IFComp 2023 - Games by Development System

Competitions IFComp
1

Once more, I’ve added the new year’s entries to my Excel spreadsheet listing all IFComp games by development system back to 1995. It also includes the place in the relevant comp and where available (i.e.: for 1999 onwards), average score, number of votes received, standard deviation, and Miss Congeniality outcomes through to 2022, and a separate tab with all the Spring Thing games.

The number of IFComp games by development system for this year is:

IfComp23

Corrections welcome.
-Steve

NOTE: The spreadsheet was updated on 4 October to include the software versions used for games created in Inform, TADS, Alan, ADRIFT and Quest.

28 Likes
2

It tickles my funny bone that my game Hand Me Down is responsible for the weird thirds in the counts (I assume).

8 Likes
3

Yes. I debated whether to just use halves, but went with game-portions so it was thirds. :grinning:

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4

I love the IF Community which produces wonderful things like this.

9 Likes
5

Sorry but I can’t seem to find the AGT games. What are the names of those games?

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LAKE Adventure and Creative Cooking.

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7

Thanks!

8

It seems, from my last time in 2017 to now, I missed the epoch-making moment CYOA surpassed parser. Anyone remembers which was the exact year?

2 Likes
9

The first year choice-focused games outnumbered parser, I think, was 2013. That was when IFComp formally entered its Twine-epoch:

Twine
Twine772×565 45.8 KB

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10

I’d argue that the “Z-Code/Inform” category should be split up as Bright Brave Knight Knave is I7 and The Witch is I6, and those are like (analogy of two very very very different things). But I guess that would blow up your entire spreadsheet which hasn’t been distinguishing between the (very very very different) flavors of Inform?

Oh, and according to the author, Artful Deceit is written in straight C, not C64 BASIC.

3 Likes
11

Ah, thanks for the correction regarding “Artful Deceit”. I thought I was probably wrong on that one.

Regarding the different flavours of Inform, to some extent the same could be said of the other dev systems; TADS 2 vs TADS 3, Alan 2 vs Alan 3, ADRIFT 3,4,5, Quest, etc. And some of the early IFComp games were written in I5.

I consciously chose not to distinguish between different versions of the same dev system for consistency’s sake.

But here are the numbers of entries by year for each Inform version:

Inform
Inform265×988 7.45 KB

14 Likes
12

I’ve updated the spreadsheet to add a column giving the software version used for each game created with Inform, TADS, Alan, ADRIFT & Quest.

5 Likes
13

That’s right, I wrote the game in C.

I actually started with the idea that I wanted to build something in C (as opposed to making this game) and it snowballed from there. Before I knew it I was trying to implement every feature that the Infocom classics supported. It wasn’t until I was nearly finished with the game did I stumble upon Puny Inform. As far as the feature set, I looked at other Infocom games and tried to implement as many instructions as I could before the submission deadline. One feature I didn’t get to in time (but tried) was to support articles (“a”, “an”, “the”). After the comp I’ll take the feedback I get and incorporate some updates.

Thanks for taking a look at my game! My wife and I had a lot of fun working on this together and I hope our enjoyment for the project comes through.

4 Likes
14

The feature-set seems reasonably good as it is and the implementation quite solid for a custom 8-bit platform parser. I haven’t spent much time with the game yet, but look forward to doing so.

1 Like