Hurricane Adventures Laboratory (in short HAL) is the complementary editor for the engine used with Escape Towards The Unknown (formerly GPEGA that stands for General Purpose Engine for Graphic Adventure).

With this editor it is possibile to create and modify an adventure game that uses the GPEGA engine. You can add rooms, objects, characters, animations, interactions, dialogues and other items to build your adventure from scratch.
The program is very flexible and let a lot of control to the user without apply many constraints.

The main window display a hierarchy tree which contains all the rooms of the game and for each room all its objects.
The user simply choose which kind of item to insert and then press the "Add" button (item's type cannot be changed after creation).
Currently HAL handle four type of item:

• GUI
• Room
• Object
• Character

A GUI is a special "room" that represent the inventory of the main character of the game. It also may contains object that will be collected with special reaction or other interaction. For example: you examine a hole in a wall and find a coin inside.

A Room is a box that contains other item (but not other Rooms) which may represent a "real" room, an open space, a map or other thing that contains other items. You can decide if the main character can visit a room displaying it on the screen or if he is only virtually present (out of the screen). For example if you want to create a "room" that is a close up of a particulary object.

An Object is a simple item that the main character may examine, pick up, push, pull, open, close, use give to another person. It can be also a "father" object that may display its childs if a particulary situation/action is taken.

A Character is a person that interact with the main character and viceversa. For HAL a character is a special Object with some extra properties. For example color of the subtitles for the dialogues and a "database" of phrases that it uses when speak with the main character.