[Announce] IFDB
Mike Roberts
offering lists of suggestions when someone asks a question like "what are
the best IF games for newbies?" or "what are your favorite mazes?". That
helpful spirit is great, but I've often thought it would be even better if
we could capture those occasional flurries of suggestions somewhere, so that
people can find them later. Sure, there's the Google archive, but I don't
think most people have the patience to sift through old rgif postings to
find game suggestions.
So I've been putting together a new web site designed around this idea. The
new site is called IFDB, for the Interactive Fiction Database, and it's
ready for use. You can find it at http://ifdb.tads.org.
(Despite the domain name, it's not a TADS-specific site - it's open to games
in all systems. It's just that ifdb.org wasn't available, and it was easy
to set up a subdomain.)
The site is very much in the "Web 2.0" mold - meaning it's all about
*community* content. When you look at it *today*, before people have
started using it, it's probably going to look like a Baf's Guide clone, and
you might wonder what the point is. But if you and other people start
adding to the site, in the ways I'll describe in a moment, it will quickly
become something rather different from anything else we have at the moment.
The real point of the site is person-to-person recommendations. It's not a
"top 10" scoreboard - we have a couple of those already, and they're
certainly good resources, but what they give you is a sort of community-wide
average opinion. It's also not a review site per se, although it does
include reviews among its features. Instead, the main thrust of the site is
to provide tools that let you recommend what *you* like, and then make it
easy for you to find the specific kinds of recommendations you're looking
for. If you've ever felt that your favorite games don't get enough
attention, you should like this site.
Some of the tools:
- Recommended Lists. This is the same idea as posting your favorite games
of type X to rgif, but now the list is stored where people can find it and
discover it. *You* decide the topic of your lists - you can create lists on
any topic, and you can create as many as you like. The entries on your
lists link directly to full information on each game, including download
instructions.
- Tags. You can tag a game (that is, associate a keyword with the game) to
let other people know that the game has some attribute that's interesting to
you - subject matter, style, whatever. You can search for games tagged with
a particular keyword.
- Reviews and ratings. This isn't exactly a new idea, but reviews on IFDB
are linked in lots of interesting ways. You can create a collection of your
reviews using tags, so that another user can easily see a list of all of the
reviews in the collection - for instance, you could create a collection of
your IF Comp 2007 reviews. When someone sees a review of yours that they
like, they can follow links to learn more about you via your profile, or to
see all of your other reviews. This is another important person-to-person
recommendation mechanism - it lets you find recommendations by finding a
reviewer you trust, and then looking to see what else they like.
IFDB is designed to reward browsing. It has a full catalog of games - each
game has its own page that collects the game's overview information,
download links, tags, reviews, and recommendations. IFDB automatically
finds Recommended Lists that include a game, and shows a selection of those
lists on the game's page; it also looks for people who gave the game a high
rating, and shows some other games that those same people also rated highly.
This lets you look for recommendations by starting with a game you like and
following links to related games. When you find a game on a list, or
mentioned in a review, you can go right to its catalog page to learn all
about it.
The catalog itself uses a Web 2.0 approach - any member can add and edit
game listings. This means that the catalog will stay as up to date as you
want it to - if you see an error, you can go right in and correct it; if
there's a game missing, you can add it. There's no need to wait for a sys
admin to get around to applying updates. I've pre-seeded the database with
listings from Baf's Guide - many thanks to Carl Muckenhoupt for providing
that - but if there's anything missing, you can add it whenever you want,
and you can edit any of the pre-seeded listings to flesh things out or
correct any errors.
By the way, you can upload "cover art" that's displayed in a game's listing,
for more visual appeal.
In addition to the Web-2.0 cataloging, and the recommendations tools, the
site has another lofty goal: to make it easier for newbies (and even
veterans) to download and install games. I spent a little while looking at
the FAQs and help sites and so on that we currently have, and I was a little
surprised - I've always thought the perennial complaints about IF's
newbie-hostility were exaggerated, but now I think they're not entirely
unjustified. There's a lot of terminology and other knowledge that we take
for granted, and while you can find answers with some digging, it's not
easy; you have to contend with a lot of outdated material and broken links.
So I've laid some groundwork that I'm hoping will, in time, solve this
problem. There's a tool on the site called the Download Adviser - it's
essentially an automated FAQ that cross-references the story-file type with
the interpreter and OS to generate custom download-and-install instructions,
all in a simple linear list, with direct links to all the needed software,
and with no buck-passing to FAQs. Every game's catalog page has a link that
lets you fire up the Download Adviser.
Now, I haven't yet populated the DLA database with every combination of
instructions. Part of my scheme, part of the reason I think this can
actually work in the long run and won't become just another outdated FAQ in
six months, is that the system is designed to distribute its maintenance
work to the proper individuals - the various experts for the various OSes
and development systems. I'm working on lining up the necessary talent to
cover all of the systems in active use, so if all goes well the DLA will
soon give reliable results for most games on most systems. Right now it
should give you good results for Z-code, glulx, TADS, and Hugo games on
Windows.
In addition to the DLA, there's an optional browser plug-in that can carry
out the installation instructions automatically. Right now it's available
for Windows for IE, Mozilla, Safari, and Opera; there's some work under way
for another popular OS, so there will be more to announce about that soon.
The Windows plug-in essentially gives you an automatic installer that works
for just about any IF system.
If you're on Windows and your browser appears to be compatible, the IFDB
home page will give you a pointer to the plug-in page; look in the top right
corner. If you install the Windows plug-in, each game's page will feature a
"Play Now" button - click the button, and the plug-in will fire up the game,
installing it on your system first if necessary, along with any necessary
interpreter software. It's not a new multi-format interpreter a la Gargoyle
or Zoom; it's just a simple program that knows how to find the installers
for the various single-format terps. I've found it to be surprisingly
convenient - being able to play the game you're browsing with one click is
actually really handy.
So, that's the 30,000-words-or-less overview :). I've tried to make the
site friendly, easy to navigate, and visually appealing, but the real point
is the community content. If people here start really using the site and
adding their recommendations and reviews, I think it'll become a great
resource. I think the integration of recommendations and easy downloads
will make it especially useful to newcomers. We're always looking for ways
to grow the community by removing some of the barriers to entry; this is my
whack at the problem.
For the moment I'm calling the site "beta," meaning that the feature set is
more or less complete, but that I expect there are still some bugs to be
found as people start using it. If you do run into any problems, please let
me know so I can fix them.
--Mike Roberts
mjr underscore at hotmail dot com
S. John Ross
Groovy. I'm all there :)
I notice there's no (apparent) mechanism for star-rating a game
without also writing a review. Is this a feature to be added, or one
deliberately avoided?
For my own tastes, the weighted star-ratings of 100 users, without any
text or context, carries more weight for encouraging (or discouraging)
me than one or two full-length reviews (unless by chance I happen to
know the tastes of the reviewers in question very well) ... Though I
can certainly understand a desire to avoid ratings that haven't been
thought through.
Deathworks
Sounds interesting. There are two things I would like to know:
How does it support the Treaty of Babel? (I always like to have the
authors give some information about their games, which is why I like
the treaty)
There does not seem to be a feature for marking/separating adult
content. Personally, I think there are probably a number of people who
would not see adult content at all, so allowing filtering based on
this may be of interest. Considering that the data base itself is not
age restricted, at least having an easily visible content rating
warning implemented seems to be advisable.
Deathworks
Trajectory
The download adviser stuff sounds great, too. Coincidentally, I'd been
thinking about ways to automate the download of an appropriate
interpreter along with a gamefile, so that casual and curious browsers
are more likely to actually try playing a game, rather than giving up
the whole thing as more trouble than it's worth. The 1, 2, 3
instructions are a step in the right direction!
J. J. Guest
you've authored? And will there be support for games that have more
than one development system (eg. Adrift / TADS / Spectrum)
Emily Short
> So I've been putting together a new web site designed around this idea. The
> new site is called IFDB, for the Interactive Fiction Database, and it's
> ready for use. You can find it athttp://ifdb.tads.org.
Very cool.
I did notice an odd thing. If I go to add a bunch of games to a new
recommendation list and then IFDB can't locate one of those games, it
blanks out *all* the game names from the screen so that I have to
retype them. (To test this, try making a new recommendation list of, I
dunno, Photopia, Shade, and Sqrblz.)
The other point is more of a policy question: suppose I've written a
lengthy review of a game, longer than really seems to fit the IFBD
site. Is it reasonable to summarize that review and add a link to the
full version? Or would we prefer just the summary? Or am I misguided
in wanting to make these reviews pithy?
Anyway, it looks great overall. Thanks for all the work!
Mike Roberts
> I notice there's no (apparent) mechanism for star-rating a game
> without also writing a review. Is this a feature to be added, or one
> deliberately avoided?
It was deliberate, although I'm not dead-set on it. My main goal with the
site was person-to-person recommendations rather than a community average,
since IF Ratings already does a good job of the latter. I thought another
top-10 scoreboard would be kind of redundant.
> For my own tastes, the weighted star-ratings of 100 users, without
> any text or context, carries more weight for encouraging (or
> discouraging) me than one or two full-length reviews (unless by
> chance I happen to know the tastes of the reviewers in question
> very well) ...
That sort of reviewer trust is just what I'm after, really. Not by chance,
though - by which I think you mean coming across a review on IFDB written by
someone you know from other, unrelated interactions. What I'm trying to do
is provide some tools for deliberately finding (or discovering) those other
reviewers you trust. I figure if each rating comes with some rationale in
the form of at least a brief review, you can get an idea of whether the
person giving that rating has anything in common with your taste, and then
you can go explore other reviews when you come across someone you tend to
agree with.
On the other hand, the site does have some collaborative filtering
capabilities, which can provide some of the person-to-person functionality
in the absence of reviews. And those benefit from a larger collection of
expressed preferences, so that's a point in favor of making it as easy as
possible to submit a rating. I tend to trust the "human filtering" you get
via reviews more than the mechanical kind, but it's certainly more work to
write a review than to enter a star rating.
What do other people think?
Mike Roberts
> How does it support the Treaty of Babel?
It's not really related, although the fields for a game record map pretty
directly to the iFiction fields. And you can store the IFIDs for a game,
and search by IFID - this universal identification mechanism is really one
of the key elements of Babel, since it lets unrelated programs on a network
positively identify games.
I've been thinking about what to do with iFiction records. I'll probably at
least make it possible to upload an iFiction record to pre-populate the
create-game form, and at some point I might provide an option to serve a
game record as a pro forma iFiction record (pro forma in that it wouldn't be
a true iFiction record, but rather an IFDB listing in the form of an
iFiction record; the difference is that an iFiction record comes from a
game's author, whereas IFDB listings are community content that can be
edited by many people). I don't intend to store actual iFiction records,
though; I think it would be too confusing to have the original
author-specified data and the very similarly structured community content
alongside each other like that.
> There does not seem to be a feature for marking/separating adult
> content. Personally, I think there are probably a number of people who
> would not see adult content at all, so allowing filtering based on
> this may be of interest. Considering that the data base itself is not
> age restricted, at least having an easily visible content rating
> warning implemented seems to be advisable.
Hmm... I can see your point; I haven't given this any thought yet. The
Terms of Service ask people not to upload anything pornographic or obscene,
which I put in specifically so that there wouldn't be any need for age
restrictions on the IFDB content itself. I guess the question is whether a
page that merely describes and links to age-restricted material should be
age-restricted, even when it doesn't itself contain anything sensitive.
