Arcade Game Designer
The Quill's descendant, forty years on
Jonathan Cauldwell's authoring system for the ZX Spectrum: the tool behind most modern Spectrum homebrew, letting people who cannot write Z80 assembly ship real games — with a Spectrum Next version reported in development.
Arcade Game Designer — AGD — is Jonathan Cauldwell’s game-authoring system for the ZX Spectrum, and it occupies exactly the position The Quill held in 1983 and the Graphic Adventure Creator held in 1986: the thing that lets somebody who cannot write assembly finish and release a game.
The difference is when. The Quill served a machine at the height of its commercial life. AGD serves one that has not been sold new since 1992.
What the modern press says
ZX Spectrum Gamer describes “the superb Arcade Game Designer by Jonathan Cauldwell” as having “been the glue behind many a recent Spectrum homebrew title”, and reports a Next version in development. It names Zombo by Malcolm Kirk as an example, and the magazine’s own Aeon carries the credit line “made mostly in Jonathan Cauldwell’s Arcade Game Designer”.
The same article makes the argument this Vault has been making from the other end of the decade, that authoring tools are what keep a machine alive:
I believe that both these pieces of software could be crucial in the long term, allowing average Joes like you and me to create essential content that will keep the machine and its community alive.
“Both” is AGD and PAW — the writer’s other hope being Tim Gilberts bringing the Professional Adventure Writer to the Next. Forty years after Gilsoft and Incentive were selling authoring systems at £22.95, the same two categories — the arcade-game maker and the adventure writer — are what a Spectrum magazine identifies as the machine’s future.
The lineage
| Tool | Year | Makes |
|---|---|---|
| The Quill | 1983 | Text adventures |
| The Illustrator | 1984 | Adds graphics to Quill games |
| Graphic Adventure Creator | 1986 | Illustrated adventures |
| PAW | 1987 | Adventures, with a real parser |
| 3D Construction Kit | 1991 | Freescape 3D worlds |
| Arcade Game Designer | modern | Arcade games, and Next games |
⚠ This entry is sourced from ZX Spectrum Gamer, a modern magazine held in this library but outside the period archive, which stops in the mid-2000s. Reported development progress decays.