Instead of starting haphazardly in some random direction and seeing what comes out I think, I'll treat this more like a work project and actually try and plan and design before committing to code. So the question is : "What do I want to build".

Right, so I have decided on a retro faux 8-bit scriptable adventure game engine and I want it to have a similar feel to SCUMM games. I always like those a tad better than the Sierra look. It needs to be feature rich to tell engaging stories and build enjoyable puzzles. So lets make a shoppinglist of sorts.

• Point and click style control
• Scriptable stories
• Scrolling graphics
• Character and object animations

Well, that does not seem to overly ambitious. So lets figure out what we actually need to build to make that happen.

• Some graphics to test with
• A render engine that takes the game state and puts it on screen
• A state machine that takes user input and controls the game logic
• User input methods
• Some basic plumbing for loading files and setting up shop
• A story to tell!

So there we are! Roughly, those are the components I think I need. Hopefully this time I can keep them separate and not end up entangled in poorly documented code by yours truly. Each element will have separate components which I will describe as I go along.

Before I start putting code to screen, I think I'll have to let this peculate a bit in my mind while I create (or borrow) some test graphics and think about what story I might want to tell in the actual game.