Let's build a new AGS demo game!

[RootBound]

I've been thinking about what kinds of rooms might be needed in order to showcase the list of features, and this is what I've come up with (for the "beginner course":

-Room possibilities:
    * a "locked room" with a key and a door, or other simple puzzle, perhaps a crate you have to push to get a key off a shelf
    * an "outdoor" or "map" area with different entrances to different rooms
    * multiple walkable areas not accessible from each other (for example, a garden path with a balcony that can only be accessed from a different room)
    * scaling areas, darker or brighter regions, walk-behinds (for example, a nighttime street with lampposts going into the distance)
    * an "interface room" (for example, a bookshelf, control panel with levers) with first-person perspective (perhaps with text input)
    * "dark room" requiring a flashlight
    * a "simple special effects" room with moving objects, animating objects, perhaps areas where an animation happens in front of the player (for example, bubbles rising through a fish tank).

Some of these rooms should allow for at least one multi-room puzzle, even if others might be a single room accessible from a chapter menu.

Any other rooms we need?

[cat]

Nice ideas!

I especially like having a map screen and an interface room.
The walking areas and scaling room could even be combined.

Some ideas I posted earlier that might have been lost:

the first room would be a title screen, with just a start and load button.

The second room could be a room with a few hotspots or objects. The first task could be to pick up a key and unlock a door. Or maybe pick up two objects, combine them, use them to open a door to the next room.

Then there could be a room with a NPC, you have some dialog, give them an item which unlocks more dialog and the NPC will give you another item.

A room could be about room features - use keyboard controls where you have to carefully navigate a KQ3 like path, including scrolling room, regions, walkable area scaling etc.

A sound room might focus on music, sound effects and voice acting.

The NPC room could include swapping characters.


About the story - I thought it might be a treasure hunt. The goal is to find the magic big blue cup or something. To get it, you have to solve puzzles in each room. Collect a certain number of gems or something to open the final door. After you solve the initial "locked door" room, you get to the map where you can visit various places. The locations could be ordered by difficulty.

[RootBound]

About the story - I thought it might be a treasure hunt. The goal is to find the magic big blue cup or something. To get it, you have to solve puzzles in each room. Collect a certain number of gems or something to open the final door. After you solve the initial "locked door" room, you get to the map where you can visit various places. The locations could be ordered by difficulty.

This sounds cool!

If I understand correctly, the first 3 rooms would be:

1: Title Screen / menu
2: "Locked room puzzle"
3: Map

and from the map you have lots of different options.

In the service of "keeping it fun to play," I think a fun way to do the map room would be almost Final Fantasy style, where the player is very small and can walk between different settings without having to go too far. For example, each "door" may not be a literal door, but a path, one leading into a forest, one to a lake with a sunken pirate ship, one into a volcano, one to a town/city, and so on. If the only place that is "locked" is the final room with the blue cup treasure, these could be pursued in any order.

Keeping with the Final Fantasy theme, the initial "locked room" could be getting out of a crashed airship. 

If this sounds too ambitious, I understand.

But as I said above, I'd be happy to contribute as much background art as anyone wants (I love drawing backgrounds), and if we get more contributors, different "areas" could be drawn in different styles by different people, which would also help show off the variety of possibilities for using AGS in different ways.

I'm happy to entertain other possibilities if people think something simpler would be easier for newbies or more fun, but I think the coding of the map room would still be pretty simple and easy to explore in the AGS editor.

Any thoughts / suggestions / questions / concerns / alternative ideas?

[Crimson Wizard]

I have ideas I think would be nice and useful to demo, but I cannot tell whether this is fine for the demo game in question or not. Initially I thought there may be a "simple" demo and then another more complex one, but now when you are discussing this tutorial approach where advanced rooms open up as player progresses, I wonder if more complex functionalities may also be included at some future stages.

One thing that I might propose for consideration is the "maze" made of a single re-generated room (or small number of rooms). Number of classic and AGS adventure games have featured a maze region where character would travel around "cells" inside a larger maze. Only particular locations would be made as individual rooms, but most of the generic cells would be implemented inside a single room that gets reshaped depending on a "cell type".

[cat]

I like the walking around map!
Thinking further about the map, if the locked room is also just one of the rooms on the map and the first thing where the player gets (after a short skippable cutscene, we should show cut scenes as well) is the map, this would practically be the menu for jumping into various rooms that Crimson Wizard has suggested.

If we do it this way, it would be
1) title screen
2) cut scene
3) map


One more feature we should show off that I think is often asked for, is a timed puzzle.

[RootBound]

One other thing that occurred to me that should be decided early on and certainly before any artwork is what resolution the game should be.

Obviously 320 x 200 is the classic, but I also worry that making it super low-res might make newcomers assume the game engine can't do high-res games. Would something like 640 x 400 be better, or this maybe a non-issue?

