AdventureJam

[MusicallyInspired]

Anybody hear about this? Starting in April, developers have two weeks to construct an adventure game from scratch and everybody votes on them in the end. There is no specific engine required so SCI games count! You can write your story and game design documents any time but the actual programming, graphics, other resource assets, etc must not start development until the two-week period. Some of you should enter, there's a lot of talent here. SCI games can be easily bundled with DOSBox for play on any system, obviously.

http://jams.gamejolt.io/adventurejam

[Cloudee1]

I am currently suffering from, what I hope to be, a temporary case of Brain Deaditis. A project at work has got me reaching so far outside of the box of my current programming abilities that I am currently unable to think through two lines of code at a time. I read this and thought, what kind of adventure game would I make and so far the little voice inside my head simply responds with "Uhhhhmmm" and then trails off.

So unless I suddenly have a stroke of lucidity I probably won't actually enter myself. I would however be more than willing to help out if anyone else out there has a great idea and is a little worried about actually getting it coded. I offer you my keyboard.

[gumby]

I'm seriously considering doing this.  A bit concerned with the extremely compressed time frame, but I've got my basic plot together. I figure if I don't have the story completely fleshed out before the jam begins, I'm sunk.

This is a completely different approach than I'm used to.  I'm more of a 'dive in head-first and see what happens' developer.  I prefer it when things 'organically' evolve.  Planning *everything* up-front without doing any coding is a bit daunting.

[MusicallyInspired]

I'd say the Scott Murphy "seat-of-the-pants" design philosophy is still possible, just keep a smaller scope for story in mind.

[gumby]

Jam just started.  I'm going to hijack this thread to track my progress.  Wish me luck, I'm going to need it!

[MusicallyInspired]

Good luck! I've got a big gig coming up so that's going to take all my time. I won't be able to participate like I had planned to. Are you using SCI?

[troflip]

Good luck! I'm excited to see what you come up with.

[gumby]

Are you using SCI?

Of course!  I started my asset gathering last night.  My plan is to get the basic framework of the game in place with as little development as possible up-front (placeholder views, sparse room pics, no title screen, stubs for narration & dialog, no sound effects/music).  Once the game is fully playable, then I'll just use an iterative approach to improve it.  That way I won't bite off more than I can chew on any one aspect and paint myself into a corner where completion is impossible.

[Cloudee1]

Good luck to you Gumby. If you need any help with anything or a play tester, let me know. I would be glad to be of assistance.

[gumby]

Thanks Cloudee - I will definitely need some community help to get this ready to submit.

On another note, I'm better understanding the power of putting all objects that you can interact with as views instead of embedding them into the room pic.  In my previous games, I would just draw the object into the pic (provided it was a static object) and then use control colors to determine if the ego is close enough to interact with it.  It's so much easier to just make the object a view, then use the distanceTo() call between on the ego and the view to figure this out.  Plus, then you don't have to worry about the dimensions of the object itself or where it is placed on the screen.

[gumby]

Experiencing if/then/else hell. 

It seems to me that there is an opportunity here for a new tool.  I'm thinking a tool that would take something like a state-table as input and would build out all the if/then/else logic skeleton for you.

[troflip]

Massive blocks of complex if/then/else logic is usually a code smell. There might be a way to refactor your code to avoid that kind of thing?

[gumby]

Yeah, I agree about the code-smell.  I've put together a puzzle that requires 5 different elements and I find myself nesting if/else statements, checking boolean variables for their state so I can print an appropriate response (all around Said statements).  It's just difficult trying to keep track of all the possible different scenarios.

[gumby]

I began working on pics and non-animated views today.  Coming along nicely, I've completed nearly half of the first (maybe only) room a couple of views.

[lance.ewing]

Do you think that a Sierra-like game written in Scratch 2 (the online version) would be suitable as an entry? I've been thinking about testing the boundaries of a visual programming tool like that & need something to kick start me in to trying it. Maybe this is an opportunity. Do you know if remakes are excluded? I'd be really keen to try building a 3d animated version of an old VIC 20 text adventure game from 1983 that most people won't be aware of. A couple years ago I decoded all its game data including the scripts & could in theory reproduce the same logic. The creativity bit would be rendering my imagination of the various rooms which are described as simply "I'm in a forest". I realise there are only 9 days left though. Why Scratch 2 and not the more powerful Snap? Well Scratch 2 is really popular at the moment with kids and educational institutions, so it might actually get some exposure. Snap seems to scare my kids for some reason. There is an offline version of Scratch 2 if an online entry isn't possible.