Re-introducing the Dagon engine (powering Asylum)

[ad7venture]

Glad it's working out for you Imari.  The Demo looked awesome.  It will be great seeing some games made with it.

[Azel]

Has anyone here tried out the new Dragon game engine?

I’m just curious as to what type of game engine it is. I mean, is it first-person only? How special is it? What makes it different from the other 2D game engines that have been around for years? What type of coding language do we need to learn to use it? Is it powerful enough to make a commercial game for resale?

I’m not picking on the Dragon game engine. I just would like a general outline/introduction of its advantages over what’s already available.

At the moment I am considering Wintermute and Unity. I know they are totally different engines 2 ½D ver 3D, but I am still looking at all my options.

Thanks 

[nigec]

Dagon is a first person panoramic engine and uses cubic images, the developer of the engine made Scratches a few years ago.
SCream powered Scratches, a similar engine would be Cpage.
Compared to Scream, Dagon is a lot easier to use, its scripted in LUA, it has a wide range of post pro effects also animation. its also cross platform, currently on Mac and Windows, Linux and hand helds will follow
If you haven't played Scatches it was re released on BigFish earlier this year, it had some tweaks and modified to run on Win7

[Imari]

In addition to the 360 degree panoramic node-to-node movement, a setting will allow your player to play the game as a slide show.  A big bonus for players who get "seasick" when playing in the round.      

[Azel]

I check this AD post weekly for new information about the Dragon engine. What is the latest news? When will it be ready to release? Anyone???

Azel

[Agustin]

Hi Azel! We're getting very close to releasing a quick demo that will allow you to experiment with the engine. Just a bit more patience, that's all

In the meantime you can peruse the information available here:

http://www.senscape.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=16

[Azel]

Thanks for the reply Agustin.

[Azel]

It's been about two months.  I thought I would just check in to see how the Dagon Engine is coming. I am looking at both the Dagon and Unity engines.

For those of you who are interested an interesting interview with Agustín on YouTube.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnNy-doYK8A

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfGVk1H53NY

 

[Agustin]

Sorry, it's taking longer than expected but we will be inviting developers to try the engine privately for now (because it includes parts from Asylum not ready for public release).

Stay tuned, we will likely admit everyone that's interested in this forum

[Azel]

Thanks for the reply Agustin. I'm in no big rush. I just wanted to check-in. I enjoyed your interview. I even learned a few things.

Mainly it made me question just what is an adventure game. Take for example the multimedia graphic novel (story) Sinkha.

http://www.sinkha.com/home_e.htm

I enjoyed the complete series and I often wondered if Sinkha would be considered an adventure game. The only difference between Scratches and Sinkha is that Scratches is player interactive using puzzles. Sinkha is a pure multimedia story. Scratches is a multimedia story with a interactive player. So, Sinkha is not an adventure game, but is a multimedia story only.

(If you have not seen/played Sinkha, you will not understand what I’m talking about.)

So, in your interview you are saying adventure games are multimedia stories first and always. But, that they are secondly, player interactive, which is what makes them adventure games.

Anyway, this is the conclusion I finally came to. That, the multimedia story is the important part of an adventure game. If you don’t have a multimedia story in your adventure game, than it’s just a puzzle game. And if you have a poor multimedia story in your adventure game, the adventure game will probably fail on the open game market.

Anyway, enough. Your interview started me to thinking and the above is what I finally came up with.

Azel

[Agustin]

Hey, glad you enjoyed the interview! I haven't played Sinkha but I'm somewhat familar with it. I guess the key point here is how the game allows you to experience the story. Keep in mind that Sinkha is a linear experience and does not give you enough freedom. It's like reading an interactive book.

There's no clear division, though, and it's hard to determine when a game stops being a game. There's a title I have always praised called The Dark Eye which has no traditional puzzles to speak of and the only clear goal is to experience adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe's stories. The experience is engrossing (I'm tempted to call it a "multimedia experience" rather than a game) and there are two important things to mention: you always have full control, that is, nobody tells you what to do. At one point in the game you have to murder someone - it's YOU as the player who decides to do that, as there's no clear indication of the goal in the story. Second, freedom: you can experience these stories in any order you want, and explore the environments as you wish.

