Adventure Game Studio (AGS) is an open source development tool primarily used to create

graphic adventure game An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based m ...

s. It is aimed at intermediate-level

game designer Game design is the art of applying design and aesthetics to create a game for entertainment or for educational, exercise, or experimental purposes. Increasingly, elements and principles of game design are also applied to other interactions, in ...

s, and combines an

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools ...

(IDE) with a

scripting language A scripting language or script language is a programming language that is used to manipulate, customize, and automate the facilities of an existing system. Scripting languages are usually interpreted at runtime rather than compiled. A scripting ...

based on the C programming language to process game logic.

History

Adventure Game Studio was created by British programmer Chris Jones in 1997 as an

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

program entitled "Adventure Creator". Jones was inspired by

Sierra On-Line Sierra Entertainment, Inc. (formerly On-Line Systems and Sierra On-Line, Inc.) was an American video game developer and publisher founded in 1979 by Ken and Roberta Williams. The company is known for pioneering the graphic adventure game genr ...

's adventure game interface, specifically as showcased in ''

Space Quest IV ''Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers'' is a 1991 graphic adventure game by Sierra On-Line. It was released on floppy disks on March 4, 1991, and released on CD-ROM in December 1992 with full speech support and featuring ''Laugh-In' ...

''. The first version of Adventure Creator allowed users to create only low-

resolution Resolution(s) may refer to: Common meanings * Resolution (debate), the statement which is debated in policy debate * Resolution (law), a written motion adopted by a deliberative body * New Year's resolution, a commitment that an individual mak ...

keyboard-controlled games. ''Lassi Quest'' was released as the first complete AGS game in late 1999. The engine gained popularity with the release of

Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw Benjamin Richard "Yahtzee" Croshaw (born 24 May 1983) is a British comedic writer, author, video game journalist, humorist, podcaster, and video game developer. He is best known for his video game review series ''Zero Punctuation'', which he pro ...

's '' Rob Blanc'' and Philip Reed's ''Larry Vales'' games in 2000-2001. Version 3.0 in January 2008 included a complete rewrite of the editor using the

.NET Framework The .NET Framework (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a proprietary software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It was the predominant implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) until bein ...

and an update to the game engine to support 3D hardware acceleration. On 26 October 2010, Chris Jones released the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...

for the editor under the terms of the

Artistic License Artistic license (alongside more contextually-specific derivative terms such as poetic license, historical license, dramatic license, and narrative license) refers to deviation from fact or form for artistic purposes. It can include the alterat ...

, version 2. On 27 April 2011, the runtime engine code was released under the same licence. By 2015, community developers were maintaining and improving the engine and IDE, and began to implement cross-platform capabilities as well as support for more modern screen resolutions (4:3, 16:9 and custom high resolutions).

Capabilities

The editor and runtime engine were originally designed for Microsoft Windows operating systems; the runtime engine was ported to Android,

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

and PlayStation Portable after the release of the source code. Prior to AGS 2.7, an

engine was also available; this has since been discontinued. It is not yet possible to run the editor on

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

s other than Windows without an

emulator In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use pe ...

or API wrapper such as

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...

. AGS can create games with a graphical range from 256 colours and a resolution of 320×200, to truecolor games with any higher resolution supported by the player's graphic adapter and an

alpha channel In computer graphics, alpha compositing or alpha blending is the process of combining one image with a background to create the appearance of partial or full transparency. It is often useful to render picture elements (pixels) in separate pas ...

. It also supports graphics filters:

nearest-neighbor interpolation Nearest-neighbor interpolation (also known as proximal interpolation or, in some contexts, point sampling) is a simple method of multivariate interpolation in one or more dimensions. Interpolation is the problem of approximating the value of ...

(2x, 3x, and 4x), and hqx (2x and 3x). Version 2.61 supports the following multimedia formats:

mod Mod, MOD or mods may refer to: Places * Modesto City–County Airport, Stanislaus County, California, US Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Mods (band), a Norwegian rock band * M.O.D. (Method of Destruction), a band from New York City, US ...

wav Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced "wave") is an audio file format standard, developed by IBM and Microsoft, for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is the main format used on Microsoft Wind ...

