Something Classic Games

Currently, you can’t re-map gamepad buttons to different functions within Shadows Of Adam. However, you can edit a configuration file outside the game to accomplish this. This post will cover how to do this, specifically for Windows 10. It should provide a good idea how to do it for other operating systems as well.

1. Find config-new.json
This configuration file contains the gamepad mappings. Its location varies based on your OS.

Windows location:
C:\Users\[user name]\%APPDATA%/Shadows of Adam

The AppData folder is typically hidden. You may need to show hidden items in your [user name] folder.

In Windows 10:
a) Click View tab
b) Checkmark Hidden items

AppData folder should appear:

Note: The location of config-new.json may vary slightly depending on Windows version. I’m on Windows 10 and the locations is: C:\Users\Luke\AppData\Roaming\Shadows of Adam\

Unfortunately, I don’t have more detailed instructions for Mac or Linux. config-new.json should be at the following location in those operating systems:

Mac:
~/Library/Application Support/Shadows of Adam

Linux:
~/. config/Shadows of Adam

 

2. Open config-new.json.  

Use a plain text editor. For Windows, we can use a text editor like Notepad, which should be the default in most cases.

3. Find the keys mappings to edit

With the file open, run a search. Press CTRL + F to open Find dialogue. Type in JOY_START and click Find Next.

You should see the following three values. These represent the three action buttons in Shadows of Adam.

4. Edit the key mappings

Change the JOY_START, JOY_ENTER, and JOY_BACK values to a different mapping by changing the number to the right of the colon.

Here are all the mappings for face buttons, shoulder buttons, start, and select buttons.

FACE_1: 256,
FACE_2: 257,
FACE_3: 258,
FACE_4: 259,
LEFT_SHOULDER: 260,
RIGHT_SHOULDER: 261,
LEFT_SHOULDER_BOTTOM: 262,
RIGHT_SHOULDER_BOTTOM: 263,
SELECT: 264,
START: 265,

For example, to use a face button instead of the start button on our gamepad, we could change JOY_START: 265 to JOY_START: 258. The value 258 is FACE_3, the third face button on a gamepad.

5. Don’t forget to save!

That’s it! I hope this was helpful!

Some three years since it all began, here I sit, looking back on the journey that has been Shadows of Adam. So it seems appropriate to look back at some of the important lessons I’ve learned along the way.

1. Good dialogue doesn’t just write itself, except when it does.

2. You really need a team you can trust. And I do trust in my team. All zero of them I have met in real life.

3. You can’t be good at everything, but you can try. And fail. Thank god for the wonders of the division of labor.

4. Always be closing. Sure you can make a game, but can you sell it? If you want to quit your day job and make more games, you’ll probably have to. Definitely not the fun part of making a game, but you should have your sales pitch in hand early on.

5. Number three again. You can’t be good at everything, so get help with marketing.

I hope this has been as eye-opening and insightful as my two minutes of deep reflection led me to believe. Until next time.

The last three weeks I’ve been working my tail off to bring the wonderful quests created by our Kickstarter backers to life in Shadows of Adam.

This is no small task. A Kickstarter survey can’t always capture everything you truly need. So I ended up having some late night chat sessions on Skype and Facebook. One of our backers was in the middle of a vacation in Europe, but he still made some time (what a guy!) to make sure we got his quest into the upcoming beta.

The quests run the gamut from serious to seriously oddball, and I hope everyone will get to enjoy them very, very soon!

One of the great things about being an indie developer is the relative freedom to follow a whim. (This can also be a bad thing, but let’s stay positive for this brief article!)
And a whim is what led to the creation of one of the areas in the Alpha Demo. Yeah, the area serves a purpose and there’s useful information and treasure to be had, but none of it is must-have. Which means in any normal circumstance with a looming deadline, it would end up on the cutting room floor.

With that in mind please enjoy these screenshots of the latest area added to Shadows of Adam.

Back in 2013, when I was asked to write a script for Shadows of Adam (which was untitled at that point), I was presented with a design doc that listed all the game’s locations in chronological order. I followed this spec pretty closely, but one of the changes I made was to a sunny port town called Borges.

For story purposes, I wanted the visit to Borges to occur after the Wind Tower dungeon. And because another town followed directly after Borges, it was important for Borges to be more than just a standard town. It needed some action! A brush with the main villain! A stealth mini game with secret passages!

All that came to pass, but recently I turned my eye back towards Borges again for a different reason.

In early 2015, starting with the Tangle dungeon, I started designing and mapping areas for the game. I revamped areas like the Misty Woods, but one previously mapped area the team wasn’t satisfied with was Borges interior maps.

There were several problems with the original design and mapping of Borges’ interiors. First off, the maps were supposed to involve sneaking through the back areas of shops. The bare bones original maps seemed to lack this aspect completely.

The second problem was spatial. In 16-bit RPGs it’s very common to take some liberties with inside vs. outside spaces. You have a tiny house on the exterior map, but when you go inside it is very roomy. However, there are limits to this. As I played through the original maps of Borges this turned into a real problem. To an extreme degree, the underground passages just didn’t link up where they should have given the distances and direction of travel. This hurt the experience.

Another spatial problem was the size of some of the interiors. They had way too much open empty space and not enough details.

I tried to think about the purpose for each area and design them to evoke this purpose. Since Borges is a port town, why not make an underground warehouse right off the docks where incoming and outgoing goods are stored? And wouldn’t it make sense if a black market was near this location as well?

Hope everybody enjoys all the thought and effort put into Borges when the game comes out. Until next time!