Tara McGrew

Note: Tara's nickname on ifMud and IFWiki is "vaporware". Tara was previously credited under a different first name.

Author Credits

• Food for Thought (26-May-2007; Z-code). Download. Not a game, but an implementation of the Dining Philosophers problem.
• Lowell's Paradise (28-May-2008; Z-code). bouchercomp entry.
• PAX East 2010 Speed-IF (with Kate Matthews; 27-Mar-2010; Z-code). PAX Speed-IF.
• Merk (with Kate Matthews; 12-Mar-2011; Z-code). PAX East 2011 Speed-IF.
• Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (with Herman Melville; 18-Oct-2014; Glulx). Not a game, but a nominally interactive tale of maritime revenge.
• Adventure: A Modern Classic (01-Oct-2015; Z-code). Ported to ZIL as an example for ZILF.
• Rascal (1-Feb-2026; Z-code). A roguelike/parser hybrid included with ZILF as an example.

Tech Credits

• ZLR at foss.heptapod.net. ZLR is a Z-machine interpreter that uses just-in-time compilation in an attempt to speed up complicated games.
• Contributed low-level library ("template layer") code and technical guidance to Inform 7.
  • Library contributions include support for Glulx games, rule-based parser disambiguation ("does the player mean..."), and dictionary/set data types (the "relation" kind-of-value).
• Wrote several Inform 7 extensions, including Dynamic Tables, Dynamic Objects, and Hypothetical Questions.
• Wrote FyreVM, the Textfyre virtual machine.
• Created Guncho, a mud that uses players' Inform 7 code. Original debuted as an April Fools' Day joke in 2008, later revealed to be real the next day.
• Wrote ZILF and ZAPF, a ZIL compiler and Z-machine assembler.
• Technical editor for Aaron Reed's book, Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7.
• Reverse-engineered the Cornerstone VM, and produced a toolchain for it (Linchpin/Chisel/etc). (Again, published on April Fools' Day under a pretext.)

Organizational Credits

• Organized GunchoComp in 2009.

Links

• Hans Prestige - Tara's website.

This article is a stub. You can help IFWiki by expanding it.
TODO: vaporware lists on her ifmud profile the following IF work: Throw Zack's Computer Out The Window, YACC for Inform, ATC for Snack, Food for Thought. Can we find out some more detail on the ones we're missing?