Interactive Fiction Contest Voting

[Vorticon]

This contest is now closed for new submissions. We only had 2 entries which you can find here http://atariage.com/forums/topic/224499-interactive-fiction-context-entries-submissions/?hl=%2Binteractive+%2Bfiction&do=findComment&comment=3020110 .

Voting is open to all AtariAge members, and will be open till August 9th. If you plan on voting, please download the programs and give them a try. Any questions about the programs can be posted in this topic.

The winner will be announced on August 10th and the prize will be an original copy of "Get Lamp: The Text Adventure Documentary" DVD by Jason Scott

 

UPDATE:

At the request of Sometimes99er, his entry was removed from the contest. Therefore, with only one entry left, there is little to vote on. I still hope you get to download the games and give them a try.

 

Edited July 20, 2014 by Vorticon

[sometimes99er]

This contest is now closed for new submissions. We only had 2 entries which you can find here http://atariage.com/forums/topic/224499-interactive-fiction-context-entries-submissions/?hl=%2Binteractive+%2Bfiction&do=findComment&comment=3020110 .

Voting is open to all AtariAge members, and will be open till August 9th. If you plan on voting, please download the programs and give them a try. Any questions about the programs can be posted in this topic.

The winner will be announced on August 10th and the prize will be an original copy of "Get Lamp: The Text Adventure Documentary" DVD by Jason Scott

Poll questions:

Originality: which program was most original in its concept?

Program design: ...?

Fun Factor: which program was the most fun and interesting to play?

User Interface: which program had the easiest play mechanism?

I don’t remember things like originality, programming design and execution to be descriptive factors of the competition.

 

To be fair, I think most questions lean in favor of Eons. Even the fun factor is being coupled with the interesting factor.

 

My first language is not English and I didn’t enter with an original Danish text adventure, then suddenly to be judged on something like, “best use of exotic language” or whatever.

 

I think this has, perhaps unwillingly, become somewhat biased. Sorry.

 

Edited December 23, 2017 by sometimes99er

[Vorticon]

Sometimes99er, the polling questions reflect what people universally look for when checking out a program and I certainly did not design them to favor Eons. Unfortunately, with only 2 entries, the differences between their respective styles starkly stand out. Both programs abide by the contest rules, but beyond that the end result was up to the individual programmer. I would think that when one designs a game, the factors of originality, fun factor, programming design and execution all come naturally into play, so I'm not sure why you seem to have a problem with this. We all try to come up with the best program we can, or at least we should. As for language, well the contest title was Interactive Fiction, so if you felt that your English skills were sub par (which they certainly don't seem to be), then perhaps you should have opted out rather than bring up this odd objection at the contest's end... As for the link pointing to Eons, this was not by design since the link points to the topic and not to any particular entry. Besides, if you look closely, your entry has had 31 downloads versus 12 of Eons, so this seems far more lopsided in your favor... I personally thought you had a fun submission that was easy to play and not too hard to complete, whereas Eons was far more convoluted.

 

In any case, since it's just you and me in this contest, I am happy to cancel the polling and call it a day if that's what you want. It's not worth the aggravation, but I do take exception to the insinuation that I somehow rigged the polling to favor Eons. You clearly don't know me very well...

[sometimes99er]

Sometimes99er, the polling questions reflect what people universally look for when checking out a program and I certainly did not design them to favor Eons. Unfortunately, with only 2 entries, the differences between their respective styles starkly stand out. Both programs abide by the contest rules, but beyond that the end result was up to the individual programmer. I would think that when one designs a game, the factors of originality, fun factor, programming design and execution all come naturally into play, so I'm not sure why you seem to have a problem with this. We all try to come up with the best program we can, or at least we should. As for language, well the contest title was Interactive Fiction, so if you felt that your English skills were sub par (which they certainly don't seem to be), then perhaps you should have opted out rather than bring up this odd objection at the contest's end... As for the link pointing to Eons, this was not by design since the link points to the topic and not to any particular entry. Besides, if you look closely, your entry has had 31 downloads versus 12 of Eons, so this seems far more lopsided in your favor... I personally thought you had a fun submission that was easy to play and not too hard to complete, whereas Eons was far more convoluted.

