Plan for Simon "Capn Love" Lamoureux

Greetings, y'all!

I never thought I'd rack up the courage to pop my .plan cherry, but seeing as so many .plans these days run along the lines of 'I'm new, I will create great games.', I figured I'd give it a try.

First of all, adventure games and what I'm trying to do.

I love old-school adventure games for one simple reason : story. I know there have been many discussions in the GG community about the importance of story in games. I can see convincing arguments from both sides, but if I look at games I've played and still remember, it's not the great gameplay that matters 15 years afterwards, it's the relation you had with the game.

The games I remember most fondly are the ones where the actual game mechanics let you play a part in the storytelling. Some games that rely solely on cutscenes to convey their plot have awesome stories, and I don't mean to take anything away from them. What I'm saying is that I prefer unraveling the story as I explore a virtual world, making choices that affect the storytelling experience. Playing with actual mechanics that allow me to discover secrets and feel involved. Another thing that I find is sorely lacking from most modern games is the repetition of actions.

Take any game, and analyze its mechanics. More often than not, you'll find that jumping, running, crouching has absolutely nothing to do with how the story develops. In adventure games I remember, even though the animations were often lacking, everything was possible, especially with parsers. Of course, I realize that even the parser was built on a set of pre-determined words and that everything was not possible. But these games allowed you to use many objects, talk with many people and figure out your way out of countless situations that rarely repeated themselves. I'm not saying they were perfect, but I loved the fact that progressing through a game held other surprises than the 'oh, that boss is original' moments.

So, from this love was born what I jokingly call my LLOD technology. LLOD stands for literary level of detail. Basically, as you move your mouse over various objects on the screen, the llod engine will write out textual descriptions to what I like to call the story log. If your mouse hovers over an object for a long time, descriptions will be more in-depth. Think of it as a sort of narrator which gives you as little or as much detail as you want when exploring the game world. If you prefer running through rooms, only glancing around the room real quick, no problem. If you're a freak like me, and you'd like the computer to tell you all about that rock over there, you can too. While it's not necessarily game-relevant information, I think it does help the immersive quality of the game.

Second, T2d.

T2d let me realize my dream. Inspired by the image Datablock editor and SCIstudio (a program which emulates old sierra games, and provides insight on how they were created), I began creating an editor which allows me to set priorities to background elements, having 2d sprite characters walk around these environments, getting progressively darker as they walk off in the distance, and lighter as they approach the camera. Once my prototype is complete (1-2 weeks tops), I believe T2d will have its own adventure game-maker. It even creates its own datablocks from png files, no need to write those endless datablocks.cs files :)

Writing a tool like this has taught me so much about T2D, and showed me how easy it is to write tools that help you make exactly the kind of games you want to make, as long as you know where you're going.

Making a 2d adventure game engine might seem stupid to some, as 3d technology is all around us. But this isn't about the graphics, it's about storytelling, pure and simple. And the stylized 2d rendition of environments just makes it feel unique. I have watched Sin City countless times, and it is one of those rare movies that really talks to me. What I'm saying is, adventure games stimulated my imagination, most modern games don't, period. And when your imagination is working, like when you're reading a book, it makes the experience that much more personal.

So, by providing compelling stories told in ways that stimulate the imagination of its 'readers', I believe we can touch an audience that is bigger than we might think.

I'll shut up for now, what I mean is, hello, I'm Simon and I will make great games!