I want to make an adventure game using animated GIFs, full motion video, and photos

I want to make a Myst/Riven-style game, with a slideshow-like interface just like those games, except each static view would be an animated GIF (or "cinemagraph" if you want to sound fancy) instead of computer graphics.

There will be hotspots on the animated GIF, which, if clicked on, might start a full screen video, or video inset into a photo, or give the player the ability to move an object in the scene (which would be a photo cut-out of the object).

The idea isn't to create a completely photo-real world. Instead, it should feel like a stylized photo collage, with moving elements here and there.

Can Visionaire Studio be used to do this? Do you have any tips or suggestions? And if Visionaire can't be used for this, do you have any other recommendations? Thanks in advance!

A'llo.

1. I don't recommend using gif animations. Gif files are inferior image formats with terrible image quality. I recommend creating your animation frames as png files & then converting them to webp format (webp is a much smaller file size than png, but the quality is almost as good as png when exported at lossy quality 10 (100%). You would take these frames & import them into Visionaire Studio inside of an object or characters animation tab.

2. It's not possible to insert an actual video into a scene object / image. You can only play a fullscreen video. We recommend using mkv (matroska) format for video files. The only way to emulate a video playing inside of a scene object / image would be to use the same method mentioned in (1). Individual animation frames.

Simon_ASA has finished one Myst like game called "ASA - A Space Adventure" using Visionaire Studio already & is currently working on a sequel called "Catyph". Another member called "Paupasia" who joined recently is also working on a Myst like game too. Both of them will probably be able to provide you with more information than I can about making first person adventure games.

Good luck.

If I understand you correctly, you want your backgrounds are animated rather than static. All the background or only some objects?
All the background I'm afraid it's a little heavy, much better some animations sprinkled in webp format. Everything you asked can be done with Visionaire, except for movies that do not can be scaled in a hotspot, you should use animations there too.

I think you have to set animated objekts on your scene. F.e.:You have a lever the player has to put down for some actions. Define the square area of 40x40px the lever should be later, maybe at x=50, y=134 on your background. Make some square frames 40x40px of the moving lever by your favourite programm and put them on the same place (50, 134) into an object animation. Start this animation with if-clauses or whatever. If you use the same background you don't need to hide the first lever beneath - it would be covered by the not transparent frames of your little animation.

That's also the way original Myst works: little square animation cut-offs (Myst and Riven uses mov-files), "sprinkled", as Paupasia said. Vis cannot handle *.mov or something like that, you have to insert them as single png or webp-file frames. It's a lot of work with absolute pixel positions... but it works.

Moving objects like some jigsaw or starting a video into an area is heavy work... Maybe it's possible with scripting language Lua, but's not mine...
;-)
I think, Myst or Riven ARE very STATIC games: they have a fullscreen landscape with some movements in. You can start a fullscreen movie like Myst in Visionaire if the player clicks on a hot spot, but a lot of things are very complicated...

Sorry, my English isn't very good... and it's late.

Machtnix