 

In any case, since it's just you and me in this contest, I am happy to cancel the polling and call it a day if that's what you want. It's not worth the aggravation, but I do take exception to the insinuation that I somehow rigged the polling to favor Eons. You clearly don't know me very well...

Well, I don’t know much about that, other than comparing with the few competitions we had on here, something like programming design was not mentioned prior or later as a criteria.

 

I don’t know what you had in mind, but I tried and support the idea, and adjusted my text adventure project in the works on several accounts to meet your specs. Now I can see that I didn’t do much to meet certain factors now part of the vote.

 

It’s easy for you to say that I should have opted out or spoken up about what you consider to be an odd objection before the contests end. The odd one about the language was just an example, so that you might see the situation from where I stand.

 

There are only two contestants, and one of them is setting up the poll questions, and I’m telling you I wasn’t at all focused on programming design among others.

 

Please try that link again.

 

My entry has been up much longer, and I guess a few maybe wanted to download again if they deleted it last time around. I guess that might explain most of the 31 versus 12 downloads.

 

Edited December 23, 2017 by sometimes99er

[Vorticon]

Again, the poll questions address universal qualities in any game and are not tailored to this particular contest. Who does not want a fun, original, easy to use and well designed game? If you feel your entry did not meet these criteria, and I personally think it did very well, then please don't take it on the judging process because you had every opportunity to come up with an arguably better program had you chosen to.

I would really like to hear from others as to what they think of the poll questions.

[senior_falcon]

I'm not sure what is meant by "programming design and execution?" The mechanics of the program should not be a factor in judging. It could be the biggest heap of steaming spaghetti imaginable and as long as it works well for the user/player that's all that matters.

[Asmusr]

I won't be the judge of whether the question are fair, but the lesson learned for next time is that the questions should be specified in advance. For now I think the programs should be judged on a simple vote about which is the best entry.

[Vorticon]

I'm not sure what is meant by "programming design and execution?" The mechanics of the program should not be a factor in judging. It could be the biggest heap of steaming spaghetti imaginable and as long as it works well for the user/player that's all that matters.

 

You do have a good point here. I will take that question out.

[Vorticon]

I won't be the judge of whether the question are fair, but the lesson learned for next time is that the questions should be specified in advance. For now I think the programs should be judged on a simple vote about which is the best entry.

 

I disagree Rasmus. When one enters a contest, it is expected that he/she is looking at submitting the best program possible within his/her ability even if the judging criteria are not disclosed. When Owen Brand ran the 2 programming contests, he did not specify the judging criteria and he simply announced the winners and runner-ups. This did not deter anyone from coming up with some of the most creative and entertaining programs I have seen.

What exactly is so controversial about judging a program on originality, fun factor and ease of use? Isn't that the goal every game hopes to achieve? Per your argument, a programmer should only come up with a mediocre game unless specified explicitly in the judging rules, and I think that's ridiculous by any standard...

[Asmusr]

I'm not questioning the categories, I'm questioning whether it's fair that they are specified by one of the contestants after seeing the other entries. In medical research we avoid this type of bias by writing a protocol where all outcomes that will be investigated are described before the trial is started.

[Vorticon]

Since we agree that the questions are what anyone player would look in any game, and given that I am not doing the judging myself, then I believe there is little bias here. My mistake was to assume that the judging parameters would be understood as universal, and I have yet to hear from someone claiming that they are not. And no, this is not research, medical or otherwise, but rather a highly subjective voting process on the part of the AtariAge users. In the end, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

This discussion has really left a bad taste in my mouth as the intention was to promote programming activity on the forum and have some fun, and it will be a cold day in hell before I decide to initiate another contest. The poll will stay on till August 9th as initially planned.

