hey, I'm thinking about doing an adventure game for a school project and I was wondering if any of you guys here have any experience using any of the tools out there and knew what was worth my time. It would also be great if I could aquire the sprites from monkey island.

I you download Dosbox you can capture as many screen shots as you want.

Probably not exactly what your looking for but this program I use called Game Maker has a really good in built sprite editor. I don't know how much it will help though, heres a link http://www.gamemaker.nl/

thanks. It would also be good to hear what a company like telltale looks for in a portfolio

Probably not sprites ripped from Monkey Island... ;)

hahaha! :))

I made an adventuregame for a school project in a program called AGS. It's very user-friendly and, in my eyes, quite powerful.

I don't know if this is the sort of program you were looking for though, but I suggest you check it out. AGS

we'll I'm going to need sprites from somewhere I'm a programmer not an artist. (Plus I've only got 4 months to get this thing done). You could have something like monkey island: the early years or probably more realisticly a game with nothing to do with MI but borrowing some sprites here and there from different games to make my own game. I'm still just floating a lot of ideas about anyway. I might make a turn based tactical strategy game based on something else; I'm not quite sure yet.

Do you know how you're going to make it?

well haven't really made anything yet. Thats what the course is for. Likely it will be c/c using either opengl or directx. I've done some opengl and I've got a book on making games using directx that I picked up recently. I guess there is always java but it has been a while since I've worked with it. It all depends also on what the rest of my team thinks.

Adventure Game Studio is the program for you. It's perfect for creating Monkey Island like adventure games and you won't have to worry about coding. It has it's own scripting language, which you may not even need to use.
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/
Ask for a program to rip the sprites for MI on their forum. There is a program for that, I am certain of it. Can't remember the name, though :(

If you want to rip anything from LucasArts games, you'd like to try ScummRevisited ( http://scumm.mixnmojo.com/?page=utils ), it lets you rip sprites, backgrounds, music, etc...

And AGS ( http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk ) sure is the way to go, if your game's gonna be an adventure....

great. looks good. thanks