Awen: Crisial Engine
I’ve loved LucasArts adventures since Day of the Tentacle and The Secret of Monkey Island, so I jumped at the chance to create a point-and-click adventure engine.
It was a very tight budget and a tight timescale, but it had a lot of potential. We used the last incarnation for producing CD-ROMs, but given the engine was Flash-based, there’s no reason it couldn’t be used for websites.
I was the primary narrative designer and wrote dialogue for two point-and-click adventure games based on this engine. The first game, The Crystal of the Pharaoh, was based on the book by Aled O Richards; he and I adapted it together. The sequel, The Pirate’s Crystal, I and Aled outlined together and then I wrote the majority of the script. For both games I led the realisation of the design, from building the engine to commissioning artwork, music and gameplay code. Both were traditional point-and-click with branching dialogue trees, inventory and items, in-game puzzles and mini-games. Both were bilingual (Welsh and English versions) and featured full voice recording.
Features
You can read a more in-depth list of features here, however here’s a quick rundown:
- Scenes constructed using XML + Flash assets + MP3 files.
- XML scripting system (state changes, objects appearing/disappearing/moving, event triggers etc.).
- Choice of MP3 audio/speech bubbles or both.
- Full branching dialogue system, script integrated.
- Full inventory system (pick up/drop/combine/look at/use etc.).
- Animation layers.
- Cut scenes.
- Integration with external Flash code.
- Load/save games.
- 3D engine calculating character perspective and layering of objects.
- Full localisation – can support multiple languages.
- Fully skinnable.
All images © Awen.
- Category
- Coding, Games, Writing
- Skills
- coding, narrative design, systems architecture, writing