Community
AGI Programming => AGI Development Tools => Topic started by: pmkelly on August 17, 2026, 02:15:45 AM
-
Someone has finally done it: https://meanhamster.com/news/agi-64-brings-sierra-adventures-to-the-commodore-64
Was this one of you? Would love to hear more details.
-
Impressive work. I don't know much about the C64, but I thought I read somewhere that the graphics engine was not able to support the 160x168 16-color screen that AGI needed. Looks like these guys figured it out though.
The title bar in most SQ1 screen shots look like they show the score as "8 of 282". But I think the C64 glyph for zero just looks like an 8. Checking the KQ1 screenshot, which I know has a max score of 158, you can see the glyphs for zero and 8 are very similar, but the zero glyph is slightly different.
Is that how the C64 always shows the zero? That seems like a terrible design choice for font.
-
Fortunately, the character set on the C64 can be altered, so if you feel there's not enough difference between a capital O, slashed zero, and eight, that doesn't need to be a problem forever.
-
Very impressive! I was working on AGI for the C64 also, but looks like they got a lot further than me. Mine required the REU too.
-
Wow! That looks very promising. Looking forward to trying that out.
-
Second to this. Paul Koller almost did it, but 4<colours/char in MC mode was too much challenging. Beside, he was targeting floppy instead of a Easy Flash (like excellent Prince of Persia - PoP64 demake); it was too much I assume.
-
I have been in contact with the author of AGI-64. He said to let him know of anyone else who is interested in helping out with the tedious task of play testing AGI-64. I have already started some testing with SQ1, so far only as far as the escape pod landing on Kerona. Keep in mind that this is the C64, so it struggles a bit to keep up with the animation requirements of AGI at times, so I think the slowness of the animation is a known and currently expected feature. You don't need a real C64 to test on. The VICE emulator is sufficient and the process of loading and running a game is very easy, and quick, assuming you have a pre-built .crt file, which the author would be able to provide you with.
Send me a PM if you want me to send you his direct contact details.
-
It is now released, so you can get it directly from the website:
https://meanhamster.com/news/agi-64-is-now-available
-
Yeah, SpaceQuestHistorian has already put a video out about this. He still claims that you need different versions of SCI for floppy and CD versions, which is not generally true. This was true in SQ4, because SQ4 used an early SCI1.0 version that didn't support message files. So they had to do different things based on their voice/non-voice status. SCI1.1 introduced message files, which provided an integration between text in floppy versions and spoken lines in CD versions. Noun/Verb/Case/Sequence tuples resulting in a string and a talker. Every SCI version since then has supported this, so they didn't need to use different interps for these versions, unless a specific bug was found and fixed.
-
...wait, what's any of that got to do with AGI?
-
I was also confused about that message. Was it posted to the wrong topic @lskovlun?
-
I mean, SQH does have a recent video about AGI-64 but the rest of the post...
-
There doesn't appear to be an easy way to watch his video at the moment. I found a link to it from a post he did, to both Twitch and Youtube, but the youtube link doesn't seem to go to a video (and I can't find it on his youtube account when browsing through the videos), and the Twitch link requires me to log in.
I have played a bit of SQ1 on AGI-64 myself and it is very slow in parts, and a bit buggy, but it is impressive for what it is.
-
It's not on his main channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0VSMk6gYOg
-
I didn't have much time to look at the video yet but I see that he noticed the same thing I did, i.e. the very slow animation of the scientist walking into the room. The author mentioned that ego is implemented with C64 sprites, which would be why its movement seems okay, but all other animations that are not sprites would be quite slow. Hopefully there is a way to speed that up in future releases. The Apple IIe managed decent animation speed. It was the room changing speed that was slow on the Apple IIe, mostly because it had to load from floppy and then draw the picture etc. With AGI-64 having the graphics all converted and prepared ready to go within the cartridge itself, room changes are fairly quick.
-
Fortunately, the character set on the C64 can be altered, so if you feel there's not enough difference between a capital O, slashed zero, and eight, that doesn't need to be a problem forever.
I just watched through half of that SQH video. He mentioned in a few places that he was looking forward to seeing the more C64-like font shown in the screenshots on the website and seemed disappointed that it had changed to the font we're more used to in the IBM, Amiga, Apple IIe, etc. versions, and even wondered if he'd done something wrong when using the compiler tool to build the cart image. It was me that suggested to the author to change the font to match the IBM font, as I felt that Sierra tried to keep it similar across the different platforms. Maybe its just my preference though. I'm so used to seeing the font we're all used to that I found the original font shown in the screenshots a bit jarring. I was quite impressed when the author was able to change it to match the IBM font.
-
as I felt that Sierra tried to keep it similar across the different platforms. Maybe its just my preference though.
You got me thinking, so I looked it up. In my honest opinion, these examples I pulled from MobyGames don't look all that similar to me. Amiga and IBM PC, at least in the MobyGames screenshots, are the closest. I looked up the default C64 font since Moby obviously has no AGI screenshots on that system and that's the closest to the Atari ST.
Make of that what you will.
-
Yeah, you're right. It isn't as close as I thought, but what AGI-64 was previously using (all CAPS, and I don't think it was the standard C64 font) seemed quite different compared to all of those examples. I think that original font in the screenshots was a 3x7 font, designed for the double width pixels. Tbh, I'm not sure if the author ended up going with the IBM font or with the standard C64 font. I would have to take a closer look, but it is now mixed case and no longer using the 3x7 font, so certainly closer to what we see with the IBM AGI interpreter.
-
QFG4
This was true in SQ4, because SQ4 used an early SCI1.0 version that didn't support message files.
Yes, this is irrelevant in the context of AGI, but Troels did mention this in the context of later games. SQ4 had to be upgraded to SCI1.1 because they had this fancy new concept of "message files". The speech support in KQ5, which was the first one, was rather shoddy because they didn't have message files. Message files provided a link between text-only and speech versions that Sierra hadn't had before. It was quite an innovation (and they obtained a patent, even though it was just a key-value database which we have had since the beginning of computing).
QFG4 had the same thing, where they needed to upgrade from one SCI version to another, where I had to fix a bug related to that translation.