I’ve been entertaining the notion of entering this year’s Annual IF Competition – it’d make my fifth time. To be safe, I even went ahead and signed up at http://www.ifcomp.org/. This doesn’t mean I’ll finish in time, or even make it another day without completely losing my motivation, but I’m giving it a shot.
Anybody else here entering a game this year? Definitely, maybe, not sure?
I would love to… I am not sure if my game will be ready… It’s quite complex but I will give it a try.
Good luck to you…
Cheers
Go for it, Merk! I really appreciated Distress and Tales of the Traveling Swordsman. I know what it’s like to run out of steam, though, and I hope you’ll get it done. I’m exited to play the Comp games again this year after missing last year!
At this point I’m really just waiting for the entries to come in. Any predictions on who or what the winners will be? I think I remember last year you came pretty close [emote];)[/emote]
My game-in-progress is too ambitious for this year, as it turns out. I could probably have managed it if (as usual) I hadn’t been overly busy with work. Some pretty important things came up, some of which had me busy all of last weekend. That, plus family stuff, daughter’s birthday, etc… And I’m really disappointed, because what I’ve started has a lot of potential.
I could enter something, if I aimed lower. Something super-short, maybe, or a joke-like entry. But right now, I’m not planning anything. [emote]:([/emote]
A bit under a month yet to go. The anticipation is part of the fun!
I was giving this some thought lately. My first instinct was that the winning game always has some kind of gimmick to it – no matter how good the story or the writing or setting or the puzzles or whatever, without something innovative it doesn’t win. But it seems like that’s not strictly true. Quite a few of the winners over the years have been traditional – but very well done – entries.
Well, not last year, or the year before. The Traveling Swordsman was 4th in 2006. Distress was 4th in 2005. Trading Punches – 2004, my first game after five years, and the first that wasn’t a home-brewed parser – was 10th place. In 1999 it was Lunatix - The Insanity Circle which I was pretty impressed with at the time (still am, on some technical levels), which came in 12th.
I guess “close” is relative. [emote]:)[/emote] Since I’ve always been in it as much for the competition as for the enjoyment in and of itself, it’s been gratifying to place highly yet a little disappointing not to break into the top 3. [emote]:)[/emote]
I think Isxek meant your predictions were close. [emote];)[/emote] IIRC you made an initial prediction just after the comp started – but before actually playing any entries – based on the authors, titles and blurbs. Of course we don’t even have that info to go on yet, so even premature predictions would be, well, premature. [emote]:)[/emote]
Oooooh. Yeah, I misunderstood. I guess that makes the rest of my reply completely unnecessary. [emote]:)[/emote]
Years ago, somebody used to post on rec.games.int-fiction with a bunch of wild predictions. I want to say it was Luc French. I’ve tried that a couple of times here, but mine are never as interesting.
I hate to predict anything yet, though. Authors might be tempted to include even the wildest ones in their WIP! Ha ha.