[MusicallyInspired]

Recently for Adventure Jam 2021, Powerhoof developed an EGA-style retro point & click adventure game (think Sierra Online's "Conquest of Camelot") called "The Telwynium: Book One - Winter's Dawn". It won first place and to celebrate the final day of Adventure Jam the designer asked me to write a short authentic Roland MT-32 soundtrack for it. You can download the newest version for free at:

https://powerhoof.it...o/the-telwynium

Here's the main theme I wrote for it with some footage from the game. Also, George Broussard retweeted it and has chatted with the developer I guess off and on so that's cool.

[MrFlibble]

Oh, that's nice! I've never been a fan of Sierra-esque adventures generally but I appreciate the amount of artistic effort that goes into these projects. And here the art looks really good.

[MusicallyInspired]

Sierra's always been my favourite. Particularly Space Quest. Just last year I managed to collect all the game boxes I was missing from the series (sans the collection boxes). Huge Sierra fan. Adventures are the other side of my gaming preference and were what I was started on so I really enjoy being a creative part of that community.

[Mark]

Looking at a Space Quest video, I think I missed that. I went from the Scott Adams adventures to Kings Quest series and then Monkey Island series.

[Morpheus Kitami]

Just point and clicks or are other kinds of adventures cool too?

Personally, I've played a good chunk of the shareware adventure titles, like Hugo, Last Half of Darkness, Maddog Williams, Dare to Dream, and uh, whatever is escaping my mind at this point. Dare to Dream is the best of the bunch, being a surreal game set in a disturbed middle-schooler's dreams. Its a very interesting game despite questionable graphics at times, though a few of the puzzles are questionable. I haven't really played many commercial titles from the classic period, more a fan of the Myst-clone era. I really like the Coktel Vision games I've played though, Ween, Goblins, Inca and their least known title, Galactic Empire.

The last PnC title I was seriously playing was Elvira, which is fun, but nightmarishly hard. The real problem with the game is the constant combat and the manual protection. See, the game has spells that require ingredients, and those ingredients are the copy protection. You still need to find those ingredients in-game. Since the ingredients are part of the copy protection, that means all the walkthroughs I could find conveniently don't mention where to find them. So, the last save I have, which is a while back, has my character nearly dead. Which decreases the rest of your attributes, since this is an Adventure/RPG hybrid, so you deal horrible damage, which means every combat encounter ends in death. And I'm at a state where I really don't want to restart.

[Fantinaikos]

That because regardless of indie or professional, the pure genre without any other element that deviates from the standard formula turning it into an hybrid, have an evident post-flaw: The replayability value outside of one's feeling is poor, reducing your physical copies (if you have them) to something left to accumulate dust on the shelf. It can happen with whatsoever videogame but it's the genre most exposed to that, or at least are among first victims. In truth, the point click if not the adventure itself could considered out of fashion even thanks to the fact most 90's to 2000's productions have abstruse puzzles and unfunny humor. No coincidence that the first customers are diehards nostalgics or people that can't really play anything else and buys story-driven games only.

Moreover Sierra Entertainment/Sierra On-Line is generally associated with "Quantity over quality" and Lucasart/Lucasfilm with "Quality over quantity" but is more complicated than this, and often distorted by perceptions. This distortion on the part of the trade press was (and is) 90% in Lucasart's favor more for reasons of fanboism than objective quality of the game.

[MusicallyInspired]

I will say that I'm generally against story-heavy adventure games. Only because they tend to leave gameplay, puzzle challenge, risk of failure, and exploration in the dust (I'm looking at you, Telltale). This is why I vastly prefer Sierra games to everything else. LucasArts are a close second because they have such solid storytelling and humour. But I lament that they abandoned deaths But their puzzles are still the stuff of legends. Myst is another favourite of mine. Love the whole series. I recently bought the VR remake too.

And ah yes, the Goblins games were great indeed. I've only beaten the first one, gotten barely anyway in the second, and almost beat the third (my favourite). Never tried the 4th sequel/reboot from the 2000s. Then there's Woodruff too which I have not played. Lost in Time I quite like (but still have yet to finish), which is another game by Coktel but in first person like Myst.

[Fantinaikos]

Well, since ScummVM, in particular now that's is merged with ResidualVM (aka ScummVM for 3D ones) the problems of technical incompatibility no longer holds. Now the problem may be availability. May be.

According the latest daily builds, a lot of AGS fan-games will be supported. But the most interesting news is the support of the cult surreal adventure Sanitarium.

