TADS Interpreter Command Recording

[Mikawa]

Recently I came across that the format of the command recording files is different between HTML Tads

<line>x me
<line>look around

and QTads

>x me
>look around

It isn’t quite clear to me, why.

[jford]

Just guessing, but the angle brackets make look like a custom tag, allowing the text to be passed through an HTML interpreter.

[RealNC]

@Mikawa

Recently I came across that the format of the command recording files is different between HTML Tads […] and QTads.

I assume you’re using the “record” command? Are you getting these results with the same game?

[Mikawa]

Yes, correct.
I wanted to give my betatesters a file produced with the “record” command so that they are able to play to a certain point, regardless of the version.
But it turned out that the formats are different so that a Qtads user was not able to read a command script produced by a HTML Tads user.

[dddddd]

tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/scripts.htm

There are two kinds of script files: Command-line scripts and Event scripts.

[Mikawa]

Ok, I was wrong.
The “record” command produces command scripts and the “record events” command produces event scripts.
The Tads Workbench under Windows records automatically event scripts, so I failed to replay these scripts manually by typing “replay” (which seems to replay only command scripts). Now it occurs that there is no “replay events” function and no replayEventsAction. Why?

The documentation reads:

When the Interpreter starts reading a script, it checks the first line to see if it contains this text. If so, it treats it as an Event script; if not, it treats the script as a regular Command-line script. After the initial line, the rest of the file contains event lines and comment lines. An event line starts with an event type tag; everything else is a comment line. The Interpreter ignores comment lines.

This seems quite confusing for me. Is there a possibility to let the interpreter replay an event script file from outside Windows Workbench?

[jford]

Mikawa:

Start the game from within Workbench, enter the command “record” on the command line, then play the game.

You can then replay that recorded .cmd file (not the .cmd file visible in Workbench) from an external interpreter.

Jerry

[RealNC]

@Mikawa

This seems quite confusing for me. Is there a possibility to let the interpreter replay an event script file from outside Windows Workbench?

Unfortunately, no. Only the Workbench has the necessary plumbing to allow replaying arbitrary input events.

You need to distribute regular input scripts to your testers.

[Mikawa]

Ok, thanks for pointing that out. I’ve tested it and it seems to work.