The IF Gates are Closed. Let the voting Begin!!
Gerry Kevin Wilson
Well folks. That's it. All the entries for the 1995 First Annual IF
Competition are in. Now all we need are votes. Lots of votes. Lots and
lots and...you get the idea. So, since I'm not omniscient, please post
this message around to interested parties/newsgroups, with maybe a little
note about what the competition is exactly. This should definitely make
it to Compuserve, at the very least. Anyways, thanks. I'd appreciate it.
My congratulations and best of luck to all the entrants. I'm thrilled
with the turn out, and the high quality of the entries. Picking winners
is a tough decision, I know, but I'm sure you'll all manage somehow.
Once all the votes are in on Sept. 30, and what prize goes to who, I'll
release SPAG #7, which will essentially be an overview of the
competition, including in-depth analyses on several of the entries.
Which reminds me. I'll be needing reviews of the entries in the standard
SPAG format for inclusion with the magazine. I will need these, of
course, before Sept 30. Any and all submissions welcome, as well as
letters to the editor about the competition.
Here's to a great first year!
=====================
"This competition is to inspire IF authors to write something,
however small, and make it available for people to play. IF as a hobby
cannot survive unless there are people out there writing and playing it.
Hopefully, some of the people who enter the competition will enjoy it, and
decide to write more on their own."
Voting in the First Annual IF Competition
This contest concerns games that have no graphics except in the
glorious theatre of the mind. Vivid text descriptions, clever conundrums,
and quirky jokes are par for the course.
In order to submit your votes for the competition, you must have
played each game in one or both of the two categories below. You may only
submit votes for a category in which you have played all games, either to
the end or for the maximum of 2 hours.
Let me reiterate that last part. If you get stuck on a game for
longer than two hours, you should put it away and move on to the next
one. This competition is about IF that can be completed in under 2
hours. I'm not saying don't vote for a game if you don't finish it that
quickly, just take what you managed to play and rate it as such.
Your vote should consist of a list of your three favorite games in
the category you are voting in. If you are voting in both categories, you
should send two lists, with 3 games from each category. You may not submit
more than three games in one category, such votes will be discarded. You
may not vote more than once. In the event that you do, only the most recent
votes shall be used, up until the deadline.
The votes must be emailed to whiz...@uclink.berkeley.edu by Midnight
on Sept. 30, 1995. No votes will be accepted after that, no matter what the
excuse.
G. Kevin Wilson
"Whizzard"
whiz...@uclink.berkeley.edu
The games are available for anonymous FTP from ftp.gmd.de in the
/if-archive/competition/ directory. To go there and get them, the following
series of commands should work (with many FTP softwares that is.):
-=-=-=-
ftp ftp.gmd.de
login: ftp
password: <your email address>
cd if-archive/competition
bi (This ensures that the files are transmitted in BINARY mode. Which, trust
me on this, is a Good Thing (tm).)
mget * (answer yes to all the games from the category(ies) in which you are
voting, listed below.)
You have then FTP'ed the proper files. If you need further assistance,
please ask your local Sysop/Sys Admin about it, because I don't have the
foggiest. To play the games, you will need either TADS or an Infocom
interpreter. These are available on ftp.gmd.de as well, in the
/if-archive/programming/tads/ and /infocom/interpreters/ directories. You
should grab the Index files for these directories and read them before
deciding which files to grab. If you are still having trouble, post your
woes to rec.games.int-fiction, and someone will steer you in the right
direction.
-=-=-=-
TADS Category Inform Category
museum.zip library.z5
TheOne.zip magic-toyshop.z5
toonesia.gam mindelec.z5
tow.zip mst3k1.zip
undo.gam tube.z5
zebulon.zip weather.z5
-=-=-=-
Here is a listing of the games from the Index file
Museum.zip A Night at the Museum Forever, version 1.0, by Chris Angelini
TADS game file, description, and a walkthrough
TheOne.zip The One That Got Away, version 1.0; anonymous entry
TADS game file, description, and a walkthrough
library.z5 All Quiet on the Library Front, An Interactive Vignette
by Michael S. Phillips. Release 1 / serial number 950829.
magic-toyshop.z5 The Magic Toyshop, a fun game for all the family
by Gareth Rees. Release 1, serial number 950726.
mindelec.z5 The Mind Electric, An Interactive Vision by Jason Dyer
release 2 / serial number 950830
mst3k1.zip Detective, An Interactive MiSTing (Mystery Science Theater
3000) of Matt Barringer's AGT game "Detective",
by Christopher E. Forman. Release 101, serial number 950814.
