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Author Topic: Classic adventure game logic?  (Read 2504 times)

bobbykarate

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Classic adventure game logic?
« on: July 26, 2013, 02:40:21 AM »
Does anyone know of resources out there for understanding how to design logic and managers or systems generally involved in or used for building classic point and click adventure type games?

I have zero scripting or programming experience and just an art background. But I have taught myself playmaker over the past couple months.

Questions I have are like, "What are some ways to manage states of active inventory items - like I have an item selected and am now in a state of having this item selected so I can get responses for being in this state while acting upon other items rather than the responses i may get while in another state with a different inventory item selected. Should you base states like this off of the cursor texture currently being used or is there a better way? I'm sure there's a better way.

Is there a bible out there for this kind of stuff? Or a teacher? Any feedback is much apprecaited!

One major issue i'm facing with my poor FSM designs is I can click around wildly and end up getting into a state that breaks the game. It's like something among all the fsms gets out of sync with the others and then the game is in a state not intended to be possible which prevent progress. So I'm inexperienced in building stable systems and desperately searching for help without having to hire an experienced programmer. HELP PLEASE! :)

jeanfabre

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Re: Classic adventure game logic?
« Reply #1 on: July 29, 2013, 06:30:56 AM »
Hi,

 You are asking for some pretty advanced features that you will unlickely master before you are getting some solid experience with Unity and Playmaker.

 so I suggest you cut down your problem into smaller chunck.

for inventories and such, I would suggest you try arrayMaker:
https://hutonggames.fogbugz.com/default.asp?W715

this will help you keep track of lists of items and such. but then again, managing an inventory will require a lot of logic and features for you to get there. So maybe study the various examples provided and start extrapolating on how you can reuse this and that to fit your needs.

I am not aware of any books on the matter unfortunatly. But maybe you could search the asset store for some frameworks that match the type of game you want to achieve.


Bye,

 Jean

bobbykarate

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Re: Classic adventure game logic?
« Reply #2 on: August 01, 2013, 05:54:34 PM »
I am using the array lists for various things like managing strings, but I don't think my inventory system is going to require it as it's not ever going to be very complex and there will never be variable quantities to deal with. I'm actually treating inventory just like any other set of objects in the world that the player can interact with, so the possible inventory is unique per scene. And I do have plenty of Unity experience I actually taught a class in Unity (be it an art class) and I've shipped a couple titles built in Unity before (with teams of programmers of course). But I haven't wired logic before or scripted anything myself, and that's where I am struggling the most.

I have a system that works and achieves most of what I want, but there are a few areas I'm having trouble debugging regarding raycast errors (everything breaks if I change the distance now, or try to have different FSM's cast different distances which is a showstopper for my intended design) and like I mentioned before the FSM's being able to get out of sync or out of expected order causing a broken state prohibiting progress. And this is all due to the fact that I have no master logic outlined and am just blindly doing things one step at a time until they work.

I am wanting to throw it away and redo it as I'm basing high level states being determined by what cursor texture is currently active. It's the only thing I could imagine because of my lack of experience in this area. But I'm ambitious and motivated to solve my problems.

I read a post where you said to treat things more like organs of a body working together rather than trying to build large systems to manage lots of things, and I am doing that for the most part but I believe I could simplify my high level state determination without relying on cursor textures and having different redundant FSM's talking to each other to achieve this as it's become overwhelming to maintain rather than having many simpler independent fsm's.

I guess what I need is to sit down with a programmer, explain my goals, and work together on sketching up the logic that would encompass this all before getting too far ahead of myself, I do believe it could be much simpler than I know how to make it.

Is there a place in this forum for developers interested in collaboration? Can we create one if not? It'd be priceless to me to have such resources. Like I could trade art services for logic construction advice.

I am currently building a website to track and share my project and it's progress, but I don't wanna hire anyone as I think part of the story behind the development of my project is more interesting if I do this on my own without hiring a programmer (though maybe it's unrealistic and eventually I'll need a partner or to hire someone), But right now I just want guidance with the most enigmatic parts, as this playMaker is amazing and is going to change things as far as independent developers go I believe! :)

jeanfabre

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Re: Classic adventure game logic?
« Reply #3 on: August 02, 2013, 09:19:38 AM »
Hi,

 Have you asked questions on your current struggled? The first step for you now is to formulate your issue, as you try to formulate it, you will need ot be precise about what's going wrong, your expectations and what's happening. This will be already a major step towards fixing this.

So, make sure you post your questions, pm me, if you want to make sure I don't miss them, and I'll do my best to answer and guide you.

bye,

Jean