Twilight Software AGE Developer Pages

Wednesday November 16th 2005

A hobbyist edition of the AGE Adventure Game Engine comes free when you purchase The Sydney Mystery for only $19.95. Click here to visit The Sydney Mystery website.

You can also download a free demo of The Sydney Mystery, at the website, to see what the AGE Adventure Game Engine is capable of.

Monday 27th March 2000

An important announcement: I'm shortly moving to the USA to begin a new job, and will not have access to the facilities for fulfilling orders of AGE. For the time being, AGE is no longer available for purchase.

I will continue to support all existing licensees as much as I can, and will continue to use the engine in my own time.

Please understand that the reason for the change is simply that I won't have access to the facilities for taking credit card orders, nor for packaging the engine and posting it out. I continue to look forward to seeing what is created with AGE, and assure you that my own productions are on their way. Thanks for all your interest over the past year.

Brendan Reville, brendan@twilightsoftware.com

Saturday 16th October 1999

Has so much of the year gone by, so quickly?

Exciting news, at any rate! We've decided to make the Hobbyist Evaluation edition of the Adventure Game Engine freely available! Previously priced at $US49, this edition of the engine allows you to get started in making your own adventure games.

We're not releasing the Hobbyist Evaluation edition publicly, in that you can't download it straight away. But if you email twilight@twilightsoftware.com and ask for the engine, we'll write back and tell you how to download it for free!

This edition of the engine includes the following:

A copy of the engine runtime, AGE.EXE
A limit of 5 inventory items and 15 game-state flags
A copy of the FontBMP utility for creating your own font images
And the big one: the full tutorial documentation for the engine - that's over 72 pages of a clear step-by-step tutorial on making your very own adventure games. This is a Word document.

We'll tell you how to download the Sample Game, too. The tutorial documentation covers this game extensively, and game itself lets you see how everything works in a real production!

So, without delay, email twilight@twilightsoftware.com and tell us you want to start making your own adventure games, for free!

Brendan Reville, brendan@twilightsoftware.com

Addendum, 20th October 1999...

The response has been great, thanks to everyone who's expressed interest. A couple issues have been raised which are easily solved... If you can't read the Word document, grab Microsoft's free Word document viewer from here. If you only have Windows 95, you need DirectX 5 or later, which you can get here. If you only have Windows 95, you might also need DirectXMedia for the streaming audio and video, which you can get here. Of course, if you release your own game on CD-ROM, our installation program will do all of this DirectX stuff for you. At any rate, it's only an issue with Windows 95. Windows 98 and 2000 work straight away!

Tuesday 8th June 1999

A reminder to our growing community of adventure game makers - feel free to email support@twilightsoftware.com whenever you have any questions or comments on using the engine. Twilight Software is dedicated to timely and comprehensive support!

It looks like the Adventure Game Engine will be making some appearances in the Australian media too... more on that when it happens.

Brendan Reville, brendan@twilightsoftware.com

Friday 21st May 1999

Not a huge deal to report; I'm gearing up to begin making my own adventure game The Millennium Adventure. The design is essentially completed, I've just got to finish writing the dialogue, and then it's time to cast the actors and do some more greenscreen filming.

I should mention, there is a book that you simply must read if you're going to be designing an adventure game. It's The Writer's Journey, by Christopher Vogler, and began life as an internal Disney memo on how to write good stories. The book outlines the various character archetypes that stories contain, and more importantly it details the structure underlying all good stories. The book goes into the psychology and importance of good story telling - and does it in a very easy-to-read and informative way. Famous movies are analysed throughout the book.

For my own game designing, The Writer's Journey helped in clarifying the proper structure for a good story, and was also just great to read. I highly recommend this famous book. You can click here to buy it from Amazon.com right now - that's where I bought it from and am most glad that I did.

Brendan Reville, brendan@twilightsoftware.com

Friday 7th May 1999

And the colour scheme has turned out so nicely!

I'm very happy to announce the latest update to AGE. Here is a feature list of all the things I've done to get to this point:

AGE v1.04

I added a new font system, which uses bitmapped fonts instead of Windows fonts. This gives much better looking fonts, ohpefully more reliability, and definitely more consistency (since each Windows system previously seemed to have slightly different fonts installed). Those who purchase the engine receive the FontBMP utility, to generate a font from Windows fonts on their system. The new font system is a big improvement.

