Expanding my répertoire.
Things I have experimented with recently:
- Stratagus - A freeware RTS engine. I found the documentation for this to be narrow, obtuse and downright condescending at times. Despite being an engine with which you are to make your own games, the FAQ essentially tells you not to make any. I'm rather miffed that it managed to be restrictive in even getting to the coding, since I would have liked to experiment more. I suppose I shall have to wait for a better RTS engine development program to turn up.
- The Doom Engine - Surely I neither need to link to or explain this. This little foray into the world of first-person shooters (the historical world of first-person shooters, I mean) was cut short by the incomprehensible nature of the third-party tools I downloaded. I have a feeling I just downloaded the wrong sort, and I may come back to this, but I'm not so sure. The Doom Engine may be good for mindless romps through blocky terrain, but it's not got much in the way of storytelling capability, which is why I'm experimenting with things in the first place.
- RPG Maker XP - A program for making 2D role-playing games in old-school SNES style. In theory. Couldn't even get it to run and I don't know why. Having used RPG Maker 2003 before, though, I think it probably wasn't wise to even bother downloading it. The 2003 version was very deeply mired in JRPG tropes and had a baffling gargantuan array of spells that I disliked. Who knows, maybe if I work on it I could make things a little less cliché-ridden and a little more interesting, but it does seem pretty much geared to relentless grindfests.
- ADRIFT - A program so good I paid money for it. It makes text adventure games. I have been using this for a long while and I have to say, I love it. The basics of making a game are so easy to get to grips with and use it's amazing, and with tinkering you can not only make incredibly complicated stuff, but that's easy too. It's a little limited, since it only makes text adventure games and isn't so hot on stuff like images, but what it can do is pretty good.
- Adventure Game Studio - For designing LucasArts style point-and-click affairs. I'm in two minds over this thing. On the one hand, a couple of hours tooling around got me to grips with the basics of making a simple test game. One room with some variable lighting and a character that moved nicely around with a little animation. However, if I wanted to throw in dialogue, objects or puzzles? Probably take me a few more days of experimentation, if not weeks, and I don't really want to throw all my spare time into learning how to make point-and-click adventure games when there's the other problem to consider: artwork. I do know a shocking number of artists, some who are even not so busy that they'll talk to me, but I think that while backgrounds are easily within their forté, character animations may not be. I could be wrong, though. I'd have to wait and see. In the mean time, I'll try and get better at pixel work myself.