Here's a proposal: we could define a special tag, say "IF-MA", that you can
use to mark a game as adult material. The server would only allow you to
view those pages if you check a box in your profile affirming that you're of
legal age and want to see such material. What do other people think - would
this be a useful feature, or a nuisance?
Mike Roberts
> The download adviser stuff sounds great, too. Coincidentally,
> I'd been thinking about ways to automate the download of an
> appropriate interpreter along with a gamefile, so that casual
> and curious browsers are more likely to actually try playing a
> game, rather than giving up the whole thing as more trouble
> than it's worth.
In case you didn't see the part about the browser plug-in (buried in my
concise 15-page announcement :), there's an optional feature that works with
the main Windows browsers (IE, Mozilla, Safari, Opera) that does basically
this. It figures out which interpreter goes with the story file format and
automatically downloads it and installs it for you. It's not quite a
one-click install, since you still have to click through the Setup screens
for whichever interpreter is needed, but it's pretty close - the key thing
is that you don't need to do the legwork to find the various pieces. And
once a particular terp is installed, the plug-in remembers it and knows it
can just grab the story file, so you still get all the benefits of keeping
the terp and story files separate (smaller downloads, smaller disk usage,
you only need to update one copy of the terp upon new releases).
Mike Roberts
Link to profile: that's a good idea. Right now you can kind of do that, but
it's indirect: you can review your own game, and mark the review as "from
the author." The review will appear in the "Editorial Reviews" group near
the top of the page, and your review by-line will link to your profile. But
an explicit link would be a good idea; I'll think about how to add that.
Multiple development systems: No problem. On the download link side, just
add as many links as you want and mark them with their various story file
formats. For the game listing itself, you can just enter the systems as a
comma-separated list. The field on the Edit Game page is a type-in field
even though it has a pop-up list, so you can go off-list if you need to.
When searching by system, the search system merely looks to see if the
system field contains the name you're looking for, so it'll find the system
as long as it's somewhere in the list.
S. John Ross
>> I notice there's no (apparent) mechanism for star-rating a game
>> without also writing a review. Is this a feature to be added, or one
>> deliberately avoided?
>
> It was deliberate, although I'm not dead-set on it.
Fair enough. I can definitely understand it from both sides.
> On the other hand, the site does have some collaborative filtering
> capabilities, which can provide some of the person-to-person functionality
> in the absence of reviews. And those benefit from a larger collection of
> expressed preferences, so that's a point in favor of making it as easy as
> possible to submit a rating.
This touches on what I'm hoping for, I guess ... not averages so much as
more data-points for filtering.
So far, my only reliable method for finding games I like has been to
download those that are rated at two stars or below :/ But I'm very
excited to be able to filter things by tags, since that cuts past
differences in tastes in many ways (which, for better or worse, I
clearly require) :)
But either way, I plan on being a contributor of reviews, too, so I'm in
for the long haul no matter which way it all shakes down.
Zylon
news:PsKdndYboujRx4va...@comcast.com...
> "Deathworks" <marun...@yahoo.co.jp> wrote:
> Here's a proposal: we could define a special tag, say "IF-MA", that you
> can use to mark a game as adult material. The server would only allow you
> to view those pages if you check a box in your profile affirming that
> you're of legal age and want to see such material. What do other people
> think - would this be a useful feature, or a nuisance?
I could see the warning label or tag, but I wouldn't make it a checkbox for
the content. Just make the pages visible.
After all, anyone could go in and just claim they're of legal age even if
they're not. So what, really, would you be preventing? I guess you could
argue it from the token attempt standpoint but I know one thing that drives
me nuts are age "verifications" like you see on some game sites now ("Enter
the day and year of your birth"). Obviously anyone can put in any date they
want and so, really, it's just an annoyance for the vast majority of users
who want to look at content.
But, this being said, I can definitely see having a a possible rating system
of sorts.
David C.
> If this is too restrictive, I could probably find a way to allow
> hyperlinks - add an enter-the-blurry-code screen if there's a link in the
> review text, maybe, or just leave it unrestricted and see if spam does
> turn out to be a problem.
This can be handled by asking one or two people to be editors of the site.
David Welbourn does a fantasic job of keeping the spammers at bay in
ifwiki.org.
David C.
Adam Thornton
Mike Roberts <mj...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Hmm... I can see your point; I haven't given this any thought yet. The
>Terms of Service ask people not to upload anything pornographic or obscene,
>which I put in specifically so that there wouldn't be any need for age
>restrictions on the IFDB content itself.
Stiffy Makane weeps big salty tears!
Adam
Mike Roberts
>> The Terms of Service ask people not to upload anything
>> pornographic or obscene,
>
Yeah, I guess I wasn't thinking of the cover art for that venerated series.
I have to imagine it's Inappropriate For All Viewers.
--Mike
Mike Roberts
>> Here's a proposal: we could define a special tag, say "IF-MA", that you
>> can use to mark a game as adult material. The server would only allow
>> you to view those pages if you check a box in your profile affirming that
>> you're of legal age and want to see such material.
>
> for the content. Just make the pages visible.
>
> After all, anyone could go in and just claim they're of legal age even if
> they're not. So what, really, would you be preventing?
It would only prevent people from seeing things they don't want to. It
clearly wouldn't be an enforcement mechanism - it's really the other way
around: it's not that the site chooses who can see what, but that you can
choose what parts of the site you want to see. It'd be for people who are
offended by adult content and don't want to encounter it accidentally by
browsing.
I don't think a real enforcement mechanism is needed, since there shouldn't
be any actual adult material on the site - just pages *about* adult
material.
> I guess you could argue it from the token attempt standpoint but I know
> one thing that drives me nuts are age "verifications" like you see on some
> game sites now ("Enter the day and year of your birth"). Obviously anyone
> can put in any date they
> want and so, really, it's just an annoyance for the vast majority of users
> who want to look at content.
I kind of feel the same way, although I think my proposal is pretty
minimally intrusive as these things go - it would just be a one-time opt-in.
Trajectory
> "Trajectory" <electricham...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> In case you didn't see the part about the browser plug-in (buried in my
> concise 15-page announcement :), there's an optional feature that works with
> the main Windows browsers (IE, Mozilla, Safari, Opera) that does basically
> this. It figures out which interpreter goes with the story file format and
> automatically downloads it and installs it for you.
I did notice that, but got it mixed up with the "download adviser".
This sounds just the sort of thing I was thinking of (although I was
considering stand alone installers rather than plugins).
I'll be sure to give it a try. Basically, if I want to recommend a
game to someone who's never played modern IF, I'd like to be able to
say "just go to this site and download a game - it's all quite
straightforward". Currently, there's no such site (that I know of),
without having to add caveats like "oh, and go here to learn how to
download an intepreter...". I'm hopeful that IFDB can fulfill that
function.
S. John Ross
A few other random thoughts on reviews. Two things that might allow
reviewers to influence the weight of their rating and/or indicate context:
A check box requiring the reviewers to distinguish between a review
written by someone who has completed a game, and a review written by
someone who hasn't completed it. I suspect, for _positive_ reviews, that
completing the game will be more likely a given ... but for negative
reviews, I (A) don't expect a reviewer to slog all the way to the end of
a game they find unpleasant/incomprehensible (B) don't expect people to
NOT review a game just because they found it too unpleasant to finish
(in fact, I want to read those reviews) and (C) at the same time,
believe that a negative review written by a reviewer who played the
entire game should have more weight in whatever weighting formula may be
present (although I lack the mathematical know-how to begin to suggest
how much, exactly, the weight should differ).
A specific way to require indication of which Release/Version the review
is in reference to. No clue if this should then objectively influence
the math on the weighting, but I think it would be a nice requirement to
put a review in perspective if the latest version is Release 14 and the
review is of Release 1.
Just idle thoughts tossed out to be chewed on :)
Andrew Plotkin
> "Zylon" <zyl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > After all, anyone could go in and just claim they're of legal age even if
> > they're not. So what, really, would you be preventing?
>
> It would only prevent people from seeing things they don't want to. It
> clearly wouldn't be an enforcement mechanism - it's really the other way
> around: it's not that the site chooses who can see what, but that you can
> choose what parts of the site you want to see. It'd be for people who are
> offended by adult content and don't want to encounter it accidentally by
> browsing.
If the site is really going to act as a database, then there will be
nonhuman users. That's an argument against putting in a checkbox. A
search bot or a database scraper will never opt in, and you *don't*
want your content blocking mechanism to affect them by default; that
effectively makes the data nonexistent, for their users, instead of
just hidden.
(This may be an argument for offering views specifically for nonhuman
users; XML dumps and the like. But Google, for example, tries very
hard to see what human see. It likes to ignore hidden "data" pages,
because spammers like to fill those with lies.)
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
If the Bush administration hasn't thrown you in military prison
without trial, it's for one reason: they don't feel like it. Not
because of the Fifth Amendment.
Brian Campbell
very well done for a first beta version.
A few comments:
* I cannot search for "I-0" even though it's in the database.
* It would be nice if games and profiles would have predictable URLs,
like http://ifdb.tads.org/game/Worlds_Apart or http://ifdb.tads.org/user/Emily_Short,
or at least URLs for the games based on their IFID, so it would be
easier to link to the appropriate pages from other web sites.
* When I click on the name of the author for a game, such as Andrew
Plotkin, it just does a search for the author's name. This returns
games that include the author's name, such as Being Andrew Plotkin, in
addition to the other games by that author. It might be nice to
actually have some notion of an author as an explicit entity so this
can work a little better.
* On lists like http://ifdb.tads.org/viewlist?id=8ug1xtsh5eauu8b there
is a space, linebreak, or other separator missing before the "Username
says:" line.
* It would be nice if people's lists appeared in the New on IFDB feed,
since otherwise they seem fairly out of the way (you have to
explicitly go to someone's account and look at the lists they've
created).
* A good feature on a site like this would be a "friends" list
(friends isn't quite the right term; a "watch" list might be more
accurate, though that sounds very dry), that lets you easily see for a
given game what your friends think of it and what their rating is.
* I'm not sure how I feel about the "you must review a game to rate
it". On the one hand, it does lead to more people reviewing. On the
other, it leads to fewer people rating. It might be better as a
"comments" feature, which isn't generally a full review but instead
1-3 sentences of comments about what you thought. BoardGameGeek.com
lets you put in some optional comments when you rate a game, which can
be helpful in seeing where people are coming from with their review
while not requiring them to write a full review in order to rate the
game.
Adam Thornton
That would be....one way of putting it. Would you like me to tell you
where to find the cover art for the Work In Progress? E-mail me, if
so. It's honestly Classical. Like, it's a work of art from Actual
Antiquity.
Adam
Eric Forgeot
But how will it position itself with http://www.ifreviews.org/,
http://wurb.com and http://ifwiki.org ? Will you share a common database of
knowledge and informations ?
Tom Hudson
capabilities - right now I can't find a way to see who's registered as
a member, or get a list of all recommendation lists.
My attempt to do the latter does seem to have hit a bug. When
searching lists for "games", I get:
Boring Games
by Michael Roberts - 98 games
"These games bored me to tears."
Favorite AIF games
by Michael Roberts - 49 games
"These are my favorite AIF games."
Favorite Games
by Michael Roberts - 98 games
"These are my current favorites. "
Games With Faulty Premises
by Michael Roberts - 98 games
"The premises of these games just didn't work."
Impossible Games
by Michael Roberts - 147 games
"These games I quit before finishing because there was not a
sufficient reward for solving their rage-inducing puzzles."