[Morpheus Kitami]

MusicallyInspired, on 20 June 2021 - 03:00 PM, said:

I will say that I'm generally against story-heavy adventure games. Only because they tend to leave gameplay, puzzle challenge, risk of failure, and exploration in the dust (I'm looking at you, Telltale). This is why I vastly prefer Sierra games to everything else. LucasArts are a close second because they have such solid storytelling and humour. But I lament that they abandoned deaths But their puzzles are still the stuff of legends. Myst is another favourite of mine. Love the whole series. I recently bought the VR remake too.And ah yes, the Goblins games were great indeed. I've only beaten the first one, gotten barely anyway in the second, and almost beat the third (my favourite). Never tried the 4th sequel/reboot from the 2000s. Then there's Woodruff too which I have not played. Lost in Time I quite like (but still have yet to finish), which is another game by Coktel but in first person like Myst.

I would say you're wrong on the story front, but I can't really remember too many adventure games with a memorable story. Usually they just have amazing worldbuilding. Like I was going to say Bloodnet, but the appeal there was never the actual story. Phantasmagoria 2?

Woodruff was originally intended to be Goblins 4, judging by previews of it from back in the day. To add to Coktel's confusing quasi-sequel games, Lost in Time is a sequel to Fascination, since they both star the same heroine, yet Lost in Time has a sequel in Urban Runner: Lost in Town. Which looks like one of the better FMV adventure games, but I have yet to actually play it.

Fantinaikos, on 20 June 2021 - 03:19 PM, said:

Well, since ScummVM, in particular now that's is merged with ResidualVM (aka ScummVM for 3D ones) the problems of technical incompatibility no longer holds. Now the problem may be availability. May be.According the latest daily builds, a lot of AGS fan-games will be supported. But the most interesting news is the support of the cult surreal adventure Sanitarium.

Wait, Sanitarium is going to finally get support? I don't see anything about that on the forums. I do see Nightlong, from the same company who did In the Dead of Night (freeware IIRC) beforehand. That was a cool game too. No skin off that, but I was hoping to get support for Adobe Director games, because I like my Myst-clones and I like my Japanese adventure games, and Director puts both of those in easy access.

[Fantinaikos]

Quote

I was hoping to get support for Adobe Director games, because I like my Myst-clones and I like my Japanese adventure games, and Director puts both of those in easy access.

Some Director games are already detectable, they are still working on it to give a stable experience anyway. I saw L-ZONE mentioned directly, but the last time I tried with something like Spaceship Warlock it was buggish. Latest daily build may have been provided of a bunch of corrections.

[Mark]

I forgot to mention that sandwiched in between those other series I mentioned were lots of demos like Hugo, Day of the Tentacle, a few of the Indiana Jones games.

As far as regular adventure games, Myst was too difficult for me. Others like 7th Guest and the 11th Hour were decent. Full Throttle was great. There are a few other regular adventure games that don't come to mind right now but seem to recall enjoying them. Oh, can't forget a few Leisure suit Larry games. I was stumped a few times during those puzzles and had to ask a friend who played it before I did.

Last year I played all the demos from the Blackwell series and earlier this year I bought the bundle of them all on Gog for almost nothing. After I'm done playing Kathy Rain I'll probably load up the first one of them. I really liked the demo of Mage's Initiation and might eventually buy the full game.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter was great except for the lack of save games. You had to reach certain points for an autosave. But that could be an hour or more to find and if you didn't, you had to start that hour over again next time you played. The company saw the error of their ways and addressed it to make it less time in between saves but still. the damage was done and I haven't gone back to it. It was really great atmosphere and graphics along with playing it with my LCD 3D glasses.

[MusicallyInspired]

Yeah, AGS support has been added to the latest nightly builds. They're calling for people to test as many AGS games as possible. There are still issues but it's coming along.

Morpheus Kitami, on 20 June 2021 - 03:50 PM, said:

I would say you're wrong on the story front, but I can't really remember too many adventure games with a memorable story. Usually they just have amazing worldbuilding. Like I was going to say Bloodnet, but the appeal there was never the actual story. Phantasmagoria 2?

I'm wrong about what in particular? I'm saying I'm not as partial to a lot of newer adventure games because they focus on story and characters over gameplay and puzzle design.

Quote

Woodruff was originally intended to be Goblins 4, judging by previews of it from back in the day. To add to Coktel's confusing quasi-sequel games, Lost in Time is a sequel to Fascination, since they both star the same heroine, yet Lost in Time has a sequel in Urban Runner: Lost in Town. Which looks like one of the better FMV adventure games, but I have yet to actually play it.

