Monday, March 17, 2008

Why No Open-Source Adventures?

I've seen it commented before, and I've had a good look myself, but there seems to be a distinct lack of open-source free adventure games. However, it seems to me that reason is obvious - there's not much fun in writing them.

The fun of playing an adventure is wondering what's going to happen next; where the story is going, what you might see. But as the programmer, there are no surprises because you actually have to create it (and test it, again and again). As the programmer, you are the one person who can never appreciate the adventure for what it is, so it would be quite a sacrifice of your time to actually write one.

Still, I did finds this link to free adventures. I've never played them though, so I don't know if they're any good.

5 comments:

ThatJerk said...

That is a valid point: "..as the programmer, there are no surprises because you actually have to create it..", I have been thinking about this as a non dev for some time.

My (not) simple solution to this would be: develop content editors(generators) map editor, dialogue (spell?) constructors and so one and forth (for a framework). I understand that this would be hell of an undertaking even for a small (non flexible) suite of tools. And this is the really hard part: You should be able to create without being a dev. rather 'not flexible tool and simple' than the other way around.

I guess what I am saying is that OSG (open source games?) developers should focus on the no fun part of game creation for awhile. "No game, no community" may be a very valid point at why not to do this...

I'm off to making a blogpost about this, I can't be clear enough about it in a comment.

qubodup said...

I guess adonthell-waste's edge is the only ever open source adventure game.

Freedroid is kind of an action-adventure, but extremely incomplete.

KIAaze said...

Just two links you might find interesting:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/
http://feags.sourceforge.net/

AGS isn't open-source and its editor isn't available on GNU/Linux yet (you can only run games).
However, it's a great source of adventure games under GNU/Linux, just as SCUMMVM. ;)

Unknown said...

What do you think about Kingdom of Loathing? I don't think its open source. I think it was developed for free though, so it should be subject to your problems with developing open source adventure games as well.

It does have battles to add some surprise.

Steve said...

Kingdom of Loathing looks like a great game, but AFAIK it doesn't have a proper story like, say, Monkey Island.