Idea Creating NES-era point-and-click games

M

Milkboy

Guest
Hi gang,

I'm a game-making beginner from London who's recently found Game Maker Studio2 and really excited about its possibilities!

I want to make a very simple point and click adventure game that looks and feels like a classic NES-era title in the vein of Uninvited or Shadowgate, albeit with the gameplay elements watered down significantly. Nothing too ambitious or elaborate to start off, just a few rooms and characters where the player has the choice of which room to explore next and perhaps some dialogue trees when interacting with characters.

I'm very keen to focus on creating the look and feel of those classic NES games. I have a background in illustration and design and experience in creating pixel art so feel fairly confident in tackling the visual aspect of it. But any preliminary advice, resources or tutorials relating to straight-up building a game like this for a coding novice would be hugely appreciated.

Looking forward to diving in. Thank you!
 

Yal

šŸ§ *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Point-and-click gameplay is pretty simple if you start off using the Mouse Left Pressed event to run code in objects (which basically means "run the event when the player clicks on this object's sprite"). If every level object you can click is a separate GM object, this also lets you add some indication that it's clickable using Mouse Enter / Mouse Leave (e.g change sprite/subimage to one with a white outline), if you wanna reduce pixel hunting.

Start with that and mess around with some interactions and room transition, then look into using global variables to store state info (e.g if you drained the canal in one room, the water hazard is gone in another and a previously uninteractible door on the other side can now be clicked) and inventory data (keys, items needed to operate devices, etc), I'd say.
 
M

Milkboy

Guest
Thanks a lot Yal. I'll definitely look into all of these elements and educate myself.

If possible, I'm keen to avoid using a cursor in the game, and would instead opt for menu- based navigation (MOVE, INTERACT, etc) with the player using the arrow keys to navigate between each option. Is this fairly straightforward to implement?
 

Phil Strahl

Member
Thanks a lot Yal. I'll definitely look into all of these elements and educate myself.

If possible, I'm keen to avoid using a cursor in the game, and would instead opt for menu- based navigation (MOVE, INTERACT, etc) with the player using the arrow keys to navigate between each option. Is this fairly straightforward to implement?
Sadly it's not *as* simple as checking for mouse input, but if it's always the same options (e.g. up for move, down for interact, etc.) it shouldn't be too taxing for a beginner. Should you want something more akin to the menus in NES-style RPGs, then things can get hairy. Since there is no UI system in place with Game Maker you have to do your own. That involves drawing the text boxes, the choices, cursor, keeping track of what's selected or active. And should you want sub-menus, things can get unwieldy when you're not well organized from the outset.
 
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