Thanks Jonathan

[jj]

Thanks for this incredible and fun to use enviroment to create games!


Brgds.,

JJ

[sendy]

I want to echo these thanks. I'm simply blown away by what AGD allows me to do, and I'm only using version 3.5. May as well stick with it for my first game.

I've tried out several game maker kits, including Game Maker for PC, Platform Studio (pretty crappy and displeasing jump physics), HURG on the spectrum (admittedly I was a kid when I tried it, but I found it incomprehensible, lol), Garry Kitchen's GameMaker on the C64, and a bunch of others I can't remember the names of. The most luck I had was with Jet Set Willy editing, allowing me to make platform games with the JSW engine, which was even expanded on greatly by the author John Elliott. That was great fun but at the end of the day you were limited to the physics, logic and level format of JSW.

Game creation kits were usually either too simple with weak results, or so complex you might as well just learn C or something SEUCK on the C64 was a good exception to the rule, although these games would often be very deterministic due to the enemies following fixed paths and lacking player targeting for their motions and attacks.

But AGD. It's simply a work of art. It's the best app (I can't believe I'm actually using that word) I've ever seen on the Spectrum, probably on any home computer. I'm constantly amazed by what I, someone with artistic and design aspirations but very bad programming skills, am empowered to do with it. It is both fun and powerful and the satisfaction of finding multiple ways to achieve your goals rivals that of any regular game.

I just... I'm simply awestruck. Thanks very much for this utility, Jonathan Cauldwell. You've created something truely amazing and I would happily pay money for it. I'd pay even more money for a PC version that let you develop games for the 128k Spectrum in the Windows environment. But as it is this thing will probably keep me busy for the forseeable future. You've made my childhood dreams of designing 8-bit platform, maze and puzzle type games seem achievable.

Best wishes,
Sendy

p.s. I wanted to buy Platform Game Designer by way of thanks (I think AGD surpasses it in every way except speed of use, but I still intend to use it to make some games), but I can't find it in the Store at the Cronosoft website, or anywhere else for that matter.