Welcome to the TADS Player Kit

Thanks for installing the TADS Player Kit! This kit has everything you need to play games written with TADS. It works with games created using TADS 2 and TADS 3.

How to start a game

To run a TADS game, go to the Windows Start menu, click on TADS, and then click on HTML TADS Interpreter.

When the Interpreter window appears, you can click on the Browse for Games button, or use the menus to select File | Open.

Now just select the .gam or .t3 file for the game you want to play.

(To play a TADS game you find on the Internet, simply download it onto your computer's hard disk first, then select the downloaded file as we just described.)

Where to find TADS games

IFDB, the Interactive Fiction Database, has listings for thousands of Interactive Fiction titles, with descriptions, user reviews, recommendations, and download links. You can find most TADS games that have ever been released, along with games for other IF authoring systems.

The central distribution hub for IF is the IF Archive. The Archive has the Internet's most extensive public collection of material related to Interactive Fiction, including games, books, articles, and programming systems. TADS games are collected in the directory if-archive/games/tads/.

Learn more about TADS

For TADS news, information, manuals, and downloads, visit the official TADS Web site, www.tads.org.

The TADS site also has links to the Interactive Fiction community and other IF resources, such as discussion forums, blogs, and other IF authoring systems.

Write your own game

If you'd like to write your own Interactive Fiction, you can find the full TADS Author's Kit on tads.org. The Author's Kit is free and has everything you need to create original IF with TADS.

Problems?

If you run into any problems with TADS, check the system compatibility notes. There are a few known problems with certain Windows configurations, and the notes explain how to fix these. You should read the compatibility notes in particular if:

HTML TADS is crashing;
you're using Wine;
you're using a non-English version of Windows.