My Quest adventure - evaluation and link to my unfinished game.

            Miss Pear's adventures. Chapter One - Fruit Town



Even though I haven't yet finished the entire game, I have put quite a fair bit of it in Quest.

Here's a link to what I have done till now.

Miss Pear's adventures - Chapter One: Fruit Town.

I have started using the software Quest for creating my text adventure game. I found it quite easy to use initially, very intuitive, and with great results. To start off with, I have read a few articles, just to be able to make an idea about the feeling around the community of game developers using Quest. Everyone was praising the software and the games I have played on the Quest website, are really fun, interesting, giving the player enough interaction to feel like they are actually driving the adventure, but not too much, so that the game becomes immense.

So, all this being said, I have sat down and took all the data from my mind map and started imputing it into the Quest software.
Mapping my game was a very fun experience as Inspiration, the software I have used, has lots of options for mind mapping and a vast library of images to use on each branch. So, the mapping itself was a large part of the process, but only because I have enjoyed it so much.


 However, after creating quite a few rooms inside the Library, which is the starting point of my adventure, I had to go outdoors in order to create "imaginary" rooms (i.e. bus station, train station, ticket office) and that's when I have encountered some set backs.

Even though I have used scripts before, in the Canteen section of the Library, I didn't seem to make it work when at the Bus Station. My intention was to create a script that would not allow the player to get on the bus if a ticket wasn't purchased. I have tried to introduce the script in the Verb section of the "Ticket" page, but because I wanted the verb to be "use",  I was sent to the Inventory section, as the verb was too similar to a normal command used for the inventory.

script added in the Inventory section of the "Ticket" Object

But, when introducing the script in this section, it didn't seem to work, when trialled out in Play mode.

Results when tried out in Play mode

After a few various attempts and getting some tips from my colleagues, I have managed to make the ticket work. I found it really interesting how, when programming the game, there are a lot of objects that the player cannot see in 'Play' mode. For example, in order to make the bus accessible to the player only if he/she has a ticket purchased, I had to create a separate room in the Bus station called Bus01, but which had an alias called Bus, which is what the player would see when in game. By creating Bus01, I have managed to have it closed unless the player has a ticket. the first Bus, was a subobject of Bus station, and that's why the ticket wouldn't work. The ticket was given the role of a key, which the player can use to unlock a room, but because Bus was an object, it couldn't be unlocked. 

Coming from a no-programming background, I found Quest very interesting, even with the little glitches I have encountered along the way.

On the other hand, writing the narrative itself, was something I have enjoyed very much. Giving life to the characters I have drawn, and putting them in various situations, following their life as such, was a lot of fun.