TAB - Windows IF/Text Adventure Maker

Games written in Inform, Glulx, TADS, CAT, HUGO and similar. Pleas for help, puzzles, bug reports etc.

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auraes
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Re: TAB - Windows IF/Text Adventure Maker

#61 Post by auraes » Tue Mar 22, 2022 10:32 am

A suggestion concerning definite and indefinite articles, very useful for translations.

Vocabulary:
Deletions:
1. a
2. of
3. the
4. some
5. an

Objects: (additional options for objects)
#1
/apple/
Definite article [3] (the word index in the Vocabulary.Deletions table)
Indefinite article [5]

#2
/pear/
Definite article [3]
Indefinite article [1]

New tags: (something like this. I didn't understand everything about the tags)
%definiten1%
%indefiniten1%

System Message 1:
You now have %definiten1%

>get apple
You now have the apple.

It would be nice to have a tag for the name of the object entered by the player:
%definiten1%
%indefiniten1%
but also for any object:
%objdefinite1%
%objindefinite2%

That's all. I probably said some nonsense, but hey?

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catventure
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Re: TAB - Windows IF/Text Adventure Maker

#62 Post by catventure » Tue Mar 22, 2022 1:56 pm

Hi auraes,

Thanks again for your interest in the TAB program and for giving it a try.
Never thought anybody would try the TAB using French language!

I guess it *might* be possible though especially if using simple VERB NOUN coding...

I am wondering if you would actually be able to complete a French version of the little demo game that I explained in the "QuickTutorial".

Could be fun to try - although I do not speak French and am not very familiar with it. :)

There is only an English language version and of course all the Editor, file requesters, captions and whatnot are all in English. (but if it did work then I could change all that internally and maybe release a separate French version of Editor/Player if required!)

Also, I wrote that the software is not guaranteed to perform properly on all systems or under all circumstances.

I chose a non-standard character "¯" (ALT+0175) to implement the "long¯word" type of vocabulary entries which can give some added flexibility to TAB.

>>>I seem to be grumbling a bit, but I just tried the software, and I don't understand why ">aller est" (>go east) works, and ">est" (>east) doesn't. I must have broken something<<<

I tried that to see and it worked fine by making "aller" a synonym of "go" eg:

/go/aller/

and by putting "est" as the KEYWORD (first word in entry) of the direction noun "east"

/est/east/e/eastward/eastwards/

[See image]

Image

>>>Your USERGUIDE.txt file uses special characters (‘ ¯ “) that may cause problems when opening it. If you do not want to save it in UTF-8, propose a version USERGUIDE_UTF-8.txt<<<

I was unaware of this. Thanks for your report. Will look into that. A second version could be good idea. :)

You gave me something to think about with new %tags% for definite/indefinite article.
Such a change might be possible and despite affecting backwards compatibility with previous databases it could be a good addition going forward - but I need some time to think about implementing that.

Thanks for your feedback,
catventure/Phil.
TAB is an offline, downloadable, parser-based retro text adventure/interactive creator for Windows XP and above.
It is similar to popular 80's adventure creators like QUILL, PAW, STAC or GAC.
http://tab.thinbasic.com/

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catventure
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Re: TAB - Windows IF/Text Adventure Maker

#63 Post by catventure » Thu Mar 24, 2022 3:47 pm

Hi auraes,

>>>Your USERGUIDE.txt file uses special characters (‘ ¯ “) that may cause problems when opening it. If you do not want to save it in UTF-8, propose a version USERGUIDE_UTF-8.txt<<<

The same special character can be obtained thru using ALT+238 as well as ALT+0175 - but I updated the userguide.txt now with the ALT+238 character to avoid the problem when opening and changed the instruction for users to employ the ALT+238 combo to obtain the symbol. Will be present in next release.

Thanks for reporting that.

catventure.
TAB is an offline, downloadable, parser-based retro text adventure/interactive creator for Windows XP and above.
It is similar to popular 80's adventure creators like QUILL, PAW, STAC or GAC.
http://tab.thinbasic.com/

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auraes
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Re: TAB - Windows IF/Text Adventure Maker

#64 Post by auraes » Fri Mar 25, 2022 7:04 am

Your system message #99 is " what??"
You don't seem to use it in this case, is it intended for something else?

Code: Select all

Please tell me your next command.
>get
get what??
I have ported a small French game with your system, and apart from some serious translation problems of the system messages (this is also the case for DAAD, Adventuron etc), it works well.
I only used instructions that are compatible with The QuilL, which must represent less than 10% of your software's potential!