Inform source code and compiled game file.
toonesia.gam Toonesia, A Mini Text-Adventure Game, version 1.0
by "C. J. T. Spaulding"
tow.zip Undertow v1.00, by Stephen Granade
TADS game file and instructions
tube.z5 Tube Trouble, a mini-adventure by Richard Tucker
release 0 / serial number 950831
undo.gam Undo, version 1.0.1, by null dogmas
weather.z5 A Change in the Weather, An Interactive Short Story
by Andrew Plotkin. Release 4, serial number 950819.
zebulon.zip Uncle Zebulon's Will, an Interactive Inheritance
Release 1.0 / 950831, by Magnus Olsson.
TADS game file and description.
-=-=-=-
The Prize Draft (and the Prizes, incidentally.)
The Prize Draft will work as follows. The author of the game with
the most votes in the Inform category (Inform was chosen at random, since
there are an identical number of entries in each category) will select the
prize of his/her choice, and that prize will be awarded and removed from the
draft. Next, 1st place in TADS chooses. Then, 2nd place in Inform, 2nd
place in TADS, 3rd in Inform, 3rd in TADS, etc. until no more prizes remain.
The prizes will then be mailed off to the winners, and possibly a compilation
produced for each category.
The Prizes:
$100.00 cash, donated by Eileen Mullin
The very first copy of Avalon, autographed and donated by me. (Wow,
a real collector's item. :)
One free registration for Save Princeton, donated by Jacob Weinstein.
"Castles and Kingdoms: An electrifying compendium of 15 BASIC
adventures you can type in to your Commodore 64" by Bob Liddil,
donated by Gareth Rees.
1 year subscription to the printed version of XYZZYnews, donated by
Eileen Mullin
"Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur" for the Mac, complete with box,
etc., donated by Jacob Weinstein.
An autographed copy of my first novel, if and when it's
published--for a winner who feels like taking a big gamble,
donated by Jacob Weinstein.
$50.00 cash, donated by Martin Braun
A copy of "Leather Goddesses of Phobos" on 5.25" disk for IBM
compatibles, donated by Jon Uhler.
One free registration for "The Path to Fortune", donated by
Christopher E. Forman.
More details are available for those competitors who desire them. As a
consolation prize, I will also mail a bound printout of Whizzard's Guide to
Text Adventures to the last place finisher in each category, with my favorite
bits circled and personalized suggestions on how to win next year's
competition. Maybe I'll start a list of authors who come in last one year
only to come back the next and kick some butt. Hopefully it's a long list.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for helping to keep text adventures alive!
--
<~~~VERTIGO~~~~~~~~~~~~THE~BRASS~LANTERN~~~~~~ISSUE~1~INCL~W/AVALON~~|~~~~~~~>
< In the irreverent tradition of _The New Zork Times_ comes The | ~~\ >
< Brass Lantern, an informative newsletter from Vertigo Software. | /~\ | >
<___SOFTWARE____________...@uclink.berkeley.edu__|_\__/__>
Neil Demause
: More details are available for those competitors who desire them. As a
: consolation prize, I will also mail a bound printout of Whizzard's Guide to
: Text Adventures to the last place finisher in each category, with my favorite
: bits circled and personalized suggestions on how to win next year's
: competition. Maybe I'll start a list of authors who come in last one year
: only to come back the next and kick some butt. Hopefully it's a long list.
Yikes!
Is it just me, or is this getting a little cutthroat?
I haven't played any of the entries yet, but I'm sure they're all
wonderful additions to the i-f family. I don't think anyone who actually
managed to get a finished game in by the deadline needs that kind of
"consolation prize". (Those who gave up with half-finished games
arguably might.)
Magnus Olsson
Gerry Kevin Wilson <whiz...@uclink.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> The votes must be emailed to whiz...@uclink.berkeley.edu by Midnight
>on Sept. 30, 1995. No votes will be accepted after that, no matter what the
>excuse.
Maybe two small clarifications would be in place here:
When you're writing about "midnight", which time zone are you referring to?
Remember that this is a very international contest...
And should the votes be emailed before midnight, or received by you by
midnight? Email isn't quite instantaneous.
Magnus
Julian Arnold
> I don't think anyone who actually managed to get a finished game in by the
> deadline needs that kind of "consolation prize". (Those who gave up with
> half-finished games arguably might.) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Oi! Leave me alone! 8)
--
Jools Arnold jo...@arnod.demon.co.uk
Gerry Kevin Wilson
>
>When you're writing about "midnight", which time zone are you referring to?
