There is nothing wrong with Unity, but it is a general purpose engine and if you want to make a specific type of game (like adventure games) you have to first invest a lot before getting decent results.
Alternatively you could also try more specific engines/plugins so you can concentrate more on game development (game assets and logic/scripts etc.) than engine development.
Examples:
Unity plugin Adventure Creator
Visionaire Studio
Adventure Game Studio
Of course you can stick with “vanilla” Unity or even making a custom engine though it’s more of a challenge.
Coming back to the dialogue topic:
The text file syntax for dialogue trees we talked previously about is an advanced scenario you can probably ignore for now.
It is meant to easily make dialogues in a game like TWP, especially allowing writers like Lauren to do this without programming background but still being able to incorporate simple game logic.
Thanks again for everyone helping me here with advice and helpful opinions. I want to continue using just Unity and c# and whatever tools I can build myself (so that I understand them completely once they are up n running). Basically, in a way, I want to build my own Adventure Game Engine that runs on top of Unity.
I’ve been quiet from posting here, because I realised I was slightly out of my depth. I designed a way to make the dialog pop up using the Json data etc, but it was still very “string-y” so I gave up. What I am doing now is re-going back to basics. I’ve got my old Unity Tutorial books out, and I’m learning as much as I can about modular programming in general.
Its a verynice surprise for me reading these old books I used a couple of years ago as a way to get started, because a couple years ago I read them feeling like “wow, these writers are so clever, how do they know all this…” and now I read it and look at much of it feeling “wow, why the heck do they do it like this, it’s wrong lol”. I’ve found a great book which shows me how to not build games, but instead re-usable modules. And I feel this is the key, once I understand it fully it should be quite trivial to do as LogicDeLuxe points out. I just need a managed way to store all that data (such as when a puzzle is passed somewhere in game, or if certain conversation has occured yet or not).
And yes, I have read MASSIVE amounts of articles written by Ron Gilbert over the course of decades because he is my hero in game design and honestly one of the main reasons I’m even into trying to make games. TBH he is one of the main reasons why I played games as a kid, and still do as a fully grown adult who should know better
Anyway guys, all have fun. Thanks again for all the helpful comments. If I ever get a decent game up n runniing I will post it here for free Also never know I might even post an easy to use Adventure engine someday in the next year (I’m certainly gonna give it every effort I can!)
The TWP dialog file format (.yack file) is based on Inkle. I changed a few things to make the format a tad less complex.
The most important thing with any format is that writers with no programming experience need to be able to use it. Also, writers like to write, not format each line as they go. I once worked in a system where all the dialog was in spread sheets. It’s was horrific. Let writers write.
Formats like JSON are easy for programers to parse, but very hard for writers. All those { and } and if you need a comma or not is just a barrier to writing. People who are not overly technical think of formatting as aesthetics, not rules that can’t be broken. What you’ll get back is a whole lot of incorrectly formatted JSON code that “looks fine” to them. Remove all these barriers.
Also never know I might even post an easy to use Adventure engine someday in the next year (I’m certainly gonna give it every effort I can!)