The Adventure Game Toolkit (AGT) is a development system for
text based adventure games.
Description
It was written in 1987 by David Malmberg, based on Mark J. Welch's 1985 Generic Adventure Game System (GAGS).
AGT was produced until 1992, after which time it was released as freeware (the final version is AGT 1.7). AGT was originally built for
DOS
DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...
but has also been compiled for
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
,
Macintosh
Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...
,
Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...
, and others.
Numerous games were created using AGT, mostly in the
interactive fiction genre but also at least one
serious game
A serious game or applied game is a game designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment. The "serious" adjective is generally prepended to refer to video games used by industries like defense, education, scientific exploration, he ...
in the form of an experimental
medical simulation.
[Raenel E. Kinkade, Craig T. Mathews, JoLaine R. Draugalis and Brian L. Erstad]
Evaluation of a Computer Simulation in a Therapeutics Case Discussion
''American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education'', Vol. 59, Summer 1995, p.147 From 1989 until 1993, Malmberg ran an annual contest for AGT games, a predecessor to the
Interactive Fiction Competition.
[Jimmy Maher, ]
Let's Tell a Story Together (A History of Interactive Fiction)
', Chapter 8 Two games that won the AGT contest, CosmoServe in 1991 and Shades of Gray in 1992, written by IF author,
Judith Pintar, are canonical in the early history of IF. The Internet Archive maintains an extensive collection of AGT games.
[Internet Archive]
AGT games
/ref>
Reception
Scorpia of ''Computer Gaming World
''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American Video game journalism, computer game magazine that was published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 199 ...
'' called it, "essentially, a sophisticated compiler", lamenting its lack of an in-game editor while praising the meta-language which allows a user to create "remarkably complex and sophisticated games in a fairly simple way".
See also
* Interactive fiction
Interactive fiction (IF) is software simulating environments in which players use text Command (computing), commands to control Player character, characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narrati ...
* Inform
Inform is a programming language and design system for interactive fiction originally created in 1993 by Graham Nelson. Inform can generate programs designed for the Z-machine, Z-code or Glulx virtual machines. Versions 1 through 5 were released ...
* TADS
* Hugo
References
External links
Mark J. Welch's siteNick Montfort and Emily Short, Interactive Fiction Communities From Preservation through Promotion and BeyondNick Montfort, Twisty Little Passages
Interactive fiction engines
Video game development software
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