TADS 3 Newbie questions

During the History and Literature lessons I teach to 6 grade international
kids we've become hooked on ADRIFT. Then at some point I felt like moving
on and started browsing through IBG and Tads tutorials. Right now I have
several very tempting plot designs which I'd like to try my hands on. (a
little previous programming experience in Java) Something (mostly Emily
Short's recommendations) pointed me towards TADS 3 (NPC agenda,
ActorState, conversation capabilities). Hence the couple of questions.

1. (a silly one) Is it possible to make a sort of trick used at the end of
"Shrapnel" by Adam Cadre, where whatever you type produces RESTART in the
command line?

2. I'd like to write in my native language for a change (Russian). How do
I define new verbs for "look", "look in/search", "take" etc.? Prepositions
instead of "with", "on" etc.?

3. In my game I'd like to be able to choose the "viewpoint" of any NPC at
any time and see the surroundings with "the eyes" of selected character.
(type "I JOHN" or "I JANE" to select the viewpoint) Some of them can see
something, some of them not. Background color change would also be nice.
How do I go about organizing this kind of code?

4. Is it at all worth starting with TADS 3 without going through TADS 2
with all its manual and stuff? (if advised otherwise, I'd really like to
know how do I answer the questions above for the TADS 2?) I am slowly and
steadily moving through TADS 2 manual along with GettingStarted with TADS
3 document, so right now its all kind of jumbled in my head. Or would you
recommend waiting until Inform 7 as a Plan B?

Thank you in advance.

Goodness, that's a lot to ask. And I'm no expert in TADS 3 _at all_.
Um. In any event, you're going to want to read over the library files
that come with TADS 3 and look at the sample programs, and read Eric
Eve's guide. TADS 3 has a steep learning curve and no official manual,
so it will be a challenge. The reward if you can climb this Mt Everest
of Everests is that you'll be able to do almost anything you want in an
IF game, since every part of TADS 3 is customizable.

1. I'm sure the Shrapnel trick is possible in TADS 3, but I haven't the
foggiest clue how.

2. Translating TADS 3 into Russian or any other language is a huge
topic, but in general, defining new verbs isn't difficult. All the
English-specific code is abstracted into the files in the
\lib\adv3\en_us directory. You would need to create a \lib\adv3\ru
directory and translate the files over. The English verbs are defined
in \lib\adv3\en_us\en_us.t; you'd create the Russian version at
\lib\adv3\ru\ru.t.

3. Moving the PC into a different body should be trivial. In the sample
games, there's a line in mainCommon() that reads gPlayerChar = me;.So
there should be no trouble with doing gPlayerChar = John or gPlayerChar
= Jane to change the viewpoint. All the fancy NPC stuff is in actor.t.
(Also, personally, I'd make the verb "AS JOHN" or "BECOME JOHN", not "I
JOHN" since "I" already means "INVENTORY".)

I assume changing the screen color is also trivial, but I've not done
this yet. I note that in banner.t that the BannerWindow class has a
setScreenColor property function, though.

4. Although I'm sure knowing TADS 2 helps with TADS 3 for learning some
of the basic concepts and strategies, I don't know if it's strictly
necessary. Like, I don't know TADS 2, but I know some concepts like
"mix-in class" carried over. And, I wouldn't wait for Inform 7; we know
too little about it to make any recommendations with it. As I
understand it (and I don't really know, just guessing from what's been
said), Inform 7 doesn't extend Inform 6's capabilites per se, it just
makes the authoring of it easier.

-- David Welbourn