IntroComp: the games are here
Neil deMause
candidates are:
Artifiction, by Mikko Vuorinen (Alan)
At Wit's End Again, by Mike Sousa (TADS)
Death By Monkey, by R. Rawson-Tetley (IAGE - playable via Web at
http://www.robin.rawsontetley.btinternet.co.uk/iage/games/playdbm.html)
Fellowship of the Ring, by One of the Bruces (Atari 2600 ROM - emulators
at: http://www.redlinelabs.com/stella/)
From the Files of Sigmund Sigmund Praxis, Guerrilla Therapist, by Mark
Silcox (ADRIFT)
Genie, by Stark Springs (Glulx)
Hey, Jingo!, by Caleb Wilson (Glulx)
Madrigals of War and Love, by Jason Dyer (Hugo)
The Maintenance Man, by Philip Dearmore (TADS)
Private Cyborg, by Tony Ash (TADS)
Timetrap, by D.R. Porterfield (Inform)
Virus, by Philip Dearmore (TADS)
The Waterhouse Women, by Jacqueline Lott (Inform)
The games are in a .zip file at ifarchive (currently in /incoming); you
can also get them from:
http://www.demause.net/introcomp/introcomp.zip
Deadline for voting is Friday, April 5, at midnight EST (5 am GMT on April
6). (REMINDER: Voters are asked to rate games on one criterion, and one
alone: "How much do you want to play more of this entry?") A voting form
will be posted later today at:
http://www.xyzzynews.com/introcomp/
(Do *not* send votes to me. I will just ignore them.)
Thanks, and enjoy the games!
Neil
Stephen Granade
> The games are in a .zip file at ifarchive (currently in /incoming); you
> can also get them from:
>
> http://www.demause.net/introcomp/introcomp.zip
The games are now available from the archive in the
/games/mini-comps/introcomp/ directory.
Stephen
--
Stephen Granade
sgra...@phy.duke.edu
Duke University, Physics Dept
Robin Rawson-Tetley
> http://www.robin.rawsontetley.btinternet.co.uk/iage/games/playdbm.html)
Can I just mention here (since both of the early reviewers mentioned
it), that just because Neil wrote that you *can* play it on the web,
you don't *have* to - IAGE comprises pretty much the same bits as
other IF languages, and if I could direct your good selves to the IF
archive, you can download the IAGE package and play my entry the way
nature intended - on the proper, ass-kicking, IP-serving interpreter!
:)
Self-Extracting-All-In-Wonder-Installers(tm) for MacOS (8.1+ and X),
most Unix flavours and all Win32 variants are catered for. If you do
not have a supported platform, you can still download the IAGE
component jars and get hold of a Java Runtime for your platform to use
it (1.1 is all that is required). Last time I checked, the upto date
version was still sitting in the unprocessed directory on the
ifarchive, but it will probably have made it to programming/iage by
the time you read this (fingers crossed).
I only posted a net version on my website to give the judges an
alternative if they couldn't/didn't want to get hold of the proper
IAGE program.
As with other web-based interpreters, the IAGE web-based 'terp is not
quite as good as the standalone version, since the applet framework
and mixture of browser/platform VM standards means that it can
sometimes be a little flaky (as other web-based interpreter authors
will testify I'm sure).
Also, the servplet program only allows you to play single player games
(due to applet security restrictions on ServerSocket classes) - if you
do run the proper IAGE program, your friends can join in and play the
game with you. Together, a group of you can crack the one awesomely
tough puzzle "Death By Monkey" offers (this is sarcasm before anyone
starts :)
It's not like everyone plays Inform games using ZPlet is it? Or TADS
games using Jetty..
Anyway, just thought I'd remind y'all,
Bob
atholbrose
Xnews. Sigh.
robin.raw...@btinternet.com (Robin Rawson-Tetley) wrote in
news:e9ceddbb.0203...@posting.google.com:
>> Death By Monkey, by R. Rawson-Tetley (IAGE - playable via Web at
>> http://www.robin.rawsontetley.btinternet.co.uk/iage/games/playdbm.html)
> Can I just mention here (since both of the early reviewers mentioned
> it), that just because Neil wrote that you *can* play it on the web,
> you don't *have* to - IAGE comprises pretty much the same bits as
> other IF languages, and if I could direct your good selves to the IF
> archive, you can download the IAGE package and play my entry the way
> nature intended - on the proper, ass-kicking, IP-serving interpreter!
> :)
In my case, lack of information. I'd never played an IAGE game before,
there was a URL for it, and it made sense to me that a possibly multi-
player game would be played in a browser. There's no mention of a stand-
alone on the page. There's also no mention of any lost functionality, so
why would I assume there was either?
