Todo the Tea-Mouse - Prototype 1

[davidn]

For a few weeks now, I've been saying that I'll put something playable of Todo up, but I just never got it into a position where it felt remotely presentable, even with the caveat that this was not complete work. However, tonight I think I've got it to a pretty good place to call a first prototype - most of the interface works and you can complete a task, so you can see the rough mechanics of the game. Have a go at this!


http://www.clickteam.info/davidn/games/todo/zip/todoprototype1.zip
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to acquire a "PipeBit" (which you can't use yet) and collect all 71 available Quest Points. Use the arrow keys with X to jump, and Up to interact with things - Q brings up the menu. You'll find that the game has some holes of varying degrees of hilarity and you have a couple of abilities which you won't really have from the start of the game, but feel free to poke around and do the unexpected - you may be surprised at what I've thought of (or more likely what I haven't).

It may seem slightly disappointing that I've been working on this for a few weeks to achieve roughly three minutes of gameplay, but so much of that time has gone into the backend - taking the base Crystal Towers 2 engine (which you'll see evidence of) and doing it... right. I've grown to love the Hatogate scripting engine as it grows more and more into what the game needs it to do - the game is pretty easy to expand now, and the game so far serves as a decent showcase of what it can do in terms of interacting with objects and characters. The scripts and rooms are all plain text in the "rooms" folder, so you can open them up and fiddle around with them if you like. Best of luck with that.

I haven't been as pleased with my game creation in a long time!

Comments

[davidn]

I sort of started my long post about automation of controls in games and selecting quest items from a menu, but then realized that I was mostly talking rubbish.

In the particular case you mentioned, though... if you're using an item on a character rather than an inanimate object, it does make sense for them to recognize something's in your inventory. However, I'd intended that bit to be a brief tutorial on how to go into your inventory and use items!

On the whole, I would like to keep having to select quest items in, and if responding to wrong item choices in a funny way is the writing price I have to pay for that then I will gladly do it :)

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

There's automation at one extreme, but there's "can you figure out to use the pipe-fixer on the pipe that needs fixing?" on the other extreme -- they both feel condescending in their own way ;) But, I might be way off in my guess about how inventory items are going to be used in this game in a more general sense -- is there going to be some Adventure Game style "use pudding on komodo dragon" or is it mostly going to be of the fetch quest variety to macguffin people through platforming segments?

But yes, this conversation is mostly academic because I do want to see remarks about attempts to just dispose of your to-do list in various places. XD

[davidn]

:D That would be an original solution to the game! Throw NOTEPAD in LAKE, go home.

I'm really hoping to avoid straight fetch-quests (notwithstanding the ones that I've put in about two minutes into the game) and have the game feel more like an adventure game with platforming elements.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay, that makes more sense then :)