Maps in adventure games

Travel is a very common element in adventure games - in fact, the name of the genre itself implies that some travel will take place. \'Adventure' brings to mind visions of heading to distant lands, seeking fortune, fame, or the resolution to some mystery. Unfurling a torn, tattered old map - such as the one shown above from King's Quest 6 - makes us interested in the distant new places we can see, and want to explore them.

This isn't necessarily a limitation, of course - adventure games can successfully take place in a very small area. In times when they don't, though, we rely on maps to travel around. The map pictured above from Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis shows the classic cinematic approach to showing a large amount of distance covered in a very short span of time - a line that tracks progress between destinations over a map. This is very useful when we're simply interested in our destinations, with little care for the voyages in between.

Of course, sometimes the journey is part of our adventure, as is the case in Gold Rush! Here the map is overlayed with closer depictions of smaller maps, showing more specific part of the historical journey, as well as small thumbnails depicting certain landmarks along the voyage. This attention to detail really helps Gold Rush's story feel grounded - we're passing known landmarks while plotting our course along this map, and this makes it feel more like a historical account. The fidelity here is pretty low, of course, but it's a decent way to convey the idea.

A similar idea is shown in this map from Conquests of Camelot. We plot our hero's journey across the sea, with little moments of narrative telling us what's happening without much visual information to convey it. This is a more zoomed out, abstract map, which has much less detail than the Gold Rush approach, but here the focus is placed on visibility - it's much easier to follow the course of the trail here, even without needing to see it in motion. We don't necessarily need to see each section of the journey closer along the way if that's a minor part of the story, as it is here, which is just a simple cut scene between sections of the game.

When Conquests of Camelot requires us to choose a destination ourselves, the view is zoomed in, but the level of detail hasn't been increased to show much landscape beyond the coastline and the river Thames in further detail and our various potential destinations. The focus here is on visual clarity rather than any sense of detail, a simple, practical approach. The inclusion of the label marking the area and date is a nice touch that reminds us more clearly of our setting, and also fills up a large area of otherwise unused space.

When our destinations are more limited, as in this map from The Case of the Serrated Scalpel, the artists are now much more free to put in more detail. Here we see the river Thames again, but now we can see the greenery on the banks of the river, the various bridges, streets, buildings, parks, and even detail to the level of the individual trees. We're also looking at enough of an angle to see a little bit of perspective, making the features feel more deep and solid. This approach requires the map to scroll, due to the much closer level of zoom, but makes the individual map markers stand out by making them colourful icons, a nice visual symbol that explains and reminds very quickly what each place holds for us.

Gabriel Knight's map further abstracts the map markers from the map itself by merely showing the presence of city streets and blocks on the map itself. Here the markers themselves represent the only real details, but the nature of the map, as well as the slight variations in colour in blocks, suggests to us a real city with buildings and streets. This cements the idea that we're not necessarily looking to the map for a view of the city - it's merely a convenient way to travel large distances between two locations that interest us in a short span of time.

Sam & Max Hit the Road shows an even greater level of abstraction - here we get a zoomed out view of the United States of America with very few details - it's recognisable, but barely more detailed than the maps in Conquests of Camelot. Here our colourful icons stand out well, once again, showing us specific highlights of each area. At this level of abstraction, we're basically looking at an inventory of locations, merely given character by the colourful art. A particularly nice touch here is the suggestion of being on the surface of a globe because of the curving lines of longitude and latitude shown. The header at the top of the map also helps to establish the feel of a colourful, friendly tourist map, which really helps reinforce the road trip feeling of the game.

Simon the Sorcerer is an interesting example - we're still seeing icons here, but the art itself feels less like that of an actual map, compass directions notwithstanding. This almost feels more like an artist's sketch from a panorama of the entire area, which isn't how we're used to seeing maps presented, but still conveys the information well. It also gives an interesting sense of how the land changes, because here details like mountains and a forest seem more like drawn elements than zones or regions. I particularly like the way it's been drawn to look and feel like a crumpled old map that we've had folded up in our pockets - a very suitable look, considering the adventures Simon goes through.

It's interesting to see this sort of change when comparing the city of Ankh Morpork between the first and second Discworld games. We see here the first game's approach, a view from directly above, that shows the layout of the city very clearly, but only hints at the nature of the buildings we need to visit very vaguely. It's a great way to show geography, but doesn't really sell the feeling of the city very strongly.