[cat]

I agree that we should decide resolution before setting up the project and doing any artwork. I also agree with your concerns. 640x400 is still rather lo-res, but it might be a good middle ground between 320x200 and anything considered high-res. This gives the creator of each individual room background some freedom in chosen style - you could still do fake super lo-res by drawing the background in 320x200 and scaling it up before import.

[Crimson Wizard]

There's also 640x360 for 16:9 aspect ratio.

[RootBound]

@Crimson Wizard 640 x 360 sounds good to me!

Based on @cat 's idea of a treasure hunt and collecting gems to get to the end of the game, here's a proposal for a structure that encourages (but doesn't SUPER enforce) a progression from easy to difficult:



As pictured in the image, completing the starting room awards 1 gem. This allows access to the "basic" rooms. Completing just 1 of the basic rooms awards a second gem, which opens up the "medium" rooms. Completing one more room of either "basic" or "medium" unlocks the "advanced" rooms. (I got the idea for this structure from Super Mario World N64 - steal from the best, as they say).

This way the player does need to complete ALL easy rooms to explore the medium, and so one, but there is at least some encouragement in that direction.

As discussed above, the "map room" serves as a kind of chapter menu, with all "gates" to feature-rooms on one map.

If people like this structure, the next question would be - which features go in "basic", which go in "medium" and which should go in "advanced."

Side note: it feels like the question of UI isn't quite settled. Anybody want to weigh in further on whether it should be a default interface or a one-click? One-click is simpler, but newcomers would have to copy the code in order to use it, whereas the defaults come pre-set-up.

Personally I lean toward one-click, but I do see the drawbacks.

What do we think? One-click or a default like BASS? Pros? Cons?

Lurkers, chime in!

I suppose this also raises the question of whether it's possible or desirable to ship AGS with a default one-click interface as one of the built-in options, but that may be a question for another forum.

Have a good evening

[Babar]

I dunno if we should lock access to seeing complex features behind complex puzzles. If the purpose is to help the player understand how to implement reflections, for example, and reflections is considered a complex feature, it seems odd to require the player to either complete a maze or figure out which ingredients of a sandwich to give a guard so that they can access that room to see the reflection in action.

Then again, we could just incorporate debug mode into the usage of the game for that use case.

As for the interface, I am fine with not using a default template UI, and designing one from the ground up. As I understand it currently, there is no default interface template that is geared towards mobile (and yes, while the two-tap method exists, I feel that's an incredibly unnatural interaction to expect of the player, even if we give a tutorial for it).
As someone above suggested, we can do a 2 click interface (a modified BASS with a visible inventory), where the second click is for optional descriptive texts (could even be the way to access the tutorial/explanatory texts, since I doubt anyone would be playing the game on mobile if their aim was to learn from its code to develop their own game).

[Danvzare]

I agree that we should decide resolution before setting up the project and doing any artwork. I also agree with your concerns. 640x400 is still rather lo-res, but it might be a good middle ground between 320x200 and anything considered high-res. This gives the creator of each individual room background some freedom in chosen style - you could still do fake super lo-res by drawing the background in 320x200 and scaling it up before import.

Considering this is probably going to be quite text heavy and include descriptions for how to implement certain features. I think going for 640x400 or a resolution along those lines, would definitely be preferable to 320x200, at least for readability sake. 
(Not that there's anything wrong with pixelated fonts, it's just hard to get a lot of text on screen at once in a low-res game, without it looking overwhelming.)

What do we think? One-click or a default like BASS? Pros? Cons?

Lurkers, chime in!

I highly doubt this demo game will be played on a mobile, and I also think it would be beneficial if there was some sort of implementation of the mouse wheel as a code example. So I don't think there's a reason to go for the one-click interface. Although I do think a one-click interface template should be included with AGS one day. But I digress.

As for the interface we should use for this, well personally I think a custom interface which can change between rooms would be preferable. So you can showcase each of the interfaces that come with AGS by default, you know 9-verb, BASS, ect. But considering that might be difficult to implement, the next thing I'd suggest is to just choose the one which seems the most popular to newbies. Which interface do most people gravitate towards when they first start using AGS?

For the record, the first interface I tried to use was a 9-verb template I found. But that was many years ago, and I'm usually in the minority with preferences like that. Besides I haven't tried to use a 9-verb interface in a long time.

[cat]

I dunno if we should lock access to seeing complex features behind complex puzzles. If the purpose is to help the player understand how to implement reflections, for example, and reflections is considered a complex feature, it seems odd to require the player to either complete a maze or figure out which ingredients of a sandwich to give a guard so that they can access that room to see the reflection in action.

I agree. I think all rooms should be accessible from the start. Of course, the separate locations should be grouped on the map (e.g. Beginner Village, Intermediate Fields, Advanced Woods) but all available from the start.