Non-interactive Games
by Michael Roberts - 98 games
"These games I found particularly vexing because you as the player had
so few choices. In fact, there was no point to playing them, as the
whole plotline was determined in advance. "
Word-play games
by Michael Roberts - 392 games
"Games where the text of the game is part of the puzzle."
Three or four of those are (short) recommendation lists belonging to
Amber Shards; Michael Roberts' profile claims no recommendation lists
at all.
Tom
Stephen Granade
> If the site is really going to act as a database, then there will be
> nonhuman users. That's an argument against putting in a checkbox. A
> search bot or a database scraper will never opt in, and you *don't*
> want your content blocking mechanism to affect them by default; that
> effectively makes the data nonexistent, for their users, instead of
> just hidden.
>
> (This may be an argument for offering views specifically for nonhuman
> users; XML dumps and the like.
I'd like to see the data exportable through XML. For the non-robots
among us, RSS feeds of the latest data added, either site-wide, for
specific games, or for specific members, would also be nice.
Stephen
--
Stephen Granade
stephen...@granades.com
George Oliver
> I'm having lots of fun with IFDB. It would be nice to have browsing
> capabilities - right now I can't find a way to see who's registered as
> a member, or get a list of all recommendation lists.
There are some other odd things -- you can search for members (the
link at the bottom of the home page), and get the first page of
results using 'location:' as the keyword, but then when you click Next
you get 0 results found. In theory, you should be able to search all
members with the keyword '-<nonsense>', but that doesn't work either.
Eric Eve
news:1192677212....@v29g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
> * When I click on the name of the author for a game, such as
> Andrew
> Plotkin, it just does a search for the author's name. This returns
> games that include the author's name, such as Being Andrew
> Plotkin, in
> addition to the other games by that author. It might be nice to
> actually have some notion of an author as an explicit entity so
> this
> can work a little better.
And I found it's not even restricted to the exact name (such as
Andrew Plotkin); if (say) you find "The Plant" by Michael J. Roberts
and then click on 'Michael J. Roberts" , in addition to seeing some
of Mike Roberts's games you see a whole of games by authors whose
surnames contain either Michael or Roberts (so, for example, the
first page includes games by Michael Arnaud, Michael Gentry, Micheal
O. Haire, Michael Zey and Doug Roberts). It's not until the fourth
page (after many pages of non Mike Roberts games) that one comes to
"Rat in Control" by Mike Roberts (presumably because the author is
listed as 'Mike Roberts' and not Michael J. Roberts), and not to the
fifth till one finds "Return to Ditch Day" (by M.J. Roberts). I can
see that variations in the way the author's name was entered
accounts for these last two cases, and that might be tricky to work
around, but the result is that clicking on Michael J. Roberts
produces a list of 57 games, only 6 of which were actually by Mike
Roberts, and only 4 of which appeared at the head of the list.
One way of excluding the spurious entries while catering for variant
forms (Michael J. Roberts, M.J. Roberts, Mike Roberts) might be for
this search to match only those entries where the author's last name
is Roberts and the first name (or initial) starts with M. That
wouldn't be guaranteed to exclude all spurious entries (if there
were games by Matilda Roberts or Matthew Roberts, say), but it would
surely include fewer of them (and since the matching algorithm
already seems to be including the exact matches first, these would
remain easy to find).
-- Eric
Mike Roberts
> * I cannot search for "I-0" even though it's in the database.
The mysql full-text search leaves a bit to be desired, it seems - I believe
what's going in is that the search engine drops short words from the search
term, and in this case that means it drops the entire search term! What
I'll do is supplement the full-text search with a literal search against the
title, to handle pathological cases like this. That'll also improve
relevance in general when searching for an exact title.
> * It would be nice if games and profiles would have
> predictable URLs, like http://ifdb.tads.org/game/Worlds_Apart
> or http://ifdb.tads.org/user/Emily_Short, or at least URLs for
> the games based on their IFID, so it would be easier to link
> to the appropriate pages from other web sites.
The IFID is by far the best identifier for this - it's specifically designed
so that two programs talking across a network can positively identify a game
to one another. And in fact, you can link to a game by IFID -
viewgame?ifid=xxx will do the trick. (It's an undocumented feature, I
guess, because I'm not quite sure where to document stuff like that.)
People don't have IFIDs, sadly, so there's no equivalent there (I guess in
the US we have SSNs, which are pretty much the same idea, but somehow I
don't think that'd be too popular :). However, the ID string that the site
assigns is designed to be permanent - it's specifically designed so that you
can link to it from an external site. It does mean you can't guess the URL
without first looking up the person on the site, but I don't think there's
any reliable way to do that anyway - a given person tends to use at least a
few variations on their name (Mike vs Michael vs M. vs M.J., etc), plus
you'd have to artificially change some names to deal with duplicates.
> * When I click on the name of the author for a game, such as Andrew
> Plotkin, it just does a search for the author's name. This returns
> games that include the author's name, such as Being Andrew Plotkin,
> in addition to the other games by that author. It might be nice to
> actually have some notion of an author as an explicit entity so this
> can work a little better.
I agree - I just haven't worked out the best way to do that yet. Linking to
the author's profile page would be one way, although I think there will be a
large percentage of authors who won't create profiles because they're no
longer active in the IF world. In the meantime it might improve matters if
I changed it to search specifically on author, rather than just doing a
generic search.
> * It would be nice if people's lists appeared in the New on IFDB
> feed, since otherwise they seem fairly out of the way (you have to
> explicitly go to someone's account and look at the lists they've
> created).
That'd probably be worthwhile. Note that you can also find lists by
searching for them by title and keyword, and each game page shows a
selection of lists containing the game. The latter is the "discovery" mode
that I think will become especially useful in time as more lists get
created.
> * A good feature on a site like this would be a "friends" list
> (friends isn't quite the right term; a "watch" list might be more
> accurate, though that sounds very dry), that lets you easily see for a
> given game what your friends think of it and what their rating is.
A "watch list" sounds like a counter-terrorism thing - I'll have to save
that for when I do my "24" fan site :). That sounds like an interesting
idea, though - so, it'd basically sort reviews from people on your no-fly
list to the top of the review collection when viewing a game page?
> * I'm not sure how I feel about the "you must review a game to rate
> it". On the one hand, it does lead to more people reviewing. On the
> other, it leads to fewer people rating.
Yeah, I think I'm coming around on this. I suspect the second effect is a
lot stronger than the first - I doubt there are many people who'd actually
be persuaded to write a review because that's the cost of entering a rating.
I think I'll add a one-click star rating feature to the game pages, and let
people follow up with full reviews if they're so inclined.
Thanks for all the comments and good ideas!
Mike Roberts
> But how will it position itself with http://www.ifreviews.org/,
> http://wurb.com and http://ifwiki.org ? Will you share a common
> database of knowledge and informations ?
There's not a shared database - that's not really practical given the
different missions, I think. Baf's Guide, for example, is an edited
bibliography, so I don't think it would want to try to incorporate the
user-edited content from IFDB. (I started with a snapshot from Baf's Guide,
but that was a one-time start-up thing; since IFDB is open to public
editing, game authors and anyone else can directly update it as new games
are released. And I'd be surprised if Carl had any interest in the data
flowing the other way, since he and his editors maintain that database.)
Mike Roberts
> It would be nice to have browsing capabilities - right now I
> can't find a way to see who's registered as a member, or get
> a list of all recommendation lists.
Oversights on my part - there are now links on the home page for those
functions.
"George Oliver" <georgeo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There are some other odd things -- you can search for members
> (the link at the bottom of the home page), and get the first page of
> results using 'location:' as the keyword, but then when you click Next
> you get 0 results found. In theory, you should be able to search all
> members with the keyword '-<nonsense>', but that doesn't work
> either.
Those should be fixed now.
S. John Ross
The curious nature of the search feature already tempted me into mucking
up the database :( I should have been more careful, but this is how it
happened:
(1) I wanted to make sure there was a listing for Ham House.
(2) I did a search for Ham House, and noted that it didn't appear on the
first page.
(3) Naively, I suppose, I thought "well, if it isn't on the first page
with the good hits it sure won't be on the back pages with the maybe-so
hits." I assumed that any matches that included both "Ham" and "House"
would be right at the top of the list.
(4) I created a new page for it, stocked it up with current info and
tags, wrote some author's notes, and so on.
(5) Later noticed that there was, in fact an entry already present,
which I could have spiffed and stocked with more current info.
(6) Even now, neither page comes up in front when searching for Ham House.
So, my fault, very (on the duplicate entry, I mean) ... But the search
feature aided and abetted my own incompetence :)
Andrew Plotkin
> "Eric Forgeot" <use_the_form...@anamnese.fr.st> wrote:
> > But how will it position itself with http://www.ifreviews.org/,
> > http://wurb.com and http://ifwiki.org ? Will you share a common
> > database of knowledge and informations ?
>
> There's not a shared database - that's not really practical given the
> different missions, I think.
But you can do cross-indexing, if each site offers the IFID and the
Baf-ID for every game (that has one).
ifwiki acts as a third database, but I don't think we need a third
index key. (Or fourth, if you count the IFArchive path!) Instead,
maybe ifwiki should accept (and auto-redirect) URLs of the form
http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Special:IFID?id=XXXXXXX
Or is there already a plan in that direction?
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
When Bush says "Stay the course," what he means is "I don't know what to
do next." He's been saying this for years now.
Mike Roberts
> (1) I wanted to make sure there was a listing for Ham House.
> (2) I did a search for Ham House, and noted that it didn't appear on the
> first page.
> (3) Naively, I suppose, I thought "well, if it isn't on the first page
> with the good hits it sure won't be on the back pages with the maybe-so
> hits." I assumed that any matches that included both "Ham" and "House"
> would be right at the top of the list.
I've been doing some tweaking to the search parameters, to make it treat
words in the title as especially important - "Ham House" now turns up the
right entries at the top of the list.
The reason it was coming up with so many hits in apparently random order
before is that the mysql full-text search engine simply ignores words
shorter than four letters - not even "+" persuades it otherwise. I've added
some code to do a structured search against the title in addition to the
full-text search, and that will use all words.
> (4) I created a new page for it, stocked it up with current info and tags,
> wrote some author's notes, and so on.
> (5) Later noticed that there was, in fact an entry already present, which
> I could have spiffed and stocked with more current info.
If you don't have any objection, I can go in and delete the un-filled-in one
of those two entries, to remove the duplication.
S. John Ross
> I've been doing some tweaking to the search parameters, to make it treat
> words in the title as especially important - "Ham House" now turns up the
> right entries at the top of the list.
Groovy!
> If you don't have any objection, I can go in and delete the un-filled-in one
> of those two entries, to remove the duplication.
Oh, please do. I'd rather folks just find the most accurate one (on
the outside chance anyone cares to find it at all) :)
S. John Ross
With apologies to those who get this as a repeat, but Google is being
very naughty lately:
------
> I've been doing some tweaking to the search parameters, to make it treat
> > words in the title as especially important - "Ham House" now turns
up the
> > right entries at the top of the list.
Groovy!
> > If you don't have any objection, I can go in and delete the
un-filled-in one
> > of those two entries, to remove the duplication.
Oh, please do. I'd rather folks just find the most accurate one (on
Dot Net Developer
> So I've been putting together a new web site designed around this idea. The
> new site is called IFDB, for the Interactive Fiction Database, and it's
> ready for use. You can find it athttp://ifdb.tads.org.
Superb site. Nice work.
Eriorg
> So I've been putting together a new web site designed around this idea. The
> new site is called IFDB, for the Interactive Fiction Database, and it's
> ready for use. You can find it at http://ifdb.tads.org.
