It's less than a week after the release of his last game Homebrew and Jonathan Cauldwell has surfaced again on the Oldschool Gaming radar, this time holding aloft version two of his Arcade Game Designer. What a show-off!!

It's time I took a month or two off...

Well, i wasn't going to say anything but you're making the rest of us look bad! =-)

Following feedback from the World of Spectrum forums, version 2.2 is now available:

http://rapidshare.com/files/288253200/AGD.zip

Several enhancements this time, details of which are included in the documentation. I've also improved the second demonstration game to test out some of the new functionality.

So then... who's interested in converting the utility to another platform?

I'm interested in it being converted to another platform, though I think that is a slightly different thing.

Regards,

Shaun.

Version 2.3 is now out. This contains a couple of bug fixes, and the ability to set the flash bit of background blocks. That may not sound like much, but if you're developing a ULA+ game it means that up to 64 colours are available.

Version 2.4 is now hot off the press. Changes this time include:

- ULAplus palette editor, and mechanism to incorporate the palette in your game
- Fast draw mode, to speed up construction of screens
- Option to tweak sprite collision detection
- Plus a couple of bug fixes and internal compiler changes.

The new version can be found here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/371180517/AGD.zip

Version 2.7 is now available, and includes Kempston joystick support.

https://rapidshare.com/files/1431339401/AGD.ZIP

One issue to report: if you're using this in 128K mode it will default to Kempston joystick. To select keyboard controls again, just POKE 23681,1. Alternatively, just load AGD in 48K mode.

This is probably about as far as I can take AGD on the 48K machine. Aside from minor bug fixes here and there, future versions of the editor are likely to be 128K-only, although games produced with AGD will always run in 48K.

AGD 3 is coming very soon. As I mentioned in the above post, I couldn't take it much further on the 48K machine, so version 3 will only work on 128K machines, although games produced with the utility will work on the old rubber-keyed original. Here's a link to a preview snapshot:

https://rapidshare.com/files/1726422709/AGD3.z80

Press Z in the example game to see what else AGD 3 will be able to do. Menus, inventories, object handling and all of that. It's a nudge in the direction of Magic Knight or Dizzy, for those interested in that kind of thing.

AGD also comes with code templates now. Just select the required sprite behaviour from a list and code will be automatically generated. You won't have to write a single line of code, unless you really want to.

While I'm here, I should point out that Paul Jenkinson has just released his latest game, and one which was produced using an earlier version of AGD. As ever, Paul has produced a cracking little game, and a good example of the sort of thing AGD can do. You can find it here:

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseek ... id=0027506

Paul has also written a tutorial for AGD:

http://randomkak.blogspot.co.uk/p/agd-tutorial.html

Finally, I've set up a little forum specifically for AGD release news, bug reports and coding tips:

http://arcadegamedesigner.proboards.com/

Wow!