Tips on Designing your Game

This chapter is a somewhat personal take on the practical aspects of writing IF with TADS 3. I offer some advice on the design and development processes that I find to work for me, and some ideas on what goes into a good work of IF.

Lest the title create any confusion, let me clear one thing up: this isn't a technical tutorial in how to set up a game project or write game code. I'm going to assume here that you already know your way around the TADS language and tools. This chapter is more about the non-technical aspects of planning a game - how you develop an idea into a plan, and how you implement the plan as a program.

This chapter is in two parts. The first part is about the practical "process" aspects of creating IF. The second is about the aesthetics of IF: namely what makes an enjoyable adventure game.