HOWTO-Fangames

This HOWTO covers writing a game for engines supported by ScummVM.

The ScummVM development team get contacted fairly regularly by users asking about how to create games to run within ScummVM.

There are two ways to do this:
1. Code a new point and click game engine targeted to ScummVM OSystem, then write a game targeted for this engine.

This is not recommended, as:
It does allow complete flexibility of design.

2. Write a game targeted for an existing engine.

This is recommended, however:
Very few of the engines have publicly available authoring tools. Without these, it would require the author to develop their own tools, which is not a trivial task as a full understanding or specification for the engine would be needed.

Point and Click Engines with Publicly Available Authoring Tools

• Engines supported by ScummVM
  • AGI: AGI/Development , AGI/SCI Fangame Creation (Forum)
  • SCI: SCI/Development , AGI/SCI Fangame Creation (Forum)

• Non-ScummVM Game Engines
  • AGS (Adventure Game Studio)
  • World Builder

Game Creation Tips

Creating a game is closer to writing than programming, though both skills are required.
For a good game, the characters, story and dialogue should come first.
It is suggested to write the game in a text adventure system such as Inform (Z Machine, Glulx) as a prototype
, before you commit to drawing artwork and creating game scripts for the graphical point and click final version.
Note that point and click interfaces are basically implicit "Verb-Noun" interface i.e. (Open) (Door), so this should map fairly easily.