Winter 2022/2023 TADS Jam

An annual IF/Text Adventure competition with a focus on TADS or Zilf (parser) games.  Graphics and audio are allowed, clickable words are allowed, but the core method of control should be a keyboard (or voice if it supports play for those for whom keyboard entry is difficult).

Purpose

The Text Adventure Development System (TADS) is a mature system for writing text based Interactive Fiction (IF). Adv3 is a detailed “world” environment that can be used to develop very rich and immersive IF games. Adv3Lite is also a very rich “world” environment developed by Eric Eve that is more “author friendly”. It is not just a stripped down version of the Adv3 library. It contains many features similar to those in Inform 7 such as regions and tools to help with non-player character (NPC) conversations and interaction.

Zilf is in active development. It has an original feel that takes up back to the early days of IF.

TADS and Zilf havw reputations that they are difficult to learn. As with any programming language, it requires study and practice.

The TADS Jam’s intent is to showcase new IF developed with TADS or Zilf  and to encourage new authors to learn these feature rich languages.

Note: ZIL is the Zork Implementation Language the language used by Infocom in the last century. See Zarf’s Article. Zilf is the compiler based upon Zil developed by Jesse McGrew. See: Zilf Getting Started Page

Schedule

• December 1, 2022 through January 7, 202 - Registration & Submission Window Open
• January 7, 2023 through January 31, 2023 - Voting Window
• February 5^, 2023  - Results Announced

Rules

1. The game must be free to play.
2. The game must be new.
3. The game must use the TADS or Zilf Development Systems. 
4. The game must be in English.
5. The game may not contain any copyrighted material that you don't have the rights to use.
6. Entrants are encouraged to share their source code or compiled versions of their game with other entrants during the entire jam. Compiled versions of the game should not be published publicly prior to the start of voting.  (In the spirit of promoting TADS, new tools and libraries will be judged in a separate category.) 
7. Entrants must be respectful to the jam organizers, other participants, people voting and discussing the games etc.
8. Entrants may not in any way try to make other people vote on their game specifically.
9. Hateful, racist, misogynist or homophobic content, or any content that is meant to make any group of people or individuals feel bad about themselves will not be tolerated.
10. The jam organizers reserve the right to remove a game from the jam or require the entrant to remove content that runs counter to jam rules.
11. Judges will be asked to rate the overall enjoyment they got out of the game. This determines the final ranking.
12. Entrants can be judges, but cannot vote on their own game.
13. An entrant can choose to submit a game to the jam as non-competitive, meaning it won’t be possible to vote on that entry. 
14. The jam organizers may enter their own games in the jam, but not in the competition.

We strongly encourage entrants to:

• Make a game that's complete and well tested.
• Utilize the time before the jam starts to learn TADS 3.

Resources

https://intfiction.org/c/authoring/tads/20   (The TADS Category at Intfiction)

https://www.ifwiki.org/Winter_TADS_Jam_2022/2023  (IF Wiki Competition Page)

Prizes

Bob Bates has graciously provided copies of Thaumistry: In Charm's Way as a promotion for TADS Jam. Many thanks!

AND

A commemorative mug for Best Overall Game.

Organizers

Fos1 (see https://intfiction.org)