Very interesting web site!
One suggestion: there are only 10 search results in one page, and when
there are lots of results (when I use "Browse games" or "Browse
members", for instance) that's not enough. I'd like to be able to have
more results in one page, and also to jump to a page of results which
isn't necessarily the next page.
And unfortunately, there seems to be a bug: some of the tags I have
added to games mysteriously disappeared from the game pages, even if
they're sometimes still available with a "tag:" search. For instance:
I created a "French Comp 2005" tag, with these five games:
http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag%3AFrench+Comp+2005&searchGo.x=0&searchGo.y=0
But when I look at the page of one of these games (http://
ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=iy6idhoeowdgvh3d , etc.): "There are no tags
associated with this game yet"! Did anyone else have the same problem?
Emily Boegheim
> For the moment I'm calling the site "beta," meaning that the feature
> set is more or less complete, but that I expect there are still some
> bugs to be found as people start using it. If you do run into any
> problems, please let me know so I can fix them.
Clicking on "view", next to "It's on my wish list"
(http://ifdb.tads.org/playlist?type=wishlist), produces a page titled "'s
Wish List", saying "The requested user was not found in the database."
Emily
Mike Roberts
> One suggestion: there are only 10 search results in one
> page, and when there are lots of results (when I use "Browse
> games" or "Browse members", for instance) that's not
> enough. I'd like to be able to have more results in one page,
> and also to jump to a page of results which isn't necessarily
> the next page.
I've upped it to 20 results per page, and made the pagination controls a
little more powerful.
> And unfortunately, there seems to be a bug: some of the tags I
> have added to games mysteriously disappeared from the game
> pages, even if they're sometimes still available with a "tag:" search.
Sorry about that. The problem that was orphaning the tags should be fixed
now, so there shouldn't be any more of these showing up. I patched up yours
and a few others that I found in the database, but there were a handful for
which I couldn't figure out the owners:
Photopia { linear }
Bronze { recommended for beginners }
Blue Chairs { surreal }
Dracula Part 1: The First Night { literature, horror }
The Traveling Swordsman { linear }
Beyond { graphics }
Ekphrasis { Renaissance }
If you see any of yours on this list, the easiest thing would be if you
could just go in and enter the tag again. Sorry about the inconvenience -
this time it should stick.
Eric Eve
news:zoSdncD0QokM5oja...@comcast.com...
> I've noticed over the years that one of the favorite activities on
> rgif is
> offering lists of suggestions when someone asks a question like
> "what are
> the best IF games for newbies?" or "what are your favorite
> mazes?". That
> helpful spirit is great, but I've often thought it would be even
> better if
> we could capture those occasional flurries of suggestions
> somewhere, so that
> people can find them later. Sure, there's the Google archive, but
> I don't
> think most people have the patience to sift through old rgif
> postings to
> find game suggestions.
It looks like it's all coming along very nicely.
I've just come across what looks like a small bug. I've been
gradually adding to the list of games I've played, but when I click
the "View all played games" link under the "Games you've played
list" on my page, the list that comes up is headed "Eric Eve's Wish
List" (instead of "Eric Eve's Played Games" or however it should be
headed).
-- Eric
Deathworks
I have created my account and written my first review (I haven't
played many games, and I have to check exact titles and authors at
home; otherwise I might end up linking the reviews to the wrong game).
I am not really sure about the personal tagging feature you get when
reviewing a game. It feels a bit redundant, given that you already
have the recommendation list feature. I am also not sure whether
"Games I played" means "Games I finished" or whether it means "Games I
played but may not have finished" - truth be told, the review I wrote
was about a game I haven't finished yet (I mention that in the review,
of course), and I checked it as a "game I played". But I feel rather
uncertain about that checkbox.
Since I was the one bringing up the issue of marking adult games,
please allow me to comment on it again. Personally, any marking
system, whether it is a highly visible banner, filtering, or a check
box, would be fine with me. As I said before, I am thinking about
people who do not want to see information on adult, not about people
not eligible to view adult content.
Frankly, I don't believe that children should be allowed to browse the
internet without adult supervision, unless you can really, really
trust the children (which requires some honest and full-time effort on
educating and socialising the children on the parents' part -
something that seems to be much harder than gathering in protest
groups). Thus, besides my worries about adults that may feel
uncomfortable with certain adult content, I was also thinking about
parents who are browsing the internet together with their children,
and who wish to be able to avoid unpleasant surprises. Such special
markers would help these parents and make it easier for them to
educate their children about the internet and IF - and isn't having a
new generation of IF players something we should support?
That is why I believe that some form of easy identification/filtering
or whatever of adult content would indeed be beneficial.
As for enforced age checks like birth dates, I agree that such
information can be faked easily, so in the end, it is just a gesture.
And I agree that something like that is not better than just asking
people to confirm that they are adults and be done with it - on the
contrary, it can be quite silly.
Anyhow, I wish the database good luck and hope that people will write
a lot of reviews (I have to admit that I don't have that much time to
play, so I am not really in the mood to blindly trying lots of games.
Therefore, I am really looking forward to having several reviews per
game, giving a complete perspective on it - although I have to admit
that I was surprised by the player ratings on Spider and Web (^_^;; ).
Deathworks
Eriorg
> "Eriorg" <Eri...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > One suggestion: there are only 10 search results in one
> > page, and when there are lots of results (when I use "Browse
> > games" or "Browse members", for instance) that's not
> > enough. I'd like to be able to have more results in one page,
> > and also to jump to a page of results which isn't necessarily
> > the next page.
>
> I've upped it to 20 results per page, and made the pagination controls a
> little more powerful.
>
> > And unfortunately, there seems to be a bug: some of the tags I
> > have added to games mysteriously disappeared from the game
> > pages, even if they're sometimes still available with a "tag:" search.
>
> Sorry about that. The problem that was orphaning the tags should be fixed
> now, so there shouldn't be any more of these showing up.
Thank you very much!
> I patched up yours
> and a few others that I found in the database, but there were a handful for
> which I couldn't figure out the owners:
>
> Photopia { linear }
> Bronze { recommended for beginners }
> Blue Chairs { surreal }
> Dracula Part 1: The First Night { literature, horror }
> The Traveling Swordsman { linear }
> Beyond { graphics }
> Ekphrasis { Renaissance }
>
> If you see any of yours on this list, the easiest thing would be if you
> could just go in and enter the tag again. Sorry about the inconvenience -
> this time it should stick.
"Beyond { graphics }" and "Ekphrasis { Renaissance }" were mine (I
added them again); the others weren't.
But I wonder if *who* added tags like "graphics" or "French Comp
2005" (or even "Renaissance") really matters? I mean, such games are
*objectively* games with graphics or games entered in French Comp 2005
-- whereas, for instance, "recommended for beginners" or even "linear"
are indeed personal opinions. But maybe I don't completely understand
the purpose of tags!
Mike Roberts
> But I wonder if *who* added tags like "graphics" or "French
> Comp 2005" (or even "Renaissance") really matters?
The only reason it matters is that it lets you go back and delete the tags
you added to a game, without deleting the same tag if it was also added by
other people. I figured it would be best if tags were additive - the tags
for a given game are the union of the tags added by each user to the game.
Mike Roberts
> I've just come across what looks like a small bug. I've been gradually
> adding to the list of games I've played, but when I click the "View all
> played games" link under the "Games you've played list" on my page, the
> list that comes up is headed "Eric Eve's Wish List" (instead of "Eric
> Eve's Played Games" or however it should be headed).
Thanks - it sould be fixed now.
--Mike Roberts
mjr undersore at hotmail dot com
Mike Roberts
> I am not really sure about the personal tagging feature you get when
> reviewing a game. It feels a bit redundant, given that you already
> have the recommendation list feature.
The main point of the review tagging is that it lets you assemble reviews
into collections (and since it's a tag rather than a "folder" or whatever,
the same review can be in multiple collections). I was particularly
thinking about competitions - I figured you'd want to be able to be able to
give people a URL that takes them to all of your reviews for a given comp.
> I am also not sure whether "Games I played" means "Games I
> finished" or whether it means "Games I played but may not have
> finished"
I guess I figure they're ultimately not that different - you don't have to
have played through to the winning conclusion to be "finished" with a game.
I suppose the system could have finder gradations of doneness, but I'm not
sure what the practical value would be. I mean, should the
cross-recommendation algorithm give less weight to your rating if you say
you've only played part way through the game? That doesn't seem like a
given to me; you might be able to tell pretty early on in a game that you're
going to hate it or love it.
> Since I was the one bringing up the issue of marking adult games,
> please allow me to comment on it again. Personally, any marking
> system, whether it is a highly visible banner, filtering, or a check
> box, would be fine with me. As I said before, I am thinking about
> people who do not want to see information on adult, not about people
> not eligible to view adult content.
It'd be technically straightforward to put something like this in; the main
reason I haven't pursued it so far is that there doesn't seem to be a lot of
enthusiasm for it so far. Here's the thing: so far it looks like you're the
chief declared proponent of a marking system (doesn't mean there aren't
other people also in favor, just that no one else has said so yet), but I
take it that you're not personally part of group of people who'd use such a
filter, right? What I mean is, you'd check the box in the profile for "Show
adult content."
So what we have is a couple of people who don't seem particularly exercised
about adult content (you and me) speculating about what this other group
(the exercised ones) wants. Now, I'm not doubting the existence of this
other constituency; it's just that I'd like to hear from some people who'd
actually use the filter before implementing something, to make sure it's
useful to them. There's no point in implementing something that annoys the
people who don't want it and fails to meet the needs of those who do.
S. John Ross
> The main point of the review tagging is that it lets you assemble reviews
> into collections (and since it's a tag rather than a "folder" or whatever,
> the same review can be in multiple collections). I was particularly
> thinking about competitions - I figured you'd want to be able to be able to
> give people a URL that takes them to all of your reviews for a given comp.
On the subject of reviewed games ... is there a way to "Browse Games"
but exclude games that are listed but not yet reviewed? I tried sorting
"lowest rated first" (since that's the way I'm most likely to find games
I'll appreciate and enjoy) but rather than giving me the lowest rated
first, it gave me unrated first. To get to the games I want to learn
most about, I had to sort by "highest rated first" and then just
manually page-jump until I got to the two-stars and below section (page
25 as of this posting, probably a lot more clicks away given another
year or two of reviews being written). :)
Alternately, maybe a way (in Advanced Search) to filter by stars, so I
could specify that I only want games with a rating ranging from 1/2 to 2
stars, for example?
--
|| S. John Ross
|| Husband · Cook · Writer
|| In That Order
|| http://www.io.com/~sjohn/bio.htm
Ron Newcomb
that problem outta the park! I can recommend it to laymen as "it's
just like Amazon.com."
I fixed my Linear and Recommended For Beginners tags.
The only suggestion I possibly have is Color. The functionality is
perfection, but have a visual artist spruce it up with some color,
maybe section dividers and ornamental borders, backgrounds, etc.
(Maybe you were waiting on that until any bugs shook themselves out.)
Wonderful site, just wonderful.
-R
ptw...@gmail.com
dollar companies have. Of course, those companies tell us the
problems are super complicated and we have to just live with it. On
the other hand, you seem to be addressing the the problems very well.
You also have some features, like the meta installer, that library
vendors turn into expensive 10 year projects (with results if we're
lucky). Excellent work!
-Paul
Mike Roberts
> could specify that I only want games with a rating ranging from 1/2 to 2
> stars, for example?
Good idea - I've just put it in there (try a search for "rating:0.5-2").
