Trying to find Revolution Adventure Game template

[Malte Brill]

Hi Willem,

This mail is just a starter and doesn´t dive too much into technical 
details and I don´t want it to get too long.


Setting up an adventure game like the one you are after in Rev requires 
some thinking beforehand, that doesn´t deal too much with the 
development environment, or the scripting language, but mostly with 
artwork and game logic. You will need some catchy images of the 
locations you like to present. Once you have rendered your artwork in 
an image editor or 3d program you can start using Rev to glue it all 
together and add your game logic. It is a good idea to render the 
images as close to desired output resolution as possible, as you can 
save a lot of execution time if you don´t need to resize the images 
within Rev.

Each game location can be on a different card. You need to write a bit 
of scipt that allows the user to Navigate through your game and a 
method to store a map of your game. Coming up with a method for map 
storage will be one of the hardest parts in the creation and I am 
afraid there is no really good out of the box recipe for it. It could 
be done in a custom property or an array or simply by using a clever 
naming convention for your cards. The method you prefer is a matter of 
taste I think and all have advantages and disadvantages. Usually you 
might want to allow users using the mouse or arrowkeys to navigate 
through your game. (see mouseMove, mouseDown, mouseUp, mouseRelease, 
mouseLoc and arrowkey in the dictionary)  You can navigate between that 
locations fairly easy with not too much script (see go in the 
dictionary) if you are sure of the method to store your game map and 
retrieve he next location from it, depending on user action.

Once you have the Navigation set up you might want to add interactivity 
to your game. On each card you can place objects that work as hotSpot 
areas. If you click on one of these areas a script will be executed. 
For example  you can show a text message or start playing a Quicktime 
movie. Those areas could be almost any control you find in Rev. You 
might either have visible Hotspots, e.g. an image of a sword, or 
invisible objects. To make an invisible object respond to mouseClicks, 
I suggest setting it´s ink property to noop. Such an object can be 
layered on top of any area of your background image and if you choose 
to use a graphic it can be shaped irregulary. On the other hand if you 
use visible controls layered on top it is easier to move them around. I 
recommend doing a few test stacks to get warm with the language first. 
There is quite a lot stuff to read around. A very good place to start 
are the scripting conferences stacks found on Runrevs homepage.


[blow my own horn mode]

You might be interested in looking at a free little eBook I wrote, that 
deals with some of the basics of the language and an in dephs tutorial 
of ArcadeEngine that might interest you later, but weighting is almost 
50% for the basics  to 50% for ArcadeEngine.

you find links to it here:

http://www.derbrill.de/tutorials_e.html

[/blow my own horn mode]

Hope that helps,

malte


-- 
ArcadeEngine - prepare to WOW your audience within minutes
http://www.runrev.com/section/revselect/arcadeengine
http://www.derbrill.com/arcadeengine/forum