I am a retired programmer and game designer.  At the beginning of 1999, I volunteered to teach a programming class at a local school (7th-10th grade).  After much consideration, I decided to make Interactive Fiction the focus of the class, and use TADS as the programming language.  I installed TADS 2.2.6 on every machine, as well as version 0.07 of a popular freeware text editor called PFE (found at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/people/cpaap/pfe).

Although I expected the students to have a certain amount of programming aptitude, I didn't want to require a lot of previous programming experience.  When I began teaching the class, I quickly discovered that the TADS manual was overwhelming to beginning programmers.  Although the manual has a lot of excellent reference material, the tutorial sections can be a little tricky for beginners to decipher because they aren't presented in order of increasing complexity.  Furthermore, some portions of the manual are outdated.

I structured the class as a series of interactive labs, starting from the basics and steadily building in complexity.  After the first lab, students could program a bunch of rooms for a player to walk around in.  The next couple of labs taught students how to make use of the TADS class library to create a simple game.  Then we moved on to more difficult topics, looking at how to program unusual interactions.  We are currently exploring advanced topics, such as scripting and non-player characters.

Because the manual wasn't adequate for my needs, I ended up writing detailed "lab documents" to accompany each lab.  Although these documents were originally intended as instructional aids for an interactive classroom setting, some people have found them to be useful as a standalone tutorial.  Therefore, I have decided to share my "tutorial" with the rec.arts.int-fiction community.  I hope you will find the tutorial to be useful, but I make no guarantees.

DISCLAIMERS

1.  Both TADS and PFE have advanced to a more current version than those used at the time of these labs.  I have not used the most current version of these products, and have no idea whether the labs are still relevant (I suspect that they are, but I don't know for sure).

2.  Although I am a strong programmer, adept at learning new languages, I do not consider myself a TADS "expert".  In fact, I have never programmed a full-length game in TADS.  I believe that my lab documents are accurate, but again, I make no guarantees.

Enjoy,

Mark Engelberg
mark.engelberg@bigfoot.com