>Remember that this is a very international contest...
Pacific Time Zone. ie, California.
>And should the votes be emailed before midnight, or received by you by
>midnight? Email isn't quite instantaneous.
Received by midnight. I can't imagine anyone having trouble over this.
--
<~V~E~SOF~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~>
< RTI T Imagination sold and | ~~\ >
< G O WAR E serviced here. | /~\ | >
<_______________________...@uclink.berkeley.edu__|_\__/__>
Magnus Olsson
>>
>>When you're writing about "midnight", which time zone are you referring to?
>>Remember that this is a very international contest...
>
>Pacific Time Zone. ie, California.
Which means 8 a.m. GMT and 9 a.m. CET, if I remember the figures right.
>>And should the votes be emailed before midnight, or received by you by
>>midnight? Email isn't quite instantaneous.
>
>Received by midnight. I can't imagine anyone having trouble over this.
Perhaps I was being a bit too pedantic here :-). *But* people with
unreliable mailfeeds, or UUCP connections that only transfer mail at 2
a.m., and so on, should perhaps keep that in mind.
Magnus
Trevor Barrie
>I haven't played any of the entries yet, but I'm sure they're all
>wonderful additions to the i-f family.
I've played all of them, and I'll back up that sentiment. Hopefully
I'll be able to decide on votes by the end of the month regardless...
**************************************************************************
Trevor Barrie tba...@peinet.pe.ca "It's a great big universe,
87 Kennedy Drive and we're all really puny;
West Royalty, PEI we're just tiny little specks
C1E 1X7 CANADA (902) 628-6845 about the size of Mickey Rooney."
**************************************************************************
Carl Muckenhoupt
>I've played all of them, and I'll back up that sentiment. Hopefully
>I'll be able to decide on votes by the end of the month regardless...
HAH! I have yet to play all the TADS games, but my decision on the
Inform ones was easy. Perhaps all this time looking for flaws in games
to report on in my Guide (http://www.tiac.net/users/baf/if-guide.html)
has changed the way I percieve things...
Anyway, I don't want to influence anyone's votes, but when the deadline
rolls around, I'll be glad to discuss the relative merits of the entries
in detail.
(BTW: Why is it that games have "reviewers" when art, music, literature,
and even film and television have "critics"? Is it because of the
generally positive tone of game reviews? If so, I want it to go on
record that I am a game critic.)
--
Carl Muckenhoupt | Is it true that Kibo habitually autogreps all of Usenet
b...@tiac.net | for his name? If so: Hi, Kibo. Like the sig?
Jason Compton
: (BTW: Why is it that games have "reviewers" when art, music, literature,
: generally positive tone of game reviews? If so, I want it to go on
: record that I am a game critic.)
Because games are a new form of art not generally accepted as an art, so
they're not accorded the same titles.
--
Jason Compton jcom...@xnet.com
Editor-in-Chief, Amiga Report Magazine (708) 741-0689 FAX
You've got to go faster than that. Better start doing it right.
AR on Aminet - docs/mags/ar???.lha AR Mailing list - Mail me
AR on WWW - http://www.omnipresence.com/Amiga/News/AR
Adam J. Thornton
Carl Muckenhoupt <b...@laraby.tiac.net> wrote:
>(BTW: Why is it that games have "reviewers" when art, music, literature,
>and even film and television have "critics"? Is it because of the
>generally positive tone of game reviews? If so, I want it to go on
>record that I am a game critic.)
IIRC, Spider Robinson once said, "A critic tells you whether or not it's
art. A reviewer tells you whether or not he liked the damn thing. I'm a
reviewer."
Adam
--
ad...@io.com | ad...@phoenix.princeton.edu | Viva HEGGA! | Save the choad!
"Double integral is also the shape of lovers curled asleep" : Pynchon
64,928 | TEAM OS/2 | "Ich habe einen Bierbauch!" | Linux | Fnord
You can have my PGP passphrase when you pry it from my cold, dead brain.
Jason Compton
: JC> Because games are a new form of art not generally accepted as an art,
: JC> so they're not accorded the same titles.
: If you follow the "fiction" analogy, fiction has reviewers as well.
Well...while it's the "New York Times Book Review", I don't see many
people calling themselves "book reviewers." John Updike and the like
always think of themselves as "critics."
