SCI32?

[MaverickLJ]

Hi, everybody,

My name's Luke Jensen.  For those of you wondering, no, I'm not related to Jane Jensen, but yes, I am indeed the same Luke Jensen currently listed as a member of the King's Quest IX project, and the same Luke Jensen listed as a beta tester for Tierra's version of King's Quest II.

To make a long story short, I have severed all ties to the KQ9 project.  I won't go into detail about the reasons why I left, but suffice it to say I found myself between a rock and a hard place with the lead designer, and, to a certain extent, still do.

I'm in the process of designing a new adventure game, completely unrelated to the King's Quest series, but with the same basic theme--on a superficial level, at least--and the same feel (charming, fantasy gameplay, relatively easy puzzles (but not *too* easy; I just mean puzzles about as hard as those in KQ4 or so)).

My team only consists of four people, including me, at the moment, and we're still very early on in the development process, but we're looking at possibilities for an engine.

Adventure Game Studio seems to be too unprofessional, and according to my co-designer, who has used it before, requires a lot of tweaking to get things to work exactly right.  AGAST seems good, but its apparent complete lack of beginner-level tutorials has me thinking twice about using it.  I have a fair amount of programming experience, but AGAST's tutorials seem like Greek to me sometimes.

I was only recently made aware of SCI Studio.  The prospect of using Sierra's own engine to create a game is, to say the least, extremely exciting.

I know a version of SCIS that allows the creation of SCI1 games is nearing completion.  However, I want our game to support several things that SCI1 does not, namely higher-resolution graphics, higher color depth, and digital sound (such as digital music and recorded character voices).  I know that SCI32 supports these things.  I also understand that SCIS will soon be able to access SCI32 resources.  However, the updates on the SCIS site seem a bit confusing to me.  Will SCIS eventually be able to create SCI32-compatible games?  If so, how long will it be before full compatibility is implemented?

Thanks,
Luke Jensen

[robingravel]

Hi Luke

Adventure Game Studio seems to be too unprofessional

The only drawback I found about AGS is the missing view editor. I messed up plenty of pictures on my hard drive when I made DG: the search of the batteries.


BTW AGS is a good interpreter by playing AGS games.

Robin Gravel

[Brian Provinciano]

With SCI32 viewers, and work on SCI32 script disassemblers, there is nothing stopping the future ability to create SCI32 games. However, SCI32 games come from a time where they have huge teams of developers. Looking through LSL7 for example, there are hundreds of views, each dozens and dozens of cels for the simplest animations. They has professional artists and animators. Lets not forget the composers and all those movies. I don't see any future that a bunch of fans could create games with the same quality as Sierra's. It would just be WAY too much time, that they'd need to be making profit in some way and make it a full time job.

I will most likely add support in the future for creating SCI32 games, but I really doubt it will be used to any potential. People are better off making high quality 320x200x256 games than high res.

BTW, LSL7, using SCI 3.000.000 only uses 640x480x256, not 16M colours or anything.

[Eero R]

AGS is unprofessional, but why waste your time to create your own engine, when AGS is already existing and is the most simple? I created my own engine for my first adventure and used it few times, but then I started to use engines made by others. Why? They took less time and had more possibilities...
I agree with Brian... Making full-lenght games is very time-consuming, but then again, medium-length and short games (like most of AGI and SCI fangames are) take much less time...

[juncmodule]

Considering that all of the "Free" game engines out there are made by non-professionals I don't think it is fair to call any one of them unprofessional.

The engine really and honestly doesn't matter. It's the quality of art and the story behind it. Most importantly though it is the dedication behind your team. I believe that a long, and good quality, game can be made by amateur developers. It will just take a lot of dedication.

I second Brian on the 320x200x256 idea. I'm sure he will release SCI Studio VGA by the time you finish putting background art, story, sprites, music, and a team together. Then, it's just a matter of putting code together. In that time you could also be learning how SCI 3.0 coding works. I may be wrong about this but, I believe the code is similiar between the two.  

May I suggest posting some of the work you have already completed. This usually inspires people to jump in and help you out I've noticed.

good luck,
-junc

[Eero R]

The engine really and honestly doesn't matter. It's the quality of art and the story behind it. Most importantly though it is the dedication behind your team. I believe that a long, and good quality, game can be made by amateur developers. It will just take a lot of dedication.

No-one said, that it couldn't be done, but it takes really very much time...