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The Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) is a game engine developed by Sierra On-Line. The company originally developed the engine for ''King's Quest: Quest for the Crown'' (1984), an adventure game which Sierra and IBM wished to market in order to attract consumers to IBM's lower-cost home computer, the PCjr. AGI was capable of running animated, color adventure games with music and sound effects. The player controls the game with a keyboard and, optionally, a joystick. After the launch of ''King's Quest'', Sierra continued to develop and improve the Adventure Game Interpreter. They employed it in 14 of their games between 1984 and 1989 before replacing it completely with a newer adventure game engine, Sierra's Creative Interpreter. ==History== In late 1982, IBM began work on the PCjr, a lower-priced variant of the IBM Personal Computer with improved graphics and sound. The PCjr's Video Gate Array video adapter could display up to 16 colors at a time—a major improvement over the Color Graphics Adapter's four-color limit. The new sound chip, too, could output a wider range of tones than the PC speaker. IBM commissioned Sierra to produce a game that could showcase these new capabilities. Although none of Sierra's earlier games were animated, the companies agreed that this new flagship game should be. The project was too complicated to write easily in assembly language, so Sierra began developing a scripting engine that would greatly simplify programming of the game. Roberta Williams worked on the game design, and Arthur Abraham was in charge of developing the engine. However, Sierra eventually dismissed Abraham, after which IBM contributed to the work in order to help ensure the project's success. IBM premiered the PCjr in 1984; it did not sell well and, therefore, neither did ''King's Quest''. However, later that year Tandy Corporation released the Tandy 1000, an IBM PC compatible that succeeded where the PCjr failed.〔http://www.agidev.com/intro/〕 ''King's Quest'' caused a sensation in the burgeoning market of PC-compatible computers, and Sierra sold more than half a million copies. After this point, Sierra made the PC platform their primary development focus. ''King's Quest'' established a new type of interactive adventure game, and Sierra named their new game engine the ''Adventure Game Interpreter''. Following the success of ''King's Quest'', they ported it to other computing platforms, such as the Apple II, Apple IIGS, Apple Macintosh, Amiga and Atari ST. In 1988, with the release of ''King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella'', Sierra debuted a more sophisticated proprietary game engine: Sierra's Creative Interpreter, or SCI. Since the SCI engine required a more powerful home computer, Sierra released an AGI version of the game at the same time. However, Sierra overestimated consumer demand for the lesser version, and ceased production. The following year, Sierra published its final AGI-based title, ''Manhunter 2: San Francisco'', then focused exclusively on SCI for new adventure game development. Among SCI's enhancements were a more versatile scripting system, an object-oriented programming model, higher-resolution graphics (320x200 rather than 160x200), a point-and-click interface, and support for additional sound card hardware. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Adventure Game Interpreter」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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