TADS

Infobox Software
name = TADS
logo =


caption =
author = Michael J. Roberts
developer = Michael J. Roberts
released =
latest release version = 3.0.16
latest release date = April 10 2008
operating system = Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, others
platform =
language = English
status =
genre = Interactive fiction development and play
license =
website = http://www.tads.org/

TADS is a programming system for creating interactive fiction games. The name is an acronym for "Text Adventure Development System".

History

The original TADS 1 was released by High Energy Software as shareware in the late 1980s, and was followed by TADS 2 not long after. In the early 1990s, TADS established itself as the number one development tool for interactive fiction, in place of simpler systems like AGT (Adventure Game Toolkit).

Graham Nelson's Inform has, since its release in 1993, slowly gained popularity. Nevertheless, TADS 2 has been maintained and updated at regular intervals by its creator, Michael J. Roberts, even after it became freeware in July 1996. Graham Nelson describes Inform and TADS as the "only two systems... widely used" in the last half of the 1990scite web
url = http://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/html/s46.html#p369
title = DM4 §46: A short history of interactive fiction
accessdate = 2007-09-03
year = 2001
month = 07
last = Nelson
first = Graham
work = The Inform Designer's Manual
language = English

] , and TADS has been called "The second most commonly used IF programming language today"cite web
url = http://home.grandecom.net/~maher/if-book/if-8.htm
title = Chapter 8: The Growth of Hobbyist IF
accessdate = 2007-09-03
year = 2006
last = Maher
first = Jimmy
work = Let's Tell a Story Together (A History of Interactive Fiction)
language = English

] . Multimedia TADS, introduced in 1998, allows games to display graphics, animation and play sounds, if the platform supports it.

Recently, TADS received a major overhaul with the release of TADS 3, which is a complete rewrite of the TADS engine, only retaining the platform-dependent code to ease porting. TADS 3 has many new features, such as efficient dynamic objects (with automatic garbage collection), structured exceptions, native UTF-8 strings, and many useful function classes.

The TADS 3 compiler and interpreter are stable and they have been ported to the Unix, Macintosh and DOS platforms. Several TADS 3 games have already appeared in the 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 IF Competitions.

Compared with Inform 7

A recent informal poll of the Interactive Fiction newsgroup (rec.arts.int-fiction) showed general agreement on the differences between TADS 3 and Inform 7:

* TADS 3 is widely considered the more powerful system. A full object-oriented programming language, it features multiple inheritance, meaning that the user can create an object inheriting methods from more than one class. As one writer put it, "You can even implement Inform 7 in TADS 3."

* TADS 3 is stable, and essentially a finished product, whereas while Inform 7 is functional, and has been used to write popular and critically well-received games, is still (Jan 08) technically in Beta-testing.

* The Inform 7 programming language is a near-English computer idiom. Fans of Inform 7 consider this a great improvement over the mathy symbolism of a traditional programming language (like Inform 6 or TADS 3), while others find Inform 7's similarity to English confusing.Fact|date=February 2008

* Adding non-English language support is naturally easier in TADS 3 than in Inform 7 which has English as part of its grammar. According to Inform 7 documentation Inform 6 remains a practical tool for non-English IF (cite web | url = http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/doc77.html | title = Inform 7 manual | accessdate = 2008-07-17 )]

* The comparative maturity of the TADS 3 project mean that the language is far more thoroughly documented, both in its syntax and in numerous tutorials and teaching examples. On the other hand, those seeking to influence or participate in the formation of an interactive fiction authorship system may find the Inform 7 project more amenable.

* While TADS 3 is available for many platforms, the TADS 3 Workbench (a development environment) is available only for Windows.

* Inform 7 has a graphical development environment for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

* Each system has fans who prefer it to the exclusion of others, and there are fans of both systems equally.

* Each system has produced high-quality interactive fiction.

