The following is an extract from the Adventure Game Engine Tutorial Document.   This extract gives a walkthrough for the sample game that is included with the Developer Kit.  The game comes with full source code.  This walkthrough will give you a taste of the kinds of features that the engine delivers...

The sample game is included with the AGE Adventure Game Engine, a hobbyist edition of which comes free when you purchase The Sydney Mystery for only $19.95.  Click here to visit The Sydney Mystery website.  You can also download a free demo of The Sydney Mystery, at the website, to see what the AGE Adventure Game Engine is capable of.

 

A Sample Game

Change to the \sample directory. You need to first run the setup.exe application.

If setup.exe tells you that DirectX or DirectXMedia installation is required (or indeed the installation of both components), then follow the program's instructions. You might need to restart your computer after this step. If this happens, rerun setup.exe when you return to Windows.

You only need to install these components the very first time you run an adventure game. In future, setup.exe will report that both components are found on your computer. When you’re ready, click the Start Game button, to begin playing the game. (This actually executes the program age.exe, in the /sample/age directory.)

(Note that the setup.exe program is only supplied on the Developer Kit CD-ROM.  If you download the sample game from the web, consult its readme.txt file before playing.)

 

autoplay.GIF (3257 bytes) The setup program is usually the first program a user sees when playing an adventure game from CD-ROM. 

 

The setup program will alert the user if DirectX or DirectXMedia is required, and will then install these components.  From the advanced... option, the user can force the install of DirectX or DirectXMedia, and may also force the uninstallation of saved games from the computer.

Usually, the user will just Play the game from this menu.

Your monitor will go black, as it switches to full-screen mode like any professional game for Windows computers.

 

The sample game begins with a "cutscene", a video file showing the animated Twilight Software logo.

The first scene - a title screen When the video ends, the sample game then moves to its first "scene", the title screen.

Click once on the title screen to begin the game.

 

An animated fly-by Another "cutscene" –a 3d rendered flyby towards two islands with spoken narration – is played. When this ends, we enter a new "scene" – we are hovering over water, looking at the first island.

 

Standing in front of the first island This scene contains two "hotspots" or "clickable regions" – areas of the screen in which you may click to perform special actions. Over the very right-hand-side, you can click on the green island to look at it. A spoken description will be played. You can click on the main brown island to move forwards into a new scene.

 

An object, a person in the distance, or travel to the right This next scene has three clickable regions. On the left, you may head towards the girl in the distance. On the right, you can walk towards the edge of the island. In the middle of the screen, there is a golden ball that you may pick up.

 

You’ll notice that the mouse pointer changes when you move over one of these clickable regions, to show an image that reflects the action you may take. A string of text follows the mouse pointer, indicating the action that may be taken. Clicking the left-hand mouse button carries out this action. Try clicking on the golden sphere, you’ll pick up the object.

Once you pick up an object, it is added to your inventory. The pointer has changed to the golden ball. The right-hand mouse button cycles through your inventory and the normal mouse pointer. With only one object in your inventory, the right-hand mouse button will just appear to switch between this first object and the normal pointer.

(Actually, this scene also contains a fourth clickable region. At the bottom of the screen, you may walk "backwards" to the previous scene. Such regions exist in most scenes in this sample game, but are not always explicitly mentioned.)

Now try clicking on the girl in the distance. This will cause you to "walk" to a new scene, this time showing the girl up close.

 

A character to talk to Click on her again to "talk" to her. This will enter a "conversation".

 

A conversation in progress Click on her again to "talk" to her. This will enter a "conversation".
 

The conversation begins with a "welcome" – a video is played of the girl greeting you. You are then given a series of choices – "questions" (although they don’t strictly have to be questions) – to ask the girl. Click on "What is your name?" and a video will be played of her reply. Ask her "Can you help me?" and she will also reply. It seems she wants a golden ball…

When you move the mouse pointer over the image in the conversation, the pointer changes to an inventory item. Clicking on the right-hand mouse button will just cycle through the available inventory items. Since you only have one item – the golden ball – you can’t cycle through any other items. But at any rate, offer her the golden ball by clicking the left-hand mouse button while the golden ball is showing. The girl will thank you for the gift, and you will notice the appearance of a new question that you can ask.

Ask the girl "What is this place?" and watch her reply. Then leave the conversation (by clicking on the Leave option). You will find yourself back in the scene standing near the girl. Walk back (by clicking at the bottom of the screen), returning to the previous scene, standing where the golden ball was found.

Now walk to the right, towards the edge of the island. In this new scene, you are looking down on a bridge that leads to the second island.

 

Looking down on the bridge There are only two clickable regions in this scene. At the bottom of the screen, you may of course move back to the previous scene. Otherwise, you may click on the bridge to approach it.

 

When moving onto the bridge, you will encounter an interesting character.

 

The Green Guy on the bridge The Green Guy is a simple hand-drawn character who has been placed in this 3d world.

