Multimedia TADS is an upgrade to TADS, the Text Adventure Development System. The file format and basic architecture haven’t changed. In fact, you could say that just one new feature has been added to the interpreter.

But it’s quite a significant feature. Multimedia TADS can understand HTML, the markup language that underlies Web pages. This means you can now add multimedia content to your TADS game - formatted text, graphics and sound.

 

What is HTML TADS?

The first multimedia TADS-compatible interpreter was HTML TADS for Windows 32. For this reason you’ll often see the name “HTML TADS” referring to the entire multimedia TADS system. A bit confusing.

 

So what does multimedia TADS let me do?

All kinds of cool stuff. For example:

• Styled text. Earlier versions of TADS simply supported boldface (emphasized) text, but multimedia TADS goes well beyond that. Bold, italic, underline, coloured type. Different sizes and different fonts (as available on each system). Centre. Right-justify. Horizontal rules.
• Inline graphics. You can add pictures to your games, right in the body of the text. Multimedia TADS supports the PNG and JPEG graphics formats, and text can wrap around images.

• Sounds. You can play MP3, WAV and MIDI files in a game. The first two formats allow you to play back digitized sounds; the third allow you to add note-based music. You can have both foreground effects for the sound of doors opening, explosions, etc. And ambient sounds, which play in the background and are very useful as mood-setting devices - waves washing on a beach, the chuff and rattle of an old steam train, the babble of voices in a crowd...
• Clickable links. You can have hot links on a page so that commands get typed in when the player clicks them. Even clickable image maps on graphics are supported.

• Tables. Multimedia TADS fully supports HTML tables, which can be used for all kinds of complicated formatting tasks. Not only can you display text within framed rectangles on the page but you can use them as substitutes for tabs - positioning text across the page. Tables can also be used for assembling complex pictures built up of individual sub-images.

• Typesetting support. You are no longer limited to plain unaccented text. You can now include accented characters for multilingual support, proper curved quotation marks and so on.
• Page colours and backgrounds. You can now add colours and background images to your game screens.

 

Does multimedia TADS have something to do with the Web?

Not really. Web pages are marked up using HTML. Multimedia TADS games are marked up using HTML. That’s it. You don’t use a Web browser to play multimedia TADS games since multimedia TADS interpreters have all the display code built in.

 

What do I need to play a multimedia TADS game?

You need a copy of a TADS interpreter (runtime program) which is multimedia TADS compatible. The program can open TADS games that have HTML formatting, and display them properly. Of course, you can still play older games that lack HTML formatting with the new multimedia TADS interpreter. Also, newer versions of the text-only TADS interpreters can play multimedia TADS games, only without the fancy formatting.

 

What platforms does multimedia TADS run on?

Right now the multimedia features of TADS are available for Win32 (ie: Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, ME) and Macintosh (MacOS 8 and 9). The Win32 version is called HTML TADS and the Macintosh version is called HyperTADS.

 

Who wrote multimedia TADS?

Multimedia TADS is the work of TADS author Michael J. Roberts, based on a suggestion by Chris Nebel. You may notice references to “High Energy Software” in old copies of the documentation for TADS. This was the name of Mike’s software company, back in the days when TADS was a shareware product. However, in 1996 Mike dissolved High Energy Software and released TADS as a free, but copyrighted, program.

 

How much does it cost?

Nothing. Multimedia TADS, like all other current versions of TADS, is available free of charge. However, Mike Roberts retains the copyright to the software - it’s not in the public domain. (in other words, he owns the software, but lets you use it for free)

 

Are games written in multimedia TADS playable with regular (text-only) TADS interpreters?

Yes. Mike has upgraded text-only TADS to recognize - but not actually use - HTML tags. A well-written multimedia TADS game should be completely playable with existing text-only interpreters - only without the sounds, graphics and fancy formatting, of course.

Of course, an author could write a multimedia TADS game which doesn’t work on non-HTMLized interpreters if he or she really wanted to. But since that’d mean deliberately cutting out a majority of the potential audience there’d really be no point.

 

Why don’t you have a screenshot of multimedia TADS here?

Well. I do. It’s just that the link is sort of hidden. Try this one.

 

So what exactly is HTML?

HTML, the HyperText Markup Language, is a simple way to format a page of text. You use special instructions, called tags, to indicate what portions of text are to be formatted. For example, to make text bold you simply bracket the text with two <B> tags. Thus, this piece of HTML:

This text is <B>bold</B>.

would appear in a Web browser like this:

This text is bold.

This simple principle is used to embed images within a page, etc. There is no HTML documentation with multimedia TADS, because HTML is a very widely-available and well-supported markup language. You can get excellent tutorials on HTML online, and books are easily available. Here are a few starting points:

Webmonkey.com HTML introduction.

Webmonkey.com HTML cheat sheet.

Builder.com HTML introduction.

 

What version of HTML does multimedia TADS support?

Multimedia TADS is largely HTML 3.2 compliant, with a number of deviations from the standard. (eg: support for some HTML 3 tags) The deviations are there for two reasons. First, Mike did not implement those tags which make no sense in the TADS environment and second, Mike extended and modified a number of tags to suit the requirements of writing a text adventure, which sometimes differ from the requirements of Web browsers. He fully documented his changes, however.