TADS games

Games written in TADS are compiled to a platform-independent format that can be played on any computer for which a suitable virtual machine (VM) exists. Such virtual machines exist for most platforms, and in this respect, TADS closely follows the example of the original Infocom Z-machine, as well as modern languages such as Java and C#.

Whereas the TADS 1 and 2 VMs had to parse the commands entered by the player, before sending the results on to the game, TADS 3 employs a more general-purpose virtual machine, where the command-parsing is done by the game code itself, akin to Inform. The rationale for this is that it is easier to customize the parser.

Notable games developed in TADS 2

* "Uncle Zebulon's Will", by Magnus Olsson (1995). It won the TADS category at the inaugural 1995 Interactive Fiction Competition and was included on Activision's 1996 commercial release of Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces of Infocom.

* "The Frenetic Five vs. Sturm und Drang", the first game in the Frenetic Five series by Neil deMause (1997). The game won an XYZZY Award for Best NPCs that year.

* "Worlds Apart" by Suzanne Britton (1999). Winner of XYZZY Award for Best Story and finalist in seven other XYZZY Award categories in 1999, the game features a huge amount of detailed worldbuilding, and is highly rated.Of the 1265 games rated at "Interactive Fiction Ratings", Worlds Apart was the fifth-highest rated game as of September 3, 2007. (cite web | url = http://www.carouselchain.com/if/statistics.php | title = IF Rating Stats | accessdate = 2007-09-03 )]

* "Kaged" by Ian Finley (2000). Winner of the 2000 annual Interactive Fiction Competition.

* "" by Peter Nepstad (2002). The game is one of a handful to be released commercially in recent years, garnering attention from the New York Timescite web
url = http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/business/yourmoney/30goods.html?ex=1264827600&en=49db8c4b16ce38ac&ei=5088
title = A Game With A Low Body Count
accessdate = 2007-09-03
date = 2005-01-30
author = Brendan I. Koerner
work = New York Times
language = English

] and the Associated Presscite web
url = http://www.columbiachronicle.com/back/2003_spring/2003-04-07/arts5.html
title = ‘1893’ has history, mystery
accessdate = 2007-09-03
date = 2003-04-07
author = Nick Wadhams
work = Columbia Chronicle Online
language = English

] , among others. It also won the 2002 XYZZY Award for Best Setting.

Notable games developed in TADS 3

* "Max Blaster and Doris de Lightning Against the Parrot Creatures of Venus" by Dan Shiovitz and Emily Short (2003). Winner of the 2003 Spring Thing; a somewhat unusual example of multiple player characters (or PCs).

* "The Elysium Enigma" by Eric Eve (2006). Eve was awarded XYZZY Awards for Best Game and Best Individual NPC, as well as taking third place in the 2006 annual Interactive Fiction Competition.

The programming language

TADS 2 syntax is based on C, with bits of Pascal. TADS 3 uses a language with a syntax that resembles C++ and Java.

ee also

* lists software similar to TADS

References

External links

* [http://www.tads.org/ Official TADS web site]
* [http://teladesign.com/tads/ The TADS page]
* [http://wurb.com/if/platform/2 TADS 2] and [http://wurb.com/if/platform/39 TADS 3] games on Baf's Guide
* [http://www.firthworks.com/roger/cloak/tads/index.html Cloak of Darkness: TADS] presents a short game implemented in TADS, as well as other languages for comparison.
* [http://lists.v-space.org/listinfo/tads3/ The TADS 3 mailing list] ;Interpreters
* [http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/tads2/executables/ TADS 2 interpreters for several platforms]
* [http://www.drizzle.com/~dans/if/jetty/ Jetty] - Java Applet Interpreter for TADS 2 games
* [http://www.tads.org/tads3.htm TADS 3 interpreters for DOS, Windows, and source for Unix]
* [http://www.hypertads.org/ HyperTADS] , a Mac OS multimedia interpreter for TADS 2 and 3