#5474 - ChildhoodsEnd - Tue Apr 29, 2003 11:07 am
I am thinking about taking on a graphical adventure such as those seen already on the GBA (Brokensword, Alone in the Dark) and would like to get some feedback on whether people think this genre can actually exist and work on the GBA.
#5476 - antysix - Tue Apr 29, 2003 11:52 am
If you can make nice graphics I think it can work.
I thought the third place at the gbaemu compo was a graphical adventure
so download that to get some inspiration.
#5665 - Daikath - Mon May 05, 2003 7:20 pm
I didn't really like that game, it was so full of medevil speaching habits that you could barely understand what it was about. Plus it was very hard to get some good form of gameplay going instead of what was just walking around finding out the gate was closed.
Broken Sword on the other hand is a point and click adventure. The gameplay excists out of puzzeling and figuering out how to do stuff, if you succeed you feel like Macgyver :). I really like those and it has been too long since a good game in the genre came out (Post Mortem).
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#6309 - MojoJojo - Thu May 22, 2003 7:04 pm
What would be great would be if someone converted the LucasArts SCUMM engine to GBA. Its already been done for the pocket pc (www.scummvm.org).
Not sure how practical this would be - you'd have to contend with the small screen size, and work out how to get the game data files onto the rom as well.
If I actually get the hang of GBA programming, I'd give it ago, but since I haven't written anything yet, don't hold your breath.
#6326 - Quirky - Fri May 23, 2003 7:37 am
| MojoJojo wrote: |
| What would be great would be if someone converted the LucasArts SCUMM engine to GBA. Its already been done for the pocket pc (www.scummvm.org). |
There have been a couple of attempts at it according to posts on the forum there, but it would require a complete rewrite as far as I can tell, not a straightforward port by any means. The problem is the engine has been designed for compatibility (and for a PC), so speed and having a small memory footprint were low down on the list of priorities.
#7635 - hnager - Sat Jun 21, 2003 11:22 pm
Anybody have links to the gbaemu compo roms?
#7646 - Lord Graga - Sun Jun 22, 2003 10:53 am
I would love to see a graphical point and click adventure for GBA!
Think about making a discworld-like game, that would rock!
#7651 - Psyk - Sun Jun 22, 2003 12:23 pm
Surely it would be better to create a new engine for the GBA rather than the SCUMM engine since the GBA has sprite scaling and stuff like that already built into hardware.
Porting the SCUMM engine to GBA wouldn't make use of hardware sprites and tile modes (although i don't suppose tile modes would be much use)
#9367 - Domovoi - Sun Aug 03, 2003 12:23 am
I've been working on a scrolling background that can be used in Broken Sword-like adventure games. The hard bit is that it's in tilemode, but all tiles are unique, so there's no reuse of tiles.
I've now got a picture of any width or height (so it can be, for instance, eight, twelve, twenty or even thirty screens wide (all depending on ROM size)), that scrolls around nicely in a screen of size 240x128, using only two character base blocks and one screen base block. It has black bars on the top and bottom (to save some tiles), but it looks pretty nice.
I wish I could make it use even less video memory, but since the screen is 600 tiles, and each one needs to be unique, you'd need more than 32KB in tile data alone. My method cuts the screen down to 480 tiles, allowing you to stay under 32KB and still have some space offscreen to store some stuff in...
I wonder if this is the right way to go about these things, but it works pretty well for me...
#9369 - Domovoi - Sun Aug 03, 2003 12:25 am
I don't think actual point and click would work well, by the way. Moving the cursor around is way to awkward. Anyone ever played Maniac Mansion on the NES?
They did it nicely with Broken Sword, I felt. You controlled the character directly, with the directional pad.
#9370 - tepples - Sun Aug 03, 2003 12:28 am
| Quirky wrote: |
| The problem is the engine has been designed for compatibility (and for a PC), so speed and having a small memory footprint were low down on the list of priorities. |
Maniac Mansion, a SCUMM game, runs on the NES, an even more limited system than the original Game Boy. The GBA, on the other hand, feels more like a PC running DOS.
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#13128 - Samer! - Fri Dec 05, 2003 11:31 pm
the cut-scenes in wario-ware made me believe that the gba can be home to graphic adventures, the pointer problem (and any other problem by the way) can be solved by experimenting new ideas, maybe 'snaping' the pointer to some points on the screen would be a good idea? there's only one way to know.. to experiment with the idea
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#13148 - sajiimori - Sat Dec 06, 2003 5:37 am
D-pad controlled cursors have been used for a long time...there's really no contreversy about that. I mean, Shadowgate for NES didn't even allow moving the cursor diagonally, but it was still a successful game.
Broken Sword did have good control. But what if it were first person? Instead of moving a person around the screen, you'd move a cursor. The 'feel' might be different, but it shouldn't be any harder to control.
I say go for it. I don't know what aspect of development you are interested in, but let me know if you need a programmer.
#13378 - schoebey - Fri Dec 12, 2003 1:31 am
i am currently working on a graphical adventure for the gba.
the engine is pretty far developed already (basically only sound is missing - it even features compressed backgrounds/animation-data)
we've decided to make use of direct controls (as in broken sword) since moving a cursor all the time would probably be a real pain in the a**
however, during our game, there are certain sequences where you get to control a cursor (closeups of objects, e.g. when searching the contents of a desk).
There's a small preview available on my company's homepage:
http://www.ancor.ch/movies/tls_teaser1.avi
(note: this movie has been recorded quite some time ago....as you can see, the character movement was pretty crappy back then)
regards,
schoebey