In Discworld 2 we're much closer to the action, and here we can see the buildings, the streets, and even fairly small details. This feels much less like a map than the way it's shown in the first game, but plays a very similar role, while giving a much more interesting, dynamic view of the city. It also gives the artists a change to play with colour - this feels like an interesting, moody panorama more than it feels like a simple, practical map, and is no less functional.

Beavis and Butt-head in Virtual Stupidity has a similar approach - the shot here feels like we're looking over the town from a hilltop, more than staring at the town's layout on a piece of paper. This feels more like a transitional shot between areas than it does a map, almost - a quick look at the entire town from afar, so we can easily pick our destination, then zooming straight in on that place once we select it.

Full Throttle's long shot of Melonweed is a wonderful example of this - a moody, atmospheric landscape that shows the town, and shares the same wonderful night palette. This means we're barely taken out of the atmosphere of the game - the mood is consistent between each location and the map screen. Full Throttle's map works particularly well due to the interesting, unique shape of each of the buildings we need to visit in the town - they stand out as being iconic without the need for special icons or brighter colours - here it's mostly just variations in value, and then the interesting and iconic silhouettes of each structure do the rest of the work.

Flight of the Amazon Queen takes this a step further by not only presenting us with a panorama that we can pan to the left and right, but also shows the character himself atop a stone peak, looking out with us. A really unique and interesting example, here we don't even lose our connection with the character when choosing our next location. This is taking the idea of a "map" to its most personal form - it feels like the character is picking his destination.

The Secret of Monkey Island puts the characters into the map too - in a very different way. The map of Melee Island is initially just that - an overhead map showing the geography, with the locations cleverly lit up to show us clearly where we need to go. At the end of the game, however, the map becomes the backdrop to animated shots, where LeChuck punches Guybrush across the island, and then flies after him. A fun way to re-use a map for comedic effect, and a rather unique use for this kind of shot.

One last fun, interesting and unique approach is this cutaway diagram of the ship from Leisure Suit Larry 7. Because of the complex, layered nature of the ship, trying to show a map of it could pose quite a challenge. The artists here solved that challenge very neatly by producing the sort of cutaway diagram common in depictions of ships. A very sensible and functional way of representing a very complex set of overlapping locations.

Maps, then, can come in many shapes and forms. While the term itself brings to mind a very specific kind of image, artists have played around with them to make them more interesting, more atmospheric, and even more practical, without changing their original purpose. There's no real limit on how you can present a series of locations to the player, as long as the functionality is kept intact, and seeing how different people have approached the challenge of doing shows a great range of successful ideas that achieve a range of useful effects which suit a wide variety of purposes.

Screenshot sources for adventure games

I've got a pretty big collection of game screenshots on my hard drive, but for some games I have to look online to save me playing through the games specifically to find one scene. There's a few sites that have excellent collections of shots from games, and these are the ones I refer to the most:

MobyGames - a long running site with thousands of games, with excellent amounts of detail about releases, and often will have screenshots from differing versions of a game. The most comprehensive game information archive that I know of.

Imgur - Neurotech - Galleries of LucasArts adventure game backgrounds, minus characters. Great if you want to see the background art without characters in the way - though be aware that the GIF format means some of the colours are slightly different. Also has scenery from Infinity Engine games, if that's your kind of thing.

Sierra Wallpaper - An excellent resource for Sierra developed and published games, with dozens of screenshots per game, showcasing hundreds of scenes. The site allows you to select a resolution to download the images at, making it an excellent resource if you want to use these old games to spruce up your desktop.

Adventure Rooms - Screenshots of many adventure games, resized to correct aspect ratio, with nearest neighbor up-sizing. A great range of games that doesn't focus on any particular publisher, and especially handy to show the older games at the proportions they were designed to be seen.

Adventure Games Backgrounds - Many screenshots from adventure games, including some less known ones, and Sierra games without characters in some examples. The images aren't pixel perfect due to the manner in which they were captured and saved, though, so keep this in mind.

If you're looking to browse through some adventure game art, these are excellent resources. I really appreciate being able to turn to these archives to find a specific shot, it minimizes the need to play through each game to find the scene I want to capture. Feel free to let me know of any others I've missed in the comments section.

