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Does anyone here remember it? If not, let me tell you a little about it. It was a graphic adventure creator, hence the name GAC. It was released in about 1985 on the Amstrad and ported to Spectrum, C64, BBC, Acorn and other machines. Unlike pazzaz (even less people would remember that one), which I had tried before, GAC was very useable. The only thing that was hard to do with it was come up with ideas for a game in the first place!
Anyway, roll on 25 years or so (holy smoke, time zips by!) and I have been playing about with it again using emulation. Three days of use, and I had a fairly complete game, which needed some graphics for the locations. A friend of mine was also messing about with it, and was complaining at the lack of memory, and the fact it wouldn\'t use the extra memory on a 128k speccy.
That got me thinking, and I though why not try to make an updated version on PC and sell it on appup? So I have been beavering over the last week to see if I could make GAC using Dark Basic. I have had some success so far, but I have a way to go and have to suss out a scripting language to mimic GAC\'s. It is surprising how many issues you get when doing this sort of thing in DB. Things you would take for granted in say Visual Basic, would end up being far more difficult in DB, such as text editing for instance.
I am wondering how many people here would have an interest in something like this if I complete it? It is a dead game genre in the main, so probably not many. I am guessing only peeps like me who used the original, wanting to play about with a familiar engine to the one they used so long ago.
A little info and the spectrum version is available here.

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0006391

Something like GAC would be a good project to do to revive the old days. Especially with the image resources available these days with google images. People who liked that then would certainly give it a go. I was planning on doing an FPS re-make of Jet Pac but I got stuck o another project instead. Hope it goes well for you and I would like to see the finished result.

Thank you WLGfx, at least one peep here is interested! 45 views so far, either 45 peeps remember GAC, or have just had a quick nose to see what it's about. I am just working on the data entry part of the program at present. Auto truncating text to the screen width as you type, and trying to edit parts of that text is proving troublesome at the minute. Almost have it going but one or 2 bugs to iron out yet. I have included a screenshot but it's hardly exciting stuff. Just to show how it looks compared to the original at the moment. The free memory is quite nice though compared to my speccy On the last GAC project I made I had a whole 11k left for graphics! Graphics will not really use any more memory than the current screen in this version though, so even more memory for the adventure itself lol!

Will you be overlaying images and possibly allowing for simple animation of images on the screen? Keep it simple but effective.

I'm halfway through my game at the mo, come across a little bug that's annoying. If you need any help just give us a shout.

At the moment, the graphics are very basic. I am keeping close to the original spec of GAC for starters in the main. However, I plan on allowing the use of video instead of a simple picture if wanted, also sprites which can be placed onto existing pictures or video. The original GAC was a little limited if you wanted a picture of say a chest open and closed, or even just a sword being picked up and moved etc. I had to always make a fake room with a new picture to get that sort of effect into a game which was not the best for memory use. I do plan on having several improvements to the original, but one thing at a time I did a simple adventure project a year or so ago and was playing with animations then, so I know it can work really well. I used a dreamscene animation of a house. The grass swayed and smoke rose out of the chimney. Beyond my graphics abilities I am afraid, and once I had seen it working, I couldn't go back to my own graphics, and ended up not bothering :p. So I know if a good artist who can animate were to do scene locations, you could have something that looks, even by today's standards, quite pretty.
Anyway I include a quick picture of the video loader in action



Edit - Oops, thanks for the offer of help. I am not really stuck yet, but the text entry is proving awkward so far. I am trying to get the text to auto truncate to fit on the screen and also be fully editable with either mouse click or arrow keys. So far the editing is only working on one line and with only the mouse. I have lots of features to add so I have left it for now and have moved on to another menu option. For my use at present the text entry suffices for testing purposes, but will have to be a little better than it stands at present to be more user friendly. Retyping a long description all over again, because of a typo, could get rather annoying. I am also wondering about a decent file loader, as at the moment videos and sounds require you to manually place the files in the correct directory, as will sprites and pictures(although the pictures you create within the editor yourself, are placed in the right directory already of course).

Are you using IanMs string commands? They do make working with text a lot easier. Making a routine that splits all text (with SPLIT STRING) and checks if the length of the next word will go off the screen is quick and easy. I'm sure you're already doing that though.

I remember GAC well, but would say I prefered PAW as a tool. If you need any help or a playtester I'd be glad to.

Good luck with this one.

Around the forums there should be a fileselector for DBP, I'm sure I've seen one somewhere. My last project I used the WinApi fileselector but that was in c++ though.

Another idea is instead of having to type everything in, at least some of the commands, N, E, S, W, NE, NW, etc can be put onto a compass and just clicked on using the mouse for navigation through the adventure.

Grog, I have the matrix utilities but am doing it all pretty much old school, force of habit. The set entry buffer command is in use though as it simplifies things nicely. I have the entry and editing working. Using the mouse to move to the text you want to edit, rather than cursor keys. I am reasonably happy with that at least for now. I don't want to get too bogged down in the editor, and want to get it working to the point where it can get all the data needed, to start the actual game engine.
Scenecommander I will certainly need some testers and when it is in a state to actually be tested (when you can produce a game rather than a database), I will pop up a request or even contact anyone who is interested directly. I just hope my rigorous testing has already ironed most bugs out by then Easy to miss things when you are the creator and know exactly how and when to do things however.
WLGfx, there are probably a few examples about as you say, I'm not too worried about getting one in if I decide to. But for speed I will leave that till one of the last things I do on the project probably. I want to get to the main game engine as soon as I can As for a compass to move, well it will be up to the user to get that in, all the tools should be there in the end to accomplish it (all going well).