Creating a (sort of) Escape Game

putte

Hi there.

I am completely new to Unity and the Adventure Creator, it´s my very first day getting into it. I´m a huge fan of point and click-adventures since 1987 (when Manic Mansion came out) and never stopped playing.

What I would love to learn is to create a game like the ones from Rusty Lake. If you don´t already know them I highly recommend them. Here´s a video of one of their gems:



So my question would be: is this possible with Adventure Creator? And if so, how hard/advanced would you consider it to be done?

I´d be happy for any encouraging comments, advices and tips. Cheers from germany,

putte

ChrisIceBox

Welcome to the community, @putte.

I'm not familiar with the Rusty Lake games, but a browse through the video suggests its a mix of traditional point-and-clicking with more modern sliding puzzle mechanic (e.g. at 6:52)

AC's designed to provide traditional P&C gameplay out-of-the-box - so things like single-clicking on objects to pick them up / trigger a pre-set animation / talk with an NPC are all taken care of.  Items can get stored in the inventory, the various states your puzzles are in can be recorded (and read) as variables, animations created in Unity Animator controllers can be played back using Actions, and characters can be made to speak with accompanying audio and animation.

This is true regardless of whether you have an on-screen player (avatar) to move around.  If it's a first-person 2D game, it actually makes development much more simple because you don't have to worry about player animation and navigation.

I would, however, strongly recommend you begin by going through the Making a 2D game tutorial video.  Even if your own game won't involve a player character, it is designed to teach the basics of AC for newcomers.  The Unity adventure tutorial, while 3D, also covers transferrable topics such as scene-switching, audio, and UI customisation.

As for things like sliding mechanics, where there's a lot more need for control and customisation over the way you need things to work, you're likely going to need a separate asset or script to handle that.  AC has an "object grabbing" physics system (see the Physics Demo), but this is for 3D "real world" only.

When such mechanics require external scripts, AC is able to accommodate to suit your needs.  The Engine: Manage systems Action can switch off individual systems (such as interactions) in favour of your own.  AC can also be switched off completely, or connect with your own scripts - see the online scripting guide as well as the "Integrating new code" chapter of the included Manual.

I invite others to share their own tips for this kind of game, but if you have specific questions about how to do something in AC, feel free to post in the Technical Q&A forum and I'll do my best to help.

putte

Hi there Chris, and thanks very much for that quick and detailed answer.
Meanwhile I watched your 2D-Tutorial and already seem to understand a lot more about the logic behind all this. That‘s motivating me a lot and I‘ll go for the 1st person-Tutorial today.

And thanks for pointing to the sliding mechanics. I will try to ask my way around in the technical section of this forum.

Hats off for all you did for us junkies with AC, I already know that you‘re providing a gem here.
Cheers for now,
putte