Mike Roberts
> The only suggestion I possibly have is Color. The functionality is
> perfection, but have a visual artist spruce it up with some color,
> maybe section dividers and ornamental borders, backgrounds, etc.
> (Maybe you were waiting on that until any bugs shook themselves out.)
Yeah, I'm definitely open to that. There are some talented visual designers
in the community, and it'd be great to team up with one of them to upgrade
the look. I wouldn't want to go crazy with it, of course - I'm in the
keep-it-simple camp for visual design - but there's a lot that could be done
with it, I'm sure.
S. John Ross
>> Alternately, maybe a way (in Advanced Search) to filter by stars, so I
>> could specify that I only want games with a rating ranging from 1/2 to 2
>> stars, for example?
>
> Good idea - I've just put it in there (try a search for "rating:0.5-2").
Sweet. Works like a charm; Mucho Thanko!
Deathworks
Mike Roberts wrote:
...
> I guess I figure they're ultimately not that different - you don't have to
> have played through to the winning conclusion to be "finished" with a game.
> I suppose the system could have finder gradations of doneness, but I'm not
> sure what the practical value would be. I mean, should the
> cross-recommendation algorithm give less weight to your rating if you say
> you've only played part way through the game? That doesn't seem like a
> given to me; you might be able to tell pretty early on in a game that you're
> going to hate it or love it.
...
Mmmhhh, actually I was not really wondering about such fine things,
just what the check box referred to. Personally, however, I do think
that it makes a difference for human readers of reviews: If you have
just two reviews for a given piece of IF with contradicting
evaluations, seeing that one of them hasn't finished the game can be
interesting: It could point to a game with a nasty start but nice
finish, or a game that starts out great and glorious but then dies off
midway through (supposedly, the person who has finished the game
should point that out, but in reality, with longish games, the
impressions of what the beginning was like could very well fade before
you reach the end of the story).
> It'd be technically straightforward to put something like this in; the main
> reason I haven't pursued it so far is that there doesn't seem to be a lot of
> enthusiasm for it so far. Here's the thing: so far it looks like you're the
> chief declared proponent of a marking system (doesn't mean there aren't
> other people also in favor, just that no one else has said so yet), but I
> take it that you're not personally part of group of people who'd use such a
> filter, right? What I mean is, you'd check the box in the profile for "Show
> adult content."
...
You are right about my personality there. And it is actually that
corner I am coming from. In adult communities that are close to non-
adult communities, handling parents is of vital importance. And when
they feel attacked, that group can do quite some lobbying, for
instance putting the heat on Yahoo! Groups in the past. Therefore, I
am always worrying about considering their needs as well. Anyhow, it
is just a suggestion I brought up, and I won't lobby for it, even
though I think it would be a good idea along the lines of self-
protection (and for the love Stiffy Mackaine - BTW, has anyone
actually ever played that game? I mean, everyone says it is awful to
the point you don't want to try it, but how many people have actually
verified that - and no, I am not planning to play it myself, just
morbidly curious).
BTW, while talking about the matter of adult material. I took the
liberty of advertising your data base over at the AIF portal in a
small post since you seem to have missed that opportunity. I figured
they could help add some information about their section of IF as
well.
Deathworks
S. John Ross
> actually ever played that game? I mean, everyone says it is awful to
> the point you don't want to try it, but how many people have actually
> verified that - and no, I am not planning to play it myself, just
> morbidly curious).
I ran off to see it as soon as it was mentioned here; I'd never heard of
it before.
Couldn't get it to run :(
Eriorg
And why not a special modifier in Advanced Search for languages, too?
(French, Spanish, etc.)
Actually, maybe it's not strictly necessary, because I can just search
for the word "French", etc. But there are two problems with that:
1. (minor problem) Games with the word "French" in the title are also
listed.
2. (much more annoying) Strangely, the results are incomplete:
"Ekphrasis" isn't listed, for instance.
Andrew Hunter
> Right now it's available for Windows for IE, Mozilla, Safari, and
> Opera; there's some work under way
> for another popular OS, so there will be more to announce about that soon.
> The Windows plug-in essentially gives you an automatic installer that works
> for just about any IF system.
Well, now's possibly as good a time as any :-) I've been working on
support for IFDB in Zoom: you can get a beta version to try out here:
<http://www.logicalshift.co.uk/etc/Zoom-ifdb.dmg>.
There are two important new features here: the first, most obvious, is
the addition of a 'Find More' button in the iFiction window. This will
take you to the IFDB site; if you have a game selected it will take you
to the page for that game, otherwise you will get the main IFDB site.
The other important feature of IFDB is the ability to install
interpreters when new ones are required. The browser plug-in system
used in Windows doesn't really work too well in OS X, I feel:
installers are rare here and 'download a plug-in, then install it, then
install an interpreter' is really a lot more work than the current
situation. Instead of implementing this, I've extended Zoom's existing
plug-in system to make it much easier to install new interpreters.
There's still some support required on the site in order to get this to
work completely: however, the work needed in Zoom is pretty much
complete now. I've added a port of SCARE to demonstrate how new
interpreters can be added: you can get it either using the 'Check for
Updates' option, or more interestingly by using the signpost file at
<http://www.logicalshift.co.uk/etc/test.signpost> which shows how Zoom
can now install an interpreter before running a game - from a standard
browser you'll need to download the file and then double-click it, but
this should give a general idea of how this should work with the main
IFDB site. My reason for picking that particular game is that it also
gives a good demonstration of how competitions and other game
compilations are handled.
In keeping with Mike's philosophy that interpreters should be
maintained by their respective authors in order to keep everything up
to date, I've also been doing some work documenting how to write new
Zoom plug-ins to add even more formats: you can find this information
at <http://logicalshift.co.uk/rotate/zoom/>. The API has been stable
since Zoom 1.0.5, so I'd like to solicit some volunteers to increase
the range of formats that can be supported.
Andrew.
Emily Short
wrote:
> On 2007-10-17 04:03:41 +0100, "Mike Roberts" <m...@hotmail.com> said:
>
> > Right now it's available for Windows for IE, Mozilla, Safari, and
> > Opera; there's some work under way
> > for another popular OS, so there will be more to announce about that soon.
> > The Windows plug-in essentially gives you an automatic installer that works
> > for just about any IF system.
>
> Well, now's possibly as good a time as any :-) I've been working on
> support for IFDB in Zoom: you can get a beta version to try out here:
> <http://www.logicalshift.co.uk/etc/Zoom-ifdb.dmg>.
>
> There are two important new features here: the first, most obvious, is
> the addition of a 'Find More' button in the iFiction window. This will
> take you to the IFDB site; if you have a game selected it will take you
> to the page for that game, otherwise you will get the main IFDB site.
This is *really* sweet. Especially since with the linked .sol files on
IFDB, I can also pull up a walkthrough or hint file right there in the
main Zoom window next to my game.
It's a little unfortunate that currently if I click on a game file for
a format it doesn't know how to deal with, it just spins its "in
progress" dial indefinitely. (Adrift .taf files seem to do this.)
But that is a minor quibble. This is awesome.
Emily Short
> It's a little unfortunate that currently if I click on a game file for
> a format it doesn't know how to deal with, it just spins its "in
> progress" dial indefinitely. (Adrift .taf files seem to do this.)
(Well, not now that I've added in the SCARE interpreter. But in
general, if Zoom doesn't know what to do with a file, it seems
sometimes to chug away for an indefinite period.)
Andrew Hunter
Ah, yes: I've forgotten to hook up the error handlers for the web view:
something similar will happen if there's a connection failure as well
at the moment. I'll get this fixed for the 1.1.2 release.
Andrew.
Adam Thornton
>> actually ever played that game? I mean, everyone says it is awful to
>> the point you don't want to try it, but how many people have actually
>> verified that - and no, I am not planning to play it myself, just
>> morbidly curious).
>
>I ran off to see it as soon as it was mentioned here; I'd never heard of
>it before.
>
>Couldn't get it to run :(
Oh dear!
Which version do you mean?
If the original...it's just an AGT game. Should play fine in Agility.
I'm pretty sure that's how I played it.
Stiffy the MSTing is z5, so that can't be a problem. If you can't get
the original to work, I'm pretty sure the MST source is available, and
if you stub out the Quip routine, so it just does nothing, the gameplay
ought to be very much like the original.
Stiffy Makane: The Undiscovered Country is Glulx. It ran on Windows,
Linux, and Mac OS (Classic) in 2001 when it was released; I can't get
sound to work with any modern Mac OS X terp, but it runs fine in
Spatterlight.
Adam
JDC
>
> > Right now it's available for Windows for IE, Mozilla, Safari, and
> > Opera; there's some work under way
> > for another popular OS, so there will be more to announce about that soon.
> > The Windows plug-in essentially gives you an automatic installer that works
> > for just about any IF system.
>
> Well, now's possibly as good a time as any :-) I've been working on
> support for IFDB in Zoom: you can get a beta version to try out here:
> <http://www.logicalshift.co.uk/etc/Zoom-ifdb.dmg>.
This is incredibly cool. Thanks, Andrew, and thanks Mike for the IFDB
site. These are like chocolate and peanut butter :).
-JDC
Trajectory
wrote:
> Well, now's possibly as good a time as any :-) I've been working on
> support for IFDB in Zoom: you can get a beta version to try out here:
> <http://www.logicalshift.co.uk/etc/Zoom-ifdb.dmg>.
Superb! I'm really impressed by the plugin interface and iTunes style
browser. Very sophisticated.
It doesn't seem to recognise .gblorb files for me at the moment - is
that a bug?
Just noticed that it automatically unzips zip files too. Neat.
Zylon
"Adam Thornton" <ad...@fsf.net> wrote in message
news:e1npu4-...@quicksilver.fsf.net...
> Stiffy Makane: The Undiscovered Country is Glulx. It ran on Windows,
> Linux, and Mac OS (Classic) in 2001 when it was released; I can't get
> sound to work with any modern Mac OS X terp, but it runs fine in
> Spatterlight.
I'm able to get it working in WinGlulxe, which is what I was running it
through. I was on Windows and had no problems, including sound and graphics.
Eriorg
>
> And why not a special modifier in Advanced Search for languages, too?
> (French, Spanish, etc.)
>
> Actually, maybe it's not strictly necessary, because I can just search
> for the word "French", etc. But there are two problems with that:
>
> 1. (minor problem) Games with the word "French" in the title are also
> listed.
>
> 2. (much more annoying) Strangely, the results are incomplete:
> "Ekphrasis" isn't listed, for instance.
Well, now I understand why the results were incomplete: the search
engine doesn't search in "Language:" at all. The games listed just
happen to have the word "French" (from "French Comp") in the tags.
Conclusion: a special modifier for languages *is* necessary!
And I've found a bug with "Add a new game listing". I've added a few
IF Comp 2007 games, and it worked, except for one game which had a
cover art picture. The page still exists at http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=pthqyajy75yym4yi
, but I searched for the game title and for the "IF Competition 2007"
tag with the search engine, and it's now impossible to find in both
cases! I've only found it again thanks to "Your Catalog Contributions"
from "Your Page". (Did anyone else add game listings with cover art,
and did it work?)
Emily Short
> "Mike Roberts" <m...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:K9mdneH6ftI1_Iva...@comcast.com...
> If this is too restrictive, I could probably find a way to allow
> hyperlinks - add an enter-the-blurry-code screen if there's a link in the
> review text, maybe,
That sounds like a reasonable solution, assuming that someone other
than me is interested in doing this. (I'd kind of enjoy being able to
find links to, e.g., SPAG Specifics reviews -- which have content that
absolutely should not be on the main page, as the whole point is to
discuss the game with spoilers.)
