Fan-made Adventure Games become portable!

Its no secret that today we live in an age of mobile electronics. Gone are the days of big bulky cell phones and laptops. In are the days in which we behold credit card thin cell phones and super lightweight netbooks and tablets. No longer do we use a simple mouse or joystick or even a keyboard to maneuver through a video game as we once used to. Now a simple touch of the screen and our preferred actions come to life right before our eyes. Yes, today, mobile devices seem to be taking the world by storm. It offers a casual experience to many as well as added convenience and simple fun. From simple smartphones to portable game consoles to high end netbooks and tablets, it seems almost everyone, young and old, are getting into the action. One thing that all these devices have in common: Games. LOTS AND LOTS of GAMES!!!! Mind you, games are not the only thing that these devices have in common, but whether you are travelling on a train or airplane, sitting in a car as a passenger, waiting in a doctors office or just looking to pass the time, more often than not you are scrolling through your list of apps to find a game to pass the time.




Many use the portable consoles to play 3D shootem ups or side scrolling games, but lets be reasonable. If you are trying to travel light, you probably wont bring along your PSP or your DS. Sure to follow you is your smartphone with the possibility of even a tablet device. Though gaming has come a long way on these devices, 3D action games are far from perfect or easy to play, particularly if you do not have a bluetooth controller or Keyboard to use. The fact is, while a tablet may be able to support such games and even in many case cell phones, its quite possible that the phone you are carrying with you does not offer the specs necessary to play the appropriate action games. Its no wonder why when you look over someones shoulder who is playing a game on their portable device always ends up being something simple such as Angry Birds, solitaire, Sudoku, word search, etc... Sure, even some fancy 2D games will make their way to these devices. So how is adventure gaming going to add to the fun of portable gaming?

Its simple really. Over the years, dozens of commercial adventure games have been released for the old DOS PC systems to the more modern Windows, MAC and Linux systems as well as hundreds more of these games being released over the years by amatuer developers whose quality of some even surpass the most successful commercial adventure games. Since these devices had first entered the mainstream world of electronics, many sought to play adventure games on these devices. They offer a simple mechanic: Point and Touch. Far easier than some of the other games which require dragging with your finger to accomplish a task. Besides the simplicity of the game, being that it mostly handles 2D functions, almost all modern day devices as well as some older devices can support running these games at playable speeds.

For years, SCUMM VM, an interpreter which began as a Lucasarts adventure game player, has made it possible to play adventure games on a number of devices and OS's. In time, the program has expanded to interpreting other adventure games created with several diverse game engines. This sytem not only allowed portability to desktop OS's and consoles, but also to portable devices such as an iPhone, Android OS and even portable consoles such as the Nintendo DS and The Sony PSP. As great of a tool that this was, it mostly supported already commercially released games from the mid 90's or older. Again, a great piece of software and it certainly allows casual and portable gamers more and better options when it comes to games. But what if one were to create a game today for a portable device? How would one do so?


There are several ways in which one can port or develop an adventure game for a mobile device. Flash and now even HTML5 have the capabilities to develop point and touch adventure games and most portable devices can view or play games developed with such environments. Also available are native tools and compilers for mobile devices, which in a lot of cases involve using Java or C++, to create games or applications. Great tools, but the process is not as simple as some would like it to be. There have been a few who have successfully created some form of adventure games for these mobile devices through use of these tools. One such game for the Android OS is "Special Inquiry" which has a point and touch 1st person playing perspective. Most games ever developed, however, were hardly ever coded directly from a programming language or environment. Most use whats known as Development Engines, and while one could generally use SCUMM, AGI or SCI to create a game that can run in SCUMMVM, the process is troublesome if not just impossible. Until recently, there was no simple way to develop point and touch adventure games for a mobile device. Adventure Game Studio for years has been the premier choice of developing amatuer adventure games for Windows and later on even for MAC and Linux when an updated build of the engine was released. But thanks to Chris Jones, the creator of AGS, open sourcing his beloved software, many have collaborated in improving and porting the engine to other devices and OS's. One such member of the AGS community, JJS, has done what many thought was years away or just downright impossible. He ported AGS to the Sony PSP and the Android OS! Granted, these ports are still in beta, but still function well enough to allow adventure games to be playable on these systems.

Thanks to this achievement, these portable devices have been allowed exposure to hundreds of more games. Games that casual players can find fun. Games you can play as a child or as an adult and play them anywhere in a non-stressful way. To that, we as an adventure community should be thankful to several people. First and foremost, we should be thankful to Chris Jones, the creator of AGS for allowing such easy development of such adventure games and for open-sourcing such a wonderful tool. Next, we should be thankful to the many over the last decade or longer who have created adventure games using this wonderful game engine and lastly but not least, we should be thankful to JJS for porting this tool to new platforms such as the PSP and my favorite, the beloved Android. My hat to you gentlemen.


Yes, its true that this engine port is a bit new and should still be considered a beta version, that in no way undermines its capabilities though or its potential. So for all you adventure fans and you portable gaming fans, look to the sky because this is the start of something big!