Starting Out

Hi,

I'm planning to make a Detective adventure game. I've been toying with the idea of making it in an isometric perspective but still haven't decided yet. I've been writing out some ideas for cases and the characters. I'm not really sure I know what I'm doing but I'd really like to make the attempt. Any suggestions for getting started with Visionaire? Anything I should keep in mind when building a game with it? Thanks.

Redspark

Hi! I'm just getting started, too, but here are the tutorials that have helped me immensely!!:

GlenFX's Tutorials - Read each chapter one at a time, and physically recreate each step in Visionaire itself, so that you're reinforcing what you're learning by actually doing. The important thing this tutorial is lacking is basic resources to download so you can follow his steps along with him (there's a link to download the demo game itself, but not the assets), but I threw together some dummy, placeholder-type graphics so that I could at least follow along and understand the functions.

This guy's Video Tutorials, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 - Cover in depth some of the most important aspects of building various parts of your game, good coverage of Conditions/Values and how to set up your maps. I'd let these videos play while I had lunch, so I'd learn while just chillin' and enjoying my break.

Wikis: The old one and the new one - The documentation is a handy reference but neither are quite filled out enough to be followed as a guide like a tutorial would be - understandable in the new one's case because it's a WIP.


General Tips
Build small, "demo" games practicing various aspects of your game, without thinking about polish or finished graphics or anything that has to be remotely presentable to anyone besides yourself. Even if it means making 20 different "micro games," have one for practicing character movement & warping between scenes, one for creating a working inventory in the style that you want, one for building dialogue between characters, et cetera. Keep familiarizing yourself with the engine until you're comfortable enough with it to start building the actual version of your game with all of those functions prepared in a streamlined and organized order.

Writing tips: Having ideas for cases and characters is the meat of game creation, I think. Keep a journal (either pencil & paper or electronic, whatever is always on-hand for you and more comfortable and natural for you to work in) and write down EVERY IDEA THAT YOU HAVE. Record details about characters, plot bunnies, details about cases, any specific lines of dialogue that come to you - don't even worry about organizing it in any order, this is just a brainstorming journal and you can pick and choose pieces of this to organize in a story outline later. When you change your mind about an idea, don't cross it out or erase it, just draw a big X at the front of that line so you know it's something you decided against - but still lets you reread that idea and come back to it and rework it into something better if the inclination comes to you.

@____@ Welp, that's all I've got for now!! Good luck on your game creation journey, and please have a thread for your projects when you've got them going, because I love detective/mystery stories and wanna see!

Wow! Thank you so much! This will help me a lot. I will definitely post something when it is underway. Thanks again.