Autymn D. C.
> For the moment I'm calling the site "beta," meaning that the feature set is
"The Interactive Fiction Database is currently in "beta" testing."
So is it in "beta", or "beta,"?
Mike Roberts
> Well, now I understand why the results were incomplete: the search
> engine doesn't search in "Language:" at all. The games listed just
> happen to have the word "French" (from "French Comp") in the tags.
> Conclusion: a special modifier for languages *is* necessary!
Correct on both counts, and the modifier is there now - "language:" lets you
search by language, using ISO-639 code or the English name of the language.
> And I've found a bug with "Add a new game listing". I've added a few
> IF Comp 2007 games, and it worked, except for one game which had a
> cover art picture.
I had a look at it, and it should be working now. The presence of the
covert art was actually just a coincidence; the real problem had to do with
the database query construction.
Mike Roberts
> That sounds like a reasonable solution, assuming that someone other
> than me is interested in doing this. (I'd kind of enjoy being able to
> find links to, e.g., SPAG Specifics reviews -- which have content that
> absolutely should not be on the main page, as the whole point is to
> discuss the game with spoilers.)
I've heard the same idea from a couple of other people, so there's
definitely interest. I've thought about it a little and have come up with a
plan. The basic idea is to treat off-site reviews a little like download
links, with an interface on the Edit Game page that lets you add links to
off-site reviews, along with a headline, rating, and summary. Off-site
reviews will be displayed on the game page in roughly the same manner as the
Baf's Guide reviews - but rather than containing the full text of the
review, they'll just show the summary and a "read the full review" link that
takes you to the original site.
Eriorg
Thank you! Now it works.
Mike Snyder
news:1192994553.6...@q5g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
In the United States, the comma belongs inside the quotes whenever the text
in quotes isn't just a single letter or a number. It's technically wrong,
and it's not the way the rest of the world does it, but it *is* correct
here. As I understand it, it goes back to a typographical issue with
printing presses. Placing the comma outside the quotes would be
grammatically incorrect in the United States, confusing though it may be.
---- Mike.
Mike Snyder
news:2JTSi.89$yV...@newssvr25.news.prodigy.net...
Or are you referring to a discussion like this one?
http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2004/09/editorial_ps_and_qs_punctuatio.html
I'm not sure it applies when the thing in quotes is meant to be a label, not
a technical designation. At any rate, it seems like an arbitrary complaint
when the meaning was pretty clear and the writing wasn't even meant to be
formal. No?
---- Mike.
Bert Byfield
> In the United States, the comma belongs inside the quotes whenever
> the text in quotes isn't just a single letter or a number. It's
> technically wrong, and it's not the way the rest of the world does
> it, but it *is* correct here. As I understand it, it goes back to
> a typographical issue with printing presses. Placing the comma
> outside the quotes would be grammatically incorrect in the United
> States, confusing though it may be. Mike.
True in regular text, but generally in a programming context the comma
is put outside anyway, to prevent the above ambiguity.
Mike Snyder
news:Xns99D0E81A014Cca...@66.250.146.128...
But giving a label to a thing isn't a programming context. It's a name. I
can't make myself believe that this:
I'll call it "beta," and then say some more...
is quite the same as:
"I need to type "1246-553," and then type some more...
Although maybe I'm just in the mood to argue. :)
---- Mike.
JDC
> "Bert Byfield" <BertByfi...@nospam.not> wrote in message
Perhaps we should just use Quine corners, e.g.:
I'll call it ⎡beta⎤, and ...
(not sure if that will post correctly). Better yet:
\newcommand{\quine}[1]{\ensuremath{\ulcorner #1 \urcorner}}
I'll call it \quine{\mbox{beta}}, and ...
-JDC
isd
> I've noticed over the years that one of the favorite activities on rgif is
> offering lists of suggestions when someone asks a question like "what are
> the best IF games for newbies?" or "what are your favorite mazes?". That
> helpful spirit is great, but I've often thought it would be even better if
> we could capture those occasional flurries of suggestions somewhere, so that
> people can find them later. Sure, there's the Google archive, but I don't
> think most people have the patience to sift through old rgif postings to
> find game suggestions.
>
> So I've been putting together a new web site designed around this idea. The
> new site is called IFDB, for the Interactive Fiction Database, and it's
> ready for use. You can find it athttp://ifdb.tads.org.
>
> (Despite the domain name, it's not a TADS-specific site - it's open to games
> in all systems. It's just that ifdb.org wasn't available, and it was easy
> to set up a subdomain.)
>
> The site is very much in the "Web 2.0" mold - meaning it's all about
> *community* content. When you look at it *today*, before people have
> started using it, it's probably going to look like a Baf's Guide clone, and
> you might wonder what the point is. But if you and other people start
> adding to the site, in the ways I'll describe in a moment, it will quickly
> become something rather different from anything else we have at the moment.
>
> The real point of the site is person-to-person recommendations. It's not a
> "top 10" scoreboard - we have a couple of those already, and they're
> certainly good resources, but what they give you is a sort of community-wide
> average opinion. It's also not a review site per se, although it does
> include reviews among its features. Instead, the main thrust of the site is
> to provide tools that let you recommend what *you* like, and then make it
> easy for you to find the specific kinds of recommendations you're looking
> for. If you've ever felt that your favorite games don't get enough
> attention, you should like this site.
>
> Some of the tools:
>
> - Recommended Lists. This is the same idea as posting your favorite games
> of type X to rgif, but now the list is stored where people can find it and
> discover it. *You* decide the topic of your lists - you can create lists on
> any topic, and you can create as many as you like. The entries on your
> lists link directly to full information on each game, including download
> instructions.
>
> - Tags. You can tag a game (that is, associate a keyword with the game) to
> let other people know that the game has some attribute that's interesting to
> you - subject matter, style, whatever. You can search for games tagged with
> a particular keyword.
>
> - Reviews and ratings. This isn't exactly a new idea, but reviews on IFDB
> are linked in lots of interesting ways. You can create a collection of your
> reviews using tags, so that another user can easily see a list of all of the
> reviews in the collection - for instance, you could create a collection of
> your IF Comp 2007 reviews. When someone sees a review of yours that they
> like, they can follow links to learn more about you via your profile, or to
> see all of your other reviews. This is another important person-to-person
> recommendation mechanism - it lets you find recommendations by finding a
> reviewer you trust, and then looking to see what else they like.
>
> IFDB is designed to reward browsing. It has a full catalog of games - each
> game has its own page that collects the game's overview information,
> download links, tags, reviews, and recommendations. IFDB automatically
> finds Recommended Lists that include a game, and shows a selection of those
> lists on the game's page; it also looks for people who gave the game a high
> rating, and shows some other games that those same people also rated highly.
> This lets you look for recommendations by starting with a game you like and
> following links to related games. When you find a game on a list, or
> mentioned in a review, you can go right to its catalog page to learn all
> about it.
>
> The catalog itself uses a Web 2.0 approach - any member can add and edit
> game listings. This means that the catalog will stay as up to date as you
> want it to - if you see an error, you can go right in and correct it; if
> there's a game missing, you can add it. There's no need to wait for a sys
> admin to get around to applying updates. I've pre-seeded the database with
> listings from Baf's Guide - many thanks to Carl Muckenhoupt for providing
> that - but if there's anything missing, you can add it whenever you want,
> and you can edit any of the pre-seeded listings to flesh things out or
> correct any errors.
>
> By the way, you can upload "cover art" that's displayed in a game's listing,
> for more visual appeal.
>
> In addition to the Web-2.0 cataloging, and the recommendations tools, the
> site has another lofty goal: to make it easier for newbies (and even
> veterans) to download and install games. I spent a little while looking at
> the FAQs and help sites and so on that we currently have, and I was a little
> surprised - I've always thought the perennial complaints about IF's
> newbie-hostility were exaggerated, but now I think they're not entirely
> unjustified. There's a lot of terminology and other knowledge that we take
> for granted, and while you can find answers with some digging, it's not
> easy; you have to contend with a lot of outdated material and broken links.
>
> So I've laid some groundwork that I'm hoping will, in time, solve this
> problem. There's a tool on the site called the Download Adviser - it's
> essentially an automated FAQ that cross-references the story-file type with
> the interpreter and OS to generate custom download-and-install instructions,
> all in a simple linear list, with direct links to all the needed software,
> and with no buck-passing to FAQs. Every game's catalog page has a link that
> lets you fire up the Download Adviser.
>
> Now, I haven't yet populated the DLA database with every combination of
> instructions. Part of my scheme, part of the reason I think this can
> actually work in the long run and won't become just another outdated FAQ in
> six months, is that the system is designed to distribute its maintenance
> work to the proper individuals - the various experts for the various OSes
> and development systems. I'm working on lining up the necessary talent to
> cover all of the systems in active use, so if all goes well the DLA will
> soon give reliable results for most games on most systems. Right now it
> should give you good results for Z-code, glulx, TADS, and Hugo games on
> Windows.
>
> In addition to the DLA, there's an optional browser plug-in that can carry
> out the installation instructions automatically. Right now it's available
> for Windows for IE, Mozilla, Safari, and Opera; there's some work under way
> for another popular OS, so there will be more to announce about that soon.
> The Windows plug-in essentially gives you an automatic installer that works
> for just about any IF system.
>
> home page will give you a pointer to the plug-in page; look in the top right
> corner. If you install the Windows plug-in, each game's page will feature a
> "Play Now" button - click the button, and the plug-in will fire up the game,
> installing it on your system first if necessary, along with any necessary
> interpreter software. It's not a new multi-format interpreter a la Gargoyle
> or Zoom; it's just a simple program that knows how to find the installers
> for the various single-format terps. I've found it to be surprisingly
> convenient - being able to play the game you're browsing with one click is
> actually really handy.
>
> So, that's the 30,000-words-or-less overview :). I've tried to make the
> site friendly, easy to navigate, and visually appealing, but the real point
> is the community content. If people here start really using the site and
> adding their recommendations and reviews, I think it'll become a great
> resource. I think the integration of recommendations and easy downloads
> will make it especially useful to newcomers. We're always looking for ways
> to grow the community by removing some of the barriers to entry; this is my
> whack at the problem.
>
> For the moment I'm calling the site "beta," meaning that the feature set is
> found as people start using it. If you do run into any problems, please let
> me know so I can fix them.
>
> --Mike Roberts
> mjr underscore at hotmail dot com
When browsing lists, for example let's say there is photopia listed
the game rating is "based on 7 reviews". If we go to the page of the
game it is written "based on 7 ratings", but there is only one review.
Above the review it is written the star rating again "based on 7
reviews"...
I guess there is a bug there.
JDC
> When browsing lists, for example let's say there is photopia listed
> the game rating is "based on 7 reviews". If we go to the page of the
> game it is written "based on 7 ratings", but there is only one review.
> Above the review it is written the star rating again "based on 7
> reviews"...
> I guess there is a bug there.
I wonder if this is including people who have checked the "I have
played this" box, even if they haven't reviewed it?
Adam Thornton
Mike Snyder <wy...@prowler-pro.com> wrote:
>At any rate, it seems like an arbitrary complaint when the meaning was
>pretty clear and the writing wasn't even meant to be formal. No?
It's Autymn D. C. *OF COURSE* it's an arbitrary complaint.
Adam
Adam Thornton
JDC <jd...@psu.edu> wrote:
>Perhaps we should just use Quine corners, e.g.:
>I'll call it ⎡beta⎤, and ...
