Half Adventure / Half Novel

Disclaimer: I am new to game creation (no programming experience) and although I have done plenty of reading, I get a little lost, and so I apologize if my question has been answered in another post.

My goal is to create something between a classic adventure game and a visual novel. I want to tell my story through a series of drawings that would function essentially as backgrounds. A visual novel game creator was my first attempt at achieving this. Unfortunately, I also need clickable hotspots and inventory, and programs like Novelty weren't doing it for me. In the end, I hope to create a classic adventure game, except it won't include a character that walks around the scene. The picture will load, text will come up and tell the story, and the player will search for hotspots, in addition to using the current inventory to solve puzzles.

Visionaire seems to be the way to achieve this, but I'm having trouble learning it. I think it should be a simple task to create backgrounds, and I have done that, but the game won't run without a main character, as far as I can tell.

Also, I want to create a series of drawings that will be read like a comic book (no hotspots) in order to introduce the story.

I don't expect anyone to give me detailed walkthrough on how to reach my goal, but a few words to set me in the right direction would be nice. Of course, I will do my part and read all the tutorials, thoroughly. I am hoping to narrow my search before I dive in, wholeheartedly.

Thanks, guys. I appreciate the help.

You can hide your character on scene, so you can't see it.
In actions under character tab - show / hide Character.

The same way you can create your comic book part, you'll hide character and set only buttons for showing next pages, which you need only one scene for that and you will only change visibility of images.

Just create a character & don't add any animation images to it. Assign your control interface, inventory interface & whatever else you need to it. Technically your main character does not have to be on the current, but has to be on a playable scene somewhere.

To interact with your scene you need to create objects for the scene & create interaction polygons for them (blue square button on scene toolbar). Then you create actions inside of the objects in the immediate execution part for interacting with the scene.

Everything else is done with if queries, conditions, values & action parts (lua script is optional).

Of course! Thank you, Ke4.

And thank you, AFRLme. The first paragraph was helpful. The second two paragraphs threw me for a loop, but I'm sure as my knowledge base grows, terms like polygons, queries, and conditions will make more sense. (I learned to program in Basic/Advanced Basic back in the 80s. So, although I do technically have SOME programming experience, despite what I wrote, above, I'm way behind in the game.) I look forward to returning here later to check my progress.

Again...thanks, you two. It's truly a luxury to have a site like this with members who take the time to answer questions. I hope to be you, someday, and pay it forward.

The object polygon is what you use to define the area of an object that you can click with a mouse/command to trigger actions assigned to that mouse button/command for the object you clicked on.

Queries are simple enough & are the backbone of most of your game.

example: (action parts)


I'm sure you won't have too much trouble learning Visionaire Studio as it's quite a logical & straight forward application, when you put your mind to it.

Don't worry, you will get into it quickly.

I've been looking at making a "make your own adventure" type game which are very popular on handhelds these days, with Visionaire its really easy
Like the others have said just create a character with no graphics.
There's some examples for first person view, one that maybe helpful is the combination lock which has the elements you would need, none visible character, screen interaction, sound also scripting. there's also a classic Monkey Island 1 example which has command buttons

http://www.visionaire-studio.net/forum/thread/template-colle...

theres also a hidden objects type game drive by conditions

Those are interesting examples. It's funny: as a side note, I played Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion when they first came out. I love that these games have not been forgotten.

I'm getting down to reading the tutorials. Although I like what the Visionaire author has accomplished here, I do think it would be nice to have a meatier guidebook--perhaps an idea that will come to fruition in the future. As it stands, the official tutorial guides you through pretty much only one way of doing things. Fortunately, there is this forum here.

I will download the lock template, as you suggested, and see what I can make of it. Right now I feel as though I'm holding all the parts to a bicycle, strewn across the floor, on Christmas Eve, and I'm going to have to translate the instruction manual into English before I attempt assembly. (This is my weakness, not Visionaire's.)

The truth is I'm shuffling my feet, not quite sure how to begin. Just when I think I'm ready to try something, I think, "Oh, wait, I need to create an inventory screen. Oh, wait, I need to create cursor icons. Got to hook up the scanner." There's a lot to this game creation stuff. Makes me appreciate amateur games a lot more.

Anyway I am about to work on a game opener, which is only pictures and story. Ke4 mentioned that I really only need one scene for that, but it seems to me that every picture needs to be a background. I haven't figured out how to replace the current background with a new one yet. That will be next.

AFRLme got me going on polygons, so I'd best get to it.

Check back with you guys later. Have a happy The Week Before Christmas.

You don't need to spend hours, or days working on graphics for testing/learning the engine. Just create some quick temporary artwork/placeholders or use the resources provided in the demo game or resources you have found on the web.

Maybe you could try reverse engineering the demo or some of the other template (.ved) files that have been added to the wiki or posted to the forum by other members. I find reverse engineering to be quite a nice way of breaking down how something works, because once you take it to bits, you have to try to piece it back together again & in the process you can learn your own methods/techniques for getting things done. Visionaire Studio isn't strictly black & white. There are often multiple ways to achieve the same thing, whether you do it with action parts, lua script, or a combination of both.

You don't have to start off with the beginning of your game, you can start off by working on whatever part you like, however I would recommend jotting down notes/ideas in a physical notepad, piece of paper, or maybe in a document or on a white board or whatever. It does help.

Makes sense, AFRLme. But I'm running into new problems.

On a project like this, I need to begin with step-by-step instructions until I get the gist of the program and can start thinking outside the box. Unfortunately, Visionaire's tutorial is outdated. For instance, I am trying to set up the mouse controls, but the options under GAME/MOUSE PROPERTIES/LEFT MOUSE BUTTON are not the same in the tutorial as they are in the program. I don't have the intuition necessary to translate what the author means. So now I'm stuck trying to do something as simple as assign my mouse controls. Despite my faults, I can heartily say that this program is not that user friendly.

When I'm done being annoyed and ready to walk back to this project, if that happens at all, I will try your reverse-engineering idea. Thank you.

You are referring to the GlenFX tutorials? They were written quite a few years ago & the mouse properties section was overhauled for Visionaire Studio 4.0. They aren't really all that different to be honest.

What type of control interface are you trying to setup? Control interface is mostly setup in the interfaces section as opposed to the mouse properties tab.

P.S: Unfortunately I can't provide step by step guides to everything, because as I mentioned earlier: there's loads of different methods/approaches to working with VS.