Hello Everyone,

I haven't coded for a long time now(used to do it as a hobby when I was younger) but recently got the urge to create a point and click adventure game engine. I would like some info about getting articles and documentation on how to go about this.

My concept of a game engine is some form based IDE that lets you specify rooms, sprites, backgrounds, events. I assume the events would be scripted somehow but have no clue how to work on a scripting engine and how a custom script becomes compiled code. For the graphics I would use one of the free graphics libraries for Windows C# out there.

The functionality of the game I would want to create with my engine would be pretty limited at first. Just want 2 rooms, objects you can look at and add to your inventory and a defined screen region for walking.

Can anyone help? Thanks....

Point and click should give you a hint that this application would be very "GUI-based":

Get your feet wet with GUIs, 2D Graphics, Events(Interactions with the User with the mouse, keyboard or any button components) in the context of C#.

Agreed with the above post. I would say just go start implementing. Just start with one feature. Once that is done, move on to the next one.

Do not get blogged down with a huge design.

Ah yes. I have read a lot of the posts re Beginning Game Engines on the forum and I think all the ones I read have suggested starting with a game instead. Maybe I shall attempt to do just that. I assume the elements of the game would be hard coded? Objects for the graphics through XNA or OpenTK? Event handlers to respond to the interface? Maybe IronPython to incorporate some scripting? Or would that even be needed since this is hardcoded so I can write everything in c#?

I realize a lot of the code between an engine and a game are interchangeable but since I've already written graphics and input code for games I wanted to see how one would implement creation of a game through an interface. I know I can create a game in 2D. I've not made a point-and-click adventure but have made smaller scale 2D games like Snake, Breakout and a text adventure with graphics for the rooms. It was trying to understand how not to create a hardcoded version of a game but a scripted one thru an interface that appealed to me.

So, I ask again: Can anyone on this board please recommend books or websites with open source code for the kind of software I'm looking for? After all if you see from my first post I dont want my engine to implement sound, conversation trees, Z-buffering etc. at this stage The most complex part would be the event handler. I've even decided to delegate scripting(if i need it) to IronPython. I just don't understand how a form based interface would be used to create a game. Do we use use the variables from the form to generate a script that will be parsed? Or do we create a runtime handler that accesses the necessary variables and calls functions as needed? Or something else entirely?

The core of a point and click adventure should be simpler than a gui. Just draw a fullscreen picture of your background art; maybe just part of the texture that can be moved, if the texture is larger than the screen/window. Maybe add some extra sprites for changeable items.

Then wait for mouse click events and if one is inside a rectangle (or other shape) above some clickable thing make the game do something with it.

The hard part will be drawing all those art pieces for the game and writing intelligent messages telling a good story.

Fine. I won't post again until I work out Khaiy's suggestion. My problem is that C# seems to have changed a bit since I last used it several years back. I am currently reading C# Game Programming for Serious Game Creation by Schuller to get back on track so I wont post for a while. Schuller is using elements like delegates for game loops. I'm currently reading about them online. Seem to be some way to pass functions as arguments.

And I've pretty much scrapped the engine idea until I can first recreate my two room goal as a game first.

This is my first Windows game so I'm somewhat confused. I'm using xna 4.0. I can create clickable Rectangle objects that change color but am not sure how to create separate screens. Do I define each screen as a GameComponent with its individual Draw and Update logic? If I want to exit one screen and go to another is there some event I can create like ChangeScreen where the current screen is removed as a Component and replaced with the new screen (maybe in GameComponentCollection)?

Here is the code I have in Game1.cs:

namespace Reflection
{
    public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game
    {
        GraphicsDeviceManager graphics;
        SpriteBatch spriteBatch;
        DrawableGameComponent room;
        GameComponentCollection complist;
        GameTime gt;

        public Game1()
        {
            graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this);
            Content.RootDirectory = "Content";
        }

        protected override void Initialize()
        {
            room = new Level1(this);
            base.Initialize();
        }

        protected override void LoadContent()
        {
            spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice);

        }

        protected override void UnloadContent()
        {
        }

        protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime)
        {
            // Allows the game to exit
            if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back == ButtonState.Pressed)
                this.Exit();

            base.Update(gameTime);
            
        }

        protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime)
        {
            base.Draw(gameTime);
        }

        public void ChangeScreen(DrawableGameComponent curroom, Type type)
        {
            room = (DrawableGameComponent)Activator.CreateInstance(type,this);
            this.Components.Remove(curroom);
            this.Components.Add(room);
            //room.Draw(gt);
        }
    }
}

Then, the modified DrawableGameComponent class in Level1.cs:

   public class Level1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.DrawableGameComponent
    {
        Game1 game;
        public Level1(Game1 game): base(game)
        {
            this.game = game;
        }

       public override void Update(GameTime gameTime)
        {
            // TODO: Add your update code here
            game.ChangeScreen(this, Type.GetType("Reflection.Level2"));
            base.Update(gameTime);
        }

And the screen color changing code in DrawableGameComponet class Level2.cs:

       public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime)
        {
            GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Red);
            base.Draw(gameTime);
        }

I want this code to initially load the room Level1 class in Game1 which then immediately changes the screen to Level2 . However, it only seems to run the Update and Draw loops in Game1. I want the DrawableGameComponent room variable to load the component specified in it and then loop that component's Update and Draw functions until changeScreen is called for new component(room) again. Each time only one room should be displayed but each room should be able to store multiple sub-components of sprites etc. That way you could set a current room to loop with its eventhandlers and sprites until a new room need to be load after exiting the current one.