1.1 Introduction
Last updated: 27 January 1998
This is a collection of all the information currently known
about the structure and operation of Sierra's AGI interpreter.
AGI (Adventure Game Interpreter) was the first major
interpreter used by Sierra. With the release of King's Quest 1 in
the early 80's, it introduced the gaming world to the concept of
a 3D graphical adventure game, where the player could move a
character around the screen, behind, in front of and over
objects. Other commands could be typed in, just like a text
adventure. This concept, in various forms, has been used many
many times since, by Sierra and other companies such as
Lucasarts. It has proved very successful and continues to be used
today in games such as Larry 7.
If you have any questions about the individual sections in
this document, email the author of that section.
If you have documented an aspect of the interpreter, or have
updated your documentation which is already included this
document, please send it to me (Peter Kelly, ptrkelly@ozemail.com.au)
so that I can add it. Please send it in HTML format if you can.
A note about diagrams:
When all the documentation was converted from ASCII text to
HTML, there was the question of whether or not to do the diagrams
as images, or just leave them as text. Although the documents
looked better with images, we decided on text for two reasons -
mainly because it was easier to save the whole page to disk
(although there are programs around which will allow you to save
images as well, but then you still need to use a web browser),
but also so that they can be read in lynx (the text-based web
browser).
Where can I get this document?
The latest version should always be available from http://www.ozemail.com.au/~ptrkelly/agi/specs/
A zipped copy can also be downloaded: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~ptrkelly/agi/specs/agispecs.zip