So, I would say there are three fundamental features that constitute an adventure game (at least a good one):

1) Above everything, it's all about the story. Anything you do in the game has to has to be in the best interest of the story.

2) The player has to be in control. Even if you as the developer needs a murder or a visit to a spooky basement in order to proceed with the story, it should feel as if it was the decision of the player.

3) Last but not least, freedom. Or non-linearity if you wish. It can be a matter of taste, but to me a great adventure is one that allows you to experience the story in any order you want and tinker with the environments. In other words, exploration is one of the key ingredients that make adventures so much fun.

So, anyway, I never felt that having puzzles was a requirement for adventures. However it's crucial how you introduce the players to your story

[Igor Hardy]

Anyway, this is the conclusion I finally came to. That, the multimedia story is the important part of an adventure game. If you don’t have a multimedia story in your adventure game, than it’s just a puzzle game.

I disagree (with the last sentence quoted). Puzzle games and story-less adventure games are two different (and just as valid) game genres. In other words an adventure game puzzle is something quite different to a "puzzle game" puzzle (aka logic puzzle). The former serves excellently introducing storylines, objects/palces characteristics, and overall presenting a believable and interconnected world you can interact with. That's why stories, world-building and adventure games go so well together.

But there is also a huge amounts of popular adventure games that have no stories at all or where the narrative aspect is minimal. So it's mostly a matter of personal taste which is the better type - there are fans of both.

Personally I love adventure games where the gameplay cleverly enhances the narrative experience. For example, as much as I love The Dark Eye I think it would be even better and more immersive if you had to figure out the story through the means of mystery-solving (e.g. what does it irk me so much about my neighbor - is something wrong with me?) and diplomatic dialog (as you become a go-between at several points in the story).

Anyway, sorry about pushing the thread even further off-topic. Truth is I'm excited about the Dagon engine as much as the next man.

[Azel]

PUZZLE
I think we are talking about the same thing here. To me the word puzzle means any difficulty the play faces and has to solve. Example: opening a door, or find an object, etc.,. I did not literally mean puzzle as in solving a number puzzle or a word puzzle. The game Dream Fall had actual puzzles inserted into their game, and I did not much care for them. If you played Dream Fall maybe you remember the Pad Lock puzzle or the Car lock Puzzle. That was a actual mini puzzle game inserted into the main game.

So when I say puzzle, I mean anything the player has to solve to move the game forward. If there is another word that fits better than puzzle, I would be glad to learn what it is so I can use it properly in the future.

PLAYER FREEDOM
As for player freedom in an adventure game. This freedom is an illusion. In most adventure games, the player is forced to take a linear path. The player may get to explore and to solve puzzles at his own direction, but eventualy he has to follow the path that the developer has set before him, or the game stops.

In a an adventure game have you ever done every thing and looked everywhere, yet nothing happens? You are stuck, and the game will not open the next level until you follow the linear path and do next what the developer wants you to do in the game. I would say that adventure games are built linear until the very end of the game where the player gets to choose, usually, one of several endings to the game.

An adventure game could be made non-linear, but then the developer would have to build, say, three different games into one game, where the player choices determine which game path he ends up playing.

But, since most adventure games only have on main linear path, the goal of the developer is to make the player feel like he does have freedom to choose when in reality the player does not. 

[ad7venture]

I agree on player freedom.  It's more illusion and most of the games I really enjoyed like Syberia, Broken Sword, and others, I didn't even really have the illusion of freedom.  I knew quite well I was being steered toward a goal.  I was just interested in finding out what was going to happen.  I think as you add real freedom you subtract story.  RPG's do this and the story becomes a series of quests contained loosely in an overall story. I find myself quitting rpg's quite often because I don't really care about the conclusion. The rewards also show which is which.  In an adventure, the reward is furthering the story, whereas in an rpg, they have to give other rewards like leveling up, acquiring better equipment, etc.  The story, in itself, isn't a strong enough reward.

[Igor Hardy]

I also agree. And creating the illusion of freedom can be an art in itself. I wrote a whole article about it once for Adventure Classic Gaming, if anyone's interested:

Gamer's (Illusion) of Freedom

I'm afraid the text may be a bit dense and nerdy since it was one of the first published pieces I wrote.