Full Throttle Scenery Studies

Over the past couple of months I've been regularly going through the background art of Full Throttle and making notes about it, trying to figure out what makes the scenes work so well. Those of you who follow me on Twitter have no doubt seen them appearing on my timeline regularly, and may be interesting in seeing the images in better quality than Twitter's image compression allows, and those of you who don't might be interested in seeing what I've been studying.

In any case, you can download all 29 of them compiled as a single PDF by clicking this link:

Full Throttle Scenery Analysis (41MB)

Enjoy!

The beauty of reflections in adventure game art

When I think about reflections in old games adventure games aren't really the first thing that come to my mind. Normally it'd be games where they're more prominent - the mirrors in Duke 3D, the cool reflection based puzzle in Another World, the hall of mirrors in the very bizarre Weird Dreams. Nevertheless, there are some interesting examples of them in adventures that are well worth checking out, from the subtle floor reflections seen in the Space Quest 5 shot above, to more interesting, dynamic examples.

Some of these examples are very subtle indeed. This scene from Sam & Max Hit the Road has the faintest of reflections on the ground, giving the impression of shiny linoleum. The counter also has a slight reflection on it - these are really just the faintest details, designed to give the impression of the glossy materials these surfaces are made of.

It's a little stronger in this scene from the game. The stronger reflections on the floor of the virtual reality device give the sense of a strong light source from above nicely. Notice how the curtains are perfectly reflected, but when the floor is reflecting the plain green wall the artist has added streaks, to help sell the idea of a shiny surface. This mimics specularity on a slightly uneven surface, giving the appearance of a reflective area despite no actual details for the surface to reflect.

This scene from Beneath a Steel Sky also has subtle reflections, but slightly stronger. The reflective floor is dirtier and grainier, this time, and while it feels futuristic, it also feels dirtier and less polished than the Space Quest 5 and Sam & Max examples because it. If you look carefully you can also see the suggestion of the seams between tiles interrupting the reflections slightly - particularly below the device closest to the left against the back wall.

This scene from Gateway shows the opposite - perfectly uninterrupted reflections, giving a clean, corporate and futuristic feel. Notice how the light source blooms the reflections out slightly, putting whiter circles in where the light hits the floor directly. Also notice how the reflections being confined to a single part of the scene gives a really clear indication of the change in materials in flooring. One oddity is the potted plant, and how its reflection goes straight down rather than following the inverted shape of the plant. This is fairly common, and simplifies drawing a reflection, even if it's not very realistic.

One last set of floor reflections is this from Dune - notice how under the two guards we can see the faintest suggestion of their reflections. This only really works because they're omnipresent parts of the scene - Leto doesn't have a reflection, because he's not always in this scene. If the guard reflections were stronger, the fact that Leto doesn't have a reflection might seem odd, but because they're so subtle, it doesn't really stand out too much. In modern games where memory and size constraints are much less of a consideration we merely give everybody a reflection.

Another great use for reflections is to suggest the presence of water - in this scene from Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist we see the reflection of the surrounding landscape, as well as the reflection of a blue sky in the water, which is easily read as being a large area of water.

For a much smaller, shallower area of water, such as the puddles in this track in Broken Sword, a much milder reflection is appropriate. The barest suggestion of the texture of the door, coupled with the slight shift to a bluer hue gives the impression of a reflection, but because the water is so shallow, enough light still hits the ground beneath the water to let the ground still remain quite visible, and so a transparent reflection is appropriate here.

Reflecting a blue sky isn't always appropriate for water. This scene from Lost Secret of the Rainforest shows a much greener reflection - which suits the greener atmosphere we can see in the distance. Here a blue reflection would feel more out of place. The artist also added some nice distortion to the water here, to help give the idea of the uneven surface of water, as well as drawing in the reflection for the boat. Notice how the character in the boat isn't reflected.

This scene from Dune shows an underground reservoir of water, and appropriately, no sky reflection is shown at all. The water is also perfectly still - there's just the mildest of distortions here and there, but otherwise it's a mirror reflection of the distant stone features. This shows how artists take into account the surrounding environment to inform the colour and movement of a reflective surface.

