I have never made a game. I am a sophomore in college and I want to make a game like Delores a thimbleweed park mini-adventure. I have very basic coding knowledge. Will have to learn everything for this one from scratch.
My girlfriend loves this game and I want to make a custom game like this one for our one year anniversary, I’m gonna name it THE ONE. How can I use the source code provided, What are the things I should keep in mind and what will be the most essential things? Any and all Suggestions are welcome.
The Delores Engine requires advanced coding knowledge. So I recommend to use a “simpler” adventure game construction kit like the Adventure Game Studio (also known as AGS).
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When is your anniversary?
Hopefully not in a year…
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That would be better than in a week
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It depends where your strengths lie:
A) If your strengths or interests lie in creating visuals - 2d or 3d, or hand drawn. scene composition, lighting, and animation - then get yourself one of the game making tools like UI like AGS, Visionaire, Adventure Creator, or Unity. And start making someone walk around - and have fun!
B) If you think you’re better at writing story - or writing dialog, and telling jokes and humour. Then it might be best to start fleshing out your story design with in a simple command line, like python, or nodejs command line. Luckily your girlfriend’s favorite game revolves around construction of sentences - so doing it (first) as a command line game still give you the story and dialog, and humor. Can always add images later - after you’ve designed all the story and puzzle parts of the game. (Some cli’s allow autocomplete like withfig.)
- If you prefer to refine and iterate, and constantly improve the humor - and the story - then perhaps chooise B.
- If you’re at college doing something related to the Visual arts - then perhaps choose A - you don’t want to weight yourself down reinventing the wheel.
- if you’re at college doing IT or computer science - then choose B since it will keep you constantly typing and building, and using git.
- If you have an online portfolio where you add something new each year, each entry has a nice image, some screenshots, and a downloadable EXE - then perhaps choose A
- If you’re online portfolio is a whole bunch of web projects, and you want users to play the game inside the webpage - (where you can monitor how their progress) - then perhaps choose B
I’ve had experience with both routes - with a bunch of short graphical ones in the packages and also text based ones in python. And now working on larger more complex ones in typescript that can be auto tested with little pathfinding and puzzle graph solving bots.
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Our anniversary is in june. You think I’ll be able to modify this game? in this time?
can you please explain what do you mean by text based, command line game??
Also can I contact you somehow, or around here? Discord or mail?
OKay, even if I use AGS (or unity) will I be able to use the code of this game somehow, somewhere? to make things easier and faster?
Unfortunately not, you have to create a new game from scratch. But with AGS that process would be much faster.
You would like to take the game and change only some parts, like some dialogs? Is this right? In that case you should indeed have a quick look at the Delores engine, especially the scripts. But I doubt that you are able to produce results quickly. AFAIK only parts of the whole Delores game are released. But maybe @Ema could say more.
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Probably the quickest way to do this would be to take the art assets of a few rooms from Thimbleweed Park/Delores and put them in Adventure Game Studio, and just have a few puzzles.
I can’t remember if they released the character’s walk cycle animation - that will be tricky to recreate if they didn’t, as you need frames for side/front/back.
AGS has a template called “Tumbleweed” which has a similar layout to TWP.
There is an AGS book that walks you through all the basic stuff - GAME DESIGN WITH AGS - Game Design with AGS
…
Honestly though, how about just ordering some nice TWP related merchandise, such as…
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Oh, no, mate 
the developer guy is @Guga, here. My current professional life is far away from computers 
But I quote everything: start from scratch, steal some backgrounds and sprites, and use an easy app like AGS. much easier than learning to use super pro tools. I’d do that if I ever wanted to do something like that.
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Just don’t try to sell it if you do 
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That would be a genius marketing move if he sells it to his girlfriend…
“Happy anniversary honey, I made you a customized version of your favourite game! That’ll be $150, thanks. DLC coming soon.”
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Yeah, I know I’d have you back on my tail
Yeah, but to aim for the very big money he should have many girlfriends… That’s quite out of the nerd cliché, I’m afraid
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Also all these girlfriends would need to have a keen interest in ‘Delores: A Thimbleweed Park Mini-Adventure’, otherwise the whole business model collapses.
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In Germany there was a TV show named “Beauty & The Nerd”. According to this show nerds have many girlfriends (as long as a camera and a huge TV channel are involved).
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