Adventure Game Studio

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Adventure Game Studio (AGS) is a free, open‑source tool for creating graphic adventure games. It combines an editor (an integrated development environment) with a scripting language based on C to control game logic. AGS was created by British programmer Chris Jones in 1997 and started as Adventure Creator, inspired by Sierra’s Space Quest IV.

What it does
- It’s aimed at intermediate designers who want to build adventures without starting from scratch.
- The editor runs mainly on Windows, while the runtime can be ported to Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, and PlayStation Portable thanks to community efforts. Running the editor on non‑Windows systems usually needs emulation or wrappers like Wine.
- You can make games with graphics ranging from classic 256‑color look at 320×200 up to modern truecolor with high resolutions and transparency. It also supports image filters like nearest‑neighbor and hqx.
- It supports many multimedia formats, including MOD, WAV, XM, MIDI, OGG, MP3, and AVI (with later support for S3M and Impulse Tracker).

About the code and licenses
- The editor and the runtime engine are released under the Artistic License version 2.
- The source code for the editor (2010) and the runtime (2011) was published, which allowed fans to improve and port AGS.

A brief history
- The first complete AGS game was Lassi Quest (1999). The engine gained popularity with games like Rob Blanc and Larry Vales (around 2000–2001).
- In 2008, AGS 3.0 introduced a complete rewrite of the editor using the .NET Framework and added 3D hardware acceleration.
- By 2015, the community had extended AGS to support more screen sizes and cross‑platform use.

Community and impact
- The AGS community communicates through forums, IRC, and Discord. They hold annual in‑person meetups called Mittens and run the AGS Awards since 2001.
- Many games have been made with AGS, including commercially successful titles such as Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman’s Mine, The Cat Lady, The Phantom Fellows, and The Journey Down.
- Studio use: Wadjet Eye Games has created several titles with AGS, and fans have remade Sierra and LucasArts classics using AGS (projects like AGD Interactive, Infamous Adventures, and LucasFan Games).