i didn't even know that there are Game engine competition in the adventure game genre. usually it's the FPS games that fights for best engines and expands to other genres.
Well, for me it doesn't really matter what engine the adventure game uses as long the game is good and doesn't crash or loses game saves :D

I think it would actually benefit AGS if people were turning away from it because of one reason or other. There'd be competition and for the game engine projects that would be a good thing - I also think that it's a shame other engines don't have so many games released even when they'd have great potential. But people seem to be content with AGS so there's probably nothing too much wrong with it, for them at least - I would never use AGS in its current stage.

Having tested many of the engines available, I'm also slightly baffled at those who proclaim AGS the greatest of them all (especially the one who proclaimed that all other engines should just stop development) without having tried the others, but well, maybe this is a subject I have to discuss with my therapist. :shifty:

You silly person. It happens more often than you think... for example, on this very forum, in Chit Chat, Three Questions Thread... SnorkleCat asked "Have you played Trumgottist's game, Frasse and the Peas of Kejick" to which SSH replied "Nope. I adhere solely to the true path of AGSity..." ... and he meant it too, ask him.


Nooo, valid point, leave your therapist out of this.

Also... to TheTwelve :: ANY monopoly is bad, even of something that produces free games. It stifles innovation and progress. You always need competition to keep the standards high.

I have yet to understand how you can talk about a monopoly and lack of competition when there are multiple engines to choose from, and major games made in most of them. In fact, I would suggest that the adventure game engine market is overcrowded, with more alternatives than the user base can support (counting AGI and Game Maker there are some eight or nine more or less viable options).

Besides, at least two of the engines (AGS and WME, and possibly Lassie) are improving at a solid rate, so how is innovation being stifled again?

Wormsie, whatever your issue is with AGS, there's a reasonable chance that it's fixed in the latest release.

I never said AGS had a monopoly, I was just disagreeing with TheTwelve's statement that a monopoly is not bad if it's an engine that provides free games and that everybody wins.

You're right, the semantics of that statement were grey. I didn't actually mean to say that a literal monopoly would be a good thing, and I'm definitely not someone to whom you need to extol the virtues of innovation. As Brisk Nap has said, there is no monopoly. I was simply trying to make light of his comment. I intended that statement to mean that you can't really complain about getting free games made by developers who are receiving no compensation, no matter what engine they use. If the developers are looking for something beyond what AGS can do, they'll go find it.

I guarantee that the majority of the AGS games that come out are more limited by the time and ability of the creator(s) than the strength of the engine. If those developers had gone with a different adventure game creation tool, they would have ended up with a fundamentally identical game with a few differences due to each engine's quirks. A crappy AGS game would have likely been just as crappy in another engine. A great AGS game would have likely been just as great in another engine. It's the artist, not the tool, that makes a game great.

Competition or no, (and even if there were competition, the maker of AGS isn't getting any sort of financial compensation for his efforts, not even donations, so would he care?) the AGS engine is constantly being worked on and has frequent version updates with new features. The next long-in-development update is a complete overhaul of the editor's interface.

The one thing that I really think AGS could use is hardware acceleration. My current project is 320x240 (again, for reasons of time and resources, not engine limitation) but if I make a higher-res game next, as my previous two games were, I'll probably move to another engine. My last game, Linus, tends to bog down on slower computers thanks to the multiple transparency effects on the screen at once -- something WME's hardware acceleration, in hindsight, would likely have taken care of. I've used WME and find it capable, but a little more complicated to use than AGS. I'm also considering Torque after I finish my current game.

I can't understand the anti-AGS feelings that I'm seeing in this thread. It's popular because it's simple to use and has an active community that's willing to help as long as you read the forum rules and are polite, and I'm not sure how that's bad.

I think that there are some AGS users or players who will play a new AGS game just because it's AGS, and fine, whatever. At worst, they're wasting their own time on some crappy games. But I don't think that there is anyone who will actually avoid playing a free game because it was made in another engine.

I, for example, didn't play The Five Magical Amulets, a very well reviewed. But the reason I didn't play it was not because it wasn't made in AGS. I didn't play it because I'm generally not attracted to fantasy tales or settings. I didn't play any of the Apprentice series either for the same reason, even though it's one of the most popular series ever made with AGS.

And let's not forget that beyond the handful of people who have their finger on the pulse of the underground scene, the average player most likely has no idea what engine the game he's playing was made in. He's just excited to get a new game for free. And so am I. And so should you be.

It's Wormsie. His opinions on all things AGS can safely be ignored.

I didn't read the first post when I voted (so I didn't see the part about not playing a good game if it's not made with a certain engine), so I just voted on "what games I usually play". And yes, that's AGS, for exactly the reasons that have been said in this thread: they're the only ones I really hear about. I'm not so much into the scene to know exactly where to look for games and I'm not on the cutting-edge of rumors and future releases, so I just see here and the AGS forums to see what's happening. And our underground section isn't exactly bursting with new games, so basically I tend to get my games from the AGS forums, which for some reason tend to be mainly AGS games.

I meant the "Nope". The rest was a joke. I play more AGS games than anything else, simply due to the demographics of the UG scene.

The other big thing missing from AGS (probably related to lack of hardware acceleration) that I think is having noticeable impact on some games is smooth scaling of alpha channel sprites. Having to choose between the two is a pretty tough dilemma. I was playing Nelly Cootalot the other day, and couldn't help but think how much prettier it would be if the character edges were anti-aliased.

Other than that, it has always seemed like support for multiple developers has been poor, but with the addition of modules and now the source control integration and text-based resource files, things are looking a lot better on that front. I think that will make a big difference to the viability of larger team projects and maybe even further commercial games.

This is one of the reasons I switched from SLUDGE to WME (and Lassie too, in one case), and why I haven't been motivated to try using AGS in its current state. I like to think it's a valid enough reason. I, personally, am experienced enough in using game development tools that I don't need a huge community to learn how to use them, just good documentation.

you forgot Adventure maker.
For games like this.

Aww, you're so cute. :D

Do you mean that whatever I want to do, I, and everybody else, should use AGS?

Actually, he never said that.

Yes, that's clearly a sane and reasonable interpretation of what I wrote. :crazy:

How about something more along the lines of "If you would 'never use AGS in its current stage', you must have found some flaw with it when you tried it (assuming your antipathy has a rational basis). Given that many of the most often remarked-upon problems with AGS have been addressed in recent releases, there's a reasonable chance (though no certainty, of course) that whatever your issue was, it has been fixed."

Just out of interest, Wormsie, what version of AGS did you last try? Or if you don't know the version, when did you last try?

I think my reason for being a bit weird about any kind of glowing praise for AGS stems from this old thread. It's very probable that I've been traumatized by that article. Also notice how I spell crystal as chrystal.

It was probably in 2004-2005. Something like AGS version 2.6.

So, what you're saying is, you don't like AGS because you have a meth problem? ;)

I never pictured you as a Crystal Queen. :D