Having just completed a set of screen capture videos for a non-IF project I’ve been working on, it occurred to me that maybe, just possibly, it might be useful to do a few quick TADS 3 tutorial videos.
So I did what comes naturally. I went over to YouTube and searched for “TADS 3.”
Imagine my surprise! Turns out, there’s a whole series of videos with that title, but nothing to do with interactive fiction programming. It’s some seriously wacky-ass stuff – a quite polished video production, with no apparent script continuity and content suitable only for paranoid insomniacs. I could only watch about three minutes before my head exploded.
I can’t honestly recommend watching any of it, but maybe you have a higher tolerance for bizarre LSD-fueled Satanic fantasy than I do.
Here’s a first attempt. I may refine the concept later, if anybody thinks it might be useful.
I’ve seen embedded videos on another forum that uses this same engine, but embedding doesn’t seem to be working, so here’s a link: youtube.com/watch?v=Glhv-0- … e=youtu.be
This cuts down on the places one has to search to find an official release. In the video for example, the instructions are to hunt down forum threads. It’s not good if people can’t find something easy and quick in a single place.
That, at least, shouldn’t be necessary, since there’s always a link to the latest release at http://users.ox.ac.uk/~manc0049/TADSGuide/adv3Lite.htm (all right, not the easiest URL to remember but it may be better than searching through forum posts, and it pretty much comes out at the top if you Google for “adv3lite”).
That said, I’ll look into your GitHub suggestion and see if I can figure out how to get it to work.
Nicely done, and just about right on target, lengthwise.
If you’re taking suggestions for future tutorials, you might consider showing how to run the debugger—set a breakpoint, run the code, evaluate and change variable values.
Good idea. After posting it, I started thinking what I really ought to do are two videos (at minimum): one about using Workbench, complete with breakpoint and Watch Expressions action, and one about using the documentation. And maybe a third that shows I7 users what T3 coding looks like – I think that might not be a bad idea.
