Arcade Game Designer
A downloadable Gamemaker
Now with instructions in German, thanks to Björn-Lars Feddersen.
Arcade Game Designer is a tool for creating ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC464 games. In fact, it's the tool we'd all have given our right arms for in the 1980s. Create blocks, sprites and screens, knock out a few lines of code (far simpler than ZX BASIC and numerous coding templates are included) and create a game that would have graced any software house's catalogue back in the day. There a few bugs, but this is the tool you wanted when you were a kid. Over two hundred (and counting) games have already been written with this tool. Free to download with no obligations, I don't expect anything in return. However, should you absolutely insist on contributing towards the cost of a pint of beer go and buy one of my games or game development tools (my suggestions: SEUD, Quantum Gardening or Gamex) fromwww.cronosoft.co.uk
The Spectrum version is available as software for the 48K or 128K machines, but also as a new Spectrum ROM, for which you'd need to burn a new 128MBit PROM or use the 16 bank ROM card fromwww.samcoupe.com. Boot your Spectrum to AGD and with the editors in the ROM the whole of the Spectrum's RAM is at your disposal!
If you like this, check out the free and far more powerfulMulti-Platform version, which will import games written using this tool and allow you to convert them to other formats. It also allows far bigger games and boasts extra commands and extensive documentation. This is the professional version, in addition to being far more user-friendly for beginners.
To get the best out of AGD, make sure you join the community of AGD and MPAGD developers over at theforums where help and support are available. There's also aSpanish tutorial and a series of Englishvideo tutorials
For the hardcore devotees there are evenAGD T-shirts
Other resources:
Choose your own price. For those who would like to help me out but are a little short of money, considerjoining Swagbucks via this link and once you've earned yourself 300 SB I'll receive a bonus of £3. For those not in the know, Swagbucks is a site where you can earn money playing games, watching videos and filling in surveys online.
Only this site and World of Spectrum have permission to host AGD.
| Status | Released |
| Category | Tool |
| Rating | Rated 4.9 out of 5 stars (18 total ratings) |
| Author | Jonathan Cauldwell |
| Tags | 2D,8-Bit,Amstrad CPC,Arcade,Game engine,GameMaker,Retro,ZX Spectrum |
| Average session | About an hour |
Download
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Development log
Comments
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Thanks. Then AGD is for me, I'm mostly on macOS or Linux. I want to create a CTF challenge where the player first must realise (s)he should load the tap-file into an emulator, then solve the game to get to the secret flag, which is just a text string that proves you solved the challenge. So I'll use AGD to create the tap-file.
Briefly, check that you have put a player sprite in your preferred re-spawn position on every screen on which the player might die. If that doesn't work, post on theAGD forums with a little more detail
Tested the ROM with my fairly new ZX Spectrum ROM Cartridge hardware, no issues :)
Last year I became fascinated with the failed ZX ROM cartridge format Sinclair released in 1983/4. I first released 'ZX-ECUTOR' interface to allow the cartridges to run on the SAM Coupe, then followed up releasing a flash memory cartridge which can store 16 ZX ROM cartridge images / system ROMS (such as your new AGD ROM) and a modern Interface 2 style interface to use cartridges on all ZX Spectrum models: 16k,48k,+,128,+2,+3,+2A/B and the new ZX Spectrum Next.
Info/Ordering: : www.samcoupe.com
Hello there! Need to test that! I’ve unified all my projects and the Spanish Turorials are now here https://www.metsuke.com/ sorry for any inconvenience!
There aren't many 3.0 users left, one or two here and there. Someone (I forget who) was writing a space-themed platformer with version 3 last year. To answer your question, not that I know of as version 4.7 is a significant improvement on 3.0 with many improvements so all the addresses are different. If memory serves, 3.4 was the latest version that would work with 3.0 games. The multi-platform Windows editor MPAGD can extract data from versions 4.0 to 4.7 but nothing earlier as things stand. I'll have to see if I can find the source for version 3 - think there may be a backup copy somewhere - then I can figure out if MPAGD could import those games. Meanwhile, you could try asking Allan Turvey on the AGDX Facebook group (Highrise on the AGD forums) if he has any suggestions as he's done some work on extracting data and I'd be happy to assist him if required. Let me know how you get on
I use onlinehttp://torinak.com/qaop and I think it's fantastic. Snaps/save/load supported, just switch it to 128 and drag&drop the TAP there and you're all set up!
