


Very cool... thanks for the suggestion! The $999/year is quite expensive for my needs. However, I will investigate the lead further (can I use it for free without support if I just download the github source?)

Definitely like the hypercard style. Time to explore and experiment

Edit: aaaah cool, they have the community edition, which allows me to make an open source version. Maybe worth me doing this while I learn (and to push out a preview). From there I can decide whether I could at least recoup some of the $999 by releasing it for iOS.
Last Edit: 6 years, 10 months ago by jetboy.

Re: Can anybody suggest a 2D adventure game engine? 6 years, 9 months ago #4337

You could always make it a networked freemium game, where the core is open sourced, and you spin up AWS to host an object trading component that is separate; people can pay for you to develop new objects for the game, or new areas. Patreon might also be an option.

First you'd need to develop the core and demonstrate that it's workable though. Then have people pay into a subscription service for developing side quests, etc. or into buying useful or vanity objects. Make it cheap enough that others could do it themselves, but it wouldn't be worth their time, and make up for that on volume.

Re: Can anybody suggest a 2D adventure game engine? 6 years, 7 months ago #4345

Any artists interested in helping with the project? Black and white phone-sized backrounds (in the World Builder style) is my goal. However, my skills are pretty poor.

My first step (after a long rest) is to make a demo called Warez Quest, where you're at an early 90's gaming party. I felt that the process of hooking your mates up with some oldschool warez (4 screen stick figure game) could be a good concept demo. Thus far LiveCode has been pretty simple to learn, which is good...

Re: Can anybody suggest a 2D adventure game engine? 6 years, 7 months ago #4346

I know Im late here, but it just occurred to me.. why not do this in the most portable format of all, HTML and JS?

Re: Can anybody suggest a 2D adventure game engine? 6 years, 6 months ago #4347

menace690 wrote:
I know Im late here, but it just occurred to me.. why not do this in the most portable format of all, HTML and JS?


Fair call. I guess my desire to have a standalone app has taken over. I might go there for the 'freedom' though.

Right now I'm building a demo with LiveCode (slowly due to a lack of free time). I'll see how I go with it. My current focus is on making a WB style shell/framework that I can slot a story into. One of the challenges is that the 'plain English' pseudocode can be a bit bulky/inflexible when compared with something like html. For example (I'm sure there's a much better way and this is just my incompetence) but to grab a highlighted value from a 'data grid' (populated using my DB) I've had to grab all the data from the entire grid, grab the ID of the highlighted row, use the assumption that the row # and array # are the same to reference the value in the array, put that value into a variable and then strip the 'keys' from the variable. As I said, I'm sure there's a better way but all the 'plain English' ways I can think of writing 'put the value of the highlighted row into a variable' have failed.

Most things have been simpler but one or two still remain unsorted in that I can only think of bulky/unreliable ways to achieve what would be quite simple in html. Hopefully this is just the learning curve... I'm 80% there with the framework so remain optimistic that this will work (and the 'game logic' will be much easier than the initial framework).

I'm hoping that once the framework's 100% functional I can start going through and optimise/simplify things. However, I might just use HTML if nutting it all out like this becomes too much of a pain.
Last Edit: 6 years, 6 months ago by jetboy.

Re: Can anybody suggest a 2D adventure game engine? 6 years, 6 months ago #4348

Re: Can anybody suggest a 2D adventure game engine? 6 years, 6 months ago #4349

If you do decide to go with HTML, and you still want native apps:

phonegap.com/

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