Magnus Olsson
Adam J. Thornton <ad...@tucson.princeton.edu> wrote:
>In article <baf.81...@laraby.tiac.net>,
>Carl Muckenhoupt <b...@laraby.tiac.net> wrote:
>>(BTW: Why is it that games have "reviewers" when art, music, literature,
>>and even film and television have "critics"? Is it because of the
>>generally positive tone of game reviews? If so, I want it to go on
>>record that I am a game critic.)
>
>IIRC, Spider Robinson once said, "A critic tells you whether or not it's
>art. A reviewer tells you whether or not he liked the damn thing. I'm a
>reviewer."
Yes, there's definitely a differenc in the level of ambition, or perhaps
I should asy in the level of pretentiousness :-).
A reviewr is simply on who reviews. IMHO, a critic tries to tell you more
than whether he/she liked the work in question or not - perhaps he/she
tries to relate it to his/her own aesthetical standards, or to
contemporary theories of art, or tries to generalize his/hger findings, or
whatever.
I sort of fancy myself as a critic of IF and not just a reviewer. I
suppose I meet the criteria both of trying to add depth to my reviews
and of pretentiousness :-).
BTW, pardon my ignorance, but who's Spider Robinson?
Magnus
-- "Pretentious? Moi?"
Adam J. Thornton
>BTW, pardon my ignorance, but who's Spider Robinson?
Science fiction author, heavily indebted to Heinlein by way of Sturgeon.
Magnus Olsson
>In article <foo>, b...@laraby.tiac.net (Carl Muckenhoupt) wrote:
>>HAH! I have yet to play all the TADS games, but my decision on the
>>Inform ones was easy.
>
>entry pool was *awfully* thin, with only one entry that was close
>to the level of quality that I had expected.
Might I ask just what level of quality you had expected?
IMAO, most of the entries _were_ the quality you'd expect from amateur
writers/programmers, several of whom are total beginners, who are
given a very short time to write a game. Some of the games actaully
impressed me by being of a much _higher_ quality than I had expected
(and no, Virginia, I'm not referring to my own entry :-)).
I'm not taking what you (Palmer) write personally, since my entry is
written in TADS and you're speaking of the Inform entries; still,
you'll have to give us poor authors a break. "Uncle Zebulon's Will"
was written in slightly less than three weeks so of course it can't meet
the high standards set by games like "Curses" and "The Legend
Lives".
This, of course, doesn't mean that one shouldn't set high standards;
in my reviews of the entries (hopefully to be published in SPAG) I'll
apply the same standards to them as to any other game. However, given
the circumstances of the competition I'm quite impressed with most of
the entries.
Magnus
Michael S. Phillips
|> In article <DF46G...@ansoft.com>, Palmer Davis <pal...@ansoft.com> wrote:
|> >In article <foo>, b...@laraby.tiac.net (Carl Muckenhoupt) wrote:
|> >>HAH! I have yet to play all the TADS games, but my decision on the
|> >>Inform ones was easy.
|> >
|> >Agreed. I haven't looked at the TADS division yet, but the Inform
|> >entry pool was *awfully* thin, with only one entry that was close
|> >to the level of quality that I had expected.
|>
|> Might I ask just what level of quality you had expected?
I can't speak for him, but I have been mostly pleased with what I have played so
far (I don't like sudden-death, timed puzzles, so to speak, so there was one
Inform game which did not please me much, although I can see where it could be
appealing to others).
|> IMAO, most of the entries _were_ the quality you'd expect from amateur
|> writers/programmers, several of whom are total beginners, who are
|> given a very short time to write a game.
Speaking for myself (and my game, LIBRARY), this was the first non-school
programming effort of my own in years, and it was my first attempt to use Inform.
Not to mention my first attempt at writing IF, and just generally it was the
first "fun" project I did. I attempted to maintain a sense of fun within the
game, but I am not a particularly ingenious person, and I didn't even know there
was an active IF community (and about the contest) until the end of August.
Given such a short time to learn Inform, come up with an idea, and implement it,
I am generally pleased with what I produced. Yes, it's short (that's the idea
behind the contest), yes it could be a lot better.
The important part of participating in the contest, however, was that it reminded
me of what fun IF is, and it has caused me to embark on a much longer, and
probably better long-term project. I don't want to contribute to the vapor, so I
won't say much about it.
Hopefully, for the sake of both the Inform community and the IF community in
general, it has had a similar effect on others who participated. I look forward
to this being an annual event :-)
|> I'm not taking what you (Palmer) write personally, since my entry is
|> written in TADS and you're speaking of the Inform entries;
I'm not taking it personally either, although I am curious to know whether or not
he entered the contest himself :-) Given that I, at least, am an utter newbie, I
expect a certain amount of criticism, and I am looking for it too (so I can know
what I did right and wrong for my next project(s), and, of course, for next year).
