Re: [kidsgames] Generic adventure game engine

[jm <giem@free.fr>]

Hi all
At 10:00 14/07/00 -0700, Terry wrote:
>A somewhat softer target might be paging "games" or software "books".
>Something like hypercard, with sprite animation capabilities (and an
>editor to support creating them).  You probably can do this in
>a browser with Flash or Shockwave type tools.  But, of course, those
>aren't free.

Yes HTML seems to be the "best" way to do this... Plus it's quite 
cross-platform
Animated Gif are a bit limited, but DHTML is quite powerful to so simple 
animations:
(see http://plaza.harmonix.ne.jp/~jimmeans/ or 
http://www.siteexperts.com/games/jperry/page1.asp (ie only )
One problem now is the NON standard DHTML...

Flash is another solution, and even if it's not free, you can freely create 
flash content freely
eg in PHP: http://www.opaque.net/ming/
(note that there is a wrapper for python too :))

The "next" solution would be SVG, but it's still "in developement".
The "mother" links: http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/
I like the fact that it's vector oriented and XML

>Obviously that depends.  Sierra games and the Humongous Entertainment
>games my kids play seem to combine "graphic adventure" segments with
>"arcade sequences."  Interestingly, the HE games seem to use the
>same arcade games over and over, just with different artwork.
Could you give me one HE title so I can take a look at it (well, hoping 
there is a demo somewhere) ?

>  It appears that they simply developed a bag of software tricks, which
>they exploit by developing new artwork and characters for the
>new games -- in otherwords, they are selling their entertainment/
>animation/character-branding rather than the actual software.

I guess that's the good thing about "educationnal" games: the character is 
important, in order to present you the educative content. It's like a 
"standard interface" where you feel at home. Tux might be a good character 
for that...

> > I know SCUMM, AGI, Infocom engine (and old EAMON) as generic adventure game
> > engine (for the ones that are documented at least). So if you have any
> > other idea, they are welcome.
>Do you mean you know how to program them?

No, I mean I've played them a bit a long time ago...
And recently did look again quickly at the creation of  adventures for them 
(and so how they work)

  SCUMM is the Lucasarts game engine, used for example in the Monkey Island 
games.
  There is a more or less free-as-a-beer but win9x and NOT open source in 
development at
www.scramm.org There you'll find a quite good description of the 
possibilities of that engine (http://www.scramm.org/feature.shtml)
This article is great too:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/programming/100397/languages1.htm

There are some demos on the lucas ftp site if you want to try the SCUMM engine.

AGI (and SCI) are the Sierra generic engines: they were used to make King 
Quest for example.There are AGI and SCI clones done or in project
http://agisci.cjb.net/

The Z-engine (aka Infocom) seems still used by the "Interactive Fiction" 
community. Like you said, it's text only (well the new engine allows images 
and sound)
Text has a limited "educationnal" range, (because it's NOT attractive at 
first) but can be a way to have children read.
Since text is still present on the internet (with ICQ, IRC and the like), 
may be some interactive fiction could help to "discover" books: most of the 
current IF deals with fantasy, aka Tolkien, but there are some Alice in 
Wonderland stories... I'm sure it could be used to create Shakespeare worlds.
The engine has been extended/recreated. There is a long spec here:
http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/zspec/
and the rest of the site is very informative on the Z-engine...
http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/inform.html

The last "updated" version seems to handle sounds and bitmaps:
http://www.eblong.com/zarf/glulx/index.html
and http://www.eblong.com/zarf/glk/index.html

The "center" of the IF world seems to be ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/

I need to give a look at Entity.


>Maybe you could write a specification?

I'm thinking about it.
  Right now, I'm looking what and how the previous engines work. If you 
have any "experience" playing with them, or with any "educationnal" games, 
or have the need for an educational game, feel free to add your point of view

I think there is a need for a "click and write" game creator,
but that you can then extend when you're more confortable with the engine.

The analogy would be www.editthispage.com
  + you can make a weblog without any HTML knowledge, and extend it to suit 
you better if you do (it's using Manila, a Linux port through Wine is on 
the work)
Afaik, there is no equivalent system for Linux (maybe Zope, I don't know...))

>Is Python really that good (or really that easy)?

Good ? depends on which point of view !
Well, it's quite easy to learn (but I'm not a good judge) and object oriented.
Plus there are a lot of "educationnal" people around python (cf CP4E and 
other python project here: http://www.python.org/sigs/edu-sig/ or 
http://www.python.org/cp4e/)

In fact, a good project should use GUILE, but I'd just give a start with 
python first (if I ever do something) because it has some sort of "multi" 
languages supports...
http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/

> > > >And may be it could be extended using Bonobo/Corba
>
>I still don't know what this is.  Is there a URL I should look at?

Well, this is the "gnome" way to do components... (KDE has another 
solution, and Mozilla another one... And Microsoft another one too)
intro on Bonobo: http://developer.gnome.org/doc/guides/corba/
intro on Corba: http://www.javacommerce.com/CorbaNotes/index.htm

--
  jm

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