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but note that that most of those games still have a copyright holder; thus downloading them is piracy. In short, it's a warez site. Please consult their FAQ.

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...one aspect of an adventure that makes or breaks the suspension of disbelief is widely pushed aside and ends up as an afterthought, not, as it should be, treated as a cornerstone of the game, possibly right up there with the story; the puzzles. A good acid test is to look at your game without the story or graphics; would I want to play it as a game simply of puzzles? And if you have trouble imagining those puzzles without the story, that's even better; your puzzles are well integrated. So here, in no particular order, are my humble thoughts on how you can make a game that has puzzles that, instead of being superfluous, actually impress the player as much as the story or graphics.

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3D adventure gaming is somewhat a new and controversial subject. For me, it's only recently that it's become a viable medium and I'm often slightly taken aback by some of the vehemence of those within our community that rally against it. They often cite past 3D titles as being the main reason as why it would never work, a questionable move compounded by the fact that those games fail simply because they're not great games, or suffered from the technology the developers were using back at that time. There's also a pickiness associated with 3D titles that doesn't transfer to 2D ones - simply put, most adventure gamers are OK settling for a mediocre (generalising maybe, but it's an example) title like Midnight Nowhere because of its simple point-and-click mouse controls when a better game like Broken Sword 3 gets kicked in the shins for some relatively minor control problems and a couple of "Dragon's Lair" interactive cutscenes which solve themselves... not that I'm agreeing with the fact that they're there, as you can see below. But it's a worthy point that many AG'ers seem to have something against 3D which I want to try to prove isn't justified.

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Depressingly Common Adventure Game Design Flaws. Inherent in all adventure games, excused in the professional ones and expected in the amateur, are the frustrations, the irksome little foibles that dog the experience, turning what should be a gleeful descent into a new pixellated fantasy into an exercise in skull-clenching horror. And yet, no matter how many windows are broken by carelessly hurled monitors, adventure games continue to contain these bugs, perhaps because even the most cherished adventures in history are sometimes guilty of the crimes, and they are as such made valid to the professional and amateur designers of today. My mission in life is to expose these disasters of gameplay, to warn others to avoid them, and as such end their tyranny on our leisure time.












This Month's Depressingly Common Adventure Game Design Flaw:












THAT DOESN'T WORK

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The general lack of story-telling in video games is pretty pervasive(though not without exception). It is also, in my opinion, a big waste. If there is any medium with which a story could be conveyed powerfully, it’s video games for one simple reason: interaction. The player must take part in the reality the game creates, so they are already that much closer to things like suspension of disbelief, immersion, and identification with the characters.

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Over the past nine years Larry Ahern and I have worked with many different adventure game designers and on many adventure games. We both contributed heavily to the game designs for all those projects. Larry even got to co designed The Curse of Monkey Island with Jonathan Ackly. During those projects we have learned a lot about the genre including these basic adventure game design ‘rules’, or you could just consider them ‘strong suggestions’. The word ‘rules’ seem a bit strong for such a flexible genre as adventure games. Also many of these ‘rules’ can be applied successfully to other game genres as well.

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There are very few tutorials on the net for making music or a soundtrack to a point and click adventure game, and the one's I read never tell you how to do it. Therefore, I'm going to give you as clear pointers as I can, so you can walk away from this tutorial and actually compose something. Of course, they're just pointers - enabling you to define your own styles etc, but I thought I'd go through some of the key elements to making in-game music.

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The vision is clear, if a game is totally open and without end it will have the potential to live on ad infinitum. The challenge is such a game is adding mechanisms that control the game content, but even this might not be very hard, mainly because players would be able to handle a lot by their interactions and contributions alone. The real issue is to make the “ultimate” finite state machine that can handle the reactions on all the player actions. When the complexity reach a critical point the world should take on a life of its own. This phenomenon is well known among programmers and people working with life simulations. When the simplified game theory models can be applied to a game environment the rest should be only maintenance. Maybe I am dreaming, and have moved to far into the future on the latter statements, but I actually suspect much of this is already out there, but in shards that just need to be collected and glued together.

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In 1995, a friend and myself rented a top floor portion of an old binding factory in Downtown St. Louis, in which there was over ½ acre of floor space. Since I was about 11, I had been jotting down notes about creating my own haunted house, and finally my dream came true. I am going to cite the order of its design and construction as it can relate to the process of game development. Just imagine a virtual haunted house attraction and build it in 3D geometry instead of wood, drywall and steel studs. It is a great idea to carry a small pocket size notebook with you so you can jot down ideas. Alhtough designing and creating the story for the game is time consuming; time is on your side. Sometimes you wake up in the middle of night with an idea, so it is best to have a tablet and pen always handy. H.R. Giger did this - one result was the design for the 'Alien' creature. I can say I have been in the least 'inspired' by vivid nightmares and 'night terrors' as well.

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