Linux, Mac and Windows versions are provided, as well as the full sources.
Note that starting with this version, Mac OS X 10.6 is no longer supported. You’ll need 10.7 or higher.
Changelog since 2.1.6:
The TADS virtual machines have been updated to 2.5.17/3.1.3
Added support for Mac OS X high resolution (retina) displays.
The interpreter will now try to detect whether a game is stuck in an infinite loop when quitting. This should avoid the situation where the QTads window is closed, but a process is still running in the background, consuming CPU cycles.
Selecting text with the mouse is now supported, as is drag&drop of text to and from the game window. Furthermore, you can paste the current word under the mouse cursor instead of selecting it by holding down the “Ctrl” key (“Command” key on the Mac) while double clicking. This behavior can be disabled in the configuration dialog in the “Misc” section.
On Mac OS X, the main window should now properly get focus again when closing a dialog.
Text-grid banner windows should now be able to correctly show their background color instead of always using black.
Printing a table without any cells in it will no longer result in the screen getting “stuck” and failing to update.
Fixed a problem with the online update check, which would result in a connection error, or sometimes an application crash. Thanks to Denis Pokataev for finding and fixing the crash case.
Added Ctrl+F command history search. It finds previous commands that begin with the same text as the text that is currently to the left of the input caret. If multiple matches are found, repeatedly pressing Ctrl+F will cycle through all matches. Thanks to tetzank for the patch.
Looks good on my iMac (10.11.2) and laptop (10.7.5).
When the app is launched, it opens a completely blank window and waits for you to hit cmd-O to open a game. . People may think that that’s a bug. Wouldn’t hurt to have placeholder text in the window saying “Hi! Hit cmd-O to open a game!”
If you open a game when there’s already a game running, your previous game is silently quit and replaced. Usually the app pops up a confirm dialog when you close a game.
I’ll also note that Sourceforge has pretty well blown their reputation as a hosting service. Github has a good project-page feature now.
There’s gonna be a small bugfix release after this to iron out the annoyances. It’s been three years since the last version and I just wanted to get this out right now before I start breaking things in it.
I’ve only migrated the source code repository to github so far. Will need to finally move everything else over as well. It’s one of those things perpetually on the “I’ll get around to it soon” list
Please forgive my ignorance here, but - could QTads be somehow used as the base for an iOS Tads terp? Is it technically possible, and realistically feasible?
And out of curiosity - does QTads fully support HTML Tads and all the multimedia that comes with it?
I don’t have a Mac nor use Linux, never did and never intend to, so I don’t know why I’m so interested, but you know - I just am.
Yes (to all three questions.) All of its dependencies are available on iOS too. It’s not trivial work though. Mobile platforms have different expectations from applications (mouse-driven GUIs don’t work well so it would need a touch-driven one, file I/O has a different security policy, suspend/resume would need to be implemented for when you get phone calls or the battery is low, etc.)
There’s been some experimentation with building on mobile platforms, but frankly I lack the motivation for this since I don’t use mobile platforms myself (other than making phone calls.) Two of these experiments were Kevin Boone’s BlackBerry PlayBook port:
I’m not a coder, but let me throw the idea out there - if someone wanted to make a better TADS terp for the android (I understand the current one is not 100% yet and hasn’t seen much development) could they expand on your Android experiment, as a basis?
I’ve this thing for official terps, sorry. It’s a personal thing. But I like the state of QTads - it seems to me to be the best “non-official” terp currently available, even better than Gargoyle, which seems to be everywhere but which eats up features and doesn’t eeven let players know.
Someone recently played Ecdysis on Gargoyle and didn’t even know it had hyperlinks, I recall. I’m sorry, that’s not a terp I’d like to use. QTads, on the other hand, seems more than up to the task, so yeah! Even if I personally don’t use it, I’m interested! Who knows, maybe I WILL use it - in an iOS incarnation someday!
You gave a reason why you were unable to try it. I then corrected you. I don’t know why you need to make excuses when no one is accusing you of anything.
Well, I figured the “sorry” was a good idea because, in effect, I’d just said “I do not plan on using that thing you’ve been working on for years, and the reason is just because” to an author. I was practically asking to be slapped in the face with a fish.
I know you didn’t accuse me. And I did like being pointed out it ran on Windows, because I’d somehow missed that.
Thanks! I’m very interested in any potential issues you come across on XP, since the toolchain the interpreter is using only officially supports Vista and newer.
It’s a personal thing. But I like the state of QTads - it seems to me to be the best “non-official” terp currently available, even better than Gargoyle, which seems to be everywhere but which eats up features and doesn’t eeven let players know.