Cutscenes now use a backing image properly, if one is specified.

Internally, the mouse system now acquires control of the mouse more strongly, making the input system more robust.

AGE v1.05 - The Latest Version

On a roll, I kept adding new features, bringing us to this new release. As well as the above improvements, it contains:

You can optionally have a soundscape playing during a conversation.

Scenes now cut to each other directly, like in a film - the transition via black is gone. It's a pretty subtle effect, but it's much easier on the eyes.

Attempts at loading an incompatible save game are now ignored, instead of ending with an error message, making things a little smoother.

The DirectX requirement has been reduced to DirectX 3, with no change in game delivery. The upshot is that the engine now works under Windows NT 4, so long as it has Service Pack 3 or higher. Note that audio performance might not be perfect, since DirectSound was never properly implemented under Windows NT.

New region types in a scene: a "menu" region activates the menu when clicked upon and a "quit" region exits to Windows when clicked upon. It makes for a cleaner interface with no keyboard-reading necessary.

A new region type - "look_and_object_cutscene" - causes the succesful use of an inventory item (on a region) to play a cutscene immediately. This allows you to play a video showing the results of the user's action.

...Whew. That's quite a bit. Going with the new font system, comes this utility, which all licensees receive. It's called FontBMP, and here's a screenshot:

The utility allows you to use Windows fonts, setting the appropriate colours - it then generates a bitmap image containing the entire set of fonts for a game. It also generates a matching script file giving corresponding information to the engine. You can then touch up, shade or otherwise edit the fonts' bitmaps before using them in your game!

It's all covered in the updated Tutorial Document, but suffice it to say that this makes it really easy to get the fonts looking exactly the way you want them to. They look better and appear consistently across all game players' computers.

The Tutorial Document has been completely updated to cover all of the new features!

The Sample Game has been updated, and contains demonstrations of most of the new features. It also contains a new 3d rendered animation, just to make things cool! Whether you've seen the old version or not, email twilight@twilightsoftware.com and request that we give you the new URL so that you can download the latest version of this Sample Game!

Q: And what if you thought the engine was too simple?

A: The Sample Game has also been updated to contain new scenes, showing off some of the more complex features of the engine - features some people might not have realised existed before. The first new scene shows a really simple way of manipulating a machine, with switches that can be turned on and off, with a certain configuration revealing a new location. It's simple, but it should show that complex scene- (and inter-scene-) manipulation behaviour can be created with this engine!

Last of all, a big thank you to those who have already purchased the Adventure Game Engine. You'll be receiving updated documentation, utilities and engines before the weekend's over. My greetings to Robin Ward, too, whose BOT project was retired today. I had the greatest respect for Robin, his creation and the community which sprung up around it. I hope that AGE can help enrich the community's game creation.

Brendan Reville, brendan@twilightsoftware.com

Tuesday 4th May 1999

Well, the colour scheme might not be perfect, but do you like the new look? The site's all the same - same content and layout - but I'm having a lot of fun with some more contemporary web styling. I've also found that coding until 4am is actually very productive - things have gone great. In fact, I've finished all of the coding for the engine's entire "to do" list. Things are greatly improved and much nicer, on several subtle fronts.

I've also been adding two new scenes to the Sample Game, demonstrating more complex logic. (There's another bonus coming too.) I'll be doing some testing, and then formally announcing all of these new things (and putting up the new Sample Game for download) later this week. In the meantime, check out the FAQ - I've added an important point on the more complex sort of behaviours that can be programmed.

Full steam ahead!

Brendan Reville, brendan@twilightsoftware.com

Sunday 2nd May 1999

I'm very excited - the new font system is working and is a big improvement. I'm going to work on the Windows NT compatibility now.

Brendan Reville, brendan@twilightsoftware.com

Thursday 29th April 1999

The first batch of Developer Kit CD-ROMs are now on their way, via Air Mail, to our first group of licensees. I'm really looking forward to seeing what these developers create; it's exciting to think that there are people from around the world who are going to be making adventure games.

