QTads 2.0.1 released (Linux/Mac/Unix Multimedia TADS 'terp)

Technical Development Interpreters
1

I’ve just released QTads 2.0.1; mainly a bug-fix release. Thanks to everyone for reporting them! Downloads for Linux, Mac, Windows, as well as the full source code can be found at:

qtads.sourceforge.net/downloads.shtml

The main reason a Windows version is offered is so that authors can test their works with it if they wish. If something seems to work differently compared to HTML TADS, consider it a bug; and if possible, please send me a bug report about it.

Changes since 2.0.0:

  • A new “Restart Current Game” menu option has been added.
  • Digital sound fade-in, fade-out and cross-fades are now fully supported on all operating systems. I think…
  • MP3 and WAV sounds that use “odd” sampling rates should now play correctly. Previously, they sometimes were playing at double speed.
  • Input of non-ASCII characters for languages that use compose keys (“dead keys”) should now work correctly for TADS 3.
  • A memory leak during unloading of MP3 and WAV sounds has been fixed.
  • Decoding of long MP3s on Windows should not take several millenia anymore.
  • A new configuration option was introduced that allows for selecting the character set encoding to be used when playing TADS 2 games. Previously, the interpreter was treating TADS 2 games the same as TADS 3 ones, which wouldn’t work correctly with games that use characters outside the ASCII range.
  • When built on Linux with Qt 4.6 or newer, appropriate icons from the desktop environment’s current theme will be used for the various menu items.
  • A sane set of default fonts and sizes is now used on Mac and Windows.
  • Sometimes the interpreter would not scroll down to the bottom when opening TADS 2 games. This should no longer be occuring.
2

Thanks for your work on this!

3

Idea: it’d be nice if, when the game has finished or quit, the status line noted that, like HTML TADS for Windows does. I used to think it was unnecessary, but today I was playing a game on QTADS that quit unexpectedly, and it took me ages to work out what had happened. (Unexpectedly for me as the player, I mean. There was no *** The End *** or anything. But it was supposed to quit at that point; it wasn’t a crash.)

4

You’re right. The current behavior is to reset the window’s title when a game ends, but that’s a bit too subtle to notice. A status message makes it more apparent that the game has ended.

5

I just re-released the Mac version in order to fix a nasty scroll history bug. It’s still version 2.0.1 since the bug was in an external library, not in the interpreter itself:

Updated Intel version
Updated PowerPC version