 

Can I split the screen?

Yep. Multimedia TADS supports a modified version of the banner tag from HTML 3. This lets you split the screen into multiple horizontal or vertical non-scrolling regions. Banners are not part of any other version of HTML, and multimedia TADS does not support frames.

Normally this is just used for supporting the status line, but you can do lots of other things. For example, you could have a traditional status line at the top, then a space for graphics (eg: a picture of the current room) and then space for the textual description and input line at the bottom. Or a clickable button bar. Or an automatic map, or whatever.

 

Does multimedia TADS support animation? Animated GIFs?

No and no. At present it doesn’t support any time-based imaging, such as QuickTime movies or AVIs. GIFs - animated or not - are not supported either, because Mike Roberts would have been forced to pay licensing fees for including GIF decoding software with the program. By contrast, code to decode PNG and JPEG images is available for free, so multimedia TADS supports them.

How about Java and JavaScript and ActiveX?

No. Stop being silly.

 

Do you have to include a bunch of loose picture and sound files with multimedia TADS games?

No. There’s a small program (called tadsrsc) that ships with TADS that allows you to insert graphics and sound files into the TADS .gam file. The files are stored inside the .gam file in the TADS resource format. (note to Mac users - the TADS resource format is not the same as the Macintosh resource format. You don’t use ResEdit to put pictures into a TADS game. Second, there are instructions on how to use tadsrsc with the Mac here)

This means that you can ship playable TADS games two ways. First, you can ship a plain .gam file with all the sound and image files loose alongside. This is obviously not a great idea, as it means that players can cruise through your files, possibly spoiling puzzles and the like. It also makes it easy for people to lose files. The second way is to can pack your image and sound files into the .gam file. That prevents casual file browsing.

 

Does it have stereo sound?

If your computer supports stereo sound, yes. Multimedia TADS plays WAV and MP3 format files. Both formats store audio at various sampling rates, and support stereo playback. Check out the Golden Skull demo game (see below) for fun stereo sound effects.

 

Why doesn’t multimedia TADS support the <BLINK> tag?

Because Mike Roberts is a man of tremendous taste and strong personal integrity.

 

Why did Mike choose to support HTML anyway? Why didn’t he use SGML/TeX/Z-machine opcodes/RTF/something new/blah blah blah...

Mike gives his reasons for implementing HTML in the documentation. I think they’re good reasons, but in addition to his comments I’d like to add my opinion.

Lots of people are going to get all uncomfortable with the idea of multimedia TADS, primarily because they’re stuck in old mindsets about what HTML is about and what textual IF is about. All I can say is this. 1) multimedia TADS works extremely well. 2) it allows you to implement some really cool stuff. 3) if you don’t like some of the features it supports, don’t implement them.

 

What if you don’t like graphics in text adventures?

Play multimedia TADS games using an interpreter that doesn’t parse HTML and thus displays plain text.

 

Will a game written for multimedia TADS be better than a game written for regular TADS?

No. A crappy game with HTML markup is a crappy game that happens to have HTML markup.

 

Where can I get multimedia TADS?

Both HTML TADS for Windows 32 and HyperTADS for MacOS are freely available for download from the standard repository of all things related to text adventures - the Interactive Fiction archive.

http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/tads2/executables/

 

I’m interested in seeing the new multimedia features in action. What’s the best way for me to do that?

I’ve written a simple demo game called The Golden Skull which shows off many of the new features. If you want just to play the game, download the file called golddemo.zip and play it. I’ve also put together a joke game called The Landing that includes numerous multimedia TADS features.

However, the best demonstrations of some of the cool new features that multimedia TADS offers are probably Arrival, a 1998 IF Competition game by Stephen Granade and Six Stories, a 1999 IF Competition game by me.

 

I’m interested in writing my own multimedia TADS games. What do I need?

You need a multimedia TADS interpreter for testing out your game, plus the newest version of the adv.t library. (the new library has support for the HTML status line; the old version does not) The existing TADS compiler will compile multimedia TADS games, but you might want the new version anyway.

In terms of documentation, HTML TADS for Windows 32 ships with some introductory files. (I’ve made a mirror of these files available for Macintosh and other users) The Golden Skull demo game contains a lot of useful information of value to multimedia TADS authors, and I’ve written up an extensive page called “The Golden Skull - learning multimedia TADS” that may be useful. Finally, I’ve also written up information on how to convert an existing TADS game to a multimedia TADS one.

Of course, this all assumes that you know how to write TADS games already. If you don’t, you need the TADS manual. You may also want to check out my general TADS authoring page.

 

I’ve downloaded HTML TADS for my Windows 95 PC, but there’s no sound! Why not?

You need DirectX for your machine. This is Microsoft’s multimedia system software.

 

I’ve downloaded HyperTADS for my Macintosh and there are no pictures or no MP3 sound! Why not?

You need QuickTime 3 or better to display graphics, and you need a PowerMac to play MP3 audio.

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