I (just now) downloaded the latest IAGE from ifarchive, and it would not
load dbm.iage properly -- instead of the listing of stats and so on I would
get when loading, say, minizork.iage, it just said "Loaded." When clients
connected, they would get nothing. I had to download the source, recompile
it, re-recompile it after realizing that you have to save what you've
compiled, and then it woud load. Argh. A difference in IAGE versions, a
corrupt file? I don't know, because the server didn't give any errors.
You might want to consider not closing the IAGE Launcher after a button is
clicked. I went to doubleclicking on the .JAR files, but not everyone will
know to do so, and in the course of this I launched those programs a LOT.
Adam Thornton
>>> Death By Monkey, by R. Rawson-Tetley (IAGE - playable via Web at
>>> http://www.robin.rawsontetley.btinternet.co.uk/iage/games/playdbm.html)
Netscape 4.7, Linux 2.4.17:
Still does not work. Complains that it can't convert a font spec
(12-point Helvetica, looks like) to font struct.
Adam
Robin Rawson-Tetley
Ah ha! That is useful!
I think I know exactly what that is - it will be fixed this weekend.
Thanks,
Rob
Robin Rawson-Tetley
> (12-point Helvetica, looks like) to font struct.
Just thought you'd like to know - I managed to reproduce the error by
removing certain fonts from my system, and I have now tested this on
NS 4.7 with my new font-related fixes and all is working fine (My NS
4.7 will now not run the version on my site, but it runs my new
version sat on my local webserver wonderfully).
The new version will be uploaded either tommorrow evening or Friday
morning (I am currently away and unable to update my webspace).
For those of you had trouble as well as Adam, please accept my
apologies. I would strongly urge you to download the proper IAGE kit
though :-)
Cheers!
Bob
Robin Rawson-Tetley
> there was a URL for it, and it made sense to me that a possibly multi-
> player game would be played in a browser. There's no mention of a stand-
> alone on the page. There's also no mention of any lost functionality, so
> why would I assume there was either?
Hmm. Well, there isn't any lost functionality by using the servplet
apart from the multiplayer aspect. It's purely my fault for not
informing people that the servplet is just a time saver for people not
wanting the full on kit.
There is also a client applet as well as the servplet, so you can run
a real IAGE server, and a webserver with the client so web players
*can* actually play multiplayer with each other. I am still talking to
Kodrik about hosting an IAGE multiplayer version of Dungeon in the
near future that I'm working on, so you'll be able to see for
yourself.
> I (just now) downloaded the latest IAGE from ifarchive, and it would not
> load dbm.iage properly -- instead of the listing of stats and so on I would
> get when loading, say, minizork.iage, it just said "Loaded." When clients
> connected, they would get nothing. I had to download the source, recompile
> it, re-recompile it after realizing that you have to save what you've
> compiled, and then it woud load. Argh. A difference in IAGE versions, a
> corrupt file? I don't know, because the server didn't give any errors.
I did mean to notify Neil (and forgot), but when I downloaded the
introcomp entries, somehow the dbm.iage file in there had gotten
corrupt between me sending it to him and him building a zip with them
all in.
The version you can get on the ifarchive (still in unprocessed at the
moment) is just fine though.
> You might want to consider not closing the IAGE Launcher after a button is
> clicked. I went to doubleclicking on the .JAR files, but not everyone will
> know to do so, and in the course of this I launched those programs a LOT.
Thank you - I will update the launcher to remain open after launching
programs.
When compiling games, I tend to set up Unix scripts (you can use batch
files under Windows) to call the compiler. The compiler will actually
accept a source input file and an output file as two arguments after
it, and this way it never fires up the graphical interface - it just
compiles the game in a console window and gives you the stats when
it's finished.
A Windows (I assume you are using Windows if you were double-clicking
the jars) compile call looks a little like this:
d:\jdk1.4.0\bin\java.exe d:\iage\iagecompiler.jar d:\mygame\game.ic
d:\mygame\game.iage
The first part is the path to the java executable, the second is the
path and name of the IAGE compiler, the third the path to the IAGE
source file you want compiled and the last the name of the compiled
IAGE file you want to create or overwrite with compiled code. Shove
this in a batch file with your settings for some speedy compiling :)
You can also do the same with the server - it will accept a compiled
IAGE game as an argument. Another thing you can do if you are running
Windows, GNOME or KDE is to set up an association for IAGE files, so
that the server fires them up and starts by you double-clicking on
them in your choice of graphical file tool (Explorer, Konqueror,
Nautilus, whatever). If you would like to do this, let me know and
I'll post a how-to.
Cheers,
Bob