, xm,

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and ...

ogg Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The authors of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high-quality di ...

mp3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

, avi. Version 2.72 also supports

Impulse Tracker Impulse Tracker is a multi-track music tracker ( music sequencer). Originally released in 1995 by Jeffrey Lim as freeware with commercial extensions, it was one of the last tracker programs for the DOS platform. In 2014, on its 20th anniversary, ...

and

S3M ''S3M'' (Scream Tracker 3 Module) is a module file format, the successor to the STM format used by the original Scream Tracker. Both formats are based on the original MOD format used on the Amiga computer. The S3M format has many differences com ...

Community

The AGS community is based on the AGS Forum, the AGS Internet Relay Chat channel and Discord channel. There are real-world meetings of the community each year, known as "Mittens".

AGS Awards

The AGS Awards were founded in 2001 and are awarded annually to the best games created with AGS, in multiple categories. The AGS Awards were once an important barometer for indie adventure games, receiving coverage from sites like

Destructoid ''Destructoid'' is a website that was founded as a video game-focused blog in March 2006 by Yanier Gonzalez, a Cuban-American cartoonist and author. Enthusiast Gaming acquired the website in 2017, and sold it to Gamurs Group in 2022. History ...

., Rock, Paper, Shotgun, IndieGames and

GameSetWatch ''Game Developer'', known as ''Gamasutra'' until 2021, is a website founded in 1997 that focuses on aspects of video game development. It is owned and operated by Informa and acts as the online sister publication to the print magazine '' Game ...

Reception and usage

Thousands of games have been produced using AGS.

Wadjet Eye Games Wadjet Eye Games is an American indie video game developer, voice casting/directing contractor/subcontractor and publisher which specialises in point-and-click adventure games. It was founded in 2006 by Dave Gilbert as a means to publish hi ...

is an

indie game developer An indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game typically created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A) games. ...

that has created most of its commercial titles using AGS, such as the ''Blackwell'' series of games. They also publish AGS games by other developers, such as ''

Primordia A primordium (; plural: primordia; synonym: anlage) in embryology, is an organ or tissue in its earliest recognizable stage of development. Cells of the primordium are called primordial cells. A primordium is the simplest set of cells capable o ...

'' by Wormwood Studios, ''

Resonance Resonance describes the phenomenon of increased amplitude that occurs when the frequency of an applied Periodic function, periodic force (or a Fourier analysis, Fourier component of it) is equal or close to a natural frequency of the system ...

'' by XII Games, and ''

Gemini Rue ''Gemini Rue'' is a cyberpunk graphic adventure game made by Joshua Nuernberger, and published by Wadjet Eye Games. The game uses a point and click interface to interact with the environment to solve puzzles and communicate with characters. A port ...

'' by Joshua Nuernberger. Development teams

AGD Interactive AGD Interactive (AGDI), LLC. is a non-profit company given a fan license to remake Sierra Entertainment's popular classic adventure games from the 1980s and early 1990s. History Founded in 2001 by Britney K. Brimhall and Christopher T. Warren ...

and

Infamous Adventures Infamous Adventures (commonly referred to as IA) is an amateur game development company, founded in 2004 by Shawn Mills and Steven Alexander, and is dedicated to making games in the classic adventure style made famous by the releases of Sierra Ente ...

have remade and updated ''

King's Quest ''King's Quest'' is a graphic adventure game series, released between 1980 and 2016 and created by the American software company Sierra Entertainment. It is widely considered a classic series from the golden era of adventure games. Following th ...

'' and other Sierra releases. LucasFan Games have done the same with

LucasArts Lucasfilm Games (known as LucasArts between 1990 and 2021) is an American video game licensor that is part of Lucasfilm. It was founded in May 1982 by George Lucas as a video game development group alongside his film company; as part of a large ...

adventure games.

References

External links

* {{Video game engines 1997 software Adventure game engines Free game engines Formerly proprietary software