OUR EXPERT
Nate Drake is a tech journalist specialising in cybersecurity and retro games. The first thing he did when discovering Linux in 2004 was play Beneath a Steel Sky. Be vigilant.
If you’ve been following this series, you now have the makings of an interactive room. I You’ve also created objects that can be picked up and used to interact with the environment. You’ve made the NPC Robbie the Robot, too, who can have conversations with the player and give your character items if you follow the correct conversation tree.
Create your next room
Having completed all available actions in this room, it’s time to configure the game to allow your character to move into another. The first step is to create a suitable background for your room. When doing this, you need to be mindful of the original resolution of your game (in this case, 320x200).
Adventure Game Studio (AGS) does support scrolling backgrounds of the kind found in many a LucasArts adventure. To do this, import a background larger than the game’s resolution. The virtual camera automatically follows your character around.
For the purposes of this guide, though, we suggest you keep things simple. You can download a 320x200 background we created using AI from https://bit.ly/ lxf313back. Once you have this or a background image you made yourself, launch AGS and click Rooms in the project tree. Select New Room.
The Create New Room wizard now appears. You’ll notice that you have the option to reset the room when a player leaves it – this can be helpful if the area contains a puzzle the character must solve in order to pass. You can also set a room number, although in this case you can leave the default value (2). If you’re planning a particularly vast adventure, remember that only room numbers below 300 save the player state. Click OK to
