TADS is a complete programming language and authoring environment for writing text adventures.
If you’re familiar with the C programming language you shouldn’t find TADS that difficult to learn. (although TADS is an object-oriented language, not a procedural language.) If you aren’t an experienced programmer you may find TADS a little difficult to understand at first. But don’t give up! I’m quite conversant in TADS now even though my only prior programming knowledge was playing around with BASIC years ago. And it’s been a useful stepping stone to learning other languages.
Getting TADS
The first thing you need to do is get a copy of the complete TADS software package for your machine. There are versions of TADS for most popular computer operating systems, and a reasonably up to date list can be found at the “Playing TADS Games” page.Once you’ve downloaded the appropriate TADS package for your machine, sort through the files. The program variously known as “tr.exe”, “tadsr” and “TADS Runtime” is the interpreter that you use for playing games.
The program variously known as “tc.exe”, “tadsc” and “TADS Compiler” is the compiler that you use for turning your plain text files of TADS source code into playable games. Note, however, that the compiler does not come with certain TADS packages. In particular, standalone interpreters like WinTADS and MaxTADS do not come with the compiler. Also, HTML TADS comes in two versions - one (the player’s kit) containing just the interpreter and the other (the author’s kit) containing the whole works, including the compiler.
The Manual
The next thing you need is a copy of the manual. In the past you could purchase a printed copy of the TADS Author's Manual from High Energy Software. But now that TADS is freeware the complete manual is available in an electronic form.The most recent version of the manual is available at:
http://www.tela.bc.ca/tads-manual/
I’d strongly recommend downloading the whole works and printing it out for handy reference - it's an invaluable resource. If you don’t want to download each chapter of the manual individually from my Web site you can grab the entire thing in one go from the IF Archive. The manual is available in the directory:
http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/tads2/manuals/ (WUSTL mirror)
The current version, at time of writing, is tadsman255.zip.
Ditch Day Drifter
Mike Roberts wrote a fun little game called Ditch Day Drifter to serve as a tutorial for aspiring TADS authors. The full source for this game is available, and is well-commented. At one point the source was included with the basic TADS distribution, but it seems to have been lost along the way. If you didn’t get a copy of a file called ditch.t with your copy of TADS be sure to grab it!The source is available on the if-archive site, in the /if-archive/games/source/tads/ directory. And while you’re there, download all the other games available as source. Not all the games are particularly well-commented, but they nevertheless serve as a useful base for your TADS explorations.
The best way to learn any programming language is to go in to sample code, tear it to bits, and figure out how it all works. So get as much TADS source as you can and go at it! (note that I’m talking about the text files written in the TADS language, used to create text adventures - I’m not talking about the C language source code that makes up the TADS software itself. The latter won’t help you much when it comes to learning how to write text adventures.) There’s lots of useful stuff in the Examples Directory in the IF Archive.
Other TADS Resources
In addition to the manual there are a quite a few resources online to help you write TADS games. Here are some of them.TADS in general:
Multimedia (HTML) TADS:
Other IF Authoring Resources