TADS Integration .gam files

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General_Toxic
Posts: 8
Joined: Wed Jan 25, 2023 2:13 pm

TADS Integration .gam files

Post by General_Toxic »

Hi All,

I was told SCUMM had Text Adventure integration, so I tried to load up my TADS games (.gam) files only to find TADS wasn't supported;

Is there a roadmap for TADs integration, or a workaround I can use to import .gam files? these are the only formats I have these games in.

I thought about compiling a native TADS disk then loads from within it, but I don't have the knowhow for that!
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dreammaster
ScummVM Developer
Posts: 551
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2005 2:16 am
Location: San Jose, California, USA

Re: TADS Integration .gam files

Post by dreammaster »

General_Toxic wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 10:01 am Hi All,

I was told SCUMM had Text Adventure integration, so I tried to load up my TADS games (.gam) files only to find TADS wasn't supported;

Is there a roadmap for TADs integration, or a workaround I can use to import .gam files? these are the only formats I have these games in.

I thought about compiling a native TADS disk then loads from within it, but I don't have the knowhow for that!
Hey. I'm the primary Glk developer. As far as TADS goes, it's kind of an interesting story. Back when I was first porting the various interpreters over to ScummVM, I ran into quite a lot of problems with TADS. First of all, TADS 2 was imported with only some compilation issues that required corrections, however when I started testing it, it didn't work correctly. I'd either need to spend a bunch of time reimporting it again from scratch to see if it worked, or seeing if I could set up a build of the standalone TADS interpreter to compare the two. I had issues trying to get the latter set up, and never had any time to try the former.

It was at this time I was also looking at TADS 3. Now this proved a major challenge. I can't remember all the details, but suffice to say.. the TADS 3 codebase would be a major challenge to make compilable as part of ScummVM. It used a lot of stuff that our newer compiler treats as errors. I tried my best at the time, but it was ending up requiring to make more and more changes to the code to try and get it to compile, that in the end I gave up. At least for the short-term.

As for if/when I'll return to working on them? Probably in the near future, within the next few years. I have very fond memories of TADS. Back before I started working as a ScummVM developer, TADS was my favourite IF environment. I even wrote a book on my experiences using the WordClass (I think it was) replacement library. So I definitely want to see ScummVM eventually support the interpreter. At the immediate moment I'm still in the middle of finishing support for Might and Magic 1, and I'm also seeing a lot of promising progress disassembling one of the early Legend Entertainment text/graphic adventures, so those games will likely be an immediate priority in the short term.
General_Toxic
Posts: 8
Joined: Wed Jan 25, 2023 2:13 pm

Re: TADS Integration .gam files

Post by General_Toxic »

Hey, thanks for the reply and the explanation!

It's funny really as you think a text adventure would be easier to compile than a graphics based engine, but as I say I have 0 experience in game engines and such.

I look forward to hearing any progress made with this, as there's still games that are 'lost' on their original hardware.
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