Mission 3/Mission 3.zip/Mission 3.iso/spiele/sgac/manual/chapter1.doc

Text File | 1989-07-28 | 12KB | 275 lines

                                 Chapter one

                             (Planning the game)

 Before we can go about writing a Graphic Adventure, we need to
 plan it out on paper before entering it into Stos. Even though
 you have a good idea of your games plan you will still need some
 notes to refer to otherwise you could end up getting stuck in the
 middle of it and end up in a right mess.

 Creating an adventure game is like making a film, it would take
 place in a created fantasy world with a plot and a goal to aim
 for. So we need to decide what our adventure is going to be
 about, it could be a knight in shining armour who has to rescue a
 princess from a fire breathing dragon or an ape who has to escape
 from the zoo and go back to the forest.

 Lets say we were going to write a game about a school which is
 haunted and the main character is a school boy who has to rescue
 his friend and get out of the school alive. We can start by
 defining the locations you would find in a school, the list would
 look something like this.

  1)  Main Hall
  2)  Assembly Hall
  3)  Caretakers Room
  4)  Headmasters Study
  5)  Staffroom
  6)  School Corridor
  7)  Classroom One
  8)  Classroom Two
  9)  Classroom Three
 10)  School Library

 So here we have a list of locations or rooms that make up the
 game world which in this case is a school. What we need now is a
 way for the player to get to each location.

   Connections

 Think of a jigsaw. This consists of a load of pieces which are
 joined together to form a complete picture. This is the same as
 joining locations together, each one would be joined to the
 nearest. Lets take the above example, the first location is the
 main hall of the school and the nearest locations or rooms would
 be the Headmasters Office, the Caretakers Room, Staffroom and the
 Headmasters Office or Study.

 The Sgac allows you to join or connect five locations to one, you
 can see an example in Grannies Garden, as you see the first
 picture shows icons of the other locations and you can go there
 by selecting Leave from the option bar and clicking on one of the
 icons. This is location number one and is locations 2,3,4,5 and 6
 are connected to it. So really, connections are a fancy name for
 exits. Each exit would lead to another location.

 This is an important stage of an adventure game, if a player
 tries to enter a bathroom and appears in an airport then he's
 most likely to discard the game as he will think its full of
 mistakes and quickly lose interest in the whole game.

   Puzzles

 If the player could go straight to the end of the game then it
 would'nt be very interesting, so what we do is set a few puzzles
 and traps that he must overcome to complete the game.

 At the moment, the player will be able to freely walk around our
 school adventure so lets make it a bit harder for him, we'll put
 a locked door in the Main Hall location so the player will have
 to find a way of unlocking the door so he can enter either one of
 the other rooms or locations there.

 This is known as a 'false exit' and is used in Grannies Garden,
 try going to the castle and then entering it, you are told that
 the guard won't let you in unless you give him a cake. So how do
 you get the cake???, well you have other puzzles to solve first.

 If you have ever read any Detective books, then you will see that
 there are puzzles and problems that the Detective has to overcome
 before finding the Murderer, so by putting them in your games you
 are providing a challenge to the player who has to get past all
 these puzzles to solve his quest.

 Now we can begin putting our plan together on paper.

   Locations and connecting them

 Sgac uses a method called 'Exit Zones' for moving to each
 location, this consists of setting up an area on screen which the
 player can click on to go to the chosen location.

 Lets look at the school game plan, location number one is the
 main hall which leads to the Headmasters Office, the Assembly
 Hall, the caretakers room and the staffroom, so we have four
 Exit Zones from this location. So we can note it down like this
 along with the other locations and their Exit Zones.

   Location                         Exit Zones

  1) School Main Hall               Z1=2, Z2=3, Z3=4, Z4=5
  2) Headmasters Office             Z1=1
  3) Caretakers Room                Z1=1
  4) Staffroom                      Z1=1
  5) Assembly Hall                  Z1=1, Z2=6
  6) School Corridor                Z1=5, Z2=7, Z3=8, Z4=9, Z5=10
  7) Classroom One                  Z1=6
  8) Classroom Two                  Z1=6
  9) Classroom Three                Z1=6
 10) School Library                 Z1=6

 So as you see, from location number one, we have Exit Zones
 leading to locations 2,3,4 and 5, the Z1 and Z2 indicates this,
 so Z1 means Exit Zone number one leads to location 2 and Z2 means
 Exit Zone number 2 leads to location 3 (Z=Zone).

 Lets note down a few puzzles and traps for the game.

  1) The door leading to the Headmasters Office is locked and the
     player must find the key to unlock it.

  2) There is a large dog in the Caretakers Office so the player
     must give it a bone so he can enter.

