Adventure Games Live
 |
|
|
Type of site
|
Online gaming |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Owner | Samuel Stoddard |
| Website | http://www.Rinkworks.com/adventure/ |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Launched | 1998 |
| Current status | Online |
Adventure Games Live (AGL) is a suite of online adventure games on the entertainment website RinkWorks. It features single-player turn-based games run in CGI on an engine written by Samuel Stoddard, who runs RinkWorks and wrote five of the ten games currently available. The suite has hosted some of its games since 1998, putting them among the web's longest-running, continuously hosted games.
AGL games are written in a simple programming language called Smash, derived from an earlier language called AGLL (from "Adventure Games Live Language"). Smash is generally intended for producing menu-based adventure games, though it is flexible enough for many other types of single-player, turn-based games as well. The former AGLL language is deprecated and is no longer in use on RinkWorks.
The specification of Smash is publicly available from its page at RinkWorks. Anyone who wants can write a game in Smash, and if they want, send it to RinkWorks for evaluation. Following a period of feedback and extensive playtesting, if the game is approved, it is published on the AGL page.
The Smash source code for the simplest and easiest game, The Trainer, is freely available on the Smash tutorial page. The source code for the other games is proprietary and not available without explicit permission from the authors.
The Smash interpreter that is responsible for running the games on the RinkWorks server is proprietary software written by Samuel Stoddard and not publicly available. People wishing to play AGL games locally on their own computer are free to write their own interpreters, or can use Rex, a Smash interpreter written using wxPython and developed by Andrew Walters (who also developed two of the games available on AGL).
The Trainer is the simplest of the games available on the site. It is one of only two games to have been featured on the site from its opening.
As the official description states, "This mini-adventure is a good way to have fun while learning the ropes. It doesn't take long, yet it does a good job of familiarizing you with the features of this site and some of the types of puzzles you'll encounter in the larger games."
The full source code for the game is now available on RinkWorks in the tutorial on Smash programming.
As the official description states, "It's 1874 in Caballo Creek, California, where a man can work and live in peace -- at least until recently. Gangs of bandits have been pillaging nearby villages, and you're worried that Caballo Creek might be next. Journey through a landscape chock full of guns, smoke, and saloons in this historical mystery adventure set in the Old West."
...
Wikipedia