TADS is an old text adventure engine. It does allow for graphics and things, but trying to make a graphical RPG in TADS is like trying to make a first person shooter in Ren'Py. Sure, it's technically possible, but there are much better engines to choose.
Yeah, I was really confused just now seeing this JRPG using the TADS engine. I've seen a few old TADS games with images but nothing like this.
I understand this game is bad and likely not worth playing, but I'm half tempted to download and check this out just to see how it functions in this engine. Really baffling choice on the part of the developers to use such an antiquated text adventure game engine.
I'm curious though. How the hell did they make an engine designed for a text parser into, well, this? Seems like an accomplishment in its own right honestly, and if they managed to make a proper (even if bad) JRPG in TADS then I'm really wondering why they haven't switched to practically any other engine at this point. TADS is basically C / C++ in terms of programming languages AFAIK, so if they could make this in TADS then it tells me the dev probably has a good enough understanding of game development to use a proper engine.
EDIT: I actually did download this and give it a try. I think it's mislabeled, I don't believe this is using the TADS engine at all. I'm thinking the uploader saw files with a ".tad" extension and assumed that meant it was using the TADS engine but that's not a valid file extension for games using that engine. TADS games generally have extensions like .t3, .t3m, .tcm, and a few similar. I've never seen a .tad file extension in any TADS game.
I believe this is the same "in house" engine that PastureSoft uses on their other games. Should probably be tagged as [Other] rather than [TADS], all of the other PastureSoft titles I've seen are tagged with [Other] for the engine, and screenshots from all of their games look exactly like the style shown here.
Just my two cents! Do with it what you will
EDIT2: Also FWIW - TADS games usually use .t3 or .t3m in place of .exe, and TADS games usually require an interpreter (as in, a separate program to run the game -- basically like QSP for example). However, when you're creating a TADS game it's possible to export a standalone executable .exe file which combines the interpreter and game files into a single all-in-one file. This to me is further proof that this game is not actually TADS, because it has a bunch of subfolders and files separate from the executable which wouldn't exist if this were TADS.
I have spent far too long on trying to figure out this stupid game's engine, lol. I go now!