  3) The player can only enter the Staffroom if he's wearing the
     Teachers Gown.

  4) If the player tries to enter the Caretakers Office without
     giving the dog the bone then it will attack.

  5) If the player enters the Staffroom and he is'nt wearing the
     Teachers Gown then he will be handed to the police.

 So here we have three puzzles and two traps, look at the traps,
 each trap ends the game for the player.

   Objects and their locations

 Objects are things that can be picked up and carried by the
 player, In fact three of them are mentioned in the puzzles and
 traps section, above, these are a Key, a Bone, and a Teachers Gown.

 These objects are there to help the player on his quest and they
 have two locations (Normal and Special), the normal Object
 Locations are used if you want the object to appear at a certain
 location in your game waiting for the player to pick it up.

 The Special Object Locations are as followed....

   Object carried

 The object is carried by the player allowing him to do anything
 he wants with it such as drop it, or use it.

   Object Worn

 The object is worn by the player, such an object could be a piece
 of clothing or even a wristwatch.

   Object N-C

 The object is N-C (Not Created) and does not as yet exist in the
 game. The object will enter the game when the player finds it.

 The objects can be listed on paper like this....

     Object                      Location

  1) Key                          Location 1
  2) Bone                         Object Carried
  3) Gown                         Object Worn
  4) Knife                        Object N-C

 Here we've added an extra object, a knife which could come in
 useful as the friend the player is going to rescue could be tied
 up somewhere and the knife can be used to cut the ropes.

   Game Events

 These are used to perform the outcome of the players command, for
 example we could use one to created a not created object when the
 player opens a box or examines a coat.

 We can also use one to if the player finds his friend, the friend
 could be tied up in a cupboard and found when the player opens
 it. This events can be noted down like this....

  1) When the player opens the large chest in the Staffroom he
     finds the knife.

  2) When the player gives the dog the bone the dog takes it and
     lets the player enter the Caretakers Office.

  3) If the player uses the key on the door of the Headmasters
     office the door will unlock and he can enter.

 When the event is carried out the game will perform an action,
 for example, if the player did use the key on the door then the
 computer will connect the main hall to the Headmasters office
 thus creating the exit from the main hall to the Office.

 Event 2 checks if the dog has been given the bone, in this case
 the bone would become a not created object and leave the game and
 a varible is set to indicate that the dog has eaten it.

 More on this later on so stay tuned to this channel.

   Graphics

 To create a Graphic Adventure you will need an art package, which
 can be obtained from a PD library for about £3. Sadly due to
 time and disk space we were unable to included one with the package
 but if you would like a PD package then send a pound to us and ask
 for the package and we'll send it to you. Our address is in the
 intro document.

 When an artist draws a picture, he always draws a mock up of the
 picture just to get the angles right and make sure everything is
 in the right place. This is what we should do before we complete
 creating our adventure.

 Lets do a mock up of the hallway location, this has four Exit
 Zones so just draw four boxes on screen then save it on a
 seperate disk. Now with the same picture on screen, lets alter
 it, rub three boxes out so you just leave one box on the picture
 and save it on the same disk with the first picture.

 The first box is a mock up of the picture of location one in our
 school adventure, which is the Main Hall location and the boxes
 are the four Exit Zones. The second picture with the one box on
 it is location 2 (Headmasters Office) with one Exit Zone.

 You may change all the palette colours for your picture but you
 must keep colours 0 and 1 black and white, the reason for this is
 explained later.

 The next thing to do with the finished graphics is to pack them
 and save them as .mbk files, using the Stos compact accessory.

 There is one other rule, the compacted pictures must be saved
 with these names only like this...

   Pic1.mbk       (picture for location one)
   Pic2.mbk       (picture for location two)

 So the name should be "Pic"+location number+".mbk", look in the
 Garden.dat folder and view the filenames for its pictures.

   Location Descriptions

 The location description is used to describe the current location
 but it must not memtion any objects. The location description for
 the Headmasters office would something like this...

  You are inside the Headmasters Office, the carpet looks old and
  worn and the walls are decorated with Trophys. A large desk and a
  comfy swivel chair stand in the corner. You see a door.

 So location 2 goes with picture 2.

 An important rule to remember is that the location description
 must only imform the player of things that stay the same, for
 example you can't say 'You see an open door' because a door can
 easily be opened and closed and you can't say the clock says
 something like five o clock because time changes.

 Well thats the end of this chapter, maybe you could think of more
 bits and pieces for the game, maybe define more locations, objects
 and puzzles. In chapter three I will be showing you more stuff to
 make your game interesting.

 Remember, the more time spent on planning a game, the greater it
 becomes. In Chapter 2, we are going to look at the creator.