Adventuring Underground
Issue 8

By Rob Merritt

You have probably been wondering why there hasn’t been an issue of Adventuring
Underground for several months. Besides the fact that summertime demands
that I spend less quality time with my computer, I have been busy working
on my own adventure game. A great amount of progress has been made, and
I’m hoping to release it by the end of the year. Once that is done, I
should be able to create a few more issues on what should and should not
be done while making a graphical adventure game. In this issue, I am going
to talk about some tools that can help you in pursuit of your vision.

Click Team has released
a patch for Multimedia Fusion. Most of the fixes are for the construction
interfaces. Memory leaks, crashes, and other bugs have been addressed.
With the 1.2 patch, I find that Multimedia Fusion is finally rock-solid.

Click Team also has released an alpha preview of Jama3D. Jama3D is a
new multimedia authoring tool made specifically for 3D applications and
games. There is some coding involved via a variant of Java called Java
Script. I’m not too impressed, but it appears to be an able tool. There
are three big weaknesses. There will be no 3D object editor included,
coding is requiring, and the engine isn’t up to today’s standards.

Twilight Software has released a patch
for its AGE (Adventure Game Engine) that covers many of the inadequacies
that gave me concern in my original review. The graphic errors have been
fixed, as well as many of the random crashes. Encoding of the script has
been added as a feature. I still feel that the package is overpriced and
under-featured compared to similar packages in the market, but at least
it’s now usable. AGE can be used to create first-person, Myst-like
adventure games.

ScienceFact Interactive has released SAGE in alpha.
SAGE is a freeware construction kit geared toward making third-person
adventure games. It seems to be the most promising of the freeware construction
kits on the horizon. This alpha release lets you play with the world editor
and view an engine demo. SAGE’s goal is to allow the user to create a
full adventure game without the need for scripts or coding. After playing
with the alpha for several days, I’m very pleased with what I’ve seen
so far–so much so I’m toying with the idea of switching my own adventure
game to the SAGE construction kit once it’s released. The full package
is due out in a few months.

A Windows demo version
of GCS (Game Construction System) has been released. GCS is geared toward
making first-person shooter games, but it could be used to make a first-person
adventure game. In GCS 2.0, you are allowed to create polygonal instead
of sprite-based objects. Overall, I don’t think GCS is all that good.
It’s easy to use and affordable, but it seems a little kludgey. However,
the full version isn’t out yet so I am hopeful it will be improved before
then.

QuasiFractal
Composer is a nifty little freeware tool I found for generating midi
music. With a few inputs, the program generates a fractal and applies
midi instruments of your selection. This program can generate some really
interesting music, which can then be used in your games. It can also create
a midi file that sounds like a cat jumping on a piano. You don’t even
need to know a thing about music. All you have to do is provide two random
numbers and how fast you want it to go. There are many more options that
you can use to tweak your music or just play with.

Jasc has released a beta
of Paintshop Pro version 6. Paintshop Pro has been a staple of affordable
image editing for years. Now the package has added vector drawing tools.
Many other tools have been added, but few are as significant as vector
drawing. While Paintshop Pro 6 isn’t as easy to use as Corel Draw, you
can’t beat the price.

Please remember that with any beta product, it may work fine, it may
not work at all, or it could harm your system. So use them with caution.
Have a great summer!