Hey guys, it's been so long since I've posted on here (2012?!) and I've come a very long way.
I've been working with my brother on a very large AGI game since 2011 when the idea was first conceived. We've hit rough patches along the way that ended up halting development for sometimes months on end, but have finally been able to work on it consistently since February of this year. I'm hoping to finish it by the end of December although I'm not getting my hopes up, so more likely by spring next year
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Before asking my question I guess I'll give a very brief overview of the game:
It started out as a Leisure Suit Larry fan game, basically the Larry 3 that never was. Over time, it's morphed into it's own game completely although it still uses the core idea of Larry, meaning that the main goal of the game is to try to sleep with women and you are walking around Lost Wages (all original locations with a couple of throwbacks like Lefty's added in).
The name of the game is 'Ultimate AGI Fan Game' (subject to change) and the main character is named 'Val Tucker'. The game has a strong focus on interaction more so than the adventure games of old. You can look at basically anything you see on screen, there are a nice chunk of NPC's to talk to, there are a lot of cutscenes (that have been hell to code in, but very rewarding) and we've tried to give every screen some form of ambience so that it won't be so lifeless and boring if/when you have to walk through it multiple times or after a big event happens.
I think I should get to my question now.
There are multiple screens in my game that have three or more NPC's at a time and you can look /talk to all of them. The way I've been handling looking and talking to them is by checking the player's position usually with a obj.in.box() or sometimes a regular posn() check depending on how close an NPC is to another. I've always felt that this is a bit clunky and wanted to change it, so about 20 minutes ago I finally implemented a list system that I like much more personally, but am still wondering how other people playing the game would feel about it.
The new way makes it so that the player can type anything like "look at man", "look at woman", "look at people" etc... and for rooms that have more than one person in them I'll make a box pop up like this:
This is just for looking, you would still have to be within the vicinity of the person in order to talk which is why I wonder if it would annoy people?
Anyway, that's all I have to say/ask for now. Let me know if you have any questions about the game, it's been so many years that I'd love to talk about it. If anyone's interested, I may take the time to compile a demo of a part of the game that is secluded from the rest. It's a one room puzzle that takes place in the "Neitherworld Waiting Room" from Beetlejuice (yes, our game has a ton of pop culture references).
I'll leave you guys with a nice clear image of this park scene and an old youtube video from 2012, although it's not anywhere near representative of the current state the game is in, it should at least give you a feel for what we're creating.
Park Party Screen:
Youtube Link:
