Adventure Game Studio: OSS software for creating adventure games(www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk)
210 pointsby doener8 hours ago21 comments
  • Benjamin_Dobellan hour ago
    I'm building a modern platform for kids to hand draw their own games: https://breaka.club/blog/why-were-building-clubs-for-kids

    Currently supports RPG mechanics, with digital card game support coming soon. Plan is to keep expanding what's offered.

    Bits and pieces are already open source with more to come: https://github.com/BreakaClub and https://github.com/godotjs/godotjs/

  • technothrasher6 hours ago
    Anybody else fondly remember the earlier Adventure Construction Set from the 1980s? It was similar, though more crude, software but for creating tile based adventure games. I remember breathlessly waiting for it to arrive in the mail one summer when I was a young teen, and then my brother and I spending countless hours creating games for each other to play.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_Construction_Set

    • jmcmichael4 hours ago
      Yes! Until I saw the box cover illustration, I had totally forgotten that a high-school friend of mine and I worked months to build a Gauntlet clone on our 64K Apple ][+ machines due to the money it was costing us to play it at local game store/nerd magnet, "Dragon's Lair".
    • WillAdams4 hours ago
      There was also _Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures_:

      https://www.gogdb.org/product/1432650732

      which I greatly enjoyed, and my NWN character, even got a cameo in one fan-made adventure.....

    • iamflimflam14 hours ago
      There was also STAC for the Atari ST - absolutely loved it. Unfortunately my artistic skills were not up to making anything good.

      https://www.ifwiki.org/STAC

    • oddthink5 hours ago
      I loved that thing. I don't know how many hours I spent on that. I wish I could my kids interested in anything half as creative.
  • alexhans7 hours ago
    Among other things, this got me dabbling with software development. It had an awesome C++ like scripting language.

    It also used to have a button with a text like "make a game" where you would click what you wanted in the form of checkboxes and when you pressed the submit button it would tell you something like, it's not that easy, is it? Wonder how easier it may be now. :P

    Shoutout to classic community games like

    - Cirque De Zale https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/play/game/377/

    - The trilby series (5 days a stranger) https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/play/game/269-5-days-a...

    • BeetleB6 hours ago
      The Trilby series is fantastic!
  • Vedor6 hours ago
    I think that Wadjet Eye Games studio still uses AGS for their games, and most (all?) of the games published by them seems to use AGS as well.

    I highly recommend checking their catalogue. While the first installements of Blackwell series didn't age that well I still think they are a quite nice starting point – they are short and memorable.

    • christhecaribou26 minutes ago
      “Gemini Rue” and “Technobabylon” were my favorites, but they recently released a new title about time travel called “Old Skies”.

      It actually made me cry and email the studio director. It was a masterpiece.

    • armcat5 hours ago
      Gemini Rue is probably one of the best game stories I have ever seen. What Joshua Nuernberger did there is amazing. The "twist" that occurs there in the final third is something else. And it's built using AGS.
      • sersi5 hours ago
        Another great AGS made game is Technobabylon. That and Gemini Rue are my two favourite Wadjet Eyes Games
      • darthcircuit4 hours ago
        Gemini rue is one of my favorite games ever, not just point and click.
    • brynet5 hours ago
      Yes they still do, and fun fact, SummVM has integrated support for AGS a few releases back, so one of my favourite titles from Wadjet Eye Games, Unavowed, works great on a ton of different OSes/platforms.

      https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=AGS/Games

      I've played it on OpenBSD before!

      https://pobsd.chocolatines.org/2953591878

    • j-kent3 hours ago
      Yes! my love for The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow is what led me to AGS.
  • vunderba5 hours ago
    Wow, I haven't heard about AGS for a while - glad to see it's still alive and well. It should be noted that it's open source and still sees regular updates (20+ years later!)

    https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags

    • RobotToaster5 hours ago
      If anyone was concerned about the nonstandard license, the FSF says this:

      >This license is a free software license, compatible with the GPL thanks to the relicensing option in section 4(c)(ii).

