TADS has been beaten up over these issues for years now. The full game, with its images, maps, and compass rose in QTADS, looks so polished and professional. It’s almost a shame to default the game to a Play Online version instead of the complete version. Makes some of the IF classics look less appealing, not more.
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The Glk terps will run TADS games in console mode (like a DOS or Linux console interpreter). Many games work really well in console mode, and most others run acceptably. But if the author didn’t ever test it in console mode then it could perhaps be almost unplayable. I haven’t actually ever seen reports of one that’s totally unplayable though.
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For reference, here is what the 1893 opening screen looks like in QTads:
And, for me at least, here is what the opening screen looks like in Lectrote:
In Lectrote, the title, the author, and the instructions for how to navigate the menu are missing. And the instructions at the bottom of the screen (“Please press a key”) are missing, too.
It seems like this game is not designed to be played in an interpreter that doesn’t support multimedia TADS.
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Looks like the instructions are only in the image, so that’s a bit naughty from the perspective of accessibility. Adding images to Glk TADS is probably doable without the rest of HTML TADS support (I think I saw some experimental code that did so, but haven’t tried it myself. Edit: no, I was remembering experimental Hugo graphics code.)
It’s an old game so perhaps accessibility wasn’t as much of a public concern back then, but it’s unfortunate it wasn’t tested in text mode. 1893 used to be a commercial game, maybe it was only sold with an interpreter so that incompatibilities weren’t much of an issue?
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I’m going to have to look at this the next time I get a chance. I thought the library automatically showed menus based on the terp’s ability. I don’t think I have the bandwidth any time soon to rewrite a second version of all the hint and instructional material…
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It might but I haven’t used the built-in menu system before. I decided to be silly and roll my own lmao.
I wonder if it would make sense to put a similar note near the Play Online link for this game, saying, “The online interpreter does not support all features of this game. To make sure the game displays correctly, please use a multimedia TADS interpreter, such as QTads.”
Edit: I’ve now added this to the IFDB page.
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FWIW, there was some work done back in 2021 to make 1893 playable with VoiceOver (the macOS built-in screen reader) in Spatterlight, so that should still work for screen reader users on Mac.
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Ok. Do you want to note that on the IFDB page?
Okay, I dug and tested a little deeper. Stock adv3 menus are indeed displayed by non-HTML terps without special logic, but with certain quirks. Lectrote’s quirk is the worst, where if there is a push-key-for-more prompt within a menu item, the program seems to freeze completely. It seems that all of them share another quirk (I tried Parchment, Lectrote, Gargoyle and Spatterlight in this wave): at least the first time a menu is accessed, the terp acts like the enter key has already been pressed for the first menu item. My game is supposed to provide the player with a menu to choose full or brief introductory text after typing BEGIN, but none of these interpreters provide the option, because they automatically select the first (longer) option. Then when the instructions are accessed, no menu appears but the player is dumped into the content of the first of the menu options (which happens to be “For beginners: concise version”). Subsequently, however, the instructions command will present the selectable menu, which mostly works normally (Gargoyle was almost unusably slow).
@Dannii , is there a common denominator in these TADS runners that causes it to seem like the command line is pre-loaded with an ENTER stroke, as soon as the menus are accessed? QTads does not do this. Much smaller note: in Parchment, the menu headings shift to the right a little bit when the arrow cursor is moved to them.
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As far as I know, only @Morningstar has tried playing it in Spatterlight using VoiceOver, so it probably needs more testing before I could recommend it in good conscience.
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I had another question in mind lately. If this is unsuitable here please move my question to the right place.
How much did 1893 cost when it was a ommercial game?
I started playing it today, using QTads (under Linux) and I’m really impressed by this piece of work.
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The common thing is that they’re all the Glk TADS port. But I don’t know why it would is doing the ENTER thing.
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I forgot what the last word was/is on having Parchment support multimedia HTML TADS.
I remember that we’ve concluded that no modern interpreter supports WebUI TADS, not even QTads, but QTads does support HTML TADS, and so it seems like it ought to be possible for Parchment to support it, too.
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QTads isn’t a Glk terp, so it’s not really comparable.
I want to add at least some of HTML TADS to Glk TADS/Parchment, but it will be a very long process.
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I don’t reproduce that. It did take about ten seconds to load, but then it loaded for me in Parchment.
1893.gam is 70MB large; it seems likely that the download was just slow for you at the time.
I’m not aware of any multimedia-enabled “HTML TADS” games that aren’t completable in Parchment.
FWIW, I’ve updated a few of the interpreters on https://www.ifwiki.org/TADS_interpreters to say “No TADS multimedia support” in the “Multimedia” column. Now, only QTads states clearly that it has multimedia support for TADS.
IFDB prefers to include a “Play Online” button wherever it can, because it is quite challenging for IF newbies to download interpreters.
First, you have to acquaint newbies with the idea of an “interpreter,” and then present them with a list of interpreters, then they have to pick a decent interpreter that works on their OS, then they have to download the interpreter, then download the game file–which can be quite challenging on mobile–and then open the game in the interpreter.
By comparison, the “Play Online” button just works when you click on it, even on mobile. QTads doesn’t even run on iOS or Android.
Currently, IFDB thinks it should include a “Play Online” button for all “TADS 2” and “TADS 3” games, but not “TADS 3 WebUI” games (which, confusingly, is a separate thing from HTML TADS 3).
Most of the top-rated TADS games in IFDB don’t use multimedia, or not in any essential way.
It’s not at all clear to me that games that do have multimedia support, like According to Cain or 1893 would be improved by removing the Play Online button.
I’m not even sure it’s wise to discourage the Play Online button for these games. “This game will play better when you download an interpreter, so here’s a list of interpreters, but, gotcha, only one of these interpreters is the good one, and good luck if you don’t even know what an interpreter is” is not going to make these IF classics more approachable for IF newbies; quite the opposite.
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It took about 22 seconds to load for me when I tried it just now. It did eventually load.
Thanks!
I was wondering if it would make sense to do something different here instead of the standard link to the whole list of TADS interpreters.
I see your point about making newbies jump through hoops. It does kind of make the game look broken, though, when you see that initial menu with the items all on the same line, and no instructions.
I could phrase it more as a “if you run into problems playing this online, try QTads” kind of thing so it’s a little more neutral.
(Catching up on a long backlog of unread messages.)
For the record, I would like to keep the Play Online button for Cain. I do like the idea that people can immediately jump in and try it out without downloading an interpreter.
I spent a good deal of time coding Cain to work reasonably well with Parchment, Lectrote, and QTADS. It required a bit of code that degrades if such-and-such feature is unavailable. So, this might not be true for all TADS games.
Another user added the “Best played in an offline TADS interpreter with multimedia support, like QTads” message to the IFDB page, which I think conveys the choices well. (If TADS had a bigger footprint today, I’d even suggest a checkbox on IFDB that says “This is a multimedia TADS game” and automatically included such a message, with a link to download QTads.)
Obviously, I’d prefer if the experience was the same across all three interpreters (and others) but am aware of the coding hurdles to make that happen.
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The only T3 multimedia/HTML component I use are some < center > < /center > here and there, and the lone offline 'terp honoring the centered text is Qtads, but I don’t have an idea how the 'net terp handle those (I guess that by nature, they honor HTML formatting tags, but in coding, nothing must be taken from granted…)
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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