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catventure
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Re: TAB - Windows IF/Text Adventure Maker

#65 Post by catventure » Fri Mar 25, 2022 2:09 pm

Thanks for this info, auraes.

I'm very, very impressed about what you have done and also intensely interested about some of the problems you may have come across during translation.
I emailed you about that today and my idea where I would like to think I can resolve the snags you hit.

You are very observant. I believe you're right about the System Message 99. It appears over time and subsequent versions the System Message 99 is not called or used anymore now, which would free up that slot for something else... A good thing.
I can see that the message "get what?" that you quoted is now dealt with by the "catch-all" entries toward the end of the default response list which effectively traps such a single verb input made by the player.

Regards,
catventure.
TAB is an offline, downloadable, parser-based retro text adventure/interactive creator for Windows XP and above.
It is similar to popular 80's adventure creators like QUILL, PAW, STAC or GAC.
http://tab.thinbasic.com/

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catventure
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Re: TAB - Windows IF/Text Adventure Maker

#66 Post by catventure » Sat Apr 23, 2022 5:51 pm

Hello,

I posted a new version 70 to the TAB site today:
http://tab.thinbasic.com/

Regards,
catventure.
TAB is an offline, downloadable, parser-based retro text adventure/interactive creator for Windows XP and above.
It is similar to popular 80's adventure creators like QUILL, PAW, STAC or GAC.
http://tab.thinbasic.com/

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catventure
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Re: TAB - Windows IF/Text Adventure Maker

#67 Post by catventure » Sun May 15, 2022 11:24 am

>>>There is only an English language version and of course all the Editor, file requesters, captions and whatnot are all in English. (but if it did work then I could change all that internally and maybe release a separate French version of Editor/Player if required!)<<<

I included in the latest version the optional ability to customize/configure various internal TAB messages (like those mentioned in the quote above) in the "System Messages" for the standalone TAB game PLAYER. This will be good for translation purposes. For instance they could be changed to French.
(Also built in to TAB are the possibility of using up to six alternative "object prefixes" which can be printed before the object noun by associated default tags used in text)
These can be very useful and handy for language translation too and a great implementation suggestion by forum member auraes - I hoping to post an example French game demo in an upcoming release of the program.

Regards,
catventure.
TAB is an offline, downloadable, parser-based retro text adventure/interactive creator for Windows XP and above.
It is similar to popular 80's adventure creators like QUILL, PAW, STAC or GAC.
http://tab.thinbasic.com/

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catventure
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Re: TAB - Windows IF/Text Adventure Maker

#68 Post by catventure » Mon May 23, 2022 4:32 pm

Hi,

Today I posted another update to TAB v70 (a day early as I busy tomorrow)
http://tab.thinbasic.com/

catventure.
TAB is an offline, downloadable, parser-based retro text adventure/interactive creator for Windows XP and above.
It is similar to popular 80's adventure creators like QUILL, PAW, STAC or GAC.
http://tab.thinbasic.com/

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catventure
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Re: TAB - Windows IF/Text Adventure Maker

#69 Post by catventure » Fri Feb 03, 2023 11:19 pm

Hi,

Game author Ron Edwards contacted me and reported he had successfully converted one of his old TRS Basic adventures with the "TAB for Windows" adventure system as a test game to share with some friends. Ron has given permission to share it with others who may be interested.

A short mini-adventure, and very much of its time, he wrote it when he was just a young high schooler.

He specifically wanted to see if he could recreate it "as is" for nostalgia purposes - so, as such, it has not been expanded upon and does not take advantage of the full range of program features and extended parser facilities that are potentially available in the TAB program.

His game, "Xanadu", is a small text-only dungeon adventure with brief descriptions. It uses a very simple VERB NOUN format.

Ron says that he was able to reprogram his project with TAB after three days learning the system.

All the required vocabulary words can be easily looked up to help players discover the correct input format required to solve the game.

Windows XP and above. 32/64bit.

You can download it from here:
https://catventure.itch.io/xanadu

It is suggested to view the readme.txt file before playing.