Ah yes I completely forgot that Lost In Time was a sequel. I need to play that...

Mark, on 20 June 2021 - 05:44 PM, said:

I forgot to mention that sandwiched in between those other series I mentioned were lots of demos like Hugo, Day of the Tentacle, a few of the Indiana Jones games.

All classics. I have fond memories of discovering the Hugo games on a Gamefest shareware CD (yeah, even though it says shareware all three full Hugo games were on it). I beat the first and the third one but haven't beaten the second one.

Quote

I really liked the demo of Mage's Initiation and might eventually buy the full game.

If you ever do I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

Quote

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter was great except for the lack of save games. You had to reach certain points for an autosave. But that could be an hour or more to find and if you didn't, you had to start that hour over again next time you played. The company saw the error of their ways and addressed it to make it less time in between saves but still. the damage was done and I haven't gone back to it. It was really great atmosphere and graphics along with playing it with my LCD 3D glasses.

I was late to that game but that was a great experience. One of the more interesting "walking simulators" out there. Particularly because there's actual gameplay involved and not just walking, which lies in your choices. Great experience. I recommend you get back to it. The ending takes it to a place that's so different from what you'd expect. But no less interesting. I just wish there were actual puzzles involved.

I really enjoyed Deponia, actually. Great and humourous adventure game. I started the second game but haven't gotten back to it yet. I think there are 4 of them now.

[MrFlibble]

MusicallyInspired, on 20 June 2021 - 09:57 AM, said:

Sierra's always been my favourite. Particularly Space Quest.

Space Quest V is actually a game that I played to completion, but I had to use a walkthrough. It has nice art for sure, but adventures are not my cup of tea.

Recently I played an obscure-ish DOS adventure from Germany called Escape from Delirium (shareware version), can't say I enjoyed it a lot but it was pretty curious. I believe it's more like The Monkey Island series though.

Speaking of which, I played the demo of The Secret of Monkey Island a while ago (early 2010s I'd say). Feels a bit nostalgic -- but again, I like the art more than gameplay. Those odd looking houses with lighted windows you see on some screens looked cosy to me, but it has no relation to gameplay, and this feeling might have not been even intended by the artist.

An adventure game I did like is MVP Software's ShadowForce, but I think it's not strictly point and click.

Oh, and I did like the concept in another shareware title, Lone Eagle - Colombian Encounter. From what I played (admittedly not very far), it has a pretty consistent storyline and a sort of free-roaming, sandbox like approach. You can sail your yacht wherever you like, and even go diving for fish or clams to earn cash.

Recently I took an interest of sorts in fanmade AGI and SCI games, but more simply out of curiosity about what people could come up with, rather than genuine desire to play (AGI are not point and click though).

[MusicallyInspired]

I'm actually quite big into SCI game development. I'm creating a remake of King's Quest II in SCI (EGA, parser, mouse). I stream development for scripting, art, and music every week Tue and Thurs at 9am CST on my Twitch channel for those interested: http://twitch.tv/musicallyinspired

All past streams are backed up on my gaming YT channel: https://www.youtube....e3am70EaM5hDfFN

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[Mark]

Another memory flashback hit me. I don't remember why I never finished another Adventure game called Curse of Atlantis.

And before I ever bought a "modern" PC I played a ton of the text only adventure games and a few recreations of them with graphics on my various Atari computers.
Also can't forget what started it all. "Adventure" on the Atari 2600 console.

[Morpheus Kitami]

MusicallyInspired, on 20 June 2021 - 08:50 PM, said:

I'm wrong about what in particular? I'm saying I'm not as partial to a lot of newer adventure games because they focus on story and characters over gameplay and puzzle design.

Story games with good puzzle design is what I was thinking, but I suspect I lost the plot along the way.

MrFlibble, on 21 June 2021 - 05:03 AM, said:

An adventure game I did like is MVP Software's ShadowForce, but I think it's not strictly point and click.

A lot of MVP's titles are broken (as in crashing the computer) in weird ways, but this one was nice, at least the first episode. Mind you, it does a poor job of selling you on the actual game, since it was like an hour IIRC, more like a prelude than a 3rd of the story. Its always weird seeing DOS-era action/adventure hybrids.

