Night Of The Newbie
Matt Dugan explores what to do if you're a newbie...
Foreword
Hi everyone, this is my first article for AGD so be gentle. Anywho, today I'm going to remind you all what its like to start out in the amateur adventure gaming world. But first off, just a little background info on me.
I was raised on Monkey Island, not literally mind you, but still I was completely enthralled by the world that they created. After Moneky Island, I would only buy pirate lego sets, and then I too started to create my own little world. Of course there were many other games, Loom, King's Quest 4 and 5. Do you remember KQ5? I would kill to play that game again.
So anyway, moral of the story, I played a lot of excellent adventure games in my youth. Half a life later, I stumble onto the Pitchfork Productions website and, intrigued by the sideburns, download LV2 to investigate. Well I think everyone knows how the rest of this goes...AGS....Rob Blanc...R-O-N...yadda yadda yadda. So of course like everyone else out there I decide to create my own game......but where the heck do I start??
Step One: Get a plot
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....let's see......so pirates have been done already eh?........What about an interstellar janitor?...oh wait....what about a prince, or better yet a king! yeah a king who's looking for....oh wait, right, ok. Hmmmmmm....this might take a little more time than I thought.
I think the more time you spend actually planning out a character and story, the better the game will be, and the more slack people will cut you for other deficiencies. No one can argue that you don't need a good story to make a good adventure game, or that a better storyline wouldn't make a game even better.
Of course this part requires some actual effort, and god help me, "writing skills". I find story boards really helpful in sorting out all the convoluted ideas and evil voices running around in my head. BURN, BURN THEM ALL! Sorry about that...where was I? Oh story boards right. Well they're good enough for movie directors, and commercial games, so they're good enough for me. (This assumes however, you want to create some semblance of a linear story, if you're not aiming for that, then disregard this section completely)
Thanks to tenth-grade English, I know that you should have 4 things in your story. An introduction, a gradually thickening, and bubbling plot, a climax of action, and then a release of the tension afterwards. Monkey Island is a great example of this with Le Chuck exploding all over the sky. Which is not to say you should end all your games with exploding zombie fireworks......oh dear, I hope you get the idea.
Want a free story idea? Here goes:
A prince sees his dead father's ghost and must kill his evil uncle who sits on the throne. He sleeps around, puts on a play, fights his best friend, and then everyone dies, because of poison or Fortinbras or whatever. The important thing is that they all die. Most people agree this is a great way to wrap up any loose strings, and release any tension. The only problem with killing everyone off is that there's no chance for a sequel. But fortunately for us in the twenty-first century, George Lucas has invented the prequel.
Well that's it, stay tuned for next time and I'll delve into the mysteries of creating a character.
Matt.
Send any hate-mail to dugan_matt@hotmail.com
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