Making a Game With Graphic Adventure Creator

[Zoe Robinson]

Hey everyone,


I've started making a new text adventure game, my first for quite a while (early attempts at remaking some older ones aren't being counted here). I'm making it in Graphic Adventure Creator and charting my progress in a series of GameHammer spin-off videos. Here's part 1. Hope you enjoy it!

The game will be made available as a free download on my website when it's finished.

[Sykobee (Briggsy)]

Good stuff - wish I still had my GAC games from when I was about 12/13!


A very accessible tool, as long as you read the manual.

[mr_lou]

Very nice descriptive video tutorial. And a rather ambitious project you've started here.

My first thought when watching this was: . o O ( Wow... GameHammer could probably write an issue of 8-bit Memoirs, considering the amount of homebrew stuff you did back in the day. )
It would of course be a different project from your usual video projects though. But considering how many people already know you by your YouTube channel, you probably already have a fanbase who'd be interested in reading your 8-bit memoirs.


Anyway, here are some thoughts / suggestions / feedback on the video:

First thought: Amstrad CPC pictures are blocky / pixelated because of resizing. The way I've solved this in 8-bit Memoirs is by cutting off the borders. Like the height is originally 288 pixels, so I cut off 48 pixels in total ending up with a height of 240 pixels - which is "compatible" with modern resolutions like 640x480 and 1280x720. The result in 8-bit Memoirs is very nice. (This trick won't work with overscan productions though). Alternatively, try resizing with anti-alias.

Second thought: There's a lot of talk. It would lift up the video if you added some music. Something playing in the background, and turned a bit up in volume in between speak-breaks (add speak-breaks  ). You can find lots of music you can use for free if you simply credit the author in the video and/or description of the video. YouTube has its own library for this. You can also find some freeware music on my site IndieGameMusic.


I also have a single question about GAC: Does GAC allow for background music playing while you play the game? I'm guessing not. But would it be possible to add such a feature yourself?

[Zoe Robinson]

Good stuff - wish I still had my GAC games from when I was about 12/13!

To be fair, I thought I'd lost pretty much all of mine until I recently found the stocktapes from my (mostly tape-based) PD library in my parents' attic.


Turns out losing these old games of mine to history wouldn't have been a great loss. 

A very accessible tool, as long as you read the manual.

Oh yeah, you don't get anywhere with this thing without the manual or, at the very least, a few issues of Amstrad Action when they were running the GAC tutorials (and even then they weren't 100%).

Very nice descriptive video tutorial. And a rather ambitious project you've started here.

I'm nothing if not ambitious.


In all seriousness though, I already had the plotline for the games worked out in my head and some of them will be re-using locations, so it's not as massive an endeavour as it may otherwise seem. If you've played Season 1 of Telltale Games' Sam and Max, you'll have an idea of the length and difficulty level of the episodes I'm planning here. It's a big project for one person, sure, but it's not overwhelming.


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My first thought when watching this was: . o O ( Wow... GameHammer could probably write an issue of 8-bit Memoirs, considering the amount of homebrew stuff you did back in the day. )

It's more likely to be a repetitive episode than a decent and interesting issue, though. I made three types of game back in the day: GAC text adventures; really basic stuff in BASIC; and a Freescape game in 3D Construction Kit that took 6 months to put together and wasn't worth it.


[/size]

It would of course be a different project from your usual video projects though. But considering how many people already know you by your YouTube channel, you probably already have a fanbase who'd be interested in reading your 8-bit memoirs.

I'd be happy to discuss writing something with you but I don't know how many people would actually be interested in it just because I made something. GameHammer barely pulls in 30 views on average. Despite putting 5-6 hours of production time into even a basic GH video, I can't seem to catch any real interest with the show.


[/size]

Anyway, here are some thoughts / suggestions / feedback on the video:


First thought: Amstrad CPC pictures are blocky / pixelated because of resizing. The way I've solved this in 8-bit Memoirs is by cutting off the borders. Like the height is originally 288 pixels, so I cut off 48 pixels in total ending up with a height of 240 pixels - which is "compatible" with modern resolutions like 640x480 and 1280x720. The result in 8-bit Memoirs is very nice. (This trick won't work with overscan productions though). Alternatively, try resizing with anti-alias.

Yeah, the CPC stuff looks terrible. Normally I'd do a screen-on-screen effect where the background screen is zoomed in on the action and blurred, to allow full HD video; and then with a large copy of the CPC screen over the top. With text it doesn't work, but a more graphic-heavy game seems to pull it off decently.


I'm toying with creating a mock-up retro TV and CPC in Photoshop so I can drop in the game footage on the monitor instead, to see if that works out better. I just want what's on the video to be visually interesting as well as make the footage look clear, so people get a good idea of what the game I'm talking about it like.


[/size]

Second thought: There's a lot of talk. It would lift up the video if you added some music. Something playing in the background, and turned a bit up in volume in between speak-breaks (add speak-breaks  ). You can find lots of music you can use for free if you simply credit the author in the video and/or description of the video. YouTube has its own library for this. You can also find some freeware music on my site IndieGameMusic.

Yeah, I forgot background music for this one. I'm going deaf and I didn't notice that it wasn't added.


Normally with background music I'll either grab a copy of the game's tune when recording the game footage, or I'll use free-to-use music from the YouTube Audio Library. For this one, I had a nice bit of classical music picked out... and then forgot to pull the music into the final video.


Hopefully Part 2 of this will have music on it.


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I also have a single question about GAC: Does GAC allow for background music playing while you play the game? I'm guessing not. But would it be possible to add such a feature yourself?

No, GAC doesn't allow background music but it is possible to add some yourself if you use a loader program; which I may end up doing in order to add some background information in place of a loading screen when the game is finished.

[AMSDOS]

It maybe of little help, though I recall AA reviewing a game which used GAC. It was one of Angela Swinbourne home-brew games called Justice. Unfortunately with it being Home-brew software I don't know if it came with Source code even though AA stated it's good example of GACs capabilities.