Who Should Read This Book?

Well, of course anyone's welcome to read this book, and anyone curious about systems for authoring Interactive Fiction may wish to do so, but this tutorial has nevertheless been written with a particular target audience in mind, namely people who want to learn how to write Interactive Fiction using the adv3Lite library. Even then, it may suit some people better than others. If you're already familiar with TADS 2, or with TADS 3 and adv3, or with another IF authoring system such as Inform, or if you come from a reasonably competent programming background, you may find you can get up to speed faster by reading the adv3Lite Manual. The target reader of this tutorial is assumed to be someone with little or no prior knowledge of authoring Interactive Fiction with a system that's broadly similar to a traditional programming language.

The tutorial walks you through the creation of two very simple games and then a rather more elaborate one, pointing out some of the key features of the TADS 3 language and adv3Lite library along the way. It does not aim to cover every aspect either of the language or of the adv3Lite library, but it does aim to take you to the point where you can start using the system on your own and find out what else you need to know by consulting the TADS 3 System Manual and the adv3Lite Library Manual. The target reader of this tutorial is thus someone who is prepared to work through the sample games step-by-step, typing out the code and trying it out, picking up the basic essentials of the system as they go along. If you don't have the patience for that, or you don't like the sound of that approach, this book may not be for you. If, on the other hand, you're keen to start trying things out but need some guidance, and you'd appreciate a bit of hand-holding through the initial stages then this may be just the tutorial you need.

One further point: it may not make me popular to say so, but the truth is that some people get unstuck and then become frustrated with writing IF with any system because they insist on trying to run before they have properly learned to walk. Although it should be a lot easier to learn to use adv3Lite than adv3, you will still need the patience to master the basics before you can do anything very useful on your own, so if you don't have much prior programming experience or much experience with another IF authoring system, and you are starting more or less from the beginning, you'd probably be well advised to follow this tutorial if you're planning to work with adv3Lite. You may want to get started on your epic adventure right away, and you may feel impatient at following through the creation of some simple games that don't match your grand plans, but the time spent on following this tutorial could well save you time in the long run, since it will help you master the basic skills you need to set out creating your own epic. You wouldn't try to write an epic poem in classical Greek hexameters without first mastering the Greek alphabet; it's probably just as unwise to attempt to write an epic piece of Interactive Fiction without mastering the basics of whatever authoring system you want to use!

Of course, it may be that you don't feel you're a complete beginner but you still feel you'd like some help. In which case you might like to skim through the first few chapters of this book and only start following it closely, say, when you reach Chapter 7 and we start working on a more advanced game. That's entirely up to you. In the next section I'll say a little more about the various ways you can use this book.