MusicallyInspired, on 21 June 2021 - 07:59 AM, said:

I'm actually quite big into SCI game development. I'm creating a remake of King's Quest II in SCI (EGA, parser, mouse). I stream development for scripting, art, and music every week Tue and Thurs at 9am CST on my Twitch channel for those interested: http://twitch.tv/musicallyinspiredAll past streams are backed up on my gaming YT channel: https://www.youtube....e3am70EaM5hDfFN

How hard is SCI development compared to AGS development? I've made a few games in AGS and I'm currently working on another one right now, but development in actual old engines fascinates me. You're making a game in an engine that hasn't been used professionally for 20, 30 years in an environment that I'm sure has severe limitations that most wouldn't be used to. What I'm really concerned about is the art. Does it use typical modern formats and tell you how many colors you have left in a scene or what?

[Forge]

[Mark]

Duh, how could I forget to mention that one? Top of the line fun it was.

[MusicallyInspired]

Morpheus Kitami, on 21 June 2021 - 05:22 PM, said:

How hard is SCI development compared to AGS development? I've made a few games in AGS and I'm currently working on another one right now, but development in actual old engines fascinates me. You're making a game in an engine that hasn't been used professionally for 20, 30 years in an environment that I'm sure has severe limitations that most wouldn't be used to. What I'm really concerned about is the art. Does it use typical modern formats and tell you how many colors you have left in a scene or what?

AGS is much more streamlined whereas SCI is a bit more "manual labour". AGS was designed with the aspects of SCI in mind, though, so it's similar. There's quite a bit of documentation in the SCI Companion Documentation on the website. My streams also go into the various aspects of scripting.

SCI is object-oriented so everything in the game has properties and is a subset of something else. An "Actor" class for instance is a subset of the "View" class. So it inherits things like View resource number (the sprite), x and y coordinates on the screen, but also adds a few other things like handling motion for moving across the screen. A "Prop" is also derived from a "View" except it cannot move across the screen.

Every room is an object in itself and has methods (like functions). Three main ones are the "doIt", "handleEvent", and "changeState" methods. "doIt" executes code every game cycle no matter what, "handleEvent" handles input from the player (via keyboard/mouse control) and also parser "Said" statement responses if using SCI0 (EGA), and "changeState" is used for triggering different sequences at different times at will. AGS has all of these capabilities but just called something different and not as much of the underlying code is exposed. In SCI it's all visible. Things like object instances (props, actors, sounds, etc) are in a handy little sidebar and you can change their property values from a list. In SCI everything is in the script and has to be coded by hand. Not too different, but not as user-friendly I suppose. I would guess that a more streamlined interface like AGS COULD be coded into Companion but just nobody has done it. And it works well enough, just gotta keep track of everything. Scripting in SCI is not in C, but in a language derived from LISP so expect a lot of parentheses.

As for colours, if you're making an SCI0 game you're limited to 16 obviously. However, SCI0 uses vector draw commands for its backgrounds and not bitmaps. This allows the use of four distinct palettes, which are comprised of 40 user-customizable colours (the 16 standard colours plus dithered colours of any two of those 16 colours). In this way you can have 4 different colour palettes for the same screen to signify different things like time of day (most popular). One palette could for midday, one for dusk, one for night, and one for dawn. Same picture with the same draw commands but by simply changing the palette you can have a very different looking picture. In SCI1 or SCI1.1 (VGA), backgrounds are bitmaps that rely on a 256 palette. Palettes can be customized, though, and different for every screen. Usually in SCI the first 64 colours in the palette are reserved for sprites and the remaining colours are used by whatever background a given room is using (this isn't hardcoded, it was just common practice) so that objects can be the same colours on every screen. Views can use colours from the background however just fine. This is so that you can have animated portions of a background that don't stand out like a sore thumb. SCI1/SCI1.1 also supports palette shifting and colour cycling, see Mark Ferrari's GDC talk about "8-Bit and 8-Bitish Art" for more information on that and how it works. Also check this out.

You can have digital sounds in both SCI0 and SCI1+ but they work slightly differently. "Sounds" in SCI are MIDI files that must be converted. You can amend digital samples (of a specific sampling rate and bitrate) as long as it doesn't make the sound larger than a certain size (I forget...maybe 65535 and this must be done with a separate command line tool outside of Companion because it wasn't implemented. All it basically does is strip out an audio files header and amend it to the end of a sound resource though. In SCI1+, "Audio" resources are separate from "Sound" resources but don't have the same limitations.

That's a quick overview of the things that stand out to me right now. Is it difficult? A bit more than AGS probably, and since you're working in more limitations, possibly a bit more frustrating. But not impossible. It's amazing what the community has done over the years to make game development in AGI and SCI a reality.

