When comparing Visionaire Studio vs Adventure Game Studio, the Slant community recommends Adventure Game Studio for most people. In the question“What are the best game engines for point & click adventure games?” Adventure Game Studio is ranked 1st while Visionaire Studio is ranked 57th. The most important reason people chose Adventure Game Studio is:
Good for newbie game creators. Can be used for prototyping: on several occasions was used to make a demo/experimental version before creating a final commercial product on different engine.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Easy to use
Arguably the easiest and most user-friendly visual IDE to create point and click adventure games.
Pro Up-to-date well supported P&CA engine
Modern P&C adventure development platform, and proven in production: used by Daedalic Entertainment for many of their well-known games.
Pro Easy to learn tool
Good for newbie game creators. Can be used for prototyping: on several occasions was used to make a demo/experimental version before creating a final commercial product on different engine.
Pro Completely free and open source
AGS is licensed under Artistic License 2.0 and is completely free for use for creating both freeware and commercial games.
Pro Relatively well documented
Besides the manual there are multiple text and video tutorials and code samples written by community.
Pro Used for a number of high-profile commercial releases
Adventure Game Studio has been used to develop games such as "Resonance", "Blackwell" series, "Gemini Rue", "Primordia".
Pro Lots of assets available
An extensive library of game templates and script modules accumulated over years. You can construct a simple game in hours (if you know what you are doing).
Pro Friendly community
An old, big and active community which would support newcomers not only in learning basics of the engine, but can help with every aspect of game making (including art, voice acting, moral support, etc).
Cons
Con Not free
It costs quite a dime, it's a con considering the alternatives are free. And investing in a point-and-click engine might not be a very good idea nowadays.
Con Development is slow
Further development of the engine is currently slow, done by only few people in their free time.
Con Assets cover almost exclusively adventure/quest genre
The features, script functions and game templates are very biased towards adventure/quest genre. The non-adventure games were made in AGS (2D shooters, platformers, turn-based strategies), but their development usually requires to write everything from scratch.
Con No visual editor for scripts
You have to actually write all scripts yourself.
Con AGS Script isn't as full-featured as other scripting languages
Its own scripting language has lower syntax capabilities compared to modern script languages.
Con Workflow is closely coupled with the editor
Workflow is very tied to the editor and custom file formats, which can cause problems for bigger, more professional projects (interfering with source control, parallel development, automated builds, etc)
Con Graphics renderer is a bit dated
Graphics renderer is not well optimized for high-resolution games and complex effects.
Con Uses dated tech
Engine is based on the old technologies, which impose number of limitations and may cause problems on latest systems (level of annoyance varies depending on your priorities).
Con Natively supports only 2D
2D only native support, 3D could be supported with plugins though.
