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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!