Game design process for AGI based games?

[Keith,Weatherby_II]

Hello my name is Keith, and I’ve been floating around here for a few years.  I’m designing a game that will sort of evoke a style that’s reminiscent of AGI based Sierra games, my thought is to be able to make great games in the future, I should understand a bit of the past.  So while I don’t have the same restrictions that the designers at Sierra had, I did want to go through kind of the same processes.  I’m wondering if anyone can direct me to any resources on how Sierra designers made their games using the Adventure Game Intepreter.  What was the process.  Did they rely on design documents a lot (I’ve noticed a few sierra design documents floating around the net), did you work on sketches and paper.  When designing graphics did the artists simply build the graphics in whatever the editor was at the time (I believe I read something about some editor that built rooms out of lines and so forth), or did they draw it on paper.  Was there a way of getting images on paper into the computer, or did you have to simply build the graphic in the editor.  Just questions like these.  The website has grown quite a bit since I last posted on the forums here, so I’m not sure where information like this is on the site, so any advice is greatly appreciated.  (Direct advice and/or links to stuff elsewhere).  Keep in mind that I’m only interested in AGI-related stuff at this time.

Thanks for your time.
Keith Weatherby II

[Collector,]

Yes, as you stated, there are various design documents floating around. I believe that Al Lowe has some on his site. If you want to get a feel for working with the Sierra interpreters, there are some tools that let you create games using the original AGI and SCI interpreters. AGI Studio lets you make original AGI games and SCI Studio and SCI Companion let you create SCI games. SCI probably has more documentation.

http://sciprogramming.com/
http://sierrahelp.com/SCI/Wiki/
http://www.agidev.com/
http://www.agifans.com/
http://nailhead.org/agistudio/

[Keith,Weatherby_II]

Thanks for posting these, but I have already been to them.  Really what I’m looking for is anything describing the process the original designers went through to make a game using the adventure game interpreter (AGI) — I’m not so much interested in the technical aspects as the design aspects and challenges.

Thanks again though.

[Keith,Weatherby_II]

I’m going to bump this once.  And re-iterate.  Anyone have any resources on how they designed games in the AGI days?  Links to old interviews, old making of articles, maybe old magazine articles, videos, just anything that sort of illuminates how they made those games?  Or maybe I should ask in the Ken Williams Q and A forum?

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