Hello, I am super new to the IF community and as a part of my thesis project, I will be participating in this year’s IF Comp with my first-ever IF game. I will be making it in Inform 7, but I don’t know how big it will be yet. I was wondering what gameplay platform you would recommend I choose for my entry information, as I am not sure what would work best for me and the potential players. The option I’m leaning towards the most, according to my limited understanding, is “Glulx Using Inform’s “Release with a Website” Feature” but I’m not sure how to approach the web hosting requirement. Do you have any tips? Thank you very much!
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Hello and welcome to the competition and forum.
Those options are primarily for giving additional information to players. When you submit your files as part of your entry, the competition will host the game. You don’t have to host it yourself.
Select “Glulx Using Release with a Website”, and if it ends up being Z-code (unlikely) you can change the option later. In fact, you can edit any part of the entry information up to the start of the judging period.
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Thank you so much for the advice and the fast reply!
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My pleasure. And good luck with your thesis project!
I’m doing a PhD in interactive fiction, and so it’s always exciting to see people approaching IF from an academic point of view as well.
I’ve entered the competition four times in the past and I’ve always found people here on the forum are willing to help with any coding questions, and often people can be found who will beta test, so don’t hesitate to ask for any help when needed.
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I agree with all of Joey’s points (including welcome to the forum!), but I’d just confirm that you’re likely going to want to stick with glulxe as your release format. It doesn’t take long for an Inform 7 game to outgrow the z-code format, so unless you have a very specific reason to go with z-code, like wanting to make a game that runs on 80s-era retro hardware, it’ll be easier for you, and just as easy for players, glulxe is the way to go.
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Note that you don’t have to use Inform’s website generating feature - the IFComp site will make online interpreters for Glulx, Z-Code and TADS entries. You only need to upload your own interpreter/website if you’ve customised it.
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I was pondering this myself a few weeks ago. My initial thought was to release with a website. But then the IFComp website will happily take a game file, e.g. Z-code or Glulx, or TADS, or a Blorb of these with cover art. And play online works well.
Last night I uploaded my .gblorb game file (a .glulx game, packaged with cover art), and it’s working well on the competition preview website. Play online working and all.
Good luck @giaourtaki!
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A Viv Dunstan game to look forward to in the next IFComp. Goody!
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I like using the custom website option because it lets me fiddle with the CSS and give it a game-appropriate color scheme.
Whether or not this is wise is another question entirely.
For those who haven’t seen me joke about this on the forum: I’m partially color blind and have a bad habit of making color schemes that other people find atrocious. I once used purple text on goldenrod background and thought it looked beautiful.
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Oh, there’s one other thing I should mention. If you upload a zblorb or gblorb and let IFComp generate the website for you, it’ll embed some special code that automatically saves a transcript of everyone’s playthroughs, and you can download those transcripts afterward. If you’re using this for research, I imagine you want that.
If you generate your own website, it’ll attempt to embed that same code, but it doesn’t always work. What I did last year was let it generate a website for me first, download it and copy the tracking code, then insert that into my own Inform-generated one.
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If you’re using a modern enough version of Parchment it should be able to inject the transcript code. I’m pretty sure that includes the 6M62 built in versions of Parchment and Quixe, it’s only older releases that aren’t compatible. I’m not certain though, it’s been a while since I tested it.
Edit: I was almost right. A couple of years back I posted this PSA. The 6M62 version of Quixe works with the transcript injecting, but not the 6M62 version of Parchment. But it is very easy to update Parchment within 6M62. Or you can do as Daniel describes, and modify what the IFComp gives you.
Also, do note that Parchment (but not Quixe) does support Glk stylehints (ie, the Glulx Text Effects extension), and so if your styling can be done with them, it will just work! And that has the advantage of working in other Glulx interpreters too (most of them except for Lectrote).
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Yeah, my trouble last year was that I had multiple HTML files in my entry, and it chose the wrong one to inject into.
(In the root of the zip I had the gblorb and the feelies, and the web interpreter was in a separate /web directory, so that people downloading it to play offline would see immediately which files they’d need without the feelies getting lost under a bunch of CSS. The index.html file just redirected to /web/play.html or whatever.)
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Very grateful for all the replies! @vivdunstan @Draconis @Dannii
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So which option is the best one to select when you’ve used the Parchment HTML Converter?
“Glulx or Z-code, presented within a custom website” feels the most accurate of the options available, because the converter gives you a self-contained HTML file, which isn’t what Inform’s “Release with a website” gives you, if I recall correctly?
Can you verify if the transcript recording will work before the competition starts or is it just safe to assume that the site will know how to handle Parchment correctly?
I’m not certain which modes the transcript injection code runs in. But you can test it before the comp starts so you can check your options work.
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Ah, so I should be able to see transcripts before the competition start!
Right, changing to:
Z-code, using Inform’s “Release with a website” feature
and re-uploading, I now get transcripts appearing, where I wasn’t with the custom website option.
Thank you! 
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My transcripting worked as soon as I uploaded my game file a couple of weeks ago. A Glulxe blorb.
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Probably the most straightforward way to do things, but I want to include a few other files, like a map…
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I uploaded my work as “Release with a website” in which added some extra files (manuals, walkthrough…) and it worked immediately with the transcripts.
I created a zip file with the entire release folder.
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