While I’m a big fan of game development tools like Torque Game Builder, etc., at this point I plan to create Adventure Game Machine using straight Xcode/Objective-C. While I plan on diving into TGB (and iTGB, the iOS version) in the near future, to make AGM look good with that tool I’d need artwork — and I’m not an artist and don’t have the funds to hire one at this point.
But I think a simple buttoned interface can be just fine for a hybrid text adventure where the story is the main thing, and not eye candy.
The games themselves are text files parsed by the player app. As much as I hate dealing with XML that’s probably the format that makes the most sense. One reason I hate dealing with it is because it’s not easy to jump in somewhere and tweak things by hand. Sure you can, but a big XML file is so verbose that I find it a pain.
Which brings up the point of an authoring tool.
At least initially I plan on spending as few resources on an authoring tool as possible. My goal will be to get something up and running that’s “good enough” for me to use and worry about making it “nice” for other people at a later date.
My dream is that I can interest a lot of people in writing games for the AGM player to make it a more valuable app.
Since I can crank out utility programs pretty easily in REALbasic I’ll probably use that for the first version of the authoring tool. I need something that can list rooms (locations), objects, NPCs (non-player characters), and events. Add on general game info (title, author, etc.) and that’s all the data you need to create an adventure.
Gee, I make it sound easy! =:)