>(not sure if that will post correctly). Better yet:
>\newcommand{\quine}[1]{\ensuremath{\ulcorner #1 \urcorner}}
>I'll call it \quine{\mbox{beta}}, and ...
Let's call the whole thing off.
Adam
James Jolley
Robb Sherwin
> If you're on Windows and your browser appears to be compatible, the IFDB
> home page will give you a pointer to the plug-in page; look in the top right
> corner. If you install the Windows plug-in, each game's page will feature a
> "Play Now" button - click the button, and the plug-in will fire up the game,
> installing it on your system first if necessary, along with any necessary
> interpreter software.
Mike, thanks a bunch for putting together this site. It looks great.
I had one suggestion, but I am not sure how much work it would be to
implement. I noticed that the competition version of a given game
appears first, above later releases (which presumably all have bug
fixes and are more stable). Is there any way to have the more recent
version of the game listed first? I think it might eliminate a little
bit of possible frustration for new players directed to a page like
that.
But yes, thanks for your work on the site, it really does look great.
-- Robb
Andrew Hunter
> On 20 Oct, 14:02, Andrew Hunter <and...@logicalshift.demon.co.uk>
> wrote:
>> Well, now's possibly as good a time as any :-) I've been working on
>> support for IFDB in Zoom: you can get a beta version to try out here:
>> <http://www.logicalshift.co.uk/etc/Zoom-ifdb.dmg>.
>
> Superb! I'm really impressed by the plugin interface and iTunes style
> browser. Very sophisticated.
>
> It doesn't seem to recognise .gblorb files for me at the moment - is
> that a bug?
Yup: that's a bug. The glulx plug-in tries to work out whether or not a
blorb file contains a glulx game or not, which it can't do if the game
isn't downloaded yet, so it's saying it can't deal with .gblorb files
and as nothing else can, they don't get downloaded.
Pretty easy to fix, though.
Andrew.
Mike Roberts
> I had one suggestion, but I am not sure how much work it would be to
> implement. I noticed that the competition version of a given game
> appears first, above later releases (which presumably all have bug
> fixes and are more stable). Is there any way to have the more recent
> version of the game listed first? I think it might eliminate a little
> bit of possible frustration for new players directed to a page like
> that.
In my initial import of the Baf's Guide data, I put the links in essentially
random order. I've just gone back and rearranged everything by archive
upload date (most recent first), which I agree should be an improvement in
most cases. (I didn't change anything that anyone had manually edited,
though - only games that haven't been changed since my initial snapshot.)
Note that you can manually set the order of the links for a particular
game - go to the game page, click "Edit this page" at the bottom, and then
use the arrows in the link table to put the rows in the right order. There
will probably be some cases where the most recent version isn't the best
default - for example, the most recent file associated with Anchorhead is
the "special edition demo," but the default download file probably should be
the most recent full release instead.
S. John Ross
I've noticed that most of the games I'd be able to write reviews of (the
Infocom library, which I'm currently playing through, game-by-game)
aren't listed. Is there some legal reason for their absence (Activision
gets surly about such things)?
There are a handful I'd like to review, but I'd feel uncomfortable
creating fresh pages for them, partly because I'm unsure if this is
legally a no-no, and partly because I don't think I know enough of the
nitty-gritty for each (the release dates, ID numbers, etc).
--
|| S. John Ross
|| Husband · Cook · Writer
|| In That Order
|| http://www.io.com/~sjohn/bio.htm
Mike Roberts
> Infocom library, which I'm currently playing through, game-by-game) aren't
> listed. Is there some legal reason for their absence (Activision gets
> surly about such things)?
The practical reason they're not in there is that my initial data set came
from a Baf's Guide snapshot, and Baf's Guide only indexes the files on the
IF Archive. With a few exceptions, the Infocom games are all still
commercial status, so they can't be stored on the IF Archive, hence they're
not in Baf's Guide.
The Infocom games are an important part of the IF canon, so I agree it'd be
great to include them. I actually don't have too many legal misgivings
about doing so - I'm not a copyright lawyer, but I'm reasonably certain that
a web page that's merely *about* a copyrighted work is perfectly legal, as
long as it doesn't incorporate copyrighted material from the source or abuse
trademarks. The IFDB game page format seems pretty safe to me in this
respect. The only complications I see off-hand are (a) I don't think we can
use artwork from the Infocom boxes without getting explicit permission from
Activision, as that certainly counts as copyrighted original source
material; and (b) there might be some need for formal trademark attribution,
since the words "Infocom" and "Activision," and probably most of the game
titles and some of the characters, are still active trademarks. And, of
course, download links would not be possible - the Download box would have
to just say "commercial status" (there's already a provision for this - you
can enter that kind of information in a "download comment" field in the Edit
Game page).
Is there anyone on the group who's currently/recently in contact with the
right people at Activision? It would be ideal to get their blessing if
they're willing to give it, since that would nip in the bud the inevitable
copyright thread with its inevitable moistened Cheerios (a registered
trademark of General Mills).
Esa A E Peuha
> The catalog itself uses a Web 2.0 approach - any member can add and edit
> game listings. This means that the catalog will stay as up to date as you
> want it to - if you see an error, you can go right in and correct it; if
> there's a game missing, you can add it. There's no need to wait for a sys
> admin to get around to applying updates. I've pre-seeded the database with
> listings from Baf's Guide - many thanks to Carl Muckenhoupt for providing
> that - but if there's anything missing, you can add it whenever you want,
> and you can edit any of the pre-seeded listings to flesh things out or
> correct any errors.
Is there a way to search for games that are missing information? Some
game listings don't specify publication year, language, or development
system; those should usually be quite simple to add, but it would be
better to do so systematically, and that doesn't appear possible at the
moment.
--
Esa Peuha
student of mathematics at the University of Helsinki
http://www.helsinki.fi/~peuha/
S. John Ross
> from a Baf's Guide snapshot, and Baf's Guide only indexes the files on the
> IF Archive.
Aha. Makes sense.
> The Infocom games are an important part of the IF canon, so I agree it'd be
> great to include them. I actually don't have too many legal misgivings
> about doing so - I'm not a copyright lawyer, but I'm reasonably certain that
> a web page that's merely *about* a copyrighted work is perfectly legal, as
> long as it doesn't incorporate copyrighted material from the source or abuse
> trademarks.
Things like a thumbnail cover for informational purposes are usually
considered Fair Use under the law as well. Statutes and judgments aside,
though: in practical terms, the real-world nature of IP-use grooviness
comes down to the relationship between those concerned and the attitudes
of the party with the fiscal stakes. In other other words: If Activision
has a history of being cool with sites about their work, they'd probably
be just as cool about this one, and if Activision _isn't_ cool about it,
it doesn't really matter what the statutes say since it wouldn't be
worth the hassle and hard feelings to make it a scuffle. So, if
Activision's cool, everything else falls into place.
> there might be some need for formal trademark attribution,
> since the words "Infocom" and "Activision," and probably most of the game
> titles and some of the characters, are still active trademarks.
Yeah, and due to the special differences between copyright and trademark
law (copyright is automatic and not limited by context, trademark must
be declared and defended and is limited by context), it would be in
their best interests to require trademark attribution. Easily done,
though, I'd imagine.
Anyway, I'll keep an eye out. I look forward to writing some reviews for
those :)
Emily Short
> I've heard the same idea from a couple of other people, so there's
> definitely interest. I've thought about it a little and have come up with a
> plan. The basic idea is to treat off-site reviews a little like download
> links, with an interface on the Edit Game page that lets you add links to
> off-site reviews, along with a headline, rating, and summary. Off-site
> reviews will be displayed on the game page in roughly the same manner as the
> Baf's Guide reviews - but rather than containing the full text of the
> review, they'll just show the summary and a "read the full review" link that
> takes you to the original site.
That sounds excellent.
Valzi
>[R]ather than containing the full text of the
> review, they'll just show the summary and a "read the full review" link that
> takes you to the original site.
This reminds me of Rotten Tomatoes' system (example:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/call_of_cthulhu/). I think it's a
great idea. An alternative would be to let clicking some text that
said "more" expand the review at your site. This could probably be
done with AJAX, I think. I personally prefer the idea you just set
forth, but that would be my second-place suggestion.
I'm grateful for your work; I think the IFDB is a wonderful idea and
has already become very useful for me.
-Michael
S. John Ross
> I'm grateful for your work; I think the IFDB is a wonderful idea and
> has already become very useful for me.
Ditto that! I've found some very cool games I never knew about, and was
able to download them right off the bat. All kinds of cool.
IFDB rocks.
Robb Sherwin
> Note that you can manually set the order of the links for a particular
> game - go to the game page, click "Edit this page" at the bottom, and then
> use the arrows in the link table to put the rows in the right order. There
> will probably be some cases where the most recent version isn't the best
> default - for example, the most recent file associated with Anchorhead is
> the "special edition demo," but the default download file probably should be
> the most recent full release instead.
Fantastic. Thanks a bunch for doing that, that's really cool. (And for
some reason, I had read most of the thread and the fact that people
can edit individual pages didn't "stick," so yeah, there are multiple
ways of doing that.)
Thanks again for all your great work with the site, Mike.
-- Robb
Eriorg
> "Brian Campbell" <unlam...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > * I'm not sure how I feel about the "you must review a game to rate
> > it". On the one hand, it does lead to more people reviewing. On the
> > other, it leads to fewer people rating.
>
> Yeah, I think I'm coming around on this. I suspect the second effect is a
> lot stronger than the first - I doubt there are many people who'd actually
> be persuaded to write a review because that's the cost of entering a rating.
> I think I'll add a one-click star rating feature to the game pages, and let
> people follow up with full reviews if they're so inclined.
I noticed a small bug with ratings without reviews attached: when I
look at a member's "Ratings by <member>" (or "Ratings and Reviews by
<member>") page, and if there are at least two pages of results
(examples: http://ifdb.tads.org/allreviews?id=4onqcn9pq2wtd3vb&ratings=only
and http://ifdb.tads.org/allreviews?id=4onqcn9pq2wtd3vb&ratings=yes ),
the link to the next page is false: it links to the second page of
reviews (not just ratings), without the "&ratings=only" or
"&ratings=yes" in the address.
I also have a suggestion: now, on a game page, we can only see the
names of the members who *reviewed* the game. I'd like to see also the
names of the members who *rated* it but didn't review it.
I wonder if members can delete (not just change) a rating they
accidentally gave to a game they never played? (No, it didn't happen
to me until now, but I'm curious.)
And I've created the pages of all the IF Comp 2007 games (well,
actually, only 28 of them and the 29th page was created by someone
else). But I noticed that some of these games were rated by someone
(not me!): is it allowed, before the end of the comp? And even if it
isn't allowed, how could we prevent people from doing it, anyway?
Mike Roberts
> I noticed a small bug with ratings without reviews attached: when I
> look at a member's "Ratings by <member>" (or "Ratings and
> Reviews by <member>") page, and if there are at least two
> second page of reviews (not just ratings), without the
> "&ratings=only" or "&ratings=yes" in the address.
That should be fixed now.
> I also have a suggestion: now, on a game page, we can only
> see the names of the members who *reviewed* the game. I'd
> like to see also the names of the members who *rated* it but
> didn't review it.
Okay, I'll look into adding something.
> I wonder if members can delete (not just change) a rating they
> accidentally gave to a game they never played? (No, it didn't happen
> to me until now, but I'm curious.)