[Crimson Wizard]

I dunno if we should lock access to seeing complex features behind complex puzzles. If the purpose is to help the player understand how to implement reflections, for example, and reflections is considered a complex feature, it seems odd to require the player to either complete a maze or figure out which ingredients of a sandwich to give a guard so that they can access that room to see the reflection in action.

I agree. I think all rooms should be accessible from the start. Of course, the separate locations should be grouped on the map (e.g. Beginner Village, Intermediate Fields, Advanced Woods) but all available from the start.

Something I might propose as an option is to have walkthrough and tutorial modes, or rather have a proper walkthrough, but also an option to unlock all rooms at once. Of course in such case a walkthrough has to be scripted with a thought that player may arrive to a room without passing previous stages, in which case it might give necessary inventory items, for instance, or have each room self-sufficient and not depending on other rooms.

[cat]

Then we would be back at your suggestion of having just a menu for quick accessing rooms on the title screen. That's also fine for me.

The real question is: how much adventure game is needed for a demo game? If you want to get a game with good story and great world building, there are tons of them in the database. The demo game should IMHO showcase the most common use cases and how to implement them.

[Crimson Wizard]

The real question is: how much adventure game is needed for a demo game? If you want to get a game with good story and great world building, there are tons of them in the database. The demo game should IMHO showcase the most common use cases and how to implement them.

Yes, I guess you're right.

So, the rule should then be that each room is self-sufficient, not requiring visiting other rooms for completing.

[Danvzare]

The real question is: how much adventure game is needed for a demo game? If you want to get a game with good story and great world building, there are tons of them in the database. The demo game should IMHO showcase the most common use cases and how to implement them.

Yes, I guess you're right.

So, the rule should then be that each room is self-sufficient, not requiring visiting other rooms for completing.

Like Gobliiins. 

I think that would be a very good rule of thumb to follow for a demo game. 
Unless we need to showcase how something can happen in one room and affect another. But that's the only exception I can think of.

[RootBound]

I see the sense behind making each room self-sufficient and having all accessible from the beginning.

I still like the map idea as a room menu, though. Maybe if one starts out on the map instead of in the "basic" first puzzle room, one could still enter it from the outside?




Anyway, I made an attempt at organizing the features into groups/rooms that hopefully makes sense. That feels like the logical next step to me.

The number of rooms could certainly be expanded or contracted based on what people think is best.

And the titles of each room here are just the "feature" themes. Each room could also have a "story" component (if they are still grouped into "areas" for each difficulty level).

What does everyone think? (Apologies for the gigantic image -- couldn't figure out how to make tables work in the forum post).
EDIT: Instead of straining your eyes, see the post further down with a much better version of this table.

[cat]

Unless we need to showcase how something can happen in one room and affect another. But that's the only exception I can think of.

Think of room as "location". Each of them could consist of more than one room in the ags sense. Unlocking a door could lead from "lockeddoorroom1" to "lockeddoorroom2" where the gem is to be found.

[Crimson Wizard]

Yes, replace the "room" with "location" in the rule, and "location" may consist of number of rooms, if changing rooms is necessary to showcase something.

What does everyone think? (Apologies for the gigantic image -- couldn't figure out how to make tables work in the forum post).

You could upload a spreadsheet to any file hosting, like google drive, and post a link instead.

In regards to the table, I'm afraid this kind of configuration will result in lots of empty cells, and a waste of visual space. The "group" may be made as a single column, where you print a group's name (or a short tag), perhaps even with a colored background corresponding to a group.
It should be easy to sort the items, keeping them grouped by "group" value.

[RootBound]

@Crimson Wizard Yes, thank you. I was looking for a way to make it more efficient and couldn't quite figure it out.

Here's a text version of the proposed feature groupings into rooms/locations:

Beginner 1, "Room Basics"
*Walkable areas (Walkable areas (incl. scaling & non-contiguous)
*Walk-behinds   
*Hotspots
*Objects

Beginner 2, "Rooms part 2 and NPCs"
*Dark/light regions   
*Scrolling rooms   
*Animated backgrounds   
*NPCs
*Dialogs

Beginner 3, "Inventory and animations"
*Inventory items
*combining items
*animated objects
*moving objects
*1st person interface room

Intermediate 1, "Sounds and Music"
*Sound effects
*Music
*Voice acting

Intermediate 2, "Keyboard use"
*Keyboard controlled movement
*Text input / text parser

Intermediate 3, "Complicating characters"
*Different views for player character
*Different playable characters

Advanced 1, "special effects"
*"Dark room" with flashlight
*reflections
*shadows
*Partially transparent or translucent effects / windows

Advanced 2, "modules"
*tween module
*Rellax module
*typewriter text module
*Other modules?

As stated above, we can contract / expand the grouping to different locations, whatever makes sense. If different features belong in different difficulty levels then I've done here, that's worth noting too. My intent is for this to be a draft we can revise together until it makes the most sense.