Here's looking forward to next year's competition, and everything which will be
released between now and then.
Mike Phillips, msp...@aardvark.cc.wm.edu
Palmer T. Davis
In a previous article, msp...@aardvark.cc.wm.edu (Michael S. Phillips) says:
>
>|> I'm not taking what you (Palmer) write personally, since my entry is
>|> written in TADS and you're speaking of the Inform entries;
>
>I'm not taking it personally either, although I am curious to know whether
>or not he entered the contest himself :-)
I do all of my development in ADVSYS; even if I had gotten something
ready in time, this year's format effectively prevented me from
entering anyway. I hope that next year's competition will do away
with requirements for specific tools and let everything compete
together. (That will also tend to reward writing portable code -- if
someone can't run your game, you won't get that vote.)
While we're on the subject, thanks are in order to Whizzard for
organizing this year's competition, and to the prize donors as well.
Other thoughts:
* The end of August is certainly a reasonable point to set the entry
deadline -- many folks (especially students) work on entries over
the summer, and the judging can be done before the fall's workload
really gets going. However, many new people acquire net access at
the beginning of September, and would just barely miss out; a
deadline of October 15 or so would give new people time to discover
r.a.i-f, learn how to use one of the development tools, and enter,
which would encourage more participation. (On the third hand, how
many people reading this would have entered if that had been the
case this year? I may be overestimating by quite a bit.)
* This year's voting system works reasonably well since we're only
rewarding the actual winner in each division, but if we wanted to
recognize (for instance) second and third place, we'd need some
way to distinguish between first place and other votes. There are
various mechanisms by which this can be achieved....
--
Palmer Davis ___
<p...@ptd.org> \X/ Vivo simpligxus se oni povus legi la fontan kodon....
Palmer Davis
>>
>>Agreed. I haven't looked at the TADS division yet, but the Inform
>>entry pool was *awfully* thin, with only one entry that was close
>>to the level of quality that I had expected.
>
>Might I ask just what level of quality you had expected?
The level that I'm seeing in the TADS division, now that I'm getting
around to looking at it....
>IMAO, most of the entries _were_ the quality you'd expect from amateur
>writers/programmers, several of whom are total beginners, who are
>given a very short time to write a game.
Perhaps I've been a bit spoiled by the full-length efforts that I've
seen from many amateur authors (including a number of the contestants).
Perhaps I take a slightly rareified view of IF as a genre. Perhaps I
shouldn't have played through the Infocom sample disks before starting
my evaluation....
However, IF is a form of entertainment, played for fun. However
rudimentary a work of IF may be, there is a certain enjoyability
threshold that must be met for a player to want to play it. In
the Inform division, there were only two entries that I didn't have
to force myself to play for review purposes, only one of which was
really suitable as division winner; that's why I was complaining.
What level of quality did I expect? Something along the lines of the
"Trinity" sample from Infocom Sampler #2, but with a real ending. Both
of my choices for division winners came reasonably close to this level.
Getting any piece of software into a releasable state is a lot of work,
and I'm glad that there were as many authors who completed playable
entries as there were. Hopefully, we'll see more work in the future
from some of the new faces.
-- PTD --
(For that matter, hopefully we'll see some production from *me* once I
finish recovering from the destruction of my development archive....)
--
---
Palmer T. Davis <pal...@ansoft.com>
Ansoft Corporation, Four Station Square, Suite 660, Pittsburgh, PA 15219
http://www.ansoft.com/palmer/home.html
edharel
pt...@po.CWRU.Edu (Palmer T. Davis) writes:
>
> * The end of August is certainly a reasonable point to set the entry
> deadline -- many folks (especially students) work on entries over
> the summer, and the judging can be done before the fall's workload
> really gets going. However, many new people acquire net access at
> the beginning of September, and would just barely miss out; a
> deadline of October 15 or so would give new people time to discover
> r.a.i-f, learn how to use one of the development tools, and enter,
> which would encourage more participation. (On the third hand, how
> many people reading this would have entered if that had been the
> case this year? I may be overestimating by quite
I might have made something (small but something) if the deadline were
later. As it were, I only started reading the Inform manual in may and
june, had little time in june and was offine for august. BTW, when the
people who are revising it put it up, can you PLEASE split it up?
Netscape cant handle it all at once.