Today I worked on programming a new utility, which will play a central role in the major update of the font system. The utility is called FontBMP, which might give a hint as to its purpose. At any rate, fear not!... I'll give full details when the utility is finished and the engine is updated accordingly. It should be a good improvement, and a free update for all licensees, naturally!

Again, welcome aboard licensees! Hopefully there are some more of you out there...

Brendan Reville, brendan@twilightsoftware.com

Tuesday 27th April 1999

Were you expecting an update so soon?

Well, I've got one! One thing that I knew needed fixing was the accessibility of the script files. While a released game probably wouldn't have its scripts named as .TXT files, they were still basically plain text files in easy view of end users who wanted to poke around. I knew I'd fix this (as promised on the wwwBoard) when people were starting to think about releasing their own games. Well, the time came today...

Those who purchase a "Release" edition of the engine license (be it a Hobbyist Release or a Commercial Release) now receive the TextCrypt utility on their Developer Kit CD-ROM. I wrote this program this afternoon and evening. Here's what TextCrypt looks like:

TextCrypt - The script text encryption utility

Essentially, you select the base directory for your game files, then you tick Recurse Subdirectories if you want to go through the entire directory structure of your files. You specify the file extension that you've used specifically for script files. Then you tell the program to Crypt! or Decrypt! all your files. Four easy clicks and you've encrypted all of your game scripts!

With the decryption functionality worked into the engine, I can now announce that there exists:

AGE v1.03 - The engine now loads encrypted script files, for Hobbyist Release and Commercial Release licensees. (Become one today - see the Purchase page!)

A guy from the bank showed me how to use my credit card facilities today. Don't email me your credit card details (since it's not encrypted), but do use your credit card on the printed form when you order by mail!

Autumn is arriving here in Sydney. Today had some thunder, a touch of hail, plenty of rain... beautiful trees and a great sunset as I took my dog for a chilly walk. The fireplace is crackling downstairs. I'm feeling good, it was a very productive day of work! :)

Brendan Reville, brendan@twilightsoftware.com

Monday 26th April 1999

I've decided that it would be nice to have this news page, so that the latest Adventure Game Engine developments and announcements don't disappear into the wwwBoard alone...

The engine's reception has been very exciting since it was launched a few weeks ago, and I'd especially like to thank those who have decided to license it already. I'm glad that you've all had the chance to play with the Sample Game first - it means that you've made an educated decision to use the engine, your votes of confidence are truly appreciated.

I'm not resting on my laurels and am already planning the next set of updates.

I'll be honest and report that there have been reports from some people that the Sample Game hasn't worked perfectly on their systems. As stated in the licensing details, it's up to developers to make sure that the engine works properly for their target market, and the Windows market in general is famous for incompatibility problems - we can make no warranties about the engine's ultimate fitness. But I take every reported problem seriously, and am working to solve them. It of course bears mention that the problems quite possibly lie with drivers and devices, not with the engine itself.

If you're having problems, make sure that you're not running on Windows NT 4 (as it doesn't support the features of DirectX 5 that our engine uses). Then make sure you're running the latest versions of DirectX (6.1) and DirectXMedia (6), both available at www.microsoft.com/directx.

The Sample Game contains v1.00 of the engine. I've since built versions 1.01 and 1.02. Here are their features:

AGE v1.01 - The first video in a conversation now plays immediately - it previously played a fraction of a second after the background was drawn up. This makes for more perfect visuals.

AGE v1.02 - The program gains tighter control over the mouse. This should have no real affect on the engine's performance, although the mouse cursor disappears a little earlier when beginning the engine. Also, more checks have been added to the font-related routines.

There are a bunch of little improvements I'll be making in the next couple of weeks. The major improvement will be to make the font system much better and much more consistent on different machines.

As always, all licensees will receive these minor upgrades for free as soon as they're ready. And the changes will be minor, so don't let them hold off licensing the engine - the updates will only help to improve the titles you're already building.

...That was a bit of information to keep you updated. Best wishes, and drop me an email if you have any questions or comments.

Oh, and I nearly forgot - our credit card facilities have now been approved. You still need to post us a printout of the order form, but now you just need to fill in the credit card section. It's so easy to start making your own adventure games!

Brendan Reville, brendan@twilightsoftware.com