Can you compare these different adventure creator software for non programmers?

Can some advanced users compare these different adventure creator software for non programmers?

COMMERCIALl:
Visionaire Studio: www.visionaire-studio.net
Adventure Maker: http://www.adventuremaker.com/overview.htm
Adventure Creator for Unity3d: http://www.iceboxstudios.co.uk/adventure-creator

FREE:
Sludge: http://opensludge.sourceforge.net/games.html
Adventure Game Studio: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/

I am curious what they have or what is missing and hidden costs. Example: I know that if you buy Adventure Creator for Unity3d, and you want to use your own (.avi) movies for intro and cutscenes, you have to upgrade to Unity3d PRO, and pay extra $1000. Export to iOS and Android cost extra, about $500 per module if I am correct.
How easy is to get started in each if you are a new user?
Graphic, video, sound files supported or not supported? Like: .png is not supported type of limitation, video playback has issues, etc..
Major known issues that can force you to call for professional help in the middle of your project?
Distribution limitation?
Anything else that would help new users make their choice?

no idea about adventure maker...

unity requires some programming knowledge in c# I think but is free for non-profit games or games that generate less than 100k in a year or something according to the license & it does have very good multi-platform support.

wintermute is an open source engine that has a visual design interface similar to VS I think but the actions & other stuff need to be scripted via some kind of exclusive code to wintermute & it already has 2.5D support & cross-platform support but only for a lite/beta version which is for 2D games only (http://dead-code.org/home)

sludge: had a look at it but don't know much about it.

adventure game studio is one of the more popular adventure game engines & I think it already has cross-platform support? but it is has no HD resolution support (unless they've upgraded since last time I looked) & is more suited towards the more classic retro/pixel graphic adventure style games.

As for Visionaire Studio, we have full HD resolution support already & will be going cross-platform with the next release, & hopefully the 2.5D support will also be ready for the release amongst other new features. Also I think VS is one of the only engines that you can make a commercial class game without having to type a single line of code as it's geared more towards artists & visual designers than programmers//scripters but we also have the built in Lua script editor for anyone who wants to add more complex features or have better control over their games.

P.S: I would recommend looking at the license pages, overview pages & reviews for each of the engines you have linked & maybe try each one out & make up your own mind on which you like best/feel most comfortable with.

I really liked to work with Point and Click Development Kit (PACDK). It's freeware and releases must not be commercial.

http://www.adventure-creator.com/

I stopped with it because my project crashed and got corrupted plus there are some annoying bugs. You have to reinstall the engine all the time. Another thing is that developement has stopped and less and less people use it so you won't get support like here.

However, the team and their reference adventures (Alühn) are awesome and the interface is ace. Everything is controlled via scripting, and when you type, there is an autocompletion so the workflow is very fast. For instance, when you need something like "change boolea abrakadabra to true" you just type "ch b ab t" and you're done. I wanna see that in Visionaire.

If your not a programmer Unity, AGS and Wintermute are going to be hard work
Unity tends to be a money pit, I know a few people have ended buying plugins to get the job done

There's a game engine called AGE which works cross platform, I've had its demo game working on a Kindle Fire
http://age.seccia.com/

Adventure Maker and Visionaire are nice newbie friendly engines, Visionaire has the edge on features and has proven successful for commercial games

SLUDGE is one of the first, still maintained and works on Mac and Linux as well as Windows, maybe a bit primitive but it is geared towards open source codec and the source is open source too

If I was just starting out I'd find one I can do a basic level without having to read an entire manual, look at the games people have done, and see how friendly and supportive the forum is, on that front, you'll find Wintermute has tumble weed blowing through it, AGS has to many EXperts and can be aggressive towards new people, a topic like this would be blasphemy over there!

Like Lee said read the licenses, its a nightmare doing cross platform, personally just do something, try and make a small game, get feedback and learn by your mistakes, going all commercial is a shitty minefield if you just dive in expecting the biggest best game ever you will fail :p

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However, the team and their reference adventures (Alühn) are awesome and the interface is ace. Everything is controlled via scripting, and when you type, there is an autocompletion so the workflow is very fast. For instance, when you need something like "change boolea abrakadabra to true" you just type "ch b ab t" and you're done. I wanna see that in Visionaire.

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Hmm the lua editor for vs has been replaced for the next release with the same source code used in notepad++ & sublime text etc. I'm not sure if Simon has finished working on it but I was told that it should have the auto complete feature & a few others like multi-line/word editing & colored syntax text, line counting & collapsible blocks. I hope it gets added as those are some of the things I really enjoy about scripting in sublime. & hopefully a dark theme option too like "monokai" would be awesome. I've seen the new script editor & it's much nicer than one in 3.7.1 but still lacking some of the features I just listed above. I really hope they get added, but if not I'll just carry on scripting with sublime instead.

Ah yeah, I always forget about Lua. When I'm done with my current project I really have to dig into that. However, as far as I understood, it is not possible to controll the whole engine via LUA or is it?

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Ah yeah, I always forget about Lua. When I'm done with my current project I really have to dig into that. However, as far as I understood, it is not possible to controll the whole engine via LUA or is it?

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No not everything can be controlled by Lua, like making it display text for instance but there are also loads of things we can control in Lua that are not available via the editor action parts. Hence it makes sense to use a combination of both the action parts & Lua.

I want to find out about more text and dialogues in Visionaire. If you have longer text, can the text scroll across the screen or in a box,and can you have typewriter effect displaing text in a box, like in Visual Novel type of games made with RenPy?

Also, thanks Nigec I downloaded AGE, after reading a little the info on their page. I am intrigued.
Wintermute looks intimidating for me at this point. I ruled out PACDK for the freeware reason.

hmm no the text only goes so far & should automatically drop to a new line, I think. you can tailor spaces/widths etc of text inside of the texts/fonts properties tabs.

no currently we don't have a typewriter transition option for the text nor multi-colored text options for keywords. the box part you could actually do yourself for both spoken & narration text but the spoken character text would require you to use an hook in lua script to position the text in the box.

I appreciate your input. Text is an important part of my planned project. I wonder If you have an xml or txt file, can it be accessed and displayed by the program?
About the typewriter effect, It can add a little bit of polish and interest to a static scene. I believe adventure maker have a free plugin implementing this feature.

i appreciate all the good info in this thread, but i think i m all set now with Visionaire, it has *almost* everything i could hope for!

my journey has started with RPGMaker, which i soon realized it was no good for adventure games, then i tried game maker demo, and it was better but more geared toward side-scolling platformers, so i found Unity, but man its over my head scripting wise... then i found a thread on a forum where someone was talking about Adventure Maker and i almost pooped my pants, it was just what i wanted... but as i researched and was about to buy it i found a Visionaire discussion and i finally found the game engine i needed!