 

The Adventure Game Engine supports full motion video for great quality cinematic cutscenes, interactive characters and other animations. However, some people will be using the engine to build compact adventure games that will be redistributed on the web – where file size should be kept minimal – and other people will not have access to video production facilities. With this in mind, the sample game demonstrates that video cutscenes and video-conversations can be replaced with non-video alternatives.

Here, the green guy demonstrates a conversation without using video. When you click on him, he will inform you that he wants a silver ball. When you try to walk forwards towards the next island, he will reiterate this information.

Fortunately, by giving the golden ball to the girl earlier, she agreed to help us. Now return to the girl, and talk to her again. You will notice that she now welcomes you with familiarity – a new "welcome" video is played because you have visited her before. (Such subtlety adds richness to the gaming environment.)

Since you know that you’re looking for a silver ball, you’ll see available a new question regarding this. Ask the girl for a silver ball. Once you have it, return to the Green Guy.

At the Green Guy’s bridge, click the right-hand mouse button to bring up the silver ball. With this item showing, click on the Green Guy with the left-hand mouse button. He will accept the item, telling you that you can now pass. Click on the green island, moving forwards to a new scene.

 

Animated objects This new scene shows off the animation capabilities of the Adventure Game Engine. This scene shows two abstract rendered shapes, animating continuously.

 

There is an interesting difference between the two animations. The donut turns continuously in a cyclic (or "forward") animation. The frames are ordered in a 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4 fashion. However, the cylinder moves in a pendulum, or "pingpong" animation. The frames are ordered in a 1,2,3,4,3,2,1,2,3,4,3,2,1 fashion – back and forth.

The animations play continuously while you are in this scene. You may move back to the bridge, if you want to re-explore any areas of the island. Otherwise, click to move forwards, up the mountain.

 

A strange device You can also walk to a new scene towards the left. The new scene, added to celebrate the launch of v1.05 of the engine, shows an odd device.

 

Try clicking on the little square buttons that protrude from the larger boxes. You can switch either button on or off – the graphic highlighting to show this change.

When both switches are turned on at once, the horizontal bar changes to a brightly coloured pattern. This pattern will disappear when either of the switches is turned off again. While the bar is coloured, try looking at it. You will enter a new scene.

 

A closer view This new scene simply gives a close-up look at the coloured bar. Return to the previous scene, which served the purpose of showing that more complex machine- and puzzle-like behaviours are possible using this Adventure Game Engine.

 

Heading towards the mountain Return to the scene with the animated shapes, and then click to move forwards, up the mountain.

 

The ending sequence An adventure game would usually display a video cutscene for the ending of the game. However, since we’ve already seen the capabilities of a cutscene – in the opening animation – the ending here is done as a simple "slideshow".

 

For those developers who do not use full motion video in their productions, this is an alternative to a video cutscene. Instead of presenting a story-segment as a video, a story-segment can be presented as a set of screens with text and pictures.

A "continue…" button appears at the bottom of the screen, allowing the progression to the next screen in this "slideshow". Notice that the text is automatically underlined when the mouse hovers over the "continue…" region. Click here.

 

The end of the sample game The final scene in the ending slideshow is simply a "The End" screen.

 

And there you have played through a tiny sample adventure game, created over two evenings using the Adventure Game Engine.

This final screen contains no links to other scenes. It does, however, demonstrate the use of a Menu button and a Quit button. Clicking on the Menu button will bring up the game menu, the same as hitting the ESC (Escape) key. Clicking on the Quit button will end the program, returning to Windows immediately.

At this stage, hit the ESC (Escape) key to bring up a menu. Choose "Quit", then "yes" to return to Windows. It should be mentioned that the ESC (Escape) key also skips a video playing in a cutscene. Also deserving of mention is the fact that the alt-tab key could be used at any time, while playing the game, to return to the Windows desktop. Restoring the focus to the Adventure Game Engine would return the game to the full screen.

 

There is one more piece of game functionality that was not mentioned, and that is the issue of saving and loading games.

You can practice doing this now, if you want, by re-running the sample game (either by clicking on Start Game in setup.exe, or just by running age.exe). Carry out some steps of the game, find a scene you like, then hit ESC (Escape). (You can’t save games in conversations or cutscenes, only in normal scenes.) Click on "Save game". You will see a set of "Unused" slots. Choose a slot, then "yes" to confirm the saving of the game.

You can then move around to another scene, doing some more steps of the game. Then hit ESC again, choose "Load game", and choose the slot that you saved in before. The game will be loaded, in the scene that you saved in, with the correct inventory objects and game steps accomplished, just as it was saved.

 

And there ends your exploration of the sample game itself. The remainder of this document will take you through the inner workings of the Adventure Game Engine, examining every piece of work that was done to create the sample game. Once you have finished reading this document, you will have seen just about everything it takes to build an adventure game in the engine. You will then be able to embark on creating your own adventure game.

 

...The Adventure Game Engine Tutorial Document continues, giving a full tutorial on how this sample game was made.   The full script source code to the game is given, so that you can see the inner workings of the game.  The documentation examines every part of the script, explaining what it all does and how it fits into the big picture of making a game.