AGT and AGX Game Files

AGT games are recognizable by having several different files with names like 'MYGAME.D$$', 'MYGAME.DA1', 'MYGAME.DA2', ... , 'MYGAME.DA6', 'MYGAME.TTL', etc. They also usually come with a DOS runtime interpreter (usually called RUN.EXE or MRUN.EXE), which can be deleted without affecting AGiliTy.

AGiliTy also has its own file format (with extension "AGX", which stands for "Adventure Game eXecutable"); existing AGT games can be converted into this format using the utility agt2agx which comes with AGiliTy. They can also be created from AGT source code by using the Magx compiler, available from
http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXagtXmagx.html

The new format takes all of the various AGT files (MYGAME.DA1, MYGAME.DA2, MYGAME.DA3, MYGAME.DA4, MYGAME.DA5, MYGAME.DA6, MYGAME.TTL, MYGAME.INS, MYGAME.VOC, MYGAME.D$$, MYGAME.OPT, and parts of MYGAME.CFG) and puts all of the data in one file (MYGAME.AGX).

Aside from the reduction in directory clutter, it has the following advantages:

1. It's smaller; for large games the new format can save over 100K (The most extreme case I've run across so far is Shades of Gray: 790K vs. 568K uncompressed or 273K vs. 148K ZIPed).
2. It loads more quickly since it's closer in structure to AGiliTy's internal format. (In particular, the interpreter doesn't need to build the dictionary or convert metacommand opcodes into a common format).
3. It's more portable. For example, there are platforms out there that can't handle the 'D$$' extension.