AGPX Game Maker v1.0.2 (2024, AGPX)

Looking back over the last short period of time, there have been a number of interesting new creations for the Commodore 64 computer, which is still popular with many. Among them, I would like to highlight one that will make it easy for beginners to create their dream game on this great platform.

The “AGPX Game Maker” is a tool that allows you to create games for the Commodore 64. Evolution and replacement of the previous tool “AGPX Graphics Maker” (with which it’s backwards compatible), this tool allows you to create games through the use of a simple BASIC language (whose guide can be found in the .zip file in English and Italian).

Features list of the v1.0.2:

• MDI Application;
• Supported characters mode: Standard Character Mode (SCM), Multi Color Mode (MCM), Extended background Color Mode (ECM) with exporter for assembly and basic;
• Supported sprites mode: monocolor, multicolor with exporter for assembly and basic;
• Supported bitmap cells (named “Blockset”) with mode: monocolor, multicolor (you can also use it to import a full screen bitmap, BUT be aware that there is no proper fullscreen bitmap editor inside the software, the blockset are treated just like characters);
• Editing of multiple characters/sprites/blocks displaced in a grid (with ability to mix mono and multicolor characters);
• Editing tool:
  • Up to 4 Layers;
  • transformation: shifting, rotation, resizing, invert, mirror, flip (you can restrict them to the selection);
  • drawing tool: freehand, line, ellipse, rectangle, floodfill (clipped to the selection, if any). Possibility to use two colors dithering.
  • selection: irregular shape, move selected area, copy & paste;
• Import images to characters (SCM, MCM or ECM), sprites (mono or multi) or blocks (mono or multi) with automatic search of the best fitting colors and dithering support (import can take a while, please fix at least the background color to speedup the operation);
• Import/Export of data and project items;
• Animation editor for characters, sprites and blocks with “ghost” functionality;
• Characters/sprites/blocks optimization: remove unused, empty and duplicates (with cascading update);
• Unified clipboard between sprites, characters and blocks (‘cut’ also updated tiles, screens and animations);
• Drag & Drop (between characters, tiles and blocks);
• Possibility to add a background/foreground image (with adjustable position and size) useful to perform decaling;
• Zoom/Pan;
• 100 levels of undo/redo;
• Tiles editor (characters or blocks based);
• Screens editor (characters, blocks or tiles based);
• RLE and LZO compression;
• Includes a simple BASIC language that is transpiled to C/C++;
• Provides a programming model based on state-machines;
• Supports a sprite abstraction called “Actors”;
• Supports the definition of “Levels”;
• Supports the definition of “Games”;
• Supports sound effects through the SidSFX Editor version 0.1.1 or higher;
• Allows import of external data/routines (like music routines);
• VIC-II Calculator;