Let’s Make an Adventure Game!

How difficult can it be? Just come up with a cool story, make some graphics... and get someone to program it.

That’s the mindset that got “Bingwood” started about 15 years ago. Had we known what it would ultimately take to complete the project, we might not have bothered with it. Ignorance truly was bliss.

With the aid of a couple of like-minded and equally naďve friends the project was started. Lots of sketching and brainstorming followed, and soon we realized we actually had something good going on there.

The Visual Design

Some background images were started as soon as the story and characters had been agreed on. However, the preferred visual look & feel for the game didn’t materialize until later on, which in turn resulted in remaking the earlier backgrounds to match their style with the new ones.

The scenes were first penciled on paper, then digitized with a handheld scanner (a spectacular piece of hardware back in the day). Using the sketched outlines as a guide, the final background art and animations were done with Commodore Amiga’s Deluxe Paint. Amiga’s screen resolution was 320 x 240 and we had a color palette of 32 colors to work with.

The walk cycles of the characters were a painstaking process even with the aid of the excellent Deluxe Paint. While many of the background images have been more or less re-worked over the years, the walk cycles are still in their original form (save for some minor color adjustments).

While about 80% of the original 1990s graphics were used in the game, the rest of the background art and animations were done in sporadic bursts over the years. This also included the re-working of some of the original art, such as brightening the colors, remaking the blue skies and clouds and some other general style tweaks. Minor fixes and additions were done all the way to the launch of the game.

Story and Dialogue

As the project started, the game had no name. “The Tales of...” was thought of quite early in the process, but it was years later until the village was finally named “Bingwood”. The decision had something to do with Markus reading “The Liveship Traders” trilogy by Robin Hobb at the time...

The first serious drafts of the in-game dialogue were written at the change of the century, when the second serious effort to get the game done was made. It took several years, a completed game editor and scripting language before the writing was picked up again. The days flew by, improving and building on the original story structure. New characters appeared, new puzzles and problems introduced... as well as new loopholes to cover and loose threads to tie up.

As the work was progressing, an idea of hiring actors to do the voice-overs emerged. After an initial burst of laughter the idea actually sunk in and started to re-emerge on regular basis. Soon after we found ourselves going through voice actor auditions at the excellent www.voice123.com. Now, having tasted the sweet nectar, there’s no going silent again. Ever.