You may have already seen it, but if not, there’s a new and unique IF competition brewing. It’s billed as “Iron Chef for interactive fiction”—or, Iron ChIF—but rather than cooks battling to produce dishes based on some mystery ingredient, it’s IF authors writing a (very short) game based on a writing prompt or challenge.
Each “Iron Chef” represents a different authoring system. I was asked to represent TADS.
As of today, almost all the challengers have asked to do their work in Inform 7, with one agreeing to do theirs in Twine. No one has asked to do their entry in TADS.
This is where you come in.
We’re looking for a TADS challenger. We will both have five days to produce a quick game that incorporates the challenge prompt. Iron Chefs and challengers are asked to write short posts over the week detailing their progress and thought process. (Think of it as microblogging during the competition.) At the end, the judges will comment on the work, produce scores, and declare a winner.
I’m going to confess something to my TADS brothers and sisters: I don’t care if I win. I don’t even expect to win. I like the challenge. I like the idea of TADS being the centerpiece of a competition, if even only for one week. I like the sharing of the creative process, and reading how others approach problems creatively.
If you would like to participate, or are even wondering about it, consider this an invitation to join in. More information about the competition can be found on the thread. You can ask me or @otistdog any questions you may have.
sigh !
If there’s not enough TADS challengers, I’ll sacrifice myself, notwithstanding my issues & reservations with “cooking time”, but in exhcange I require an amendment of the rules explicitly excluding bad english from evaluation criteria. and this is non-negotiable.
Unfortunately I have way too many projects, a deadline for all of them that might not be possible, immense magnitudes of recent mental illness, and apparently my brain has tossed out a lot of TADS knowledge in favor of Rust knowledge, which is infuriating.
Also, I was doing all of my TADS stuff in VSCode. Piergiorgio will be pleased to know that I have purged VSCode from my system, and I’ve switched everything to emacs. I haven’t figured out a TADS workflow for emacs, though.
So, um… I will happily be your cheerleader, but if I take on any more tasks, I am going to collapse, lol.
Honestly, 100% agreed. I haven’t checked the rules, but I would be against this criteria on principle. I thought Iron ChIF was supposed to be about mechanical implementation, and not English prose.
I don’t see anything in the rules saying English skills will be evaluated. I assume Piergiorgio meant he would like a rule to be added that says explicitly that they will not be.
From the discussions going on in the background, I believe the idea of a code fragment has been quashed in favour of a seed-like (i.e. descriptive) ingredient. However, the format of that ingredient is still being discussed.
Note that I said “in the background”. I believe there are three private message groups for contestants, Iron Chefs and judges. I’m only privy to one of those. There may also be some discussion in individual private messages.
This sounds really fun, Jim… if I’d known about this as an upcoming event I might have juggled things to make time. I don’t think I have the bandwidth right now, though, alas! I would love using TADS for challenges, as right now I’m a bit hooked on CodeWars using C++. But honestly for coding of any kind right now it’s hard to find time. Are these blogs going to be posted here on IntFiction? I’d be interested to observe at least.
Whoops! I didn’t read the link, I just saw Jim say “we both have five days” and I was thinking it meant right away! Thanks for the clarification. I’ll take a look!
That’s correct. At present, the earliest anticipated time for a “pilot episode” would be early November. The rate of progress within the three working groups is fast enough that it should not be difficult to reach that target.
Timing was also my biggest concern here. Well, somehow surviving my recent Internet outage was my BIGGEST concern, this is a close second. What a supercool conceit for a community event. I will never tire of “Iron ChIF.”
If truly not kicking off until November, will add my name in the queue. That gets me past some disqualifying life conflicts late Aug thru early Oct. No worries if the line is long ahead of me, will be cheering on all our entrants. Just want to make sure our TADS community is represented!