You can, although the procedure is admittedly a little obscure. A
review-less rating is really just a review without any title or review text,
so you can delete it by clicking "review it" from the game page, then
clicking "delete this review" on the review editor page. I should probably
add a button next to the little "star" control on the game page that lets
you delete the rating more directly.
> And I've created the pages of all the IF Comp 2007 games (well,
> actually, only 28 of them and the 29th page was created by someone
> else). But I noticed that some of these games were rated by someone
> (not me!): is it allowed, before the end of the comp? And even if it
> isn't allowed, how could we prevent people from doing it, anyway?
I probably *could* add some kind of technical measure to keep people from
rating Comp games during the judging period, but I'd rather avoid that - I'd
rather treat it as a public forum like the newsgroups and rely on people to
hold back on their own.
Note that the "embargo" feature works for ratings just like it does for
reviews, so anyone who wants to enter their ratings early but keep them
hidden can do that. If anyone has already entered a rating for a Comp game
and wants to hide it until the judging period is over, or if you have some
ratings you're eager to get into the system, do this:
- go to the game page
- click "review it"
- in the review editor, enter the embargo date (15-november-2007)
- save the changes
That'll hide your rating from everyone else until the Comp is over, at which
point it'll magically appear. It won't even count in the averages until the
deadline.
Eriorg
> "Eriorg" <Eri...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > I noticed a small bug with ratings without reviews attached: when I
> > look at a member's "Ratings by <member>" (or "Ratings and
> > Reviews by <member>") page, and if there are at least two
> > pages of results, the link to the next page is false: it links to the
> > second page of reviews (not just ratings), without the
> > "&ratings=only" or "&ratings=yes" in the address.
>
> That should be fixed now.
>
> > I also have a suggestion: now, on a game page, we can only
> > see the names of the members who *reviewed* the game. I'd
> > like to see also the names of the members who *rated* it but
> > didn't review it.
>
> Okay, I'll look into adding something.
>
> > I wonder if members can delete (not just change) a rating they
> > accidentally gave to a game they never played? (No, it didn't happen
> > to me until now, but I'm curious.)
>
> You can, although the procedure is admittedly a little obscure. A
> review-less rating is really just a review without any title or review text,
> so you can delete it by clicking "review it" from the game page, then
> clicking "delete this review" on the review editor page. I should probably
> add a button next to the little "star" control on the game page that lets
> you delete the rating more directly.
Thank you for your answers.
> > And I've created the pages of all the IF Comp 2007 games (well,
> > actually, only 28 of them and the 29th page was created by someone
> > else). But I noticed that some of these games were rated by someone
> > (not me!): is it allowed, before the end of the comp? And even if it
> > isn't allowed, how could we prevent people from doing it, anyway?
>
> I probably *could* add some kind of technical measure to keep people from
> rating Comp games during the judging period, but I'd rather avoid that - I'd
> rather treat it as a public forum like the newsgroups and rely on people to
> hold back on their own.
>
> Note that the "embargo" feature works for ratings just like it does for
> reviews, so anyone who wants to enter their ratings early but keep them
> hidden can do that. If anyone has already entered a rating for a Comp game
> and wants to hide it until the judging period is over, or if you have some
> ratings you're eager to get into the system, do this:
>
> - go to the game page
> - click "review it"
> - in the review editor, enter the embargo date (15-november-2007)
> - save the changes
>
> That'll hide your rating from everyone else until the Comp is over, at which
> point it'll magically appear. It won't even count in the averages until the
> deadline.
Another idea -- but I suspect that it might be too difficult to
implement, at least for a non-vital feature! -- would be that someone
(probably an administrator) enters once and for all the embargo date
for games with the "IF Competition 2007" tag (or other comps in their
judging periods). Then, every page about IF Comp 2007 games would
automatically hide ratings and reviews until the end of the comp,
*but* there would be a link with something like "Warning: this game is
currently in the voting stage of a competition. Click here if you want
to see spoilers about it."
The advantages of this idea would be:
* People could *avoid* all the spoilers about these games if they
want, whereas now they can accidentally see spoilers if the authors of
the reviews or ratings forgot, or didn't want, to use the embargo
feature.
* People could also *read* all the spoilers (ratings and reviews)
about some or all of these games if they want -- even weeks before the
voting deadline! That could be useful for members who already played
and rated the game, or who don't want to judge the comp, or who don't
mind spoilers.
Mike Roberts
> Is there a way to search for games that are missing information? Some
> game listings don't specify publication year, language, or development
> system; those should usually be quite simple to add, but it would be
> better to do so systematically, and that doesn't appear possible at the
> moment.
There is now - most of the modifiers now accept blank values to search for
listings that lack that information. For instance, to search for games
without a known publication date or language, you could enter
published: language:
There's another recent search enhancement worth mentioning: you can now
search for games with a total number of reviews or ratings in a given range.
#reviews:5-10 searches for games with 5 to 10 member reviews; #ratings:3-
searches for games with at least three ratings. For instance, if you're
looking for a recently-published game that hasn't been reviewed by anyone
yet, you could look for published:2006- #reviews:0.
RootShell (www.ifreviews.org)
<use_the_form_on_websi...@anamnese.fr.st> wrote:
> it looks great ! I've just registered.
>
> But how will it position itself withhttp://www.ifreviews.org/,http://wurb.comandhttp://ifwiki.org? Will you share a common database of
> knowledge and informations ?
IFReviews.org welcomes every new if related project.
As for your question, Eric, about the common database of knowledge and
informations, it seems that IFDB got it's initial information directly
from the BAF's (aka wurb.com) database, while none from the
IFReviews.org project.
IFReviews.org was not contacted in any way (nor am I saying that it
should have been) regarding the IFDB project.
IFReviews.org uses a proprietary database scheme to gather some
information about if games (not all information is gathered, although
due to several ifreviewers requests new information will be available
at the second 'long due' version of the IFReviews.org project).
IFDB goes in a direction that IFReviews.org once thought about
undertaking, but decided to not step on the BAF's / IFwiki grounds,
and focus mainly on the projects main purpose... Reviews.
As mentioned before, several new features where in beta testing for
some time now, and will (unfortunately) be similiar to some of the
IFDB new and interesting features (i say similiar because they are not
equal just similar).
I think that IFReviews.org in the overall got deserved attention from
if community members, and as said before, welcomes new projects and in
this particular case wishes good luck to the Mike Roberts IFDB
probject.
Next Year will see a new IFReviews.org site... Stay tuned :)
Kind Regards,
RootShell
Maureen Mason
thanks for all your work on this, Mike.
One question: is there some useful boiler-plate language that people
are using in the Download Info field when creating a game's entry? I
notice that games imported from Baf's guide usually say something like
"For all systems. To play, you'll need an x Interpreter - visit
(hyperlink here) for interpreter downloads." When I wrote up a Glulx
game I couldn't figure out how to link to interpreter URLs, e.g. the
ifarchive or Gargoyle/Spatterlight.
Also, I really like the "IFDB Recommends..." section but I notice that
several 5-star games that turn up there have been rated by only one
person. A game that has 5 or even 4 stars after several people rated it
generally carries more weight, in my mind, than one with a single
reviewer. I may be extra conscious of this because I gave two different
games a 5-star rating but they are both in Spanish and so I can't be
confident that even one other player will rate them and reflect a
greater range of tastes.
Technically is there a way to weight IFDB recommendations to take into
account the number of ratings (even if that number is just >1) together
with the average rating? Is it useful to show a game's "popularity" in
this way? Or could that just open up a whole new can of worms?
Maureen
Mike Roberts
> One question: is there some useful boiler-plate language that people
> are using in the Download Info field when creating a game's entry? I
> notice that games imported from Baf's guide usually say something like
> "For all systems. To play, you'll need an x Interpreter - visit
> (hyperlink here) for interpreter downloads." When I wrote up a Glulx
> game I couldn't figure out how to link to interpreter URLs, e.g. the
> ifarchive or Gargoyle/Spatterlight.
That boilerplate and the interpreter links are automatic - all you have to
do is set the right file format, so that the Download Adviser knows what
kind of game it is. The site can then automatically generate the right set
of instructions for each operating system.
To set the file format, go to the Edit Game page and click the Edit button
next to the file link. That'll pop up the link editor box. Check the box
for "This is a playable game file," then select Glulx in the File Type
pop-up list. Save the changes, and when you go back to the game page, the
Download box should show the Glulx instructions.
> Also, I really like the "IFDB Recommends..." section but I notice that
> several 5-star games that turn up there have been rated by only one
> person. A game that has 5 or even 4 stars after several people rated it
> generally carries more weight, in my mind, than one with a single
> reviewer.
As you and other people add more ratings, that list should get increasingly
personalized. The selection of high-rated games is only a default; once
you've added enough ratings, the algorithm will switch to look for other
individual users with similar patterns of ratings - what's sometimes called
"collaborative filtering." The idea is to come up with personalized
recommendations that fit your tastes rather than just looking for games with
high average ratings.
It might also be interesting at some point to add a more general scoreboard
feature that does some kind of weighted overall average, taking into account
the number of votes as well as the overall score - although that would be
pretty similar to what IF Ratings already does.
Maureen Mason
> To set the file format, go to the Edit Game page and click the Edit button
> next to the file link. That'll pop up the link editor box. Check the box
> for "This is a playable game file," then select Glulx in the File Type
> pop-up list. Save the changes, and when you go back to the game page, the
> Download box should show the Glulx instructions.
Thanks, Mike. I was identifying the downloadable file as a "zip" file
-- i.e., not playable -- instead of a Glulx file (the main game file in
the downloadable zip archive), and so the Download Advisor button was
not appearing.
OK, just one more question. If you ask the Download Advisor for
instructions for Linux and Mac, it says "Unfortunately, IFDB doesn't
currently have instructions for playing this game on your operating
system" and refers the reader to the game's website -- a nice touch, by
the way, because that site *does* have a link to the glulxe folder at
the ifarchive.
But is there a reason the Download Advisor doesn't just point you to the
if-archive if the OS you choose is Linux or Mac?
> As you and other people add more ratings, that list should get increasingly
> personalized. The selection of high-rated games is only a default; once
> you've added enough ratings, the algorithm will switch to look for other
> individual users with similar patterns of ratings - what's sometimes called
> "collaborative filtering."
OK. Good motivation to keep adding to the site :-)
Maureen
Mike Roberts
> OK, just one more question. If you ask the Download Advisor for
> instructions for Linux and Mac, it says "Unfortunately, IFDB doesn't
> currently have instructions for playing this game on your operating
> system" and refers the reader to the game's website -- a nice touch,
> by the way, because that site *does* have a link to the glulxe folder
> at the ifarchive.
>
> But is there a reason the Download Advisor doesn't just point you
> to the if-archive if the OS you choose is Linux or Mac?
Only that I haven't entered any instructions for those yet. My goal is to
enlist platform experts for all of the major OS and interpreter
combinations, because I think that's the only way to keep everything
accurate and up-to-date - if I tried to do it all myself, we'd have within a
few months' time the usual problem with FAQs slipping out of date. The Mac
should be covered shortly. There's no one covering Linux yet - if anyone
wants to volunteer, drop me a note.
Valzi
> It might also be interesting at some point to add a more general scoreboard
> feature that does some kind of weighted overall average, taking into account
> the number of votes as well as the overall score - although that would be
> pretty similar to what IF Ratings already does.
You could change the current display slightly. ----> [3½ Stars]
(based on 2 ratings)
If, for example, the "based on 2 ratings" text was red until at least
4 users rated it, for example, it would bring attention to the
subjectiveness of the rating.