Regards,
catventure.
TAB is an offline, downloadable, parser-based retro text adventure/interactive creator for Windows XP and above.
It is similar to popular 80's adventure creators like QUILL, PAW, STAC or GAC.
http://tab.thinbasic.com/

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catventure
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Re: TAB - Windows IF/Text Adventure Maker

#70 Post by catventure » Sat Feb 04, 2023 2:34 pm

Hello,

I was asked to contribute an info article about the TAB creator for the latest issue of popular Spanish adventure club fanzine: CAAD#58
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37J1kRgjz2g
Video is in Spanish 🙂
View article (use translate)
https://caad.club/parser-tab-2/

Regards,
Philip. (aka catventure)
Last edited by catventure on Sun Feb 05, 2023 10:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
TAB is an offline, downloadable, parser-based retro text adventure/interactive creator for Windows XP and above.
It is similar to popular 80's adventure creators like QUILL, PAW, STAC or GAC.
http://tab.thinbasic.com/

Denk
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Re: TAB - Windows IF/Text Adventure Maker

#71 Post by Denk » Sat Feb 04, 2023 6:18 pm

catventure wrote:
Fri Feb 03, 2023 11:19 pm
Game author Ron Edwards contacted me and reported he had successfully converted one of his old TRS Basic adventures with the "TAB for Windows" adventure system as a test game to share with some friends. Ron has given permission to share it with others who may be interested.
Nice, keep up the good work Catventure. I only played one TAB game (The Arkham Abomination) and it was pretty good. In the end it doesn't matter which engine was used to built a good game, as along as it is well done. Just a shame that the games cannot be played on Mac and online. Perhaps in the future your programming language can compile to Mac and/or online play?

Alastair
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Re: TAB - Windows IF/Text Adventure Maker

#72 Post by Alastair » Sat Feb 04, 2023 11:55 pm

Denk wrote:
Sat Feb 04, 2023 6:18 pm
Just a shame that the games cannot be played on Mac and online.
Perhaps it will run under Wine, see https://www.winehq.org/ (though you may need a third party application, https://wiki.winehq.org/Third_Party_Applications).

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catventure
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Re: TAB - Windows IF/Text Adventure Maker

#73 Post by catventure » Sun Jul 30, 2023 2:33 pm

Hi Denk,

Sorry for delay in reply.

Realm of Obsidian: An older TAB text adventure by Amy Kerns for a Spring Thing Comp in 2009.

https://amethystgames.wordpress.com/92-2/

MAC:
Amy says "Parallels Desktop for the Mac? I haven’t gotten around to posting this video in my blog, but here you go. Omar got my game to run beautifully using this emulator."

Amy posted a video showing this:

https://youtu.be/hKCr9TZtcFI

LINUX:
In Apr 2022 An intfiction.org member posted:

"I'm happy to report that it (TAB) runs fine under WIne 5.0.3 (Debian 5.0.3-3)"

I cannot verify the above - but if anyone tries it on mac or linux please let me know.

(This game was updated to run under latest TABv70. If anyone wants the database to run in the TAB Editor, let me know)

A standalone version of the game (with no sounds or music) can be downloaded here: http://tab.thinbasic.com/Realm.zip
* Please note this game was unfinished and that is why it is not included on the TAB games page at:
https://catventure.itch.io/

Regards,
catventure.
TAB is an offline, downloadable, parser-based retro text adventure/interactive creator for Windows XP and above.
It is similar to popular 80's adventure creators like QUILL, PAW, STAC or GAC.
http://tab.thinbasic.com/

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catventure
Posts: 103
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Location: UK
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Re: TAB - Windows IF/Text Adventure Maker

#74 Post by catventure » Sat Aug 12, 2023 3:48 pm

Here is the small example standalone text only parser game test version written using TAB for Windows in French language referred to earlier in this topic.
Can be played offline. Win XP and above; 32/64bit.

Direct Download link: http://tab.thinbasic.com/cqvdle.zip
(700kb)

Note: this is mainly a verb-noun example and doesn't use or show the full potential of the TAB system.

If anybody wants the database to load into TAB (text only version) to check out how it was constructed please let me know.

Regards,
catventure.

[Special Note: It's possible that some virus checkers may produce a "false-positive" warning. You may need to tell your antivirus program to create an 'exception' for the game app in order to allow the program to run]
TAB is an offline, downloadable, parser-based retro text adventure/interactive creator for Windows XP and above.
It is similar to popular 80's adventure creators like QUILL, PAW, STAC or GAC.
http://tab.thinbasic.com/

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catventure
Posts: 103
Joined: Wed Jul 07, 2010 11:58 am
Location: UK
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Re: TAB - Windows IF/Text Adventure Maker

#75 Post by catventure » Sun Aug 13, 2023 7:03 pm

Today worked on a gfx version of TAB in addition to the 2 already available for an upcoming release.
This one has only one graphicbox and is a split-screen type.
There are coding action commands for showing images in the graphicbox eg: locations, characters, object and whatnot.
You can also display full motion video files in wmv format.

Image

Regards,
catventure.
TAB is an offline, downloadable, parser-based retro text adventure/interactive creator for Windows XP and above.
It is similar to popular 80's adventure creators like QUILL, PAW, STAC or GAC.
http://tab.thinbasic.com/

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