The opposite is visible in this shot from Space Quest 5. We recognize the water for what it is, because we're used to seeing water reflecting a blue sky like this, but considering the actual "sky" it exists under is the colourless black of space, the blue colour of the water here doesn't make any sense. It doesn't really ruin the scene, it just feels a bit less realistic than it perhaps should.

One reflection I particularly love is this shot from Future Wars. Here we see the side of a large building and a window cleaner at work - the massive, glass surface cleverly used to give a panoramic reflection of the scene behind us, interrupted only by the window washer's gear, the open window and the frames of the windows. One of my favourite things about this scene, other than the wonderful panorama it gives, is how you can see other reflections in the sides of some of the buildings in the reflection, a testament to Eric Chahi's imagination, attention to detail, and skill with the barest minimum of colours. It's a wonderful and extremely memorable way to start a game.

Another great example of seeing a bigger scene via a reflection is visible in this cutscene from Full Throttle, where we see Ben riding up to a rival gang member as reflected in the lens of his goggles. This is a very stylish and cool way to show this scene, and actually requires less animation than showing Ben from a long shot, riding up to the other rider. A really fun way to show two different angles at the same time.

A similar idea is used in this moment from The Secret of Monkey Island, where Meathook opens the door of the "murderous winged devil" enclosure. Here we see the apprehension on Guybrush's face, and the gradual reveal of what is clearly just a parrot in his eyes, followed by his perplexed look as he realizes what the fabled beast actually is. This is one of my favourite jokes from the game - a wonderful way to deliver a punchline.

An even more complex shot, this later shot from Full Throttle shows the scene directly from Maureen's eyes, as she notices one of Ripburger's henchmen enter her doorway and point a gun at her, who she then deals with by lowering the ramp he's standing on. I love how this conveys the idea of how Maureen notices him at the same time as showing exactly what he's doing, and then showing how he deals with him. It's a great combination of ideas into a single shot, and tells multiple angles of the story at once. I also love the warped and distorted reflection in the surface of the toaster, which gives a great impression of being close to an object, where subtle imperfections in a surface will be more visible.

One final great use of reflections to tell a story is the mirror in Dune - Paul's journey involves seeing him change as he grows into his role as leader of the Fremen. This is beautifully illustrated by looking at yourself in the mirror - at first Paul's eyes are plain, indicative of his offworld heritage. As his exposure to the spice melange changes him, we see his eyes turn gradually blue when we return to the mirror to save our game.

Here we see his eyes coloured deep blue, showing his adaption to the new world, and we also see his companion Chani next to him - I really like this idea of showing the two of them together in the mirror, showing Paul isn't just doing this for himself anymore. A wonderful way to show a character's progression.

One final shot - just to show an exception. It's very common in games with mirrors to simply avoid showing reflections when it's not practical to do so. The mirrors in this shot from Discworld don't reflect a thing, no matter where Rincewind walks, and are just shown to have a glossy surface. This is fine, and perfectly readable as a mirror - it's really not essential to show reflections in order to give the idea of a mirror, it's just a nice touch.

I love seeing how artists have played around with reflections in these scenes. There's plenty of opportunities that playing around with reflections can provide, from simply making a surface look shiny and polished, to giving a whole new way to show a situation. They're a great tool, a fun effect to play with, and a nice way to spice up a scene - and though they may require a little extra code trickery in some cases to get working, well worth the extra effort.

Atmospheric perspective in adventure game scenery

Atmospheric perspective, also known as aerial perspective, is a very old artistic technique where objects that are further away from the viewer are weaker in colour compared to those close to us. Usually the colour of the object shifts towards the colour of the sky - the idea being that dust and water in the air gets between us and the object we're looking at, and the more distance between us and the object, the more dust and water in the air to weaken these colours. It's very common to exaggerate this to direct focus, as can be seen in the Willy Beamish shot above, and it's interesting to see other examples of this in other games.

When atmospheric perspective isn't used, the effect can be a little jarring - in this scene from The Case of the Serrated Scalpel here we have deep blue water, despite a grey sky, which doesn't make any sense outside of the context of us expecting blue water because we're used to seeing it reflecting a blue sky. More relevant, though, the dark grey tower also feels like it's quite close, because it's darker than much closer objects, and it's somewhat hard to read the distance. The colours aren't representative of their environment.