[Morpheus Kitami]

Bit late in responding to this, but thanks for the info. From what your saying and what I saw on the SCI Programmers wiki, it seems like if I'm not misunderstanding things, the current implementations of the engine have the user draw the background, at least in SCI 0? Its not something I really understand yet, but I think I can figure things out. The palette is not something I'm used to, the previous engines I've used (not just AGS) have a single palette across the whole game, or very awkward palette changing that I never bothered with. Unique to every screen isn't something I'm used to, but I think EGA is what I'd start with if I do end up making something in the engine.
As to music, well, I probably should have searched beforehand, yeah? The whole thing just sounds like I should just do what you did and see how midis sound in a midi player versus this Soundbox thing.
Also, thanks for the link to the Canvascycle. I got one of those images from some "cool pixel art" thread a while back and I didn't realize there was something behind it. Cool.

[MusicallyInspired]

Yes, for SCI0 (EGA parser games) the picture backgrounds are all drawn with vector commands (lines, fills, that sort of thing). Very similar to drawing in MS Paint or something except every draw command is saved one step at a time instead of saving the image as a bitmap. Good luck. If you have any questions feel free to ask. There's also the SCI Programming Forums SCI Programming Forums[/url] which has a bunch of resources, how to tutorials, and questions to problems already asked and answered. As well as a bunch of games already on the website that you can view their sources for if you like to figure out how to do things. Of course, you can also decompile Sierra games but the variable names won't all be legible. If you can read the syntax though you can figure most things out with some experience.

[Fantinaikos]

After FOUR remake versions of the first one, we can say that is about time.

[Morpheus Kitami]

The funny thing, IIRC, is that Cyan didn't even originally want to do that, I think that's a fan remake they made official.

[MusicallyInspired]

Morpheus Kitami, on 02 November 2022 - 04:08 PM, said:

The funny thing, IIRC, is that Cyan didn't even originally want to do that, I think that's a fan remake they made official.

They never had the budget for it is all. The fanmade "Starry Expanse Project" has been working on it for over a decade first starting as an add-on for Uru, then moving to Unity, then Unreal. Some years ago they got Cyan's official blessing and permission. Then a few years ago they announced that they had merged their project with Cyan and it was now a Cyan project officially but there wasn't much information. Now Cyan has formally announced it as an official project but it's going to be a new project from scratch using a lot of the work that the Starry Expanse Project had put in for camera-matching the original still images to actual 3D meshes. But the Starry Expanse team is not involved (save one person, who Cyan actually hired) and it will be Cyan's own project starting (almost) from scratch with just a solid foundation thanks to the Starry Expanse team. When Cyan approached them a couple years ago they told them that they now had the budget and resources to make the remake and they shared their information and resources with Cyan and now here we are.

I'm SO PSYCHED FOR THIS. Riven is one of my favourite games ever.

[Šneček]

I've played our Czech games Samorost 1 and 2 in this genre of games + I just finished Papetura. Papetura was a beautiful cute game with original graphics and an impressive ending. Moreover, it was short and one of the few games that I played the whole game without using any walkthrough!

[Aleks]

Here's Stowaway, a point & click adventure game by George Broussard - free to play.

[Fantinaikos]

You may be interested in the fact that few days ago Pierre Gilhodes, the guy behind the Gobliiins saga and Woodruff and the Schnibble of Azimuth, released Gobliiins 5: The Morgloton Invasion.

https://pierre-gilho...h.io/gobliiins5

[Šneček]

Earlier this month I played Happy Game by Amanita Design. I like game style of these creators (due to cuteness), but despite some favorable reviews I personally consider it probably the weakest game from this czech studio so far.

[Šneček]

I downloaded The Whisperer from my GOG library. I finished it yesterday (during 1 week) and enjoyed it a lot. I have a new notebook, so I set the graphics to the highest detail, and the computer made a decent noise :-), until I was surprised, ´cause it is just a clicker adventure game. But the game was really great. It was a horror set in snowy Canada, the game consisted of course in finding objects, combining them and using them in the environment, and reading letters for the sake of the story. Like Papetura, this is one of the few games I didn't need any walkthrough for. All I understood from the story is that the fiancee of the main character, who is being played, falls in love with another suitor, after which the father of the main character cuts her with an axe in her sleep, after confessing to his son, he is met with the same thing from him, after which the main character, after murdering his father in the end (maybe brother too), he throws himself off a cliff. However, it could have been a little different, because I am quite uncomprehending of any stories that are not written or narrated in my language.

[Fantinaikos]

Myst: Riven Remake is out.