My Adventure Creator project…
For those of you who don’t already know, at the start of the lockdown, I set myself the task of creating a graphic adventure game! Or, I should say, I started to learn how to make a graphic adventure game in Unity.
There was a time in Lockdown – what can I say!
For those of you who don’t know me, I studied Multimedia Design and Digital Animation as a follow-up course to my HND in Graphic Design at university. All those years ago! I also have a yellow belt cert in Unity too.
In the early days of the 2000s, Adobe Flash was king, ( Check this blog post out on why to avoid Flash player on another website ) and I used to make a lot of multimedia applications, both personal and commercial. Most of these early projects were micro games or small interactive animations – all of this stuff was pre-smartphone.
My first project on this sort of scale, where I had to try and create my own project, was at University. I set about making an e-learning game for children, which was all built in Flash. Sadly, with the demise of Flash Player, this is tricky to play now although I may still have a projector for the game somewhere.
Here is a picture of it.
From a game creation perspective, In hindsight, really it was a narrative game with educational elements to it. You may also be interested to see in theory how to make a story game in Adobe Animate.
But now to the crunch.
Adventure Creator Project.
Adventure Creator Project | Fools Errand
A name for a game that exists solely as a learning exercise – it could have been called anything really, as I had no intention of monetizing it. The game was based on classic 2D point-and-click graphic adventures that you could buy in the 90’s – the humble point and click game.
You point… and you click.
I created this game a greybox prototype to see how Adventure Creator works. It was something to learn during the Lockdown.
The brief – Learn AC.
If you are interested, you can play the game on itch.io. It is free to play with bugs and all. ( however, it should be noted that you can’t save it via the browser version )
Do I think Adventure Creator with Unity is good?
‘I’ think it is great.
Actually, saying AC ( Adventure Creator ) is good is a massive understatement. It is excellent, I have never been able to assemble a graphic adventure game in the most time and cost-effective way until I used AC. The standard that Adventure Creator offers is just excellent compared to some of the game engines or tool sets I have used in the past.
I have written a post about it on this website – is Adventure Creator good for 2D games on game-gunk.com.
What is my Adventure Creator Project about?
I called it Lost Hat, AKA Fools Errand. The title leaves very little to the imagination of what you need to do.
Who knows where the hat got to?
Or who could be wearing it!
Oh, the trifles of life.
You will need to use your wits to get through this 3 level game to find your hat. Perhaps if I see enough people play it, I might write up a shot hints and tips guide. But I have largely moved on to other things.
The components of the project – AC ( What was involved )
For a personal development project – more than I would care to admit.
This project has a of artwork, basic 2D animation created in Photoshop, some rough and ready characters, Sprites and sprite sheets, sound effects, dialogue, conversations, and logic, and I’ve even decided on a small video clip at the end of the project to see how that would work too. And, of course, Adventure Creator. To summerise it is best to mention it this way.
- NPC character sprites
- Player character sprites + and custom animations spites
- Background artwork
- Scene and item artwork ( such as coins )
- UI design
- End scene video animation ( video )
- The AC logo for every object and item that can be interacted with in the game
- The Icon artwork
- Writing all the dialogue for the game
- SFX
Adventure Creator Project | Sprites
The sprites, or the characters, however you’d prefer to see them, comprise of all NPCs, the animals, the main player, and various other bits and pieces that were used in the environment. If it moved or was animated, it was probably a sprite.
To quickly paint these characters in various states of animation, I used Photoshop to sketch and brush in the black and white ‘wash’.
The main player in particular has a 4-way direction and various other obscure animations in its repertoire!
The main player was the most time-consuming to create, even as a rough sketch. 8-direction would have taken more time still.
Adventure Creator Project | The Scenes
I don’t wish to spoil too much of the game just in case you do decide to play it, as there are only three levels. But in each level, there was a background image that was quickly drawn in Photoshop and then imported as an asset to my project.
Adventure Creator Project | Motion & Animation
I gave very little time to the motion graphics and animation sadly.
After all, I needed to think about the project as a whole and produce this game it quickly. I was invested more in the learning of Adventure Creator than the actual product itself. However, creating some basic frame-by-frame animations was still essential for making the sprites.
To create basic in-game animations, I used Photoshop and painted a couple of layers with my Wacom Tablet as if I were to make a GIF before exporting out the layers as frames.
How did I feel about the project?
As a semi-personal project learning experience, I feel pretty good about it. This was never going to be a polished game for the whole world to play. I created it so I could learn and share. It was undertaken during the Lockdowns. It was a grey boxing experiment.
The project as a whole, taught me more about AC and how I could potentially create a bigger and bolder game in the future using Adventure Creator.
You can play the game here on Itch.io if interested. Warts and bugs included ( you can’t save via the browser version ). It should be noted that the browser version of the game won’t allow you to save! Enjoy. Or you may find some information on this website interesting if you are at game projects.
You may also find this subject on game-gunk interesting: is Adventure Creator good for 2D?
Without divulging too much. I’m currently remaking an old project in Adventure Creator.
