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CHAPTER TWO
Planning an adventure game
******************************************************************
Like any other game an adventure has to be planned out on paper,
this chapter is dedicated to showing you how its done. We are
going to look at how St brides was written as an example.
The first thing we need to think of is what the game is going to
be about, what will the main character be and what does he have
to do in our adventure. We then need to create a fantasty world
for him or her to do it in.
Looking at St brides we see that the main character is a normal
everyday schoolgirl, the created fantasty world is the inside of
a school and her task is to get out of the school.
We now need to make a list of the locations or places we are
likely to encounter in our created world, for example the list
of locations in a school would look something like this.
1. Headmasters office.
2. Dinner hall.
3. Caretakers office.
4. Main hall.
5. Boys toilet.
6. Girls toilet.
7. Classroom 1.
8. Classroom 2.
So here we have eight locations making up the inside of a school
you could also add other locations such as a staffroom or an
assembly hall for example.
Now we have our locations we can connect them together like this.
**************** ************
* classroom 1 * -------------- * corridor *
**************** ************
LOCATION 1 LOCATION 2
Connecting locations is like drawing a map, you connect your
location to the nearest one. In the above example the nearest
location or place from the classroom would be a corridor. As
above you would draw a small box with the name of the location
in it on paper along with its location number.
For practise why don't you draw a map of your own house with
small boxes repesenting each room in the house and drawing
lines in between them to connect them together.
CONNECTIONS
******************************************************************
Connections are just a way of getting from one room to another,
This is done by the normal compass directions (north,south..ect)
when you want to go somewhere in an adventure land you would
normally type "go north" or "n" for short.
In St brides the first location description says there is a door
that leads north. This location is the bedroom of the main
character and this is connected to the corridor. So what you
are doing is deciding which direction leads out of that
location and into the next one, the nearest.
Imagine yourself in a school corridor. In that location you
could see three different places to go, so your map of the
corridor would point to three different locations which could
be a classroom, a staffroom and the headmasters office. You
could then decide that the main character would have to go
north to enter the classroom or east to enter the staffroom.
Now remember when you enter a location using a direction you
need to use the oppisite direction to leave, for example if you
go north into the classroom you would have to go south to
leave it and re-enter the corridor. Or you could go east to the
staffroom and west to come back to the corridor.
Just like the rooms of a building locations apply to the
outside of the building like a village or a forest. Connections
for a village location could be north to a forest. In this case
the connections from the forest would be south to the village.
Not all locations would be connected to each other, you may
decide that your character has another way of getting there
like traveling by car or stepping through a magic mirror.
After all this your plan could be written down like this....
1. HALLWAY (n=2,s=3,w=4)
2. BEDROOM (s=1)
3. BATHROOM (n=1)
4. STAIRCASE (e=1)
As you can see, the first location is an hallway which leads to
three other locations. The information in between the brackets
are the connections (exits) from that location. So our main
character can go north to the bedroom (location 2) from the
hallway. The letters are the first letter of the direction and
the number is the number of the location it is connected to.
Here is a list of directions sac uses............
n=north s=south w=west e=east u=up d=down nw=northwest
ne=northeast sw=southwest se=southeast.
Connections will become clearer as we move on.
OBJECTS
***************************************************************
Objects are normal everyday items that can be picked up and
used or just moved to another place like a torch, a piece of
clothing or even some food and drink. Our character may be a
knight whos task is to save a princess from a dragon, in which
case he would need a sword and shield.
An object could be created and put in a certain location
waiting for the player to find it or it could be carried or
even worn. You could decide what objects are needed by the main
character and write it down like this.....
1. TORCH (found at location 2)
2. COAT (worn)
3. KNIFE (carried)
So judging by the plan, our first object (the torch) can be
found by the player at location 2 (the hallway).
Most adventure games allow the player to examine a carried
object. The game would normaly give him a description of the
object, for example typing "examine sword" would result in the
game printing up "The sword is sharp with a golden hilt."
Other times an object could reveal something like examining a
jug and finding a key inside. This is known as a reveal examine
command where one object is found in another. Normaly the sac
editor would just print up the normal examine message so the
reveal messages are kept separate. See chapter 4 for a example.
Examine also applies to examining part of the current location
that is'nt an object. As above this can be a normal or reveal
command where reveal is treated separate. Don't worry about
this for now as it will be discussed in chapter 3.
If you have subscriped to sac you will have recieved chapters
5 and 6. Chapter 5 will tell you about adding extras such as
characters and samples and other clever routines.
Well thats mainly how adventures are planned. As we move on we
can add extras to the plan like game messages and high priority
commands and the special commands like reveal.
In chapter 3 we shall discuss using the sac data creator.