In this scene from The Secret of Monkey Island, we can see aerial perspective in play. The trees close to us are a vidid green, and then the tree covered mountains in the distance are much bluer, making it really feel like they're further away from us. It's still easy to see greenish hues on the mountains, but the closer and further greens are much easier to distinguish because of this effect.

This scene from Loom shows a great use of dithering to show distance - with the mountains in the distance clearly showing the different layers of depth very clearly. Here the mountains start blue and recede to a white sky - it's not about making the distant colours blue, it's about making them closer to whatever colour the sky is.

In this shot from Simon the Sorcerer the clouds recede from a creamy-yellow colour to a purplish grey and finally to a medium blue - almost the opposite to the blue to white we saw before. The effect works both ways, as long as we can tell what's a foreground image and what's a background image. Here the layers of distance also give a nice sense of physical perspective due to their arrangement, a nice use of these layers of atmospheric perspective.

In this scene from Gabriel Knight, for another example, the trees recede from a dark green into a lighter green. There's not much of a hue shift this time, but the effect is still pretty clear - the colours change as they become more distant, from one shade to another, in a linear progression, and this helps to indicate distance. Here we get the impression of light coming through the trees.

Again, we see the opposite effect here - we get the impression of trees receding into shadow from this shot in Simon the Sorcerer. Despite using totally opposite shifts in value, the effect is very similar. The main difference is that the dark distance in this shot supports bright nearer objects like this fallen tree, whereas in the previous one it supports darker objects closer to the viewer, like the dark tree and Gabriel himself. This particular example is less like atmospheric perspective and more like lessening levels of illumination as the thick forest blocks out more and more light going back, but the effect is very similar.

The light itself has a big effect on how these colour gradations should be picked. For example, in this shot from Discworld we see the distant trees going to a bluish green, a fairly light colour compared to the shadowy blues in the nearer trees next to it. There's still green highlights on the trees, showing the warm, yellow sunlight hitting the tree and making it look greenish.

The same scene at night shows the distant trees without any green and all, and now a darker blue. Because there's no sunlight hitting the trees, making them green doesn't make much sense, so an ambient blue light is used to inform the highlights instead. The effect of distance is still quite readable, though, because these trees are once again closer to the sky's colour than the closer trees.

In this scene from Gabriel Knight we can't really see the sky, but the dappled sunlight of the scene suggests day time, which means it makes sense to make the top left hand corner recede to a light blue rather than a dark blue. In scenes such as this it's sensible to assume a shift to the colour of an imaginary sky, despite the high horizon line meaning that the sky isn't visible.

Weather conditions also play a big part - here the foggy air means that the trees and stones in the distance fade very quickly, which really helps to convey a thick, misty atmosphere. In this scene from King's Quest 6 you can directly see the moisture in the air, which really allows for a strong separation of foreground and background elements. A great way to convey depth and atmosphere, as well as direct focus.

This scene from Broken Sword does something quite different and uses a very bright, strong sunlight to make the foreground elements have very strong highlights and shadows, and makes the distant objects feel quite washed out by the glare of bright light. A great comparison is the very richly coloured textiles in the foreground versus the much smaller, much paler textiles in the distance. Their much smaller size helps this to read clearly, but the fact that they're so much more washed out really makes the distance here read very well. This is an excellent way to bring the focus right towards the foreground and away from the background.

And one last example from Full Throttle, just to prove that there's no specific rule that works all the time. Here the foreground rocks are a rich, vibrant red colour, while the distant ones are pure black, despite the fact that they're receding to a blue sky. Here the lighting of the scene takes precedence, and we still read the forms as being distance because of the implied direction of the sunlight - we read the distant rocks as having shadow cast on them by the larger, closer foreground rocks. Here lighting trumps the trickery of atmospheric perspective, and we can read the distance perfectly clearly. Much like the whites of the background in the last scene, the darks of the background here make the lighter foreground colours read much more clearly, and bring the focus towards them.

Atmospheric perspective is a great way to show distance, and to direct focus. It's easy to get caught up thinking about one form of aerial perspective, but as can be seen from these examples, there's many ways to use the idea. It's a neat, versatile little trick, and a very useful one to have for when painting or drawing scenery like this.