What is it all about?

The Arcade Game Constructor is, as the name suggests, a tool for designing arcade style games. There have been a few of those before, and they have resulted in a few games, a lot of fun and also quite a lot of flaming from real programmers, perhaps not liking the idea of people creating games without having to master The Source first. But no new Delta, Armalyte or Project-X would ever come out of those packages, not even if the designer had twice the skill of the designers of those games.   Until now, this kind of software has been either very limited or too complex to learn. Their graphics engines are also usually low performance due to the required flexibility, or more likely, simply to avoid creating a viable alternative to hiring a skilled programmer! Those packages were designed mainly to bring in money from gamers that were as excited about creating games of their own, as they would be disappointed with the results...

Why another game design toolkit?

I have always been interested in operating systems, interpreters, compilers, graphical user interfaces and that kind of software. Designing my own operating system is a thought that have crossed my mind many times through the years, but as Linus Torvalds and the Linux community are doing a very good job in that area, I decided to contribute in a slightly related area; development tools.   My intention with The AGC Project is to create a game design tool that can be used both by the game designer wannabe who wants to check out game development without having to learn all about the art of programming first, as well as the professional game designer who wants to quickly get a running prototype to test an idea.

Suggestions and ideas

The AGC Project is right now in early stages of design and there are still decisions to be made that can have great impact on the final result. I'm open to any ideas and suggestions that may result in a better, more powerful and more useful game design toolkit! Please, feel free to write a mail describing features you'd like to see in the AGC, or just let me know if The AGC Project sounds interesting to you.

More programmers...

Even though some working code exists already, quite a few design decisions are yet to be made. The central parts of the engine must be coded and somewhat optimized before the interfaces can be considered "stable", so I can't accept any programming help right now. But as soon as there is an API solid enough to publish, I'll condsider letting other programmers join the project.   I have not yet decided if The AGC Project will be an Open Source project, perhaps even released under the GPL/LGPL, or if it's best to keep it closed and under full control. If there is not enough interest among skilled C/C++/asm programmers, there is simply no point in attempting any form of Open Source development model.