  • ChicagoDave23 minutes ago
    Just announced beta release of my own parser-based IF platform: https://sharpee.net/ built in Typescript.
  • s-macke6 hours ago
    Blast from the past. In my mind, the Adventure Game Studio is forever tied to the ancient (German) Maniac Mansion Mania website [0]. Yes, that Maniac Mansion from Lucasfilm Games.

    To this day, they’re are releasing fun new adventure episodes in the Maniac Mansion universe.

    [0] https://www.maniac-mansion-mania.com/index.php/en/

  • mathnodean hour ago
    It's a lovely facelift of their website, but am I correct in saying the editor is Windows only, still?
  • Risse7 hours ago
    Man, around 20 years ago, when I was a teenager, I used to noodle around AGS. I think I made a couple of "games", but never released them or anything. Glad to see it's still around!
    • npsomaratna7 hours ago
      Didn't they remake Quest for Glory II and a couple of the Kings Quest games in this? Fun times.
      • BeetleB6 hours ago
        Yup. This is the one.
  • j-kent3 hours ago
    I have never tried AGS, but I cut my game making teeth on Klick and Play and RPG maker back in the day. I think I was intimidated by the amount of art and the level of story telling needed to craft an adventure game. I wish there was a mac version of this, since I refuse to go near windows at this point.
    • plagiarist2 hours ago
      I had that! I wanted to write a game like Monkey Island but couldn't work out how to do an inventory system with what was available. I found some blog on the internet where an enterprising soul with the same issue described using prime numbers and a modulo calculation to make an integer act as a bitfield. I wish I could reread that for the nostalgia, seemed like magic at the time.

      I moved on to RPG Maker and that was more my speed. I was really into JRPGs at that time.

      I accomplished absolutely nothing with either software. I was stuck on imagining the perfect art and perfect story. That inaction remains in me to this day.

  • shdon3 hours ago
    I've created my own adventure game engine starting in the late 1990s. Only learned about the existence of AGS many years later. Although my own engine allows much more flexibility than AGS, there is no userfriendly IDE and besides the runtime, it's mostly just a bunch of separate tools. I have to applaud Chris Jones for going all the way, it's really quite impressive.
  • bdbdbdb2 hours ago
    AGS is cool but I wish they'd make a version for macos. You need to use wine to run it
  • kleiba5 hours ago
    Or, if you've always wanted to make an old-school text adventure game directly on your Commodore 64 (emulator), there's this:

    https://www.protovision.games/games/d42.php?language=en

    • goopypoop2 hours ago
      finally now i can kill pippin
  • brynet5 hours ago
    ScummVM added support for AGS a few releases back, it works great for a number of free/commercial games.

    https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=AGS/Games

  • geophph24 minutes ago
    Randomly stumbled upon this yesterday when I learned that there is a Goblins 5 (released 2023) and it was built using AGS and it’s playable using ScummVM!
  • robertlagrant4 hours ago
    I remember making a very simple adventure game from scratch in BBC Basic in the mid 90s. Good times. Code immediately lost on reboot.
  • agjmills3 hours ago
    This reminds me of OHRRPGCE
  • armcat6 hours ago
    Oh wow completely forgot about AGS, awesome that it’s still alive and kicking! Brings back memories of Gabriel Knight, Broken Sword, Monkey Island and many other awesome adventure series!
  • a-dub4 hours ago
    there are also several oss editors for the original sierra agi and sci formats.
  • ndr424 hours ago
    I remember looking at it about 20 (?) years ago and came back disappointed that I could not use it on my Mac. Well, at least I was able to revive this feeling today... :-(
    • newsclues2 hours ago
      Surprised it isn’t on linux
      • ndr42an hour ago
        At least the engine seem to be able to output linux games. IOS is also possible but not the Mac...
  • maximgeorge4 hours ago
    [dead]