[sometimes99er]

This discussion has really left a bad taste in my mouth ...

it will be a cold day in hell before I decide to initiate another contest.

Sorry about that.

Edited December 23, 2017 by sometimes99er

[Tursi]

JUST ANOTHER SMALL ADVENTURE

-I like the loading bar, and the title screen is neat

-A restart without loading would have been nice, but, that's what Overdrive is for

-Very interesting in that it hides the actual text from the listing (with a data file)

-Simple interface made it possible to see all the endings (I think). very cute! This would be a fun little romp to do up with split-screen graphics

 

 

EONS

-Resisted the urge to read the source listing, but it did appear there were clues to be had there!

-White on black is a tough color scheme to read, especially with TI's small-capital font (I actually have trouble with my eyes looking at it these days).. a softer color scheme is something I'd recommend (black on grey, white on blue, something like that). I had to change the setting to run through. (So sad, I'm getting old... first noticed with my Piano music demo )

-Parser works quite well, though a little slow (very good for XB, mind you! Overdrive solves my modern impatience.)

-When the parser does not understand, though, once I lost the description (cleared the screen, THEN said it didn't understand). Having "look" be a freebie to reload the description was a nice touch in many older ones. (Yes, I died trying to look at the description again )

-After several slightly different deaths I did begin to cheat a little. This gave me the clues I needed to advance (as well as giving away the ending, but I played anyway).

-I do like the story concept and the way it steps from scene to scene! (Trying not to 'spoil', but I can't believe you made me beat up on lions... )

-Seemed like a glitch on the third screen, when I talked as my first action, it told me 'this is really getting old' and left me locked up in that scene, repeating. (Anti-cheat? I don't even see that in the listing...)

-Still, fun concept and surprising depth for the size of the code!

 

The debate above kind of broke the contest side of things, though. Both games are fun but have different feels, and honestly, either or both would have certainly been passed around back in the day. You should both be happy and not worry about it!

[Vorticon]

Thanks for the review Tursi

There is indeed a small bug in Eons in the third scene, where line 3370 should contain DATA 41 instead of DATA 39. It does not happen if you use TALK TO instead of just TALK, which is why I missed it during my testing. I have attached the revised file here. Good catch!

Your comments are all very relevant, and I'm really sorry I had you harm lions! But it would have been either you or them Writing a text adventure is more a game of semantics and anticipation of player actions than anything else, which is why I am so in awe with the Infocom games. The amount of thought put into them must have been tremendous! I did my best to try to anticipate what players will do, but clearly there is a lot of improvement to be had since everybody who tried Eons has been stuck without peeking at the code. Speaking of which, it would have been trivial to hide all the residual text and data statements in disk files, but I figured it was not worth the effort for such a small adventure but definitely needed for a more involved one from a memory savings standpoint. Besides, it provided an unofficial hint book to the players

 

As to the contest, I honestly believe that Sometimes99'er' entry was the better one as it was quick to play, entertaining, and not frustration laden like Eons. For me Eons was more of a proof of concept in a programming genre I had never explored before, and I learned a lot from it. I was just saddened and a little miffed about being indirectly accused of rigging the judging process, something I would not have considered in a million years...

EONS.zip

[sometimes99er]

I was just saddened and a little miffed about being indirectly accused of rigging the judging process, something I would not have considered in a million years...

What I said was,

 

I think this has, perhaps unwillingly, become somewhat biased. Sorry.

I think you weren't trying to even listen to my viewpoint, instead you continue heating things up in your favor with stronger wording and variants of "poll questions address universal qualities", "it will be a cold day in hell" and "being indirectly accused" etc., - and yet having removed one of the questions, also leaves me miffed. Please remove my entry from the competition.

 

Edited December 23, 2017 by sometimes99er

[Vorticon]

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