Text Adventure Development System (TADS) is a prototype-based domain-specific

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

and set of standard libraries for creating

interactive fiction Interactive fiction (IF) is software simulating environments in which players use text Command (computing), commands to control Player character, characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narrati ...

(IF) games.

History

The original TADS 1 was released by High Energy Software as

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer. ...

in 1988, and was followed by TADS 2 not long after. From the late 1980s to early 1990s, free development tools such as TADS and

Inform Inform is a programming language and design system for interactive fiction originally created in 1993 by Graham Nelson. Inform can generate programs designed for the Z-machine, Z-code or Glulx virtual machines. Versions 1 through 5 were released ...

enabled amateur communities to create

. In the mid-1990s, TADS was a top development tool for interactive fiction. At the time, it was a more improved tool for

parsing Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is a process of analyzing a String (computer science), string of Symbol (formal), symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal gramm ...

and world building than existing systems like AGT (

Adventure Game Toolkit The Adventure Game Toolkit (AGT) is a development system for interactive fiction, text based adventure games. Description It was written in 1987 by David Malmberg, based on Mark J. Welch's 1985 Generic Adventure Game System (GAGS). AGT was produced ...

). TADS 2 syntax is based on C, with bits of Pascal. 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, creator of Inform, describes Inform and TADS as the "only two systems... widely used" in the last half of the 1990s, and TADS has been called "The second most commonly used IF programming language today". Multimedia TADS, introduced in 1998, allows games to display graphics, animation and play sounds, if the platform supports it. In 2006, 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 In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desig ...

. TADS 3 uses a language with a syntax that resembles C++ and

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

. It has many new features, such as efficient dynamic objects (with automatic garbage collection), structured exceptions, native

UTF-8 UTF-8 is a character encoding standard used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode Transformation Format 8-bit''. Almost every webpage is transmitted as UTF-8. UTF-8 supports all 1,112,0 ...

strings, and many useful function classes. The TADS 3

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that Translator (computing), translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primaril ...

and

interpreter Interpreting is translation from a spoken or signed language into another language, usually in real time to facilitate live communication. It is distinguished from the translation of a written text, which can be more deliberative and make use o ...

have been ported to the DOS,

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

and

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

platforms. Several TADS 3 games have been released.

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 In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulator, emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve ...

(VM) exists. Such virtual machines exist for several platforms, and in this respect, TADS closely follows the example of the original

Infocom Infocom, Inc., was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called ''Cornerstone (software), Cornerston ...

Z-machine The Z-machine is a virtual machine that was developed by Joel Berez and Marc Blank in 1979 and used by Infocom for its text adventure games. Infocom compiled game code to files containing Z-machine instructions (called story files or Z-code ...

, as well as modern languages such as

and C#. Whereas the TADS 1 and 2 VMs had to

parse Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is a process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar by breaking it into parts. The term ''pa ...

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 Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one o ...

'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 a 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. * '' Kaged'' by Ian Finley (2000). Winner of the 2000 annual Interactive Fiction Competition. * '' 1893: A World's Fair Mystery'' by Peter Nepstad (2002). The game is one of a handful to be released commercially in recent years, garnering attention from the New York Times and the Associated Press. 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 Emily Short is an interactive fiction (IF) writer. From 2020 to 2023, she was creative director of Failbetter Games, the studio behind ''Fallen London'' and its spinoffs. She is known for her debut game ''Galatea (computer game), Galatea'' (200 ...

(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 Award for Best Game, XYZZY Award for Best Individual NPC, and took third place in the 2006 annual Interactive Fiction Competition.

References

External links