Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: gmd.de!xlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!noc.near.net!viewlog.viewlogic.com!allen
From: allen@viewlogic.com (Dave Allen)
Subject: TADS request: a Windows DLL?
Message-ID: <1993Aug13.131844.4810@viewlogic.com>
Sender: news@viewlogic.com
Nntp-Posting-Host: hex
Organization: Viewlogic Systems Inc.
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1993 13:18:44 GMT
Lines: 29

Hi all.

I am writing a combination adventure / exploration game for MS-Windows.
It has a graphical map, with point-and-click capabilities.

I own TADS, and I like it; I want to use TADS for the adventure part.
Basically, click on the map until you get someplace interesting, and then
interact with the characters within TADS.

Right now, I can only do this by having two different programs, the graphical
one and the TADS one.  This works, but looks pretty dumb; the graphical tool
throws up a dialog box which tells the player a password to enter into TADS
to make TADS "teleport" the player to the location on the map.

I have a suggestion: would it be possible to make TADS.DLL, a dynamic
link library for Windows?  Then I could write my graphics code, make some
API calls to a TADS library, and manage the user text input / output
myself.  I am using Borland C++ 3.1 and Windows 3.1.

Basically, I think the API would need to have three calls:
tads_init (name) char *name; /* Ask TADS to load the indicated .gam file */
tads_input (line) char *line; /* Send a line of user input to TADS */
tads_output_handler (func) void *func; /* Tell TADS to call this function to
   print each line of output */

What do you think?  How hard is it to make a DLL?  All I know about the DLL
is how to spell it.

- Dave Allen: allen@viewlogic.com
