AGD (Arcade Game Designer)
As with most kids who grew up with the ZX Spectrum I enjoyed programming in BASIC and dreamed of creating games to match the commercial releases of the day. But it didn't take long to realise that without knowledge of machine language, this was never really going to happen. That didn't stop me from trying and I still have lots of bits of paper sketching out ideas and graphics for games that only ever existed in my head!
Back in the day several companies released games designers, some were designed for creating adventure games and others for creating arcade games. the one I remember is H.U.R.G. from Melbourne House. It was announced late in 1983 but was delayed and despite the company announcing a £3000 prize for the best game created using H.U.R.G. I can't remember if I even bought the package in the end.
Roll on 30 years and I happened across AGD (Arcade Game Designer) by Jonathan Cauldwell. It's a games development package which runs on the ZX Spectrum or an emulator and for me it does everything the old packages claimed they could do and more, also games created with AGD can run standalone, unlike H.U.R.G. which still needed the engine loaded to run.
I can't praise this enough, it sparked my interest in programming as the built in language is very similar to BASIC making the learning curve nice and easy. There are several demo games included which can be loaded and experimented with but the most useful guide was a set of tutorial videos by Paul Jenkinson available here at his website. These videos are brilliant and perfectly paced and by following these I started to create my first 'proper' game which I later called 'Page's Castle Quest'
There are other modern development tools out there, some which run on a PC and compile to work on a Spectrum and others which run on an actual Spectrum or emulator. But my vote goes to AGD, have a look here for the latest version, discussions and tips.
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