Graphic Adventure Creator (often shortened to GAC) is a

game creation system A game creation system (GCS) is a consumer-targeted game engine and a set of specialized design tools (and sometimes a light scripting language), engineered for the rapid iteration of user-derived video games. Examples include Novashell and Pie i ...

/programming language for adventure games published by

Incentive Software Incentive Software Ltd. was a British video game developer and publisher founded by Ian Andrew in 1983. Programmers included Sean Ellis, Stephen Northcott and Ian's brother Chris Andrew. Later games were based on the company's Freescape rende ...

, originally written on the

Amstrad CPC The Amstrad CPC (short for ''Colour Personal Computer'') is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Si ...

by Sean Ellis, and then ported to other platforms by, amongst others, Brendan Kelly (Spectrum), Dave Kirby (BBC, Electron) and "The Kid" (Malcolm Hellon) (C64). The pictures in the demo adventure, ''Ransom'', were made by Pete James and the box cover art by Pete Carter. GAC was available for the

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as the ''ZX81 Colou ...

, Commodore 64,

BBC Micro The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an emphas ...

and

. A simplified version without graphics, called just the Adventure Creator, was also available for the

Acorn Electron The Acorn Electron (nicknamed the Elk inside Acorn and beyond) was a lower-cost alternative to the BBC Micro educational/ home computer, also developed by Acorn Computers Ltd, to provide many of the features of that more expensive machine at a ...

. GAC was later ported to the Atari ST as ''ST Adventure Creator'' (STAC) by the original author. GAC had a more advanced

parser Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is the process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar. The term ''parsing'' comes from Lat ...

than '' The Quill'', allowing commands like GET THE LAMP THEN LIGHT IT, and a built-in graphics editor. Over 300 titles were written using GAC. It also came with a built in text compressor.

Reception

GAC was well received, earning a Zzap! Gold Medal Award.

References

External links

* * * {{Incentive Software 1985 software Text adventure game engines Graphic Adventure Creator, The ZX Spectrum software