What is good about AGS

[dbuske]

There are alot of posts that list problems and what is wrong with AGS.
I am starting a thread of what AGS does well!

I like it's character development, which is really good handling drawn or cartoon characters.
I tried other engines and there character development tools are totally unituitive.
AGS is the only engine that is intuitive.  You can usually figure it out in the editor, or a quick check of the on-disk help file.
Lots more, but I want to let others chime in.

[Matti]

I'd say AGS does all the things well that aren't listed as problems 

[dbuske]

I'd say AGS does all the things well that aren't listed as problems 

Since you are one of the advanced AGS users Matti, why do you use AGS?

[WHAM]

AGS has one of the greatest, most helpful communities I have ever encountered, which allows even a total newbie to learn to ropes with relative ease.

[Igor Hardy]

AGS has one of the greatest, most helpful communities I have ever encountered, which allows even a total newbie to learn to ropes with relative ease.

Yep. The community is one of the most important things about AGS (but also a testament to the quality of the tool itself). And the benefits of how well it works are far greater than just being able to receive help with scripting.

[TomatoesInTheHead]

I like that AGS takes care of pretty much everything needed for an adventure game, like inventory, verbs, pathfinding, event triggering etc., but that these things can be greatly customized at the same time, by writing an entirely different ineraction system, setting each animation frame on your own if you want, etc. - though it lacks some features programming-wise, I guess it's more than is possible in other easy-to-use adventure game making studios.

And I agree, the community is really good, not only helpful, but also - and maybe that's sometimes even more important - encouraging and motivating people to work on their games.

[Mr Flibble]

When I first came to AGS I needed it; I wanted to make games but I really lacked the knowledge necessary to build a game from scratch. My programming capability was probably above average of an AGS new recruit (though I still shudder to recall some of the things I considered good code back in the day) but still well below what I'd need to make it on my own. So I loved that AGS let me just get on with being creative, and held my hand a bit through the difficult parts.

Now I've been doing a programming degree for about 2 years, and I've already made some games from scratch. So I suppose you could say I've really grown up and I could write my own adventure games if I wanted to. But, I notice that I'm still making my (development hell-bound) game in AGS.

If I were to think about why that is, it's probably because AGS really is just that simple and fun to use. If I were to write my own game engine I'd end up with something that was heading towards acting just like AGS does, but without all the years of experience and fine tuning that have gone into AGS. I'm thinking, immediately, of the Views and animation stuff.

That said, if I were going to make a game that relied on a lot of stuff AGS doesn't support, I think I'd rather go from scratch than hack a lot of technical stuff in.

[Eggie]

You can write dialogue in it quickly! And edit what you've written easily!

It's something it's always it's always done well and it's only got better over time. The switch to object based coding was a stroke of genius, the code for cutscenes is as easy to read as a play-script.

Has anyone here ever used the OHRPG program? It reminds me quite a lot of early AGS in some respects (only for copnsole-style RPGs, obviously) but my God, writing cutscenes is a nightmare; you have to create a new message box, select the option to edit it's text, type out what you want it to say, save it, leave the program, open up notepad and reference the number in your code. There's no way to re-order them so if you want to add an extra line you have to tack them on to the end of your giant list and, worst of all, if you make a spelling mistake in the middle of one the editor works in such a way that you have to delete half the message before you can get to your typo.

Thank you, Chris, for making the process of getting our characters talking and walking such an intuitive process and giving the storyteller in all of us free reign.

[Matti]

I'd say AGS does all the things well that aren't listed as problems 

Since you are one of the advanced AGS users Matti, why do you use AGS?

I'm not sure how I found AGS in the first place, I think I just searched for a general game making engine. I quickly got used to it (having programmed in Basic and Pascal before) and AGS is perfect for making adventure games, thus I started making an adventure back then. The editor is well-arranged, the features plenty, it's just easy to use.. and as the others mentioned, the community is great too.

That I'm working on non-adventure games these days and still use AGS is partly due to my limited programming skills - the inability to make a game completely from scratch. I know what AGS is capable of and up until now it serves my purposes. Also, I don't really know any other cool engines/editors and am not eager (yet) to acquaint myself with something else.

If I wanted to do a 1st person shooter or real-time strategy (which I don't) then I'd switch to something else, but as long as I'm working on RPGs/Beat-em ups/Adventures/Shoot-em ups etc. I stick to AGS.

[Radiant]

There are alot of posts that list problems and what is wrong with AGS.
I am starting a thread of what AGS does well!

It's very versatile:

and

[Scavenger]

Has anyone here ever used the OHRPG program? It reminds me quite a lot of early AGS in some respects (only for copnsole-style RPGs, obviously) but my God, writing cutscenes is a nightmare; you have to create a new message box, select the option to edit it's text, type out what you want it to say, save it, leave the program, open up notepad and reference the number in your code. There's no way to re-order them so if you want to add an extra line you have to tack them on to the end of your giant list and, worst of all, if you make a spelling mistake in the middle of one the editor works in such a way that you have to delete half the message before you can get to your typo.

Oh man, I remember using that program. The only good thing about it, looking back, was the graphics handling system. Minipalettes and easy recolours, oh my god. It was bliss in regards to making the graphics.

Everything else, though...


Something that has kept me on AGS for ages is the help file. Every function, every command is documented in exhaustive detail - not just what parameters it takes and what it does, but examples of how to use each function with the correct syntax. Every other game creation program I've ever used has had an awful help system. Links to dead websites with dead links, no help at all, or when you press the help button, it takes you to a webpage and frankly, I hate that. Something as simple as having an easily searchable compiled help file really aids in the game creation process. That, and using a C++/C style scripting languages helps to ease people into real programming later.

Not to mention the autocomplete which reminds me what parameters I should be using, and the compiled sprite file (having it all in one program saves me having to hunt down folders to find assets), the excellent community support...

... the inbuilt customisable GUI editor, so you can make exactly the interface you desire. The ability to run at a very low profile resolution (320x200x256 natively! Oh my god!) where other engines want to bloat up your resolution to at least 640x480 and put it in a window and run at 32bit colour, allows you to tailor make your game to the amount of resources you want to use.

AGS at it's core is basically exactly what I want for games of it's ilk - an animation handler, an interaction handler, and a background handler. You can use the default functions and make an adventure game, or take control of it to however a degree you desire. It's my benchmark for other game engines.

If only there was an AGS-like system for tiled games! That would rock.

[Baron]

The ease to learn definitely drew me in, but by far the greatest thing about AGS is the community that has gathered around the software.   The forums are neat and tidy, and there's no flaming or gratuitous profanity.  Folks around here are genuinely helpful, often have very interesting and well-expressed points of view, are keen to discuss/debate in a respectful manner, hail from a diversity of cultures and backgrounds, and are always friendly -basically it's like the Canada of the internet, except that it's actually interesting here....

[R4L]

AGS has one of the greatest, most helpful communities I have ever encountered, which allows even a total newbie to learn to ropes with relative ease.

This community sucks. You all suck.

Jokes aside, AGS has always been beginner-friendly. Hell, I learned how to use it back when I was 11 or 12 years old to make very basic games.