Snatcher-Style Exploration Gameplay?

[Sleepy]

I've been working on a small demo to practice some skills and one of the aims of the demo was to show a "story" and a "gameplay" section. Due to my limited coding skills, for the gameplay section I'd been going back and forth on whether to do point and click or to do something like Snatcher's exploration segments:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf5z2zRpcn8&t=1m39s[/youtube]

The main aims of the gameplay segment are: capable to look/investigate environment, move across two screens, and find/use an item to enter a locked building. Snatcher-style would rely heavily on using things like multiple menu choices that appear and disappear depending on what you have available (for example, the "use" option not appearing in the item menu until you've found a useable object) so I was wondering how feasible that sounds for a beginner? Or would it be easier to stick to point and click and image buttons?

[SundownKid]

I would do point and click, the dialog menus don't really have a point if you can literally click on the objects. Otherwise, the whole thing is feasible even without point and click, just use the game's built in menus. You can make menu items appear and disappear based on variables.

[78909087]

First of all- do you have a reliable code for an inventory that you understand and can edit? If your answer is 'yes' then you're well off. Defining if an item has been found will rely mainly on persistent data, but that's as simple as defining the variables using init and setting them 'true/false' in the game script. (expanding on previous post)

[Sleepy]

I would do point and click, the dialog menus don't really have a point if you can literally click on the objects. Otherwise, the whole thing is feasible even without point and click, just use the game's built in menus. You can make menu items appear and disappear based on variables.

Thanks, I'll keep in mind. I had been leaning towards menus partially because they seemed simpler to work with but given the nature of the gameplay, I probably need to work with image buttons in some capacity anyway.

First of all- do you have a reliable code for an inventory that you understand and can edit? If your answer is 'yes' then you're well off. Defining if an item has been found will rely mainly on persistent data, but that's as simple as defining the variables using init and setting them 'true/false' in the game script. (expanding on previous post)

I have a somewhat workable inventory that I've been experimenting with. I understand defining the items and adding them to inventory when X action happens, I've mostly just been figuring out how to transition from find item->add item to inventory->check for item when interacting with correct object (true/false statement)->action happens.

[78909087]

I have a somewhat workable inventory that I've been experimenting with. I understand defining the items and adding them to inventory when X action happens, I've mostly just been figuring out how to transition from find item->add item to inventory->check for item when interacting with correct object (true/false statement)->action happens.

If you define

Code: Select all

init:
    $ Apple = False

and later, in the code, wrote

Code: Select all

    $ Apple = True

you can later call

Code: Select all

    if $ Apple == True:
        jump I_got_apple
    else
        skip

If this isn't helpful, I apologise. I'm just kinda sending what I know.

[Sleepy]

I have a somewhat workable inventory that I've been experimenting with. I understand defining the items and adding them to inventory when X action happens, I've mostly just been figuring out how to transition from find item->add item to inventory->check for item when interacting with correct object (true/false statement)->action happens.

If you define

Code: Select all

init:
    $ Apple = False

and later, in the code, wrote

Code: Select all

    $ Apple = True

you can later call

Code: Select all

    if $ Apple == True:
        jump I_got_apple
    else
        skip

If this isn't helpful, I apologise. I'm just kinda sending what I know.

That helps~ That actually reminded me of a possible way to bridge the code.

Thanks a lot~

[philat]

Watching that video, I am pretty sure that except for a specific subset of gamers who have some serious nostalgia about text-based games, the menu-based approach is going to be annoying for players who are used to point-and-click.

For some basic imagemap based point-and-click: (I'm sure there's better code out there, but I just happened to remember making this post before, so.)

http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 18#p346625

Or check out the cookbook: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 51&t=20541

I haven't tried this code out personally, but it looks similar to what you're looking for.

[Sleepy]

Watching that video, I am pretty sure that except for a specific subset of gamers who have some serious nostalgia about text-based games, the menu-based approach is going to be annoying for players who are used to point-and-click.

For some basic imagemap based point-and-click: (I'm sure there's better code out there, but I just happened to remember making this post before, so.)

http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 18#p346625

Or check out the cookbook: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 51&t=20541

I haven't tried this code out personally, but it looks similar to what you're looking for.

Yeah, I replayed a bit of Snatcher to refamiliarize myself with it and I'm being reminded of how much of a chore part of the gameplay was, at least compared to point and click text adventures like Ace Attorney and Dangan Ronpa. I'm somewhat leaning towards point and click atm, though it depends how well I can get the gameplay to work.

Thanks for the links~ I haven't seen the first link yet but I've seen the second before and it looked handy.